My Final Year – Degree Practice Digital Sketchbook

I will be discussing my posts and reasoning for the Artstation  Instagram takeover to promote our Congruous Exhibition in Feb 2021.

I did some research for the Professional Practice 2 module in regards to the best time to post on Instagram to get the highest reach out our your posts. I found that in general, Wednesday and Friday afternoons seemed to be the time when the highest proportion of people were using Instagram. However, after checking my own follower Instagram use, I found that the time where I had the most engagement from my posts was on Monday’s, then Tuesday’s followed by Wednesday’s. Although when I looked into this it only increased by one or two on those days. For this reason I chose Wednesday as my ArtStation Instagram takeover day for the Congruous exhibition.

Images of Global Instagram engagement hours and a screenshot of my own insights from my Instagram account.

I chose to post the following:

0900 (First Post)
Post in Instagram Feed
Post images in order, and press the double square button on the right-hand side so that they are shown in their original dimensions rather than as a square.
Also please tag me in the actual image @elginthwaitesart (press the three dots on the upper right hand side and tag me)

“Hey! Elgin Thwaites @elginthwaitesart from @uosfineart here and today I’ll be taking over @theartstation Instagram! Today is all about my work for the Congruous exhibition.
Swipe to see images of my work Transcend the Cube (2021)
You can currently see the work virtually on the Artstation’s website. It’s great that we can show our work there so go and give it some love!
Transcend the Cube is an immersive painting that moves up the stairwell in my house – as close as I can get to a white wall at the minute! It’s interesting to be exploring new ways of making while at home during lockdown. I have worked on a written mural in the past but I’ve never made something like this. It’s super exciting and I can’t wait to see how my work progresses from here.
(Please post the hashtags as a comment rather than in the original post)
#CongruousExhibiton #L6DegreeUOS #ElginThwaitesArt #ImmersivePainting #TheArtStation #TranscendtheCube

1100 (second post)
Post in Instagram Feed
Post images in order, and press the double square button on the right-hand side so that they are shown in their original dimensions rather than as a square.

Elgin Thwaites @elginthwaitesart here again, here to tell you about our film that we’ve made of our collective home for the Congruous exhibition. @ellaart__ worked hard on editing the film and we are so proud of how it turned out!
You can view it on the Artstation’s website and prepare to be immersed in an exciting virtual tour of our work made during this third lockdown in the UK.

Check out the Artstation’s Stories to learn more about my influences and how working from home is going!
That’s all from me, stay safe and watch out for more takeovers this week by other artists exhibiting in the Congruous exhibition!”
(Please post the hashtags as a comment rather than in the original post)
#CongruousExhibiton #L6DegreeUOS #ElginThwaitesArt #ImmersivePainting #TheArtStation #TranscendtheCube

1300 Instagram Stories Posts

Post on Instagram Stories First story
Post GIF from Artstation website as a video on the stories and write the following at the bottom (only what is in quotes).
Tag me
“ @elginthwaitesart “ Insert hashtag
“ #CongruousExhibition “

Second story
Post video blooper I have attached of my dog sneezing. Text at the bottom
“Adjusting to making work at home is a change for us all!”

Third story
Text at the bottom
“I am influenced by @studioolarfureliasson” Image

Fourth Story
“Also influenced by @elizabethpowerart”
Fifth Story
“Check out my other paintings!” Insert tag @elginthwaitesart

Final story

“Thanks for following along!”
Tag me @elginthwaitesart

27/05/2021 – On reflection, i did get a few new followers from posting at this time, and i believe it was the right thing to do. I would continue to check my follower engagement on my Instagram in the future when i look to post things like this, to ensure maximum reach. I really enjoyed making this and i feel that the inclusion of the video of my dog sneezing, although not ‘professional’, it allows followers an insight into your practice, how people work and how Covid has forced us to work in new ways which, certainly I, would have not considered before.

In the final installation of work for the Congruous Exhibition with the Artstation, these are the final posters used. I made each individual an array of poster styles for posting on facebook, instagram and on websites and for a physical poster. These were used during our Instagram takeover on the Artstation’s Instagram page.

Images of Posters for Congruous

Images of my final work Transcend the Cube (2021)

(26/05/2021) I believe that on reflection, these were successful posters and in the future I would offer to make them again. The title ‘Transcend the Cube’ was successful and impactful. In discussion, people were able to understand it and apply the meaning to the work in the way i hoped they would. I think next time, due to the unusual shape of the space and the lack of natural light I would find a way to get a better white photography light for documentation.

Tutorial on the following images with Matthew Bowman

Bold text is reflection on original notes.

27/05/2021 – Note taking during the tutorial is a helpful way for me the remember things mentioned – however I sometimes find it a little difficult to decipher looking back. I looked up some of these points I recorded in the tutorial, such as indexical traces and the idea of painting in the expanded field. I wasn’t sure if this was a theory that had already been explored, it was something that I was interested in during L5, I did some reading into Rosalind Krauss and the blurred lines between drawing, painting and sculpture. I think balancing the lines between these is something i enjoy doing in my practice, however when i name something, such as my studio mural ‘Transient Convection’ a painting, I hear the audience discussing wether it is a painting, a drawing with paint or as its architectural, a painted sculpture? It brings up many questions for me, such as is it a a site-specific mural painting? An immersive installation?  I looked into Katharina Grosse’s works and took a leaf out of her book to call it a painting. However is it immersive, mural.. drawing made from paint? I’m still not totally sure.

Notes form Tutorial with Matt 15/04/2021

Painting in the Expanded field?

Have another look into Rosalind Krauss.

Drawing or painting? Drawing with paint?

Merlau Ponty embodiment/embodiedness

Indexical Traces

Sculpture is what you bump into and step back and look at a painting
Paintings exist on the wall in front of you and sculpture exists on the floor
Not clear cut you cannot encompass it into your field of vision it becomes unframed and it can’t be bounded.

What Determines those shift in composition ?
How I engage and treat the physicality of the space around you the partition is a wooden panel which separates the space
Each vertical line takes over it
Ignore those vertical lines and do not let them determine or constrain those vertical shifts
Site specificity is always there in my practice – i should probably embrace it.
Paint directly on the ground
Against the immersive aspect
Health and safety aspect? 20/05/2021 – Walking around the space it is the same as it would be. If i were to include something covering the ceiling then it may add to or take away from the piece. It would make the back room quite dark and overwhelming, considering it as it is now. 

CY Twombly painter or draw’er’
Form of drawing
Mark making
Drawing in space
Drawing made with paint
Line doesn’t describe contour or form anymore
Morris Louis – have a look at his work.                                                  Unveiled large sheets of canvas allowing the paint to move around and run down and form its own lines
Abstraction impersonal non subjective
Rothko – Large works on a huge scale.
Merlau pointy embodiment embodidness
Immersive space in front of the body behind body is part of the experience of the artwork

The mark are directly connected to your own body reach of arm and height. Not going in beyond my height – a trace of my body. 27/05/2021 – I did end up jumping above my height and using a brush on a stick to reach heights beyond my body. I think doing this is still making it an extension of my body, therefore is still true to the original idea. It’s not really comparable to Julie Mehretu’s cherry picker heights! 

The body matters in making the experience of the work not always explicit or made into a thing. 27/05/2021 – after making the work and researching into Sol LeWitt and Grosse I would have to say that the audiences engagement with the space and the painting is what makes the work. The consideration of the traces left behind by my body is one that i have been told about many times in both crits and tutorials. The audience do consider visualising me creating the work ,moving around the space and mark making. I believe that it was successful because of this.

Embodiment of subjectivity
Line continues around the corners of the space goes towards the floor how is the line stretched? 27/05/2021 – I added lines onto the floor, continuing the work to be both in front and underneath you. I think this adds to the work as it creates more of an immersive space. I achieved this ‘line-stretching’  by working onto the floor. 

Susan Morris embodiment ephemerality connection

Sol LeWitt – Wall Drawing #1136,  2004, Sol LeWitt

The distinction between a drawing and painting is something I have been looking at through making my work and researching other artists.

Sol LeWitt’s wall drawing works come with instructions, as if asking the viewer to be able to recreate them. The audience is a co-creator of the work. This reflects back to my ideas in that without the audience, there is no work.

Sol LeWitt is an artist who works mainly in drawings and other media. I came to find out about LeWitt through suggestions from tutors when discussing ‘Transient Convection’ (2021) in its early stages.

His drawings are well known as to have been done by someone else. He believes that the conception of the idea, rather than the execution is what makes the artwork. His main concern was the conceptual art (the ideas) rather than the execution, this was interesting for me as I work in almost a completely opposite way. However, the instructions given to the person making the drawing were open to their own interpretation as seen below.

27/05/2021 – I think after exploring the work of Sol LeWitt and discovering the importance of the instructions, I think in the future I would try to incorporate more planning into my work. However i think that this planning would have to be limited as to not limit the spontaneous nature of my work.

A muralist and one that works with site-specificity, Katharina Grosse is an artists whose work I can discuss in relation to my own. As my practice has progressed over the last three years, drawing has been something that I have always had at the center of my practice. Looking back, mark making with paint and using colour in my work is something that I have developed a severe interest in.

Grosse is disrupting what it means to be a painter, the work she is doing in immersive where the painting merges with the real world. She balances that boundary between painting and sculpture, bringing the historical ‘painting’ into the three-dimensional world.

Paintings only began to be moved and carried around about 300 years ago, the way that Grosse moves the paint around in the space is contemporary, however not a new idea as discussed in this article by the Gagosian (2020)(https://gagosian.com/media/gallery/press/2020/Brown_Kate._How_Can_a_tnet_August_12_2020.pdf).

Grosse discusses painting directly onto surfaces and how they interact with pigment. I can see this in my work where I have progressed from painting on canvases to corn husks in my sculptural ‘Hare’ (2018) piece in L4. I then progressed to large pieces of paper in L5, working with ink and writing on the walls. In L6, I started working on objects like polystyrene, canvas spread across the floor, the walls in my home and eventually the walls and floors of the studio space at University.

Like Grosse, I believe that painting doesn’t need to be within the strict confines of the traditional canvas, hung on a white gallery wall to be viewed in person and eventually sold within the art market. If I make a painting directly onto a wall or floor, it cannot be owned, or sold, unless the architecture itself is removed or the building is sold. I really like this concept as it makes a work worth more than a price tag or an asset someone can add to their insurance. It is much more personal. It embodies traces of myself, as it sinks into the architecture itself,  becoming the surroundings, an immersive space where people walking over the work become the artwork themselves.

Without the audience it is just paint on an architectural surface. The viewer can embody the work, visualising myself working in the space, leaving the ethereal marks on the wall and leaving traces of themselves in the space.

This work was made during lockdown in Germany last year. Grosse, much like myself feels that work can be viewed online and a viewer can gain an insight into the work this way when necessary. I do however feel that a work as grand as this, although documented well, cannot be fully appreciated unless the audience can enter the space. I feel that audience interaction is a huge part of experiencing art.

Images from https://gagosian.com/artists/katharina-grosse/ (2021)