Category: Year 2 – Professional Practice Research

Simon Gales started by stating 17th century artworks as some of his earliest influences, also ideas of existence and space that were being discussed/discovered at the time. He also cited everyday things and objects as an influence as well as questions of us as a species in space and the brevity of life.

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Gales is a painter by practice and nature and showed more interest in his idea and concept than in the media and whether it is relevant. He makes though provoking work that challenges viewers perception either directly through the use of 3D and painted perspective or indirectly through the use of colour, tone and composition.

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I was inspired by how deeply he ponders his ideas and also the nuance with which he seemed to stumble upon effective works and concepts. In terms of things I can take forward into my own practice it would be the depth of thought and the use of subtle juxtaposition. Both of these are things I already do but his confident use of it shows me I have much more to practice and learn.

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I also really like how he made his 1st sculpture and how it was so clearly linked to his paintings but still an object in its own right, and the way he used water to play with the perception of shapes relative to the viewer. His clever, delicate and thoughtful approach is hard to not be drawn in by and the crisp nature of his rendering increases this seductive effect.

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He also seemed fascinated with showing some sort of movement or action (implied or otherwise) through a fixed/still painting. For example his piece Off Limits depicts a track saw on a rail that appears to be floating, the soft texture and relentless white place the object in a non-space, with the painted shadows and lighting effects grounding the object in an understandable reality. This effect creates beauty in its intrigue and disarms you from the normal judgement of the recognisable object, which is that it is dangerous and volatile. The paintings may not be the most ambitious or impressive but they are incredibly well thought though and highly effective.

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Gales process is interesting to me and I look forward to exploring ideas with this new information, perhaps even make some more traditional paintings after resolving the ideas I am working through now. The rest of the post is just my notes from whilst the talk was going on, I chose to leave them unedited as it shows both his message and my interpretation in one

Egg and Nail – vulnerability and threat, metaphor for life, prick conscious of onlooker.

monument to a physicist – scientists trying to marry their theory to their ideology, represents a crucifixion.

old photograph of woman – symbiosis between her and the Avant-Garde house, wanted to show ephemeral movement in the past tense.

In Season – lemon on a shelf, sense of uncertainty since there is no visible sign of the shelf

gravity pull – Caroline Weissman, sculpture, instability finely balanced equilibrium, metaphor for humans, implies increasing depth, water glasses reversed this depth, attracted a lot of attention

shifting mass – changing light or viewpoint disrupts perfect equilibrium, playing with shadows and light and perception of the spectator

shifting space – intermediate space between the depth and the individual and the middle, the yellow bar interacts with all three layers, playing with the perception of the person and making their movement important. incredible paintings.

shifting policy – living in orwellian society, cctv helmeted creatures watchin us, wall becomes part of the work, challenging the credibility of their initial perception.

shifting decomposition – virtually protected from reality, senses dull, death becomes an image, unfocused into pixels to decompose it complementary colours to create magnetic attention and seduction. pixels suited the subject of langoustine well, they are separated

shifting republic – amused by american flag w/ elephant, banana is derogatory, slightly lewd, shadow suggests movement, flag is transluscent suits subject well.

offset overwide – beauty in noisy dangerous tools, awe, animation from the layers of the panels, double illusion, automatic function, tension between seduction and danger, full relief right across the wall?

one o’clock – question position of the spectator, are you within or without? is it one am or one pm? you choose your own environment. fake shadows interacting with real ones

Beckett – not a random choice, photograph pushed it, interrupted signal from pixels, two stage reduction, needs to be Beckett but also be disrupted, put spectator in the position to make their own connections

challenging the limits of painting, works on the hoof, pulled by painting process, coming out of the wall to go and get the viewer, images relating to the ground are the realm of sculpture

naturally drawn to the image for its own sake, stumbling across something that resonates, do things with that energy and try to mold it, so many of the images come around by fluke, unplanned. searching for the image and inspiration, develop something from that even if it has nothing to do with the original image

Patrick coulfield, Robert reimann, 1617 – etching et sic in infinitum.

Phyllida Barlow is an interesting artist who came into fame later in her life (after 40 years of teaching at Slade), something I think is beneficial since you have life experience and perspectives, not just technical skill and ideas, she additionally spent 40 years as a member of staff at the Slade School of Art.

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Her work is based on the urban environment, her surroundings and is often very large scale bordering on monolithic at times, this sense of ambitiousness is something I want to try to emulate however having that much space to work with is difficult. If the workshops were open/accessible then I would have wanted to experiment with metal and wood structures to act as braces or supports, these could then be taken to a location and assembled and used as anchors to build or paint on. This links to Barlow’s own desire to create a ‘ship in a bottle’ effect where the work expands within the space to fill it.

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She also has a fearless mentality when it comes to her work, combining found materials with traditional and domestic ones in new and interesting ways, she seems to possess a great sense of discernment in the way she creates a piece or installation. This discernment likely comes from her massive experience as an educator, but also from confident experimentation with making and materials.

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Conceptually we are similar in that neither of us would proclaim a focus or subject of our work outright, as she herself says the subject or meaning must be found through the making process, which can often be a struggle. But it is in this struggle that we as artists negotiate between material, concept and experience to create our unique perspective. From viewing this perspective a conversation can be opened between the viewer and the work that has been made.

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I find Barlow to be both intimidating and inspiring, which links to the way she feels about her own process, stating that it is often on the edge of being out of control through its aggressive invasion of the space. This is something I have also struggled with in that I feel like the making is running away from me and I no longer have control of where it leads. This assertive use of chance and change is integral to Barlow, and many other artists I admire, and is by far the most important element of my work I need to focus on developing.

Barlow’s honing of her creative process over decades is inspiring and gives me comfort that I do not have to expect so much of myself so soon, as Ed says not everything you make will end up in the Tate. Remembering this lesson has been the hardest thing this year so I am pleased to have found Phyllida Barlow and her work to help guide me through.

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RANDOM NOTES: repetition until you find the form you want then build on that. sculpture in a way rejects the single image in the way you walk around it, and despite its physicality sculpture constantly disappears; you walk past and its gone, then if you come back to it you have the chance to see it in a completely new way. sculpture feels more like a film and music its a moment and an experience. time is a material like gravity is a material, historical sculpture can be very grandiose and lacks intimacy. she is trying to make an approximation of something that is gone, its not about perfection I’m not a perfectionist, I might be obsessive but I’m not a perfectionist, I don’t have the patience. sculpture is about the relationship between yourself and your space and the object that is taking up your space as it were. The aggressive invasion of the space and a take over of it. The viewer only becomes relevant to her after the work is realised and ready to be displayed in a space.

interested in post minimalism arte povera, dislikes moral stance of judgementalism, dislikes pomposity or over seriousness, british proudness of its own historical position. last 10-15 year of monuments falling, twin towers saddam hussain buddhas in afganistan, BLM marches and Brighton. sculpture uses pretense, bronze that is hollow inside, constant parodoxes of sculpture. the bigger a thing is the more it must embrace its own fakery, intrigued by the notion that something can be massive but also could be made by one person, larger pieces made of smaller sections.

Ignores viewer while making work, it is a private relationship, when it comes to installation she tries to use the work and its relationship to the space to choreograph the viewer into a certain kind of looking. Views sculpture as a restless object, where everything is open to scrutiny not just where the object lands on the ground. floor empty forces viewer to examine the objects at different heights from different angles

”Think about Cave Paintings, its an age old desire to bring into dark spaces images or evidence of something that was seen or heard or experienced outside. Its about evidencing something seen or experienced, through a language that I believe is as old as the hills.”

PHYLLIDA film on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krbUNuUMVQs

Tom Davis is a contemporary artist who studied at DMU and is now working in Walsall Birmingham. He is a visual artist working in digital and traditional painting who is inspired by personal life, video games, digital culture and perception. When he spoke about his work he gave us a very detailed and reflective presentation of his work to date, his honesty about successes and failures of his process was inspiring and reassuring.

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One point he spoke about that was realising the limitations of your process, this was something that actually became a focus of my methodology this term and for me the limits of what I can do directly govern what I do. I try to work with a limit but also right up against it, in the hope that this sparks new ideas or effects. This is similar to the way Tom used his experience during lockdown to integrate his interest in games and nature.

He also spoke about media and relevance to the context, for example a digital display of work is relevant to the context of Tom and therefore an oil painting would have a different and perhaps unwanted effect.

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Tom likes to make work across different media (plaster, oil, acrylic, digital & comics) he also spoke about how he enjoys converting from analog to digital and making smaller versions of work that can then be scaled up. This is similar to my own digital drawing process where I work over real life locations I find on walks/trips. Tom also makes small collages as preliminary ideas instead of drawing/painting all the time, this is something I would like to experiment with further also.

He ends by speaking about his return to naturalistic subjects, how he struggled with digital/gaming focused process and couldn’t justify it to himself completely. He also talked about how he absorbs what’s around him and about enjoying slightly different ways of working, emulating this could help me balance my confused style and help me hone in on my unique process/processes.

Another insight I got from this talk (and my own process) was the need to go out to primary sources to learn more about a subject or idea. Davis says he felt like secondary research limited his outcome and I agree, with my own work if I am limited in the amount of outer world things I can absorb that affects the diversity of my inner world.

My other favourite thing about this talk was Tom’s challenge to us: ‘My challenge to you is to go out of your comfort zone, make work outside, leave with a view to coming back with a piece of art. How can you integrate outdoor adventures into studio work or practice?’

This inspired me, much like the Ed challenge, to just get out there and go for it which in the current circumstances of the Covid pandemic has been a lot more helpful than some other guidance.

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RANDOM OTHER NOTES: heavy application of acrylic to get a different effect, different language for oils and acrylics. new interest in natural subjects, watercolours and painting from life. changing aspects of your practice gives you different results, different medium different location etc. TD now paints outdoors by candlelight, very traditional and interesting process. TD now interested in NFT, but concerned by ethics and energy cost. eventually things blend, try combinations and push limitations.

https://dmureplay.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=191c2357-f91d-406c-ad1f-acf000e0f5c8

Tom also mentioned some advice for after graduation: be a part of an artist community afterwards and get in with a community and a network. Go to private views and openings to build a network and encounter as many new/interesting people as you can. Try not to be too introverted.

Fischli and Weiss are a pair of Swiss artists who collaborated on various projects and ideas, one of the most iconic is called ‘The Way Things Go’. The pair collaborated on many works over their careers and even had a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2016, regrettably Weiss died of cancer in 2012, but their unique viewpoint and way of communicating meaning keeps on rolling like a tire.

This work is actually a 30 minute clip owned by Bates College Museum of Art, who describe the work as slapstick and thought provoking. Generally they were received by people well with an appreciation of their humour but also of the issue they were trying to poke fun at. However, other artist like Roberta Smith also spoke about the danger that viewers take Fischli & Weiss’ work (and work like it) at a superficial level without fully understanding the deeper complexities intended by the creators.

I love their playful elements but also their very frank way of communicating and also generating ideas; The Way Things Go was made from the leftovers of their studio whilst working on an entirely separate project. The same is true of How to Work Better, found on a bulletin board in Thailand, its a list of 10 things to do to work better that the pair use to ambiguously critique and/or praise notions of industrialism and potentially modern life or the ‘rat race’ as it is sometimes known.

I also like how Fischli talks about curation; trying to make sure his pieces stay in the ‘good neighbourhoods’ and don’t fall into the bad ones and try to convey too much meaning. I think Fischli is trying to stay away from meta or pretentious ideals and stay true to the satirical whimsy that made the duo’s work so interesting.

In terms of my practice I would like to emulate their sense of ambiguity, their playful use of materials as well as their understanding of everyday materials. I would also like to experiment further with interactive or kinetic elements of my work especially when considering exhibition or installation.

“We knew people enjoyed some of our work, and at the same time we suspected that they didn’t take us seriously,” Mr. Fischli said. “But we had a strong sense of what we were doing. And what was interesting for us was something that was loaded with ambiguity. Irony, after all, is interesting only if you don’t know if it’s meant ironically.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/arts/design/fischli-and-weiss-anarchy-at-the-guggenheim.html”>https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/arts/design/fischli-and-weiss-anarchy-at-the-guggenheim.html</a>

Peter Fischli and David Weiss: The Way Things Go

David Medalla described himself as a ‘poet who celebrates physics’ and was an artist with a long career that focused on a playful and individual approach to making work, his work was based around many themes (namely personal experience) and he was an important artist in the exploration of kinetic, installation and participatory art.

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His works like Cloud Canyons and Stitch in Time are well known and he was also one of the founders of Signals, an influential 1960’s gallery in London that was open 24 hours a day. I think the main reason for this popularity is because of the purity of Medalla’s mind and ideas, from hearing interviews with him he was as interested in enjoying his life as he was in making art and art was his life.

Having grown up near Manila Bay which was decimated by war Medalla saw a mixture of contrasting imagery from the land and water to the war torn area and then afterwards the regrowth and rebuilding. I feel Medalla greatly understood life (since art is all about life he also understood art well) which allowed him to clearly and thoughtfully take advantage of chance and change to make impactful work, it is also undoubtedly linked to his Filipino heritage where legacy and community are important to the people.

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My practice and his are similar in the sense that our lives and our art aren’t really separate, one informs the other and they both turn in a never ending cycle. I also strongly relate to his interest in participation (despite a certain coronavirus limiting this…) and in art as an experience to be shared or given. I also relate myself to Medalla in the sense that we are both concerned with connections between things, most prominently between humans, nature, and the machine.

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Moving forward with his influence I would like to make more pieces that require participation to be completely effective and also lean into things that are kinetic or changing. I also want to try and work with other people and artist in making work, to experiment with not being the sole author or creator and to be part of a community or collective piece.

His use of fabric and textiles is also interesting and I want to explore this further in my work, perhaps stitching things together to make connections between objects or places, perhaps go on walks and collect materials and bring them to the studio like a migration of materials. I would also want to emulate his and many other artists’ methodology of capitalising on change and chance wherever possible and having a confident hand and open mind.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jan/08/david-medalla-obituary

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/artist-david-medalla-the-kinetic-art-pioneer-known-for-his-cloud-canyon-foam-sculptures-has-died-aged-78

https://cnnphilippines.com/life/culture/arts/2019/02/20/david-medalla-interview.html

One of the artist talks I attended was with Juno Calypso, a young British photographer whose work discusses many themes most prominently feminism, isolation, loneliness and self sufficiency. Her work has a retro/vintage feel to it and recalls 1950’s style in some ways, probably calling back to a very different age of feminism.

Juno explained a series called ‘What to do With A Million Years’ in some depth and described how she approached a venue she was interested in, a Las Vegas 70’s underground bunker now owned by a group of people attempting to achieve immortality. She explained the way she approached the owner and group and the sensitivity with which she had to approach.

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She also explained and encouraged us to ‘just go and ask’ which is always useful advice for someone like me to hear; I struggle with confidence especially when asserting myself in the outside world. It was encouraging to hear from someone who had a relatable experience to tell, it gave us a different kind of insight than listening to an artist later in their career.

Juno then went on to explain how her process is very personal and therapeutic (even though it won’t feel that way at the time) I think the wisdom she was trying to tell us is to be true to yourself and do what works for you. She did this by explaining her own limited photographic process which usually involves just her, with little outside help or equipment. For this reason she does most of the work in post production where she edits and tailors images to get the desired effect.

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Photography is something I am interested in and after this talk I would like to explore it further conceptually, although it isn’t relevant to my practice at this time and I feel like engaging heavily in this would distract from the current train of thought I am working through in my practice.

However I would like to incorporate and experiment with some of Juno’s stylistic qualities, figure, colour, drama and self/self sufficiency. With a view to try to create my own reply to a conversation we are now in (because she is a newer influence to me I always like to directly respond to my first encounter with them).

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The most impressive thing about Juno was her honesty, with her intimate photos of her own body and with her honesty about her process, stating she feels success is attributed to luck as well as talent. It has been very inspiring this year to hear from multiple young artists who have had different experiences after graduation. THIS IS THE KIND OF HELP WE NEED AS STUDENTS. Something to bridge the gap between student education and adult engagement in society/workplace, these kinds of skills seem to be in short supply and it is an area of our education that isn’t practically focused on, only conceptually.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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’.

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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.

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