Little Boats

To get myself back into the printmaking workshop I set myself a couple of wee print projects during the Pole Tay Pole project. I wanted to do more with the lino boats I had made so decided to experiment with a bit of colour as I'm usually lazy and just use black.

Not exactly reinventing the wheel but I liked playing about with repetition and composition and I love the simplicity of these prints!

Pole Tay Pole - Final

Busy week this week in the printmaking workshop, interviewing people and doing some creative writing workshops which definitely brought out my dark side... Maybe the less said about that the better. Settling down now to write about Pole Tay Pole last Friday which went really well! Great turn-out and it was so nice seeing everyone's work in the space. Thought I would just post a few photos of my piece in situ (and some cute group polaroids).

Pole Tay Pole - Development

Installed the exhibition today at the D'Arcy Thompson museum! Was pretty last minute in getting everything together but it went OK.

It took me a while to decide exactly what would be in the box. I read the book Whalehunters: Dundee and the Arctic Whalers by Malcolm Archibald which was a surprisingly good read and gave me much more of a detailed insight into the conditions these men worked in and their day-to-day lives. I also did more artists research looking at Will Mclean and Marcel Broodthaers on the recommendation of my tutor.

Flicking through my sketchbook I found a photo that I had taken of a photo at a museum of a whaling boat, which was pretty blurred and almost illegible but I quite liked the way it looked.

It's a colour photo but I liked the idea of printing it in black and white using the darkroom so it could almost be a picture from the time rather than a photo of an old photo... Nice idea but in practice I really couldn't get a good print from it as the photo was pretty underexposed in the first place and printing in black and white from a colour neg gives a really flat image. Nonetheless I had four hours until my deadline so decided that the photo would have to do...

I decided to line the cigar box with ruled paper to mimic the boxes I was looking at in the D'Arcy Thompson museum.

To give the lined paper a fake aged look I stained it using tea. I kept the teabag to include in the box as I had been reading about how the sailors loved tea so much they would risk smuggling it onboard the whaling ships. Their love for rum went even further - often sailors would deliberately fall into the icy water as they knew they would get a warming glass of rum afterwards! As I am a lover of both liquids I decided to include the netting from a bottle of rum I have in the flat and the teabag I used. The netting also points to the nautical theme as it almost mimicks rigging on a ship.

I started experimenting with oiling paper using linseed oil as a reference to the whale oil the sailors risked their lives for. It gives a nice translucency to the paper which reminded me of the paper I had been looking at at the uni Archives.

Two happy readers, topics of interest are whaling and the Boer War. #archiveseducate #archivesinspire pic.twitter.com/QKx301GQS6

— UoD Archives & RM (@UoD_Archives_RM) February 2, 2016

I found a list of names of men who sailed on the whaling ship Intrepid which was written in beautiful copperplate handwriting. I decided to include a list in my box with my name included. The grid also added a bit of structure which I can't resist.

 

Attempting to mimic the handwriting was probably one of the most challenging parts of the project and again due to time constraints it wasn't as successful as I would have liked.

Finally I couldn't resist adding in my little boat linos which were probably one of the most interesting things to come out of my project! Going to work on them further in my own time and experiment with a bit of colour.

Pictures of the final piece to follow!

Pole Tay Pole

I'm working on a project right now about the Dundee whaling industry and polar exploration. It's a subject I hadn't known much about but I'm really enjoying researching it. I went to the McManus Gallery as a starting point as they have a lot of items relating to Dundee whaling and followed that up with a trip to the Discovery to find out more about Antarctic exploration.

It's been really interesting learning about an industry which was totally brutal to both man and whale, but also completely vital to Dundee's economy. We had a talk at the D'Arcy Thompson museum which was interesting to see how these polar voyages linked in with science and specimen collecting at the time.

One story in particular really stuck with me which was a case of four whaling boats being separated from their ship and having to row all the way to the nearest land which was about 300 miles. Only one man survived and he had to have a double amputation. So many of the stories I've been reading are about ridiculous endurance in the face of totally hellish conditions.

Doing this research has made me think about how I would cope in such conditions (I wouldn't) and also about the almost hidden role women had in the industry, getting on with life whilst their men were away at sea and not knowing whether they would return. There are a couple of mentions of captains' wives accompanying them on whaling voyages but as you might expect there were no female whalers (from Dundee anyway). I've been thinking about making an exhibit inspired by the cigar case displays in the D'Arcy Thompson museum putting me in as a female whaler as a sort of curiosity type thing...

I need to work on my concept and how to execute it but at the end of the project my class is putting on an exhibition at the D'Arcy Thompson museum called Pole Tay Pole which should be great! Really looking forward to seeing my work in the space and seeing what everyone else comes up with.

Selection Box

So Friday went so well! So well in fact that we've set up a Facebook page for Selection Box and are planning to do more events in the future so keep a look out! Well over a hundred people attended including people that we DIDN'T KNOW!

I had a nice wee set-up for the stall with a paper mache stand that I made out of cardboard and a Chinese newspaper, it looks pretty cool so I'll be using it in future for craft fairs etc. I kept my stall quite simple with a few prints up on the wall but I wanted to keep most on the table for people to rummage through. Got some great feedback on my work and spoke to some interesting people. All in all the night was a brilliant success, can't wait to do another one!

Flat Earth Installation DJCAD

There's an exhibition of selected work from the third year modules up in the art school right now! It's well worth a look, there's some great work to see. It was a good opportunity for me to revisit my Art and Science final and reconsider it for a different space. My original piece was too large to assemble in this exhibition and I couldn't put up shelves so I used plinths of different levels to play around with height.

While the installation was a rushed job I actually think it looks really good in its new conception and possibly a bit more refined than before!