Inside- Artists and Writers in Reading Prison

"In the great Prison where I was then incarcerated, I was merely the figure and the letter of a little cell in a long gallery, one of a thousand lifeless numbers as of a thousand lifeless lives."

- Oscar Wilde, De Profendis, 1897

Today I visited the Inside- Artists and Writers in Reading Prison event. .The exhibition is centred around it's most famous inmate Oscar Wilde, containing paintings, sculpture, photographs, videos and writing in the cells, along corridors and in the prison chapel. It is the first time HMP Reading is open to the public, after it was closed in 2013.
Taking place throughout the original Victorian architecture, the exhibition featured work from artists including Richard Hamilton, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Wolfgang Tillmans and readers including Patti Smith and Ben Whishaw, among others.
As well as being eerie and ghostly, the exhibition was also very touching at times. The graffiti on and scratched into the cell walls bought the exhibition back to reality, making it really thought provoking. I highly recommend this exhibition and feel as if the atmosphere of the building can only truly be felt when inside, walking up the stairs, along the corridors and in and out of the cells.

The outside of the Inside Reading Prison Exhibition

Exhibition info

HMP Reading from level 3

Wolfgang Tillmans video 

A cell on Level 1

Part of an installation by Doris Salcedo

"I'm stood in a field in a scarecrows hat"

Graffiti in a cell

Weight (2016) by Steve McQueen in a cell

Oscar Wilde's cell door in the former Prison chapel

Details of Oscar Wilde's door

For more/detailed information on this exhibition visit:
https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/inside/

Aspect Lecture #2 Surface

/The outer covering of an object./

The texture of a work can be important, with seductive surfaces drawing us in, but can also be repulsive. Texture is very important to me in my own work, as I feel it creates an atmosphere and gives the work more substance. 

This lecture also focused on 'beyond the surface' and how Agnes Martin used surface to portray a state of mind. "Anything can be painted without representation, I never painted a grid with squares..." I feel that the surfaces she uses in her work creates a mental connection, almost meditative, between the viewer and the work. An intensity only seen when in front of the painting.

Agnes Martin, Untitled #3, 1974

http://surfacelecture.tumblr.com/

Fine Art Crit #1

"Art doesn't have to represent anything"

One of the things I've struggled most with about the course so far is the idea that contemporary art doesn't have to be directly representative of anything. It is important to have and be able to form your own opinion around a piece of work- It's what it does, rather than what it's supposed to do. 

During the Crit our lecturer asked someone else doing the joint honours with Psychology course "Would you say it(the piece of art) is an experiment?". I think this is an important question to think about and in my own personal opinion I think all art is to an extent- the artist changing the materials (Independent variables) to see what the effect is (Dependent variables). This has led me to think about my ideas in a more structured, almost methodological way, and consider what I am doing. 

Focusing on my own work, he suggested I could try presenting the paintings in a different way, combining them with the sound to create a moving image. This is something I want to explore. I am thinking of filming the painting from a tripod- layering it with the sound to bring it together. I may also try layering the works digitally, using photoshop, or physically, prehaps printing onto transparent plastic or tracing paper to combine the images- putting one in front of the other to explore ideas of space  and how it effects the work.   

Responding with paint

How do you paint sound? 

I took the sound clip I recorded and picked colours which I felt best matched it. I chose to use blue, green orange and yellow, to mirror the atmosphere of the audio. 

To tie my work back to the Subject of 'Wallpaper' I used wallpaper samples from Home base(other DIY stores available) to contact print onto other paper. This allowed me to create layers which overlapped, matching the chaotic noises throughout the sound. Silence was also important and to reflect this in my work I used masking tape through some of the layers to leave empty spaces. 

After experimenting with different materials I found acrylic paint was the most effective to layer and get the intensity I wanted to create quickly, However I also found using chalk pastel and glue to add different textures contributed to the surface of the paintings. 

Here are the two most successful outcomes, which I think well capture the sound:

 

To move forward I need to think about how to present the work and whether or not/how the sound will accompany it. As the sound is 'for an enclosed space' I'm thinking possibly putting it through headphones (to bring the audience directly in) or to surround the art as more of an installation than a still piece.  

Experimenting with sound

One of the things I noticed whilst on the London trip was that I was attracted to works which were loud, slightly chaotic and not necessarily still, so it became clear to me that I should consider adding these features to my own work. 

I used Adobe Premiere Elements to edit my audio clips, piecing them together, and overlapping them to create a continuous sound that brings the audience into my work. All of the sound was recorded on my camera, a Nokia D3100 to ensure it was of the same quality. I think it works in terms of creating an atmosphere and giving narrative to a piece of art, as my main goal is to bring a viewer closer and make them think.

A photo posted by Rosie (@rsprcy) on Oct 8, 2016 at 12:03pm PDT

You can listen to it here:

Moving forward I need to consider ways of linking this to wallpaper (through the patterns and repetition).

How do you draw sound?

What does sound look like?

How can I transform vibrations into an image?

From portraits to line

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and face the strange) Ch-Ch-Changes

I've decided that although I enjoyed looking at portraiture and how identity can add emotion to work, it doesn't completely sit with my other ideas and thought processes. Throughout my portraits I found that line and linear patterns were what interested me the most, so that is the direction that I want to go in. 

I feel this change will also enable me to bring wallpaper back into my work, tying me closer to the brief and give me a stronger focus.

Portraiture

You can tell a lot about someone by their face. 

Facial expressions and shapes within the face help to build a strong narrative, adding to the connection between a work and the viewer. Sometimes this link is explicit, for example in a piece of art showing clear emotion, but what about when the face is distorted or overlapped?

One of the things I took from the Aspect Lecture on space was the importance of the viewer having to work to understand what is exactly going on, letting them form their own ideas and opinions surrounding the work.

To help me with my technical drawing skills I asked people I knew to send me photos of their face- which I then drew and developed using different materials. 

Hannah, Acrylic Paint

Ellie, Fine Liner

Jay, Charcoal Pencil

Leah, 2B Pencil

Poppy, Charcoal

I then used Photoshop Elements to overlap and manipulate the images digitally. These were the results-

A practise attempt at making a digital collage of faces

A second attempt at the collage

Final attempt at overlaying drawings of people- changing the
opacity allowed me to create a better 'flow' of the collage

Aspect Lecture #1 Space

Art is dangerous.


Here are some notes I took from the first Aspect Lecture on 'space' by Richard Allen.

In summary the things I took from the lecture were ideas on how proximity and the intention of the work affect the relationship between the art and the viewer- I think it is important to make whoever's looking at the work think about what they are seeing.

I was also interested by Janet Cardiff's 'Opera for a Small Room' (2005) and want to look further into how installations can be linked with sound and wallpaper. 

http://spacelecture.tumblr.com/

Digbeth First Friday

The train's at 6.20, don't miss it...

Before Friday, I'd only been to Birmingham once before- and that was for a shopping trip with a friend. This time we were headed to Digbeth's 'First Friday'- an event which sees the first Friday of each month come alive with open studios, live music and street food.

Digbeth, although obviously run down, to me had some kind of industrialised magic about it. I don't know whether it was the eerie atmosphere but I felt inspired to create something walking through the streets(almost definitely just me). I mean maybe it was just dark and I couldn't seen properly but I felt like I was in a movie and I was a really cool DIY scene artist walking through the wreckage and on my way to making some kind of masterpiece which would then make me rich, famous and never have to work again... so I recorded it.

I took sound recordings of the train journey and walking to the studios which I want to edit as a part of my sound for an enclosed space. I personally find trains (Especially London midland ones) quite claustrophobic, and the noise can be quite overwhelming- so there we have an enclosed space. In the future I hope to create my own area, with physical artwork that mirrors the sound. I am also going to layer the audio clips to try and make my audience feel involved in the whole narrative of the work, as if they're there with me, at the station, on the train, walking the streets.

Digbeth's first Friday, October 2016 

London Gallery Visit

Are we nearly there yet? 

I feel about 10 going on a school trip, walking with partners in a line. We leave the university at 8 and don't arrive in London til 12, suddenly I'm taking back every time I moaned about the 2 hour journey from Norwich to London.

James Richards at the ICA

Requests and Antisongs

Sketchbook page from the exhibition

William Eggleston at the National Portrait Gallery

Portraits

Sketchbook page from the exhibition

Tate Modern

Sketchbook pages from the exhibition

What comes first, the material or the idea?

Here are some photos that I look during the day. I wanted to look for structures and architecture that might be useful in my own work. 

What IS the relationship between?

FIRST YEAR

Sat in a dingy, incandescent lit room in halls, we see a tired, confused first year student reading her first Fine Art brief. 'What's the relationship between....' a list of subjects and a seemingly unrelated list of objects.

What IS, or could be, the relationship between wallpaper and a sound for an enclosed space. 

Wallpaper                                                                                

The wallpaper adds to the haunting effect, in 'The Shining' by Stanley Kubrick 

• Everywhere
• Surrounding
• Pattern
• yet Empty, Isolating

Sound

• Voice
• Overlapping Sounds
• Pattern
• Loud
• yet Silent

I want to focus on the repetitive features of both wallpaper and sound, looking at sharp lines and edges which mirror sound- with the enclosed space aspect linking to feelings of isolation, possibly echoes?  

I need to go out and take photos of industrial structures and overlapping objects-> perspectives etc, and try to recreate the effect by experimenting with mixed media techniques to see what works best.
I also want to experiment with the use of portraiture and voice, as I think both wallpaper and sound can have a very strong narrative feature.