I had an induction the other week. I really enjoyed learning a new process. This etching is done with a hard ground which is quite tough and requires quite a sharp object to mark it. With hard ground etching the lines you achieve are very fine. The gray background is due to the image being on a steel plate which has quite a rough surface and picks up a lot of ink. If I were to use zinc or copper plate the surface would be much smoother and the image produced would be cleaner.

I have also tried soft ground etching which seems to suite my style of drawing much better. With soft ground you can make marks with much more blunt objects and also make marks by pressing textured surfaces like fabric in to the ground. I tried putting paperclips on the plate and putting it through the press which resulted in almost negatives of the paperclips.

The great thing about learning to etch is that I can continue with it at Hot Bed Press after I leave university.

“Many of his works operate like drawings and at the same time can also be described as the thinnest possible sculptures. In his Hole Punch Pieces, the effect of the punched surface is both spatial and linear.” (http://www.axisweb.org/ofSARF.aspx?SELECTIONID=20310)

Folded Hole Punch Piece, 2006, A4 paper with hole punches

The simplicity of Hughes’ work is quite refreshing. In most situations where art work involves commonplace objects presented in some sort of installation, there tends to be a ridiculous concept behind the work that I don’t understand. I don’t think that Hughes’ work has any hidden meaning, he is simply displaying objects and their functions in a visually desirable way.

‘I side with things, and not with materials’, he has said; ‘Functional objects express themselves, not me’. (axisweb.org, Dean Hughes, contribution to Dysfunctional Objects seminar at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 20 March 2009.)

Boxes, backing card.

Pin Drawing No.2, 2006, A4 paper with thread and pins

Staples pushed through A4 Paper, 2005, A4 paper with staples

Bent Staples, Bent Staples on plinth, Dimenions Variable, 2006

All images from Dick Smith Gallery website: www.dicksmithgallery.co.uk

Rubbing of split pins using roller and black oil paint.

Photocopy of rubbing of paperclips which was made by wrapping paper round the paperclips.

Are there any other reasons for using these kinds of objects? I had a tutorial with Ben White and he wondered if there was some connection with the fact that I was using paper clips, standard A size papers and so on. I don’t know myself, I don’t think I intentionally use these things because they all connect together, I just choose them because they are there. Since the tutorial I have started to think about this theme more though. In the past couple of weeks I have started to realise that “less is more” and that I don’t need to accumulate ALL my ideas into one tiny space of time or one piece of work. SO, perhaps by limiting myself to standard sizes of paper and just the paper clips I can create more coherent work.

At the moment I still have a fairly wide selection of objects that I use to make images. This is great for experimenting, I can keep a record of the types of images that certain objects make and return to this when I want to use these patterns at a later date. But I do have quite a haphazard way of making these images and have accumulated rather a large stack of drawings and prints that I am not sure how to sort through. Something that came up in conversation with Ben was this idea of having a ‘system’ of image making. The idea of organisation relates to the subject of paper and paper clips. I can still use my image making/reproduction processes like photocopying, screen printing, playing around with scale and so on but I need an organised approach. I’m thinking along the lines of the sequence of images I created for the collage exhibition…..

Rubbing of paperclips using monoprinting ink and roller.

Ben mentioned an artist called Dean Hughes who works with things like paper and pins. (More information about him in the following post.) His work made me think about how I could use the materials in the oraganisation process of my work. I have used graph paper before to draw and print on, I want to start using it again along with lined paper to make organised and systematic patterns with paper clips. I hope adding this paper in suddenly won’t throw me off track too much, I’m really trying to cut down on random tangents! However, it seems to fit in with what I’m doing.

As for all the other images I’ve made using spit pins, washers and nails, I have many ideas for them: make large scale prints by enlarging patterns made with objects, giant rubbings by covering a surface with lots of objects, LOADS more drawings and prints!

1. Had a meeting about the Drawing Group exhibition. Just did a round the table discussion about the things people want to exhibit. Some fairly diverse ideas. I am happy with the number of people who want to do the exhibition it is a nice comfortable number I think. I am slightly anxious about the fact that I will have to curate the exhibition but I will rise to the challenge! Plus I have a reliable bunch of people who I’m sure will all get stuck in putting work up. I need to come up with a rough plan of how I think everyone’s work will fit together. I also need to think about what else I can do to give the show an edge so it doesn’t just look  like assessment work. (Mental note to self: I will do all the labels for the work so they all match!)

2. A Tutorial with Hazel on Thursday 18th which was rather useful. Basically she could see immediately that there was a pattern in the work I had up on the wall in my space; the rubbings of masking tape, paper clips and other household bits and bobs, experimentation with surface patterns, manipulation of the images etc.. I had made some new work in a sudden rush towards the degree show. I took images of the light shade in my room and made these in to screen prints. I liked the images but didn’t know what else to do with them.  Hazel said quite bluntly that she didn’t see a connection with these images and the rubbings. She was absolutely right. She reccomended that I spend a couple more weeks experimenting with the work on the wall. I said that I wanted to work bigger and she suggested getting lots of paper clips and large paper and making a large scale image. After this tutorial I went a bit mental in Aldi and Staples and bought loads more paper clips and household fixings like split pins etc.. At the weekend I got my Dad’s tin full of screws, nuts, nails and bits and pieces. I spent ages making images using these and I really enjoyed myself. I think I know which direction I’m heading in now, I just need more development time.

I knew Davenport’s work already having seen some in London and also after watching a documentary on him. What I particularly like about his work is the importance of process and materials. In this way I can relate my work to his. It was great to see and hear in more detail his development from Goldsmiths to the present.

Davenport began by talking about some of the paintings he made during his third year at college. He had been focusing on paint pots and the way that the paint drips down them. After painting more and more paint pots he eventually just painted the elipse of the top of the pot with the dripping marks. He realised that he was more interested in this idea of the liquid moving. His interest in seeing what materials can do is the driving force behind his work. I really like his inquisitive and playful approach to materials.

Some of the next work Davenport showed us included paintings where he’d used pins to put a small dot of paint at the top of the canvas and let it drip down. He said that one day when he was doing this he left the studio window open and the wind blew the dripping paint across the canvas. He then decided to use electric fans to create the effect himself.

One of the things he said which which should be very important in my practice is that when he discovers a technique or process that he likes, he repeats it over and over again until he masters it. He can then either develop this technique in different ways or let it run its course and move on. I think something that this is something that I should be doing. I feel that I skip very quickly between different things as though I have to rush to find the perfect idea for my degree show. Really I need to spend more time on each of my ideas and explore them fully.

Some of the other processes in Davenport’s work include pouring large amounts of on to a flat surface. His “Poured Paintings” are a result of a long amount of practice in pouring differnt coloured layers of paint over each other onto MDF and producing these arch shapes.

He said he spends about three months finding a process and experimenting with it and will then spend a long time producing work using that process. With the poured paintings he spent a few years making various versions of them, using different paints and colours, different compositions, mulitcoloured pannels together until he felt there was nothing else he could do with this.

When Davenport moved on from his poured paintings he started to produce my favourite paintings, the stripey ones!

Warwick University Comission

He’d previously experimented with pouring paint down the canvas using things like a watering can. This time he  had been inspired by a fly curtain at a kebab shop and how it was blowing in the wind and the lines were not quite straight. He wanted to do this with his paintings.

I really like Davenport’s puddle paintings. He produced after seeing the way that the paint collected at the bottom of his poured line paintings. So he played with this idea by folding the surface he was painting on, allowing the paint to collect and then flattening the image out again. It leaves a really lovely swirly effect at the bottom of the image.

Puddle Painting

What I really like about Ian Davenport was that even though he is so successful he is still very down to earth. He makes a point of not using ridiculous jargon like some artists do and he doesn’t over complicate his work. It was encouraging to see how much his ideas and practice actually relate to mine; his interest in art and the everyday, art as an industrial process. Seeing the way he works has highlighted a lot of things that I can improve on in my practice. Plus I now want to research his work more along with other process based artists.

There were three sculptures on show; Wild Man, 2005; Spooning Couple, 2005; and Mask III, 2005. What is really interesting about Mueck’s work is that it attracts all sort of people and not just the regular art gallery goers. I think this must have something to do with our natural tendency to want to look at the bizarre and uncanny. As is well known, it is the manipulation of scale with these works that makes them so unnerving. Wild Man was particularly striking because it was about twice the size of a normal human being and so realistic it was quite scary. I liked the way he was posed; naked and vulnerable, he is a giant man and yet he looks more scared of us than we are of him.

My other favourite of the three sculptures was Spooning Couple. These figures on the other hand were no bigger than your arm.

I had a meeting with Hannah Mosley the Arts Engagement Officer at Nexus on Thursday 4th Feb. We had a really good discussion which was actually really useful to me. First of all she really liked the examples of work I’d emailed to her, which was a good start. What Hannah said was that as the outcome of my project is  so vague, we couldn’t yet discuss how it might be exhibited. However I can use the cafe almost like a residency and come in and work whenever I like. Hannah was really interested in the idea of me using my experiences at Nexus to create a body of work. So rather than jumping through hoops to try and score an exhibition, I can use this time to create good work.

I’m going in on Wednesday to start working in public basically. I’m going to try and experience all the different things that Nexus has to offer; life drawing, music, exhibitions, night cafe etc… and use my image making processes to record everything.

What’s really nice is that Hannah will keep checking up on how I’m doing so hopefully this will help me work more systematically and productively. Plus it will be nice to be in a different environment.

More to come on this……….

Some ideas I’ve had for the actual event are:

Large scale drawings with audience participation, the drawings can be cut up at the end and given away to people.

Documenting the night through drawing and then creating a Flickr page with the drawings

This could be interesting….. more to come on this……….

I initially wanted to set up a drawing group to explore and discuss the possibilities of drawing with other students. I also wanted to force myself to draw more because for me, ideas come from drawing.

So far, we haven’t quite been pushing the boundaries of drawing in our group sessions. We have been drawing mostly from observation but I have been enjoying sitting quietly in a small group just drawing what we can see.

I have booked the Link Gallery in March for a “Drawing Group” exhibition. I want to encourage people to see drawing in quite a broad sense and think about the possibility of work they can exhibit. I was afraid that people might shy away from exhibiting if they didn’t consider themselves to be “good” at drawing. I’ve had positive response from people so far with ideas of what they want to do. Phoebe is considering experimenting with lighting and shadows as drawing. Bonnie has mentioned that she would like to create a piece of animated drawing. I suggested to Ed that he could do a 3D drawing as he is experimenting with that kind of thing at the moment. Ashley has come up with some ideas for group pieces in which we draw objects from different angles and display them as an installation.

I am going to organise  a group tutorial to discuss ideas further.

Lora and I have opened a bank account dedicated to our degree show fund. We feel very proffessional now! I have set up a blog for the degree show too.

http://thedegreeshow.wordpress.com/