Space
Sometimes delivers
Unanticipated
Outcomes
*tea break*
Research
30.09.2019 - revisit to an unfinished piece - play
I went shopping for craft supplies and finally they had the graphite putty and double graphite powder available. I snapped them up and went home to explore
I moved on from this to a canvas that had been inactive for over a year. It sat motionless with its geometric grayscale lines staring at me from the bookcase. so I decided to play.
I HATED it immediately! So I took it to the shower and hosed it down.
Some of it washed off and left traces. This opportunity gave space for the graphite powder, applied with wet fingers like paint. A WORK IN PROGRESS
Week 2 - Tutorial Notes- Mon 30.09.2019
potential for the sensory experience of touch, sensory awareness without physical data. anticipation, blind artist researching objects and touch, Kimberley will be helpful, material encounter and anticipation. heightened awareness, an altered state that we experience in an instance, you're heightened awareness as you go in. Newness. This lack of experience, uniqueness, primacy of touching, material encounter.
once it's happened it can't be experienced. is the work about the experience, are we creating an
disruption - normal and accepted anticipated interaction -
piece in the pods - could be a space that quite analogue, sensory experience
john cage - 4.33 piece, - stage setting exercise - unanticipated - exists differently at that moment
inviting the audience into the piece - the anticipation of the participation for the artist and the participant
predictability of putting art work out there
increasing the scale of the lack of control - sound, movement
Kira O’Reilly - body work and blood - invited people to cut the body 1-1 - the audience can refuse to participate
marina - distance, table, audience
when does potential become risk and the risk become too great, - how do fear and experience and the response go, is its step to far.
live arts festival in Scotland - annual -
where does the invitation come in to it, at what point does the artist connect with the viewer - does it still have a value,
how does the invitation -
selfishness - think of others - care - as women - make sure everyone else is okay - procrastination through cultural way of being - gendered bias, - cultural conditioning- 'our work' making it a toil and acceptable - develop a piece
Week 2 - Thinking for Tutorial - Sun 29.09.2019
Thoughts on touch, when is the tension of moment actually done? When is the initial sensation over> How long do goosebumps last?
Before you even start? They are a symptom of anticipation
Sometimes an indicator of the frisson of the thrill. So actually happen in the moment after the anticipation and the experience of initially felt
I use the book form and couldn't explain is, it just felt right. Now I'm writing and thinking about the primacy of touch, a lack of experiential information first hand, I can see a link between narrative as depicted in prose and poetry. An author leads you, page by page, somewhere, the anticipation is intrinsic, it is what maintains the action of turning the page.
Book as Anticipation Containment. A 'page turner' whats going to happen next, how will the material/line/substrate behave as we flip it over. What will be revealed...
Interruption
Heston blithe then
Antihithis study - antonyms
Can these be applied to this form
Glory holes- photographic sense? Negatives work - analogue photography, can you photograph something as a negative, what would work? Too obvious
Bridget Riley
Weaver - anne Albers
The writing over in Notts castle
Being watched and written about
How can the participants
Control feel sor the opposite how will the audience react. Can cater for aspects or your audience? Should you be?
Displaying Interruption Heston b…
Why do I deny myself pleasure?
I hold back
Refrain
Contain
Silence my desires,
Until they explode
I stop drawing
I stop my touch
I refuse to commit
Why do I deny myself so much?
Week 1 - A review of the summer - Sun 22.09.2019
A review of the summer, the aspect of change. New job, new thoughts, new activities.
moving from making to walking to running. Towards the end of the 2nd year, I experienced a number of transitions both artistic, personal and professional. I began to seek space by walking in the evenings, alone, in my neighbourhood. There was no reasoning behind it but one day I ran instead, and I never stopped. I have spent the summer running through the varying degrees of heat and humidity, finding a quiet space in the pounding of the pavement. The experience of running in the hostile Middle-eastern climate was visceral, the air so dense with moisture it bombards the skin, filling the lungs weighting clothing with its dampness. The tactility of the experience lead to an anticipation of event. The longing to get out of the cool ac and the freedom of exposure to extremes. Hot air has a smell, its violates your nostrils, occasionally bringing with it the fragrances of evening pollinating tress and smell of over heating cars and hot tarmac.
I moved out of teaching in to a position at an arts institution/gallery space in Dubai. The summer was spent getting to grips with the new role and facilitating workshops for adults and children to while away some of the hours inside out fo the Dubai heat.
On the personal level, I have been questioning and exploring the affects of cultural conditioning, the expectations of both society and the self, as imposed by cultural conditioning. How much influence our upbringing, relationships and circumstances have on our attitudes, values and beliefs. Its been a tough and highly personal journey but I do feel like I have grown and opened as a being to wider options.
I have spent a large potion of time reading and writing, mainly poetry alongside fiction works and some theory. Exploring the sensations of touch, longing and anticipation. Poetry tends to cover topics of romance, heartbreak: effectively its a way of expressing intense emotions. I found myself anticipating these emotions, desiring them or considering how they effect me as the reader. The words evoke a sense of empathy, stirring memories of similar experience. shared experience.
I began to consider how art works create the shared experience, but how many audience members are not aware of the shared experience in the moment. We tend to move daily, consumed by our own experience, considering our next move, our needs, wants and desires. Occasionally we are aware of the requirements of our loved ones and friends, the basic needs that we may facilitate or them, I'm thinking of those of my daughter or my husband. The reality is that these are my assumptions of their needs and desires, they are informed by snippets of conversation or by my own needs and desires in the case of my daughter.
Living is a shared experience, we share space and breath, but how often do we actually acknowledge the community aspect of living other than to complain about interacts or lack of space etc.
With the growing debate on climate crisis there has been heightened awareness of the shared experience, pf the shared responsibility of humans. We are more aware of the act of consumption. It has been argued that to live is to consume. I am intrigued by the way we consume space and art.
The consumption of art in institutions tends to be a shared experience, in the larger museums and galleries it is rare to be alone with a piece of art work, even in the smaller spaces there will be a security officer, gallery assistant or even a cleaners present.
Public artworks are created and placed in spaces where consumption is shared, the experience of the work is shared, it is effectively designed for the shared experience.
The artworks that have struck me the most, and I keep coming back to are those of James Turrell's 'Deer Shelter' and Miroslaw Balka's 'How It Is' as they were inherently shared experiences, Balka's piece commented on the shared experience of the concentration camps in Poland, but as an individual entering the spaces the experience is purely internal and personal. The shared space is experienced and consumed in an entirely different manner given that the way we consume and interpret experience is dependent and informed by our preexisting memories of space, art and experience.
June 2019 - Overview and thoughts on MA2
This year really pushed my critical engagement, I resisted at first. I found it tough to move the practice out of my comfort zone, not the practices comfort zone as I have control over it until it is released. Starting the projections inside my place of work maintained the security, I really didn't see the works potential until I projected the videos on to the supermarket, it didn't matter too much about the engagement of the audience, but mainly that there was one. It presence became routine, it was there when they entered the building and still playing when they left, I would like to explore this further with much longer viewings, perhaps over days to see how this varies the engagement. I'm interested in the philosophy of the Event, how can a staging of and Event change the events experienced by others, the constancy is the time and location, the collision is within the events of their own lives.
This year changed the notion of 'chaos' to 'collision' and brought with it the theory of the event in philosophical writing. Inherent in the event is the notion of time and space, these things were so glaring obvious in my practice, I had already referenced them but in a subtler way. Clarifying this context was an epiphany moment. I am so grateful to the tutors on the course for guiding me and allowing this to be unearthed!
Writing is a sticking point for me, I really enjoy story telling, I like the way words play to the point that it has made its way in to my practice. However writing the contextual study was hard work, I was nervous about relating my work to that of others, which I do believe is a confidence issue more than a writing one. I need to work harder next year on maintaining a consistent writing practice. Allowing the work to be compared and discussed in the same space as other artists looking at similar themes or working in a similar way gave the work strength and validation, this was unexpected as I had been taught in the design space to strived of originality, but finding these contemporaries also open the doors for growth and possible collaboration.
I ended up really enjoying the Testing Boundaries task, although I do wonder if I would have felt the same if I had not had the opportunity to project the work at the music festival. I felt such a high from the work being so large and consuming, and the feed back was great. I don't know if it would receive that same feedback from a critical art audience though. Showing my work in public was empowering as an artist and led to self-evaluation and further development of the work. I am taking away from the project that perhaps some works are better shown in their current state and evaluated after rather than striving for perfection and never getting them out there.
A visual of the course. Missing are some photo-books I created and didn't have time to photograph and a video that is under construction.
My videos: https://vimeo.com/thisiskatievw
My poetry: https://hellopoetry.com/ThisIsKatieVW/
Final submission
My submission for MA 2 is defined by three sections.
Sparse Collisions:
three book forms and a collision diptych
Exploring the notions of constancy, materiality and collision.
Dense Collisions:
a book form, two diptychs, four videos (two have an accompanying drawing)
Tactility, space, repetition and fracturing
Language Collisions:
A book of poetry in digital format, two videos.
Violence and texture of language, repetition, pause, motion.
The poetry book:
I feel that although separating seems counterintuitive for cohesion, these varied paths make a lot more sense over the whole practice. It defines and clarifies the intentions behind, the search for weight, for space, and for interpretation.
I felt that a cohesion appear when I completed a rewrite of my artist statement for the year. I complete a minimum of one revisit a year although it has been more the past few year due to submissions to programs and exhibitions. I really enjoy this process as it helps clarify the practice in my own mind, identifies the key elements and points of passion.
Statement 2019
My practice explores the ways in which every-day rhythmic collisions provide opportunity. The overall aim of the practice is to explore the boundaries between awkwardness, manageability, quietness and the containment of collisions. Fixated on reoccurring compositions within my work, I studied commercial textile techniques; creating work using techniques that had replication inherent in their processes such a weaving, printmaking and embroidery, embedding my practice in materiality and tactility.
Working through these repetitive processes that produce singular outcomes, I was intrigued by the monotony that leads to a conclusion. Reflecting on how humans transmute routine to accommodate changes of circumstance, and how the minute collisions provoke disparate reactions and actions in people, I aimed to capture the gradual decline of routine through the repetitive cycles of discipline and disruption.
My current research augments this conundrum involving tactility, consumption and time. I’m currently working between handheld artworks that challenge the audience’s security in viewing, and a larger, more immersive practice utilising projection. Interestingly I am most inspired by the concepts behind the work of installation artists James Turrell (Deer Shelter Skyspace, 2006), Miroslaw Balka (How It Is, 2009) and Olafur Eliasson (The Weather Project, 2003). Their works promote a state of meditative contemplation in a communal viewing space and are best observed over a length of time due to the artists use space and light. They raise questions about public space; creating collectivity while maintaining individuality. They coerce the viewer into relinquishing time, breaking routine and halting motion while consuming the work.
Sent with submission
In the Karin Mamma Andersson video from Articulations and Intersection she discusses that the artist is innate in the work, that there is always an element of subjectivity. I agree with this, I am entwined with my work, I have a need to create it and it comes from a passion. What the drives the work forward is the community of knowledge that I access to discover more, the thoughts of those before me and those along side me. The work does take a life of its own, my job it to allow its voice to be heard and not over shadowed by my hand. I feel I have come some way to embracing that this year, to allow hints of myself into the work while still allowing it to stand alone.
Supermarket sweep
