My Final Year – Degree Practice Digital Sketchbook

I was invited to be involved in the mail art project The Waiting Place by Ann-Marie James at the Art Station in Sandmuxham. However, I did not anticipate the arrival of the beautiful pack that was sent to me. Enclosed, typed on the thickest paper with the brightest pink ink was an except of the waiting place by Dr Seuss. My favourite part of it is as follows:

Everyone is just waiting…

a Better Break…

or Another Chance.

While reading this and appreciating the words and images running through my head, reality kicked in. There are people who can no longer wait. Families who waited for the worst to happen and those who didn’t have the chance to wait with loved ones this past year. The devastating loss of lives we have experienced as a country and as people has been inconceivable, and yet it continues to grow. Every day the virus is taking our loved ones away from us and while we do everything within our power to keep safe and protect the vulnerable, I have a feeling that we are not at all in as much control as we like to think we are.

Image of The Waiting Place stationary

I thought about it. Three hundred and twenty two days have passed since the first person died due to COVID-19. That first, huge loss of a life on March 5th 2020 was horrendously, just the first of thousands of people to die. But now as we pass 91,470 deaths today, January 20th, 2021, there are so many we can only comprehend individual lives by a daily figure. An electronic database of numbers which seems to endlessly rise. Yet here we still are, waiting for the day to come when the number stops going up.

Image of 322 Days photographed on a previous work which was used as a background

Following the changes in COVID-19 restrictions, we embraced an idea to hold a ‘Virtual Exhibition’ – something we are all seeing more of these days. It is based in our homes, so we have all taken a room or area within the home and are creating work in response to the space. The plan is to make a film of these areas, so it becomes an unusual tour of a puzzle of mis-matches spaces within a home environment. It will be shown on the. Artstation website from Feb 15-19 2021 and we will be doing an artist takeover of the Artstation’s instagram throughout the week. I’m looking forward to this as it will be a great opportunity to show my work on a professional site and through their insta page.

Images of the initial stages of the abstract painting in the stairwell.

I decided to make some work in the stairwell and just paint directly onto the walls. (I’ll find a way to paint over it when I move out! Sorry Carillion..) I don’t have a plan for the work other than to use what i have learnt about my painting style over the last few years. I will be freely painting onto the walls with a variety of materials, acrylic, enamel, watercolour, pastel and oil paints to name a few. I will also be adding very tiny words and sentences, similar to my Suspense in Black work I showed in Arlingtons during the Common Space exhibition last year.

Image of Suspense in Black 2019 in the Common Space Exhibition 2019

The triangular metal piece has very small writing on it which i think is effective. I had some feedback from Ann-Marie James back in 2019 where she suggested that including the small writing within my work was unusual and something she hadn’t seen before. I was very chuffed with this and it’s something I’d like to include in this piece.

Although much has changed in these past weeks, luckily our interim exhibiton is still going ahead. However it will be a bit different. Initially we had planned to have a physical exhibiton at the Artstation in Sandmuxham from Feb 8-12. I had been working on a large abstract painting which I had on the floor in the studio. I had moved it from the wall to the floor so I could work on the painting easier, but I had some feedback about how it was placed on the floor and I decided to work with it. I continued to work on the piece and decided that it should be exhibited on the floor. Once we visited the Artstation back on December 11 I knew that it would work really well on the floor in this space. I played around with the image I took of the floor space at the Artstation and made a digital mockup of the painting in the space.

Digital mockup of large abstract painting on the floor of the Artstation

After playing around with the painting on the floor outside, I decided to exhibit it with objects underneath to create a sculptural landscape. I felt that this worked well and I plan to photograph the piece outdoors when I can. I feel that photographing art in a natural environment helps to view it in a different light to that of the white cube.

I had the honour of being in the Room 1 Gallery for a week long residency. This was from Nov 26-Dec 2 2020 in Ipswich.

Image of the CUBED space within the Room 1 Gallery at the University of Suffolk 2020

This started as an idea that I had over the summer, sometimes these come to me at unusual times of the day. An word popped into my head ‘eggs’, and I wrote it down and didn’t think of it again. I must have been influenced by the installation i saw in Firstsite of Antony Gormley’s Field for the British Isles (1993). This was a very inspiring exhibition the see physically and I really enjoyed taking my time to look at it for as long as I did. I feel that it had an influence on my work as it made me think about how I could make on a larger scale to what I had been doing before. I enjoyed working with plasticine and clay as a child and had bought some air dry clay to play around with. I hadn’t made something sculptural accurate during my time of the course. I did make a sculpture of a hare in first year (looking back at now makes me cringe a little, but we learn) and I hadn’t looked at sculpture like this before.

I began making an egg using DAS air dry clay and moulded it so it folded round my table. It dried well but it was an expensive material to buy. I had decided at this point that I needed to make approximately 30 eggs to fill the space provided in the Room 1 gallery within the cube. After making about 11 and letting them dry, sanding and painting and glazing them took much longer than I had first anticipated.

Image of the first DAS clay batch of eggs

I decided to use air dry clay with a higher fibre content as it was more cost effective. After laying the eggs out in the measurements of the space I knew I needed a lot more. In total I made around 70 eggs and I really enjoyed the process.

Image of most of the first and second batch of eggs

Once I was in the space I played around with the placement of the eggs. First I tried spacing them out within the CUBED structure and was impressed that I had been able to make enough to fill the space evenly. This was my first idea and I had made a digital mock up of it previously online.

Image of digital mock up of the eggs in the CUBED space

I had initially thought of including a white cube within the CUBED space, mainly to have something for the moulded eggs to lean on and move downwards on. However, I had a discussion with Jane and she reminded me of the project we did in first year with Srin based on the concept of the pedestal, which is often used to display artefacts within museums, or pieces of sculptural art of value. I did some research on the meaning of it and how it carries much historical meaning and decided that maybe it might actually detract from the concept so I didn’t pursue it.

Concept 1: Image of the eggs in the CUBED space

THis was how my initial concept – 1 turned out. I wasn’t thrilled with how it turned out. It looked too placed and thought out and I just thought it didnt really have the effect I had hoped it would. THis was a little frustrating but I decided to play around with the placement again.

Concept 2: Image of the eggs in the CUBED space

I liked this a little more as I thought the idea of them pouring into and out of the constraints of the CUBED space was pretty exciting. But again, it didn’t really work for me.

I tried thinking of how I might incorporate the collection of dead insects I had collected over the summer. I decided to place them in the space like how a trail of ants may have walked around the space, as if an army.

Image of the eggs placed in the space like an ants formation

I decided to place the insects on the eggs. I felt this created an uncial and uncanny feel to the sculptures which I quite liked. The eggs had a certain humour about them, but placing the insects on the eggs made me feel uneasy. Dead insects all over fried eggs placed on the floor as if an army of ants had left them here for someone to discover, only if you land on our touch the eggs – as an insect, you many not survive. I just liked them like this so left it for a few days to gather some feedback.

Images of the eggs in the final formation with insects

I had a very useful critique with my peers and tutors, as they always are. I really do enjoy crits! Due to covid it was a digital critique which was just as useful if not more, as I was able to pinpoint exactly what it was I wanted to show. First the work, a large unfinished abstract painting on the floor (2020) was shown, and this is what I took from it: The white background is a successful way for me to show the saturation and colour of my painting. The varied mark and movement seen within the lines are successful. The colours are complimentary and fade into each other well.  The more you look at the image (It draws you in) the more you can see figures and movement. This reminded the viewers of Jackson Pollock’s work, in that it was very visual, you could imagine movement or the artist making the work. This has always been a consistent thread for me within my work that seems to be observed by all. It was described as having a ‘serious playfulness’ which was something I really liked hearing!

Elgin Thwaites work in progress (2020)

It also reminded the viewer of the work of Julie Mehretu and Helen Frankenthaler. Also when the work was flipped upside down it was considered to be just as successful so this was very reassuring.

Elgin Thwaites work in progress (2020)

Image of work in situ on the floor of my studio.

I look forward to working on it more and playing around with the placement of the work, on the floor and may on the wall. I would like to have a go at trying it on the floor over 3D objects. This would remind me of DC Semiraris (2019) by Tai Shani I saw in October 2019 at the Turner Contemporary. I really loved that work.

Tai Shani DC Semiraris (2019)

Image from Artnet [https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/tai-shani-on-performance-art-1676260] (2019)

The second work that was in the crit was Suspense in yellow (2020)

Elgin Thwaites Suspense in yellow (2020)

Images of work face on and in the shadows.

The feedback was as follows: the close up images are effective in showing texture and detail, and the use of shadows in some of the images were effective. Interesting that I repurposed polystyrene as a surface, lots of negative connotations with using polystyrene but as this was repurposed that is a good thing. The inorganic material gives of an impression of being an organic one, and some of the texture reminded a peer of being a lichen. The carving into the polystyrene is linked to a relief print.

There is a clear connection between the works They seem to not be purposefully made, but created through passion, freedom and movement amongst the layers. This reflects on my previous works which explored the notion of chance and also my automatic drawings.

I will also be having a read into Rosalind Krauss’ Medium specificity, as the polystyrene piece refuses to sit in either box of painting or sculpture and instead is a balancing act between the two.