Last week was the final week of term, and also Events Week. There were some worshops and we had some alumni working in the project space on a short project about being visitors. One of the highlights was a meeting that a few of us had with some Chelsea MA students about setting up galleries and studios. We’ve decided that we’re going to do something fun and a bit different as well as slightly scary (for me) in June around London. I’ll write more about that nearer to the time. It is a little crazy.
The main plan for the week was to use the foyer space and the Centre for Drawing to display work for a crit on Thursday. I jumped in and got myself a wall in the drawing centre to make something new for the crit. I wanted to have a bit of fun as it was the end of term so I decided to just play around with the space and not worry about what the outcome would be.
I’m still thinking about the history of different kinds of buildings and structures, and what they stand for, and that is forming a fair bit of my research at the moment. I’m still quite unsure where all this is going, but hopefully I’ll be way clearer after an intense couple of weeks of reading, writing and researching over the Easter period. For this piece of work, I kept things simple and opted for a Nazi watchtower, as I kept coming across lots of Nazi related topics over the last week or so in films, books and on the internet. A sign perhaps?
I still believe that there is mileage in the perspective paintings that I was working on a few weeks back, so I wanted to build on that, and work with it on a larger scale. I also wanted the photocopies to remain present due to their aesthetic value and edgyness. I decided quite randomly to work with string, and make a large perspective drawing on the wall based upon the watchtower image that I had. I wanted all the perspective/working out lines to be part of the work and create its own space and shapes. Interestingly, the perspective lines look like search lights from the ground that illuminate the tower. I quite like that coincidence. I used a complicated method to work out how the shadow should look, and at one point had string coming from the wall out onto the floor to work out how a shadow may look, which I made from photocopies of black paper. I wanted the shadow to stand out and be quite physical compared to the string, you notice the shadow on the floor before seeing what is making the shadow. It wasn’t the best thing that I’d done, but I had fun doing it and made the most of having a different space to play with.
The crit was good fun, and there was a good atmosphere. This was probably due to the fact that we had loads of beer. Somebody mentioned that my work is too physical, maybe the string should be replaced by lasers. Some people though it was strange that I was talking about my work as if it were a drawing. I think it is a drawing though.
I really feel as if I should be getting my head around everything that I’m doing and working towards now that we’re heading towards the assessment. I’m compiling all my bits of research and writing together for my research folio, and I’m hoping that in doing this, along with all the other reading and essay writing that I have going on, that things will become clearer for me.
