Thursday 31 July 2014

Dead Tails, Dead Roots


Dead Tails, Dead Roots is a collaborative sculpture project by 3rd year Art, Philosophy and Contemporary Practices students at my art school. The work was 5 large figures made out of found materials.
"Their project undermines the idea of fixed meaning, alluding to extinct myths and the loss of their origins."
The figures were placed in a variety of locations; dotted about a corridor; standing in a circle facing inwards which was pretty intimidating; and most successfully (in my opinion) in this piece of disused land down the hill from DJCAD.


I loved the way the figures interacted with their surroundings so I took a few photos.


To see more pictures of the project have a look at their tumblr.

Arte Povera - Matches


One of the first things I did this year at art school was the Arte Povera project, the object being to produce a sculpture inspired by the Arte Povera movement. I didn't especially like the brief so I basically spent two weeks messing about with matches.







Like most of my projects I wasn't happy with this at the time but now I think it's actually a pretty successful project. I wanted the outcome to be fairly subtle and I spent a lot of time just doing different experiments, trying different methods of "drawing" such as smoke on tracing paper. I also liked the forms of the burnt out matches. I presented my final piece, a suspended sculpture, as a handmade book.








Wednesday 30 July 2014

Universe Journal

“We inhabit a universe where atoms are made in the centers of stars; where each second a thousand suns are born; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Milky Way; where a thing as beautiful as a galaxy is formed a hundred billion times - a Cosmos of quasars and quarks, snowflakes and fireflies, where there may be black holes and other universe and extraterrestrial civilizations whose radio messages are at this moment reaching the Earth. How pallid by comparison are the pretensions of superstition and pseudoscience; how important it is for us to pursue and understand science, that characteristically human endeavor. ” 
Carl Sagan, Cosmos


The project I did on the big bang is one I suspect I will keep revisiting. Recently I found an amazing quote by Carl Sagan which summed up everything I feel about science and decided to incorporate a shortened version into another book.


This book was pretty simply made, I just wanted to test out an idea I had about using holes to show expansion.


I used fineline pen and a ruler to draw out the lines, collage, and watercolours.


I like the way the image builds up and almost creates a mirror image effect.


I finished the book off using a photo I had taken of my friend Maya at Mills Observatory in Dundee, which I had liked but hadn't found a use for yet. I liked the shadow clock and thinking about the different ways that people try and chart time.


Sunday 20 July 2014

Giulio Paolini Exhibition


Today while my group of students were at Madame Tussauds (grim), I took the opportunity to go and see the Giulio Paolini exhibition, To Be Or Not To Be, at the Whitechapel Gallery. I had been meaning to go to the Whitechapel for a while anyway to see the new relief work on the building by Rachel Whiteread, a beautifully subtle addition to the facade.

On entering the Paolini exhibition I was confronted by a large black and white photo on a canvas, showing the artist standing behind a stretcher frame. This made a couple of recurring themes clear from the outset  - the idea of viewer as artist and artist as subject, and  ideas of shape and composition suggested by the strong grid composition. There are several more photographic canvasses throughout the exhibition, many of them using the effect of mise-en-scene or mise-en-abyme, again with the artist as the subject, which reminded me of Luigi Di Sarro photographs.
 
Blank canvas is a recurrent material in the show, self-consciously exploring the nature of making art and artistic potential – a blank canvas can become anything. Canvasses arranged in rigid grid formations dominated the ground floor, with sparingly drawn lines and occasional prints and other objects interspersed to make large but aesthetically fairly minimal installations. Paolini’s crisp clean lines, and simply but precisely rendered line drawings, either classical looking figures reminiscent of old marble statues (raising the question of creative influence), or figures representing the artist, are arranged to make the viewer consider questions of composition, potential and artistic intent.

Upstairs there was a large room split into three, each containing a large installation. The first was a mise-en-scene representation of an artists’ studio, with a cubic plexiglass desk, with clamped on lights and a chair. On the desk was a miniature easel faced by a small chair showing that in the making of the piece Paolini is examining his own practice. Surrounding the piece there were lots of scrunched up pieces of pieces of paper suggesting the myriad possibilities available to the artist and the lost potential of work which doesn’t come to fruition.

The second of the three sections had a large installation of plexiglass screens with cut out sections and transfers of footmen all facing in different dimensions making the piece very dimensional. Several different objects – pieces of paper, two chairs (with caned seats which brought another element of pattern and geometry into the work) and a polyhedron with a transfer and drawn lines, surrounded the main plexiglass screen.

copyright Giulio Paolini
To me this piece strongly evoked abstract concepts of space and time with its historical references and precise lines. I loved walking around it and seeing new perspectives and different shapes framed by the structure.

The straight lines and shapes are strongly reminiscent of perspective and compositional aids and geometrical rules, for example the idea of the Golden Section, continuing the idea of historical influence by evoking classical drawing and formal techniques, a concept which carried through to the next and final piece.

This was another plexiglass table, similar to the first but covered with lots of different drawings and prints – some of outer space, some of old anatomical and scientific line drawings which brought to mind the Renaissance and the beginning of proper scientific enquiry and its relation to art. The sheets were arranged as though scattered on the desk with a torn arial view of a man – presumably the artist – laid on top of the other sheets in a scene which suggests a frenzy of creativity. However, order is restored by another sheet of plexiglass which is laid on top of the papers, holding everything firmly in place and giving a sense of weight. Another cane-seated chair sits by the table but this one is on its side as if thrown down by the artist in a rage which gives the work a feeling of tension. The fact that it remains on its side also makes the piece oddly humorous as though the artist has chosen to preserve the scene of his frustration in an act of self-mockery. This was the perfect ending to an exhibition which explored ideas of process and composition in an interesting and highly enjoyable manner. 

Saturday 19 July 2014

Generation x Urban Outfitters Window Designs

Right now I'm down in England working for a company that teaches English to kids from abroad. I'm enjoying it but am looking forward to getting back and completing my latest project. I recently won a competition to design and install a window display for Urban Outfitters in Edinburgh in association with GENERATION Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland - here is the announcement on Facebook.

The brief was to create a display that reflected both the Urban Outfitters brand and GENERATION - which is a celebration of the last 25 years of contemporary art in Scotland, featuring loads of Scottish artists at different galleries across the country.

Here are the original designs - I used pretty low-tech collage and drawing to communicate my idea.




Right now I am sorting materials for the install with the guy who does the window displays for UO Edinburgh. It's so exciting doing a project where cost isn't a limitation. I'll post photos of the actual window in August when the install is complete.