Weekend Reflections

Grayson Perry's last Reith lecture has given me much to think about. I loved hearing from someone inside the art world giving such honest opinions, and it was really helpful. I feel inspired to really try and to take every opportunity possible(even though I don't want to be an artist).

Have also been looking on tumblr quite a bit and finding it really useful to find new artists by following art blogs - it is also a handy way of keeping track of all the artist's names that I find.

Discovered work of French sculptor Vincent Mauger... amazing! Reminds me very much of Tara Donovan, and I love it instantly just as much. Such brilliant intricacy, but with the use of one, simple, everyday/industrial material, which is transformed to almost organic forms in the contouring and decomposition. I was particularly drawn to the pipes sculpture because of the simplicity of the circular lines, the sections look so beautiful, they remind me of coral or geometric mountain ranges.. His work that is displayed on the ceiling instead of the floor is another favourite because of the way it changes the normal format of the gallery and makes the viewer look to a place that is not regularly used - of course I am still very interested in this concept, and I feel unnoticed spaces is something I want to continue from foundation.

Something that is very apparent from looking on tumblr is that there are so many works out there... I wondered this morning whether it is beneficial or detrimental look at all these artists and to be constantly reminded that it is nearly impossible to be original. In the short term I think it is beneficial for providing inspiration - their art gives me new perspectives of the world, and feeds my own ideas. But it is still a little hard to comprehend how many artworks and ideas there are being made continuously, infinitely. It is very tricky not to feel self-conscious and insignificant with this in view.

 

Drawing

Drawing is going well. I responded to the brief quite quickly making a range of drawings without planning them at all beforehand. To begin with I didn't think this approach was successful because the drawings looked messy and very rough, but as I have made more and viewed them together, they have begun to have some significance.

 

I have become quite reluctant to draw lately because I haven't practiced it seriously since AS Level.. I use drawing as a part of my natural process in developing ideas, but mainly continuous line drawing and very quick sketches. The topic of drawing also makes me feel guilty because it is something I know I should keep up with, having focused on it and enjoyed it for so many years.

 

Chosing the sources was fairly easy: the wasps nest, which is just so intricate and fascinating, a macro eye shot by photographer Suren Manvelyan, and the photograph of my shopping bags on washing line AS experiment, which still interests me now.

 

 

 

Today I set myself a target of making a detailed, studied tonal drawing, as a test of my patience, which I feel I have latterly lost. While I was drawing I was thinking about how it is very easy to rush artwork.. my reason for not painting is that I don't have the patience, and the same for drawing, and the same for learning how to use a proper SLR camera... the same even for using materials such as wood and metal - (as well as being afraid of the machinary) I can't instantly manipulate them with my hands like I can with paper and the materials I have worked with recently... I need to be more patient, clearly. A new goal.

 

The crit today went well. I really enjoy hearing about other people's work and I was told I work in a similar style to Eva Hesse, which made me happy. Today I also found myself able to describe and interpret work in more detail and with more depth; I think I am getting better at viewing works with an emotional response, as well as just looking at the obvious aesthetic. I think this is probably down to thinking and looking at the works for longer, something that has been encouraged by all the tutors so far.

 

Not really sure how I am going to develop my pieces yet.. I am going to think about it over the weekend. Initial thoughts are that I'd probably like to keep it 2D just so I can have a go before I go back to my usual medium.

'Figuring It Out'

Reading my book... 'Figuring It Out' by Colin Renfrew, which I chose because I have enjoyed reading 'But Is It Art?' by Cynthia Freeland - the theory of art is something I'm really, really interested in.  I feel reading these sorts of books is something I need to do to keep my brain going... like at A Level, I think a balance of physical creativity and intellectual subjects is necessary for me. Last year I also found that reading became a part of my creative practice... reading about the history or philosophy of a type of artwork gives me new ideas.

 

Aside from these things, reading just now also made me think about art at school... I knew nothing of art history before foundation, and I'm really puzzled over why not - there just seems so much out there to learn, which I am really excited about, but I guess I am shocked by how little I know. But why were we not even introduced to art theory and philosophy, and told to draw pasta or rope or copy an artist's work instead... Recently I have got quite annoyed at how people might view art as an 'easy' subject, or one which doesn't require a lot of brains or academia... but there is so much intellect and meaning and interesting ideas to learn about within the subject. The book is describing how art can inform our knowledge of human development... art is as good as science in learning about the world around us.

Temporal Practice - Friday Crit

 I didn't have a great amount of work to show after my week of no ideas...

1. Three video clips of toilet paper falling to the ground, mirrored

2. Photographs of 12 compositions produced by black wool thread being dropped onto the ground

These were made as a way of investigating the materials in an active way. I learnt about Gutai in Wednesday's lecture, a post-war Japanese group of artists who used performance to highlight the properties of materials. I was drawn to their ideology more than the work itself - they believed materials should be valued for their own properties instead of being used to represent different objects, as if they are pretending to be something they're not (e.g. traditional sculpture - clay modelled to represent figures...). I realised that I am also more interested in the materials, how they move and what I can do with them, over figurative things that I can make with them.

Although only a rough idea (a video version of a maquette perhaps), I was pleased with the short clips of the falling toilet paper... If anything it is a base for an idea that interests me and I would be happy to investigate further. I think this was a key thing I was lacking last week - I had neither any confidence, nor any interest in the ideas I was coming up with. One thing that was helpful, and with hindsight seems like an important thing to remember, was the suggestion by Ed that I should focus on what inspires me. I was thinking of ideas that fitted the brief well but that I did not feel comfortable with and were quite removed from my usual way of working... although I want to grow and develop my style, If I'm stuck maybe it is sometimes a good idea to return to an idea/concept that I know has some mileage.

The feedback was quite positive, the group seemed to find the video peaceful and aesthetically quite interesting. I was asked whether I might consider using colour in my work as both my pieces were monochrome. I tend not to use a lot of colour in my work, colour itself certainly isn't something I really try and investigate - I don't really like bright colours because I always want my work to be subtle... after a discussion, we all reasoned that colour perhaps wasn't necessary because, if it is the materials I am exploring, it wouldn't make sense to give them artificial properties.

The wool composition idea seems a very simple idea, but I really like the spatial quality: some of them look to me like they are balls of thread instead of being flat on the surface beneath. I also really like how they are all different... this element of chance was something I wanted to focus on in both my experiments because of the history of this way of working in video and performance... I think it emphasises how the work was an action, unravelling the wool and allowing it to fall where it will.

 

It was by chance itself that I learnt that Marcel Duchamp did a similar thing in his 1913 work, '3 Standard Stoppages', dropping three threads, each 1m long, onto canvases and glued them down. I found an interesting quote about Duchamp's opinion of the work:

 

Three Standard Stoppages, according to Marcel Duchamp, was one of the key works in his development as an artist. He said,"In itself it was not an important work of art, but for me it opened the way -- the way to escape from those traditional methods of expression long associated with art. I didn't realize at the time what I had stumbled on. When you tap something, you don't always recognize the sound. That's apt to come later. For me the Three Standard Stoppages was a first gesture liberating me from the past." (found in: tout-fait :The Marcel Duchamp Journal On-line, Issue 1/Vol1, December 1999)

 Reading this gives me more confidence to make works that may not be particularly monumental, but which are interesting and might be the beginning of another series of works.

Other hings to learn from the last two weeks would be...

- To ask for help (perhaps main aim to learn to do this)
- To not panic/get overly anxious, because it doesn't help
- To investigate what interests me
- Video can be used as another method for investigating materials and recording ideas

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Really, really struggling today. Have no faith in any of my ideas, and I don't have many anyway. Not sure really how to move on from feeling like this... I have an experimwnt that I planned to carry out today but I'm too afraid to do it because I know it probably won't be any good, and it doesn't mean anything.

My plan yesterday was to carry out some quick trials with materials just to provoke some ideas amd so that I will have something to show at the crit... but I don't even want to do these now. Feeling very self concious of my work after showing the video. Worst of all, having doubts about whether I'm enjoying the course and whether I suit it.. perhaps I would be better doing prop design or something. Hopefully this is just the result of my unfamiliarity with this medium, but I am really disappointed in myself for having this reaction to something out of my comfort zone, as I want to learn new things.

Temporal Practice Week 2

Feeling fairly anxious at the moment over how to develop work involving an element of time.. presentation of my film today I don't think went well - I wasn't happy with it and have no ideas/little interest in taking it further. I have taken several books out the library on ephemeral installation, performance art and the use of the body as medium, sound art and the history of video art; I am hoping reading around the subject and learning about different artworks will give me a few ideas.

At the moment I think I am being held back by my nerves. I really don't want to produce something that I'm not proud of again - this I need to conquer or nothing will get done. I am also really trying not to revert back to my 'style', I want to try new ways of thinking and working so that I can use them in future work when I get back to the format's that interest me.

I think tomorrow I might go for a walk to try and get some ideas going.

'... Descending a Staircase'

Final idea for the 2-4 minute video task: multiple overlayed images of me walking down the stairs... a reference to Duchamp’s 1912 painting ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’. The process of filming was easy as the composition was inspired by the painting... the staircase filmed slightly to the left so that I would be travelling from the top left to the bottom right corner of the screen, camera in a fixed, stationary position.

 

I definitely did not plan my ideas enough... the decision to go with this new idea was spur of the moment and I think this made the whole process harder as I wasn't clear on what I wanted to achieve... I found the editing process very stressful, trying to understand how to use new software combined with not knowing what effect I was after anyway. I think overall I did well to produce the film that I did in a limited time (and this was something I shouldn't have allowed to happen - I should have allowed myself another day to edit the footage) and I did learn from the experience. I also found some reassurance in my ignorance.. decisions were made for me by the limitations that I had, such as turning away from an orderly, precisely timed overlap of images, to a more experimental depiction, that was more fun to make and conveys Duchamp's use of fractured shapes in the painting.

I am not exactly happy with what I have made... I think it is rushed, poorly assembled and gives very little thought to anything except the loose historical reference. I think the piece lacks a concept, which is what makes it most disappointing to me.. but this is something that I think would take me longer to develop than the time I had. Practicing using the software and becoming more confident with using different editing tools would also allow me to focus on details and sharpen ideas.

Having said this, I have taken some stills from the film which I think are really interesting visually.. very different to anything I have produced before, but I like the 'ghostly' element, and how parts of my body can be seen multiple times in the same image.

The aspect I find hardest about video is that I have no notion just yet of what makes it good... with sculpture/installation there are elements I recognise which interest me, and I feel able to judge the quality of my own work. With video, as with painting too, I find it very difficult to identify what the good qualities are or what doesn't work at all. To improve on this, I aim to look at more video art online, on Ubu etc. and maybe read some books that will introduce me to video art as it has evolved historically.  I really want to understand it more as I have enjoyed making videos in the past (on much simpler software) and it would be good to experiment with it more at some point.