My laptop is still in a coma, i hope not a terminal one, so the entry from the second week still remains in limbo. I have been based in the studio lots, time is passing too quickly, and I want to have something worthwhile to show to people on Thursday. I have been completing a second version of Leonardo’s Virgin on the Rocks, started painting on the acetate for a lithograph print and started some more thickly painted pieces. I have also been in the gallery office grappling with final-cut to create a new film piece. Some interesting things are happening as a result of my time here that I can take back to Manchester and build upon, whilst some will remain in London.
I have just had a studio visit from Sacha Craddock and am currently digesting the dense conversation. Early on she asked why I asked to talk with her, I replied for two major reasons. i knew i would get a completely honest view of my work from her, one that you all too rarely get outside of art college. Secondly when I first met her (in her capacity as my MA external) she spent one minute looking at the work, before proceeding to pull out everything I had not considered/taken for granted, and thus all that was missing within my work. I believe she is such an incredibly astute person that the same would happen again 10 years on.
She said incredibly obvious things about my work, things so obvious i have not considered them and are, as such, not obvious at all. Firstly and perhaps most importantly is the fact that at present i am only ever considering the reproduction of the painting and ignoring everything beyond the frame. She felt, rightly, that i am too respectful of the edge and that this creates too strong of a (tonal) difference between the border and the picture itself. This is something I should not ignore. I have to acknowledge this space and maybe this will create the ‘other’ that I am after.
At present I am ignoring too much the context of where i am getting the work from – the book, print or poster – and for the paintings to succeed i have to bring this into the work.She talked of an early Wallinger work where a night light lies underneath a propped page of a book. We talked of how this creates a tension between the two sides of the page (and the images on each respective side) and also the acknowledgment of the three dimensionality of the book. I show her some of the transitory paintings I made last year where i cut away aspects of the reproductions of paintings in auction catalogues. Quite often in these there is a tension created between the two sides, either from a translucency of the paper revealing the ‘hidden’ other image or how more directly one cut figure form one painting interacting with the painting on the other side of the paper. She appeared to react positively to this work and i think here lies the tension that the recent work needs.
We looked about earlier moving image work. In The Jump she felt I was being too referential to the source and by extension the photograph. When i let the paint do the talking (she suggested a relationship to Munch) it was all the more successful. UnMasterclass was too much of an aside for her and not concideredenough (why is the book in shot?, why is everything so wrong?, why so small?). I was interested to get her view on this work as this was what Dave Hoyland responded most warmly to.
The film I am editing at the moment she was also not so convinced by. She suggested i need to fuck about with the footage more, break it up, more like the cubist-esque triangulation i am dealing with in the painting. I should use time in film like i use surface in paintings to a far greater extent.
I have got so much from this visit, the sort of comments and insight that will linger when i am back in Manchester.
