The Body Sublime

Another showing for Seep, at Parlous Arts gallery in London, as part of The Body Sublime exhibition.

This time I will get to see the piece in another context - amongst sublime bodies.

Seep. Eleanor MacFarlane. digital video still. 2009

parlourartscreations.tumblr.com

I had to write an additional statement about Seep and the sublime:

Seep and the Sublime

 Time erases the boundaries of our selves, our bodies, and there is a letting of the person, a haemorrhaging, as we absorb the flow of tidal, cyclical, everyday experiences.

Time seeps into our lives, as we seep into the overlaying membranes of our selves.

..........

Rather defying definition, my favoured interpretation of the Sublime is an agreeable kind of horror (Joseph Addison, 1699). We are drawn to look, and see into the depths. Perhaps the Sublime image is one we can lose ourselves in, and think our deepest thoughts, those without limit. The body is a language we all understand, written in feelings and our experience of time. Sometimes dysmorphic, our own experience of the self is ripe with profound messages.

It's so fascinating to see a piece in different situations - this is Seep's second group show, and it has also been screened at the Whitechapel Gallery.  It would be an interesting exercise to build an entire art career out of showing the same piece all over the world in all sorts of venues. I once wrote an essay about having seen the same group exhibition in two venues in London and Prague. How differently the art came across with the variation in context. The London show was a warehousey, contemporary white brick wall place, while in Prague the work was hung in the most decorative, baroque setting, literally upon flock wall paper. I always thought it is the hallmark of art with integrity that it may survive disadvantageous venues, and still more or less say what was intended, rather than become subsumed by surroundings.

Even so, no background is neutral. It becomes part of the art, and the experience.

23rd February 2012

city university library, making frames proposals

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.

..........

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.

23rd February 2012


Postscript to these proposals:
I didn't get either of these commissions, but I have to say the quality of their rejections was superior.
Really, they were very good - considered, personable, and just saying they had decided to go a different way.
That's the way to do it!
I'm glad I wrote the proposals, and thought up what I would do. I will make those frames.


10th March 2012

Modern Panic

Only this year am I experiencing showing the same work again and in different places and contexts. Up until now I think I've only shown any piece of work one time. It's so interesting and fruitful to see the same work in different spaces and in front of different audiences. Last night was the opening of Modern Panic at The Old Abattoir, Clerkenwell, London, where my piece Seep is showing.

www.guerrillazoo.com/modern-panic

I have mobile phone photos of the set up, but actually forgot to take any of the Private View last night. The space is fantastic, really atmospheric, and truly an old abattoir which seems to be haunted by the ghosts of animals. Although in places well lit, there are areas and tunnels which lead to darkness, and still alarming fixtures which can only mean one thing.

I was given a great alcove for my installation, which is a TV showing Seep on loop. The TV is painted with blackboard paint, and so looks dark and matt. I was going to write the title on it, but found a suitable piece of board on site which I used to write on the piece of writing accompanying it.

Seep

     Time erases the boundaries of our selves, our bodies, and there is a letting of the person, a haemorrhaging, as we absorb the flow of tidal, cyclical, everyday experiences.

     Time seeps into our lives, as we seep into the overlaying membranes of our selves.

In all, I was really pleased with the quiet set up, it looks intriguing, and reveals itself more and more as the viewer approaches. However, at the PV, which was quite crowded, it suffered the scourge of moving image pieces - it was switched off when I arrived! A performance stage had been set up almost immediately in front of my space, and so the whole point was lost. I was able to turn it on, but there were still people writhing in front of it, and lights strobing etc, and so not really accessible.

The entire exhibition turns out to be what you might call a very specific genre. Freaky, sexual, bondage, underground, out there, are words which may describe. There is certainly some interesting and well done work there - imaginative figurative sculptures, use of animal material, body art, and so on.

http://www.guerrillazoo.com/assets/Uploads/modern-panic/cliff-wallace-creature-effects.png.pagespeed.ce.pPCMkRtHlW.png (accessed 4th June 2011)

http://www.guerrillazoo.com/assets/Uploads/modern-panic/george-triggs-tree-man.png.pagespeed.ce.zR1HdoA1Fu.png (accessed 4th June 2011)

http://www.guerrillazoo.com/assets/Uploads/modern-panic/charlie-tuesday-gates-photo-by-nathan-whitham.png.pagespeed.ce.xPfALzLdnq.png (accessed 4th June 2011)

http://www.guerrillazoo.com/assets/Uploads/modern-panic/lefki-derizioti.png.pagespeed.ce.Nw6nc52sXm.png (accessed 4th June 2011)

http://www.guerrillazoo.com/assets/Uploads/modern-panic/simona-umaraite.png.pagespeed.ce.SoGwrTi2JN.png (accessed 4th June 2011)



I can see why they chose my piece Seep to sit within there, although the overall effect of such work, two floors and about 50 artists, definitely weakened and diluted this desire to shock. In those terms, I felt it was pretty lame. Many people in the PV obviously adopt such things as a lifestyle, but must have seen much more intense material in clubs, etc. I personally have seen much more alarming and provocative work in Fine Art and other settings. It's not enough to have slightly subversive subject matter, even if it is having sex with a pig, if the photograph is nothing special and in no way subverts the medium.

However, I am not unhappy to show work on the fringes of genre art. The show itself was well organised, and my piece will be playing on loop in a great venue in London for a couple of weeks for all to see.

 Seep still

vimeo eleanormacfarlane seep

My partner Jon said something brilliant last night, which I will from now on adopt at exhibitions and openings. Confronted by an appliqued alternative version of the periodic table (no picture) he said, "I love all the contradictions in that."

What a useful phrase to say about art. You really can't go wrong in any art situation armed with that. It implies knowledge and insight, yet is completely non committal.


I have previously shown Seep at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, at a screening  session in their small cinema, with questions and answers after held by the curator. That was certainly slightly scary, but mostly because I am unused to this. It's the sort of stress which works and which I would like to have more opportunity to practice. I remember being a little thrown when I was asked why I used digital video and not film, since the work is alot about light and filmic concerns. Only later I thought it through and realised that I am quite committed to exploring and conquering digital media, and making it behave like film as much as I can. At the time I mumbled something about using what I had available, which is actually also true.

I have also shown Seep for discussion in my artists group. Apart from that, it has never yet been shown as I really intend it, playing on loop either in its TV installation or on projection, in the context of a Fine Art gallery. Mostly I have not shown much of my work in this intended setting. While fascinating and useful to see alternatives, setting and context is the final follow through, given the chance.

4th June 2011

Things move on

Technology is a living breathing thing that sometimes is off colour and difficult. I a struggling a bit with an older computer which I use to process films. It needs alot of maintenance, so it is taking time to prepare work for an upcoming exhibition, Modern Panic. Every so often I like to check work is up to speed and exhibition ready, just in case. I feel I am coming up for a major digital review.

guerrillazoo modern-panic

I stop myself amassing more and more material. Unprocessed bulk of images can become unmanageable, so like managing time, I focus attention on what I think will be more efficient.

Sent an application of work to Photomedia Salon 2011, at Charlie Dutton Gallery. Moving image is sometime shown within photography exhibitions, but this time I have sent a still.

charlieduttongallery

Received an email from Oxford Brookes university, asking for a scheme of work I might present there for a course they are setting up. I feel very well prepared to write the lesson plans after recent PTLLS teaching course, but it is still quite a challenge to think of everything in an intensive portfolio preparation course. I am really delighted at this sliver of opportunity, as I have sent I don't know how many applications to get a regular teaching job. This is just what I want - associate lecturer, so it is part time, flexible, and about at the level I want to teach, foundation and beyond.

www.brookes.ac.uk
 

I have yet to track down how I am on their files - I think it must be from Design your Future, a UCAS exhibition I went to for a couple of years at ExCel. Although for students, I reckoned since there were all the art schools in Britain in one place, I would go down with my CV to see if I could get work. Most of the people I know who are associate lecturers got a break through someone they know.

ucasevents

The first year, 2009, I was asked to give a lecture about my practice at Norwich School of Art, and to give tutorials to undergraduates. The next year, 2010, I went down more clued up, with a better CV, having done courses in teaching and things like health and safety. The big message amongst staff was about cuts, job losses, department cuts, and so on. However, I still made contacts and handed out my CV. Amazingly, Oxford Brookes had kept me on file.

It is undoubtedly difficult to get a job within a university, especially at the moment, but people will be investing in themselves more in what they really want to do, and will want to do art. If I were to get some work there, then I will really have a full plate.

When I was at university, I really valued and had interesting and revelatory conversations with the visiting and associate tutors. It gives you such perspective and insight as an artist and student to realise what is going on within your own institution and the outside. I have felt very drawn to the role. I also have a need to do several things at once - studying the MA, the assessing, the reviewing, writing and making work too. I always feel one enhances the other. I certainly learn from each area and link them. Somehow it all appeals to my sense of urgency. Oh, and there's life as well.

16th May 2011

Showing Seep

A moving image piece, Seep, from 2009, is being shown at a Guerilla Zoo exhibition, Modern Panic, in a venue to be announced in London in June. I will have a chance to sell things through this exhibition - something I have been hoping for and preparing for to some extent, so I hope to maximise this opportunity even by getting it together to sell something.

guerrillazoo.com

I have also submitted the same piece to the experimental section of Tenderpixel at Rushes, the Soho short film competition. 

tenderpixel.com

Seep is also the work I have put on the group crit blog this first month. Suddenly it seems to be the most apt piece for these current things. I am actually immensely pleased with it, because it fulfils many aspects I wish to convey, the multilayered ambiguity, and the odd experience of time. I think a sense of beauty can be unsettling and contain what may be called ugliness. In Seep, time and tide seep away, but equally, the effects seep in.

Seep. still

I am (always) planning more work along these lines. It's been a while since I had or gave myself time to immerse myself in making a piece of work like this.

15th April 2011

Archival Correspondent

Sent an application to the New Work Network for the post of Archival Correspondent.
Would you like to root through the past of ‘New Work Network’ and replay the records?

NWN offers a bursary (min 3 months) to support a project examining our archival holdings and representing our historic and ongoing role in the development of Live Art and interdisciplinary practices in the UK.  

new work network 

  

Archival Correspondent Proposal. Eleanor MacFarlane.

An archive is dormant unless awakened. It is sleeping material, as useless as  if it had never existed. It is evidence of past organisation, to be reorganised, redreamt, remade.

We can turn an artistic archive into an abstract enterprise - a mechanical elephant, a virtual cloud, a catalogue. We can arrange it according to colour, or size, or importance of thoughts.

The archive is a mass of material, ideas, masquerading as having a regular relationship with each other. It is merely a cluster of ideas, an arrangement of what has gone before. It can reordered, disordered, compacted, scattered. A library in a book, a book in a sentence, a sentence in a word.

In art something is made of materials. It becomes more than the sum of its constituent parts. It takes a leap, makes new connections, severs associations, subverts expectations.

As archival correspondent I would expect to be surprised, to be thrown and distracted by material. I imagine I will find fissures in ideas to explore, leading me to unexpected vistas. In fact, I will be looking for such byways, perhaps to be led by punctuation, or smudges on the paper, or the smells of musty files.

Perhaps there will be messages, hidden codes, things unsaid. Perhaps the whole archive needs translating into a new language and back again, like Chinglish or Engrish.

I have my own vast archive of material as an artist – drawings and writings since childhood, photographs, videos and others, which I keep live, organise, refer to. It is my visual language, my thoughts made manifest. My artistic approach is methodical with a tinge of chaos. In life I am rather organised, but after I’ve been working I look round and wonder who made all that mess. When the exhibition opens, it is done, and the backstage work is complete.

The role is for archival correspondent. It could be for archive artist, or archive writer, or archive archivist. But correspondent, or in other words, communicator, or disseminator.

Forgive me for quoting Wikipedia: 

Reporter vs. Correspondent: A correspondent generally includes some of his/her own perspective on the news. For example, a correspondent is expected to provide considerable context to the events being chronicled. A reporter, on the other hand, offers largely fact-based reporting. In Britain the term 'correspondent' usually refers to someone with a specific specialist area, such as health correspondent.
 

As archival correspondent I’ll approach the New Work Network archive from the perspective of a curious interdisciplinary artist, an organiser, a writer. I believe in a generous approach to art. I like giving people things, leaving things for finders, swapping things for ideas. I’m used to maximising budgets, and having no budget. Depending on what I find, I initially like the idea of disseminating ideas, quotes, materials from the archive by way of small packages, delivered by hand, by post, to an imaginative and helpful list – to friends, museums, artists, hospitals, colleges, left in bus stops, in cafes, on trees. Perhaps I will set up a swapsies system.I will whisper a low-tech viral campaign, infiltrating blogs, the press, rumours. 

Then the archive will exist in the minds of many. 

Is there a message the NWN would like to be disseminated by their archival correspondent? I imagine you would like awareness raised, the project to be relevant to interested and allied parties, but also I imagine that you are willing to see what happens and to give the role space to breathe. 

I would not come to rearchive your archive, but to pick a thread from it, several threads, and knit them into something different, or possibly into a great knotty mess. Then I will divide it all up into multiples, and share out what I have found, little abstract notions which will bring with them feelings.

I’ll share my feelings about the joy of delving into the archive by pulling out and passing on thoughts about time, about time passing, about receiving presents, about what trace is left of us in scraps of paper. Perhaps it could all be cut up and sewn randomly into books. There is a multiplicity of aspects to be gleaned from this project. Our own minds are our personal archive. Perhaps this model could make us reassess.

I’ll blog and update and be open about my journey and discoveries and process. I’ll use  online sites, social networking, twitter, LinkedIn, artists sites – NWN, artists newsletter and others, and point as many folk as possible in the direction of this project from outside the artistic community. I may arrange collaboration with others when it comes to sending out, inviting suggestions of people and places.

In my roles as Artistic Assessor in Visual Arts at the Arts Council, and also as a freelance book reviewer, I am required to write from the perspective of an individual and individualistic artist – a subjective objectivity. I interpret and translate artistic elements into my own language. As an artist I create my own archive, internal and actual, and translate ideas into form.

I am able to organise projects, having devised all aspects of art exhibitions, including my solo show. I believe strongly in new ways to share out art and the art experience – I actually like the gallery system, and love to show my work within galleries. But equally I have experienced some of my most profound artistic moments in odd places – on the street, travelling, in conversations. I’m sure we all have. After all, art is a human activity, and it is in the human arena that I think this project would come alive. It is not purely an intellectual exercise, although grounded in a rigorous methodology.

I see the role of archival correspondent as an artistic one, a challenge to read between its lines. I will wake up and reanimate the archive, and introduce the element of now. It will perform its function by informing the perspective of now, distilling what has been into what may be.

I know I haven't told them exactly what I will do, which I think is what is wanted in proposals, but I have been honest in my approach, and anyway, I rather enjoyed thinking about this and imagining having an archive to play with. It may be a credible enough proposal if they allow for my back-up experience and CV which shows that I can follow through.

With the MA touching on archive material this would be an especially fruitful project. I've not really thought much or dealt with archives before, apart from my own, and apart from reading about other people's research and findings, and now it seems like a wealth of opportunity and exploration.

4th April 2011

Didn't get to interview with this one, but didn't lose anything through applying, and actually gained a little in thinking through what I would have done and how I would have approached the task.

9th April 2011

Prix Ars Electronic

My system for keeping up with submissions seems to be effective - I've added it to my very evolved listmaking system by which I seem to live, keeping track of all the small and large things.

Sent my animation Personification to Prix ars electronica. 

prix ars electronica 

 Since 1987, the Prix Ars Electronica has served as an interdisciplinary platform for everyone who uses the computer as a universal medium for implementing and designing their creative projects at the interface of art, technology and society.


Often, I look for ways my work may fit in to a submission's catagories or agenda - most are a bit unsuitable, and they already have a clear idea of what they want, which is not necessarily what I have. And like all applications, each has it's own format, it's own preferred way of uploading work. When I make a piece of moving image, I finish off the processing by rendering it in different formats, file sizes, extracts, etc, to have it ready to send for different things. Everything takes longer than you'd think, but I have been methodical for a reason.


Following up Contraption showing at Grimbsy Minster in the Lightworks festival recently, I have been unable as yet to see any documentation or feedback of any sort, so although my piece was played there, I can only imagine it and any response. So far, it just counts as another notch in the CV.


One cannot live solely in the imaginarium of potential or theoretical exhibitions. Similarly, the process of art is not merely to imagine it, or talk about it, or plan it - it's all in the doing and manifesting. As a sometime tutor I have seen that and recognised it with students - fanciful ideas are the food of art, but must be made in concrete form, or plastic.


Memories of a short story (?) about a famous painter who had never painted, a poet who had never written. Reputation was all, anticipation of the works which may be produced, which would probably be produced, if process was not beneath them, and too lowly a task.


As artists we should have fanciful ideas, grand ambitious plans, a lifetime's gallery full of ideas to make and paint. To project our dreams intact, to capture our heightened feelings, to be driven by our intent. To make something, show something, do something. To get it out of our minds so that we can see it, and then have enter our minds anew.


Perhaps art is a sharing of the imagination.


28th March 2011
 

Tutoring / in our time

Applied for more part time tutoring - one is an hourly paid lecturer at the University of Lincoln, another is at the Independent Art School in London. I think my applications get better and better. Good enough for interview and the job I hope - I think I could really do with an MA on my CV.

Also heard from the London School of Liberal Arts venture - I did not get through to the next round, and am honestly relieved. I had sent some more blog entries in their interview process, more on the theme of exploring what the Liberal Arts are anyway. I have a much more broad and abstract view than is wanted. I think the students in such a course should come with their own theme, and devise their own journey through the broad curriculum, much as how one comes in to study Fine Art. You don't have every nuance already worked out for you - the point is learning to do your own research and find your own references. I ended up feeling that the historians and philosophers and educators devising the course already had a very fixed view on what the Liberal Arts are, that is was basically what they already teach, and that they can deliver it. However, for true integration with other disciplines, you need to allow other practitioners to take over, and teach in their own terms and allow students to experience differently, outside the realms of academia.

I think it would be a wonderful education to have a true grounding in the Liberal Arts, to create your own portfolio on your own chosen theme, taught through the eyes of historians, artists, philosophers, engineers. Then later when one has specialised, communication is more possible between scientists and writers, artists and historians, having the basis of a common language.

Radio 4 touched on this theme in In Our Time recently, Melvyn Bragg hosting a fascinating discussion about the emergence of Universities.

bbc.co.uk/radio 4 in-our-time

Broadly, for hundreds of years in Europe students learnt a common Liberal Arts  curriculum in the common language of Latin. Travel was encouraged, and so Dutch engineers could converse with English theologians and French medics in terms they understood. Such a transmission and dissemination of ideas seems like an aspiration today, and makes the sci/art movement relevant but in its infancy.

18th March 2011 

Grimsby Minster

A piece of my work, Contraption, is being shown next Friday 18th March at GrimsbyLightworks mulitmedia festival. I'm really pleased this piece is being shown again - I have shown it before as an installation, and this time it is the video, Sadly I won't be able to go for the evening, so will hope for any documentation, etc, to be sent on to me. Grimsby Minster sounds like a perfect place to show such work - a lovely big old church full of atmosphere and history.

lightworks

It's so important to see work in exhibition settings - to see it play live in front of an audience - you get to experience it yourself in a whole new way, and when people enjoy it or get something from it - there's absolutely nothing like that. An artist friend of mine says it's like a drug, you just want more, and he's right. It is especially gratifying and amazing to anonymously witness a viewer experience a piece of work - to see people moved or taken by something you have created, with no reference to yourself, without your intervention or explaining, is the ultimate. Sometimes if that viewer then finds out you are the artist, they will tell you something about your own work you maybe had never thought before.

I've had all sorts of experiences like this - some people are convinced of their own view of the work, insisting that the piece is very political, or industrial, or feminist or something else. Those aspects may well be there, and probably are in shades, but I always try to graciously accept a different interpretation. After all, everyone walks in off the street with their own thoughts and their own issues, and although I do alot of thinking through and subtle directing in my work, my intention is not to impose my thought. I am offering my view, my take. It can be wonderful to look at the world through different eyes, to read it in a novel, to hear it through a symphony, to relive it in a film. A piece of art can be like a lens you borrow, making aspects visible, understandable, that you bring back to your own outlook.


13th March 2011

Applications

life

Sent an application today to be a drawing/life drawing tutor at London Drawing londondrawing


As I said on my application, I do consider drawing to be a major part of my art practice.

skyline

Drawing

Like many people, drawing was my first involvement in art. The initial wonder of what could be created with pencil and paper is still a fascination, as well as the frustrations that often come along with it.

Through drawing I explore major areas in my art practice – the relationships between light and shade, subtleties and suggestions. I explore things revealed through a person’s shadow.

I have always been fascinated in how sparingly so much can be suggested in drawing – a line or a bulky shape offering as much meaning or menace as an intricate description.

I have increasingly been using drawing in my moving image – animations they may be called, though like my other work they tend to be non- narrative – more a melting or moving drawing – a drawing stretched out in time. I best like to draw with graphite sticks and erasers on very white paper for maximum contrast. I also draw directly with scissors, so the process is quite sculptural – shading and suggesting depths. Shapes, shadows, boundaries of where a person inhabits or exists – these are the areas I seek to explore. The idea of drawing, of making something meaningful out of very little, is the idea of art, and the core of the transformation the artist hopes to make. The simplest things can always be redefined and reinvented, both in practice and in concept.

My preference is for abstraction in drawing, although I value very much the exercises I have done over the years in “proper” drawing and sketching. I draw from intuition and the imagination, and prefer to remember what a thing looks like in order to draw it – this requires that I have done much looking and thinking beforehand. The purpose of my drawings is to express that abstraction and feeling of suggestion, and to evoke.

city

personification

7th march 2011

Application

Sent a piece of work, Contraption, to Lightworks 2011, a one night festival of film, sound and new media held in Grimsby. Although Contraption is 2006, it's still current work in that I am still very involved in that stream of aesthetic and intention, the quest for capturing light.
Yet another in the stream of continuum of applications, proposals and submissions made over the last few years. Once or twice I get through.


Am also involved in a strange application process as visiting lecturer for a new venture - the London School of Liberal Arts libartslondon . It is an online blogging debate. The process is unusual in that we did not submit CVs and the usual form, but had to write a statement outlining our experience and suitability to teach a broad-based liberal arts subject. The forum is by invite and sets up themes - I have started a thread about The Canon and contributed to others. It is all a bit mystifying - as one blogger pointed out, there is no real school as yet, no staff, no curriculum, and they are asking applicants to contribute and shape the entire course. That is true, but still I feel drawn. I am also finding the relentless intellectualism of most posters really offputing - trading references and dry concepts. however, when I have dared to mention this, I've had a positive response, which makes me think that there may be something there for me after all.


Here are some of my blogs - alot of writing, but it has been a chance for me to explore some of my ideas about art in a wider context, and which ideas I am also resistant to.

 - I think what is fascinating is works in the arts which "make it" into the canon and become what we all know. Fashion, politics, waves of aesthetic aside, there are always significant masterpieces which slip through, or move in and out of favour.
Above all, this attitude of what is seen as established culture today, set in stone, written in anthologies, documented in books, museums and websites, is surely as shifting as it has ever been, and it is truly valuable to develop a critical way of thinking which rigourously analyses what is shown today, and in what context and assumptions.
It seems easier to analyse choices of the past, to see establishment through empire or colonialism or social influences, but what of today, what of tomorrow.
What is this white cube way of showing art anyway.

 - I think it's the common cultural references which is interesting and apasite. When talking amongst artists, teachers, peers, we must have a common language, or at least be on the same page. And yet in the creative arts, we are looking to be surprised and to find things we didn't know before.
I like the idea of a personal canon (of course we all do that in a way) but it may miss out something we "ought" to know. Puts me in mind of the very first Sherlock Holmes story where he didn't know the earth rotated around the sun, but had stuck with an earlier version of knowledge because such an area of truth was irrelevant to his current studies. Although Conan Doyle allowed his character to evolve, I though it was a fascinating idea about only knowing what you need to know in your field. We would surely hope for a broader spectrum of knowledge, but we, and by we I mean I, sometimes forget how specialised one's thinking becomes within one's own speciality.

 - You could hardly pick a richer theme and arena than London. I think visits in situe to various corporate and public artworks in the city would fit in with a multilayered approach. There are many statements of empire, and of more contemporary aspirations, comments and memorials. Banking atriums still sponsor large scale art which can be visited by the public by appointment. Also looking at architecture is fascinating in this context

 - I think for creative writing, completing stories, poems, articles,etc, in a different media would be effective - painting a novel, making an animation, making a biographical scultpure...Always talking of one art in terms of another is effective, and working cross media even more so.

 - I think one can have great revelations working cross media - seems to me what Liberal Arts is about. Besides, people learn all the more when they are engaged in enjoyable occupations - no learning need be dry. Personally I trained as a classical musician before becoming a visual artist, and feel the benefit of having resource to many terms of reference and experience.
I love the thought of a creative writing course discovering new forms of narrative through animation, exploring character through portraiture, describing their creative process in drawing. It's a very rich seam.

 - I admit I have been struggling with the definition of liberal arts, and still am after reading through much of the blogs. I think it all depends very much where one is coming from.
If liberal arts is about fostering an analytical and critical approach across disciplines, and providing a broad cultural context, then everything need not come from a purely intellectual context. I'm sticking my neck out here, but I thought I was invited to participate in this forum as an arts practitioner. I have a reflective practice and a background and education across media and am also involved in critique, but I admit I'm finding it difficult to engage in much of these conversations. Maybe this is not for me, but I was expecting more practitioners, writers, actors, artists, etc, more interplay between experiencial ideas and less endless references.
I find myself thinking much more about the point at which prospective students will be at, and how to engage them. I understand that many will have the end view in sight, but I am hoping to trully colaberate in ideas.
There has been talk of leading students to anger to provoke response. Perhaps tutors also can be provoked.

 - My thought on the liberal arts venture is that once one has studied deeply and deconstructed or constructed something, anything, the value in applying those analytical and critical skills to another media is intensified. I like the talk there has been on here of writers sculpting and so on.
As an artist I have had fascinating colaberative talks with scientists - almost the opposite end of the spectrum (since artists prove knowledge to themselves). Is this what is meant by liberal arts? That one form of specialism can communicate with another without always using the same specialised language? I hope so.
There are philosophical elements studied within fine art, and most areas refer to other disciplines. The liberal arts could develop a broad and common language, cultured but not too specialised, rich in reference and experience.

 - Although the truth is that we all come from some point of view or another, we do not do so exclusively. We all cross media and specialisms to a certain extent, and the pursuit of liberal arts is surely to encourage a breadth of understanding.
Frankly, I don't want to have pretend that I have read this philosopher or that book. That doesn't tell me where a person is coming from, other than that it is an intellectual, highly specialised base. In this arena should we all not be able to speak clearly and in an informed manner about concepts without relying on whether we have all read the same books or understand exactly the same references. If we are all educated people in the humanities, or science, or whatever our specialism, I hope to be able to have a meaningful and productive conversation without having to rely on exactly the same language.
Would we not hope of our prospective students that they could talk to anyone in the broad field of liberal arts in a productive way, having shared terms of reference to an extent, but an attitude of openness above all else.
This surely means tackling the same theme from many different perspectives, as many different facets as can be brought together, for example, if it is the theme of history - London and the Wealth of Nations: 1688-1901
or Life Fiction - Helping People Dramatise their Lives,
or any of the interesting threads being discussed, then the same subject will be presented to students by a philosopher, by a scientist, by an artist, a writer, an actor, a historian, a musician, and so on, so that the students the will form their own language and understandings through these multifarious event.
The liberal arts arena opens up and facilitates this birth of new ideas, beyond itself, and beyond each specialism.

I'm sure I agree with that. I think I just find it frustrating when one feels excluded from ideas and conversations because of in-jargon or specialised language. In life, outside this forum I mean, I'm sure we all have great experiences of sharing across media and disciplines.
I find the whole liberal arts idea one in itself really worth considering. I'm sure students of the school, and tutors, will be asked many times over the years just what is meant by the term liberal arts, and will have to come up with pithy definitions. For myself, that is where the key lies.
In fine art the nub of the debate is often about what is art, and does this particular thing qualify as art.
And so I really do wonder, what are the liberal arts?
It seems to be the study and critique of a very wide range of disciplines, and certainly not a completely intellectual pursuit. Practical humanities, perspectives of theories, mulitdisciplinary insight.
I have googled liberal arts a bit, and had a fascinating mix of definitions, suggesting a more renaissance education and a true general knowledge.

 - Perhaps the canon is more analogous to a thinking breathing being. One can untangle endless threads as to why it exists as it is, who decides, and why some works never quite make it into the collective consciousness. It's not that it should be other than what it is, it just is, always changing, always a bit out of step with what it really should be, all things being equal.
I have a lovely old victorian book about concert favourites - some are still in the reportoire, and some are forgotten. I also have a lovely edwardian set of encyclopaedias. full of fascinating and out of date information. Somehow by seeing the inadequacies of past world views (to our eyes) we gain insight into how fleeting and transitory our own world view is, and how reflective our current canon is to our way of thinking.
There is no wrong view of the world - they're all wrong.

 - Identity is a classic arts project, and I'm sure one which encompasses many disciplines. There are so many approaches possible, so many activities and studies, reading and activation. It brings in cultural and contemporary issues, political and artistic concerns. In fact, you could throw anything at it and devise a liberal arts context. I can't make any sensible suggestions yet, because I am only thinking of rather naughty ones where the students create false identity cards to gain access to the house of commons or something like that - point made, but rather costly. However, with a liberal arts actor/tutor, they could spend a day in a different identity, constructing and inhabiting other personae...

 - Having had a reread through posts, my thinking is that open subjects have much more scope for development by all than specific, for example, everyone can hang their hat upon "Identity" or "London and the wealth of nations" or perhaps "Just what are the liberal arts anyway?"
Although any course must be multilayered and highly developed, let's be inclusive at this stage, in the spirit of the liberal arts, and incorporate all disciplines. A rather open topic can bring in all sorts of intellectuals and practitioners, providing many aspects and a wide experience for the student.

- I think with the rapid evolution of photography and moving image technologies, process will become less of an issue. The fundamental elements of photography as an art also move on with technology, with new forms of imaging possible, eg, speed, magnification and manipulation. However, aspects of composition, subject matter and intention remain as the main point of art photography. Across all arts, artists tend to use multi media more than before, morphing all sorts of techniques. As long as new technologies remain tools for artists, increasing the palatte of choices, all media remain valid. When instant digital images are even more ubiquitous, time rich print and photography become more valued.

The onus remains with the artist to prove their photography is art, to become more expert, perhaps more specialised, to diferrentiate their work from the mass of snaps available.
In many fields it is similar - there is a proliferation of printed and digital images and written material.
If it focusses and improves the quality of the very best, then it can be a virtuous cycle.
The medium is a chosen means to an end.

 - I agree that the skills change - artists still use oil paints, as well as acrylics through to multi media.
I think that the young photography student who may never has stepped into a darkroom will approach photography differently from those of us who have, but I don't think their skills or sensibilities are necessarily diluted amongst the mass of proliferation. I think artists use the tools of their time, and will evolve their skills accordingly.
I agree it is changing. One need not always be on the cutting edge of technology to be contemporary.

 - I also love the idea of a set of criteria qualifying entry into the Canon. It's such a bizarre, self- reflecting notion, which would also be illuminating. We may end up with terrible nonsense which would qualify by points - perhaps some do already.
But somehow by picking out qualifying qualities and rules, one would uncover paradigms.
Again, it is easier to see through the paradigms, and analyse the choices of the past, through what has faded from the Canon. Oh, for the awareness too see our own age so. Those early 21st century Londoners, how could they think like that? How could they value those fleeting pursuits and deny the self evident truth?
Perhaps the project should be to project into an imagined future and reload the Canon for then. I don't mean in a sci-fi way, but in a progressive leap, projecting human nature into imagined circumstances.

 - I don't have the same prejudice about the word creative when associated with writing. In this forum all sorts of terms are being cited, writers, references, schools of knowledge, specific philosophies.
Let's not lose the word or idea of creativity. If it has poor associations, then let's reframe them.
Creative writing, fine art, the liberal arts - they all have associations good and bad, and manifest through new definitions.
People know what you mean by creative writing.

2nd March 2011