Swansea Metropolitan University

Ok! So a slight delay… but its here. A collection of documentation photographs from my performance piece in the one of the smaller installation rooms last week.

The practice went well, i've spoken to our helpful video technicians about recording straight onto my external hard-drive in order to have a continuous video stream for around 3 hours.

I stopped the performance once the DV tapes had run out. So after 50mins i quickly got out of the freezing cold bath water i had been sitting in. Unfortunately, due to health and safety, i couldnt have an electric heater in the room with a bath tub full of water… hmmm wonder why.

Being blindfolded while creating a sculpture taken directly from the touch of my own torso was an interesting experience. At first i was nervous, and a little disorientated. But soon i became engulfed with the exploration of my person.

Im still deciding on wether or not to have the two projections, one next to the bath and one over it. Or just the one projecting over the water and clay structure. The latter was wonderful to watch. As my projected self lent forward to move the clay around i could see my projected arm moving over the actual clay structure – as if to still be moving layers from it.

I clay structure rather than sculpture because as the week continued the clay (which was a very smooth clay) had started to dilute into the bath water creating a murky mess of what it once was.

I hope you enjoy the photos.

P.S

I managed to do a cast of the space between my hands. I was rather pleased with the results, even if there was some cracking. Tomorrow i will take some photos before the big crit and hopefully be able to upload them soon. Im working 8 hours tomorrow night, so i doubt they will be uploaded before Wednesday evening.

After a few cups of tea and a large homemade cake *thanks Andrew* i feel a lot calmer.

Now the challenge is FOCUS! Which ive worked on today, spent the afternoon writing and re-writing artist statements and i seem to be trying to say too much. So i moved onto building up an artist CV. Now, these are 'interesting' and i hate them even more than a normal CV. I look at the cold harsh listing of exhibitions infront of me on plain paper. I see the lack of exhibitions done away from the university. And i feel embarrassed. It makes me not want to submit my work to galleries because they also ask to see my artist CV. I find it an unnerving experience showing my artwork to a person who doesnt know my work and may or may not understand it. Let alone showing them my 'lack of experience'.

So ive decided to try and apply to a few exhibitions and galleries in the surrounding area. Ahhh! A lot of the deadlines are the beginning of December, time limits! Ahhh!

So tomorrow im planning on an early start, go in and catch a lecturer and see if they can give my artist CV and one or two of my applications a once over. I also want to get into the casting workshop before the masses arrive in the later morning. Im looking at making negative space castings with the body. The idea of intimacy and the space between us. The negative space between two hands holding is my first experiment.

Lets see what happens.

Time for more cake and tea me thinks. :-)

Today i recieved a text message blaming me for my ex-boyfriends sucide from a girl that barely knew him.

He died 22 months ago in our home.

I am filled with anger.

Today has been a bad day. I'm sure I do not need to explain why.

I create artwork that is biographical without talking about myself as an individual. The biographical element concentrates on emotion. Emotions which are experienced throughout humanity regardless of gender, culture, age or lifestyle. I believe that in order to express a concept sucessfully, the topic needs to be experienced personally – even if the experience is not fully understood.

I have been working hard. On a personal and artistic level. After a year of not creating or expressing myself through art, i am now treading on delicate ground. My lecturers and technitions are all supportive, but they try to be aware of the artwork im developing. When working so closely to my emotional status there is always a risk of triggering myself to regress to where i once was.

I feel weak, i feel fragile, and yet i feel under a trance of constant rage. The performance piece i had planned for the installation room didnt materialise. I couldn't. Not today.

Tonight is being spent trying to collect myself, getting ready to enter my installation room with a renewed and fresh mind.

Why do people want to destroy me? I know this may not be the best blog to talk about my personal life in, but i feel like a beaten dog. I wish i could bite her, make her hurt like i am right now.

Ignore it.

Don't respond.

Take the moral high ground.

It is not fair.

It's not fair!

It's not fucking fair!!!!

I'd love to create an artistic masterpiece, telling her and the whole world exactly what she is in my eyes.

But art isn't there for revenge… or is it?!….

grrrrr….

Write up from a diary entry on 06/11/08.

I've never really appreciated the experience of a Rothko painting, until today.

My partner has an interest in abstract expressionism, the last romantic movement (as he tells me). To have him there while viewing the Rothkos for the first time had an effect on the emotional and spiritual experience. Simply because he stood there, almost watching the paintings, so i decided to stand there with him. Never have i had a reason to devote such lengths of time to a Rothko painting.

The painting moves, something so solid and static has an energy. The 2D element does not stop Rothkos paintings from having an unlimited amount of depths. The layers dance with one another, depending on how you visually explore areas of the vast colour fields.

I entered room three of "Rothko: The Late Series" exhibition to find myself surrounded by a series of paintings executed for The Four Seasons. I was told it was the first time this collection of murals were exhibited together in the one room. They benefited from one another, emitting an atmosphere which appears to be somber at first glace. Standing as close as the Tate Modern would let me, my vision was engulfed by colour. The mood did not stay somber for long. I watched the colour field of paint, thinking that they would fail, that i would leave their prescene uninspired and still very much uninterested…

…I now consider Rothkos work to be time-based, they need your time. I gave time and was rewarded with a dance, a dance of colours, shades, tones. Shapes emerged and submerged into one another. The sequence of experiences were mine, the paths my eyes chose were what i like to consider unique. If i remember back to a lecture mentioning Rothko and other Abstract Expressionists, i remember the idea of "the universal". Does this mean that my vision was encouraged to follow a certain path and that my experience was universal? Or the fact that once given time the universal aspect of our "collective unconscious" will interact with the painting in the same way ie. to experience the visual movement and depth within the physically 2D artwork?

I wouldnt normally use the word because i feel like i don't fully understand it, but sublime is definetly on the edge of my lips.

Last night i returned to Swansea from London, and i am still tired!I have so much information and opinions in my head, so many new visual memories and blisters on my feet from pounding the pavements!

I managed to find "A Nice Man with a Van".24 Hour service, local and national,offering student discounts.Bonus.He was willing to pick up the bath tub and deliver it to my university for £25.I am so thrilled that everything has worked out so far for my installation.The process of hiring a van is extremely difficult.I am 21,therefore the majority of companys will not rent to me.The ones that do have a rather high insurance fee.So believe me when i say,i was 100% pleased with my van man.

So at 11am i had a bath tub,yes!I then set on my task to make the bath ready for fiber glass.I needed a water tight bath, unfortunatly the plug and all then fittings were missing, so my answer was to cover the hole with fibre glass and resin.Though maybe it would have been wiser to buy a plug and fittings?

Visually i would have liked some overally polished taps, or extremely rusty ones.But conceptually i currently feel that the lack of plumbing plays a role.At present the concept is winning the race of importance.

Harold helped me in the resin room,he mentioned an "interesting article in a-n magazine this month".Which i immediatly assumed was my blog being quoted.He continued to say that health and safety was not the only issue, but also the ethics.

The ethics!?!

From what i understand there is talk about wether or not students and the university as an institution should be partaking (at any level) in unethical activities.I understand that the UK needs to give generalised rules and regulations to the masses, but seriously?

Unethical art,who is to say what art is unethical?My view point is that art is a part of a conversation, to encourage and develop opinions.If art is to be controllled and directed externally then how can a conversation flow purely,naturally and honestly?

My feeling of being restrained and controlled with what i wanted to do followed me to London.I went to the Tate Britain and paid to see the Cildo Meireles exhibition.I wanted to see "Through 1983-9" a wonderful installation among the many that were present.However, the art work had been altered from what i knew.The floor of broken glass was different.
By chance,I ended up speaking to a gentleman that had worked on the exhibition and asked him why the installation had changed.He was direct and said that it was due to health and safety reasons that the floor had safety glass placed over it for the UK exhibition.Turns out, when "Through" was exhibited back in Brazil they never had health and safety 'problems'.

I felt so disapointed, I laugh out of disbelief.Maybe its not just in University that my art practice will be limited,maybe the UK is no longer a good venue for Art?Which breaks my heart.