Week 7
I spent the bulk of this week reading and making notes. I felt pretty lost for most of the week. On Staurday there was a Symposium at St. Martins. It was the first of a series of talks/discussions for the Tableau Project. This one was called Fragments, Openess and Contradiction in Painting and Photography. It was quite a long day, but worth the climb up 11 flights of stairs. One of the speakers, Cedric Loire, who gave a talk called What do images do to painting, what does painting do to images, was the most relevant to me at the moment. He spoke about two artists, Robert Suermondt and Terry Costeseque.
Suermondt’s paintings that go beyond the frame that are based upon the urban/suburban environment. His work is a constant reference to the photographic image, showing evidence of digitization. He paints in the way that an editor would edit a film. Photos are taken, images are cut from magazines, these are digitzed and attached to the canvas. Fragments of black and white photos are collages, becoming unrecognisable from the source material. He uses montage, as in cinemas, but done with paintings. More ‘editing’ takes place when the collages are used to make the paintings. There is movement between the images and the planes. The viewers gaze is being disturbed. There is perfect vision and blindness at the same time. Details are extracted from photos and the collages, and are blown up during this editing. He also makes models of spaces that contain copies of his work, and then photographs them.
Costeseque’s source material includes advertisments found in the street or from the net. Signs and textures from urban spaces, like neon signs. The speaker talked of artificiality and superficiality and about using photomanipulation to abstraction.
What am I doing?
My recent practice has been concerned with layers, boundaries and journeys through spaces, as well as architectural forms. This has led me towards looking at the urban environment. Spaces that interest me range from small and awkward urban spaces to voids and desolate landscapes. Both these environments can create alienation. I also wish to explore town planning and surveillance as forms of control on society.
Geometric abstraction in painting conveys architectural forms and distorted space within the pictorial space. Spatial understanding and grids link abstraction in painting and the systems used by architects. Things exist in the real world, and the world that is created by the painting. These two worlds overlap.
My main area of research up to this point has been the anxieties that some people experience when confronted with these spaces. So far, Agoraphobia, a fear of being in a large open space with no clear means of escape, claustrophobia, the fear of being enclosed, cremnophobia, the fear of precipices and strasophobia, the fear of elevated areas. These conditions came to prominence during the late nineteenth century, as a side effect of modernism and the new metropolis’.
Why am I interested in anxiety and why am I interested in this now? Am I asking deeper questions?
Week 6
After a weekend in Bath I entered the week feeling properly recharged. It was nice to get out of London for a couple of days, it definately did me good.
Tuesday was quite a long day. I went to a graduate talk by Stephen Farthing at the Royal Academy, which kicked off at 8:45, so it was rush hour across London. It was good to be in what was described as ‘the ideal lecture’ in that we were in a gallery full of the work that was being talked about. Some of the works had something (in paint) between the painting and the viewer, this was described as a veil. He also talked about repeating motifs as being a disruptive force, something that distracts the eye. Once I had journeyed back to college, I began to scale up my work, and make more mess on the floor. Once again working with cement and plaster. It’s nice (I shouldn’t use the word nice) to combine cement, a building material and the pigments and rabbit skin glue, traditional painting materials.
Artists that have been informing my practice over the last few weeks have been Julie Mehretu and Sarah Morris. I also now have a massive reading list too. Being in London is great with so much to see, but I think I’m going to need to be very selective about what I choose to go to see/watch/listen as I do need to spend time reading, writing and making of course. It’s easy to get caught up in too many things.
Week 5
During my tutorial the other week, I decided that as I was working with ideas of the urban environment, that I would try out making some work with building materials. I got hold of some cement and plaster and spent a few days playing around with them. I’ve been using them as a paint at the moment, mixing with pigments and my old friend rabbit skin glue. I’ve ended up with some interesting colours and washy textures. It seems all quite dingy and bleak. Thin washes look and work more effectively than thick plastering. I’ve ended up with quite a flat and industrial and very worn and used look. I’m just doing stuff at the moment and not trying to make any work.
I was also introduced this week to the Wimbledon way of making stretchers, which is a really good way as they are much stronger than the way I’m used to making them.
Friday involved a trip to Liverpool to the Biennial
Week 4
I spent most of this week getting together some work for Thursdays group crit. It was so useful to be back in a group crit situation, I felt quite annoyed and disappointed with myself afterwards. There was quite a group of us, 15 I think, we would each go to one of our spaces, the artist would introduce the work to be discussed, and then for 8 minutes, the group will talk about the work whilst the artist remains silent, before having 2 minutes to talk at the end. The format is useful, but it seemed obvious that we were all still getting to know each other.
My turn was pretty late in the session, and we were getting tired. There was some interesting comments that ranged from things moving in space, to optical illusions (oh dear) to 1952 (even more of an oh dear). It has definately given me food for thought. I needed a few days (and few beers) to digest it all. The studios are really coming to life now, I also got to have a play in the print studios which was fun.
