I have been working on my ideas around the presentation of my work and the inferences and associations I can use to layer the display. The artists I have been looking at include Mark Quinn, Gaby Taplick, and Damien Hurst. But I have been particularly struck by Mark Dions installation work. I find the way he uses the principles of taxonomy and Museum systems of classification, and then subverts them very relevant to my work. I am seeking to blur boundaries in the classification of my forms and to raise questions in the viewer, and Marks work consistently blurs the boundaries between natural history, art and science. I find the way he questions the classification systems place on objects by professionals and Institutions very relevant.
I have visited Manchester Natural History Museum though I had found they did not have a particular botany section on display at the moment. However, I was excited to go as they have 2 areas of great interest to me: One was the Darwin exhibition on at the moment and the other was the Mark Dion Installation ‘Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy’ 2005. This grand sounding name represents the culmination of Dion’s working through the Manchester Museum’s own collections, especially the more neglected pieces. This Installation has been incorporated into the Darwin exhibition and I believe is to become a permanent fixture in the museum. In the installation Dion attempts to classify the unclassifiable while working with and exploring the museums own systems of working. He plays with the ambiguity of nature by assembling a whole array of boundary crossing, hybrid objects. This was great as I will be completing my essay about Dion and how his work relates to mine soon.
Leafing through some of the books I borrowed from the library I was interested to see some mushrooms that look quite waxy. One looks almost identical to one of my wax sculptures! I am sure I have not seen the image before!
My immediate feelings are that there seems a lot of useable material, but I can’t always be sure of my first impressions. I need time for the information and images to filter through my brain a few times; for the new information to combine and make connections, for things to link up in my own unique way. I find that even when I am not sure if there is something directly usable, as long as I found the information/image interesting in some way it all seems to go into storage in my head, where it is adapted, combined, linked in with other stored bits and something new and mine comes out at some later point.
I seem to only get a short way in actually creating art work before I am off researching again. Though the initial point for the research may seem straight forward to satisfied, it always seems to lead on to many more areas of interest or raise more questions requiring even more research!! It does keep the inspiration levels high, but my rate of production just does not keep pace with my ideas!
This was another research day.
A.M.
Visited larger library checking out loan books, reference books and what they call ‘the stack’ (which are books that have been taken out of use). Not at all ‘sexy’ research I suppose. I have however found numerous interesting images and lots of useful info. The 2 most exciting aspects were:
1) A large reference book on mushrooms, with species I have not found previously in other books.2) A smaller book still in the reference section which attempts to explain the meanings behind words used in the naming of plants e.g. Facetus means elegant etc.
I did find lots of other interesting images and snippets of information in many other books available and brought the usual stack home to plough through!
P.M.
Visited the local Museum to look through their Botany section, checking out specimens, but mainly just re looking at their styles of display/image recording and naming protocols. This was o.k. In some of the display cabinets they used a second smaller box to contain the specimen. These specialist boxes looked very much like the boxes I used in an artist book last year, (boxes used in taxonomy of various insects). So I think I will be re ordering some more, after checking out sizes first! This visit was of good use, but I may visit a museum with a larger Botanical section, I’ll check out Manchester or Liverpool. As I have interest in representing my objects so they allude to the whole scientific, taxonomic, Museum system of display. During the visit discussed the possibility of opening up the cabinets with a member of staff from the museum. As I expected I would need to speak with the curator (who was not available). I will wait before following this up as I need to be very clear about what it is I want as I have other ideas as to my display.
After a recent visit to Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see Peter Randall Pages exhibition I was inspired to research phyllotaxis. This (very briefly) is the arrangement of cells, organs etc. Within plants which follow a mathematical pattern. The way leaves grow on plant stems etc. follows a pattern. It can either be alternate, opposite, whorled or spiral. I particularly like the phyllotactic patterns made by the seeds of a sunflower head. It has two oppositely directed spirals, one going clockwise the other anti clockwise; this creates an optical effect of criss-crossing spirals which is fascinating. (These patterns are not just contained in plants they can be found in many places even in the markings on some seashells). These phyllotatic patterns also correlate with Fibonacci numbers. When the spirals are multiple they create whorls and they then have multiples of Fibonacci numbers. I have been looking out for sunflower to photograph. I have found one, unfortunately some of the seeds are missing now, but the pattern can still be clearly seen even in this area. (This is something that I feel I can particularly develop through my print work).
At the same time as developing the sculptures and documenting them photographically, I have been developing drawn records of these forms. I want these images to suggest the historical conventions used in the documentation of natural history. I initially started pencil drawings onto clean white paper. These first drawings are o.k., but I want to give the pictures more importance and a history.
I tried out a few differing ways of presentation then decided to try aging the paper… I was not too convinced about this as I thought the concept a little silly in some ways. But the thought of what it might be like wouldn’t go away so I had a go anyway. I am quite glad I did now as it has given the drawings another edge of fragility, as the paper itself now looks fragile. It adds to the images importance and believability as a botanical record. You handle old documents with more reverence and care than you might I more recently produced document and you seem to care about its reliability/accuracy less, as if accepting it to be the best record possible at the time.
Naming some of the forms I have drawn may be necessary, to recreate the recording conventions used both in the past and today. I do not want to simply produce a ‘made up’ name with no reasoning behind it. It would be good if it had some basis in real botanical recording…. I will need to chase this up.
Always seem to have problems when I get near a computer! They obviously don’t like me much!! Mind you, mine is so old it should be drawing its pension. So may be I’m just being ageist! Eventually managed to get some of the pictures I took on to the blog! As I suspected there are problems with quite a few mainly regarding focusing, (me being too close to the object for the camera to cope with). But still liked the images. The angles on some are great, if a little blurry, so will just have to do those again.
Some of the sculptures that I was worrying about looking a bit too ‘Hammer House Of Horror’ have grown on me since photographing them. But I am still am not sure! They certainly have a hybridism about them!
