I heard about Corey Arcangel from a CPS seminar, he wasn’t suggested as someone for me specifically but I decided to investigate on my own. I’m glad I did because his process is fascinating even if his work is sometimes hard to categorise or fully understand. He has a similar feeling to me in that his process is sort of intuitive more than well planned or thought out, stating he is sometimes last to know what going on with his work and that he is interested in materials.
Critical Review – Term 2
Marmalade Night: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16zUTON0BPDLzupFl9FmUdPro3qbxp-lW/view?usp=drivesdk
Failed Experiment: https://drive.google.com/file/d/166pLiNKgSK4o0TtPLM8wR0YJ2gI02e6Q/view?usp=sharing
Kick the Yellowstone: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15t4NtGzGbKjdBIoa6ROSyciosNMmIL0z/view?usp=sharing
Circle: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16CzTUhN3RrrPdOy4y74Ns2id919OjDBa/view?usp=sharing
Sail over the Wall: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15kjznbD5QYX5CcRWgKnW3b7g7mZmrFov/view?usp=sharing
Charlotte Posenenske – modularity
Charlotte Posenenske is a German born artist who makes sculptures and paintings and who interestingly became a sociologist towards the later decades of her life, her work is broadly about industrialism and mass production.
Her work visually centres on industrial materials and representation with the flatpack style boxes and brackets being repeated (with some variance) to create different objects from the same materials. Her work very modular in this sense and the sense that the different objects relate and communicate with each other in the space, the different component parts contribute to the understanding of the whole.
Posenenske’s wall hung sculptures use different types of language; brighter colour, matte or gloss surface, curves are used as well not just angles. This gives them a different feeling to the viewer but the sense of modularity and mass production are still present; all of her forms look as though they could be 3D printed and easily assembled by anyone in today’s world.
This could perhaps have been Posenenske’s point, that if corporate consumerism and mass production continue to aggressively expand art could become a function and not a passion. this is again emphasised by her choice of materials and forms, all industrial in nature and all products of man not directly of nature. Had these forms been made from grained wood they would have had a completely different feel with the natural wood contrasting the man made references.
This careful consideration of modularity and sensitivity to materials is something I want to try and replicate through my work but in my own way, although I do like the idea of having easily repeatable forms that can expand to fill or take over a space. I also love the simple but powerful use of colour to make relationships between the objects, so they can be effective as an individual thing but also belong to a collective. This is also our paradoxical desire as humans, to be unique and to be accepted, which goes against the phrases like ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered’.
I want to also take forward the fact that she painted and sculpted simultaneously to have a flow between her ideas, for me this is something I feel I have forgotten how to do effectively which leads to be getting stuck or frustrated easily. If I can have multiple ways of working through or thinking about an idea then I can be a more versatile artist and adapt better to any more unforeseen circumstances (Covid) that may happen in the future.
03321 – Experiments
These are an assortment of images from my experiments without a studio. I had no idea where to start and as an avid overthinker the possibilities and the limitations made me feel incapable of making work at first. I spoke with my academics and some of their advice was helpful, in the end I chose to start work by exploring my sensitivity to materials in a collative or curative manner.
There are also reference images from my walks and drives around Leicestershire, none of these are specifically related to my ‘practice’ and I haven’t consciously tried to incorporate them. However, they are moments that have caught my eye or curiousity. Engaging with my curiousity and my own interests is something I have always wanted to incorporate into art but it is also something I have struggled with.
Moving forward I want to try and explore this sense of movement in my work but also remember my focus on materials, some feedback was to maybe experiment with digital media and with the content I already have. This is something I will explore and I will also look at some of the artistic references that were suggested to me, such as Serena Korda Alice Walton.
Exhibition Planning
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Eric Bainbridge – composition
Eric Bainbridge uses a range of materials, unfired clay, fur, bronze, video wood, food and steel. He references Caro and Smith, Maleavich as well, and how he was horrified by steel constructions that looked exactly the same. He saw a very rigid environment that made him anti-‘carryouttheideology’ where style over substance is the focus. Anthony Caro and his work was so big (and influential) he filled that space, Bainbridge felt there was no room for others to explore without a comparison being drawn.
When he discusses his steel sculptures his attitude and strategies become clearer; he pulled the pieces from wherever he found them, and much later in his career (after getting over Caro/Smith) he was ready to have a go, even though he worried he might ‘make an arse of myself’. He was concerned with how to approach it with reference to the past, but also with a new and exciting twist.
He was also concerned with formal aspects and domestic aspects and the contrast between steel and towel etc. Using recognisable marks and structure in both the steel and the towel to draw unity, but they also contrast each other and open up a discourse.
Bainbridge, like me, finds memory more interesting than the reality or analysis, since a less specific/more generic image comes into the mind from memory.
Bainbridge states ‘the one joy of making things is to be able to look at them when you’ve made them, I don’t believe you can function without a space to look at your work.’ (paraphrased from the below video) This also struck a cord with me especially considering the current situation regarding the lack of support and access to a space to view and understand work, separate from the pollutions of domestic life.
He also talks about colliding languages with interesting results, which is something that resonates with me very strongly since I feel this is an element of my work as well, I like to use different materials and processes to see how they relate to and interact with each other. Particularly in this term of self-directed practice I have found myself drawn to multiple ideas and interests at once, and the only way I can figure any sense of unity is to make them ‘collide’ physically or conceptually.
His work also has this sense of vagueness and searching, particularly the steel sculptures, to me it is clear to see that what he is doing is trying to question and understand his intuition. This was a note in my feedback from last term that my work was unspecific and shared a sort of lost or vague nature. I personally feel on reflection, and now after studying Bainbridge, that this vagueness is not a negative, in fact it is a direct reflection of the doubt, uncertainty and frustrations that have overshadowed the past year.
I also feel that a potential suggestion as to why this vagueness was not fully recognised as fundamental to my expression, is because of the difference between being an academic during this crisis and being a student during the crisis. One example being the academics are still being paid, whereas the students are still paying and receiving less of what they pay for. I feel it also comes down to the security, an academic is employed, has a degree, has a career or home studio potentially, when compared to a second year undergraduate.
The common phrase for assuaging our anxiety is ‘We’re all in the same boat’, I feel this is a misstatement, ‘We all have a boat, but yours is smaller’ would be a more accurate statement. This is not a condemnation of the academics, they earned their stature and are entitled to it and I can only hope to be in their position someday. However, it is a condemnation of the lack of or refusal to understand that art students are being hit harder by the restrictions on access to university than some other non practical based subjects, particularly now the library is open to students who have returned safely.
That thread about studios was a complete tangent, but I want to keep the authenticity of my thoughts and ideas whilst I study artists to understand my own ideas, motivations and artistic process. To edit or omit these thoughts would be dishonest to myself, my creative expression and the effect Bainbridge has had on me and my practice.
For these reason I feel Bainbridge has had a strong impact on me, allowing me to better understand my own artistic process (and my thoughts) through his ideas and understanding of his work. These sorts of sentiments led me to also think of, and look at, Cory Archangel; an artist who states his understanding of a material or process comes from experimenting with combinations and preservation (I will do a post about him later).
I was unable to embed the two Frieze articles that my tutor linked me, possibly due to copyright etc. however the titles are as follows: Frieze – Eric Bainbridge: Review – by Jonathan Griffin, Issue 119. Frieze – Tales of Everyday Madness: Features – by Jonathan Griffin, Issue 123.
David Hockney – colour
David Hockney is a very prominent artist of our time with a long history of successful and imaginative works. His work centres around his experiences and personal perspective, illustrated in a book retrospective called ‘That’s just the way I see it’, his later works centre mainly around nature and the environment he finds himself in. He is also a well known portrait artist and his paintings of people have the same natural warm sensibility as his paintings.
I have been inspired by his brave use of colour and his candid way of working, he isn’t trying to render a photo perfect image, he is just painting what he sees and trying to communicate his experience to us. This is similar to what I try to do with my work but Hockney does it fearlessly, which is something I need to learn to channel.
Although I am working in sculpture and 3D I feel his work is related to mine in the sense of colour and the perception of colour; we both use vibrancy and contrast to impact the mood of a piece and we both illustrate a perception of colour that is not as traditional as other perceptions. Cezanne and Klee are other great colour users, they also inspire me to continue to be vibrant and to experiment.
The reason I gravitated towards Hockney this term is because i have been way out of my comfort zone; living in a new house and no studio access has made it very difficult for me to stay focused or even feel calm most days. Hockney’s work (and the colours especially) make me feel joy, I can feel the warm soothing California light that influenced him so much. I also love the way he uses contrasting and complementary colours to create depth and almost movement in the paintings.
I also really admire his honest technique in painting and it is encouraging to see such a famous artist be so popular by using such a candid (and some would say child-like) way of painting. His paintings of Yorkshire are some of my favourites and they display all the best things about him from bold colour to immense scale; he sometimes paints on 6+ canvas’ to make one wall sized image.
The more important factor is that when I see his work I feel the intense drive to be a better artist that I felt when I first found it, this is a feeling that I have not had strongly this year. The fact that an 80+ year old man can still make his way out of the house to paint or draw each day is an inspiration, and the fact he can still work so well and in such a large scale is a higher standard I want to try and hold myself to.
Essay
I chose to write my essay about negritude with respect to two important texts about race and art, Jonathan Yau’s, Please Wait by the Coatroom and Homi K Bhabha’s The Location of Culture. This was in reference to the work of Kara Walker, specifically Marvellous Sugar Baby and how it related to the themes discussed within the two texts.
*insert essay?*
Space
These images are from the second half of my first term and centre around an exploration of Space. I approached this by using my object based work and trying to respond to it with other materials that have different properties. I also wanted to develop more of an experience/installation style work rather than a single object or series of objects etc. The first way I did this was by weaving sting through my largest sculpture, I used one continuous ball and tried to treat it like a line drawing that once I started I wouldn’t stop.
These results were successful, I feel the string not only highlights the spaces between the wood but suggests new spaces.
(Space text from Andy about lines and things that ”arrest your eyes” being the things that construct space)
After this I began by making a smaller frames and weaving the string much tighter to create more of a wall not a net. These were mostly successful and the forms came from my old work and references to branches bridges, any sort of rigid structure however, i did not want them to be completely uniform so I combined the materials with random/spontaneous decisions about length or angle.
Once I made a few of these things I started to arrange them in the space around me, at this point I felt that I needed to try and create a space, or at least try and draw attention to the way the objects relate to each other through space. I struggled with how to do this in a less literal way. Weaving between all the objects was an option but I wanted to try and create a more subtle relationship between the things I made and the space; like Phyllida Barlow or Joel Shapiro.
Whilst making I started looking at minimalism and the work of Dan Flavin and I was blown away by how he created these illusions of space with some lights and careful placement
The final stage was to introduce the lights and try to edit down my installation, unfortunately this was mostly unsuccessful since our term was cut short by some weeks. However, I feel that I still managed to pull together a good collection of work especially considering the restraints we all had to work within.
My initial feedback on these piece was mostly good with there being some comments about the lack of unity or sense of vagueness in the work as a whole. I feel this was fair, but also ironic considering both a lack of unity and sense of vagueness perfectly reflect the state of our course, my practice and the wider world around us.
I personally did not immediately recognise this however, the more I look at the work the more I see through the superficial exploration of materials and process to the unspoken message, a message I didn’t even know I was leaving. So in some ways this was a very successful piece, I am unsure whether it is resolved or not and will continue to explore this next term, assuming we still have a studio.
Making Space
My next focus was making space and here are some of the intermediary pieces that bridged my thinking between object and space. I started this by weaving string between sections of one of my objects, this made the structure feel more solid and highlighted the planes of space between the wood.
I continued making drawings and trying to imagine a space where my objects or creations would eventually be, this is where some of the larger forms and new ideas started from.
I then extrapolated this weaving process into objects I made with wood, metal and found objects, such as the freezer drawer in the image above. Reflecting on this practice I can see I was trying to fill the space, and sort of turning these grids and grates into woven walls, playing with flexible and inflexible materials.
After looking at the work of Dan Flavin I decided I wanted to incorporate light to manipulate the space and also use it to create new spaces. I did this in minor ways trying to create a more subtle lighting effect rather than Flavin’s mostly vibrant/high contrast pieces; this was still effective but I feel but can be developed further.
I also wanted to incorporate light to enable shadows to come into the composition as well since abstract lighting cannot always be understood a shadow is a familiar form, my hope was that by playing with lighting in a subtle way the installation would have an unsettled feeling.
Many of the smaller forms I made represent figures now I look at them, although at the time I was not thinking of people at all and wanted to stay away from recognisable figurative imagery. However, the fact that these references came out autonomously with random combinations of angles and lengths gives the forms another relationship to human nature, not just the figurative form.
These smaller ‘people’ like forms also create this sense of anxiety from the way they are twisted and contorted. They do not seem comfortable in their environment or in themselves; emphasised by the bindings of string and wire they are covered with.
Initially I thought this collection/installation was purely an autonomous exploration of space but now on reflection I can see the edges of an expression that communicates frustration and a sense of confused order, or organised disorder. This relates strongly to the pandemic and current limitations and restrictions and is interesting to see that even when consciously avoiding a topic like Covid-19 it is still represented in my work.