To engage with a practice that confronts problems can be problematic, but it also produces possibility: this comes from re-assessing understandings and concepts that come from the things I have learned and characteristics I have attained… things familial.
Many projects to date have been self-funded by scraping the barrel: I see this as pertinent to how I work fitting with my work ethic. Being at the tail end of a now “better off” working class family, the word resourcefulness was driven in to me as was the not so healthy practice of holding on to one’s thoughts, remaining proud but also quite unprepared. Thank goodness for resourcefulness and the ability to be experimental whilst unprepared.
A family of hairdressers and business degree graduates in the end produced an artist wanting to pursue his ‘career’, but to that I have phone conversations asking, “When will you get a job that earns you money?” I see my father less than I would like, whilst greying he holds on to less of his thoughts than ever before. I often think about where I get my creativity, is it handed down along with the grey hair gene? Does the fact that my father says he was “always good at technical drawing” – something he let slip not long ago – mean I somehow attained a knack for putting pencil to paper? I also sometimes think, “Why don’t I just become a hair dresser it’ll earn me money” As earning money was always presented as something essential in producing consolidation I’m standing by that inherited resourcefulness:
Finding my practice then, is a process that happens with the things I already have or things easily attained (things reminding me of my father’s garage). I then utilise a process driven activity to re-configure such materials (re-organising the garage…) rendering a practice that is more about notions of discourse, the problems of language and understanding, using words and objects, their descriptions and states: it is relatively open ended and non-problematic.
What is problematic is the nature of exhibition. My artistic concerns extend to the application of a work or series of works to visually communicable scenarios; they confront inherent problems and thus possibilities, using presentation as a medium. Working site-specifically is in some ways easier as I adapt myself to various spaces and intricacies. However what lies within this is the difficulty in having an overriding statement on what the work is about. What I do seems to be defined by the different projects I complete, by the certain places in which I intervene. I often think that in order to somehow consolidate the work that I produce I should do an MFA: in this I would hope that congregating with others in an institutional environment would make things clearer… or better placed.
But first I guess comes money before any such consolidation: meanwhile I can rely on my knack for technical drawing, solve problems by cleaning out and exploring a garage or two…
I have just blogged on my other blog (OutofOffice) where I am blogging about an exhibition proposed for the beginning of next year (January 2010). It made me think about this blog and how I am neglecting it, I seem to be thinking this with the absence of much else to do – in other words I do not work as such at the minute I have just been spending some time updating my online presence.
I have recently re-located to Glasgow and have joined the Transmission Gallery as a member, for the price of a day of invigilation: I opted for this in order to hopefully meet some new people and get some more contacts. Take a look at my online profile with a picture of a mixed media piece I did earlier this year and also a little more information about my practice: and a biography!
Richard Taylor on Transmission
The best thing about this website is that you are searchable by tagged key words that relate the you practice: for instance if you go to the website and click on Drawing I will come up, if you click on Conceptual I will come up, if you click on Animation I will come up… etc.
I have also produced an online profile on LinkedIn:
This seems like a good resource and a good way to network with people: you can upload information about current and past projects or employment. You also upload a picture of yourself, which is horrible but also I guess for the purposes of signification (I tried to upload a picture of my artwork but it would not let me).
Another good thing about this is that it lets you link to other online applications like google presentations and slide shows of work, I am yet to get my head around this though.
Google is a very useful tool
Take a look at my LinkedIn profile here:Richard Taylor on LinkedIn
Here is an image taken from the film series… that i seem to have left behind for a while.
the title of the work still seems rather obscure. i will ask anyone who is willing to answer, at what point does a title for a work happen? and does it stay the same? i for one seem to re-invent the title almost every time the work is re-exhibited. As the work is re-staged according to the new environment, or depending on new components added or old ones taken away, the title changes also.
What also seems to be happening is that i make work, in digital format, and then come to saving the work on my computer or hard-drive. At this point i have to come up with a name for the file, this name has to be easy to remember for me… it is interesting how this file name can also become the name of the work just out of simplicity. So the name that i use to understand the whereabouts of by work, then becomes the name that the audience reads in order to engage with the work. This is an interesting transition…
The Film and how it Works.Film Works…
So the DVD player and the digital projector become sculptural objects, through their role as image producing machines. Image making machines become objects and the objects become subjects thereof. Certain artists seem to be making a feature of the workings of actual image production and presentation. Certain artists seem to be making specific use of a cine-film projector, presenting its presence as an actual sculptural and animated entity. This is what I am interested and prospectively engaged in. I feel like I need to wrap televisions in order to signify them as sculptural, and in order to separate them as individual entities… I like how televisions can be used as 3-dimensional objects that can then contain 2-dimensional information. There is a certain dialogue that happens when they are presented as actual artworks. This dialogue happens through the negotiation between illusion and physicality through presentation. The subject of the televisions (other than that they are themselves) is the content that is shown upon them, and this content should always refer to other drawings and evidence apart.
However what happens when the very content is the subject of the object within which it is shown? Is it therefore within or actually upon? It is interesting how the projectable space, through its illusion in light, acts as an actual boundary within which something is confined. It is this confined space that is then explore-able in its changeability in actual space:
Two different coloured tapes will be used to begin this exploration. One will unwind up to the other which begins unwound; the second then winds up after collision with the first. The frame in which the film is projected (or the composition in which the content is edited) acts as a boundary for where to tape can extend to. This boundary therefore prevents the second tape from overrunning the perceivable space and acts as a wall upon which the second tape bounces off and then begins to wind itself back into its original state, thus the cycle starts all over again as a reflection of itself.
Intimate/macro space and covered/trajectory space an exploratory installation that with projection will, through material bind the two.
An every day material such as electrical tape exists in its potential state as a sizeable object that can be experienced intimately, regardless of perspective. Furthermore when the tape is then unwound it begins to cover the space, which then transplants it into the domain of perspective, and it is at this point where the medium of presentation comes to the fore in negotiating the trajectory space.
Two different coloured tapes will be used to begin this exploration. One will unwind up to the other which begins unwound; the second then winds up after collision with the first. The frame in which the film is projected (or the composition in which the content is edited) acts as a boundary for where to tape can extend to. This boundary therefore prevents the second tape from overrunning the perceivable space and acts as a wall upon which the second tape bounces off and then begins to wind itself back into its original state, thus the cycle starts all over again as a reflection of itself.
The amount of space covered depends on the space in which the projection exists. However as the actual tape that is filmed will be present in the installation set up and it will be a prerequisite for the tape in the film to be proportionate to the tape that physically exists. The tape that physically exists is to be presented upon, (thus highlighting) the apparatus/equipment that makes the installation possible: namely the DVD player and the Digital Projector.
The film itself will be especially simple and will be played on loop as if the context is endless and the person viewing the work can enter at any point and exit at any point. The speed of the film however will be notably slow as this is needed to make reference to something that is almost still but then is moving with a willingness of momentum. This willingness of momentum I think is important as the covered space is then more strenuous. The film can be made at a good speed but then will have to be slowed down during editing.
