Clay Project 2

Recent research is around thinking about different activities: artistic / domestic / scientific etc. There is an overlay of gestures, approaches, methods and medium in these areas but we are conditioned to accept these processes as separate e.g. when applying washing-up liquid with a brush to paper, one hardly thinks of it as painting. 

 

 

Grids

           

Moonlight & others

 

 

Clay Project 1

Initial proposal:

Continue an investigation into domestic and cosmetic materials: their propensity to work as painterly medium whilst retaining unique materiality. In particular I would like to focus on working with different powdered clay masks.

Domestic Liquids Project

Initial proposal:

I would like to investigate various aspects of colours found in everyday household – both naturally derived (fruit/vegetables/plants) and artificial (household chemicals, makeup etc).

These materials would be explored on the basic level as stand alone colours, their application as pigments, and furthermore through analysing their chemical make up by using method such as paper chromatography/colour separation.

The project will be initial research into the area, possibly raising more questions and opportunities for exploration rather than providing answers.

Not Painting, Body Bronzer/ Domestos/ Herbal Essence/ Fairy Liquid/ Baby Cream/ Baby Oil/ Toothpaste/ Antifreeze/ Harpic/ Carex/ Femme Fresh/ Persil Washing Liquid / Enliven Soap/ Red Clay/ Carrot Juice/ Orange Juice/ Beetroot Juice on Tracing Paper

 

Faith in Fakes - reinstalled in Old Truman Brewery, London (poor quality images)

Faith in Fakes - Degree Show, Bath, June 2011

 

Untitled (Blue is For Boys / Pink is for Girls) presented in Project Space, Dartmouth Avenue, Bath

“It is not so much difficult to have the real equivalent but public is meant to admire the perfective of the fake.”

Umberto Eco,  Faith in Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality  

 

"The display of realistic objects may portray a non realistic world; nevertheless a non realistic object may portray a realistic world. The verdict of what is the true reality and what is not, relay on the most elusive and convoluted connections within human culture, nothing empirical can prove its existence and this is the object’s ongoing changes in faith."

Daphna Weinstein, Telling Lies Short 

Untitled (Blue is For Boys / Pink is for Girls)

I have delayed this post as I was testing some new ideas that were consequently included in the degree show.

I have been thinking a lot about the density of my work. How fully packed it is when it becomes an installation, all surfaces covered, overlapping - almost one large sculptural construction. This it leads to number of considerations, like the balance of work and site. I would not say that my work is trying to be site specific but definitely site sympathetic. It responds to the shape, light, fixtures and fittings and then it overlays itself onto the existing with its fake reality. The concerns about the density is that it overpowers the existing canvas of the site. 

Therefore one of the ideas I wanted to test out was to allow the space to enter the work.  The fragments would need to stand for the whole or suggest some bigger meaning then their physical presence. 

At the same time the illusions of overload and feeling of confusion could be retained through scattering the fragments and applying different rules for linking the objects. Certain elements were placed purely to act as a balance to other objects whilst others referenced the site, art history, literature etc. Eventually many found elements were replaced by their "manufactured" equivalents.

There is also a great potential to reconfigure the arrangements in multiple ways. I am not too sure what it means yet but I find it intriguing as the recyclable ability of art and twisting the meaning is something I have engaged in other ways before...

Some of the detail of the arrangements. The working title is Blue is For Boys / Pink is for Girls.

Mise-en-scène

Memorial; polythene, vinyl film, electric tape, dusct tape, aluminium structure, bath stand; overall dimesions 100 x 150 x 85 cm; March 2011

Some of the comments from the crit:

-     It looks like art – when is something not art?

-     It is far from painting but has paint-like skin reference of peeling off the paint. The table is support for the painting. Also very craft like, almost beautiful where the cuts are made, sense of human engagement.

-     Quite a mad (schizophrenic) piece, almost emotional in that sense. Obsessive nature of the work seems to deal with emotional response to womanhood, domesticity, motherhood and the market pressures felt in this regard. Praying on most anxious feelings. Cuts could also be read as aggressive as in Lucio Fontana's work. It is not humorous in a way Angela de la Cruz’ work can be, not a joke piece.

-    There is a sense of occasion/festiveness here; seems quite spontaneous.

-     Greedy seepage, it wants to impose itself on the surroundings.

Restructured / Destructured

I am intrigued by possibilities of transposing the work further. Can I recapture the key elements through photographs or photomontages or just plainly rework the acutal pieces so they are offered another life where they can become something else? 

I am fascinated by the recycling and subverting the structures, refusal of the fixed and permanent. I guess it is not enough to just use the temporal materials, even the solid elements are interpolated, restructured and destructured.

@ These Words I Seek Are Not My Own

Her Sunday Best

 

This piece was recycled in the purest meaning of the word. It actually ended up in the bin and then lovingly rescued it just before the bins were emptied. 

He is all Front

Innocence

Living Space for Uninheritables

These Words I Seek Are Not My Own

These Words I Seek Are Not My Own: presents new work by eight artists whose practices are imbued by a specific interest in extended painting. The exhibition attempts to address the continually evolving collective understanding of painting through a diverse range of outcomes and installational elements.

"All painting is (at the same time) material, space and activity. It may or may not have a singular (sur)face and it may not hug the wall. It may appear as a projection across the space of architecture, as multiple surfaces separated from a fractured support, or as a collection of playful but useless objects. These 'paintings' are not mere images of things, but inhabit space as things in their own right, sometimes functioning as props and triggers, working to invoke faint memories of other things - almost but not quite abstract, and almost but not quite painting."  

From 'The Spaces of Painting' by Linda Khatir which accompanied the exhibition

 

The title of the show was a text by one of the participating artists created in response to an intimate unravelling of the artists’ practices, a piece of work alone, layered and acting as catalyst, enveloping the practices and sparking and extending new responses.

An essay on the practice of extended painting written by an artist and writer Linda Khatir gratefully accompanied the exhibition .

Organising the details of the show - proposals, communication and marketing - was pretty time consuming but a good learning curve. During the exhibition week, I had to divide my time between Bristol, Bath and London so my set-up time was effectively limited to one day. I was moderately pleased with the work I put in given the time constraints, though one of the pieces has since evolved in the studio into a more intriguing proposition (I will post the image later).

Overall it was a strong show, holding a variety of artistic responses, with a respectable turn out including general public.

There is a really good summary of the exhibition posted by a fellow artist Natalia Komis: Natalia's Blog Entry for These Words I Seek.

My work in the show: