The Underground

 A collage of diagonal lines is mirrored through sharp steel shapes, converging towards a silhouette of a human figure. The female can be seen wearing a coat down to her knees, although it is unclear of her identity. She has long light coloured hair, tied into a pony tail. The coated figure is stood in front of a grid, tiles which are reminiscent of a swimming pool, however not under water. This semblance of water is repeated through advertisements which are reflected by the metal. Corrugated teeth form horizontal steps, which get closer towards the woman, interrupting the pattern of line. Twenty-five can be seen, before they are merged by light. This light stems from seven white holes, overhead and once again converging to the centre, but cut short by an arch, separating the ceiling from the moving ground. Disappearing into the reflection, the steps give a gradient affect, suggesting an ongoing illusion of foreverness, as if you will never reach the top. Combined with the isolation and cold metal, the escalator appears eerie, as though you are lost within the geometric lines and forms of the underground. 

Phootshoot 2

From London to Worcester 

Edits continued

Tips:

• Take ALL the photos and don't delete them until you've looked at them on a computer screen, even then I'd keep them in, just in case...
• Back your photos up
• Actually get round to developing your film

Editing

Street Photography

After referring to my contact sheets, I edited a few images in Photoshop elements. I experimented with overlaying images to make a photo-collage using different layers and opacity's. Here are the final edits:

Aspect Lecture #4

Fiction

Here are my highly anticipated lecture notes on 'Fiction' by James Fisher.

note: Thinking about changing the space between the viewer and figures in the work just really reminded me of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, you can watch the opening monologue here and I'd highly recommend it even if you've already seen it before:

Other than that...the most important things I took from the lecture were;

• Thinking about your relationship with the material and thinking about the making process; is it autobiographical?
• Thinking about news way to tell stories, through photography and film.
• How do you know when a story is over? How do you know when something's finished?

Ryan Gander as a curator

Night in the Museum - Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

"The role of curator is one of gathering and collecting, grouping and assembling- instincts innate in all of us. Choosing what clothes you put on in the morning, what objects you arrange on the mantelpiece or even what to eat when friends come to dinner are all curatorial acts...Just because we are not knowingly being creative and curatorial, doesn't mean we are not being curatorial and creative."- Ryan Gander

This exhibition questioned the role of the curator as a mediator between art and the public, looking beyond traditional relationships; changing the relationship between the contemporary and traditional art, and the viewer, in some kind of weird art threesome. 

• Could think about other ways to present work together, rather than just putting a painting in a frame on a wall.
• Consider space in a different way, galleries have lots of empty space, how can you use it better?
• Are there any themes that run through the work which can be used to link it together? (i.e. blue)
• Think about how the viewer will see it

Digital Collages

Forgotten posts...

Whilst typing up the notes from the crit I realised I hadn't actually posted the work I was presenting. I have been digitally manipulating photos relating to street photography, layering them with my paintings on acrylic. Some of them seemed to 'work', or 'do something' for me, with others not so much.

     

Tabula

How do you look at art?

Thinking about group crits and how to attempt to 'read' art. 

"The best foundation for any fresh consideration of contemporary art is to start from zero"

T- TIME Give the piece a few minutes, what are you looking at?

A- ASSOCIATION What can you relate it to?
B- BACKGROUND Look for clues,
U- UNDERSTAND What is the artist playing with, e.g. line, texture, surface
L- Look Again- using this knowledge and understanding
A- Assessment- Will you applause or escape? How does it make you feel

'Ways of Looking: How to experience Contemporary Art' by Ossain Ward

Life Drawing

Linear bodies

One of the key things that I learnt from doing my footnotes assignment on 'How To See The World' was the significance of taking a step back from detail, and seeing things in their simplest forms."We assemble a world from pieces, assuming that what we see s both coherent and equivalent to reality".This inspired me to explore how I can use shapes and lines to break down complexity, implying figures and going beyond the surface, and almost through the detail and into a new way of seeing.

Exploring surface

How does the surface effect the relationship between the artist and the work?

To develop my ideas surrounding surface following the lecture, I experimented with using different materials to create a differing physical surface. In the back of my mind I had the idea of painting on a transparent surface to see the effect this had on the atmosphere and connection to the piece. I headed to Homebase and bought a sheet of transparent acrylic. (note= add this to Christmas list) 

Taking it back to the studio I stared at it for a bit, not sure how to start. After a few hours and trips to Mcdonalds/the vending machine I decided to snap it in half (so professional), viola, two sheets of acrylic. I then went back to the sound clip from Digbeth and the paintings I had done. Prompted by these, I masked areas of the plastic and printed onto the acrylic using the same wallpaper samples and acrylic paint. The shiny and slippery surface made it difficult to print directly and carefully on to, though this might have been because my 'technique' was to place the wallpaper onto the plastic and stand on it to transfer the pattern/texture- looking back I could have possibly invested in a roller..

The two pieces of acrylic directly on top of each other, with a white table as backgdrop

My ideas to progress with this are to place either piece in front of each other, and light by an artificial light, making it more of a 3D work- Looking at how the distance between each sheet of acrylic, and the background, affects the result. I may then possibly film the installation, returning it to a 2D form, before showing this film, combined with the sound clip through a TV screen.