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Haseeb Ahmed

Haseeb Ahmed works across a variety of disciplines at the Von Karmen institute. To beginning of his presentation, he displayed various pictures of a sculpture mimicking the letter ‘A’. This sculpture was made in a Plasma Tron, which can reproduce the conditions of e-entry into earth from outer space.

Ahmed created a film piece of these conditions, I found the film very boring as I am not interested in science at all. However, I did notice how the film quickly changed from very aggressive and loud, to calm and silent. When the silence came, the whole lecture theatre was still and I felt very at ease, it was interesting to see how the film changed the atmosphere of the room. He told us that the point to this piece was to see if language could come from the heavens to earth. He continued to explain, when the Jewish people received religious text from God, they believed that they were receiving it from the heavens. I was surprised to hear that Ahmed was inspired by religion, since he is heavily fixated on scientific methods. I am not saying science and religion can’t go combine, I am explaining that he again uses quite large opposites in his work.

In 2009, Ahmed studied an MA in Art Culture and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, which now has 10 Masters students, 10,000 scientists, technicians and engineers that are unaware that their University offers an art course. His interest in wind tunnels began when he built up a foundation of trust with the Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel, which is the oldest functioning wind tunnel in the world. He built an installation in the tunnel using a sword, he took the moment the sword was in mid swing, and the wind would hold it there, keeping it in mid swing, continuously slicing through the wind. This theory is normally impossible, but the wind tunnel made it possible, as it creates a situation where the wind is blowing straight, which fixes the object in the air at 78mph.

This was very impressive for me to hear, but I did not feel inspired by any of his projects. With installation, I feel like you have to be there to really appreciate it, as I believe that installation art is to be experienced. For example, you should be able to feel the wind and see the sword in person, in mid swing. I found myself zoning in and out of the presentation due the the fact that the structure of his lecture was very unorganised and therefore I continuously found myself being lost.

One thing I admired about his practice was, he would always start these very advanced installations and sculptures, with such a simple drawing, sometimes consisting of just a few lines on a piece of paper. This interested me because a few days before this lecture, Rick Creed spoke to us about our Painting Projects and one of the main things he said we must do is, to plan our paintings, begin with a drawing and develop from there. This has taught me to not rush straight into a mediocre final piece that I would not be willing to exhibit. That is a very important point to me and I will carry it with me throughout the year and I will be satisfied if that is the only thing I have taken away from this lecture, as I feel it is a critical point I need to grasp within my own studio practice.

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Painting Project Initial Meeting

Today we had our first meeting with Rick Creed about the Painting Project. We had five topics to choose as starting points;

Haiku Poetry Painting, Movement, Rhythm and Music Psychological/Punk Landscapes Political/Ecological/Issue Based Themes Fantastic Voyage

Rick inspired me to be more passionate about painting by the way he was talking about it. You could see his excitement through his hand gestures and by the way he was speaking about the process and journey you go through when painting. He talked about it in a way I had never thought about painting until today. My notes were broken down into three sections, painting, Haiku and starting point.

Painting:

I have bullet pointed the key points that stood out to me when Rick was describing the painting process, as I felt understanding that painting is more than just a process, will really help me to delve deeper into this project.

Painting is not just a process, it is an emotional feeling. The process of painting can be incredibly personal and profound. When working with text based artwork, it can be very restrictive. Painting is more freeing, as it is always trying to run away with itself. It is very hard to know when to stop painting, as painting can be a continuous process. When painting, you need to research, plan and build towards it, don’t just jump straight into a painting. Research and material is just as important as the painting. When painting, you should alway put down a base colour, even if it is just an off shade of white, it can make beginning a painting less daunting. Really focus on the quality of your work to build up a strong portfolio of paintings.

Although I have only just begun this project, I have looked back at these bullet points several times. I haven’t treated them as rules, I just know they are there to help me from straying to far and loosing sight of my initial ideas.

Haiku Poetry:

Haiku Poetry is a form of Japanese Poetry, it expresses a single feeling of impression through approximately 3 short unrhymed lines. Haiku Poetry paintings are very simple, sometimes just a few strokes of paint. Although the paintings may be simple, the thought process behind it, is very deep and meaningful. The paintings are normally very gestural, it is a pure language that you can’t structure or define. Rick told us to attempt to copy some Haiku Poetry paintings as it would help us to understand them more. I haven’t attempted to copy one yet, but when looking at them, I think they will be difficult to copy because they are so simple. This style of painting is a new experience for me as normally my paintings are abstract, yet have many layers within them. I think this experience will be calming for me and teach me that sometimes keeping work simple, can express more than a complex painting.

Starting Point:

Begin by reading some Haiku Poetry. Use my own emotion to write my own Haiku Poetry, based on recent events in my life. Look at old family photographs as inspiration and to generate an emotion. Begin by drawing your emotion, but keep it simple. Move onto photo montage, maybe use copies of family photographs. Think carefully about the surface you choose to paint on and the materials you choose to paint with.

This is an image of my Grandad who recently passed away this summer.

I am going to use this image as my starting point, to generate some emotion, as everything else seemed to unravel after his death.

So I thought.

The Final Image

It’s where it all began, so I thought, This i an unfamiliar sensation, I want to forget the final image.

Cactus: Joe Fletcher Orr

Just two years after graduating from Manchester University, Joe Fletcher Orr has opened up his own gallery space “Cactus” in the Royal Standard. Not only did he have no knowledge of opening up a gallery space and curating exhibitions, he also conjured up a series of techniques, techniques that would aid him in approaching galleries, that were very different from each other and convincing them to exhibit his work.

During his final year in Manchester Metropolitan University, himself and his best friend were shortlisted for an exhibition, unfortunately his best friend beat him. His friend created a neon piece, almost exactly the same as the image above, but it said “Turnt Up”. A year after this exhibition, the gallery approached Joe to exhibit his work, so he created this piece in the image above “Turnt Down”, to show the frustration he felt when his friend beat him only a year before. When Joe began the renovations for Cactus, he anticipated that the building work would take up to 3 weeks. However, the Royal Standard amazingly allowed him to rip down a whole wall to open up the space and transform the floor to make it look unique to other galleries. Finally after six months, Cactus was born. Joe decided to choose a white wall when transforming the gallery space, which gave it a crisp clean look. Unfortunately, the first artist, Sebastian Jefford, didn’t have the same point of view. Jefford, decided to paint the wall mushroom which, according to Joe was a, “pain in the arse”!

When deciding who to exhibit, Joe didn’t just pick the first artist that knocked on his door, he really thought about who should be the first artist to exhibit at Cactus. He wanted the public to take the space seriously. Joe had really thought about what flooring would stand out when building Cactus, so when artists would exhibit their work there, people would recognise what gallery it was in, due to the flooring. However, he wasn’t able to have the floor shown until Daniel McMillan and Lucas Wilson had a show there called “The Weekend Supplement”. Joe felt like he had to say yes to everything an artist asked him, as Cactus was still a new, developing business at the time. “I Dunno Shit” Rogue Project Space, was the next exhibition Joe co-curated. 40 artists were invited to bring solid party items and a plus 1 to this “party” that he co-curated. After the private viewing, the space was left as it was, in a mess for the public to see. According to Joe, it began to smell after a few days!

When beginning his journey at Cactus, Joe had no idea what he was doing, he learnt how to exhibit his own work by observing other artists preparing for their exhibitions at Cactus. “Liverpool’s art community is supportive and approachable, unlike London where you would need about 3 jobs, my friend is paying £450 a month for a studio in London”! “As long as you have access to a motorway or an airport, you can practice or show your work anywhere, it doesn’t matter where you live” After Joe’s lecture, I had a tutorial with him. I hadn’t planned what I was going to ask him so I was very nervous to speak to someone who had achieved so much in only two years. However, when we spoke, he made me feel comfortable. We didn’t actually talk that much about our own work. We talked more about the people we both knew in the art community around Liverpool as we are both from here. He asked me about the Tate Collective, which I am currently a member of. I asked him a few questions about where had had to confidence to take control and open Cactus. He told me, because he didn’t know what he was doing, he couldn’t really go wrong because he was making up his own rules. He reassured me that big companies such as the Liverpool Biennial are eager to get more upcoming artists and students involved in their work and I should not be afraid to approach them. “Running an art gallery makes artists want to be your friend” - Joe Fletcher Orr.

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For the Walker Art Gallery interventions, we had to find a piece of art within the Walker and respond to it.

The piece I chose to respond to was in the first room I went in to, “Elijah in the Wilderness” by Frederic Leighton. I was inspired by the muscular figure and the cloth that he was sleeping on.

When I looked at the painting up close, I was really taken back by the texture of the painting and how you can’t see it from far away, the texture was an artwork itself.

I decided to in print a selection of textured fabric onto paper as my response to the painting. I experimented with various ways of doing this, I first tried it without colour as I wanted to design to be subtle, but the fabric was not strong enough. I decided to cover the fabric in ink and then press it onto the paper, the colours I chose were not an important feature to the artwork, I just chose what I thought went well.

We had to take into consideration many health and safety issues when displaying our work at the Walker because it would be in the public eye around historical artworks. I decided to place my work on the floor in front of an extravagant table as I wanted to see if the public would notice the work. When I observed the public, I discovered that due to the layout of the gallery (Salon), people naturally looked up at the extravagant frame and high up artworks. It was interesting to see the suprise that people had when they saw such a contemporary piece on the floor of the traditional gallery space.

If I were to do this intervention again, I would create the same artwork but on a much larger scale and probably place it all around the gallery in various places.

David Kidner is a writer, curator, artist and film producer. He talked to us about his journey from being an art student to "something else". (Producer, curator and writer). His journey hasn't always been straight forward, he studied painting at Wolverhampton University in the late 90's and by the end of his degree, he realised that he didn't want to be a painter anymore.

His main interest is, why if you like film and video to become so central to contemporary art? When we have cinema? He thinks about history of film and video and how they are constantly being rewritten just as art is constantly being rewritten. History is constantly changing, it determines what art will influence the next generation of artists. The moving image of film has become contemporary art.

He moved from Wolverhampton to Bristol were his studio was and after a year of fixing it up, he realised he might be interested in interior design or curating., however, a curator wasn't considered a real thing in the 90's.

In 1997 he set up an organisation called "City Projects", it was a fake institution that he took to the arts council to raise money for exhibitions, which he was granted £5000. At this point he realised he was good at convincing people that he was an organisation, which eventually became a real charity, but at the back of his mind, he always thought that it was made up.

Between 1997-2004 City Projects displayed work in alternative spaces such as toilets and rented flats. They worked on one project at a time and worked with artists such as, Chris Evans on a piece called "Radical Loyalty" which was set up in a sculpture park in Estonia and lasted 8 years.

In 2006 City Projects focused purely on film art because in the mid 2000's many artists began embracing film at and there was a drive to do something different with film and video that didn't exist in the 90's.

In 2010 David Kidner created a collaborative film piece with Anya Cusher and David Panos called "The Empty Plan" (90 mins). It is a German play write about a man in 1940 called "Bret". The piece was shot in the UK but the film was German with subtitles. It is traditionally a feature length film due to the length of it.

Emily Wardeel was an artist that Kidner worked with, she created a film piece about Sarah Winchester who inherited a fortune and bought a house. The legend was, she added secret rooms to house the ghosts of the people who she had inherited the money off as she felt guilty buying the house.

Eventually Kidner left City Projects to run a film and video organisation called "Picture This", this organisation was very different to City Projects as it had its own studio but no money. It was a risky career move to go to a company with no money, but the history interested him. He stayed there for 2 years, were he experimented with what was possible to show in a gallery that was dedicated to film. Due to the company having no money, they set up a space called "Video Shop", it was part gallery, book shop, video shop and a space to hang out. Kinder said that, although the company had no money, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as it would open up other possibilities.

Eventually Picture this merged with a company called "Spike Island", which they ended up calling "Spike Island Video", which was basically Picture This, just without a director. The final project he did at Picture This was a group show curated by James Richards who was nominated for the Turner Prize last year.

I really enjoyed hearing David Kidner speak, at first I couldn't stand the thought of listening to yet ANOTHER film artist, because it felt like that was all the Wednesday lectures were ever going to be about. I was tempted to leave at first, but I was already there so I gave it a go. I mainly took notice of how structured his lecture was, don't get me wrong, I was listening to what he said, but I appreciated to he structured his talk and didn't try to sound smart.

David Osbalderston’s idea of "Style", is meaning and relationship. He refers to his work as a journey because he doesn't know how his work is gonna turn out when he starts it. Language is a critical way to organize and communicate thoughts, make sense of reality, how language operates through communication and miscommunication. He said that as artists, it is our responsibility to make the invisible, visible.

He showed us two wood cut pieces that relate to his sculpture work. He said that it represents something that is moving and still at the same tie. He made a film piece of the wood cut print and referred to it as the ghost of the wood cut print. He is interested in the fictional space in the brain, that the brain has put together, it is space that appears familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

That last point really stood out to me because I like the idea of the fictional space between the brain, because with my own projects, I let the project find me, not the other way around, so in a way, I let the fictional space in my brain, find the project subconsciously.

The main themes of Paul Rooney's artwork were text, music and context. He studied painting at the Edinburgh college of art and taught at Staffordshire University in 1993. Painting made him precious about his own history as an artist, so he needed to break free from it, therefore he began to create sound pieces.

A particular piece that he talked about called"Lights go on" 2 mins (2003) caught my attention. It was a film piece about a cloak room attendants description of their night at work in a night club. It emphasised the [people who we don't normally notice when we are out clubbing, were this person is in a situation were they are in the public view, but not high up in the institution.

This got me thinking about my own project, it made me think about the minority and how women today are still sometimes considered lower class than men, especially in art, there are more successful male artists than there are female artists and still today, women are paid a lower wage than men for doing the exact same job.

I want to emphasize this in my own project, I have been embracing my own femininity which has made me come across as more confident according to other people. This relates to the pieces I created recently where I drew charcoal designs over the feminine figure that modeled for me.

I went to the Cathy Wilkes Exhibition at the weekend and it was a very surreal experience for me. I had never heard of her before and her work wasn't really my style. She had a series of small paintings hanging from bars that were alarmed if you went too close. I appreciated the paintings, they looked like paint palettes, however I was more amused by the alarms going off, because if people got too close, they would jump and do a little dance. I found it really fun to watch and it became a performance piece in itself. There was also a series of manikins dotted around the room with patterned gowns on them and fabric hanging over string like they were hung out to dry. Again, the work didn't really interest me, but the audience amused me more. As it was an installation, people were tip toeing around the artwork, carefully weaving their way around admiring the work as they went. What also shocked me was there was nothing anywhere near the walls. This was a strange experience for me, I know it was an installation exhibition. But it was like everything had purposely been forced away from the walls and the typical white cube gallery space, looked even more clinical and daunting than usual.

My friends Kitty and Kayt had an exhibition at the Bridewell Studios and Gallery called "Vulnerable". Their work is based around femininity and exposure. It was a very personal show as it was about their own relationship and how delicate and vulnerable they can both me.

I found their work truly inspirational and gave me a lot of amazing ideas to progress on regarding my own project. As my own work is inspired by feminism, I took a great deal of interest in their work. A particular piece that stood out to be was a series of white petals nailed to the wall, that had slowly died over time. The work looked so delicate that I was afraid of getting too close in case my breath blew the petals off the wall. This piece relates to a piece of my own that I have created for the Metal Exhibition. It is a white bow that has got daffodils wrapped around it and then painted white to preserve the flower for longer.

This exhibition inspired me and my friend to form a collaboration and do a small project together on the side of our own on going projects. We both work in very similar styles and have the same views regarding feminism. Therefore we are working on a piece now that incorporates our curvaceous abstract styles, which emphasizes feminine themes. We are layering our designs on top of each other on a wooden board, covering each design with masking tape, then working over the top of it, still being able to see the previous design through the masking tape. We want to encourage the viewer to peel away at the making tape to reveal the design underneath it, which again relates to a piece I did at Metal, which went with the box I made. It consisted of multi colored strips of tape that I preserved whilst making the box.

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De Kooning never fully abandoned the depiction of the human figure. His paintings of women feature a unique blend of gestural abstractionand figuration. Heavily influenced by the cubism of Picasso. His work relates to my own practice, as I am also studying the feminine form but putting my own abstract take on it. His works seems to flow really well together and I admire his use of colour as I only use black and white. However, I want to start incorporating more colour into my own artwork slowly, until I start building up more confidence to do a whole piece in colour, which is were I eventually want more work to lead.

As I have mentioned in several of my blogs... I am not a massive fan of colour! However, De Kooning seems to have found the perfect balance. Where even though the colours clash, they still somehow work really well together. I love the shapes that he has used in all of his artworks, but this one in particular as it reminds me of my artwork in my previous blog, where I have draw around the feminine form. Although the colours are very striking, I thin he has chosen the perfect tones and highlighted the red with the right shade of blue. I think the yellow somehow calms the whole piece down, because without it, I think it would change the whole mood of the artwork.

Although the colours that De Kooning has chosen to use are a lot paler than the previous artwork, I like the striking black line that he has placed in the painting and he has found the perfect balance again, not too much and not too little. I prefer the paler, more pastel colours, I don't know if that is because, in my opinion, these colours are a lot more feminine and my project is based around femininity, or it may just seem like a more attractive use of colours,, again the colours used clash together, but still work as he has chosen the right tones. The shapes he has made are very calming to look at and if you look carefully, you can see images within the lines.

I love the simplicity of this painting as the background doesn't distract the viewer from the main topic of the artwork. Again I love the pastel colours that he uses so I am going to attempt to incorporate these colours into my own artwork, which will be a new experience for me and slightly out of my comfort zone, but I am looking forward to trying it.

I did some experimental pieces using charcoal on A3 plain paper. I didn't set myself any sort of brief because I wanted to go with my natural instinct as an artist, so I just let my hands flow. What I noticed was that I kept repeating this beautiful spiral shape.

I experimented with a variety of pressures using charcoal to see what effects I could create. Although these images are simple, I still like them because of the variety of techniques I have achieved just with one material.

What confused me was, why do I find life drawing so therapeutic when it doesn't relate to those shapes at all? Then I realised that the spiral shapes mimic the feminine forms. So I used a life model to photograph the back of the feminine form mainly focusing on the hips, waist and butox, which is said to be the shape that inspired the love heart.

I then began to mimic the charcoal spirals onto the figure. I chose to print them in black and white to make the form smoother so I could work around the shape easier.

I have chosen not to incorporate colour yet because I think it would distract the audience from the figure. What I have noticed is it is very distracting to other people, they will stop mid conversation and ask questions about it, then forget what they came over to talk to me about. I want to add some subtle colour and experiment with scale, to see if it changes the effect the charcoal creates.

Van Gogh was a unique artist that worked with a sense of urgency, which often caused him a great deal of stress. He was famed for his bold, dramatic technique, which expressed emotion and added a feeling of movement to his works. It's often thought that he painted straight from the tube (impasto) and in the 70 days leading to his death, he averaged one painting per day. Van Gogh's practice relates to my own studio practice because, I also work with a sense of urgency when I am developing my own projects., however, my artwork is a lot more abstract than Van Gogh's paintings. I enjoy paniting with not many varieties of colours, so I appreciate that his works don't involve too many different colours, as he seemed to focus more on the tones of colours he was using. I incorporate a lot of my own emotion into my artworkas I feel it makes the work a lot more personal and passionate. I love the way his works are flowing together and peaceful to look at which contrasts with his personallity as he struggled with many of his own demons throughout his life.

When studying Van Gogh's paintings, I notice that he keeps to the same tones of colours, which I like because, as mentioned earlier, I think that too much colour can overpower the artwork. I notice that he uses similar shapes in his paintings, I see spiral shapes and relaxed forms of nature. The first image looks a lot more textured than the bottom image. I like how Van Gogh has distorted the paintings slightly so they are more Surreal, it enhances parts of the painting, such as the sky in "Starry Night".

This piece is very different to the previous paintings as it is a lot more simple. and less surreal. The reason I chose this artwork is because I think the shapes of the branches are very beautiful and the subtle white colours compliment the background.

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