Thursday 13 October 2016

Flat Earth News


Devotees of my work will surely remember my seminal Flat Earth installation and accompanying screen-printed book that I made at the end of 2015. Since then ideas about Flat Earth theory have been nagging away in my mind like some kind of well-meaning but irritating acquaintance so I have decided to explore it further and make a more resolved and visually satisfying project.

The main bulk of my work this year is 4 projects - 2 per semester - so they're supposed to be fairly weighty. For my first project of the year I decided to make a newsletter based on the Flat Earth News which the Flat Earth Society published in the 70s-90s, Reading the newsletters I was struck by the ridiculous phrasing and naive graphic design and thought it could be fun to make my own version as a sort of parody.





I started doing more research into Flat Earth theory and thinking about various subscription-based and fringe publications. I tried some risographs and stencil screenprints


I was struggling a bit to focus my ideas so decided to make the first edition a "Broader Horizon" issue and started developing some garish visuals and ideas which were quite in keeping with my installation. I was becoming frustrated with it though as I was finding it difficult to make anything that actually looked good, then I had a crit and completely psyched myself out about the whole idea, feeling that it wasn't enough, and veered very off course.



I did loads of research reading some articles and a collection of articles in book form called Lost At Sea by Jon Ronson. In that I read an article about a man who reinvented himself as a soul singer called Mingering Mike and made cardboard records, record sleeves, and recorded tapes spanning an entire fictional career. This got me thinking about outsider art which was interesting, learning about people with an uncontrollable urge to make things without necessarily intending anyone to see them. This made me feel pretty bad considering I had been sitting about for weeks doing virtually hee haw in an attempt to come up with something really original and smart. The more you think about creativity the more it can completely elude you, and the act of making can spark ideas, so I decided to revert back to my artists' block go-to and make some collages.




I was thinking about dimensions and flatness and made a collage with paving slabs which I thought was quite effective:


It was the only thing I'd done so far which I found visually rewarding so I got more photos of pavements and started playing about with collage screen-prints:





I'm pretty happy with how they look so far - I feel much better about the project now that I actually have something to show for it. Now I just need to work out how to bring together all the separate elements I've been thinking about into a final piece.