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SHIMMER

Dust, 2016

Fragments, 2016

Turning Words, 2016

Boxed dust, Untitled, Super Silenced, 2016

Framework, Untitled, Disrupted Narrative, 2016

Untitled, 2016

Disrupted Narrative, 2016

I always surprise myself with the works that I make under the pressure of a deadline. Helena and I have been working towards our exhibition Shimmer for several weeks, however my realisation of works for the exhibition came relatively late in the process. I have enjoyed working with Helena and looking for common ground between our practices on which to curate the show. Helena works mostly with figurative painting, she has a strong Art Historical understanding and a rich interest in contemporary philosophy. We are both interested in materiality and the process through which an art object emerges. Object Oriented Ontology formed the basis of much of our discussions when working towards the exhibition and it was a privilege to be able to discuss concepts and share research resources with one another.

Some of my work was developed through the installation process. For example, Dust and Fragments are each made up of three layers: a paper cut-out on top, a cellophane sheet in the middle, and photographs attached to the wall underneath. The depth of the imagery was achieved through the installation. I was pleased that this work commanded several ‘closer looks’ by people at the private view. 

Disrupted Narrative consisted of a photograph that I had taken of the St Albans Abbey glass fragment on a lightbox, printed on acetate and displayed on a lightbox fixed to the wall. It was a simple re-presentation of the object itself, with its status raised through presentation and exposure to a new audience.

During a formal discussion about the exhibition, I shared my attraction to transitory objects. I was encouraged to use melting ice as a metaphor/lens through which to approach my work going forwards. It is interesting how one’s understanding of an object changes the way it is seen/contributes to the melting of the ice.

When I told the story of the St Albans Abbey stained glass fragment a peer reflected that museum objects are at the mercy of the accessioning process. This is quite true. If an object is incorrectly accessioned its history is incorrectly recorded.  In current society we have a vast wealth of knowledge. With access to the internet a great deal of that knowledge is at our fingertips. Some of the objects that I have looked at in the museum store have a power in the not-knowing or disruption of their stories and history.

I will continue to research the stained glass fragment in order to plumb the depths of what it may be able to offer and open up new conceptual readings/interpretations. I also need to think about how to continue making work throughout the research process, and how the ‘finished’ works can hold up in a Fine Art context. For Shimmer, I presented the work in a way which related to archiving. I think the next presentation of the work ought to move away from this. Continuing to make unrelated work and maintain a broad area of research will also help to shape and affect the museum project. 

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SHIMMER

Installation views:

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The Spider Embroiders

For this embroidery I stitched an excerpt from the poem The Spider Embroiders by Jean Arp into canvas. I sewed the text entirely freehand, as can be seen by the irregularity of line and form. This was an experiment in working with thinner thread and a mid length piece of text. Next time I feel I should work with a grid on the underside of the canvas to ensure a more regular form to the text. I will continue to experiment with this technique when it is relevant to do so. 

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W.G. Sebald and Other Tracings

I have selected the following three poems by W.G. Sebald due to the appeal of the layout of their stanzas and their titles. I have used the same method as before, dissecting the spaces in-between letters through multiple lines of text in order to create patterns that reflect the form and rhythm of the language, rather than its explicit meaning or context. However, by using the same titles for the tracings as were the titles of the poems in the tracings, I feel they bring depth and colour to the language form described.

Festival, ink on tracing paper

Crossing the Water, ink on tracing paper

Pneumatological Prose, ink on tracing paper

The Dimension of the Present Moment, ink on tracing paper

The final tracing was taken from a page of a philosophical essay by Miroslaw Holub. I chose the essay for its title and the specific page as it was a fairly solid and unwavering block of text. As a result the central line is almost vertical, focussing the eye on a specific point in the centre of the image, A happy accident!

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Automatic Writing

Automatic writing, reversed.

Inspired by the Susan Hiller exhibition, I have created a piece of automatic writing. 

Automatic writing is the process, or product, of writing material that does not come from the conscious thoughts of the writer. The writer's hand forms the message, and the person is unaware of what will be written. It is sometimes done in a trance state. Other times the writer is aware (not in a trance) of their surroundings, but the actions of their writing hand. (Source: crystalinks.com. Full text found here)

I approached this piece of writing not as a spiritual exercise but as a mechanical action; an emptying of words from the head/hand onto the page. It is challenging to do this in the way outlined above. Unless one is in a trance-like state, asleep, or under the influence of a substance one is fully conscious. I tried to write as freely as possible by keeping a quick pace so that I was writing without thinking too much and made no attempt to write anything ‘worthwhile’. 

I wrote using a fine liner on layout paper so that I can display the work back-to-front in order to conceal what has been written. If I knew that my words would be read publicly it would have made it more difficult for me to ‘let go’ and simply write the first words/sentences that came to mind.

Automatic writing, dissected vertically.

Here I have continued the technique of scoring through the gaps between the letters. The above image shows a vertical ‘dissection’ of the automatic writing from the first image.

dissect [dih-sekt, dahy-] verb (used with object) 1. to cut apart (an animal body, plant, etc.) to examine the structure, relation of parts, or the like. 2. to examine minutely part by part; analyze: to dissect an idea.  (Reference: www.dictionary.com)

Automatic writing, dissected horizontally.

The above image shows a horizontal dissection of the automatic writing from the first image. It references written text much more clearly than the vertical dissection as it follows the usual trajectory of written English. The flow of the lines is less detailed and varied and more spread apart. It has a wider and more subtle rhythm than the vertical dissection and I find it less interesting as a form and less engaging as a process. The process has visual connections with Ann Hamilton’s Tropos Books (see ‘Language’ post, 21/11/15), in which an audience were invited to score through the text of books while they read them. However, Hamilton’s piece has stronger conceptual depth due to its performative and interactive process, which is directly linked with the process of reading. My text dissection pieces are more connected with the form of the text than the process of reading or writing. In order to develop these forms I will seek out texts with more varied layouts.

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Language Forms

Much of my time lately has been taken up with reading and research and I have struggled to find time to focus on my studio practice. I made the sketch above by laying a piece of tracing paper over the text i was reading, and tracing my pen along the gaps in between letters in vertical lines, trying to roughly follow a central line and ensuring that the distance between lines was one letter thick. 

Column of text. Biro on tracing paper.

I’m interested in the forms that these lines are creating. They bear no reference to the context of the printed text, they simply mimic its form and rhythm. The above image could reference water or wood grain.

Column of text. Fineliner on tracing paper.

When flipped horizontally the text tracing refers more to a landscape, or the surface of an object placed under a microscope. These lines seem to relate more directly back to the text, as they follow the direction in which English is read. I wonder if they could be interpreted musically, the peaks and toughs denoting changes in pitch. I will make more of these drawings and continue to explore their forms.

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Feedback

I presented my piece Thread as part of a work in progress seminar last week. (Please see Art Language Location Post, 16/10/15) I was keen to receive some feedback on the work as I had not received a great deal during the Art Language Location exhibition.  Due to the work being situated in a non-art environment, viewers would have had to seek me out (via an email address on the interpretation panel) in order to have a dialogue about the work. This, unsurprisingly, did not happen.

During the workshop, the political side of the work was picked up on. The legible text was only visible to those ‘on the inside’. The philosophical quote referencing a search for Truth, could provide a double entendre about the ownership or rights to knowledge and Truth. It was suggested that the lack of feedback received from members of Cambridge University could be due to the fact that they felt insulted by the tone of the work. I had seen this as one of a number of interpretations of the work, and thought that the inference to elitism was more subtle. 

The importance of the process of making was highlighted through discussion. Whilst seemingly naive in its application, the style of text/writing was important to the illegibility of the marks made under the canvas. Conversation was had about experimenting with other languages, and manipulating the environment in which the work is hung in order to affect the visibility of the thread on both sides of the canvas. I have not found a reason to use another language yet and would not wish to do so unless it was of conceptual importance. However, I have found that the choice of thread and fabric and style of the text can make the illegible text appear more like one language than another (for example, when exhibiting a piece of stitched text at a gallery in London in 2009, some visitors to the exhibition thought that the text was stitched in Bengali. Only on closer inspection did they discover that the text was illegible)  and I will continue to experiment with styles of text in future works. I am not keen to manipulate the environment that the work is hung in too much, though I would like to see how this text or others could work in further non-art exhibition environments. 

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Paper Punctuation

I recently took part in a paper modelling workshop designed to introduce a process of thinking through making. I am not used to working in this way and enjoyed the challenge that the workshop presented.  I decided to focus on the materiality of paper, thinking of it as a kind of skin, exploring and manipulating its surface to see what forms and textures it might throw up. 

Creasing and scrunching:

Oiling:

Cutting, piercing, bending

I found the forms most satisfying when I had intervened in a minimal way. Oiling and scrunching the paper gave it a texture and durability similar to thick fabric. When I folded the oiled paper in some clean paper and ironed it to smooth it out, it left a print of its oily surface on the paper. An unexpected and pleasing result. I will be interested to see whether the oil evaporates over time. The fault lines that appeared in the oiled papers surface through scrunching looked like marks on a map or lines on skin. 

I may return to these experiments again. I hope to experiment further with oiled paper. Also piercing the surface to allow an exchange of light is something I have played with in the past (for example, see my laser cutter experiments from my AA2A residency blog). Light shone through the hand-pierced holes in the paper with mixed success in the workshop and would need to consider how to present the pierced works in order to maximise the penetration of light through the surface, or change the size of the holes. Laser cutting provides a quick and accurate solution to this issue.