Well, the big news of the week is….. I won the competition in college, which came as a great surprise. A few of the entries were really good so I was genuinely shocked that I won but hey, woohoo to me. I will get some prize money for myself but also they are paying to fabricate my piece of work which will be a couple of thousand pounds, very exciting stuff. More importantly I will be able to use all the work & research towards my site specific elective work, imagine how brilliant it will be to have a professionally fabricated steel artwork to show to the assessors. What’s even more fantastic is because my work will only cost about £2K to make, our lecturer persuaded the company to take an extra piece of work so my friend Julie also has a commission now, so pleased for her too.
I have a seminar to go to on Wednesday, 9 of us present a brief seminar on our essay’s and have a question and answer session, should be really interesting to hear everyone else’s research and ideas.
The Long Night of the Biennial that I mentioned last week was a great night; we viewed a phenomenal amount of art, walked for miles and still managed a good few pubs in between, my cold was much worse the next day but so worth it!!! Saw Sarah Sze work at The Bluecoat again and it re-enforced to me that I have made the right decision choosing her piece to write about.The next day went to see the Biennial work at Pilkingtons Warehouse, again all impressive but what stood out most to me had to be Yayoi Kusama’s light installation which was utterly mesmerising. An unreal infinity that you could stay in all day.
On top of all this, I have worked incessantly on Critical Study write ups all through Reading Week and am glad to be back in college to actually ‘make’ things again. Oh, also this week I volunteered on a collage workshop at the Williamson Art Gallery. Thoroughly enjoyed it and have offered my services again whenever the organiser needs me. Some of the works were really impressive and It was such a buzz to see the kids faces when they realised they had actually produced a piece of art that then went up on the wall of the gallery.
Time seems to be shooting by, I have been so busy that I just forgot to diarise what I’ve been doing. I am stressing a bit about time, saw a great quote today which sums it up– Time is what we want most, but… what we use worst. ~William Penn.
The solicitors holding the competition met this week to view all the presentation boards so we should find out the results very soon which is good a lot of work went into the designs by all of us, actually felt guilty doing it when I should have been concentrating on my core work really.
I have been collecting & recycling objects, I love the way being at college works, we all help each other out, three of my friends have given me broken musical instruments already, I am enjoying the monotony of taking them apart, cataloguing each piece so that they will all ‘fit’ together again of they were ever to be rebuilt. Rebuilding them is not part of the plan, I want people to explore the boundaries between art & everyday life, wonder why an instrument can become a piece of art, question the presentation of it in it’s many pieces. Music is a huge part of most people’s life whether they know it or not via radio, cd’s or ipods.I feel people will relate to a musical instrument even if it takes on a different form. Think of the humorous ‘Loophonium’ or ‘Harpic-phone’ by Fritz Spiegl., it has been a huge hit on display at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool since it’s acquisition.
Also been working my way around the many Biennial art works there are to see, it’s the long night tomorrow which I am looking forward to. I’m taking a group on a tour of the various galleries and public art pieces which stay open until 11pm for one night only, should be really good, I am full of flu but will wrap up and have a brandy to warm the cockles.
Had a bad health week so not as much work done as hoping this week. Saying that, I have used my sketch book a lot more whilst waiting for hours in hospital corridors and being laid up, the ideas were still flowing. I have scoured charity shops and internet auction sites for the right objects to start off my work, I know the piano will form a final piece so have decided (so far anyway) to stay music oriented so that the work will progress naturally to the piano. I eventually managed to acquire a radiogram and a broken violin…for free too! The violin will act as a maquette in theory. I toyed with blowing it up, smashing it with a hammer or jumping up & down on it but in the end I very carefully took it apart piece by painstaking piece and have laid it out in a plan form. It is waiting for me now, to get to the next phase, exciting stuff.
Site specific is going well, so far a lighting installation and a stainless steel sculpture and I have chosen a 3rd site to research. 3 down two to go!
Research, research, research. I think people who are not artists or art students do not necessarily understand the amount of research involved in producing or even proposing a piece of work. This week, once again, I have not actually achieved any ‘art’work but have spent hours online and in the library and out in the field gathering information. I’m researching Sarah Sze as I have chosen her as the artist I will write my dissertation on this term. Prior to that I have to hold a seminar with fellow students to contextualise my practice and compare my own work with hers’ and offer questions for discussion. This is actually more difficult than first thought, as with a lot of contemporary artists, there seems to be not a lot of written information on her work. I have acquired a beautiful, old and badly tuned, broken walnut piano that I am hoping to use for my final degree show piece, so have been photographing and photo-shopping the images, I know what I want to do but am having to put it on hold as it will be such a huge piece of work. I don’t want to make any mistakes, so this term I will be finding other musical ‘items’ to use as maquettes for the final piece. I am spending a lot of time in charity shops and antique shops lately searching for the ‘right’ piece. No luck yet though.
This week included a trip to Yorkshire Sculpture Park to view work by Isamu Noguchi and Sophie Ryder amongst others. As always it was an impressive way to spend a day, even though it poured down most of the day and we were practically blown up the hill to the Longside Gallery.
Been a busy week in all, we have a competition of sorts at the moment, a local firm of solicitors is interested in commissioning a large piece of work for their entrance and have asked the third year student’s at college to put forward proposal boards and maquette’s. There will then be a display in their office and one piece will be chosen to be made up and exhibited. I have been working on a piece that would involve laser cutting metal, the final prize would pay for fabrication of the piece so I figured I could design a piece I would not usually be able to afford to make. It involves using words in many different languages and it’s been interesting doing the research, not sure if all my words are perfect though but hopefully I’m not saying anything too dreadful. Some of the other proposals are very good though so I don’t know what my chances are.
Also been researching for my elective work, so much of the work so far has been research and I’m looking forward to actually making something….. hopefully soon.
