University Campus Suffolk

These last few weeks I have been relentlessly working towards the creation of my installation for the Degree Show.

The biggest hurdle for me has been creating my staircase which I felt was an integral element to include in my installation to fully communicate it’s basis upon the hallway of my old house.

There were definitely moments when I thought ‘why have I made it so difficult for myself?!’ I think it goes without saying that I am not one for much DIY and I did feel like I had bitten off more than I could chew even in relation to trying to find some nice person to help me build it!

Lucky for me my Step-Dad was kind enough to help me and I could not have done it without him!

My main aim was to create a four-step-high staircase which looked like a proper staircase, although it would not need to be functional as this would be way more expensive than my budget would stretch to.

At home I already had wood to make treads for each side, a base rail, spacers and a couple of spindles. Admittedly I have skimped on a few things in the making of this element of my work but I still think the desired effect has been achieved.

I created the hand rail and newel post out of one piece of softwood, with the side board and steps being made form hardboard. The main thing I probably did pay out for was the rest of the spindles I needed as they needed to match the ones I already had.

Process of staircase-making:

– create the treads for each side of the staircase.

– attach pieces of wood to create a frame so that the treads stand up by themselves.

– cut up the hardboard to create the steps. Attach these to the treads using panel pins.

– Cut the other hardboard to size and attach to the side of the staircase to fill in the gap.

– Sand down the newel post and then attach to the staircase.

– Cut the base rail to size and attach to the newel post and hardboard side, making sure the angles at the top and bottom are correct so it sits flush with the post.

– attach a support to the back of the staircase to aid the attachment of the handrail and ensure the correct angle.

– attach the pre-stained handrail to the newel post and support.

– in turn place spacers and pre-stained spindles until the length of the baserail has been filled.

The images on this post illustrate the various stages of building the staircase. Now the building is completed there are just a few more things I need to do for it; staining the remaining areas, carpeting the stairs, wallpapering the side board and painting it and then distressing the whole staircase to fit with my concept.

I think so far this element of my installation has come out pretty well. It is, as I have said, not functional but I believe it serves it’s purpose for my Degree Show.

Getting it to university will be the next challenge!

It seems like a long time coming but I have finally completed my 50 print dry point etching series ‘Every Photo We Took At The Beach.’

By leaving the anaglypta backgrounds to dry fully after dripping the various colours of acrylic onto them, I was able to ensure that the paint did not run when soaked in the water bath before printing. This was my main concern but the paint stayed on incredibly well.

I believe these outcomes to be a great success. They definitely achieve my intention of injecting colour into my prints as well as presenting the same obscure quality of my other analgypta prints in 22 on Anaglypta. If anything, I think there is a greater loss of detail within these seaside etchings. This is dependant upon the density of marks on the etching plate combined with the consistency of acrylic on the background.

Many times I have been asked about these seaside prints being in my final show and everytime I have clarified that they shall not be. After something like the fifth person had asked me this question, I began to think why I had made this decision.

Since deciding on my final piece for the Degree Show, in my mind the prints on the wall were always black and white. I have been going on and on about wanting colour in my project and now I want to desaturate my work once more. Why is this? It is only sitting here now that I know the answer.

I have always considered images/videos in black and white to represent the past, therefore, it makes sense in my head that my work, fuelled by past photographs, should also be in this format. For me the lack of colour is emblematic of the loss of my own memories.

As I shall not be displaying many of the etching prints I have done, I have been contemplating for a while how best to display them. Sticking them in a sketchbook and mounting them onto larger pieces of paper have both been options but I wish to obtain a way of displaying them which fits best with my project as a whole.

I have decided to make each series into a makeshift photo album by simply attaching them together with string and writing the description (year, location etc) on the back such like my Mum has done for all our family photographs. I think this shall portray the prints in a more informal manner as opposed to making everything look professional and sleek just for the sake of assessment. After all, my project has referenced themes of distress and imperfection…why should all my work not be displayed within this same context?

I find installation art more thought provoking than paintings or drawings. I personally feel unchallenged when viewing such artworks. Perhaps it is the often similar format of a rectangular/square canvas which has ‘just been painted.’

Don’t get me wrong, I still go to galleries and see paintings which are awe-inspiring and way beyond any painting I could wish to create, I just feel that paintings make for ‘easy-viewing.’ By this I mean that very rarely do I stop to look at a painting for a long period of time because I don’t feel the need to. It is as though I have seen all that I need to within a minute or so.

Installations, on the other hand, I believe require a greater investment. When an artist creates an installation it has the ability to be anything and to use the space in a multitude of different ways. With paintings, despite a few exceptions, the work is most often hung on the wall in a standard format. What I guess I am trying to say is that if you go to a painting exhibition you can pretty much guess what to expect, with installation anything could happen.

When I think back over the work I have created during my Fine Art Degree, some may think it odd that my final show is to be an installation. Many are probably not aware of my great interest in this area of art given that the majority of my artwork has been painting/print based over the past few years.

I have previously mentioned within this blog my struggle with creating work using only one medium. It, therefore, makes sense that when beginning to think about what my final show should be I was reluctant to exhibit only my prints. Despite my fondness of these particular pieces of work, I felt like they needed something else, more of a context perhaps. Hence why I made the decision to exhibit them within an installation piece.

Over the course of this project I have not looked a great deal at artists who also produce installation based work. As I began to relentlessly research as much as I could to find the most fitting contextual references, I let myself think back to the very beginning after finishing my dissertation and what I had said in my degree project proposal.

Doris Salcedo and Christian Boltanski both featured within my presentation as I reflected upon memory and the idea of ‘absence as presence.’ I didn’t fully acknowledge until now how much my work still relates to these two artists who have played an integral role in my ideas over the course of my final year at university. Within my dissertation I discussed how Salcedo and Boltanski both use processes to distress their work in order to convey trauma.

The distress present in my work is intended to reflect the vulnerability of memory, more specifically my own memories. In context with Salcedo and Boltanski, however, I have begun to consider how my work could convey trauma also. It encourages me to ask questions like ‘Am I traumatized by my lost memories?’ and ‘Is there any other reasons why I want my work to be imperfect?’

I don’t think I would go so far as to say that I am ‘traumatized’ in any sense, although, I do think that imperfection has been a thread through much of my artwork over the years without me realising.

As I begin creating my installation in which I want everything to be ‘distressed,’ I felt the need to look closer once again at the work of Boltanski and Salcedo and how their work is displayed. I believe there are similar elements in both artists’ work to that of my own.

I have posted before about the relationship between my anaglypta prints and Boltanski’s re-photographed images and how both have suffered a loss of clarity. Salcedo, I feel, is most similar in her use of familiar items which convey a certain sense of nostalgia and unease both at once. This outlines very much so my intentions for my installation, for the viewer to recognise the objects and connect with them whilst at the same time being forced to acknowledge their demise.

As the Degree show draws nearer I am beginning to finalise pieces of work that have been ongoing throughout my project.

In relation to my seaside etching prints I have finally decided how they should be printed. It has taken me long enough to come to this conclusion after considering many options and the solution has been staring me in the face the whole time.

I knew I wanted to inject colour into these pieces which would mean painting the anaglypta before printing onto it. I did not know, however, whether I should tailor make each background for specific images so that the colour fit with the original image. After deciding that this would be a very long-winded and laborious task, I have decided that I should return to the drip technique used in my experimental paintings earlier in my project.

By attaching the pre-cut pieces of anaglypta to my studio wall and dripping a variety of bright colours onto them, I was hoping that the outcome would be one of spontaneity and a heightened lack of control on my part.

The pictures within this post illustrate the outcome of this preparation stage before printing, just after I had completed dripping the different colours onto the anaglypta. I feel excited not only about finally printing my seaside etchings but also by the effective ‘mess’ which I have made during this process.

The images captured by myself of the drips down the wall and the paint spatters on the floor seem to encapsulate a sense of freedom. I definitely relished this opportunity to let go a bit and have fun with the materials.

When creating my anaglypta backgrounds, a fellow student suggested I take a look at the work of Ian Davenport to compliment the use of this process in my project. Whilst there is a greater conceptual depth for my use of the dripping process, Davenport’s work is based upon the physical immediacy between himself and the materials. I believe the simplicity of this idea about the relationship between only a few components is what allows the work to be viewed in the most effective manner. Maybe if there were some deeper underlying explanation the work would not appear so beautiful as the viewer would be more concerned with deciphering a meaning.

When I think about my own work in regards to this, I begin to consider how the use of the drips has changed. In my experimental paintings the drips were a tool to depict an image melting away from my memory. When it comes to my prints, however, I am using them as a simple, quick and easy way to inject colour into my works. It is quite interesting to contemplate how the use of one process can reflect various intentions, although I like the fact that this process will, hopefully, marry the painting and printing areas of my project together.

Throughout this whole degree project I have focused largely upon the production of dry point etchings which make up a large percentage of my body of work. Given the time I have put into these prints I think I made the unconscious decision a long time ago that these would be included in my Degree show in some form.

Something I have reflected on previously, in relation to my mixed media work, is my desire to combine different elements before I feel happy with a piece of work. I feel this is relevant with my prints. As much as I find them aesthetically pleasing and effective in their own right, I struggle in imagining my show to be just these framed prints.

I have discussed many times during this project the significance of using anaglypta within my work. My feeling is that my prints should hang not just on a plain white wall but on a wall covered in anaglypta as if to represent the actual walls of my childhood home.

As I think in greater depth about this idea, I return to a place where I become increasingly nostalgic about the awful wallpaper and carpet which resided in the hallway. As much as I really did hate it, it is something which characterizes me and my family and something which has certainly characterized areas of my work over the past 2 years.

I feel I have been transported swiftly from not knowing what my Degree show would be to having a pretty clear idea. It is as though the idea has just fallen into place sort of like I knew all along.

There are now many elements I am thinking about, many of which may take a while to sort out. I have decided that my final show should be an installation piece which includes my dry point etchings. My vision is to have anaglypta wallpaper pasted onto the walls of my allocated space and painted pale yellow. On the walls my etching prints shall be displayed in a variety of second-hand frames.

I have a few different options in mind regarding the furniture I may want to utilise in the piece. I like the idea of having a cabinet, preferably with glass doors and filled with old fashioned trinkets, photographs, books etc. On the other hand there would be more relevance for me to obtain an old fashioned coat stand such like the one which used to reside in the hallway of my old house. I am unsure whether to acquire both and to play around with the space. I do not want the space to be crowded but I do not want it to be too minimalist or empty either.

One thing which I am sure of is that I want an old rotary dial telephone like the one my Mum had in the 90’s. This also used to be on the wall in the hallway. I can’t even remember if it was functional, I suppose it must have been at some point. I feel such an object would be an interesting focal point within my installation and an integral tool in encouraging the viewer to consider their own memories of such old-fashioned objects.

Everything within my show I want to be distressed, deteriorated, damaged and worn to various extents. I want to set a scene in which a space that was once lived in has been abandoned but remnants of memories still remain.

Within the prints my own specific memories are fractured. Through viewing my installation, however, I want the viewer to consider their own memories and the vulnerability of memory in general. I want people to feel nostalgic, reflective and mournful all at the same time for their own past and for the one I am attempting to represent.