A5 notebook / Acrylic and oil paint on stretched canvas (297 x 420 mm)
Over the summer I had an incident when I couldn’t breath and my boyfriend had to help me get to A&E. I decided to rewrite this event, changing myself into “her”, whilst you read the passage, the narrative view point is from a different 1st person account. In this story, I stole the place of my boyfriend, writing him out of it and writing myself in. Instead of being the victim of a scary incident, I became a character who has to deal with and make decisions for someone else.
When I was young I believed that ‘nonfiction’ meant ‘true.’ But you read a history written in, say, 1920 and a history of the same events written in 1995 and they’re very different. There may not be one Truth—there may be several truths—but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.
I have decided that I want to start a new project considering narrative and how you can rewrite your own.
A favourite author of mine, Jeanette Winterson, who wrote Oranges not the only fruit, created a story in which she combined her own life experiences and fiction. She complained once in an interview that when men do this it is considered metafiction, however when women do it it is considered autobiographical.
I hope to do something similar with my own life, and gain some new insights and understanding of my own. I plan to use my own experiences, day to day as well as life altering events (particularly the bad things). I plan to do this in a way that will cause the audience to look at the work and consider how the series of work add up to as a whole. I want to create a series of artefact: paintings, pieces of writing, and objects that document and record this new life that I am creating.
I hope to include writing in this. I have never been a writer and have repeatedly attempted to keep diaries and failed over the years, however I hope that this time will be more successful. I may also use these failed diaries as part of the artwork, either documenting them, recreating them in the alternative way, or showing them as they are (possibly viewable at the perusal of audience, copies of these or pages, or shown in a way where only a double page can be seen and the pages not turned).
I started this process of creation with writing and gathering materials. I decided rather than writing a whole narrative and a complete life, it would be easier to choose bits and pieces, memories, moments and alter them to make something different. One of these, for example was when I was in a shopping centre and a changing room struggling to get dressed because the close felt too tight and my fatigue was too bad that day. Another was when I was looking down the rash on my thighs and on my stomach. I chose these events because they were some kind of reflection on my health and specific things that I've been struggling on experiencing over the last year. I have struggled to deal with some personal reasons. My mother has never been particularly understanding or sympathetic to these health problems but haven't really been explained. And in some ways I take on that voice and that understanding of hers of my health in this narrative.
I hope at some point to create book as a whole, incomplete. I like the idea of having a professionally printed book one that looks like you might pick it up and read at home. But when you open it there are pages upon pages blank between short excepts of text. Lines of writing starting midway through paragraph, pages unfilled, pages with only one line of text on them. I like the idea of having page numbers despite the pages not being filled. This would make the audience look at it, flick through it wonder what would be be on these empty pages.
Margaret Atwood once wrote about how it is safer to live in the margins of the page and the space around the text this is what I want audience of my work to think about the blankness and the open spaces.
In a lot of ways this project links to my last one, in which I painted over images to try and recreate what my visual disturbances look like, but painting over and image leaving only certain parts showing. Both of these processes involve alteration, covering up: relationship between the audience and the creator. “I choose what you see”, it is a dictatorship, an abusive relationship. I am in full control of what I choose for you to see. But there it's a wiggle room for you to see with your own eyes and interpret with your own understanding.
I chose to write myself out of my current character. I don’t split myself not equally, or down the middle, and I need to tidy away, but I divided up the shares of who got what. I chose to compartmentalise all of the bits that I can't deal with, that I have to struggle against every day, and put them in “her”.
I have been considering giving this "her" a name or an identity in relation to the main character in (me), but I quite like the vagueness and on characterised version.
I designed a quick poster and photocopied it to put it up in the cubicles of women’s bathrooms and disabled/gender neutral toilets. I tried to stick them in places where they are likely to get read (close/visible from the loo- so they can be read while people are on the loo). I did put one or two posters out around the uni, but a majority of them were in the bathrooms. This is because it’s where I felt people are already in one place for a little while, meaning they have the chance to read the posters. Also because a bathroom is probably one of the easiest places to take a picture of your pants.
I set up an email address ([email protected]) so that people would be able to send in the photos anonymously. I could have used my normal email address, however I felt that if it had no personal connection to any name, people would feel more comfortable to send them in.
I also left a note in a friend’s loo, asking her to take photos for me (she already knew of the project). I have a similar note reminding my flatmates to take photos too.
In the summer of 2016 there was an internet challenge (like the ice bucket challenge), in which you were meant to challenge your female friends to post a picture of the inside of your worn pants. As a result, a lot of clean pairs of pants were posted online, shaming the idea of having female discharge. Some posts of such photos called other women “dirty” for not having completely clean looking pants.
I wanted to create a rebellious art piece, to show people that this is a normal and real thing that happens to everyone and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. For a little while I’ve been occasionally taking pictures of the inside of their pants, and I have asked my two flatmates to do the same.
Some women during the panty challenge did post real photos of their underwear. This is far braver than what I intend to do- I’m going to ask for anonymous photos. I’ve designed some posters to put in the inside of the toilet cubicles at uni. However, it may be that no one will read it or they will but the won’t take the photos, or they won’t send them in. But it’s worth a try!
We spent Christmas with some extended family (Coral and Chris) and Coral was telling me a story about how she had once saved 4 baby Jackdoors that had been living in a chimney that got taken down. I’ve hear quite a lot of the stories about them, and she was telling me that she wanted to write them all down, into a book, and she suggested that I could illustrate it.
So, as a side project, I have decided that I am going to illustrate her stories of her raising these four Jackdoors into adulthood.
Now that I have finished with my Visual Disturbances project, I wanted to strip the canvas off the frame so that I could re-stretch another onto it. However I didn’t have any staple removers/pliers on me, so I ripped the canvas down between the staples instead. This was a really satisfying process, particularly the sound of the canvas tearing.
However, as an afterthought, I found that I really much preferred the frame and strips of canvas attached, than the piece I had before it.
I got the opportunity to do a free film interview with a small company called With With. They wanted to do a series of short films about young artists/art students, and I was lucky to be the first one in this series.
This meant I got the opportunity to talk about my series of work on Visual Disturbances that I created this term on film. I had to loosen up and become comfortable on film, and talk succinctly about my work. It was a really exciting experience, because it really felt like I was starting to make a headway with publicising my artwork and showing people what I create.
It was also great because it meant that I was getting awareness for mental health- every time this it’s talked about it takes away a small part of that stigma. I also feel like this series of works shows people that it is possible to take a negative experience and turn it into something positive.
Putting on an Art Fair (Cass Art Islington - Dec 17th)
This year I have been part of the Cass Art Student Ambassador Program (STAMBAS), in which each term they give us a task of some kind, which help us develop as artists (and advertise their franchise). The first task was to put on an event. I decided that I wanted to put on an art fair.
This involved putting together a proposal to the Cass Art administrative team, so that I could use their space, design posters, advertise the event, get a group of artists together, produce my own work, etc.
Reflection/Learning Process
The event was definitely a learning curve for me- it meant that I had to think about what artwork of my own I could make into a sellable item. I produced a series of Lino print notebooks, order small prints and prints of my work, a few small framed prints, etc. I also experimented with way that would make the work seem more appealing (packaging was a big part of this): I used sandwich bags and handwritten labels to make the work look more professional.
This was an interesting process for me, as when making artwork normally, I had had to consider presentation, but in a very different way. I’d only ever thought of work in relation to a gallery and an audience, not in a shop and with potential buyers. Interestingly, my works sold a lot better than the other artists on the day (who either hadn’t considered how to re-create the work in another form, making it more affordable, or appealing to buyers).
In some ways I found it kind of shameful to produce a commercialised version of my artwork (stickers and notebooks, etc), because in the art-world there is a lot of shaming of artists who modify their work to make money. I understand this attitude and I do agree with it to an extent, however, it’s also important to recognise that you don’t have to be a starving artist to make you a real artist. Just because you make your work more marketable, don’t mean that its no longer artwork.
When I had to take down my work over the weekend after the exhibition, I painted over the yellow paint using thick white wall paint. I expected it to take multiple coats to remove, but because the paint was so thick, it covered in just one coat. I took a few photos, because I really enjoyed how the yellow appeared as though it was disappearing, as through the white paint was slowly spreading over it. I really liked the glowing colours of the yellow, as though it had been a highlighter been used to colour the wall.
I managed to get a hallway space for the exhibition meaning that I was able to have an enclosed space in which I was able to alter the light without disturbing other people’s work. I showed three photocopied pieces of paintings that I had done over the course of the project. The reason I showed photocopies rather than the original works, as I would've preferred, was because it meant that the white showed up better with the back light UV light. The paint I chose to use was a bold yellow poster paint which are used on the wall behind the paintings meaning that the work was really difficult to look at and people with licensitive eyes struggled to stay in that space.
The crit with the visiting practitioner went well and he did have some interesting ideas, however I felt that he struggled to engage with some of the ideas I was discussing. He chose to focus on the back story behind the work, rather than the work itself, and as a result he felt that these ideas were not involved in the artwork enough. It came up in discussion that I enjoyed narrative: narrative art and narrative fiction, which he said I should explore more in my artwork. The main reason I felt that I didn't get more out of the critique and I did was because he asked me to talk about my work and the process of the project before the work itself was discussed. Through this process I have decided that in future crits I will instead ask people to discuss my artwork before I do. I feel that this would be more insightful for me, as it’d allow me to gauge and understanding other people’s perceptions of it, before I've explained the concept. This is particularly relevant in this piece, as I was attempting to create an experience, not a narrative of my experiences.
Self Evaluation Form - reflecting on process of my Visual Disturbances project
Describe what kind of experimentation you have done with your studio practice.
I have been exploring the ideas of visual disturbances (specifically my own hallucination-like experiences). I have been trying out different ways of creating visual representations of what I experience. This then led me on to try out different ways of presenting these works, looking for ways to make the images more immersive and experiential for the viewer. This experimentation with ideas has made me realise how much I draw on my own experiences to create art. This experimentation with ideas has also made me realise how much I draw on my own experiences to create art.
I have also been exploring the process of figuration and abstraction, by painting over parts of photographs in white to show how the world sometimes looks to me. This process of blocking out sections means that I am having a conversation with the viewer “Here, look, this is what I want to show you. This is the important part.” This in turn creates a power dynamic- the artist in control of how much the viewer can understand, leaving the questioning and uncertain. In this way I have been looking at relationships between the artists and the viewer, using artwork as the means of communication.
I have also been experimenting with colour in this project, looking at the impact of bold harsh colours, and how they alter the way you see things. As my practice is quite drawing orientated usually, it means that I’m naturally drawn to the monotone or few colours, and when I do use colour it is with the purpose of giving depth and dimension. However in this project I have really pushed myself out of my comfort zone, using bold and bright colours which are difficult to look at, and often in block colours.
I have also been experimenting with immersive instillations, and how they could be used to create an experience similar to the ones I have. I attempted to build two walls out of MDF, in which I would paint one of the reduced images I had been working on. I thought that the larger scale would make it more impactful on the viewer, hoping that being in a surrounding space may trigger these experiences (using lights, reflective paints, bright colours). However I struggled a lot with the MDF because of the scale, and the wood buckled in shape, and it seemed that this option was no longer possible. Instead, I decided to focus on other ways of presenting the images I had already created. I experimented with including some bright yellow paint on the walls, with lighting, photocopying the images, and UV lights, and through trial and error found how I wanted to present it.
Explain how other artists and ideas are relevant to your practice.
Through working from my own visual experiences, I have had to consider what prompts these experiences (bright lights, colour, etc), and this has also got me questioning what causes these experiences, and if anyone has them. I did some research and came across Dissociative Disorders, which explains the experience quite well. By finding words to be able to explain and express the experiences, it has made it easier to verbalise the experiences and therefore help me to discuss my artwork.
I researched artists such as Martin Creed – Work no. 227 (lights on for 5 secs/off for 5), and other 60’s and 70’s conceptual and dematerialised art. This helped me think about artwork as an experience, not something that can necessarily be documented, but only really purely understood in memory. Because I chose to present my paintings in an instillation style, the space itself would not be the artwork, but the experience and people’s interactions with the space would be.
This idea of experiential instillations, particularly site specific ones, was developed by reading Simon Sheikh’s Postively White Cube Revisited, in which he explores “[a gallery space as] an aestetic object in and of itself.” It got me thinking about how work can add to or take away from a gallery space, create an experience within it, not just cover it with a canvas or image.
Visiting Katherina Grosse’s current exhibition (This drove my mother up the wall) at the South London Gallery inspired me thinking about the interactions in instillations: a space in which people are enclosed in a space of art (in which there is no boundary between the two). In her work there is a very harsh contrast between bright bold colours and the painfully white areas of floor/wall creating a trippy experience for the viewer. This helped me progress my ideas of art as something you can be surrounded by. This is particularly relevant to my current idea, as hallucinations are something that you cannot escape from, they are all encompassing, and this is a very good way of expressing that conceptually, but also to create a fully immersive experience for the viewer.
David Lang’s film work currently showing at the Lisson Gallery made me think about possible ways to make a space more immersive as an experience. In his work he used a harsh contrast of light between the main gallery space and the showing of the film, making the transition very disorientating. He also used a space that you have to move through to get to the space that the artwork is shown, with two black-out curtains you have to move through. These involve very site-specific ways of working, which I didn’t have time to plan for in the exhibition, however, in is certainly an idea I’d like to return to.
Other exhibitions visited- Iconoclasts, Tate’s swings, Soul of the Nation, Lisson Gallery, South London Gallery
Other artists research, artist lectures, lectures, theory seminars- Nacho Guzman, Toing Ang, Katherina Grosse, Judith Butler Vivian Maier, Greenberg, Hannah Sontell, Robert Morris, David Lang, Daniel Buren, Audre Lodrde, Richard Long, John Berger, Rosalie Schweiker
How do you plan to further develop your practice?
I hope to learn to become comfortable with choosing when my projects start and ends, and not having someone else chose these times for me. I cannot choose to be able to do this, but with time and gaining confidence, hopefully it will come naturally.
I hope to learn how to interact with peers more just within the studio to gain feedback on how to improve my work and my ideas. This will begin to happen more as I become more comfortable with those in my year and being able to ask for opinions, but I also need to put myself out there more to initiate those discussions.
I also plan to learn new processes and experiment more with other mediums, such as ceramics and also casting in other materials. Additionally, because of not having access to printing studios, I plan to teach myself to become more self-sufficient in resources- learning how to do printing process, such as screen printing and lino either in the studio or at home.
Marking Criteria
How well have you met the criteria?
Research - I have kept detailed notes from the lectures and theory seminars and exhibitions, then further documenting them on my blog by typing out some of the key points I’ve learned.
Analysis - Using the blog I documented how I reflect on my own work, as well as some of the thoughts from critics and peers
Subject Knowledge - I feel I could have done some more research on subject area of hallucinations within artwork or on instillation art.
Experimentation - I feel I did quite a lot of experimentation, considering lots of different possible forms and outcomes of the work, also considering how this would impact the viewing of the work.
Technical Competence - Part of my downfall in the original instillation I had planned was due to my lack of technical competence in working three-dimentionally and lack of pervious experience with working on MDF in a really large scale. I hope to gain some skills in this area in the future by working more in the workshops.
Communication & Presentation - The presentation of my work creates an atmosphere and experience for the viewer, however the meaning may not be completely clear.
Personal and Professional Development - I learnt how to be self-disciplined about coming into the studio regularly to work, and how to work independently within a studio-space. However I feel I still have to learn a little more on how to interact and get feedback from peers on a more day-to-day conversational level.
Collaborative and / or Independent Professional Working - I have learned how to work more independently, not relying on starts and ends of projects being set for me or mandatory times to work in the studio.
After the light arrived, I experimented a bit with what showed up more effectively, etc. I found that the white on the photocopied paintings showed up much better than the white paint or the original paintings. I decided that I’d photocopy the four images I was planning to show and show the photocopies instead.
After the light arrived, I experimented a bit with what showed up more effectively, etc. I found that the white on the photocopied paintings showed up much better than the white paint or the original paintings. I decided that I’d photocopy the four images I was planning to show and show the photocopies instead.
What I’m hoping to do now for the exhibition is have the bright yellow paint in a rectangle as a background, with the four photocopied paintings nailed to the walls with pins, with the LED black-light attached on the wall above or bellow them.
I decided to take my tutor’s advice and show the paintings that I had already used. We discussed the fact that it’s okay for a final outcome of a project to be one or two of your best works from the project. I don’t plan to always do this, but in this case I had put too much pressure on myself to create something big, new and impressive that it was just too much pressure.
I picked out 4 portrait A3 painted over photos to show, as these ones worked well as a group. I then started thinking about possible ways to present the paintings. I knew that I wanted to hang them in a subtle way, something simple like a small pin in each corner of the page. I debated whether or not to cut off the white boarders of the photos, however I quite like the honesty of it. The fact that it’s the size it was printed as, that you can see the paint on top of the image- it allows you to see how it was made.
I thought about if there was any way of combining the florescent yellow paint that I’d board. The bright colour meant that you can always see it out of the corner of your eye, which I liked. I tried painting a little bit of it onto the studio wall, masking some off, to see if how it would look and if it’d bleed under the tape- it didn’t. The colour came out slightly differently on the wall, looking more like I had coloured it in with highlighter, which I quite liked as a funny image for the viewer to imagine.
I tried out creating a block of yellow paint, to show one of the images in front of, just to see how it would look. The bright yellow made the image harder to focus on or look at for long, which I like.
When discussing with my tutor, we discussed adding some kind of light to the piece, to make the colours bolder, hasher or stranger. I searched through lots of different types of lights online, considering a daylight bulb (similar to the kind used on buses), but ended up getting an LED black-light. I felt that the light would make the white really pop and the colours become a weird kind of glow.
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