I spent the weekend reading through and tidying up my contextualisation file. This documentation along with a specific section of our presentation at the assessment is not only a very important part of the marking, but a critical area for me. Throughout the course and the research elements of essays and the dissertation, I have relished learning about artists both in history and those practicing now. As with any subject, its history and context is essential to the understanding of what is happening now; and for the reading of meaning.
I like to read monographs of artists to get some depth into their work, I also read a lot of interviews as I love to hear artists grapple with expressing their practice. I am currently reading Brice Marden, an exhibition catalogue from Daros Collection, 2004, edited by Eve Keller and Regula Malin. Also, Various Arrangements, Jamie Sovlin in conversation with Martin Holman, from Shovlin’s current show at Haunch of Venison. I also listened to a recent podcast of Robert Irwin interviewed by Tyler Green.
Somewhere in listening to the ‘voices’ of these artists, are the questions. The answers are relevant only to themselves, really. It is the questions that are inspiring and that provoke thinking. As I’m writing I am reminded that the questions that I have been asked in my previous assessments have been the most helpful spur to progressing the work.
I wonder what questions I shall be asked in my final assessment? Only a couple of weeks until I find out.
Studio days are flying by and I find it hard to believe it is almost a month since the last post.
My work reflects my interest in my sensory responses to the experience of walking through cities, particularly London and New York. These opportunities give way to a freedom of expression of feeling and thought which is felt. Connecting visual and kinetic information through paintings and drawings of layered line and colour within an improvised geometry, re-enacts the pleasure of the movement and observation of the city avenue.
Much like the act of walking and looking and moving forward I constantly want to find myself in a different place with the painting. I need each time painting to be an experience that has physical progression. I look at the paintings made several months ago and they seem to be from a completely different time zone. Something about my process makes it almost impossible to see or remember how they were made. I unwrapped several today to photograph them and they always surprise me. In the way that we sometimes write things we never expected to or how we look back at blog entries and see ourselves from a different vantage point. From the other side. Photographs of my paintings never really capture the effect of the transparent layers, it flattens them and dulls the light, they need to be seen; is that what it means for them to become a place?
The short statement above is from the degree show catalogue that we are putting together. I have a longer one to write, I have six paintings underway, catalogue and invites to finalise, drawings to get to the framers, doccumentation to edit.
Two weeks until the show build begins.
Moving around the Dan Graham pavillion in the sunshine at Lisson Gallery was a good way to start Friday. It followed an intense week of prep and a presentation to staff and students (with questions) on studio practice and contextualisation.
Question. Reflect. Précis. Answer.
There is a hyper-real intensity about this stage of the degree. Past discoveries and experiences and future hopes are swirling around and about the current struggles. I feel I have a 1000 paintings that need to be made, perhaps that it why I am relating to drawing at the moment. It enables thoughts, records hunches, brings rhythmic order and facilitates play.
After seeing the work of Jorinde Voight Konnex and Spencer Finch and Dan Graham at Lisson, I spent time at Drawing Room with the work off Franz Erhard Walther, for him, ‘…drawing is not a static medium but rather a materially fluid generator of work processes, conceptual experiments and imaginative participation.’* The show, and that particular space, was like being in his studio, a place of ongoing investigation.
It feels important to me to not lock things down in my work or to try to ‘complete’ too much but to create openings.
Good times.
*Stephanie Straine, Franz Erhard Walther, Drawings- Line/Frame/Action/Drawn Novel. Drawing Room
http://www.lissongallery.com/#/current/
http://www.drawingroom.org.uk/exhibitions/franzerh…
Painting. I am working on one painting. Ongoing and continuing across different canvasses, through the books and on paper. It is made fast and slow, hidden and revealed, quiet and loud. Phrases that sway, sequences that echo. Most of the painting is happening away from these surfaces, the repeated humming of a tune; held and then placed, jotted and drawn.
