Assessment criteria:

As I said before, as I’m not entirely sure about all these categories I’ll just put a sentence about each and let Diana feed back to me.

1) Demonstration of Visual Skills

I think my food paintings came out very well and I used a variety of techniques and materials. And was visually aware of how the new materials would work on the paper. Painting on a 3D surface also showed visual skill in adapting to my chosen technique.

The coloured paper was mixed, as I only minimally used the fact it was coloured but I used a variety of techniques with small paintbrushes, big paintbrushes and impasto and the paintings evolved over the series.

My line drawing was weaker. I saw the ‘collection’ as a boat and though it was difficult to draw big, on A1, I thought the outcome was less skllful than my other paintings.

2) Quality of outcome

I take this as how well I achieved my aim.

The food paintings captured the essence of the collections, which I was amazed by, in a unique way and were, in some ways, better than my conventional paintings. So, I’d give myself a tick for these. Similarly with the 3D painting as I set to make a 3D painting look like a painting on a flat canvas… it was a bit of fun but I think it worked, especially when I put it in a frame.

My line drawing looked like a boat, so even with the weakness in drawing I think it worked in this category.

And my painting on coloured paper, where I wanted to let the technique change the painting outcome worked too. I painted in quite a different way with a palette knife to fine brushes and the outcomes reflected this.

3) Demonstration of creativity

I think I need to work on this, not in terms of having creative ideas and having a go, but in working through those ideas in my sketch book and trying out alternatives. I tend to have a ‘creative’ idea and then launch into the final painting.

With the food paintings I did a try out which involved a process… and this informed how I tackled the exercise. So that shows creativity.

However, with my line drawing, 3D painting and painting on coloured paper I just launched into it. This doesn’t mean they were devoid of creativity, as my ideas and the way I carried them out were creative, but that I experimented and learnt on my exercise rather than in my sketch book.

4) Context

I think I would score well on this as I put a lot of time into it and research the artists and paintings in some depth.

COPPER: Leaves a warm glow underneath the layers of paint.

1. Nadia Hebson b. 1974 – English

She paint on a variety of surfaces including at least copper, zinc and canvas and in a variety of styles from semi abstract to art decorative to realist portrait.

White Tree: 2003, 31 x 25 cm, Oil and glitter on copper

White and brown are quite opaque colours and I can’t see the copper glowing through, maybe in the gallery you can see it.

It seems odd that she has used glitter when it might have been more interesting to scratch off the paint to reveal the shiny copper.

Much as I try I can’t see that (in this case at least) this could not have been painted on coloured paper, white canvas or any other support… the main difference will be that it’s firm and very smooth so would encourage a certain painting style.

Lucien Freud: b. 1922 d.2011

Boy Smoking, 1950–1, 15.5 x 11.5 cm, oil on copper

In the Tate it says:

“To create this work Freud took a used copper etching plate and prepared it with a thick layer of white primer. He then employed sable paintbrushes (as opposed to hogshair, which he would use almost exclusively from 1956 onwards) to apply a smoothly blended mixture of oil paint and tempera to the copper plate in fine, even brushstrokes. The white primer was left exposed by Freud to produce the lighter areas of the painting, except for the very brightest parts, which he created using a fresh application of white paint. Freud used thin washes of grey and brown underpaint to create areas of shadow around the boy’s eyes and hair. Each section of the painting has been given equal focus by Freud, establishing a uniformity of detail and flatness, characteristics not present in many of the artist’s later portraits.”

Obviously, reading this, the copper was completely covered up so Freud wasn’t using it for the warm glow. But, he did have a very specific way of painting… and it would be very smooth, just the bite of the gesso.

Like painting on watercolour paper but hard, durable and without any of the problems of absorbing the carrying medium, be that water or oil.

It may be one quality of the support that a painter can use in a particular style of painting but given that these two famous painters don’t use it for that, I suspect it is more favoured for its hardness and smoothness.

Genieve Figgis, b. 1972

Acrylic on canvas

Genieve drips and drops (one headline called her… Drippy, Dippy, Do!…) her media onto a supporting surface. In the OCA textbook it says she drips oil and enamel paint onto a copper surface, she probably did in the past, but after 20 minutes looking through her paintings I couldn’t find any of her drip paintings on copper.

Again, this doesn’t seem like it’s about the reflective or colour quality of the surface… and in her case the surface was easily changeable to canvas which makes sense if it’s just about dripping paint, in fact the canvas might even give her a bit more control as it has some ‘teeth’ and will grip the paint a little.

But generally, Genieve will have very little control over the paint, hence the childlike quality… I don’t think her paintings are childlike, but equally I don’t think they’re great paintings and certainly not ‘Art’… Pollack they’re not.  Her style is however very distinctive, even if a one trick pony… if it sells sell it. It’s a great USP… the DRIP LADY!

ALUMINIUM: 

Geraldine Swayne… b. 1965

Je t’aime moi non plus, 2014, 7.5 x 12 cm

Interesting… she uses found imagery, often titillating (which gives her works an appeal over and above the quality of painting). Her media is oil paint which, judging by this, she works with a small brush and also lets pool naturally.

I don’t know her other work, and all power to her, but this has the feel of a gimmick/marketing ploy/brand identity.

I’m not sure these are fantastic paintings either on the level of looseness or semi abstraction.

In the OCA coursebook it says she sometimes makes opaque paintings (which wouldn’t let the metal shine through) but that she sometimes leaves the metal uncovered, which would fit with the distressed/rustic nature of the images. However, I didn’t see any bare copper in the couple of dozen paintings I looked at online. Letting the copper shine through certainly doesn’t seem like an integral quality to the paintings.

So yet again, it seems that the most important quality is not the colour and reflective quality of the surface but the flatness and hardness.

 MIRROR:

Mimei Thompson, b. ???

Island Sketch, 1,2 and 3, 2011 (oil on mirror)

OCA say oil while OFFSITE  Sluice Art Fair 26 Sth Molton Lane, Mayfair, London, says its acrylic.

So there is a dispute about the media… both say it’s on a mirror.

I must admit a bias here as I like Mimei Thompson’s work… it hold and considers a fragility about personal identity and authenticity, here applied to nature – is nature always a construct? Can it ever be… natural.

The gallery notes say:

“The Island Sketches are based on found images, and are quickly worked in
acrylic paint on the smooth glass of small mirrors. Only fragments of the
reflective surface show through, reflecting back the odd glimpse of light,
space, depth, or perhaps the viewer looking back at themselves.”

I take ‘found images’ to be a way of saying photographs without using the word. Found images sounds much better than copying a photograph?! Though, of course, she isn’t copying the photographs… she’s just basing her ‘observed reality’ on a photograph rather than having been there in person or working from he own sketches.

The notes specifically refer to the reflecting quality of the mirror being used but it’s impossible to tell how effective this is from the photograph. And even the notes don’t claim it’s a major part of the work.

In conclusion, it seems like you can paint on just about any surface… but it will affect your technique and the media you use. And that if you want smoothness and hardness metal is a good choice. But the primary reason for choosing metal doesn’t seem to be because of its colour or reflective qualities.

 

 

 

A4 watercolour paper painted yellow – painted with acrylics.

I enjoyed doing this and in a realist sense it’s not a bad painting, but it’s closely observed and quite tight… though not as tight as I might have done it in the past and the yellow background meant I didn’t have to paint right up to all the edges as it sort of becomes invisible.

To set myself a challenge and use the exercises for different objectives as well as tone I’m going to set myself the task of doing the next painting with quick bold brushstrokes, and the final one in impasto.

Emotionally, it was quite nice painting on yellow as it’s an uplifting colour and it’s easy to paint over.

Finally, I didn’t draw any of these with a pencil, I drew them lightly in paint with a brush and thin paint… I’m not sure how I’m going to approach the quick paintings, whether I’ll paint the outline or go straight for the object.

Another good thing about painting quickly is it will help me escape the trap that the longer you spend the better the painting.

A4 watercolour paper painted burnt umber – painted with acrylics in impasto with a palette knife.

Very interesting as changing the painting tools changed my relationship to the subject and produced a completely different painting.

Impasto is not good for detail so I didn’t put in the writing and I altered the composition and size of the objects to accommodate the impasto. I think impasto is probably best suited for large canvases as my it was difficult to manipulate my palette knives on the paper.

It’s probably possible to buy different palette knives in the same way you can buy different brushes, it would have been useful to have some with flat stubby ends and in different (smaller) sizes.

I found my paper buckled as it absorbed the water so it’s probably better on canvas. With that in mind I let my background dry and then painted the objects on top. The objects themselves and the background were wet on wet. My colour mixing is also cruder to match the palette knives, to produce a bolder chunkier painting.

Interestingly I found I was making a pattern with the objects… is this because it’s the second time I’ve painted them, or because the method was forcing me away from a naturalistic representation and that pushed me into recomposing the objects?

I’m quite pleased with this, it says something (I’m not quite sure what) and works as a whole. Its composition is balanced and keeps the eye moving, aesthetically it the limited palette of browns and yellows work and it almost sets up a narrative – strangely the more realistic painting didn’t – as to the story of these objects.

And finally, considering the crudity of the marks and the broken edges, it’s not at all realistic, it reads well and is another lesson to me to loosen up and escape from objective (if there is such a thing) visual acuity.

A4 watercolour paper painted in ultramarine blue – painted with mixed brushes.

This is interesting…

I know this exercise was supposed to be an exercise on painting on a painted surface, and all my papers were different colours, but I found the colour of paper made very little difference. Here I’ve used the blue of the paper to give tone to the toilet seat where it curves away from the light and subtle variations over the top. And if you don’t paint all the canvas it does unify the painting, but for me it made a minimal difference.

So this exercise became about painting in series, using different tools and layering.

Layering was useful for adding a sheen without mixing colour, a layered thinned white is totally different to a tone. Also you can build up colours, depending on thinness and transparency, by layering on the canvas rather than mixing on the palette.

The different tools were very interesting: for instance the palette knife dictated a blocky way of working without detail and I found it also made me simplify the colours; the small brushes made me paint tight; and the mix of brushes (after having just used a small brush and then a palette knife) made me think about the right tool for the job and allowed a mixture of styles.

Painting in series was great as I found I recomposed the image and lighting as I went along.

I’m much happier with the composition of this final painting than the first two.

But looking back over the three paintings I’ve discovered that the meaning has changed. The first is about the collection; the second is texture and sculptural and the third is aesthetic, almost abstract, in that it’s become about the composition and balance more than the collection. This is a useful lesson in thinking what I want out of a painting.

For instance, a painting where the focus is about the meaning of the collection and what it says about the collector will be totally different that where the focus is formal or aesthetic.

 

My ‘White Collection’ lit from above but painted on the objects to make them look like a painted canvas.

I really struggled with this and ended up using my artistic license to interpret the instructions.

I know not every painting has to have a meaning, it can just be for fun like a James Bond film, or purely an exercise… but the way my brain works is I find it very difficult to paint something that I can see no point in.

Most of the meaning in a collection is held in the collection, how you paint it might comment on or subvert (or even exemplify) that meaning… but on a canvas with conventional tools you have the freedom to manipulate the media to express your interpretation, whereas it’s much harder on a 3D surface to use those painterly techniques so you can end up with a poor painting, the only value of which is that it’s painted on something other than a canvas. On top of that painting on a handbag or a coffee cup just seems gimmicky. I can sort of see it with carefully chosen collections and 3D objects – but I can’t see that Paul Westcombe’s coffee cup paintings gain any meaning by being painted on a coffee cup… they gain notoriety and visibility which is always good for sales… and are fun, but that doesn’t make them art… and Lee Edwards miniature face on a conker seems pointless too.

So my problem was either just to do the exercise or try to give it a meaning.

The solution I came up with was to paint a collection without psychological/narrative/emotional meaning – my white collection – but to paint it on the objects themselves. The white collection is formalist in that it’s all to do with shapes and tones and it doesn’t have a ‘meaning’. By painting on the objects I’m painting on 3D surface, and by painting a particular direction of light and shadows on a collection as if it was a painting on a flat canvas I draw attention to the process of painting – so that gives the painting a meaning.

The viewer is meant to think, is that a painting or is it painted 3D objects; and to slip between the two interpretations… then to apply that to other paintings which are seemingly complete and think… yes, somebody painted that, it’s their interpretation of the world. I can agree, accept or challenge it.

If you put my photograph in a frame the illusion is even more convincing and the viewer sees a still life painting. But once you’re told it’s a photograph of painted objects you start to compare reality to ‘painting’ and think about the process, and the flatness of the canvas.

From a painting point of view I found this fascinating but difficult.

The plate and objects couldn’t be moved so I was bending over a table and this hurt my back after an hour; all the objects are painted so there is no natural surface left and matching the exact hue/saturation and tone was great fun; I realised how different all the different ‘whites’ were – from the browny sugar to the blue white salt; the shadows varied hugely from bluish grey to orangey grey… and the secondary reflections were very interesting. However, I’m trying to move towards much looser expressive painting whereas this was all the things I struggle with… very tight accurate painting and formalism.

Still, I’m quite pleased with the result as it sets out to do what I wanted to do. It makes the viewer think about the nature of representation.

 

Inks applied with brush and pen on A1 drawing paper

This ‘collection’ is my marketing box for acting: it has a list of 130 casting directors folded over; highlighter; a paper index with emails and addresses; and envelopes for casting who don’t give out email addresses.

I thought it looked a bit like a boat so I tried to be loose and have this in mind when I was drawing. My idea was it travels out into the world… a metaphor for my email messages.

It was difficult working on such a big scale and drawing straight onto the paper with ink. I found I made quite a few errors which I left in – I didn’t want to make it tight by pre-drawing or by having it flat on a table. Working on an easel gave me the opportunity to use my whole body.

The ink is fluid but runs down the pen and brush so is difficult to use.

I don’t know if anybody else will like this but I can see the boat with a sail so it has captured the meaning I wanted and makes me smile.

 

1. Coffee/turmeric powder/chilli powder on HP watercolour paper – I’ll use it like ink… being just coffee it will be monochrome. Seashell collection.

I had a play with the coffee on a bit of scrap watercolour paper and decided I needed a little bit of variation to the soft brown so made up a mix with turmeric which gave a burnt sienna colour and chilli powder which gave me burnt umber. The mixes also gave me some texture.

So I had coffee with a small brush, coffee with a big brush… I could layer the coffee with wide brushes or ‘draw’ with it with a loaded brush; I could also pool the coffee which almost gave me a black, draw with a pen, use the turmeric and chilli mix and remove coffee with a tissue.

Which, to say I thought this would be boring is an amazing range of marks and tones all round a very limited palette to harmonise it – and texture.

I was really surprised with the result which has a strange beauty and captures some of the forms of shells and rocks.

Another benefit is that as it was coffee I didn’t treat it with respect (it was effectively free) and realise I’m always slightly concerned with cost when using ‘real’ paint. This affected my application (it’s difficult to put into words), as well as not thinking I would capture anything worthwhile which meant I told myself I would work for so long and then stop. And my tutor had said I didn’t have to finish all my paintings.

The effect of all this was that I was much more relaxed and really love some of the mark making on this.

2. Coca Cola – on flat watercolour paper… I might try building up washes? Painting the plates. Collection of plates laid out in sun on the floor.

I soon discovered that coke in paintbrush amounts was barely readable, more like a mild stain with a ring round the edge. It makes me realise just how strong the pigment in paint is… weird the coke looks so dark in the glass.

So I mixed coke with turmeric/chilli and paprika as I thought the acid might take the colour up. The powders coloured the coke but made it grainy and as I wanted to paint the plates (which were shiny) I didn’t want the texture so filtered it with a tissue. Interestingly each powder reacted differently with the coke and tissue… the chilli broke really easily whereas the turmeric and paprika filtered much more easily, which is an example of the different qualities of painting materials.

This gave me a browny red (chilli/coke); orange-red (paprika/coke); light brown (turmeric/coke) and light stain (coke). As it didn’t layer very well and pooled easily I tried to break/simplify the painting into four tonal ‘colours’.

Again, as this was ‘free’ painting and I didn’t expect to be able to control the media very well so it really freed me up; it wasn’t costing me anything and I had no prior expectations of being able to create a finished product. so I just had a go.

It was a different and freer emotional relationship to the media and produced a different (not just looser but more confident style of mark making), which was very interesting and gave a pleasing result.

I simplified the composition of the painting keeping in some strong shadows falling across the plates but taking out a lot of detail such as the individual shadows of the bowls, but keeping the internal shadows. So, in a sense I made it slightly abstract.

My biggest surprise is that it has some pleasing qualities and is not awful.

I might not paint with coke but have learned something about mark making.

3. Marmite on a HP paper.

I started on a plate but found it restrictive as a support because the Marmite runs and the plate is shiny, I couldn’t use washes and the upturned lip of the plate caused the Marmite to pool down into the centre… so I experimented with a piece of watercolour paper and that was much better.

As you can see, because it is so slow setting, the Marmite tends to run together and obliterate the marks.

I used all sorts of mark making tools: brushes – end/side and top for thick Marmite; and different sized flat brushes to put on the watered down Marmite; pen nibs and the side and end of a pencil for sticky Marmite; and a dip pen for the writing.

What I like about this, and I think it’s a great learning exercise, is the casual but focused way I applied the media (because it’s Marmite, it’s free and it doesn’t do what I want it to do… and have no expectations of control). It’s really difficult to put into words but it’s a different relationship to the canvas, image and media. The process of painting became more part of me, more natural, rather than something external I was trying to control – more like my natural speaking voice than an instrument I am learning to play – and this made it much easier to connect with the soft toys.

So, although in realist terms (but as I’m learning that is only a tiny sub set of painting) this is weak it has something of me in it and I can see my relationship to the cuddly toys. My son gave them to me when he was little – he has now finished university and is independent – and my relationship to these toys has changed as my relationship to Josh has changed.

There’s a lovely endearing quality that I really like about this painting that I have never managed to capture with ‘real’ paints. It has a ‘wholeness’ that my much more technically skilled paintings haven’t got, and it is a quality I’d like to find in my work when I go back to conventional media.

4. Loganberry jam on white HP paper.

For some strange and bizarre reason I really like this, it is to do with the quality and personality of the image. The objects are almost alive and I have no idea how I’ve done this but it must have something to do with the media and my relationship to it.

It’s not just loose, it has another quality that I really like.

I’ve got to try to carry over some of this when I go back to conventional media.

A few things are objectively clear though… a friend commented, “What an interesting concept loganberry jam painting is.”. This made me realise that the media is part of the painting. If it’s oil it is in one sense invisible, but yet it sets up a series of judgements (has a different feel… more classy and expensive than if it’s acrylic); household paint or children’s poster paint would add a different set of associations. So, in one sense, like the conventions or language of documentary photography is invisible to the viewer so in most cases we don’t even consider the media… however, if we break the convention and use jam it becomes visible and part of the reading of the painting like the brushstrokes or colour palette. But, of course, the irony is that it is always part of the reading, it’s just that most of the time we don’t realise it.

Because I mixed chilli, turmeric and paprika to the loganberry jam to give me a range of colours it made me think of the difference of the carrier (in this case loganberry jam) to the pigment and how the pigment adds colour but the carrier affects how that pigment goes on the canvas, and how it looks in the finished painting. So it affects the making and the end product, like the difference between sculpting the same sculpture in wood or marble. The pigment might be the same but an oil painting, acrylic and watercolour would all produce very different paintings both in actuality and because of the associations we bring to the media.

So, whereas I started my degree thinking it was the colour that was the most important, because that’s what I was focussed on, I now realise that it’s the carrier that is far more important.

5. Hazelnut chocolate sauce on HP watercolour paper

Chocolate sauce is a difficult media because when it dries it becomes solid chocolate and is unworkable, it just comes away from the paper.

I used it straight from the jar, thinned, and mixed with turmeric, paprika and chilli.

Annoyingly, I think this is one of my best paintings – it looks better in the flesh – how can that be… its chocolate!!! I think maybe the lesson, again. is less is more. The eye completes these paintings much better than any kind of ‘copy’ (even a loose copy) I could paint. In some ways they resemble impressionistic paintings as the media is applied roughly in blobs and splodges rather than a controlled painterly way.

The jacket is the weakest but that’s the part I tried to paint with pure chocolate sauce and it was technically very difficult. However, I love the texture inside the collar where I’ve used a spatula to apply the sauce and how it contrasts with the grunginess of the jumper.

…..

What I’ve learnt:

That the media is very important in how the pigment is put on the canvas, they’re like different instruments in an orchestra. They may be able to play some of the same notes (colours) but have very different tones and qualities which affect both how you apply the paint and how it looks when finished.

The media also affects the audiences viewpoint, how they come to the painting… how they interpret it and to some extent how they value it.

But perhaps the biggest lesson is my relationship to the media and how I apply paint. It’s made me realise that I’ve been trying to control the paint and have, even when working fast and loose, been separate from it; almost as if I’m slightly scared of it and it’s precious. And that I get much better results when the paint becomes an extension of me, more like my voice. It’s really interesting that I needed to work with something that has no monetary value to make me realise that, and also with something that I couldn’t control so had to find new ways of working, technically, emotionally and psychologically.

 

What struck me quite forcibly having researched the artists using unusual materials/surfaces/collections is just how much every painting is a collation of items in a frame which tell a particular story. They can be collated for aesthetic reasons, or to do with meaning.

I realised for instance that if all my best socks were in the wash and I only had my emergency boring socks and I arranged those, that they would tell a different story about me than an arrangement of my colourful socks. Equally it made me think of how I curated photographs in my house… what story were they telling me to myself. Was the narrative they told true… how did I understand and relate the events they captured?

Once items have been chosen you have to compose them in a frame, again this could be aesthetic but might equally involve the relative size of objects, their closeness or a myriad of other factors to affect meaning.

Another thing that struck me was the framing: square, round, rectangular… irregular. And what an odd convention (when you think about it) it is sticking everything in a rectangular or square canvas. Rectangular canvases are, sort of, invisible as they are ubiquitous but composition is to a large extent governed by framing so different shapes would involve different compositions and may give us different meanings.

Finally, I thought about background – in most paintings the background is ‘part of’ the painting like a wall behind a portrait, a table underneath a vase of flowers or distant hills in an outdoor painting. But the question then arises as to whether these backgrounds are part of the composition (items of importance) a background (a neutral placeholder for the important objects…. more like the back of a display case in a museum. So, I now see backgrounds differently as they could be items in their own right or just neutral placeholders.

Here are the backgrounds I came up with:

1. 

Aesthetic – but also reminds me of beach trips. The shells are in the bathroom. A natural collection… I guess that because of the water and shells are traditional in bathrooms.

2)

A utilitarian collection – on my ‘office table’ – I’m an actor and this is a kit with everything I need to contact casting directors.

3)

Soft toys in my bedroom given to me by my little boy – he’s now left home. They comfort me and remind me of times gone by.

4)

My bathroom shelf is a natural collection based on usefulness. It only has a small space so it’s like a job station.

5)

White objects. Reminds me of snow… lots of different shades of white snow/ice with different qualities.

6)

Pens and pencils on a black background.

7)

I wasn’t interested in the cutlery but liked the shapes and reflections they made

8)

Shoes in pairs… not quite all of them as my favourite pair are being mended.

9)

Plates and bowls… I like the heavy shadow and abstract pattern this makes. It’s almost not about the plates and bowls but more about shape, shadow, colour and pattern.

10)

Toiletries – interesting putting it all together. The toilet seat made a good background, I liked the shape and texture.

11)

Three or more items of clothing… this could have taken a day as the different clothes and combinations could all have told different stories (plus a lot of my clothes were in the wash)… so I just had to go for it.

12)

A selection of photographs or pictures… I could have filled the lawn with pictures but these photographs tell their own story.

13)

Most of my socks were in the wash so these are my second tier emergency socks.

14)

No jewellery and only a few knick-knacks. These all have potent meanings and stories for me – to survive in my house there is a severe selection process.

I think I should state my prejudice before I embark on my research because it will be interesting to see if the research alters my viewpoint.

Using unusual materials are very valid, I think you can use anything on anything to make a painting. However, I think using non standard combinations becomes a bit of a brand statement, you are known for the person who doodles on coffee cups rather than being a great artist… or at least that is a danger. It also fixes you to something static whereas all the great artists I have studied like Picasso constantly change their work over their lifetime, and the conversation is about the work rather than the media. Rather than the media being invisible they become pert of the work, which also pushes it towards concept art. I can see how painting on unusual materials would make them collectible but hopefully my research will show me how they can also be great art.

I also worry about the long-term curatability of non standard media.

Either way, I’m looking forward to the experimentation and research.

Collections, I find much more fascinating. A persons belongings could be said to be a ‘life collection’, and tell us lots about a person from a psychological point of view. People’s belongings are fascinating and a personally curated ‘collection’ even more so. However, whether paintings of collections can be great art is something I’ve yet to be convinced about… but I think they could be a very useful artistic tool both for understanding and including where relevant in a painting.

I’ll reflect at the end of this research, the supplementary reading and the reflection at the end of Part Two whether my initial views have changed.

…………………………………………………………………………….

Julian Walker:

Born 1954 – on his website he terms himself a visual artist, writer and educator

Art Out of Place: Norwich 2005.  http://walkerjulian.tripod.com/id27.html

Items Held

Norwich castle was a prison that became a museum at the end of the 19th century.

Julian has curated a collection of over 4000 objects of museum failures (fakes, damaged and broken items) from Norwich Castle and written the name of a prisoner under each. In so doing he hopes to link the two identities of the castle and examine how history permeates through time.

He makes us aware of a past which we may not have been and draws a parallel between broken people and broken items… and the state involvement in locking things up (people in a prison and artefacts in a museum). It uses words enhanced by a collection to alter our perceptions and understandings. This is a good thing to do and I would certainly view the castle with a new awareness of the prison buildings after seeing this exhibition.

But for me this is education not art.

Fred Wilson:

Born. 1954 – US… changes the contexts (new labels/sounds/lighting/pairing) of museum displays to change their meaning… focussing especially on how cultural institutions have shaped historical truth and artistic value.

Here’s a video on his approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLG6c_NSvCE&feature=youtu.be

He goes into art galleries, finds out about the collections and re-curates them, but as an artist not as a curator. Which seems a bit of a moot point as the main distinction is he doesn’t have grants to fulfill, so doesn’t have to curate to satisfy his paymasters. However, in using the objects to tell a story he is doing exactly the same as the curators are doing, the only difference is it’s his is a different story.

For example: Black Artists, Brooklyn, Museums + Collections, Sculpture; Jan 22nd 2012

Were Ancient Egyptians Black, White or Brown? Discuss.

This raises the whole issue of the skin tone of ancient Egyptians, and of racial identity in art, and how traditional curation may manipulate or disregard this… and also reflect on our own treatment of art… or make us think of how Judas was painted as a Jew while the other disciples were painted as white in medieval religious paintings.

In another display he sets up museum guards, usually black and in the lower levels… and how that affects/manipulates perceptions and visitors.

This raises the question… is this art but using artifacts rather than paint and a museum wall as his canvas, art in the re-arrangement of found objects, or is it creative education where we’re made to see things afresh by unusual juxtapositions.

I am hugely impressed by what he does, and think it\’s a very valuable service for a pluralistic democratic society, but I don’t think it’s art. It’s education, teaching and the presentation of ideas… that these relationships were hidden doesn’t make it any less curation than the original – it just highlights the power of curation.

Lisa Milroy:

Born, 1959 – Anglo-Canadian – painter – known for everyday objects placed in lines or patterns and series in incongruous settings.

Light Bulbs, 1988

This sort of painting seems to be mainly in the 80’s, her later and current painting branching out into more traditional areas. I chose this image as the Tate bought it, so it has value in the museum system and is a collection of objects.

It’s described as abstract made out of real objects emptied of their meaning like Jasper John’s American flag series of paintings.

Personally, I don’t see it as abstract as the objects retain their identity (though admittedly it’s not about the objects), it could almost be wrapping paper if it repeated… I see it as an artistic pattern or design, a pleasing study of colour, form and balance. A pleasing visual experience without meaning.

Although a collection this doesn’t delineate character, expose cultural identity or tell a personal or social story. These are empty objects disconnected from life and chosen for their ability to complete the design.

Paul Westcombe

Born, 1981 – He draws on used coffee cups with ink and coffee.

I couldn’t find much useful information about his work online… mainly from galleries trying to sell his work.

I can’t see that this is anything other than miniature painting on coffee cups and would put it in the ‘factory’ box. As although the individual canvases are all different (as in conventional art/painting) it’s not the quality of his painting that sells his products it’s their novelty value. There is nothing that I can see that raises these above any second or third year drawing student work of a similar style that I have seen in numerous exhibitions.

Using coffee cups as his canvas doesn’t make his paintings into great art… it would be cool to have one, he probably has a cult following and they will have a financial value.

I admire his craft and they’re fun, but I can’t see them as anything other than a variation (a hand crafted version) of comercially printed mugs.

Lee Edwards

Born, 1981 – works in London –

He produces exquisite drawings of commonplace objects which look photographic so has excellent technical skills, but for this I’m looking at a series of miniatures he did on everyday ‘childhood objects’ around the theme of lost love.

On Domobaal Artists, who sell his work, under ‘Exhibitions’ – How to Disappear Completely – there is a whole page of A4 explaining why these works are worthy of our attention, how to appreciate them and what they mean. This text attempts to turn the meaningless and banal (conkers and the like with miniature paintings of women on them) into the extraordinary by giving the objects/paintings a position in Art history and a personal narrative.

However, though knowledge changes how we view things, opinion can be disagreed with and the this opinion doesn’t make these miniatures any more artistic for me. If you picked one up on somebody’s mantlepiece without any foreknowledge you’d think it no more than an interesting and quite clever curio, a novelty.

I don’t think using a tiny or unusual as a canvas of itself, especially if it has to be justified and explained, increases a painting’s artistic value. If there is a natural link between the object and the painting, and it connects and communicates to a viewer without words, then I can see a point. But in this case just because it can be done and it means something to the painter doesn’t mean it should be done.

David Dipré

Birth, 1974 (same hospital as Kate Bush but no date) – uses impasto oil on 3D surfaces to paint portraits and self portraits.

David Dipré, Beardy Face, 2011, oil and spray paint on brick and concrete, 21.5×12.5cm

(Auctioned at the trasnsition gallery)

His mediums are not unusual, he usually paints with oils… here with oil and spray paint, both common painting mediums.

But his canvases (or is this a sculpture?) are; here it’s an old bricks and concrete but could be anything that matches his purpose, or a traditional canvas.

For this I’m looking at his use of unusual canvases.

For the record I find his work almost totally opaque. He states clearly that he paints portraits and self portraits in order to capture the world around him, from memory in the bubble of his studio. His works don’t feel abstract but they barely have any reference to a face, or as here marks where the eyes are, and a lump for a nose.

I like the fact that his process is organic, that he is conducting an ongoing experiment into capturing the world, that he builds on past work and that the object (for him) and the paint are bonded together in meaning.

However, the language is so private that I am excluded, so they are meaningless for me. Or rather I am aware of some meaning but cannot capture it.

The concept of painting on non flat surfaces where the paint remains dominant, that is it doesn’t become about shape and space like a sculpture but remains about the paint, but where the shape enhances the painting is very interesting and could work really well.

For me these are not aesthetic, nor do they work in terms of meaning but they are close to working. I wish him luck.

Cathy Lomax and Alli Sharma

October 2013,

(Frieze is an Art magazine.)

The quote below is from DisneyRollerGirl Magazine:

‘So here’s a really excellent fashion-art project that launches to coincide with Frieze. Huntergather (a fashion label and Wigmore Street store) has enlisted six artist buddies from East London’s Transition Gallery to hand paint a selection of found handbag as a commentary on female adornment.’

Quote from DisneyRollerGirl Magazine: https://www.disneyrollergirl.net/huntergather-art-bags/

So the driving force behind this was a fashion label, one might assume any link with the art world was good for business and draws the worlds of fashion and art closer together. Art gets a chance to do its thing and fashion gets a bit of free kudos, well not actually free as Huntergatherer paid for it.

The exhibition was called ‘Obsession’ and was held at the Transition gallery: http://www.transitiongallery.co.uk/htmlpages/Ornament.html

		Kirsty Buchanan’spainted bag looks at someone looking at him or herself.
			Annabel Dover isolates the jewels worn by Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt and Ingres’ painted ladies.
	Cathy Lomax’s  noir bags depict the necklines of iconic femme fatales.			Alex Michonuses broken glass to stand in for diamonds in her depictions of the over arching femininity of drag queens.
					Alli Sharma inspired by Angela Carter’s Wise Children paints perfume bottles.
Corinna Spencer examines love and obsession with a series of painted gems.

The idea of using handbags, a feminine symbol (a different set of paintings could have been done on irons for instance, which would raise issues of stereotyping and women’s roles in the family) was clever – as it’s not only points towards glamorous high fashion (good for Huntergatherer) but also raises the issue of how women identify themselves in our culture.

In a similar way to Fred Wilson it then becomes an issue of curating two objects with different meanings to create a new insight. We have the accepted cultural values around ‘handbag’ and the artist’s painting is the other meaning… which allows for interesting juxtapositions and the creation of new meanings.

As an idea I think this is fantastic, but as with curation there is a danger that it will become education of visual philosophy… or even (though they did use found handbags) top end customisation.

Sadly, I think the moment was lost as none of the painted handbags carries much of an emotional, aesthetic or meaningful punch though I’m sure the idea of mixing top brands from the art and fashion world drew audineces.

But, that said, I think the idea of counterpoising meanings by painting on iconic objects is fun and exciting and could alloiw you to carry a message that would be impossible any other way.

Tabitha Moses

Born 1971 (I worked this out from a Guardian article about her having a baby, age 43, in Dec 2014 – couldn’t find any critical or biographical information online)

My Exercise book says she makes collections of groups of objects to make connections… to tell visual narratives. So I’ll try and find some of her art.

Desi Man: (Date unknown)

Desi Man (Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi man)

Tabitha met ordinary workers when she was in the areas above and it is the memories of these ordinary working men she celebrates in this collection.

She also cites John Forbes Watson’s The People of India (1868), as an influence. He photographically recorded/surveyed all the the castes and tribes of India like butterflies in a case; collecting and classifying people as if they were specimins to be found in the  collection of territories that made up the Empire. But the photographs still stared out at her as a direct connection with those lost people.

Her ‘assemblages’ (collections) were taken off everyday throwaway packaging and mounted in cases, referencing museum collections. In so doing she honours and validates the unseen and faceless of the past and present as precious and draws attention to their uniqueness at the same time as she refers back to them as colonial specimens.

However, though I think that is very clever, and a wonderful thing to do… and it’s made me think – I don’t think it’s art. It’s curation, a repositioning of past and present. A manifesto for a new way of thinking as with out the words the collection ios all but meaningless.

If you saw it on a primary school wall it would raise no mopre than passing curiosity.

Tauba Auberbach

Born, 1981 – works in New York – she says her work: “… operat[es] in the gap between conceptual art, abstraction and graphic art”.

Altar/Engine, 2015. Photograph: © 2019 Tauba Auerbach, courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (3D printed nylon and plastic on table of aluminum, wood and paint)

This is very interesting…

It is part conceptual art in that it can be justified by words, and words add to its meaning such as the shapes in the top right referring to the DNA of the grandchildren of Henry Ford, and if you know about 3D printing it has a host of meanings, though the technology is already dated. But that’s not its main justification, it can also stand on its own as a hybrid of geometrical and organic abstraction.

What’s especially fascinating here is the use of material… not oil paint but printed 3D objects, even without words that sets up all sorts of premises and ideas in your head which you bring to the work. So it has a ‘representational’ media referencing but is visually abstract.

It’s strangely beautiful and is a sort of meditation on the modern world, I get lost in the visuals while subconsciously acknowledging and meditating (without words) – a sort of unvoiced awareness – of all the implications of data, technology and AI.

This, I would say, is a work of art.

 

My text-book says both these essays talk about collections and how they tell an often untold personal story.

Benjamin, W. (1940) Thesis on the Philosophy of History.

(Deals with national history, communal memory and the nature of truth)

This essay seems caught in its time like a fly in amber with its concerns over the rise in German fascism and Marxist revolutions, but that said it’s also a wonderful eye-popping revelation about the curation of cultural identity.

It says we live in history, that history controls and moulds us… it validates current behaviour and maintains the social elite and political structures. In ‘ordinary history, called Historicism, history is seen as an additive continuum where one event naturally leads to another and every event is part of a single arc of history leading to today.

There was an image which I found very useful where the present was likened to a house built out of the bricks (carefully selected elements of the past) of history and designed by the winners, where our cultural identity was crafted and maintained by the rulers… they decide on what are ‘house’ (society) looks like and maintain it. The maintenance being in the form of museums, official history (unchallenged) and the calendar of remembrances from (in the case of the UK) Guy Fawkes night to First World War memorial services.

This, the essay suggests, is the ultimate form of mind control, because society’s personality is created by its curated history. So societies, in default of some kind of revolution, continue in a mind-set that benefits the rich and powerful.

The ‘ruling’ history consumes and adapts to its own ends radical technological change, be that in the form of the industrial revolution, the technological revolution, the current digital revolution and coming Artificial Intelligence revolution.  These changes may create social disruption and  may be moments of danger for the established order but the traditional mind-set always reasserts itself as the revolution is ultimately technological and not psychological.

True revolution would only happen, it argues, if society changed it approach to curating history.

A different history could be built, the events themselves were not ‘historical’, but unique and fixed in their own era, they only ‘made sense’ and became ‘historical’ after the event. Historicism, traditional history, sees historical events as beads on a necklace, all linked and naturally evolving into modern day society. By contrast Historical Materialism involves a formalistic approach to history where time is ‘frozen’ and (in so far as it is possible) the truth of each event uncovered in terms of its own era. The events Historicism sees as causal and leading naturally to our ‘enlightened state’ are treated as unique events.

Therefore we had a pride in our British Empire, the glorious Victorians, enlightened and philanthropic, benefactors of the arts – saving the ignorant savage and benignly bringing civilisation to the darkest corners of the globe; the history of slavery was untold. The source of those riches (the brutality, abuse and inhumanity) has only recently been begun to be told with the rise of power in the African nations and an awakening sense of identity and power among minority groups in 1st world countries. A new curation of history has begun to emerge which challenges the old elite.

In terms of Part 2 of this course and it’s focus on collections it tells me how important collections are to meaning and identity. Collections tell the (constructed) life stories of societies, and fashion our thinking.

Therefore curation (collecting things and showing them together) becomes a radical and political act… and whether that curation is the voice of authority (white, male, middle class) or the whisper of radicalism (minority groups, women, black, uneducated, structurally unemployed) very much depends on your view of identity and history.

Freud, S (1909) Family Romances.

(Deals with creating your own reality through a retelling of your own personal history)

This was a much harder read for a non psychologist but I think I got the drift of it.

For little children their parents are gods and the font of all wisdom and power. But as they get older and compare them to other adults they realise their parents have weaknesses and seek to replace them with better models, higher status and more powerful. Adolescents will often make friendships with more powerful adults outside the family, which is an attempt to replace their parenrts with stronger models.

This process of gaining independence is natural, if it doesn’t occur it causes neurosis.

When a child finds out the facts of reproduction it accepts its mother as given and either rejects the father or tries to exalt him. There is also a sexual fascination of the youngster with the sexuality of the parent of the opposite sex. Again, all this is natural.

For the purposes of this exercise what’s important is that people create narratives in order to validate (and in the case of daydreams to supply what’s missing… they’re really the princess) and explain their lives. These narratives – especially in neurotics are untrue – and often hidden.

These narratives, ‘Family Romances’, come out in psychotherapy, but are also revealed in collections. The objects collected by somebody reveal all sorts of truths about them that might otherwise be hidden.

In the same way society curates its past in order to support its present, so too does the individual. So what people collect either as a hobby or involuntarily around the house become evidence to unpick their lives, history and hidden self narratives.