I’ve been in the sudio this week surrendered to the idea of play and experiment.
I’ve been using Mondrian grids as a kind of portal that leads from my practice to form an interface with Josh’s photographic work and by using this structure it allows me to really study Josh’s work and I’m starting to get a feel for his aesthetic. Certain images are standing out for me: the lady in the burka, the man at his desk in the shop.
I seem to be more and more interested in making a 3D response to the photographic surface. This week I have been using clay and piercing the surface of the print. I think the clay connection is odd and interesting considering Josh was a ceramicist in a past life, maybe this is another way for me to narrow the gaps between us.
Well we’ve started!
I am making a 3D papier mache object inspired by one of Josh’s photographs of a heap of grit covered in snow (eventually it will be white and glittery) and I’ve been thinking about the nature of photographs. After a session of trying to sand the paper? back of the photograph off, I came to the conclusion that a photograph is pretty much only surface. This made me think about its weight and depth and I’ve been making plinths in modelling clay.
Josh has been making digital reassesments of my work turning an essentially angular painted work into a circular form. Lovely.
The process continues…
Josh
Wednesday 30th April
Having met with Alex today, it seems that we both have enough ideas for a series of projects. We can now begin to single out our thoughts and put them into practice. During our conversation, there have been a number of related strategies that we are both interested in exploring: cutting away from an initial layer in order to reveal a secondary layer; cutting out photographic elements to alienate them from their original ‘’meaning’’; introducing textural/3-dimensional elements to an otherwise 2D surface. In order to organise our thoughts, we both agree that we should start making work and see what happens. Given that we have discussed and agreed on a number of overall ideas, it is best to start conversing on a visual level. I particularly look forward to seeing how Alex will be manipulating my own physical photographs, and I may start digitally manipulating some of Alex’s images in order to print and further manipulate using physical collage. I will start tomorrow morning.
Alex
Wednesday 30th April
I had a really encouraging first meeting with Josh today. We want to get the ball rolling and talked in some depth about possible interactions and approaches. I am nervous to share ideas normally but we went into detail about processes and it all seemed to flow quite easily. In fact we feed off each other and mapped out about 8 or 10 different outcomes for the work. Prior to becoming a photographer Josh was a uniquely talented ceramicist and I totally trust his eye and his appreciation of materiality.
We both decided that the best thing to do would be to actually start making. It’s all very well talking about ideas but sometimes they don’t work exactly as planned. So we are going to work on our own, on each others materials, for the next 2 weeks; experimenting and creating rough ideas that we can talk through at the next meet. I am sending Josh a folder of work for him to play with in Photoshop and I have taken one special photograph of a landscape as a reference for a sculpture I plan to make. I also have a number of smaller photographs that I can use to test some of the things we talked about. Josh is also borrowing my slide projector and has a collection of my original collage surfaces to photograph or make use of as he likes.
The most exciting bit for me is the freedom to work outside of my own practice. I am very focussed in my own work and don’t allow myself to explore for pleasure. The materials I use are often linked to the source materials, implicit in some ways. It suddenly dawned on me during the meeting that working in response to Josh’s images will free me from my own rules and structure.
We also talked about the structure of the blog and the Facebook page. We have tentatively started both. Again I think its important to get stuck in and I imagine we will find a rhythm and sense as we go along. Three months is a long enough period to develop a compelling profile.
