Reflections from the weekend. Reading this week. Audio files from Brendan

10/2020 The display of my community works should be part of the actual final outcome. I.e the effect on people. Not of the artworks but the event or way it is displayed. Do I wait until Corona is over. And do something for everyone? We don’t know when this will be. Craft artworks that state this length of time. So not just specific to lockdown?

The river is Public. A quilt is Private. Textiles tending to be private -> Quilt -> Public display?

24/10/20

Inspired by the banner project from the girl guides in 2018. This is number one a great thing to organise, and number 2 it created some beautiful banners which are truly artworks, would love to have seen an exhibition. Thinking about how I can be inspired by the techniques and imagery used in these banners. What ties them together is the deliberate green and purple colour way. Then the maker can instil the work with their personal language. I suppose my limitations in fabrics creates that colour way, a tie across the quilts. I want to make my embroidered quilt next and then hope to make a larger banner style with inspiration from these banners and also Helen Johnsons paintings. The imagery, textures and patterns, and how shapes push and pull into the background. This needs careful consideration but I need to increase my skill base before I feel I can tackle this.

 

24/10/2020 I just feel I need to push this blind-feel painting further. Try to paint someone else, or another body part. And also attempt more layers to bring things into relief.

Also potential for something more, under the paint/marks

-        But what? Lists 

-        Pages from a book

-        Images from a magazine

Using the two blue water colours?

 24/10/20

I am starting to think about the essay topic for HACS, we have to put our work in context with other artists and theories. This is a great way to get people thinking about this, because art making can be quite introspective. I am trying to think about where I would place my art, and looking at all the different qualities it has, overall though I am trying to create a discourse, a back and forth, between myself and society/community/etc through my making. I am not making something for it to be a thing and that is that. The thing or object is a communication device. To communicate time and place, with a narrative behind each (ideally) material used. And to ultimately achieve some sort of social interaction. I think I need to work more at documentation and photographing etc my work. As ultimately it is where I place them and how I use these objects that counts. They are a material record of my investigations. Investigations into how things are made, the history of an item or material, the history of a place or area, the record of a time/trend etc. How I use these objects may be key and I need to write about this more.

Reading: Nicholas Bourriaud: Relational Aesthetics

Relational Form

Artistic activity evolves according to time period and social contexts. Critics need to view contemporary art from the same place as the artists. 20th century fight between rationalists and irrationalists all hoping to end in emancipation but ultimately with tech and corporations making it easier to exploit and dehumanise. 

'It is not modernity that is dead, but its idealistic and teleological version.'

Art is no longer to imagine and create utopias but to question/change the 'existing real'

Art no longer needs to be viewed from the aristocrats tour of their home (although it is now commodified and used as investments)

Relational art 'encourages and inter-human commerce', is it the 'materialism of the encounter'?

'There are no forms in nature,  in the wild state, as it is our gaze that creates these, by cutting them out in the depth of the visible. Forms are developed, one from another. What was yesterday regarded as formless or 'informal' is no longer these things today. When the aestheetic discussion evolves, the status of form evolves along with it, and through it.

Drawing Projects

Instant personal declaration of what it is important

Marks are an alphabet

Marks are merely a component of drawing

How we read the marks, and whether they come together -> good mark making, is subjective

Energy, communicate and express qualities of light and material substance

Present the eye with changes of pace and rhythm.

Express the medium the drawing is made from

We get used to the medium and how we hold and use them – can change this which might create a different mark. The marks can suggest at the emotional state of the artist.

 Vitamin D – new perspectives in drawing

Early experiences, global visual language, drawing and on the material world, less specialised

Lines draw across spaces, cultured (and culture of) drawing and its associations 

John Berger on Drawing

Drawing is discovery, looking at the object, or dredging of memory (store of past observations), mark leads to the next

Different to painting, recreate and situate in the painting