The following is intended as an aid to conversation. Working in pairs please come to some conclusions regarding the questions below. They are intended to focus your thinking regarding the resolution processes you will be engaging with in order to present work for assessment.
Task
1. Make notes based on your conversation your partner (30 minutes)
2. Group discussion of outcomes,(20minutes)
3. Secondary consideration of issues raised, this will involve converting the notes made with your partner into a short piece of writing (300 words max). Please then send this to the 303 blog, as a comment, attaching it to the relevant post. This needs to be done by the weekend.
Starting Statement
There needs to be a process. A process has parts. These maybe within or outside of the work
Giving an account of the work
1.What did it begin with, eg a related experience, a memory, another artwork, etc
2.How did it end?
3.What can you say about the actions collected within your work?
4.How is it different from other things you’ve done?
5.In what way is it an experiment?
6.In what way is it an extension of things done before?
Editing
7.What criteria are you basing your selection on?
8.Are there criteria you have rejected?
9.What influences you more the idea or the result?
10.Have ideas been sorted through a process of consideration. How have you demonstrated this?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
On Elena:
We discussed how the works revolve around memories and a collection of thoughts and nostalgia. It was suggested photos might make an interesting twist on the drawings, enacting the scenes I had imagined in a sort of stage. The actions involved in it were thinking and contemplating whilst drawing and adding the thought in text, or vice versa. All the drawings we looked at, were from memory, which was different from my usual practice, as usually I draw from photos. I realised I needed to distance myself from the work slightly, to make it more accessible, letting it be read by the audience rather than imposing my reading as the only way. All the drawings are recognizably an extension of visualised thoughts in my workbook, and I have started to make them into their own drawings, rather than a diary entry/thought/doodle. We concurred that I havn't really changed subject matter, in that I am still into drawing people, animals and details, just need to successfully bring them all together. We decided the more successful ones were the short and sweet, "to the point" ones if they included texts, as it was found to cut the audience off the more writing there was, and the more complicated. Making it less personal was also something to work on, as then I would not be upset by criticism if there was distance between me and the work. I found when asked, that I was more interested in the result, in that by the time the result is ready, I suddenly am not so "in" the work, and am amused by it, or am pleased, as I have drawn something that appeals to my thoughts, and explains them appropriately. It becomes an archive of sorts. Despite the text drawings, and the ones of people and animals, I still find myself most pleased and relaxed in abstract or detailed drawings, of say, bark.
On Bella:
Luke and I began discussing the model house painted with slip that was sitting on a circular piece of wood also painted with slip. This object began a discussion that lead to a much more vernacular approach to the work that came from discussing the relations between the work, work space and the objects that litter my desk. The house work began in a slapdash way, combining objects together and this was an interesting thing for me to realise as it made clearer the way that I approach objects. Luke used the term ‘signifier’ but in an opposite sense. We discussed how he saw in my work that these objects are not longer their original use, nor are they trying to claim a new use. This is an idea that I found odd for me as I usually load objects with meaning, imbuing them with endless readings and ideas of my own and others. This semester I have tried to take on board a more holistic approach to art making, not just focussing on the art making but also living. The things I like and spend my time doing everyday are often not present in my work. I want to live in the world more, rather than focus purely on art making and have this living as art. This is why, for the formative I chose to present objects, both altered and not- objects I have been drawn to for whatever reason (like the ‘intelligent birthday candle’ that I bought mainly because I had seen it on a Shortland St episode) and images cut out of old encyclopaedias and Guiness World Records books, and the house drawings that record some of the houses for private sale on trade me with the keywords memories or family. I am not going to start presenting things just ‘because I like them’. The things we are given to read and see and be exposed to in the world through foraging and learning whether they are old or new, are deliciously interesting.
Isabella Pachter
On Ryan:
Elena and I discussed how the focus of my practice has moved from religious themed to a more scientific approach. The human heart was the beginning of this, with no referencing towards Christianity. When we had our discussion, heart surgery was the main concept to the work. We looked at a white, plastic cast of a heart, ambiguous photographs of a fake heart, and a video work of an ultrasound scan of my own heart. These represent a broad range of collecting, with drawing in the form of photography helping a lot. I have never made video work before, so it has been a struggle and will continually be, to try and experiment with the video programmes on the computers. However, the video I created was technically not that hard. In the way of mediums used, it is an extension of what I have done before. Photography and casting with plastics is something I have played around with quite a few times. In a broader sense, it can also be seen that the human body plays an aspect in my work. I decided to base my selection around the idea of how we are strangers to our very own bodies. We have no idea what our insides look like. Yes, pictures have been seen, but not of our very own body. That is why I am so drawn to the ultrasound of my heart. It is so mesmerising as it could easily be something far from a human heart, and almost alien-like. There are a few works which have been left out; due to the fact they are not as successful with the other works presented. The ideas within these were stronger than the result. Medicine and art can be seen as always being linked, however, they have rarely been considered as working alongside each other.
What began as an investigation into the potential of the object through the process of de-construction and re-configuration of separate parts has reached a pivotal point in the project with a new line of inquiry emerging; concerning itself with a more direct approach to the realisation of outcomes that no longer rely on the reincarnation of broken pieces or re-interpretation of previous works, ready-made objects and the revision of ideas. Reflections around a recent sculpture reveal the potential of an object that carries with it no explicit history apart from the evidence of its production through its formal qualities. Casting is now used to create a “singular” work, which is a one of a kind experiment consisting of only one physical piece. An aluminium form is created, cast from a polystyrene referent which is destroyed during the casting process. This new direction would appear to require more clarity in pre-production; due to the irrevocable nature of the cast aluminium, revision must now occur before the fact.
Another of the elements of the current work that I am particularly interested in focusing on from this point is the relationship between, and the reconciliation of content and formal qualities. In commencing this body of work I have been using the specific content of my research as something that helps perpetuate the making and not something that the viewer necessarily might use as a point of access to their personal response. What I am unsure of at the moment is the importance of the ability for some of that content to be more explicitly conveyed through the object itself. The negotiation of ambiguity has involved lenghty consideration and productive discussion in relation to recent work and with that, more and more questioning in the studio revolves around the parameters of what to “give away” and what to “keep for myself.“
The processes at work began out of ‘thinking about experience’. I was thinking about the experience of a work or a place through its reproduction and how that experience is different. This resulted in the making of sculptures as props to be photographed. The action of translating these objects from a physical to a visual medium in effect, places these objects within a discussion about experience. I also felt that the object in themselves seem like they didn’t have a place to be – as sculptures, the bone didn’t really work so well as a floor work, or a table piece. This context issue along with the ephemeral nature of the materials involved, documentation in the ether provided by a plain white backdrop seemed appropriate. Additionally it is evocative of the way most people experience historical artworks. In a sense that aspect of the process is for these particular works is fixed and it is the content – the sculptural forms that have become more of a free exploration – an attempt to try to engage with the process of working through making using the appendage like forms present in the initial two works as a starting point. The result of this process so far has been a work that (content wise) Shannon suggested is more abstracted than my previous work. The object was created through the process of working through making, using some of the forms seen in the bone work as a starting point, but using an assemblage of different materials with organic qualities. Moving forward I’m working towards something that does stand its ground physically, remaining as a sculpture which will speak to these works and bring to the surface some of the discussions surrounding dislocated experiences and euro-centrism that I have been thinking about.
*neeve quotes*
"Everything possible is being done to make him feel that nothing momentous, like flight, is occurring. At no point does anyone suggest that he and three hundred other strangers of unknown mental health status are trapped in a four-hundred ton aircraft flying thirty thousand feet up in the air relying on equations of energy and velocity that no one aboard could sketch out in even their most basic form. Everything in this plane is an interface, like the windows on his computer. Nothing on this plane has anything to do with flying, just as his desktop doesn’t have anything to do with the processing of information. Pretty, pretty pictures. Lovely distracting stories we tell each other. If Alex leans out into the aisle, he can get a glimpse of the brilliance of the illusion: this private experience he is meant to be having is replicated as far as the eye can see. The same meals, the same detritus (the missing sock, the broken biro, the twisted blanket, the plastic water glass quite exploded) the same angle of decline, the same TV screen showing the same father and son playing catch, the same vigilant mindfulness of one's personal space. In this context, leaving the interface, crossing the white line, is pretty unthinkable. It’s a hero’s job – or a madman’s. Accompanied by birdsong, the Zen lady says, “knowledge is the reward of action, because it is by doing things that we are transformed. Executing a symbolic gesture, truly living through a role, this is when we come to realise the truth inherent in a role. When we suffer consequences, we fathom and exhaust its contents.” Alex turns to channel 6 in preparation for watching the popular cinema classic, Casablanca.”
- excerpt page 184 ‘The Autograph Man’ by Zadie Smith
Random House New York 2002
I wonder how far a literal illustration of an idea from a piece of writing could feed a growing body of work. That is how I started, and that piece of writing is still interesting. A piece of writing ends when I stop thinking about it, usually because I’ve replaced it with something else that pursues the same argument more sophisticatedly.
When David and I were talking, I hadn’t made a connection between this approach and the actions present in my work, but there seems to be. There are many moments of borrowing in my work at present - even casting can be considered a form of borrowing. I’m curious as to what can be done with never producing anything of my own but just becoming very discerning with choosing assemblages from existing things. In a way that is how I have come to be with my reading. I read lots. I photocopy lots, but I hardly ever annotate or write about what I have read. I’m equally curious to see if I can say what I want by only using other people’s words (and why does this seem much less acceptable than me only ever tracing someone else’s drawings?)
Julia Chiesa
I began the project from my observations of time management and measurement while watching things around me without judging them or putting them in a category of “this is this and works in this way”, etc….. I began with a Wide mix of Video footage to measure time in abstract ways. As for my usual art practise and the ways in which I work usually (in the past), I have had much trouble taking my videos apart to their simplest forms. Ana still brought up the idea that “Less is more” and I still needed to take the work further apart. I could say I began with a complicated arrangement of footage, maybe a bit distracting in a sense from the subject by the use of editing and shot mixing….it was a bit too much in the eyes of Ana and Sophia. I could say I was told in a way to work backwards, from my edited mumble jumble to the mere raw footage being individually shown; as that was more easily understandable. This is a very different way of working for me, to make things simple is very hard for my mind to see because the work is made, and then the work is taken back apart, and remade as simple footage. But this gave me many new ways of looking at it all, sometimes, often, it is hard to step back from it, so this was very useful for me. It is fully an experiment and has brought my thoughts to lost time from measuring time. I would say that it is similar in the use of everyday subjects as I have done before, but I do see a new juice approaching. I have rejected some of the videos that have been looked at as “not fitting”, either because of colour, pace, speed, movement, blandness or similarity with others. So my selection was partly my own partly what others have said. The result influences me more because I have chosen a very wide subject or idea, Time, and how people and myself react to each step in my process is what changes it into a next step. It ended with blackness: which is real time; nothing. After my session with Sophia and Ana, I stayed and reworked on what they suggested and showed my new work from a new look at it. This is where I have come so far…..
This project began with an idea and some mediums/methods I wanted to try out. The idea was, basically, artificial intelligence. The aspect of AI I was most interested in was the social complications that would arise if actual thinking robots existed and conveniently this problem lends itself well to the mediums I wanted to explore (programming, electronic things and such) However, he project has evolved since I started and is now much less focused on society's interactions with robots and more on my own relationship with the things I build. The work is at a half way point at present as I get used to the idea of my practice becoming the final outcome. I don’t believe this can be a sudden changeover as I like to evolve slowly, carefully and gradually rather than making sharp turns and continually branching off. Making a preformative work that focus’ on me will be very different from what I’ve done in the past as I’ve only ever hinted at my presence in previous works. I tried to present my work so far so that it interacted with ‘me’ (the beanbag) the ideas I’d finished with presented as finished, the developing ones in communication with me and the new ones being worked through.
My work began with the interest in memory and how it connects to one’s childhood. I went through progressive stages from making small mock-ups by fusing dolls from the dollar shops to looking at film stills from Google images and consolidating them. Then I went on to look at traditional death rituals (Buddhism mainly) and what are the bases for some of the concepts, beliefs and mythologies (of Hell) revolve around, which relates back to how we create false history and how ideas can be passed on simply by word of mouth or certain imagery. Julia and Ana talked about the stages that led to my drawings and how they are more readable as compare to the works I’ve done before. There is no doubt that the drawings are tools to facilitate a performance piece, which will be discussed and presented in the second part of the semester. The idea inevitably influence the work (vice versa) which results in the final outcome thus in my opinion one cannot work without the other. I base my selection mainly on the aesthetic qualities and how thoughts and perceptions can be altered through relationships between the ambiguities of materials, forms and actions. The later part of the investigation involves casting with sugar and liquid glucose and using the outcome (sculpture) as a performance/ video piece.
Louise…
We discussed how work I am focussing on has been drawn from present and past experience and memories. I focus on artwork that always somehow relates back to uneasiness or an inaccessibility problem. This is been the product of a childhood experience. (Growing up in a home without the means of touching or playing with toys, as one day they be deemed as collectables or antiques, and I huge profit may be made) Our works both deal with boundaries, but this maybe the only relation between the works of Yo Na’s work and mine. Using ideas of inaccessibility but in the opposite sense is how the work is aiming to end. Presenting the unseen, in an appreciable way. The bacteria is claiming a new objective, no longer is there uneasiness about it. I am blurring the difference between art and science. The medium is very different in terms of creating it for ‘art’; I have used agar jelly before but for a science project. But the underlying idea is similar to that I have done in the past. It is an experiment in the way that I am growing bacteria; it is a test to see what will grow and what I can do with these colonies of bacteria cells. Also experimenting with a previous idea becoming an extension possibly. The reaction of the viewer I guess is what I am basing my criteria on. The idea I suppose influences me more, they are forever changing. But I feel the idea is more important because it is the starting point. It the result turns out to be not so successful, it is the idea that keeps you going, but in a new direction. Consideration of work is demonstrated through different stages of work. I take an idea, toil with it, and then move on to another idea. Separate pieces/ ideas of work are documented.
Notes:
This project began as a result of experiencing Aboriginal art in Australia at the time of the Sydney Biennale. I found I was attracted more so to the aboriginal artworks than some other contemporary works. This intrigued me, so I came up with a hypothesis as to why I was attracted, which forms the conceptual framework to the project.
I think that the relationship between Indigenous artworks and the mainstream has inverted. We are no longer analyzing Indigenous artworks relationship to the mainstream but the other way around – mainstreams relationship to Indigenous artworks.
The actions collected in the works are visual illustrations and experiments, which explore my hypothesis. This exploration uses Aboriginal art as a visual tool and academic processes as a means. The dictionary definition is an experiment because it is not literally stating what I want the viewer to get from the work. The brainstorm is an experiment because I don’t know if I will reach my desired outcome. However, the fact that I might not is interesting. My discussion with Sophia and Julia raised some good points for me to think about. Are the works too literal or too ambiguous? A solution could be to have an artist statement or exhibit two works side by side. How am I engaging and countering established art history in my work? (As the work with the appropriation definitions is confusing to (them) someone with an understanding of art history).
Post a Comment