Re: What we talked about

Collage isn’t a technique I’ve made much use of in the past, my previous chopping up of found images has always been reductive rather than additive. (removing areas with a sharp scalpel or a digital airbrush) But as a thinking and drawing process goes it has proved fruitful of late.

Recent changes in my life have affected my practice in interesting ways. I became a mother 18 months ago, and recently gave up my external studio space. Both these factors have changed my work in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Becoming a mother didn’t soften me (my work anyway) if anything it sharpened my edge. I’ve become acutely aware of my role as a woman, of what is expected of me as a mother.

I attended a discussion recently to examine the continuing influence of Laura Mulvey’s seminal text ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, the organiser kindly screened my film, Torture The Women, alongside a selection of contemporary artist’ films at the Feminist Library.  The discussion was highly productive, although the setting was far from salubrious, The Feminist Library is on it’s uppers and may soon lose the building it has occupied since the seventies. There were a lot of angry young women in that room.

We discussed contemporary culture, the film industry, the art industry and politics, motherhood and being a woman.

When I got home I discussed these things again with myself, and started making collages about being a woman. These collages are just about that. There are film references, because it’s an easily digestible reference palette, and there’s crisp delineation, surreality, an appreciation of the material qualities of paper, and a dash of paint and humour. But mostly they are about being a woman.

I was thinking about information overload while making these, or the sources we have for our information. It used to be books, and serial magazines, newspapers, print in all it’s forms. These little artists books are an experiment with collage using old children’s serial Finding Out, published in the seventies. Also thrown in for good measure are some great snippets from seventies photo-romance novellas Blue Jeans.

The internet, with it’s cloud of information produces some strange visual juxtapositions, and odd contextual associations.

The information that surrounds us, contextualises us. “The analogue internet for girls” is an attempt to work out just how the craziness of this mishmash of images might affect you in terms of how you think about yourself, and your relationships with others.

“The paradox of old gramophone recordings is that, today, we perceive the singing voice whose clarity is obfuscated by scratches as more ‘realistic’ than the most faithful Dolby- stereo or THX recording – as if the very imperfection of the rendering is a proof that the ‘real voice’ was there, while, in the second case, the very perfection derealizes what we hear, turning it into an experience of a perfect fake. And, perhaps, this is how one should read du Maurier’s texts: their very scratches – what makes them old-fashioned, often ridiculous-are also what keeps them alive.” Are we allowed to enjoy Daphne du Maurier, Slavoj Zizek

The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (The Birds, excerpt)

The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (Vertigo, excerpt)

1940s Rebecca trailer

and That Mitchell & Webb Look spoof

Other sources:

The Sublime Stupidity of Alfred Hitchock – Kyle Barrowman – International Journal of Zizek Studies

Finding myself in the studios is unusual these days, not because I’m not working, I am, all the time. But because taking a ten month old to a communal  studio and expecting her not to a) break something b) injure herself or c) drive me to distraction is just, well, delusional.

I’m sitting at my desk researching a new project, organising an exhibition and writing funding applications, meanwhile I have a new(ish) piece on the wall in the exhibition/project space next door with plans to develop it further to exhibit next year.  And it’s Open Studios at ArtLacuna this weekend. I’m slightly surprised that all of this has originated with me to be honest. Free babysitters helps immeasurably.

It has, however, been a while since I posted here, and I always find it useful to clarify my thoughts, even if, as with the majority of blogs, no one but me will read it.

In my recent guest blog posts for Katie Goodwin’s Lightness Film project I undertook an exercise of memory and drawing. I called it drawing in the dark, I sat with a pen and pad, in complete blackness (lights out & eyes closed, it’s difficult to generate a true blackout these days without sitting in a cupboard, and all my cupboards are too full of junk) and tried to draw the images that came to me when I thought of drawing, and the past. I’ve done an awful lot of portrait and life drawing, and I was thinking about people from my past, so figure-like lines were what came out. I’d like to develop this into a future project. It feels a bit like automatic drawing, although I don’t know much about that, so it needs research. But it was also a struggle to release control to a certain degree and let the pen go where it would. I wanted to let it go, but was too wedded to the idea of representation to set it free.

In talking to another artist yesterday about my recent test film Torture The Women, based on the screen-tests for Hitchcock’s Rebecca, she told me that the way I described it made it seem very related to drawing, that she saw my body of work as drawing, I’m very happy to wear that label.

For the next week I’ll be guest posting on the project blog of filmmaker Katie Goodwin, whose new project Lightness will take her to Greenwich and Glenelg, Scotland with a bolex time-lapse camera.

Katie has asked several artists to guest post ideas and artwork in response to the theme Lightness. Her upcoming companion project Darkness, will explore the loss of the night sky to light pollution.

Katie’s Lightness Tumblr Blog

In addition I’ve been working on a curation project for 2015 at Artlacuna Space, and restarted my Hitchcock film project, which I hope to have finished within the next month or two!

ArtLacuna is now over a year old, it seems amazing that we’ve made it this far, with no funding, and no remuneration for any of us! The next few months will see our schedule filling up again with solo artist projects, an artist book fair just before Christmas, and some collective offerings, including a party to celebrate.

Communist Party