Transcription response to Learning outcomes for Active/ Reactive assessment.
A1 - D ; Flash card Buzz words
Kurt Schwitters used detritus in order to find some sort of aesthetic sense of the world and I think that is why this work both excites and disturbs me!”
I am going to start with “How this work addresses problems in previous work?.....
A1 Noticing the Space
As a result of my last assessment I was asked to be more aware of the space I was presenting my work in and so it has been the starting point for this work.
You'll notice that the piece uses the height of the room and I like how it has climbed up into space that is almost never used or noticed. It's like the wasted space of the studio now made good by the wasted objects that I have found. I've also explored starting a process that I didn't know where it was going. I've enjoyed taking notice of the space, I feel like I'm actually curating the space and that the space has become an intrinsic part of the work, this is definitely different from previous work. I think I take more risks in this space I think the form of it is more unique as a result. I can't take it home.
A2 My Artistic Process....
What has worked for me is to have given myself the permission to continually change the position and elements of the work. To explore freely and take as long as I need to explore without requiring myself to have a clear finished result.
So how my work relates to Contemporary issues.....
B1 Materials
The contemporary materials I've used are similar to the kinds of materials used in many of the works in the British Art show. For e.g. plastic polythene wrapping, used timber, electrical wire, tape, felt material, string, and a number of found plastic and metallic objects including a broken rear view car mirror and a metal reflector.
Many of these objects were discovered on the hard shoulder of the motorway and on the pavement, walking to the studio. These materials are not traditional and the discarded nature of there existence reflects the modern world and the increasing practice of certain Contemporary Artists in using recycled materials. Using these objects in art help to elevate them, giving them a new function where they had previously been discarded.
I like using recycled objects because the making of ART is not limited by the cost of the materials. It enabled me to create a large sculpture at no cost.
B2 Re-appropriation
It also reflects the Contemporary Art practice of re appropriation I have not only re appropriated discarded objects to re use but also the residues of other peoples artistic endeavors that I found lying around the studio. Nylon wire hanging from the ceiling, Ryan Curtis’s timber and the black universe circle painted on the floor.
B3 Process/ Result
I also intended the piece to not be an end in itself but to be ever-changing which goes against the classical and commercial position of Art. It is never finished and so therefore un comodifiable.
B4 Form
I’v used objects that have familiar form but the way in which I have assembled them is contemporary in its un predictability.
The form of the whole sculpture part sculpture part installation, part freestanding, part wall mounted with the ability to be re assembled creating a new narrative relating to a new space.
I think it is contemporary in that it is not meant for a museum or gallery space, it could be re assembled anywhere.
B5 Influences
Spartacus Chetwynd’s, Folding house presented in BAS7 uses recycled, discarded timber window frames and building materials to create a towering structure that can be re assembled and moved to different spaces.
Carla Black pushes and challenges the use of mundane everyday materials (Vaseline, plastic, talcum powder) and natural and artificial substances (soil, washing powder), redefining them by suspending, pulling, pouring.
The reflective metal mirror can sway back and forth like a pendulum and is a subtle reference the inescapable movement and stillness of the passing of time in Christian Mclay’s the clock which I was struck by last year in the BAS7.
I am influenced by Picasso and how Cubism explored different planes of perspective and how it took familiar objects and re assembled them in an un familiar way, which is what I have done here.
I think elements within the work relate to the idolatry of the machine by the Futurists and the recognisable formal elements have a constructivist association.
There are a few ways in which my work reflects issues in the wider cultural context!....
C1 My work is about multiple perspectives
I’am exploring the themes of movement time and space which I began in paintings then progressed to two-dimensional and three-dimensional form but in this work of course it is on a much larger scale and using nonconventional materials. The idea of the journey is also a theme that fascinates me.
This idea came to me while sitting in a car and looking in the rearview mirror and thinking about the fact that I have just left the place I was looking at, the rearview mirror represents the past, I sit in the present, yet moving at great speed, and unnatural speed towards the future which I can see through my windscreen.
C2 Nature v Technology
I started to think about technology and how it crosses the boundaries of time and space and how we are all becoming used to that. We travel in our cars our minds flitting between thoughts of our immediate past and immediate future and possibly our historic past, our childhoods or other distant memories and our hopes for the longer term future, our minds do not stay in the present but like the car constantly flits between the rearview mirror and the front windscreen. We are used now to being able to see somebody across the ocean on our Web cams or mobile phones, we don't think about the unnatural distance and time zones this technology makes invisible. The rusty, broken disconnected satellite dish represents the dilemmas of modern life that face humanity. The wooden stake is punched up through the middle of it. You could see it as representing the friction between nature and technology.
C3 It addresses the issue of the throwaway society and the attempt to address it through recycling.
C4 Fragmented selves / Lives out of reach / control.
I set the broken rear view mirror at the traditional height for the eye line of a classically hung portrait. I did this on purpose to make the viewer literally part of the work. When they look at the abstract chaotic assemblage they will also see a broken and fragmented reflection of their own face. Regardless of our views on contemporary life, we are all a part of it.
The use of a broken mirror adds that emotional element that people often find missing from the Contemporary Art but which is an important element in art to me.
I hope the mirror can be an emotional gateway into the piece, something to grasp while many of the other familiar objects, such as the empty box I have set purposely out of reach.
I feel the inclusion and placement of the mirrors, the empty box, the very top of the highest plane, the pierced rusty satellite dish, surging electrical currents are elements that communicate my underlying intention. Particularly the placement of the palette above the wall horizon line, almost outside the structure, high above and into un chartered territory works in defining this unnoticed, unseen un usable space and inside the structure the triangulated areas of the now stretched pink plastic create planes in space, windows that can be seen through and beyond.
C5 The “Out of reach.....”
The out of reach, now empty, upside down box was intended to represent what is beyond our grasp both in Contemporary Art and modern life.
C6 Lights / surging electricity / always on the move
I think it's quite un settling, uncertain like modern life. Nothing is quite straight, no perfect symmetry yet there is a kind of harmony and sense of balance. There is a lot of tension in the work through the use of different materials meeting and crossing. It is also ‘alive’ in that there are electrical currents surging through the lights, constantly on the move. The use of found objects reflects our throwaway society.
D What has worked less well...
What doesn't work for me is how the framework creates a boxed in feeling across the floor space. I would like to see this area opened up. I would like to find a way of attaching this structural element to the wall and to have one structural leg coming out into the floor space. Again giving it a sense of precariousness and perceived instability.
How I want to develop my work...
Although it has been challenging working with dirty wet rubbish I would like to continue using found objects in future pieces. To take elements and to re-assemble the structure in another different smaller space and perhaps with the addition of colour. Also to explore the idea of combining a specific theme to work on a smaller scale.
