‘it starts with embarrassment and ends with hope’
I’ve just been watching Damien Hirst ‘The First Look’ on TV – an interview about his forthcoming exhibition at Tate Modern and I’ve pinched (in the spirit of his art) this quote about his show, for my degree show project ‘Painting in the attic’, in June. I’ve been scraping away more paint, filming myself working, taking samples, collecting relevant information and thinking about the presentation of this ‘forensic investigation’. Last week I had the opportunity to book a space for 4 days at at the university studios in Royal William Yard, Plymouth. My tutor, Phil Power, held a seminar for the group on Wednesday and I got some excellent positive feedback.
I set up the space with a trestle table, a working space with my tools for scraping and examinging the painting which includes a microscope and slides. An easel with the 50 year old oil painting undergoing a removal of the oil pigment and a magnifying lamp.
On the floor was the original frame and a ‘contemporary’ response to the work – overlaid monotype prints, 6 mirror tiles and a paper boat made from a used envelope – this response to the original painting was as if it had fallen out from the original frame and remade itself 50 years later with the work I am now involved in – it was a spontaneous response while working in the space and trying out my ideas for the installation. The rest of the paper boats (50 in total) I have been making were huddled in the corner rather like a safe harbour! Not sure what to make of this as it took me by surprise when I placed them there.
On the opposite wall I put up a shelf of test tubes and perspex boxes containing fragments and pigment scrapings – I intend classifying these and labelling them for viewers to make sense of – only they probably won’t make much sense (only to me!)
Finally I projected a film of me working on the painting on the wall to the right of the easel painting. The sound was the most interesting – a perpetual loud scraping noise – one of my tutors has suggested I concentrate on presenting only the sound and not the projected images – so more work to do as I don’t know much about sound installation.
I feel a lot less anxious now I’ve tried out my ideas – it was really exhilarating to get them out of my head and into a concrete, visual form.
