University Campus Suffolk

After an incredibly busy and tiring two weeks my vision has finally been realised!

When I stand in the space and take it all in I am hugely proud of what I have been able to achieve within this degree project. As an artist who has only ever dappled in installation based work in the past, I cannot believe this is the end product.

I have had help along the way in creating Everything I Do Not Remember with the staircase and wallpaper specifically, but I do feel a great sense of achievement after the amount of work I have put into this installation and how much I have been able to do myself. I feel I have definitely pushed the boundaries on what I ever thought I could achieve and the amount of courage needed to try something so different at the most critical point of my Fine Art degree.

As mentioned in previous posts, I have had my doubts over the past few weeks in regards to how to create an effective space. I have commented already upon how the installation has been based largely around my dry point etching prints and so it wasn’t until I had these in place on the wall that everything felt right.

I think the etchings on anaglypta work really well in the frames which contextualise the photographic element definitively. I always knew that I wanted the composition on the wall to be one of slight disorganisation to once again communicate the complexity of memory and one’s ability to recall past events efficiently. I did expect the frames to take up more space than they did, although this is a small issue. I still believe the significance of the number 22 is more integral to my project.

In a conversation with my tutor, the question was posed whether I was to hang anything upon my coat stand. This is something I have been quietly mulling over as I progressed with my installation. I think it had to wait right till the end to see the overall effect to be able to determine if this is what the space needed. I decided to place an old coat and a spare belt from a coat upon the stand which I think emphasizes a homey feel. I also believe it creates a greater interest within the space as the viewer contemplates the prints on the wall and begins to build a relationship between the images and objects in the space.

Upon the small table resides a rotary dial telephone and one of my framed prints. It was a spontaneous decision to place one of the prints on the table and once it was there it just seemed to work. The particular print I have chosen to be displayed in this manner is of me on my first day of primary school. This pinpoints the significance of my education now coming to an end after 18 and a half years as well as emphasizing my own presence within the piece.

I also made quite a quick, but what I feel to be a rather signficant, decision when it came to the telephone. When placing it upon the table I decided to leave the phone off the hook. At the time I didn’t quite know why, it just seemed to fit. As I contemplate this action in greater depth, however, my ever analytical self has come to a much more conceptual and complex conclusion.

I feel having the phone off the hook symbolizes an ongoing conversation, the one each and every one of us has with our memories. It acknowledges an absence and a presence all at once and the potential for a connection with something or someone we are not even sure is there anymore.

This concept is, I think, heightened by my choice in title, Everything I Do Not Remember. In essence a large part of my installation is actually based upon what I do remember from my childhood.

What I wish to convey with this title is the doubt, the uncertainty, the vulnerability of these memories. The distress in the piece signifies a trace of what is still there whilst acknowledging the fact that some parts have already been lost.

My blog seems to have taken a bit of a back seat this week as I have been working relentlessly to complete my installation.

After wallpapering the walls and painting them last week, the first thing on my agenda this week was to distress the wallpaper. Using a scraping tool, I removed parts of the texture to expose the layer underneath as well as ripping parts to create larger distressed areas. I think this helped to break the boldness of the colour up a great deal which immediately made me feel better about the space.

This process did take a lot longer than I anticipated and created a great deal of mess! After talking to a tutor I began to think about how these shavings of wallpaper could be put to use to create a more visually interesting piece and to convey my concept more effectively.

I decided to clear up the majority of the shavings and to leave parts just around the edge of the carpet. Whilst I could easily have left my installation looking a bit more abandoned had I left it this way, it was important to me for the viewer to be able to walk into the space and look closer at the prints on the wall. If I had left all the shavings in situ I felt that people would not have been able to view my work in the way I intended, not to mention I would’ve risked the work of other students had the shavings been treaded all around the exhibition space!

Once this distressing process had been completed, I decided to use tea and coffee to stain the carpet and walls more as I felt the space still looked too clean.

After looking at the work of Mike Nelson and extending my research to acknowledge the aesthetics of abandoned buildings in greater depth, I personally feel that with more time my work would have become increasingly distressed to such a point that the space would’ve conveyed abandonment on a much higher level.

When viewing the images of abandoned buildings I felt excited by the ideas that manifested themselves within my creative vision. My intentions for my installation were to create feelings of nostalgia and mourning in the viewer both at the same time. For them to recognise various elements within the piece but to also acknowledge how they have become more obscure.

I think my work succeeds in accomplishing a nostalgic air about it. I do, however, believe that if I had the opportunity to develop my work further into issues regarding abandonment, that it would’ve conveyed a greater sensation of grief and sorrow.

A part of me really wishes I would’ve realised this sooner so it could’ve been put into action. Many students have a niche, a way of working and an interest in a particular area. I have struggled over the past few years as my ideas and processes have often been all over the shop. It is only now that I feel completely comfortable in the ideas I have and confident in where I could take them.

Had I begun this particular project a year ago I believe the end product could’ve been something really special. Nevertheless I am proud of what I have accomplished and glad that I have found my identity as an artist.

Earlier this week I completed all of my dry point etchings ready to be framed and displayed on the wall of my installation space.

I made the decision to use previous etching plates to print with and to supplement these with a few new plates to increase the diversity of the images used. If I had more time I would’ve liked to be more selective about the exact images I wanted to use for my final show and created completely new etching plates from these.

Despite not being able to do what I originally wanted to, I based my decision of what plates to use largely upon the effectiveness of the outcomes I have already created. For me it was important to retain a certain level of clarity so the viewer can still recognise what the image is supposed to be whilst at the same time embracing the nature of the wallpaper and my own mark-making. I was also able to achieve the desired effect by taking off as much ink as possible so there wasn’t any unecessary obscurity because of excess ink.

If I wanted to I could’ve just used prints from my initial anaglypta series, although I felt it was better to keep my prints in their respective collections. This is also so I can create mini sketchbooks/makeshift photo albums out of each of my print series’.

The prints within my three separate series’ 22, 22 on anaglypta, and Every Photo We Took At The Beach have been strung together to create these little books. Whilst the first two have been trimmed down, I decided to leave my seaside etchings as they were. Not only did I find the coloured drips visually stimulating, I also liked the idea of their imperfection; with some prints slightly askew and some edges torn or rough etc. I feel this signifies the imperfections in amateur family photography as well as the vulnerability in the physicality of a photograph also. Ever since printing them I could not imagine trimming these pieces down as I always viewed them as a whole.

I gave a lot of thought to how many prints I actually wanted to display in my installation and given its previous relevance in my project I decided to go for 22. I have strived to maintain a certain level of continuity in my project which is illustrated by this significant number as well as my use of anaglypta wallpaper throughout.

Over the past few weeks, I have been considering how my installation can relate to the work of other artists in relation to the representation of interiors and the element of distress.

I have come across the work of Mike Nelson whilst and was intrigued by this artist’s physical manipulation of the exhibition space. For Nelson the distress is an integral part of the particular piece of work illustrated in this post as it would not exist without it. In some respects this is similar to my work too. Whilst mine would still have a physical existence, I do not feel my concept would be communicated as effectively as I strive to represent a fractured past and lost memories.

As I view my space and contemplate how my installation may be perceived by the viewer, I realise something really quite obvious. I have had the idea for a while now that the distress was to specifically signify what I have discussed at length about memories fading away. A word I do not believe I have mentioned in regards to this is ‘abandoned.’ I had not realised until now how much my installation has begun to develop characteristics of an abandoned space.

I think what I have been largely focused upon is the creation of a space for which my prints will be the main attraction and so I have built the whole idea for the installation around these specific works. I am, however, beginning to consider it as a whole which is integral if I am to create the most effective, thought-provoking space possible.

I feel if my ideas had come to me sooner I would’ve been able to achieve this in greater depth. I think spending so much time preparing my space over the past few weeks may have slightly clouded my conceptual and creative vision (especially when spending hours staring at that awful yellow wallpaper!)

I find the context of abandonment quite interesting in correspondance with my previous ideas about memory. When commenting on this subject I feel I have put it in such a way that assumes we have no control over what we remember. When we throw the word ‘abandonment’ into the mix, however, I begin to think about how we can intentionally abandon our memories and our past. I have discovered a breadth of online images which document the nature of abandoned buildings which I feel encompass this concept effectively.

I believe this has the ability to change how my installation can be viewed. Instead of representing an element of my past that I want to remember it is as though I am distressing my work because I want to forget. I feel there is definitely tension between these ideas, although, I suppose being analytical at his level could lead to some very intense debates in regards to how I feel about my past.

In some ways this relates back to the very start of my project where I intended to include an Emin-esque confessional element in my work.

As people finish hanging their work I feel slightly apprehensive that my space still needs a bit of TLC…or not as the case may be.

Last week, with the help of our trusted technician Glen, I was able to wallpaper my space with anaglypta and paint it a (not so lovely) shade of yellow. Since then, however, I have been focusing largely upon trying to sort all of my prints out and so It feels like everything will come together at the last minute.

Many of my elements are already sorted so I do not want to stress myself out too much. My hat stand was also put together last week and I used sandpaper to make it look distressed and old. I have also acquired a small table to put my rotary dial telephone on which, after many bidding wars, I finally received from ebay!

Many elements of my work are from second-hand sources which fits well with my intention for everything to be worn.

I also quite like the idea that other people’s memories are in some way being represented as opposed to just my own. It is this idea that I want people to acknowledge my space in relation to their own lives and so I think acquiring authentic second-hand items adds depth to my choices and decisions about the various elements.

Since my last post, my staircase has been finished; stained, painted and carpeted. All that is left mainly in regards to the wallpaper and staircase is to distress them. I have begun to rip the edges of the wallpaper and it already looks a lot more interesting. The woodwork will just need a bit of sanding down which shouldn’t take too long and it seems there are just a few things in my space that now need touching up.

Standing in my space in it’s current state, I have mixed feelings. I think as it stands the yellow walls really do stand out. The paint has dried a lot darker than I expected and I hope this will not take too much away from the prints once they are up. Ripping some of the wallpaper in the distressing process should hopefully help to break this bold colour up also.