Part One. Assemble. Ex 1 Your initial thoughts on Sculpture

 Sculpture.......we have not, as yet, found a better word for the Art of manipulating 3D space but we loosely understand its meaning. As the flat brush and oil paint in tubes shifted the artist out of the studio to paint more loosely in nature and the proliferation of photography releasing the artist from representation much has happened. The change from receiving commissions to the gallery space has also effected change particularly as Victorian flock wallpaper was replaced by huge white spaces. Art schools also set trends, looking back I see that my foundation course in 1964/66 was founded on Cezanne, Mondrian, and of course the Bauhaus. On visiting the degree shows in London in the 80s, particularly the RCA, there was a noticeable change with standard departments of painting, graphics, illustration less in evidence but much to do with the environmental/land art, fashion and photography. Being in Milan from 1986' to 2013 afforded me the opportunity to regularly go to the Venice Biennale whilst visits to London were a great opportunity to see what was going on. Now based in Budapest (not the best for exhibitions) I visit nearby Vienna to see anything major, which I sometimes do.  However, I am aware that I am more familiar with European and American artists than what's going on elsewhere including Hungary.

Concerns. I do worry that these huge white spaces such the Tate Modern and the Venice Biennale are inspiring but also dictating what goes on. The work needs to relate to the space therefore difficult to transport and often therefore ephemeral. Not a problem as long as smaller work is not suffering neglect.

Some of the sculptural work that excites me. It seems I am drawn to delicacy and fineness (may I call it beautiful pain) rather than bombastic pieces such as work by Richard Serra, Anish Kapoor, or Anthony Gormley. I am not dismissing their work it just isn't where my heart lies. Here are some examples of work I like very much.

Most work by Doris Salcedo. Many artists have worked with furniture but she gets it right. 'Unland' stored away somewhere in the Tate is achingly beautiful along with her wardrobes as above.

Damien Hirst, some not all. I particularly loved his stunning chrome plated and mirrored glass case displaying prettily coloured pills spaced in neat rows and hard not to be moved by his 1000 years...a horror story that confronts hard. 

Berlinde de Bruyckere. Just about all her work to date.

Gordon Baldwin. Ceramic artist who makes wonderful sculptural forms that I'd dearly like to own.

Louise Bourgeoise. All.

Just a note to say that I am rather envious of artists with workforces at hand to realise ideas.

Exercise 3. Analysing and reflecting

 

Rachel Whiteread.   

With no found title or information on the piece I am left to guess how it has been made. It appears to be a photomontage made from an image of a section of ‘one of her cast sculptures perhaps ‘House’ superimposed onto a photograph of a different London building. Juxtaposing the images in this way presents us with a comparative study. We see the familiar victorian house beside her reconfiguration of a house by casting the interior space. This presents us with a leap in emotional as well as a visual response, on the right a house as a home, our place, a place of refuge and comfort where windows permit light and a view of the world which we have temporarily left, on the left a bleak grey hard flatness with windows now blind. This ‘leap’ feels as uncomfortable as does this perception test on discovering both interlocked images for these expressions of inside and outside are also giant 3D jigsaw pieces. Does the cast enlighten us as to our home’s interior spirit or does it present the truth of our futile empty existences in stark hard reality? Perhaps her holocaust memorial in Vienna where fineness of finish and mechanical symmetry presents an aesthetic quality too hard to bear in our knowledge of its purpose. The symbolism of a library and the forever closed doors mark starkly the brutality of its dreadful truth. 

No matter what one casts (particularly if using a fine material such as plaster) the outcome is always a thing of beauty and wonder, not simply for its inside outness but for its astonishing smoothness or exactness of forms. I’ve as yet to hear R W speak of about this but surely she has hit on a wondrous approach for a lifetime of visual exploration and she has not disappointed in manipulating this technique in powerful innovative and dramatic ways. 

 

Approaches to Sculpture Exercise 1. What do you hope to gain from your foundation course

What do you hope to gain from your foundation course?

I am hoping to encounter new challenging experiences to increase my range of making and more importantly thinking. I hope to find synergy in form and content to make my work more meaningful at least to me. Keen to get started I have a tendency to respond quickly to an idea perhaps without sufficient consideration as to its purpose, depth or potential and so in time I am inclined to lose heart. With this in mind writing may be as useful to me as experimentation with materials. I note that artists increasingly seem to justify their work in written conceptual terms perhaps to satisfy the need for prefaces and exhibition notes but surely this too must create a firm premiss for the work in progress. 

Developing purpose of expression.  

The strange and interesting upbringing of someone such as Louise Bourgeoise could take a lifetime to reflect upon but how not to lie in a stupor and realise that those pieces of fabric stored under the bed so meaningful in her childhood could present a way for her to express something 'unspeakable' and so emotionally raw. Her journey has been drawn from her personal experiences an approach continued by artists such as Tracey Emin. Other 'Young British Artists' have explored social, eco and political themes forever responding to shifting hot topics as they may well be the way to get noticed or funding. I suppose finding out what is sufficiently worth developing is much the same problem for writers who are usually advised to dig deep into their own experiences even if they are painful then, of course, to have the courage to see them as valid unique, and worth expressing.

Somewhere here I plan to refer to artists' works and musical compositions which correspond to values which I cherish and would like to find their way into my work. In trying to grasp what I am trying to express I often make lists of adjectives but the content through which to realise them continues to be the  challenge.  

Part Four. The expanded picture plane

Project 1 Shaped paintings

I've started this project by exploring edges and the relationship between images/marks contained within a frame and their existence when 'travelling' beyond their perimeters. I haven't followed the projects as set such as cutting out and arranging geometric forms but hope that I've followed the principle of exploring beyond the traditional frame. My work is continually referring to contemporary Italian artist Marco Gastini and yet again I'm looking at work in this context.

Some exploratory sketches...

 Thinking about frames being eroded or expanded. Floating/passing marks, dynamism/ static interacting

Looking at Marco GASTINI whose work is rarely contained in a frame.

Charcoal A1 object drawing. I've placed a found bit of packing paper on a rectangle then added a piece of metal grid. I'm exploring the agitated contortions of the paper untamed or contained by the rigidity of the rectanglular form/frame. I failed to finish this not knowing what to add at the base of the picture.

 It was good to be drawing from life again and I enjoy exploring form through light.

                                                               

These next pieces explore marks in motion passing between rectangular frames 

Acrylic on foam board 60x40cm

Acrylic on paper and foam board 80 x 43cm

Further works with marks passing around and beyond rectangular shapes. Here I've added a 'bridge' masking the transitional stage. 

It works quite well but its over complex and muddled. If I went on with this the marks need to be placed with feeling but great care. Possibly the same image needs to be tried repeatedly. I've used foam board as it gives a bit of depth and its smooth surface helps the skimming brushwork.

I like the layer effect and have often toyed with the idea of using sheets of perspex or glass. This mark work that started in the calligraphy unit was directly inspired by Paul Keesey and Claude Heath.

Acrylic on foam board 30x14cm

Here I am playing around with edges creating divisions within a rectangular frame.

In several parts of this course so far I have wanted to scatter bits and pieces but have yet to find a way to attach them to a surface effectively. Maybe I should make wet sticky surfaces....plaster maybe.

Shaped paintings....the shaped representational or narrative painting.

Here I've returned to the 'restless sleep' theme that I looked at some time ago thinking about the mosquito net as an isolating 3D form. I'd quite like to develop this further one day.

 

Project..... Object Painting

I've made three 80cm high plaster forms as a base for this project. I intended that they should relate one to another joining in places but they evolved as separate pieces. I feel the 2 forms on the left work best and have some expression in the common. The piece on the right has been a struggle from the start.

 

Working out some processes for working the surfaces with some odd bits of plaster I had lying around. Rather than paint I'm trying out layers of tissue paper.

 

 

The 'zebra' one is a mono print that did in a former part of the course.

Assignment four

I am choosing the following pieces to submit for this unit.

Acrylic on foam board 60x40cm

Part Three. The appropriated and displaced imaged.

                                           
Project Found images

Looking through this unit I'm dismayed to find it similar to the previous unit on found text confirming yet again that I didn't understand that this is the established nature of 'mixed media'. I would like to draw, paint and play with a variety of materials but find that once again there is an emphasis on collage.

Researching mixed media work by Max Ernst- a past master in the technique of compiled found images.

 Trying to work around the first exercises I wonder whether I can use a process of eliminating parts of images rather than accumulating and juxtaposing imagery in a bid to cut down on searching for stuff which I find irritating. I like the idea of starting with the whole image but keeping only some of it in its original form - expressing the remainder as less defined or leaving a space.

Eliminating parts of an image puts me in mind of unfinished work which has interested me in the past. The unfinished 'Regatta' by Spencer reveals his meticulously planned process in making his compositionally complex works. As with most unfinished work you get the feeling that the work is there under the white primer, it just has to be revealed as with those picture books I had as a child where painting water over the surface released the colours. The flatness of the unpainted and painted parts contrast emphasizing the very power of the modulation of tone and colour to create convincing form and 'life'.  The plasticity of Freud's paint heightens the white flatness almost as if his subjects lie behind the surface.

'Every block of stone has a statue inside it an it is the task of the sculptor to discover it'

Michelangelo 1475-1564) Here I have removed parts of the image drawing in the contours of the men...presence and absence....certainly creates focal points. This ghostly image playing with displacement may be an interesting idea for something. Responding to the Black and White/Adding line exercises Again trying to keep away from surrealistic solutions I'm trying to think how to develop my ideas. I have painted washes over a family portrait in a gradation relative to their existence i.e. dead, fading alive. Thinking about a series of 4 paintings that my cousin's husband did expressing the slow death from motor neuron disease of his wife. The more vibrant abstract motif on the first canvas on the left gradually fades across the works to an mere suggestion of colour on the fourth right hand painting. Corny perhaps but very beautiful and moving. Thinking about cutting away put me in mind of Klimt. The way the flat patterned areas clothe the more modeled parts of faces and bodies echoes a medieval style and very like orthodox church icons where the gold raised covers protect the flatly painted madonna and child. Trying out a few collaged/photo montaged compositions in response to the Black/White exercise.

The following 3 paintings are in response to the Black/White exercise they use pieces of collage as a starting point. As requested the photographs are presented in a chronological sequence

                                      Painting 1   Collage and Acrylic on paper A3

                                   

                                   Painting 2  Collage and Acrylic on paper

Painting 3   Collage and Acrylic on paper A3

Of these 3 paintings I think the middle one is the most successful. The mix of shiny magazine paper and matt acrylic paint + buckled surface does detract from the finished image but this method of working helped develop composition, colour and texture.

Project    

History,intimacy and narrative

 The two pages of my workbook below show photographs of sections of a wall in my kitchen. I am a natural collector of bits and pieces and often make arrangements in boxes as did Cornell. Many contempory artists such as Damien Hirst, Belinde de Bruyclere, Gavin Turk, Louise Bourgeois, Doris Salcedo have used display cabinets and space frames. Influences for this trend may have come from display cabinets in museums housing untouchable valuable relics to fascinating stuff in cabinets and jars used to store items of natural history exist in the public conscious. The enclosed space also acts as an isolation chamber separating the contents from surrounds as in a 3D frame. Much of modern art can only function in the white stark spaces of the the gallery and it may be said that the art is the white space.

                                                                   

Playing around with apple boxes                         

I wanted to do something with religion and make an altar piece with a predella which usually enlarges the story being depicted on the larger panels above. I know that artists who have worked in this way like Cornell and Peter Blake have an enormous collections of bits and pieces and sadly I do not so it's been a bit of a struggle to find relevant stuff let alone select to the point of establishing a message. Nevertheless nothing comes from nothing so I suppose what I have put together is a personal statement of sorts.


Below

Not done for the course but a couple of arrangements I have 'on the go' around my flat.

 Project        Repeated and multiple images

I have made compositions of a number of photographs that I took whilst walking along the coastal paths of Cornwall. I've had it in mind to work with them in this way since I took them last summer and am pleased to have this chance to record my juxtopostions. I should learn how to develop them further using Photoshop but here the photos are simply butted one to another. I am continuing the coastal path trail in August and thought to take some more photos with the view to using them in the expanded painting project in the next unit.

N.B I spent quite some time working on compositions to do with the disconnected nature of dreams but didn't manage to resolve anything worth recording here.

Assignment 3

In June I went to the RCA degree shows in Kensington and Battersey and came back inspired and excited by all I saw but in particular by some of the painting work. Wanting to do draw and paint I've drawn on the feeling/experience of walking on paths, head down watching where to tread.  

Not particularly linked but I also wanted to do some drawing.

3 paintings (with work in progress) for Assignment 3

Painting 1  100x100 cm oil on canvas

 

Painting 2 (with stages) 40x50 cm oil on canvas

Painting 3

60x80 cm Oil on canvas (unfinished)

N.B. unfinished