Recent commission proposals. I feel I am getting the hang of these a bit. It's impossible to be too formulaic, because proposals must reflect practice and personal style, which will follow through to the project and finished piece, but I can see that, bar actually making the piece in advance, the proposal must provide all the elements so that the reader can share the artist's imagination.
I thought through what I would really like to make, what is feasible, what is relevant to elements of my practice, and what I can back up with my own evidence.
City University London, Graduate Library Centre
Commission Proposal
For the Library commission I propose making a series of gilded frames containing mysterious shapes and contours.
I will source reclaimed frames to fit the space. As an artist, I always do my own framing, and taught myself best practice by taking apart and renovating old frames. I will choose old and mostly ornate pieces, and depending upon the space, decide upon the number - possibly two or three larger, or several smaller frames. There are interesting interrelations, harmonies and juxtapositions which can be created in hanging formations.
In my art practice I have a great love of being resourceful, and of using vintage and antiquarian items. I have also recently completed an exhibition which required many hours of using aluminium leaf. I grew to become fascinated with its properties, and propose to use it in this commission.
Vessels. vintage bottle, aluminium leaf.
Additionally, aluminium leaf is robust and not subject to tarnishing like silver.
I have previously made a piece, “Warp” which was an interactive work employing embedded metals and magnets on a reclaimed frame. That piece was contoured with plaster and paint, and the embedded items hidden. I have often been told that the piece looks like a solid cloud.
Warp
For the Library commission I will gather vintage and antiquarian items, some which have little value, but are treasures nonetheless.
I have some bits of metal collected by metal detectors, and will salvage other items – for example old coins.
For the Library wall I will make and hang several frames. They will be contoured like Warp, but will show suggestions of the embedded items. Over all, including the borders of the frames, will be a burnished gleam of aluminium leaf. The work will be intriguing to the eye, and conducive to thought and contemplation. It will be reflective and beautiful.
aluminium leaf
The project will largely be completed with vintage and reclaimed items, both harmonious to the historic surroundings, and the recycling and sustainable initiative of City University.
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This passage is from my own unpublished novel, The Interpretation of Time, suggesting the contemplative nature of the piece.
The dark shadows of the sculpture you now see are voids. Now it makes sense, to add nothingness. It was fun making it, you seem to remember, slapping together whatever you had lying around, half-baked ideas, things never made, other things you had obsessed over. You realised the importance of being indiscriminate, and painted over rubbish and treasures alike with white plaster.
Once you had swept it all together, you placed onto it anything you had left over. Big things, little things, it made no difference. Things that took a long time, others barely a snatched moment, you turned them all over so that you couldn’t see them, and chose them for their shape alone, sticking them on anywhere they would fit.
The order started to emerge, understood by a part of you you didn’t have immediate access to. You let your eyes decide, your hands decide. It didn’t matter how you felt. You unwrapped yourself and added the secret you kept next to your heart. You let it become part of the mix, somewhere, in where even you can’t now tell.
Now you stand back, watching as other people reshape your sculpture, interpret it to you, stick on their own shapes and ruin it.
You smile. You nod in understanding. Now it is your sculpture.
Making Frames Lancaster University campus screen network commission proposal
I aim to work across as many of the screens as possible within the time – aiming at all, as they are so diverse, and in ideal, non-ideal and unlikely places, giving the project more facets of juxtaposition.
I am interested in shadows, reflections and trace layers of people, and in how much is revealed by the suggestion of presence. Often screens, like glass picture frames, have reflections of the viewer and passers-by, windows opposite, sun streaming in, and so on. I like to incorporate these layers into a piece rather than pretending they are not there. People walking past the screens of watching them will be incorporated into the work by their reflections.
I propose making a piece that evolves over the time of the project, and that works across many of the screens. I will start off with video footage of passers-by – some I may collect on the University campus, and others I will add from my location and places I travel to during the project. I am yet to decide how much of the people I will identify – perhaps they will always be walking away from the screen, or towards. Perhaps I will only deal in shadows. The footage I use will be edited and considered, showing only exactly what I choose, however, how they are inserted into each screen to layer with others will be more random and surprising.
I will add footage of animated people – drawings which also move across screen. I will mingle and layer the footage and drawings over and over, adding new material to separate screens, so that in time the screens show multilayered video, shadows, reflections and drawings of people, mixing together in an equal fashion, all, as it were, going about their business. They will seem to interact.
The screens respond to and communicate with each other, as one person, animated or virtual, may walk throughout all of the screens.
The effect will be intriguing and perhaps ghostly. I aim to summon associations of presence, and feelings of others who may have passed and who are yet to pass by that very spot. Mixing video and animation together reminds that the physical image of a person is just one layer, and that there are other, deeper, more complex and ambiguous layers of psyche and spirit.
I am interested in the suggestion in the brief of working in new ways, and hope to extend the possibility of working remotely and including a live internet feed and a direct webcam into the mix of added footage. I will not just layer film and animation, but have an experimental approach to the possibilities of this multi screen format.
I anticipate sound will be an issue in some venues, and propose to layer whispers in a similar way to the visual material, which can be played or not as appropriate. Multilayered sounds also create surprising elements, as if a collective voice is formed.
People, forms, shadows, reflections, drawings – all will walk in and out of the frame.
I added links to relevant Moving Image pieces.
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