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.
Apparently, my blog was one of the most read last month. I’m rather flattered that people are reading it, although it also feels a little peculiar at the same time – by trying to discuss my work in quite an honest, day-by-day way, I’ve made a conscious decision to omit ‘art-speak’; but in doing so, it has all become more personal, which is a slightly un-nerving act in itself.
The format of writing in a blog makes this easier though, I think. By putting my ideas in this context, it’s automatically less formal, and there’s less of a temptation to add some pretention into the mix. This is also about the only time I write anything for Other People to read without asking my partner (who has a degree in writing) to look over, re-arrange my sometimes rather erratic sentence structure, and generally smarten up. However, I’ve looked back over my posts so far, and I still feel happy with them – I wonder if there’s a way of taking extracts to include in that elusive Artist’s Statement?
Looking around the archives at the Discovery Museum was great. They’ve got a fantastic collection of objects, which I could have nosed through for quite a while. What interested me more when I got there though, were not so much the objects which they know a reasonable amount about, but the ones that they don’t. There are quite a few objects which the museum owns from previous collections, when the cataloguing and record keeping wasn’t as detailed and accurate as it is now. I quite like the idea that a museum is effectively there as a place to house knowledge, but when the museum lacks this knowledge, it heightens / creates a sense of loss about that particular object.
I’m going to be spending the rest of the afternoon reading some essays about collecting, and making a few notes. There was recently a call out for papers for a conference called ‘Museums and Biographies’. They want to ‘draw together analyses of representation, material culture and personality’ and they are ‘inviting papers that can cast a new light on the study of lives, objects and display’. My work seems to fit rather nicely into this, and they are asking for artists as well as historians and museologists, but as I’ve never done anything like this before, I’m not quite sure where to begin. Hence the reading.
Well, it's been a bit of a while since my last post – Christmas, New Year, and having a rush of applications to complete have taken over recently. I've also been spending an inordinate amount of time sitting in front of this computer either arguing with it about colour calibration or researching various ideas.
I'm attaching a photograph of the dress piece I completed just after New Year and photographed in the project space I was working in. I've recently applied for some funding for training in alternative photographic processes (using liquid emulation and making tintypes, a late 19th century process), but for the moment, I'm trying to get the colour accurate for digital printing. Which is a mission in itself, as my computer resolutely refuses to stick to the correct calibration I've worked out for it. Anyway, until that is solved, I've attached an image to give an idea of how that last piece of work is looking.
I thought it worked quite well in the space, until my partner told me the space made him think of some sort of underground torture chamber, which gave the dress rather different connotations. I was seeing the work set up there as a chance to work out how to photograph in those types of interiors, what sort of lighting etc, and for that it worked – I'm now looking for alternative locations to set up a shoot (which preferably avoid aforementioned implications).
I'm off to meet one of the Keepers at the Discovery Museum later today, to have a nose through the objects in their social history archives and collections. I'm looking for items which have some information about their previous owners, some sort of story attached, as I think this might be another direction to take this work – an actual history or story, rather than it all being anonymous. I was reading various theories about collecting over Christmas, and looking at some research about what sort of people ‘collect’, and what is collected. As I was reading, I was thinking about how after we’ve died, all that is physically left behind are the objects we’ve amassed during our lifetimes. So by collecting, (either consciously knowing it to be a collection, or not) is that an attempt to create a permanence, a physical grounding after we’ve gone?
I’ve been thinking about how my moods are associated with my work, and how they go in waves quite a bit. I’ll feel like I’m on to something, I’ll have a rush of ideas which need to be written down very quickly, and I feel really energised. However, that pinnacle on this rollercoaster is inevitably followed by a very low dip, which brings me crashing back to questioning everything, and feeling numb and muddy in my head.
I woke up the latter this morning. When I’m like this, I find it really hard to focus on what I’m making, and really feel like just giving up on the day, but at the same time I know if I do that, then the feeling will just continue – it’s basically finding a way of working myself out of it. I achieved this, this afternoon by making myself a list of each stage I needed to do in order to photograph the dress piece and the doily carving. I then made myself work through this list, and gradually the numbness faded, and I began to think clearly again.
I realised I’d been thinking of the dress as a dress, rather than as a vehicle to suggest the absence of a person. So I’ve tightened the fabric over the mannequin, and I’ve coated the fabric with more starch and watered down PVA, so when it dries, it should be quite sturdy, and also really get the shape of the figure across. I’m not sure I like the way that the fabric finishes with the hem-line at the moment. It seems a bit sudden, like a line being drawn underneath something to divide what is below from what is above. I wonder if there’s a way of making it seem to fade away, like you can do with paint?
I’ve also been thinking about this concept of blogging again. I’ve found myself narrating what I’m thinking in my head, mentally dictating sentences to write. Does this mean that the process of writing my thoughts for this blog is having an effect on my thinking process?
