The grids are unfiltered, randomised brain dumps and rambling thoughts.
Disorder often stimulates us with new ideas and creative ways of doing things.
They are messy, and I feel like I should try to make some order from this, and so the process is chaos -> order.
Brian Eno has spoken about his use of cards (in music composition), containing instructions or rules, to help structure these rambling thoughts, and compose something interesting.
So I feel I should be structuring the grids into something more ordered, to structure my rambling thoughts …
Structuring
The work consists of 3 components:
- panels
- grids
- matrix
Most of my panels follow themes, and these themes repeat within grids.
To try to structure the grids I’ve come up with a colour coding system, so I use a different colour palette depending on the particular theme used in each panel. This way a colour structure appears within the grids, and this becomes useful – and interesting – when many grids are displayed together as a matrix, which is what I’m planning to do for the Clutter show.
Colour code:
- Trees & buildings – silver, grey, black, blue
- Concepts – gold, yellows, black, ochres
- People – red, pinks, black, purples
- Nature – green, light green, black, blue
- Slogans/ opinions – black, grey
- Politics – greys, blue
- Diaristic – greys
- Text – black, grey
- Textures – grey
- Body – reds
- Thoughts & feelings – yellow, grey
- Philosophy & theory – brown & black
- Food and meals – black, grey
- Outer space – black, grey, silver
Note that some of the individual panels in a grid actually mix themes, and so I am allowing combinations of codes to take place. Whether this works or not, I dont know. Maybe I need to be strict about this.
So the grids can work as individual items, but using this colour coding system, they can also work as part of a bigger structure, though in different ways to how they work individually. For this show they are going to be arranged according to a combination of my personal choice and date. But devising fixed rules for this would be a logical next step, to take the project forwards.
Rules
The code/ rules aspect interests me – particularly in how the colour coding rules dictate the overall composition. This is perhaps a nod to generative art – and rule based art.
As Philip Galanter said (2006): “Generative art happens when an artist chooses to cede some degree of control to an external system, and the artwork thus results from more than just the moment-to-moment intuitive decisions of the artist.” (https://philipgalanter.com/downloads/vague_terrain_2006.pdf)
Random journals?
On reflection, I don’t think the grids are merely messy random journals, I think they are actually the finished work. I like to make/ finish each one within a day, so it’s a true reflection or snapshot of that moment and my emotional state, and the things in my head. Finishing one gives me a sense of completeness. They need to be done in a day. They are like today’s news. Tomorrow it’s all different.
