University Campus Suffolk

I am learning to embrace the diversity of my practice…

I used to want to find a certain type of work that I could stick to… I never wanted to make art that just went on and on, never changing, never being interesting in that new exciting way… but I wanted a kind of theme I suppose, so you would look at the work and say .. that’s definitely a Kate Manning… don’t things sound ridiculous when you write them down…

I am learning to embrace it, I am taking a break from trying to learn everything at once… (theory I wish I knew, artists I think I should be aware of etc)

It is liberating and I am finding I am making much more interesting work as a result… There must be a common element because they are all made by me but everyone has different side to their being… I’m actually starting to think that exploring all of these sides of myself is really exciting, it keeps my practice fresh… I never know what I might make… where it could go, the medium anything…..

When I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by it and the deep longing to make a piece of work that somehow feels right forever…rather than the much more realistic fleeting moments of fulfilment… I start playing with the idea of a kind of formal element.. Like Agnes Martin’s grids, or even a size of canvas or a certain medium… to restrict me a bit, so I have a platform.. but I suppose that doesn’t really work because needing a platform is to suggest it is a time of stillness (in terms of making) and actually, that is just forcing it… Maybe I can just be totally free and then when I have a slow period just go with it and go to exhibitions, relax… let it come… Easier said than done. I want art to fulfill me!

…A video that inspired me ages ago … but of course it is as relevant now as it was then …. Sean Landers…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9lXZvtg5h8

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New works…..

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I really enjoyed creating these works, they were a lot more palyful…

I just went with ideas and tried not to be too hung up on the weight of art history and critical theory that can be applied (A side effect of reading that I have found)

I really felt the blue cassette tape on top of the canvas, the colour complemented the piece well and somehow reflected the slit in the canvas.

The text was all to do with fragments of memories, which I am realising inform the ideas that I start with… then by chance the painting ended up underneath and it really worked together.

I created the painting by stapling on a carboard box (I have loads lying around from a raid on the union rubbish ages ago – wanted to accumulate things to draw on at the time- so I felt it was kind of important that they made it in to the work as they have been a big element of my studio experience for a while).

Speaking of chance, I have been reading – well, probably ‘was’ reading at the time some of these were made – a book Chance all about the unexpected and spontaneous that I keep talking about with my work…. I was looking for another book in the library and came across it, I often find the best books that way!

Gerhard Richter’s writings have been a particular inspiration to my work (not just these ones but to my general practice and reflection of it) reading his work makes me feel like I am not alone in the way I create work and the way I think about it…

‘Letting a thing come, rather than creating it – no assertions, constructions, formulations, inventions, ideologies – in order to gain access to all that is genuine, richer, more alive: to what is beyond my understanding’ (Gerhard Richter Chance)

I really wish I had found the words to express this earlier, my explorations into meditation, process, spontaneous paintings and sculptures…. this is what I was getting at, not something necessarily beyond my thought… but beyond my understanding, Antoni Tapies seems to have worked in a similar way. He mentions observing this kind of thinking in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, it has made me really interested in reading the book, Tolstoy had an amazing mind and his words have often inspired me in its honesty and purity.

I could quote the whole book (Chance) because it just feels like post of the artists published in it just totally GET IT but I will settle for one more little snippet…

‘What I’m after is the liquidity of things, how one thing leads you on to the next’ Gabriel Orozco

There’s something really important for me in knowing that others have thought similar things about their practice, by my very nature I question everything (as I am sure many people do) but this inevitably leads to me questioning myself all the time and as a result my practice suffers a kind of yo yo confidence… where soemtimes I really FEEL what I am doing and what I am thinking (probably less what I am saying as I never manage to quite put it as succinctly as I would like) and then suddenly I question it all and look down on myself and think WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT ANYWAY? What is it achieving? Is it valuable? Should it be? Does the work represent me and what I am about? Does it have to?

So on and so forth till my head explodes…

Text explored:

Iversen, M., 2010 Chance: Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary art. London:MIT Press.

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I went to see some more exhibitions in London this weekend (after helping install a show at the Waterfront Gallery, which was a really good opportunity to learn how to hang work/ what it is like to have a show and a good opportunity to talk to the artists about their work)

I think I got the most out of going to see the Antoni Tapies show, built up paintings with rough surfaces and carved symbols made me think about my use of canvas recently and I started thinking about the possibilities of using board to build up sculptures on the wall….

I have been exploring this lately and have really enjoyed exploring the possibilities of situating works in different places and interacting with the space in a more complete way.

I read his obituary when I returned and I found something rare… I liked what he was into as well as the physical objects that resulted. Normally I find I either connect with the physical work or I like what an artist is about… It is very rare that I am drawn to both of these things with an artist.

‘Nonetheless, all his “walls” and related imagery share one quality: a suggestion of something that lies beyond the material world but is only sensed in its absence.’

The Guardian, 2012, Antoni Tapies Obituary. [Online] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/feb/07…. [Accessed 21/03/2013]

Tapies had a really interesting way of talking about his connection to the work and the objects that he created as a result are both ambiguous and fascinating. Standing in front of the work, I felt their dominating presence and it was as if I had to let go of trying to understand and go beyond that somehow.

Another exhibition was Jose parla, the painting in the first room was really exciting… I couldn’t look anywhere else, it’s scale, presence and think application of paint was totally seductive… However the next rooms proved to be a bit of a disappointment, I understand that he is exploring urban landscapes but I felt the work in the next rooms were much closer to graphic design or graffiti.

Michael Krebber’s exhibition was interesting and I was particularly intrigued by the tape that had been left around the canvas…. they were in the same position as you would put the guides when hanging a work.

I have seen a lot of shows over the course of my final year and I think it has been a huge element in the progression of both my practice and understanding of contemporary art. I used to go into galleries expecting to be enlightened in some way and if that didn’t happen I felt like the artist has somehow failed, I often left places feeling really unfulfilled and disillusioned… the more I have read, made work and visited shows, the more galleries intrigue me… I have an insatiable appetite for seeing work in the flesh and experiencing their physical attributes as well as things I think they might be trying to say .. or not say.

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I think the red against the plain wood works really well, I am interested in how the piece would work if I changed the way it is displayed… turned over, upside down etc…

The second piece I posted doesn’t work at all for me, it feels too engineered, I have learnt this lesson many times lately… anything that I make spontaneously tends to work a lot better than anything too planned.

HOPEFULLY I WILL REMEMBER THIS IN FUTURE!

(In fact the small vinyl letters on the cardboard off cut in the corner of the picture is…as ever… more interesting to me than the ‘piece’ I photographed!)

I seem to work in a way that combines two different styles, coming up with a small part of an idea for the starting point (eg the red that I always saw in the bleak townscape) and then letting it change freely! I seem to be as interested in how I am working as I am the work I produce, I constantly question it and read about different artists to find where I sit.. Although I think finding where ‘I sit’ is an elusive thing that I probably wont find in a lifetime…. Maybe I will just have a much better idea of where my work can be placed and where I would like it to be placed.. and maybe that is enough?

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