#studiopractise2

[alfielaneart]

Mixed Media Collage

Lino-print, newspaper, acrylic, oil and pen on paper

120cm x 55cm

This is the finished version of the mixed media collage I have been adding to this week. Overall, I’m really pleased with the final outcome of this,

 I originally began working into the Lino-print with written text, writing ‘System Update’ at the top corner to make reference to digital terminology, suggesting that the system of power and the monarchy within the UK needs to be updated. However, I thought that there could be more effective methods of presenting. my ideas powerfully. The piece uses newspaper cuttings from a Socialist Worker’s Party newspaper. Though I don’t necessarily agree with or support the organisation’s Trotskyite beliefs, the paper was ideal for my work as it contained a lot of phrases and text relating to the monarchy and the Government which I could use in this piece to communicate an anti-establishment message. I think that the use of newspaper collage is effective in evoking the look of the DIY/Punk art movement, signifying working class anger, revolution and anarchist ideals. Taking into consideration my current visual research into conspiracy and systems of power, I also incorporated some of these symbols in this piece, using pen to depict the Illuminati triangle and pop culture references (The Beatle’s album ‘Help!’ scribbled below the image of the monarchy in the bottom left). I particularly like this section of the piece, with the ‘Love love love’ newspaper cuttings and the ‘Destruct’ text directly above the heads of the royal family, evoking a sort of tongue-in-cheek approach to the topic that I find easier to communicate my ideas without being completely serious. This also lends itself quite well to conspiracy theory, as it allows me to investigate the subject through a more flippant tone to give a degree of separation between my own beliefs and the ones communicated through the work.

I wasn’t completely happy with the look of this collage before painting on top of it, so i thought about how i could inject a colourful style into it that fits more with the aesthetics of my current practise. At the beginning of this semester I had briefly experimented with painted mandala motifs on top of mixed media collage, so once I had tested this out again I used it in this work. The slightly translucent properties of the oil paint makes the work more vibrant whilst the text is still visible underneath, allowing me to make reference to religious iconography and the outsider/punk aesthetic at the same time.

I definitely want to continue using collage in my work this way, I could return to this piece to add more intricate details to the mandalas painted on top.

[elnasart]

Paper dollies

I found these paper dolls in Tesco on my weekly shop, and I just knew I had to do something with them! I used them as blank canvases, to create lots of different versions of myself, 20 of them to be precise. Each represents a different day, who I was on each different occasion. There's something so comforting about having them all in one place, together, like they're holding hands with one another.

[alfielaneart]

Artwork for PC2 Exhibition

oil on canvas

40cm x 60cm

Above is the finished painting that I produced for our gallery group exhibition. The work as featured as part of a printed Zine, as well as on our exhibition’s Instagram page.

I chose not to post this on my blog until we had the launch party and released images of all the artworks. I’m really happy with the look of this work, its possibly one of my favourite paintings I’ve produced this semester. I’m glad i spent a lot of time digitally drawing out the precise geometry of the shapes, and spent time getting the lines as accurate as possible. I also considered the use of colour a lot more here. Painting against a black background helped the colours to ‘pop’ a lot more - I’d like to create work against a darker background more often, as to me it really helped to evoke the tribal, artefact type of appearance in the work. I think it could potentially work nicely as a Lino-print as well. I could make a print out of it and work into it like i have been doing recently with my other prints. It may also look effective as a repeated pattern.

Working digitally first to map out my design idea worked well for me, helping me to make creative decisions without them being set in stone on the page. It is something I will definitely take with me into my next semester in third year.

[alfielaneart]

Testing out mixed media backgrounds and oil paint

40X30cm

Newspaper and Foil on paper, oil paint on top

Above is a piece of work I produced to test out using oil paint on top of newspaper, which would form the background of the larger mixed media piece I’m currently working on. I used both scrap newspaper cuttings and foil, glueing them on to form the background. 

As this was just a test i didn’t intend to create any obvious meaning from the pieces I used, however the paper I used was taken from a scrap socialist newspaper, so naturally the contents are made up of words criticising the government and speaking about worker’s rights. I then sketched out mandala designs on top, painting in solid areas of colour in oil. I really like the way the oil dries translucent on top of the paper whilst also keeping quite a vibrant pigment. The overall look of it fits in nicely with the aesthetics of my work in general  - bright primary colours. I can go on to use this on the larger collage piece knowing that it will be effective. I could continue using this technique with further mixed media pieces that I make, using oil to to add colourful designs reminiscent of religious imagery on top of the collages, creating a mix of local socio-political issues and broader transcendent concepts.

[alfielaneart]

Experimenting with mixed-media collage

Acrylic, oil, pen, collage on paper

Close ups, entire piece is 120cm x 55cm

The images above are from a large roll of paper I have been working on, using my Lino-prints, newspaper cuttings, acrylic, and oil paint. 

I began by working into one of the large prints I produced, using written text and newspaper letters to construct statements related to the abolishing the monarchy. I wanted to test out creating a layered piece of work with many different images and motifs, similar to the work of Steven Lebya that I have been looking at recently. I also used this piece to start bringing in some conspiracy related motifs, again using cutouts of eyes, illuminati symbols, pop culture references and royal figures, generating an amalgamation of many different strands that all relate to the British state. 

I wasn’t that happy with the original appearance of this collage, I knew that working on a thin roll of paper, getting thick areas of solid colour would be difficult with acrylic paint. I wanted some of the text to be visible, but also wanted a highly colourful piece of work. I then began to consider my previous visual research relating to religious or spiritual iconography, and thought that it could look really interesting to have a thickly layered collage beneath an arrangement of mandala motifs in oil paint, so that the images show through. I began to paint this on top, working in primary colours all the way across the page.

I’m really pleased with the look of some of the areas pictured above. It has taken a while to put together, a good few days of arranging and layering, but I think that the use of collage to communicate my ideas work in relation to the theme of systems of power and conspiracy, having lots of different strands of information and references placed together to produce an ambiguous and interconnected web of ideas. Creating more of these that fill the page with many different leads could potentially allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions about the work, similar way that Herbert Bayer proposed the idea of using a mass of images in the exhibition ‘Family of man’ in 1955 (mentioned in my previous blog post) to allow the viewer to construct their own narrative from the images.

[alfielaneart]

Mixed media piece, working into Lino print

Acrylic, oil and pen

A3 Paper

I’ve been working into the black Lino prints that I did a couple of weeks ago, experimenting with both paint and collage to create mixed media pieces. This is the first of these. 

I started with oil, covering the white space around the print in a layer of pale yellow to help generate a more dated look similar to the beige tint in the handmade paper I’d used previously. I then began to paint in the circular shapes reflective of the mandala motifs I’ve been using in my work, painting in corporate logos, as well as bringing in various alchemy/occult symbols from my ongoing visual research. Additionally, I had some leftover cutouts from a previous piece of work that I wanted to use as part of this mixed media piece. I cut up various eyes and glued these on. Repurposing leftover images of Margaret Thatcher, I played around with different compositions, cutting away some parts of the face or repeating others like the multiple mouth’s on the bottom-most image of her that is in this piece. 

For this piece I focussed on communicating symbols of power related to the British state, displaying the crown as well as the 3 black squares that make up the BBC logo, repeated along the borders of the work. The BBC can be considered an arm of the British State, serving to uphold outdated values that no are no longer relevant in our post-imperial world. Alongside this is imagery from my Lino-prints that reflect a worldwide presence of corporate control in the style of an ancient artefact. I am quite fond of the vivid primary colours I’ve been using in my work so I implemented them in this piece too. I considered how could further deface the printed images, blacking out the eyes and scribbling over the teeth to create a demon-like image on the page. Additionally, I’ve begun trying out text within my work, inspired by the ‘Kill The Bill’ protests fighting against the government’s proposal for more authoritarian police measures. Seeing the mixture of art and text on signs at these protests encouraged me to begin looking into how i could use text as a powerful means of communication in my work, which could also aid my audience’s understanding of its intended meaning.

It is with this in mind that I’ve started to consider how my work could be less polite and more of a form of protest itself, defacing authoritative and corrupt political figures and representing systems of power visually through the lens of a religious cult.

[alfielaneart]

Series of Lino Prints on paper

35cm x 35cm

As well a the large print i made, I also cut out 3 smaller tiles of Lino to create a series of works inspired by the cycle of consumerism. The quote by Victor Lebow:

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.”

I took the ‘ consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded’ part of this as the basis of these prints, using a combination of Huichol symbols and the Big Tech logos to present a cycle of consuming, using up and replacing. I thought that the idea of a snake eating its own tail would be a good, simple representation of consumption, it also links to cult symbolism to help communicate the concept of my work. Aiming to create the look of a cultural artefact from a past civilisation, I used the Huichol motifs of snakes and fire to help communicate the look of ancient indigenous art, not worrying too much about the preciseness of the lines for these. The second one, I used the image of a fire as a straightforward depiction of burning or using up. For the third, I used the retweet symbol with snakes instead of arrows to present re-use or replacement.

Again I think the fact that I hand printed these works well to achieve faded areas on the prints. For the ink, I tested out both red and blue in the first images, before using a mix of black and red in the second, neater version. The gradient of this works well to show areas of vivid colours in some places and create an overall archaic look. 

[alfielaneart]

Lino Prints on paper

4 x Lino Prints on plain A3 paper

1 X Lino Print on handmade paper, 70cm x 50cm

These are the Lino prints of the large design that I cut out last week. I printed these in the studio, sing my body weight to press down the prints. I’m really please with how they turned out, I think the less precise and slightly faded effect where the ink didn’t transfer to the paper fully adds to the old/faded look I aimed to produce with these prints. I tried out black, green, red and blue.

I used the same surface for rolling out the different colours so they overlapped slightly and produced some nice gradients on the prints especially the blue one where it is slightly dark er in some areas. I also like the slightly dirtier green I created by working on top of the areas black ink on my rolling surface.

I made multiple copies of the black print, so that I could work into these when they are dry. Using soft pastels around the outside could create a nice contrast between the print, also potentially using acrylic paint would work well too.

I printed one of the designs onto the handmade paper that I can work into once it is dry when I’m next in the studio. I love how the print looks on this paper, I’m definitely going to buy some more sheets of it as it gives a really nice archaic look to the work I put onto it.