Been rather busy this week, so much so that it's taken me a good hour and a half this morning with a couple of cups of tea to wake up enough to be able to string a series of coherent sentences together.
I'm currently showing some of my work as part of a group exhibition called Re-appropriated Phrases, Sayings and Idioms. It's basically using various parts of the university over about three weeks, with different artists from the MFA course showing each week. So I was hanging that on Monday, sorting out the final things Tuesday morning, followed by a very long but productive meeting with Sarah Tullock, an artist who I'm organising some projects with. Tuesday afternoon I went to a talk by Minty Donald who's just completed a three year research project in Glasgow called Glimmers in Limbo about understanding urban environments and authoritative versions of the past (http://www.glimmersinlimbo.co.uk/). Really, really interesting stuff and rather creepily relevant to the ideas me and Sarah were discussing earlier. She gave quite a clear theoretical framework for her research, which I found really useful – I'm been trying to figure out something for my own work with not too much success so far, so it was useful to see how someone else was relating their practice / research to ideas within geography, anthropology and architecture. Wednesday started off with a talk by George Chakravarthi (http://www.georgechakravarthi.co.uk/index.html), followed by a bit more running around, then me and a couple of the other artists exhibiting in the current group exhibition gave talks about our work.
The space I'm using is a bit odd – it's effectively a corridor with a window along one side, and an area at the far end with a very high ceiling. And a definite lack of electricity points. Add to this the fact that universities are pretty crazy about anything vaguely health and safety related and you understand why I spent three hours on Monday morning learning about amps, fuses and appropriate cables so that I could extend the wires on my spot lights so as not to used a load of extension leads plugged into one another. (Continues)
February 12th continued
I'm showing the dress piece I was working on over Christmas, together with another two that I've made since. The corridor is entirely empty apart from these dresses and four spotlights. I've got them set up at the end of the space, hanging from cotton threads with are sewn into the exposed seams. These in turn hang from a couple of wooden sticks, which is hanging from a single thread from the ceiling. This methods means that the structure of the dresses isn't squashed, but also means that they spin and move when people walk past. I've been thinking about different ways of lighting work since Still Lives in the summer. On this occasion, I've got two different lighting set ups depending on the time of day. When there's plenty of natural light, I've tried to highlight the dresses themselves, to emphasise the subtle colour differences in the fabric. During the evening, I'm lighting them from further away, so that there's a range of shadows. From the end of corridor during this set-up, the dresses themselves seem to disappear, or at least become less visually prominent – you see the shadows first.
I'm not sure how successful this is. Whilst I've gotten quite a bit of positive feedback, there are a couple of things that keep reoccurring – the fact that they are female forms, and that people think they look ghost-like. I chose a female form primarily because I wanted to give an impression of more than just a torso, and with one item of clothing, as I wanted it to hang without a break, and so that it could fade away at the bottom. And at least in Western culture, a dress is the really the only item of clothing that is a total body covering by itself. As far as the ghost comment is concerned, whilst there are ‘ghosts' involved, echoes and traces from unknown people, I'd rather things were a little more subtle than a Boo. (Continues)
February 12th continued
I've tried to explain this work and where it's coming from three times in the last two days, due to giving a talk and having tutorials with both Minty and George. It's gotten to the stage that I find myself repeating particular phrases, so that now they feel like self-made clichés. I also found that during my talk, I had pretty much the same problem I have with writing a statement – a linear narrative doesn't work. I've got ideas which spin off from ideas, which then produce more. I've got reams of images, notes, essays and thoughts which influence what I'm making, and I know there are connections, but they seem vague and insubstantial. This annoys me because on one hand I like a level or organisation and exactness – I make lists so I know what needs to be done and then I can feel satisfied when I've ticked items of and have a sense of achievement. But the work itself is about the exact opposite – it's about things which aren't there, empty spaces, absence, fragility… all stuff it's hard to put your finger on, for want of a better phrase. I like making things, but I also use pre-existing objects. I'm interested in how these things are neglected, but I take care of them. I'm creating things, and yet I like emptiness. I like finding these objects, but I like that they're also lost. And so these layers of contradictions seem also to be an inherent part of my practice.
My computer decided to behave itself with regard to its colour calibration for a good hour the other day, which gave me chance to play around with colours and tones of some shots I took in the project space. I still need to get these printed to see how they work in reality, but these look quite good on my machine, so I thought I’d upload a couple of examples.
I quite like the slightly painterly qualities these images have, and how they feel much less warm, after getting rid of the yellow cast from the spotlights.
I’ve been thinking along the lines of photographs becoming works in their own right, so that they are more than straight documentation. In order to do this, it’s important that they become an object also – by this I mean that they the photograph would be more than the image: it would be the surface it’s printed on, the smell and the weight of it, in addition to the depiction of the space. If I’m successful in the funding I applied for recently, it would mean that I would be able to have some training in using alternative photographic processes. (By the word ‘alternative’, read nineteenth / early twentieth century ways of producing a photographic image). I’m particularly interested in tintype, which in layman’s terms, was basically like the equivalent of an early Polaroid, and using liquid emulsion, as I quite like the idea of being able to create photographic prints onto a range of different surfaces. I like the tangibility these processes entail, and also how using these methods would mean losing some control as to how they turn out – the prints would then be unique.
On a completely unrelated matter, not being particularly familiar with the art of blogging, I’ve only just realised that people have been making comments on my posts. Apologies for that, I wasn’t ignoring you, I was just rather slow. I’ve just responded, but rather annoyingly, despite being allowed 400 words, the comments feature doesn't seem to be showing them all after I pasted them in.
Which is a little irritating really.
