Unit 2 Reflective Journal | MA Online Platform

Unit 2: Reflective Journal/Studio Diary

This reflective journal/studio diary serves as a record of my practice on a weekly basis. It records and documents the development of my studio practice in a chronological order. I see this journal as a cornerstone in my ability to work through and properly absorb the workings of my practice. These recordings function as a necessary reflection of my trials and errors, the material exploration, the risks I take, and the processes of my developing works. It is where everything I am making, thinking, and reading is noted down in one place, almost like a working sketchbook.

03/02/2022 Beginning Unit 2

Stepping out of unit 1 and into unit 2, I feel like things have shifted substantially, but in a good way. I may be starting again a little bit in terms of my project proposal and what my inquiry is about, and I am feeling around in the dark a bit too. However, I feel ready to push the making now and have the material research lead what happens next. I think this is imperative. In my usual way I am working off hunches I have for certain things, and we will see what happens next.

I want to note the conflict I am having with wanting to make paper-based/2d drawings while actively navigating a three-dimensional drawing practice and establishing/situating myself very firmly there. I feel like I am contradicting myself, going back on my word. It feels hypocritical.

Anyway. I feel the need to have and make paper-based drawings. I am looking for something mediative, something that asks for your time, attention, something you need to look closer at to understand or question. I hate to use the term, but I also want them to be ‘beautiful’. Something that can catch your breath visually.

Studio space 03/02/2022

I want to find a place where I can straddle 2 & 3D without having that issue of one being lesser/more, one being drawing/one not. I think that the relationship of having both 2 & 3d works together in space will invite interesting comparisons and relations where you can watch the back and forth of these dimensions in a way that activates both works. I think maybe by nature and entrenched historical dialogues that in inviting these comparisons, the inevitable drawing/sculpture chit chat is going to come up. I'd just like to achieve something that scrutinises it a bit differently so that it can throw out some newer, fresher questions.

Because I approach all my works as drawings, especially in the context (and most currently active) of welding – this to me, is me drawing. It's everything a drawing feels like. And I get bored drawing on paper/2d. It just doesn’t cut it. The exploration feels limited because I know a place beyond the page. But I do really miss that ability to get into a drawing (paper/2d), and I worry that part of me has maybe died over the years/or I can’t go back from this spatial extension. It might be that I find this to be true and 2d drawing isn’t going to cut it, or I might find a shift that allows me to enter this space again. In my mind it would be nice to have it back, I miss it. But it must sit right in the real doing. Actively living through it. I want something that takes time in that way. A labor of love. That you can feel on the surface of it.

17/02/2022 Wooden parts/holes & screens

The question for a while now has been what the siblings/companions/friends to my steel lines are going to be.

Their exact identity is still an unknown, but features they need are

Being pink
Being a solid
Having an abstract bodily relation

I want to find a way of merging the digital with the physical and now in unit 2 I can push my GIFs into this materiality.

From the outset of this idea, it is important to me that the shape so the screen must not be a rectangle i.e., your typical rectangular screen shape.

Reading/viewing a screen in this way alters your experience – it is something so commonplace in our everyday lives of viewing screens (phone/laptop/tv) that it is an automatic relationship. I find artworks that feature on straight-up screens, where the viewing device hasn’t been altered in any way boring because it doesn’t make the experience of viewing a screen any different. So, I want to try to shift the way in which you can view the device so it can be viewed differently and renounce that screen relationship with everyday life/purpose.

In response to wanting to make solid shapes with viewing holes, I chose to begin by working with MDF, jig-sawing shapes and cutouts. Due to limits on workshop access at university, this was something easily doable from home which I could make instant progress on.

18/02/2022 Considering Screens - examples of other artists with embedded screens

Evy Jokhova, Totem III, 2015

Cast cement, acrylic polymer, and stone effect on polystyrene, clay, wood, furniture wheel, wifi tablet, 40 x 40 x 130 cm

Evy Jokhova, Installation view

Evy Jokhova, Installation view

Evy Jokhova, Totem V, 2016

Cast cement, plaster, acrylic polyment, and stone effect on polystyrene, steel, wifi tablet, 40 x 40 x 180 cm

Ian Monroe, Bureau, 2017.
Glass, powder-coated aluminium, brass, Dibond, stainless steel, carpet, Perspex, MDF, video. Dimensions variable

Ian Monroe, Facsimile (Calibrating) 2017. Powder-coated aluminium, iPad, battery pack, 73 x 56 x 26 cm

Evy Jokhova and Ian Monroe are two artists I was recommended to look at that utilise screens by embedding them within/into their works.

I want to note that what the screens are showing is not important (the film footage itself), I am looking at the way in which the screens feature as a part of the work as a thing in itself.

Evy Jokhova’s screen doesn’t hide the screen as object at all. While I enjoy the clash of represented rock formations as a natural material jutted up against something as modern as an iPad/tablet, Jokhova is presenting the screen as a monument. Giving the screen significance as an object to be looked at, viewed, I’d even go so far as to say hallowed (it is titled Totem after all). They sit atop cairn-like plinths. While it is embedded and surrounded by other, very interesting parts, sculpted, and carved into place, your eye will inevitably wind up on the screen as focal point.

It implies a hierarchy, because of the order and the layout, but also materially. The organic connections of rock, while being handmade, are at odds with the slick sheen of a screen.

The oscillation and dialogue between these things as objects and arrangement is fascinating and I think these are incredibly astute works.

Overall, I think I relate to Monroe’s work less, but I relate to the placement of the screen within his works more. Here the screen sits within an object, and you view into it. I think it is the context of within and into that is important – implying an internal space, it elicits movement or action towards (to view it).

It also suggests physical contact between one thing and another – the inner and the outer, the object within, the surface on top, there is a simultaneous coupling and uncoupling of the object, the screen, and them both together. But with the screen embedded into the piece, it is more difficult to separate it as a screen alone.

Practically I didn’t foresee the need of wires/cables in my own work or the problematics of dealing with this. The screen relies on a power source. I figured that it’s too early to let this put me off and I can find a way around this and solutions to house or make the wires part of the work later down the line. Both these artists’ works, from what I can make out from the images, have very cleverly done away with the gubbins of their digital components by hiding them away within the internal structures of other components of the installation, the parts they sit on or within. This is good to note for inspiration.

19/02/2022 Making wooden shapes & holes

Crudely mapping out on the computer the shape, the size of the screen, and how it will sit so that the shape can fit within the screen.

2nd and 3rd attempts of shapes/forms, less reference to recognisbale features and placing screen holes closer to corners and edges to see what that does for the overall feel of composition

First shape attempt: Checking how the screen sits within the shape and determining how much of the animation can be seen - this has opened up questions as to whether all of the animation needs to be seen at all times? Or can it spill over the edges, fill the shape? This to consider re. scale. But this was the point at which I noticed the face and abandoned this piece!

The rear of work with routed area for the screen to fit

I found the back of the shape more interesting than the front and the way these differing levels of space opened up (the pink outer edge is incidental to its finish, I am using pre-used pieces of MDF, however, the finished versions will be coloured pink.

I built up the width of the shapes in order to allow room for an area to be cut out to fit the screens and their wires/protrusions, so they can all sit within and be relatively contained

The first attempt (pictured above left) I abandoned after I noticed it looked too much like a goofy face and just couldn’t get past it or take it seriously. (Overall circular shape, two eye holes, and a mouth)

What it revealed in the process was important though. E.g., thinking out the back/front, positioning of holes, space for the screen and gubbins

I preferred the back of this work to the front – spaces entering into, depth, seeing into. Maybe there is a way of incorporating this view as an active part of the work (the back is seen as well as the front)?

Opposites: full/empty, inside/outside, internal/external, layers

With this piece, the screen was set very flush to the front surface and while I am not disregarding this proximity (yet) something about it doesn’t sit right. It might be because the overall composition isn’t working, and its relation to a face is brought out more by this surface level. It was also centrally focused, and this positioning could be off.

More interesting tensions are created when gaps sit close to edges. – on a practical level, this does make routing out the gap where the screen will sit difficult. It can only sit so close to the edges or the screen won’t be able to fit in/there will be overhang or gaps where the space around the screen will be visible – it is important that the cut out is filled by the screen (and therefore the animation)

Consequentially I want to test out deeper screen settings on the next ones.

The depth from the surface level feels more like you are entering into another dimension, or that the work holds a space that is ‘other’ – portal-like, digital realm while simultaneously being physical

The form/shape needs to be strong. Weak compositions don’t lend themselves well to holding more than just their own shape. (This capacity for more than 2d/3d)

23/02/2022 Wooden Shapes & Holes. Other Notes: thinking while I'm making:

Not all holes need to be filled with screens. Firstly, I don’t think it’s necessary. If all holes are filled with screens, it loses its appeal - excess. It’s like a surprise or a material revelation within the work itself. If all of them are screens then it changes the ability of the work, it’s a small element/component, it isn’t the overall subject. It is important that the work doesn’t become digital, it can encompass it, but it cannot be it (it’s not the subject matter) the materiality of it I think is the subject matter?
The installation of these works, how they will sit with other works, is an unknown to me right now. I don’t know if they will sit with the steel lines, will they go/work together? I'm not sure how the display of these pieces will work – wall-based, floor-based? Can I make them be floor-based? Will they be flat? Will they stand? What is the back and what is the front, what will become visible?
I think those that I have started out with have gone with the presumption that they will be wall-based. It’s good to start somewhere but I don’t know if that is where they will stay.

Looking visually at the evolution of the holes, gaps and spaces from Unit 1 into Unit 2

03/04/2022 Steel – Falling out with it a bit. No that’s not right either. Burnt my hand.

There is a limit here, maybe a material limit, or I am reaching my limits with this material in relation to my current making? I am not quite sure what it is exactly, but it is not able/I am unable to get it to how/where I need it to be right now.

I want to keep to a 2 weekly (?) welding schedule, so I continue to make work in this way and whatever is happening around it will feed in. But other materials and forms need to take precedence here and steel needs to take a back seat.

It can/will still feature but these are well-established parts and making them for the sake of making isn’t a good enough reason to make them.

I need to work out and understand how they combine/feature within the other materials/pieces but this can't happen until the others are made. So it will come back around to the steel, I think it is still an important framework. Like the rigid skeleton/spine on which the other forms can hinge. But the rest needs fleshing out first.

24/02/2022 Tutorial with Paul Tarrago

With these stop motion animations it is such a new medium to me, I have been worrying about them not being good enough because I don’t know what ‘good enough' in this medium looks like. Paul reassured me that there is no yardstick measurement for this kind of work, and if they are doing what you want, what is most appropriate, then they are successful. So, on that basis, I do think that they work.

I also feel that it was a confidence boost in understanding that I am a specialist of my material (drawing) and when it feels right, it is doing what it needs to be doing, there is no technical aspect to shy away from because it all comes back to drawing.

These works have not had an audience yet, so to get keywords back about how they are being perceived is important to note so I can build on them for the next set of animations.

In a conceptual sense:

Organic/biological pulsing forms there is a correlation with being something living but it isn’t necessarily bodily in a human sense, I find this interesting to help blur that periphery where you can reference the body at the same time not be explicitly about it. I must say that I don’t want to tip over the edge into nature too much, I’d rather stay on the borderline. Where things both are and are not. Avoid the pigeonholes, keep the openness.
Cell splitting & state change I love the aspect of state change, I am looking for my work to look as though it has the capacity to be in flux in that way, maybe less cellular though?
Cross-sections. Circulatory, of blood vessels, vascular, heart scans the viewing perspective of cross-sections is very interesting, especially given how I intend for their display (another cross-section)
Endoscope images I was really surprised to hear just how medically orientated these responses were, especially being like endoscope images because it feels like it has come full circle to the event that kicked this whole enquiry off! I guess all the medical imagery I have been looking at has been filtering through subconsciously in this way as I did not use any referents to make these GIF drawings.
Regular pulse which has a vulnerability to it I find it interesting how what started out as a breath has shifted into a pulse, but either way it is an indicator of life/living (not static) and a life-dependent action. In the same way that breathing is a fundamental activity to allow a body to go on to do more than just breathe, this action here, which started with breathing, has allowed the work to go on to do more. There is some sort of fundamental reciprocity here
Solemnity and vulnerability to it keeps an edge to it so it doesn’t just turn into something wholly playful
Medical imaging to show you something that is happening to me, I feel like this means you are being shown something in action that is autonomous – if you think of medical imaging, it is an (albeit invasive) invite to see something you don’t normally see, a way of trying to better understand something within, it is also a means to better understand yourself. The medical context also allows for notions of experiments, science, and hints of objectivity (even though it is a very abstract and subjective thing)
Sketches – there is an element which is observational, a diagram of something observed, committing to paper as quickly as possible, so it acts as a record of the thing rather than the thing itself I really love this idea and it wasn’t one I was consciously aware of but would certainly agree with. I do think there are elements of this so that through my practice and in my making I am trying to recall or record an understanding/feeling/movement. I think it ties in very well with these ideas that are fleeting, intangible, it feels like trying to catch something you can’t hold (coming back to breathing)
If it is to be a breathing thing then sound would be necessary, I knew that the subject of sound would come up again, and I can appreciate that if the connection to breathing is to be tied down with some certainty for the viewer, then sound would probably be necessary. I am not there just yet; I want to play with physical material more than I do with audio material right now
Irregularity of the line itself means it doesn’t feel like it’s just getting bigger and smaller this, to me, comes back to drawing practice itself and the focus on the line, a wiggling, active entity and I like that it pertains to this within my work
Abstract so there is nothing to identify it with, so you don’t know what exactly they are or how they move, so there is lots of permission, no rules to how I manipulate them this gives me a sense of freedom I hadn’t fully acknowledged before

In a practical sense:

The longer animation (pictured right below) can afford to get smoother the next animation I make will be a long one too, and I will be making a conscious effort that for greater fluidity then more frames per second will be needed, however, I don’t necessarily see the jerky aspects of these animations as a negative
Screens provide their own illumination very good point, again not wholly acknowledge the full potential of this, but I am aware that this illumination will be almost like a call to action in the work, the light will draw the viewer to it
Continual loop I didn’t want there to be a real sense of stop/start, therefore a continuous loop was a natural decision
Encountering the object – what will be the mood? I think this is a question I should keep coming back to again and again because it will be continuously relevant. For now, I am thinking towards the Cross Pathways Dialogues Installation & Curation, which is a testbed and a chance to see new works in action. For this I want it to have a buoyant, playful feel. The material dialogue and exchange will be apparent, and the body referenced more notably than in my previous works through more obvious material language (colour pink, soft forms). Using this event as a springboard, I will ask myself this question again afterwards.

Untitled GIF 2

2022 ink, paper stop frame, drawn animation, video loop

Untitled Morph

2022 ink, paper stop frame, drawn animation, video loop

For the upcoming Dialogues exhibition, these will be the two GIFs I select to be a part of this work

04/03/2022 Wooden Parts & Holes cont. Re. thinking about display, how the works will look/feel ahead of Dialogues

This picture (left) got me thinking about frontal layering and arrangements of these wooden pieces. Which led me to playing around with layouts (pictured right).

Sitting in front of/atop, a layout which could be laterally placed (as in spans across the wall) and frontal (as in coming out of the wall)? Esp. relating to the wall. Plus thinking more about internal arrangements. Like a condensed installation into wall space. What does reliance on the wall mean?

I think for future cutouts I should consider their forms with some pre-made compositions in mind. This will enable me more certainty about their placement so there is always the option of a default layout if needed, but of course, this can always be open to change.

I noticed during their making that I made each shape very individually with no real thought to their overall installation. While there is nothing wrong with this, it leaves it very open-ended and subject to maybe not working together at all. It would be nice to have some certainty here. Especially as the forms begin to become more intertwined and reliant on one another, it would be good to have that layout more in mind when making.

I realise it is the same with the steelworks. And this is where I get to a bit of a sticking point because while I make with them all in mind, it is very general. I work on each one as an individual without intentions beyond that singular piece at that time. Then, when they come together, I just expect their relations with one another to get them by. But they were never made to consider each other as a group. So, I have to search for ‘rightness’ in their compositions and placements when they come together. Again, there is nothing wrong with this process per se, but it opens me up to a lot of precariousness, not knowing, and energy spent here. I have always worked this way, but it might be time to firm up some of these decisions a little.

I always want there to be scope/potential/capacity to respond to the space they are installed in, but if I have a little more grounding to come from, this might help me out.

07/03/2022 & 08/03/2022– Mould Making Process

Going through the step-by-step process of making a mould, this example is with small 2d shapes. Once I have got to grips with this, I intend to go on to make 3d moulds.

The flat forms made in clay

These are then stuck down to the melamine board with more clay and all the edges are sealed - taking care to maintain the undercut edge as this is the only real detail of this work

A clay wall, which is higher than the object, is built around the form, leaving about a 2 fingers width gap around the edge. This is then sealed to the board too on both the inside and outside

Mix up the first batch of silicone, or ‘the skin’. It is important this layer is done well as this is the face of the mould. All undercuts must be filled and no air bubbles throughout. Left to set for 1.5hrs

Mix up 2nd batch of silicone, making this batch a much thicker consistency. This layer must be thicker and cover the entirety of the object evenly. Left to set overnight. Added keys here.

Remove clay wall and any clay residue, clean up space around the shape on the board. Tidy up the silicone edges with a scalpel and cut in keys around the edges (as seen in the next image)

On the split mould, make circular key indents on one side and reinforce the other side with clay so when the plaster is poured it doesn't sag under the weight of it

All ready for next stage, making the plaster jacket

Prepared strips of scrim to reinforce the plaster jacket in weaker areas, like edges and walls

In the case of the 2 part plaster jacket, once the 1st half has set, the 2nd half is prepped with vasaline around all the joining areas and the 2nd plaster jacket is then made as above and left to set

Remove silicone moulds, wash and dry them and then reinsert back into plaster jacket

Left to set and then once hardened the casts can be removed

1st layer of jesmonite, carefully painted on as this is the face of the cast. I added red pigment to make the cast pink but the pigment is VERY strong, and this colour is too red

This is jesmonite reinforcement, Quadraxial cut up from the sheet into small pieces to reinforce the edges and hollow areas

The resulting casts once removed from their jackets! They need a lot of tidying up around the edges to make them into smooth, hand-able objects.

Image top right: shows back of the cast and the variation of colour pigment. It is not a very good example here, because the forms are so flat, but it gives you a sense of hollowness

Build a new clay wall where the previous clay wall ended, seal it inside and out. Pictured is the example of a 2 part mould, building a wall across the middle and ensuring it is sealed

1st layer - plaster

2nd layer - plaster & scrim

3rd layer - plaster

Once set, remove clay walls and soften/shave the edges of the mould so there are no sharp edges and it is easier to handle

Carefully prize the mould off of the board

3 layers of jesmonite

1st - jesmonite

2nd - jesmonite & quadraxial

3rd - jesmonite & quadraxial

Above: detail of the surface and example of not being careful enough with that very first layer of jesmonite - there is a strand of paint brush stuck in there

Jesmonite is not as I expected it to be, I guess I thought it would be more like plaster, but it is nothing of the sort. It has really made me pay attention to the feel of the material handling. Plaster, to me, feels softer, more intuitive, malleable, chalky, there is a certain density to it and even when it is hard and set it still feels softer in your hand.

I haven’t got to know Jesmonite well enough yet but on the face of it, it is a harder material. While it might be more lightweight and hollow in comparison to plaster, Jesmonite has this rigidity to it, and, therefore I feel like there is a certain amount of harshness to it. The fact that it gets reinforced with fiberglass is a bit scary, because to the hand, there is a limit to the touch, how close you can get and a risk of injury.

it also has the ability to be a material masking other material properties, not that I have explored this capacity, but there is something about this aspect of lying/fakery that I do not like. I might enjoy contradictions, but with contradictions, it is both things simultaneously. Pretending and maybe getting away with it is something altogether different.

I do not want this reflection to sound as though I am discounting or do not like jesmonite as a material. I will continue to explore working with it, I am not letting this initial reflection deter me, but it is a thought I had all the same. Maybe this material exploration will change my mind later down the line.

09/03/2022 Shifts

I feel quite uncertain about this new work I am going to be showing in Dialogues. I think it is a starting point of a shift of something that has more to come. I can’t tell if its crap or if it has potential. In the same way that there is something in a starting point but it’s a bit rubbish because it hasn’t been fully realised yet, I think the same is true here. I am trying not to have/make too many judgements about it and see what feedback it receives.

11/03/2022 Dialogues: my response to my work

Very pink, is it too pink? I got self-conscious about just how much pink there is in my work, as if pink equated to not being taken seriously, and I was quite taken aback by my own reaction. Girly, feminine, soft, all these things I don’t think I am, or maybe all the things I perceive as easily overlooked? Things to be embarrassed or ashamed by? I took it very personally and I think I need to examine what the issue is here.

Comments that kept cropping up – cute – I don’t know how much I like this comment either (tied in with the pink) there needs to be a line at which cute doesn’t become cutesy. I think my work is more than that.

Wall/floor relation – because the exhibition was heavily wall-based it was decided to show my works on the floor which wasn’t an intention I went in with but I was pleasantly surprised at the results. It showed me installation potential I had not given much consideration to.

The wires, which I wasn’t sure how to deal with, became a feature of the work when it was situated on the floor

Making the cables a part of it, which led your eye straight to the plug sockets, especially as the work was on floor level it was right in your eyeline, made me think about considering making a feature of these often-irritating features that would otherwise get edited out.

The screens came into their own later in the day with lower lighting as the blue light emitted from the screens stood out against the pink and drew the viewer in, making the audience stay with the works, get down closer and spend their time and attention which I think is a very successful thing.

I think the depth of the screens do work better when the piece is on the wall because you get a better sense of the light coming out of it. On the floor, that screen space flattened out and it was less noticeable. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing but something to consider going forward with new variations of installations.

Image of viewers interacting with my works during Dialogues

Audience comments, often repeated ones, that I picked up on. Either because I felt like it was in agreement or it problematised something I am yet to address,

Cute - I would like them to work harder in terms of activation and to perhaps lose some of that cuteness and replace it with a harder edge (the feel of one) give it something to jutt up against.
Yummy - this comment pleased me because there are certain colours, this powdery baby pink being one of them, that go beyond a place of verbailsm and move into this territory that can only be described as inherently edible. It makes you want to bite down on it. But the point here is not about eating, its about this body response to something (in this case a colour) so pleasing that it teeters into something to do with a/the sense of consumption. In my search for the right shades of pink, this is always the thought in my mind, do I want to eat that colour?
New-born/Fresh - coming from that reading of the colour pink, what does pink in this context mean? Need to do more reading around this

Body splat - this intrigued me because it is such an odd combination of words that have the ability to tug on your thoughts (like titles of works, hinting and leading a dialogue) It's both amusing and comical but also pained and wrong, thinking about a body going splat
Coming alive - the screens adding that element of something more, an unexpected activity within the work
Beautifully made - this was heartening to hear because I tried really hard in the making of these works and I am pleased it came through visually
Very pink, feminine - this was a comment most surprisingly perhaps, only made by male members of the audience and it made me question how much I need to question the use of the colour pink in my work and any gendering that might be going on?
I got a lot of questions asking what the shapes were of, the audience was definitely trying to find a reference to pin them to - I work hard to keep them reference-less, I make conscious decisions to steer these readings as best I can from recognised things, especially within the body. Hint, don’t say. E.g., face features discarded, reading as an eye with animation and hole

To view the documentation of this show, please click here.

18/03/2022 This Art Exhibition

I was invited to be part of a large group show of students from across various MA courses at Camberwell. There was no theme to this exhibition and 32 students took part. This was to be a public-facing show at Espacio Gallery.

I chose to show the steel lines in this show for three reasons,

Because there was a very specific hanging system to this space which did not lend itself well to the way I’d want to hang my works
This was an opportunity for these pieces to have an outing, without which they would (and will never again) be shown in this way
This was not an exhibiting opportunity to test and push new works, it was purely to show for the sake of showing, and therefore I needed works I knew well enough to just do the job and be left to it

This Art Exhibition_Works Details

The proposal of works I was requested to submit for the show

I personally would have disagreed with the curation/placement of my work; however, I have never shown it in this capacity before, so it was good to test this parameter (see gallery plan, right)

The idea behind its placement was to be a draw into the gallery by positioning it in the window space, which I do think was achieved as the dynamics were interesting as you passed by. However, the works blended into the space too easily. Without any bearing to delineate against, the lines were easily lost, especially against the floor. While the woodgrain was complimentary it also camouflaged the details of the lines and made them even more difficult to make out. Difficult to photograph, you could appreciate them more in person which highlights the importance of experiencing the work.

For these steel pieces, especially when working just by themselves (with no other components), a white wall to work against is as important to back them on as a page is to a pencil line. It’d be lost without it.

To view the documentation of this show, please click here.

Proposed paper curation of This Art Exhibition

A note on exhibiting – I have felt very limited in the shows that I have been in/are upcoming lately, they are all very fixed things with strict hanging rules. While I appreciate these rules are there for a reason, nothing bores me more than pictures just hanging on a wall or things sat on white box plinths. I have always worked in a very curatorial way, but my curation and installation are fluid and precarious things that can shift about. So far there has not been an opportunity to work in this way. It has made me more aware that I need to sus out where/what spaces there are out there that allow for this way of working and to factor that into future shows.

23/03/2022 Paper-based drawings

Recounting my reflections on 2d drawings back at the very start of Unit 2 (entry 03/02/2022) I am continuing to make paper-based drawings a more consistent thread within my practice. I am still grappling with feeling conflicted between the 2d/3d relationship of drawing, but I think I need to get out of my own way.

It is all making, it is all responding at the end of the day. My approach and attitude never change, only the medium has. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, this is exciting. Because it is in the in-between spaces of going backwards and forwards and to and fro between 2d, 3d, and digital, where something interesting is happening.

I want that flip and flop between these material states – the physicality of each of these states, where and how they sit, how something happens, appears, and takes on the space of its surroundings. I want to unpick this relationship and the moments between them more.

When I am trying to explain something through drawing, sometimes I can only get so far in describing it via 2d means, so then I switch to 3d and continue that explanation in that dimension and vice versa.

Maybe it is less about the limitations of making in a certain dimension or material (even though it certainly feels like a limitation at the time) and more about continuing the conversation into another dimension?

I have been committing to two sorts of drawings that fall into 1 of 3 categories,

Ideas sketches, intuitive doodles, drawings that I just let come out, they are like notations, a thinking through
Digital drawings to realise something that doesn’t yet exist, relating to a proposed installation
Drawings as a piece of work, these are more formal, performative in that I would display them, they still act as ideas and thinking through, but have a finish to them

Example of (1) Ideas sketches

Example of (2) Digital drawings

Example of (3) Drawings as 'finished work'

At the end of Unit 1 in a conversation with my tutors, I was asked whether or not it was necessary for me to draw on paper/in 2d at all and I would now argue that yes, it is imperative. The ‘ideas sketches’ are probably the most fundamental part of my work as they often seem to be the initiation of a description, or a question, or a curiosity. I will never necessarily know it at the time, only ever in hindsight, that so much of my thinking will pivot upon something that happened in that sketch. Oftentimes even in their rough and ready way they are the most eloquent.

Why aren’t they the work then?

Because even for their eloquence, they aren’t fully functioning. They pose a predicament not an answer.

The digital drawings are something that came out in the frustration of trying to explain what an installation could look like for the exhibitions I have been working towards – but drawing it freehand on paper wasn’t getting the spatial aspect across and I hadn’t made the physical works yet either – so a crude cropping and pasting and awkward attempts at drawing with a mouse or trackpad led me to make these digital attempts.

There is something about drawing in that digital space that feels like it describes space better than a piece of paper can. I don’t know why, and I am not sure if I can explain exactly how, but there is a potential for spatial parameters. You look into a screen, you enter spaces digitally, there’s a whole world in there. Whereas when you look at a piece of paper, you know its spatial limits. What is on it, sits upon it, not within.

Since our Drawing Reflections Seminar 1 where we looked at the work of Catherine Anyango Grünewald, it inspired me to make paper-based drawings again. Her works play on the materiality of drawing on so many levels. I do not really have any links between my own works and Catherine’s; however, I was blown away by the intensity of the process and the physicality of her drawings. It made me want that tactile response with paper and manipulating softer materials, out of curiosity more than anything else.

At the time, I was looking at the drawings of Phyllida Barlow – especially those whose medium is acrylic, depicting solid colours, hard edge shadows, always alluding to a sculptural aspect – which echoed my want to show the physicality of a thing, finding ways to depict fullness/emptiness, internal and external spaces. With those planes of colour in mind, this led me to the current ongoing series of drawings that I’d call more ‘finished’ pieces of work.

Phyllida Barlow

Untitled, 2008 - 2009
Acrylic on paper, 56.3 x 76.7 cm

Phyllida Barlow
Untitled, 1965 - 1966
Coloured pencil on paper, 38 x 40.2 cm

28/03/2022 Wooden pieces – evolution & related responses

The MDF shapes feel like they are evolving. Each one I make is a response to the previous, and then that, in turn, reciprocates a response from the next one. I am really enjoying what feels like an organic progression within these works. I like the notion that they are related responses, the evolution here can keep all the iterations together, they don’t cancel each other out as they advance, instead it feels more cyclical, a back-and-forth dialogue of referents. The idea of evolution also holds the feeling of these things being alive, life forms developing.

I want to scale up, to make them stand, to get them to be more involved with the space they are in and to start to address the viewer from different heights. To me, enabling them to stand and balance on their own equates to a sense of self-autonomy, an authority, when an object can do this for itself.

Also considering other gaps and holes, spaces that are not just for screens.

I am trying to think of ways to incorporate the mechanisms that make them stand into the work itself, so it becomes a part of it – slots and arms – ways in which the back of the works isn’t necessarily hidden from view

Thinking through ideas for supporting the work

Sketches: thinking through shapes, intertwining, supports and how to prop up works

Making MDFs: wood layer to embed screen into

Making MDFs: Fitting screen holes

Making MDFs: shapes and forms, supports in process and ways of situating them

MDF turned pink and thinking about placement

07/04/2022 Beyond Mountains exhibition & developments from here

I was invited to be part of a group show which was to be curated by a curation student from the RCA. The exhibition was a mix of students, 3 from UAL Camberwell Drawing MA and 7 from various courses at the RCA.

It was exciting to be part of a public facing exhibition in London in this group show and I was very grateful for the opportunity. However, it wasn’t without its challenges. I did not know how the relationship with the curator would work, or how hands-on/off she would be. This was my greatest concern in the build-up to this show. The installations I make are site relative and responsive, I make the work as a whole on site. The decision-making process is almost entirely my own, I do not tend to share it as it is an integral part of my way of working. It would be like giving someone else my work to finish making. I felt the pressure of this even more given that I did not know the curator personally.

Floor plan I was provided of the space for my works

Proposal 1: original proposal but vinyl was not accepted on the gallery walls

Proposal 2: option to include other elements, dependent upon use of wall

Proposal 3: just MDF parts with screens

I made some rough proposals to give to the curator as she wanted to know what works I would be showing (above). This again made me very nervous as all the other artists within the show had finished pieces and knew exactly what would be shown, I on the other hand did not. My working process tends to be that I make many pieces, bring them all with me so I have many possibilities, and edit out from there. I do not know what will be shown. I went for a site visit ahead of the exhibition to get a better sense of my space and had a general idea of how I might like to use the space.

The curation and hang of this show were difficult for me to navigate. Not enough space was given between my works and the proximity of the works to the right of them. When this happens, it always causes problems with viewing, especially when my works sit next to solely wall-based works. Anything that invites the viewer in for a closer look next to my works inevitably means that people will step back into or onto them. That, coupled with the fact I make spindly lines and baby pink forms sitting on the floor, means that works become a trip hazard, get knocked over, scuffed and dirtied, and moved out of their original position. Even with an audience who is well versed in moving around a gallery space, it still poses a problem.

Because of how closely the drawings to my right were installed in the corner of my installation, I did my best to foresee how the audience might navigate between the works by trying to compensate with a gap for the viewer. But this meant that my installation is not as well balanced as I would like. It is too left-dominant. I feel like this constraint was a lose-lose situation (either my works get trodden on a lot and potentially damaged, but the composition is stronger, or my works get trodden on a little, but the composition is weaker).

In my opinion, I put too many works in my installation plus, overall, there were too many works in the show and therefore the space for them all to breathe properly was lost.

Coningsby Gallery is another space that uses a picture rail hanging system with transparent fish wire perlon cables, no other form of hanging is permitted. I find this difficult to work with as it means that my response to the space can only ever be one that you sit upon and not within, it feels like you can’t be properly in the space. I spent a lot of time avoiding this system but, in the end, I decided to look at it as a challenge to take on.

I was cautious because things that aren’t flat and parallel tend to flop forwards off the wall. The misshapen nature of my works and awkward angles I want them to be able to adopt meant that I had to carefully consider which shapes to use and how to use them.

I was worried that the plastic cables of the hanging system would also get involved. Because of the incorporation of lines as a subject in my work means it pulls and responds to every other line in the space. When you want this to happen on purpose it can do so with great effect, when you don’t want it to happen it’s a huge distraction.

Having all the works as floor-based pulled the feel of the works down too much, they needed the lift that something wall-based would give to pull the composition up and together as a whole. I think in the end, the cable line dissolves just enough not to be an issue, but in terms of personal preference, I would rather not see them.

Using the cables got me thinking about the possibilities of suspending or dangling works on purpose. What potential is there in playing with balance and poise by suspending works? What could it do for the mobility of some pieces, in playing with those subtle movements that air and drafts and wafts will create?

This is already a dialogue that is had within some of my steelworks (see video, right) Is this an awareness that can be heightened?

To play with subjects of lightness, airiness, floating, gravity, grounding, and the weight of things. This could even find its way back more closely to the breath.

It is another transitory space that my works could move between; floor-based, wall-based, air-based (physical spaces) and what that means in relation to also using a digital space.

Something that I think has been a huge success of this show has been the coming together of the steel and MDF pieces. This was even better than I could have hoped. There were such lovely revelations to be had visually in seeing the way parts of them echo one another, a mimicry in the curves and undulations of one material found in another, and I tried to play on this paring of happenstances.

Breezes passing by, and movements around this piece make it mobile

The line of the cable for the screen to link it up to a plug socket for a power source and the line of the steel was also something that worked better than I thought it would and I decided to deliberately show the cable as a feature. Only upon closer inspection would you realise they weren’t all the same material. This is an interesting facet that could definitely have more scope in installations going forward.

I also came to notice just how light and airy my works are, delicate in fact, more than I realised. The subtle shadows from the lights make more of the works in the moment and I am reminded that the encounter of physically seeing and being with the works in the space is more important than ever. Scale makes a significant difference, the bigger works I made for this show could have been bigger still as once they were in the space, they seemed diminutive, so I think I can be bolder with the size of things going forward. I was also pleased to be able to try out the screens in an upright position as I haven’t yet displayed them in this way. I definitely prefer it as you are able to detect movement and the light from the screen is paler, compared to the dark puddle-like form it becomes when the screen is on the floor. The light from the screen still does just as an effective job at drawing the viewer in closer. I am wondering if, following on from this, I could start to vary the screen sizes and what impact this would have, especially relative to being bolder with scale. I have loved how each making and event has culminated in an evolution of responses.

Dialogues = pinks, MDF and digital drawings

This Art Exhibition = steelworks coming together

Beyond Mountains = the combination of all of the above

And I am excited to push what happens next.

To view the documentation of this show, please click here.

14/04/2022 Wood pieces evolution post exhibition

How things can start to work together more, intertwine, rely on one another, have more of a conversation?

Now I know that the steel and the MDF come together successfully, how can I play on this relationship more – the parts I liked, like when the foot of a piece of steel sat within the gap of the MDF.

(Left) foot of steel & MDF intertwined (Middle) like two 'heads' or 'faces' (Right) material and visual relationship between steel and electric cable

I am considering how I could incorporate paper-based/2d works into installations with 3d and digital works. Starting this series of drawings and taking them more seriously is the beginning of this exploration. See examples of artists who I think work in this way below.

I like the relationship of a 2d paper-based drawing with its 3d relative, you get to sit, physically and conceptually, in the in between as it changes from one kind of thing to another.

How can I have this conversation without allowing the presumption of the 2d being a draft of the 3d and that automatic assumption of an upward evolution (thought, 2d drawing, 3d object) when in reality, for me, it’s been an almost backwards transition and then I don’t want that transition to stop there, I want it to keep going.

Thea Djordjadze (details of artwork not given)

Avis Newman The blue is in the green

Nairy Baghramian Side Leaps

Katrina Cowling Material Matters

I keep getting pulled between making work(s) that can be much larger because I keep being disappointed by their size when they enter into the gallery space, they seem diminutive. But at the same time does everything need to be bigger? Why am I looking to scale to try to gain more autonomy? It’s an obvious route to go down given the relation to sculpture and scale. But is it necessary?

21/04/2022 Where next?

With the start of the new term and the degree show looming it is difficult to keep one eye on unit 2 and the other on the show. Feeling pretty overwhelmed at how to juggle both!

I think it is important to be thinking about what I want from that show and to direct my making towards that. My works have been evolving with each exhibition, but I am still not happy with where they are at. I feel like I am missing a beat. A way I keep describing it tends to be that I want the work to look and be sharper. By this I mean that I want it to have a snap to it, something stronger, more potent, a voice that makes you listen. I want the connections to have a stronger imprint, I want the work to pull harder on you (the viewer) and the space. I am not looking for a yank, more a constant quiet tug.

I keep seeing glimmers of it but not as a whole. I think this is happening in the digital works that are embedded within shapes, there is a draw for interaction here.

The issue sits more within the overall composition, I think? How everything comes together.

It is something I think my work has been lacking for a long time and it is that finish (is that the word?) I am after. I can’t shake the feeling my work still feels and looks like a student’s. I want to push it over that edge where its activation becomes fully adult, more mature.

While I want those feelings of airiness, lingering, fleeting moments captured and transitory elements, all those things are still as important, it does not mean that the works stature itself needs to be loose.

Looking at the artists I am influenced by, Tuttle with his ‘rightness’ and Theodora Djordjadze, Esther Klas – these are all artists who don’t fill spaces to the brim with works, if anything they are often relatively empty. But the spaces between are tight, that invisible space is taught,

This tension makes that invisible in between almost visible, palpable, so the overall works pull together in this shared dialogue of the between. They have substance. I want to find that substance.

21/04/2022 Metalwork - Loops & Height

Interested in how these parts fit together

Mimicking the screen holes, but how different these gaps appear in metal as opposed to wood. It’s essentially the same thing, same space, but how different it feels

How long and leggy can I make something and still get it to stand?

Desire to make it above my height

Narrow to, partially, deal with logistics of space constraints but also because I wanted an upward trajectory, opposites of the low-down structures I already have

When I was in the exhibition, I wanted something up above, a part to fill the expanse of height to counterbalance the things on the floor, that were low down.

Experimenting with height: longer, taller steel drawings. However, the taller they get, the more difficult it is to get them to stand and balance

Closed loop: closing the circuit of the steel line and connecting it back on itself is not something I have used in my work before. I find the similarities and differences between this 'hole' and the holes within the MDF peices intriguing, because it is essentially the same thing - a gap - but the process to make it is differnet, adding rather than cutting out like you do with MDF. The feel of this space is entirely different.

While making, I became interested in the lines that were slightly elevated. Where you think they touch the floor and the surprise/delight of how it doesn't. I do not like this particualr composition, but the idea of hovering above the floor is successful here.

Got me pondering, why is it I always go back to steel and welding? What is so important about this process? What does it unlock that other means of making don’t?

It feels like working through a blockage

It is a very physical tiring process

Forces me to move, literally physically move about with the line

In doing so I have to make decisions with immediate three-dimensional effects

It’s like the unlocking system to my thinking processes

Like sitting in the middle of a tangle of lines as big as you and sorting through them into coherent parts

Is this the building block/base of my practice

I never scrutinised it before as to why

Anna bunting branch lecture got me thinking, mapping my practice

My works are becoming very layered, and it is getting difficult to extrapolate these layers because they are so enmeshed. I don’t think this is a negative thing, I think it means things are starting to solidify into place, but I am still in the throes of trying to explain what is happening and it is the explanation, verbal and written, which is really hard!

(Left) A material observation: the steel rod I was given was warped, twizzled, as though it was drilling downwards.

I want to try and incorporate the material/structural nature of the material into the form/composition of the work itself. I feel like having this piece pointing downwards and having a relationship to the floor will allow this dialogue of drilling down to continue in the work.

Noting because I am trying to work with this material abnormality, which is not something I normally do and do not know if this will be successful or not.

22/04/2022 tutorial with Sarah Woodfine

This discussion was kicked off by the fact that I am trying to rewrite my proposal and the recent lecture by Anna Bunting Branch on Locating Your Practice. The subject matter of my proposal is so far removed from what it is happening now, what is going on. What I came with originally is not what I have. And in trying to locate my practice, it has got me pondering on where these things are coming from and what is of historic importance to me. What is fundamentally important, what do I leave in and what do I leave out?

Reflecting more on exhibition Beyond Mountains and Sarah put it to me that while the installation was interesting, there were too many things going on, or not enough, it either needs to be more minimal or more complex, in terms of the arrangement and the relationships. And I have to say I agree. They needed a lot more space than I gave them, and I am really struggling with finding a ‘rightness’. There are little moments of rightness, but I am struggling making it all come together. The following quote from the book The thinking hand: existential and embodied wisdom in architecture by Palassmaa re. rightness & feeling is exactly what I mean here.

‘The work is identified with and introjected in one’s body. I become my work. I cannot perhaps intellectually analyse or know what is wrong with my work during the design or writing process, but my body knows it as feelings of uneasiness, distortion, asymmetry, pain, and a curious sensation of incompleteness and shame. I know that I have arrived at an acceptable rendition of the work only when my body feels relaxed and balanced; the body gives its sign of approval.’ (Pallasmaa, J. 2009. pg, 124)

I don’t know how much of this is caught up and stuck in the fact that I’ve reached this point where I don’t really know what any of it is, I feel untethered in the location of my practice.

I’ve been intuitively making the forms, just making without stopping too much to theorise. Where I am has been influenced by, and is in response to, the works I made for Dialogues and what I felt was lacking in those works I have begun to build into these new works.

(e.g.

- from being floor-based to questioning how I can make them sit up and not rely on the wall

- where the stand and function of the stand becomes part of the work

- where the back became interesting – opening up the relationship with the back of the works

- a building sense of landscape to it even though it has a relationship to the body (I wonder how much of this is filtering through from the upcoming research conference ‘body as landscape’ coming up?)

- continued importance of the works having to stand up, important because it is happening in the steel and now in the MDF pieces

- The idea of posture is still important, but I don’t think that is the right way to explain quite what the interest is, it still feels like there is a gap in my understanding of what I want the work to do and what it is doing

My understanding and experience of the world and how I move about in it is obviously very important to the way I make, but how much of my background of physical experiences are needed in order to understand my subject matter? Where it comes from and how far back do I need to go? What do I include for an audience to know and what gets edited out?

I think what has been hugely influential is my background growing up with horses and elements of natural horsemanship. Maybe that is the gap that I am missing, and I’ve taken a big jump and left some important inputs behind? Not the subject of horses, but the spatial navigation.

Why is this important?

A knock-on effect in the use of my body, the understanding of my body

Because your being doesn’t stop with you, it flows into another

They move, you move, you move, they move – reciprocal, sensing

Thinking isn’t done cerebrally, it is through feeling

They are so much bigger than you, the relationship is as big as you - maybe that is why scale is important?

It’s a thin place

The tension between two

Moving around this very powerful energy that you respond to (rather than control)

There is no language for these things, there are no words in that way

This sense of movement and understanding is then carried forward in my approach to teaching Pilates - also through sensing, trying to create that mind-body connection, what can you feel and how you come to know it.

From this, subject matter that gets me really excited is a body-brain based thinking, proprioception, neurological approach to movement.

I need to stop thinking of these interests as separate (interests outside of art)

I’ve been prone to keeping ‘art’ and ‘fitness’ apart. Something interesting is/could happen here with interdisciplinary practices, but I am struggling/don’t know how to get these two things to come together.

Possibility of performance (see Franz West, Adaptives)

I know full well there is a performative element to my work, it is intuitive. I have been dodging actually performing since forever. I don’t want to perform; I just want to be. But I would not be happy with using a performer either, because it’s me, it’s my being. These works are self-portraits in a way, but I just don’t tell anyone that.

I believe that most of the stuff I do could be performance (how I handle works, how I transport them, how I install them, how I live with them) it is a documentation of interaction with objects, material relationships, I could call a lot of it my practice, but I don’t.

This is still something to consider, despite my feelings towards it.

The performative aspect could be documented as photographs, so these things are still. Pictorial with particular placements, not including my face/identity, so I could become another object as part of the work. My limbs through a thing, positioned with these energies. Maybe the thing I need to bring visually into the work is my relationship with it? (E.g. Georgie Hopton)

I want to be open to playing with this, not to see it as having to have an outcome, but just to see what happens.

Franz West, Woman with an Adaptive, ca. 1975

Franz West, Passstücke, c. 1978.

Georgie Hopton

The Juggler, 2008

Georgie Hopton
Stepping Over General Lee, 2007

Talk around it, talk around the process

The things you can’t say, the feelings, the shapes of those experiences, the resonance, the energy, these are all wordless matters. How do you talk about something intangible?

If it is felt and intuitive, how do you describe that - you describe it in terms of process. It is very process based what I am doing, it is a form of three dimensional very intuitive drawing through object. Talk more about the process. Then the process will give form to these experiences within the body.

What I am trying to portray is the sensory aspects. Sensing the body rather than trying to portray the body.

This connection is a physical energy, think more about it in terms of exchanges of energy.

There is an inherent animalistic quality there, probably because sensing is a primal thing.

A theory area to focus on here is perhaps the tension between the form and formlessness, Rosalind Krauss and formlessness relating to sculpture.

How to do interpret this into my making?

I think I am trying to catch that moment of poise, held, those seconds, between formless and form. This negotiation is tricky, by its nature it is difficult.

Maybe I make something larger, relating to horse-scale? There is still the need to include other materials, bring in something softer, fabric or foam, because it is lacking something. To go back and look at Eva Hesse here might help.

22/04/2022 Drawing Reflections Seminar

De-Figuring The Body with Paul Noble, Chloe Piene & Aura Satz

This seminar became a real turning point for me in my understanding of my drawing process and how the exchange of energy I was referring to comes out in the making, through me.

The way in which the talks of artists Chloe Piene & Aura Staz reframed the body was fascinating, they talked of the body as something that wasn’t fixed, finding ways of stretching anatomy, and using the senses as a means of exploration. It was also hugely relevant to my research for the upcoming OCAD U presentation.

Chloe Piene put something into words that I had never heard verbalised before (below text highlighted in pink is a section of the transcription of the video linked here):

Chloe: Yes, I do subject myself to all kinds of physical experiences in order to understand the subject matter. everything for me is so much about lived real experience. And so, I will go and do things in order to explore something that doesn't necessarily develop into a series of drawings, but by going through experiences to try to understand something that is attractive to me.

and for me that's how I understand actually and it's hard to explain because it's not like, it's not very conscious, so I'll go through all these things and somehow the drawing comes out of that, like, kind of really through me, and then through my hand, but a lot of these things have to happen first for me,

I don't think it's totally unique to me when you're kind of in this zone, and things start to come out. But to that point, it's a synthesis of a lot of what I've done before, this kind of, real, these activities like I described somehow gets synthesized in a way that they just start to speak their own language, put it that way, through me, you know? So, they start to almost sort of like, in that sense, draw themselves, they come out, they're kind of, you know, being articulated in the sense that I open and out they come

The magnitude of this statement! This is what I do too! I just didn’t know how to say it, how to verbalise it in this way, when I heard her say it something just clicked. this is why the process is so important and why it is a three-dimensional way of drawing.

This is a methodology I need to confidently own.

18/05/2022 tutorial with Jennet Thomas

This tutorial was an overview of my work to date, as well as discussing the potential of my GIFs for future animations.

leaving technology visible, cables/electrical leads like ‘life support’

I love this idea; it makes it feel crucial. It makes it seem essential, which it is in terms of powering the videos. I am always keen to be honest to the material and its need to be plugged in, but I could make more of this. The suggestion of coloured leads – look into this

power leads & steel lines respond to each other

the atmosphere of the two, hard things which are also soft and the paradox

I am really glad this is successful. What other ways can I actively play on this paradox?

colour

plaster colour, flesh, insides, and underneath

white person’s skin tones

medical teaching and learning models, the colours of diagrams

plasticky, morph-like forms

pretty in a perverse way, comforting and school-y but it isn’t

I need to make this aesthetic vocabulary work harder. While I fully intend my work to be oblique and not obvious, I am not making the most of the opportunity.

The limits I am putting on what I do. What I am not doing and being curious about why. Is there a purpose to the limitations I am setting?

Re. GIFs

The limit to perspective - is fixed in the centre to one plane/axis. Can/do these shapes move in different ways?

In terms of thinking about perspective, purely from a practical standpoint, this was the first time I made stop motion drawings, so they came out in the format that was most immediate and uncomplicated. However, the relationship this perspective has to medical imagery, flat planes, cross sections, and scans, all have this limited perspective.

It is also the observational aspect and the temporality.

When the works are viewed on the embedded screens, I move the animation to best fit the shape of the hole they sit within, and this is never from a central viewing point.

Rotoscoping could be a way of opening up possibilities and a way of incorporating sculpture/3d into this way of working

I am intrigued by the idea of a revolving as well as changing shape. I am not sure that this is the sense of movement I am after, rotoscoping to me feels more like pivoting around a point and I don’t think that is the point for me.

The thickness of the line

It is the quivering, tentative and inquisitive nature of the line I love most. For me, that is achieved best with a thin black line, one that retains its connection to the hand-drawn line. This is an important association to keep because in it you can feel the hand/sense of the person behind it, a humility and humanness.

The complexity of the shape

With the next GIFs, I make I want them to morph, expand, contract and shapeshift with more complexity. For me, looking at these breathing GIFs now, they are too simple, but they got me going.

By revisiting the planning aspect of the GIF, planning what the shape starts out as and what it finishes as, will set the parameters here.

Between rock formations and the body

standing stones

Angus Braithwaite, The Count

I am very inspired by this observation, especially in relation to OCAD U. I think this is a direction I want to start to push my work into. I also think that between the body and the landscape I might find the grounding I am looking for in my work, rather than feeling like I am freefalling in abstracted intangible terrains all the time. This relationship could give me the right kind of grounding which I can then pull out the right kind of ambiguity.

Having material to riff off

To allow myself some new materials to play with – as there is still the missing ‘soft’ element to my material language – the soft sculptures of Louise Bourgeois for example.

In all honesty, making has taken a back seat in preparing for the OCAD U conference. I feel a little lost with my making right now having taken on huge advancements in terms of theoretical research, the making has fallen behind. Jennet’s suggestion to make incremental steps and changes, makes me feel capable of making again rather than overwhelmed. Little changes in colour, in wires, in tubes. Little changes could come with exciting developments in the work.

19/05/2022 OCAD U x UAL Outside In Research Conference

This was my first time presenting at a research conference, and I was immensely grateful for the opportunity.

What started out as something on the periphery as a means to explore the elements of how the body features within my practice actually became probably the most essential means of investigation and channelling of my inquiry.

As always seems to be the way with presentations, it (uncomfortably) forces you to take long, hard looks, saturate down, handpick the right words, and make what you have communicable. In doing this ‘translation’ for others, you translate it for yourself.

Thinking of the body as landscape in this way, as a terrain to explore and be curious about, opens up a way of thinking that helped me realise where the shift is.

It is important to me that the body doesn’t become this gross and visceral thing – even though it can be/is at times – I am not after the shock factor. This state of shock, repulsion or squeamishness makes me/you/the viewer/society retract, step back and ultimately distance themselves from this vessel we all inherently inhabit. It makes us more un-involved in ourselves.

I guess it could be argued that what I am doing then is trying to make the body more palatable, and this could be looked at as falsifying the stuff of us. The reaction, or awareness, I am after is one of awe, wonder, and curiosity. It is a state of heightening, not overriding.

Being is a sensitive state, and I want to respond, in turn, sensitively.

Disseminating this presentation clarified this for me.

Interesting comments and conversations were sparked during the conference.

There was much appreciation for the title of my presentation, and I am pleased it was a success. It struck the right chord with the link between understanding/knowledge and the body/the physical. Those idioms which are embedded in the body evoke a physical response and extend your understanding beyond just a thought, embedding it into a physical place/site.

Cavity, caves, passages, veins, water, air, waste, fats/oils - all interesting parallels between our internal and external landscapes – my attempts at trying to be more loyal to an embodied/situated state of writing worked well and teased out those comparisons in the audience’s mind. I’m going to write like this more and consider how it could feature within my work. Perhaps as part of the installation?

This was a question from an audience member: ‘Stelarc says the body is obsolete... have you considered external factors on bodies and the discourses around the posthuman body?’ My immediate reaction was to shun this; the thought of the body as obsolete gets my hackles up. I think that reaction alone is enough for me to look into this and allow myself to sit with this theory from a more considered position as to why I might feel so strongly against this.

Another observation from the audience was about Inuit cartography. In Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), the Inuit people are known for carving portable maps out of driftwood to be used while navigating coastal waters. These pieces, which are small enough to be carried in a mitten, represent coastlines in a continuous line, up one side of the wood and down the other. I find this idea of mapping intuitively, by getting to know a landscape that well, fascinating. I think there could be something in this and want to extend my research out in this direction if I can.

There was a suggestion of rotoscoping as a way to bridge my physical movement and my drawing practice – a comment that Jennet also made in my tutorial as a way of incorporating movement, sculpture/3d elements and testing the boundaries of perspective – even more reason to test this process out.

To look into the performative drawing group, a London based group.

‘Hiraeth’ was a word given to me by an audience member in response to my presentation and an answer in the roundtable comments about existing somewhere between a lived experience and an arts practice and the difficulty trying to translate between the two. ‘Hiraeth’ is a Welsh word for something like a mourning, yearning or sickness for a time or place in the past or that perhaps never existed. I thought this was a fascinating observation and also very beautiful.

I think for me, doing this highlighted two important overarching matters that I am dealing with in my work. And they come from these direct quotes.

“So much comes to us through images and screens, which prioritises seeing well above our other senses and seems to enable a distanced viewing that lets us believe we are somehow removed or not complicit in what we’re seeing. For us, touch reiterates our connections. We also want our work to feel like a landscape, a terrain, an ecosystem – which, after all, is exactly what the body is.” Julia Crabtree and William Evans

‘…drawing [is a] spatial and haptic exercise that fuses the external reality of space and matter, and the internal reality of perception, thought and mental imagery into singular and dialectic entities. As I sketch a contour of an object…I actually touch and feel the surface of the subject of my attention, and unconsciously I sense and internalise its character’ (pg. 89) The Thinking Hand by Juhani Pallasmaa

18-20/05/2022 Expanded Curation with Liv Preston & Mujeeb

MA Drawing group show, curated by Liv Preston and crit with Mujeeb Bhatti.

The curation, placement and hang of my work were solely decided by Liv, I was really interested to see what her approach would be.

After my last show (Beyond Mountains), I wasn’t happy with the curation or installation of my work. I wanted to bring in the same works and see what or how different the results might be, not quite a re-doing but definitely a re-working.

Liv was keen for us to bring all the works we had, in whatever state they were in, in order to get a feel for our practices and then edit out accordingly. This meant I included steel pieces that were still in parts, ones I have, so far, failed to ‘complete’.

The guidelines I gave Liv was that the installation of my works was open-ended and that they are flexible; they can stand, sit, hang, and hook. Liv decided to keep all of the works I presented to her and displayed them throughout the show, dotted in various places, using them as linking touchpoints. I was intrigued that Liv separated out the steel and MDF pieces entirely. The MDF took on the territory of the floor, the steel, mostly, took on spaces up high, clambering around the walls.

I hadn’t anticipated their separation, but it was interesting to see. My steel pieces have a history of working in this way, so I am familiar with their architectonic responses and relations, as well as taking on spaces not typically perceived as ‘viewing’ spaces. It was nice to be reminded of this because I had forgotten about it.

I guess the note to myself here is if I want to make this a more active consideration. It wasn’t exactly made with that as its intention, lately I have been more involved in making the work stand up, so if the intention is for them to hang and hook specifically as an action then I need to change the intention when I am making.

Some audience observations of the steel pieces were divided – either thinking that they were poorly placed, set up to be missed and therefore, missed the point of being in an exhibition – to be seen. I found this interesting though because although the criticism was that they missed the works, they still did in fact see them. I personally, enjoy this play. I get bored of works that hang on a wall and that one way of navigating them. I like it when things appear more like how they do in life. I am interested in things that might sit quietly, to me it is more a question of what you notice. Not what is there in front of your face. What you notice first, what it makes you notice next, how you then move around a space and what you might be looking for as a result. I am more interested in that than a ‘fixed’ presentation.

The second observation was that in the separation of the steel and MDF, it looked as though they were works by two different artists, the works were doing very different things.

That one body of work was recognisably different from the other. Which is completely true, and I recognise this difference.

I think the worry here is that one work or the other loses out. Not for me, but for the dialogue the audience has with it. How much do they need to see that the artist is present in the shapes, colours, oppositions, and mimicry? To know that these differences exist in the same artist?

This only became so apparent because they were separated out, featured together I don’t think the same problematics exist.

I need to question whether or not the expression from one work can be extended, to bring them together so they connect like dots, even when they are spread out in the space (a really obvious example would be like colouring them all pink) to open up the possibility of how many pieces of work the audience will see and resonate as being one and the same.

My curation has a heritage, but the ways in which I am working in terms of the subject matter are new. So, I still believe that this might be where things aren’t quite lining up.

What I took away most from this crit was how much I might be missing out on the opportunities that presentation can empower my work - the missed opportunities, or the opportunities there are in the display of my work. It is half the work. It is true that we take this for granted.

I think I need to start getting much more specific/purposeful.

I feel like my work has needed tightening and maybe the presentation has been the outlier. Especially as the installation is where my work essentially gets ‘made’, the presentation matters as much as the work, it must not be secondary to the making.

I think I have been missing out on important aspects of expression here and I need to make clearer, more committed decisions about how the work is being seen, how it is being read and what matters to me about this. I need to refine these processes.

To refine them I need to pay attention to the relevant practicalities of showing my work, get specific about the details and explore their possibilities. Why it is there and what it says. Subtle details of how the presentation can make strong statements about the work.

e.g.,

The wires

essential technological function, the need for a power supply

the cable existing, it is true to the recognition of how it was made, how it is seen, and this is a strong statement. It makes for strong reading by the audience.

The tape

The tape is then a way to force you to look

I have made a deliberate decision to use tape, and not any tape, pink tape. It literally highlights that I am not forgetting those cables or where they are going to.

What started out as aspects of dealing with practicalities of H&S became a recognition of the presentation of the cables – relevant recognition of the identity of the work - and in doing so it shows I thought about it. It is these thoughts that are the specifics, where I am

making choices about what the audience is reading/registering.

I need to tap into these expressions of the work that get registered in seconds. The audience will be making a decision about what this work is saying. Reintroducing what I want the work to say is really important. To remember it isn’t just the work, it is how it is being seen.

Empowering/enabling the show

Presentation - a forgotten place to express yourself

Pink/colour

There are things I know it does:

Pink - Bright, striking, flesh, internal organs, play, feminine

It has come up more than once now, that pink is also able to reference white persons’ skin tones.

While my subject matter does not involve skin, it is far more internal than that. I feel I have a duty to register this because, in the reading of the work, that possibility is there. My relationship with pink is something that works on an intuitive level, a natural, almost physical gravitation. But in the spirit of how the audience will reflect/absorb my work, I need to ask myself more about the relevance of pink.

Observations of the MDF pieces:

They look interactive, with notions of play. But the scale fends off interaction and stops people from being able to physically interact
Simplified medical diagrams
Dislocated
Child-like forms, kindergarten effect
A sense of fragility – too fragile to interact with, parts that stop this (screens)

My biggest disgruntle was that this show was the worst instance of my work being trodden on. while I am not happy about this, it has made me question x2 things,

Scale – if my works are going to take on floor space, what do I do about their size?
Dirty pink (as a result of being trodden on) - I really don’t like it when it gets dirty. My pinks are very particular, pristine, they mustn’t be spoilt. I hadn’t come to terms with this fact till now. Relating to the questioning of pink as mentioned above, questioning the importance of its pristineness is important too

24/05/2022 Tutorial with Marsha Bradfield

So much has been happening these past couple of weeks and the momentum is building so quickly that I actually feel like I am getting washed away in this slipstream of happenings and moving forward feels difficult.

Pre the OCAD U presentation, the subject area it dealt with, I did not view as ‘enough’ of my practice, it was something peripheral. Now I have come out the other side, I think that it is the thing. It has left me in this place where mentally I have moved on big leaps and bounds but my work has been left behind. And I am not enjoying this disjointed-ness

It is very uncomfortable, and it is so close to the degree show, which I am trying not to be precious about, but I want it to add value to my practice. I feel like I am running out of time.

Out of OCAD U, it revealed the importance of two overarching aspects – a sense of touch or connections and a haptic relationship to drawing. This has really got me somewhere theoretically, but I’ve come out the other side, looked at my work, and none of it feels like it has caught up.

Marsha’s ‘cold comfort’ as she put it was that this was totally normal and that Katie mc cloud practice as research likens it to a seesaw. Which was very reassuring!

My intuition for the upcoming degree show, my gut feelings, and want to fiddle with, is to make something more immersive. To make an immersive space in the way that the scale of my works, so far, has been falling short of. To go with my gut and make it larger- to face a viewer, or the viewer face it, be with it, so it feels like something that moves and affects you. Perhaps a structure, to build something that you enter into, move through, with the same elements it’s always had (video, MDF, screens, pink). It is important to me that it feels like it expands and contracts. That it has the ability to go from 2d to 3d and back again, I want it to look like it has that mobility even though it doesn’t actually necessarily move.

Suggested to look at the work of Kiki Smith. While I don’t feel attuned to Smith’s work, this summary of how her works take on a space is similar to my thinking.

“The exhibition envelops the viewer—sculptural pieces will be wall-mounted, hung from the ceiling, placed directly on the ground, and presented on plinths; works on paper will be installed in gridded groupings across the gallery’s walls”

If I could visualise what I would like it would be something like Natasha Macvoy’s Notes in the Margin. This is the sort of work I would’ve liked to of made.

How do I respond to this? What does this work touch, and why is it interesting?

What it is achieving that I haven’t yet realised, is that it doesn’t have to be as complicated as I have been making it.

Macvoy has literally used her shoulder blade, and it is quite simple as a form (pictured below left)

It has made me realise that I don’t need to worry so much about rightness and anatomy, what is correct or get so caught up. What she is achieving, that I haven’t yet is the capability of the repeated motif, that 2d, 3d back again. There is a real sense of humanness hanging around, a bodily relation that both is and isn’t there. I like these paradoxes and that is where I would like to be able to sit.

These different modes of expression, things that are and aren’t – what is that threshold? What is that difference?

If you are working across different modes of expression, what do those distinct modes enable and disable? And if you are doing them in parallel or in dialogue, what does that relationship enable and disable? How do they inform each other?

I need to start being explicit about those things because it can help with the decision process in terms of what I decide to prioritise going forward in my making.

As in Jennet’s tutorial on 18/05/2022, I need to find something to riff off – a site and location to put myself in – like Macvoy’s shoulder blade – if I can find a similar thing, then that will be my grounding from which to move about from.

Natasha Macvoy, shoulder blade

Or as Twyla Tharp states in The Creative Habit “The idea is the toehold that gets you started. The spine is the statement you make to yourself outlining your intentions for the work.”

The use of metaphors is incredibly helpful in extending that thinking too.

How will I create structures, like a spine, for myself, so I feel comfortable taking the next steps in making?

I am questioning this idea of scale again.

The issue of my works being trodden on. How big does something need to be for the viewer to see it, not in terms of sculptural mass, but to affect the way you move around the space?

As Marsha reminded me, one of the definitions of sculpture is what you trip over when you are trying to get a better look at the paintings – oh the irony!

This also extends into the Julia Crabtree & William Evans quote re. prioritising seeing and screens, about how the visual is so increasingly cultivated at the expense of the phenomenological, the embodied. This is also something to be asking when I am probing these conundrums - how do I want viewers to feel in their bodies when they encounter my work?

Marsha said something I found very interesting and really resonated with for personal reasons, she said ‘I want for you to take up more space. You, but also the work as a surrogate for you.’

Another relation to Twyla Tharp, ‘tak[ing] up space’. Taking up space ‘is both a physical and mental act…[an] intuitive way of moving bigger, with amplitude.’

I have a chance here to take some risks, while within a support system of study. I think the issue I want to confront is around scale. So why not go bigger, wider, or have a different kind of presence now.

Tutorial with Marsha Bradfield

26/05/2022 Tutorial with James Ireland

The opportunity to talk about my drawing practice in relation to sculpture.

This move into embodiment within my work.

Looks punchy

There is a particular aesthetic not to ditch this

Grappling with the experiential, experience-based and where does the art sit within that, does it need to, how can it, what can it match up to, in trying to explain something that is quite intangible in terms of experience or personal experience to come out in something that is very fixed, or dislocated (the work - MDF pink parts – has been called dislocated quite a lot recently) and where that meets.

Perhaps an attempt at levelling out the hierarchy. Giving the body more scope, often everything is very cerebral, and we think only in terms of our brains all the time and the body is secondary, and we move around in it only in order to give our brains a good time or we think to give our body a good time.

This is a really good position. The mind/body duality.

Pointing out a history there, 19th century, very much of a time, The Birth of Tragedy, the apollonian (being cerebral and rational) and Dionysian (being impulsive, carnal, desire-based) What about impulses driving as much as rational truths?

Rolling that around in a way

What is this relationship between body and mind?

e.g. Covid-lens

all of that stuff is more to the forefront, in that there is lots of sculptural material that maybe you could bring to that, just in terms of expanding that out.

It also looks like you are interested in cutting, bending, and sticking – that is also part of it – there is a way of knowing the world that comes out from touching it, through cutting, sticking, and gluing.

So, I think that sense of experience is in the work in that manner, I can see that, I know that action. That’s has been twisted, that has been angle ground, I know that, I know that action.

Bringing more of that in, in materials that have that tactility in them. E.g., tape is great like that because we know that action of tearing and sticking, it is a great object

Images, or materials that are suggestive, influencing shapes that you make or materials you want to reference. Sense of those things.

Medical equipment, the glues, the tapes, the plasters, replacement hips, cages for someone who has to grow bones back, sculptural items

Rooms with weights, straps, foam objects, to encourage growth of muscles, growth of bones, there might be source material in that, that gives this sense what that body can get hold of, get hold of the world, or function in it.

(liv show) Responding to these physical things and the fact that these metal things are climbing up things, or grabbing hold of stuff, unnecessarily finding their way around, maybe make it more absurd, like 100 metres of cable and at the end of it, there is a tiny thing.

The body as landscape, there is a real question about scale, there is always a question in landscape, ditto with the body

The tools to look inside your lungs are different to the tools to look inside your cells, but they are both of the landscape of the body, understanding how they act, that is something that could be expressed as art/sculpture, our scale relationship to the space we are in, you are making a landscape here.

(homunculus) That sense of scale, how the body scales itself. How to communicate this feeling, how do we communicate how we sense ourselves as opposed to how we are measured, and what is the rationality of it.

Resolve front and back – if they are in the space, they need to be understood like the body is.

Re. Colour & Pink

Acknowledgement of the fact that translating pink into paint makes it more graphic (because originally it was in plaster, and pink in plaster has a very different aesthetic)

Colour as another way of exploring the body

E.g.

- the diagrams for teaching methods

- anatomy specimens, chemically altered and dead, so have changed colour

- there might be colours that come through the materials, that might not be of the body, but are connected through certain kinds of associations (e.g., covid mask blue, compression wear, bandages) these things will bring the colour in

This is both a question (of what) and a liberation – to select these things from the world and bring them into the dialogue of the materials and their bodily expectations and implied inference.

02/06/2022 End of Unit 2, the exercise class

The shift in where my practice is starting to sit is exciting and very welcome; it finally feels like I might be getting somewhere. But as mentioned in previous reflections, my research has leapt further forward than the making of my work, and my work feels like it has been left behind. It feels almost daunting to start making again. I need to feel this fear and do it anyway. I want the work I make going forwards to look and feel more ambitious.

Part of this fear is the upcoming degree show. I am finding it very difficult to decide what direction I should take my work forward for this…I have all these little trembling ideas, and each feels like it’s got scope - but in the sense of newness, untried, untested. And I can’t do them all; narrowing it down to pick one direction to advance in is tough.

Wooden Pieces

I am not happy with where the wooden pieces are right now, and I can’t quite pinpoint why – something about their diminutive size or maybe even their flatness.

Up the scale?
Build large shapes (see image below) something more immersive

Screen grab from Instagram of works at Spike Island open studios

Visual relationships between Theodora Djordjaze's works and images of gymnastics areas. The coloured mats define areas spatially

GIFs

I want to produce new GIFs as I feel tired of the current ones; they need to move forward to catch up with my thinking too.

To vary the size of the screens within the shapes – which is another way of upping the scale of these things
considering building aspects of these screens into a wall, so the relationship is carried into the surfaces of the space my works are sitting within, not just within themselves

Soft stuff

A repeated topic of conversation – to introduce softer materials into my material dialogue – what and how?

Materials + shapes = bodily expectations

Following the conversation with James Ireland (entry on 26/05/2022), I am keen to make things look more ergonomic (Olga Balema) and work with references to materials that imply a connection with the body.

I quietly introduced felt with the MDF shapes as a different interaction with pink, but I’m not convinced; I want something more lightweight, breathable – looser - if fabrics were included, I like the idea of something draped or suspended so that it can drift on breezes (like Lilah fowler LINK ETC) thinness like membrane layers
I am no textile artist, nor consider myself a dab hand with fabrics, so any idea of making soft sculptures isn’t an area of interest, especially on such a short timescale.
Softer materials (or even paper?) as marking out ‘areas’ like how exercise mats define an area for activity – see the visual relationship between Djordjadze's works and gymnastics areas (pictured left below)
Foam – exercise equipment inference, matter that holds the body

Pink

Going forward, I would like to navigate the colour pink with more confidence to articulate it as a context in Unit 3 eventually. I did not feel ready for this now at the end of Unit 2.

Make

This unit has been all about realising the relevance of embodiment, remembering that this embodiment carries through from its realisation to its presentation. I want this work to feel like a landscape relating to the body, like a terrain that the viewer has to navigate. And now I need to make, make, make.

Artist Kelsey Cruz-Martin use of fabric in hooks, brackets & palates

73a550_5201f415bc7745df94463422bcca5548~mv2.jpg.jpg

incorportation of fabric and sculptural objects in the work MASH a collaborative project between Abi Charlesworth and Gwenllian Davenport

Lilah Fowler's use of fabric in Code Clay, Data Dirt where she uses weaving as one of her material methods along with sculpture and videos to explore our relationship to environments

My works, the body/poses from yoga/pilates, the work of Nairy Baghramian and the shapes, materials and props of pilates/yoga practice - speak of ergonomics, bodily relations, things that support or hold the body, awaiting interaction

Unit 2: Reflective Journal/Studio Diary

Cast cement, acrylic polymer, and stone effect on polystyrene, clay, wood, furniture wheel, wifi tablet, 40 x 40 x 130 cm

Georgie Hopton Stepping Over General Lee, 2007

Georgie Hopton
Stepping Over General Lee, 2007