Reflection / Questions for Catalog

Reflection of work

Throughout the course my work has developed to focus on the material. There were originally two sides to my work; 1- the aesthetic value and the perception of luxury which I focused on through reflective surfaces and commercialised stainless steel sculpture; and 2 - the other side of my work which explored the process of art and the intrinsic value of making sculpture. A changing point for my work was seeing the Chelsea school of Art’s BA Show work and how some artists used mild steel to create the kind of sculpture I was trying to create with stainless steel. 

I moved away from using stainless steel as this was very limiting in terms of what I could produce, and mild steel allowed me to manipulate the material in many ways such as colour distortion and welding. Work has now focused on materiality, and exploring the potential of a material. The value of my work comes from the intricate details of the material and how the viewer interacts with the work by being consumed by the fine distortions featured in its image. A final way my work disrupts the notion of sculpture is through the language of painting. Each of my pieces have used sculptural processes within the format of painting, and vice versa, combining two-dimensional surface on three-dimensional context to amplify viewer engagement and interaction therefore, this creates a more 'consuming' piece of work. 

Q1. Your work has developed over the course to focus on the material. Can you explain more about the evolution of your practice? 

There were originally two sides to my work; 1- the aesthetic value and the perception of luxury which I focused on through reflective surfaces and commercialised stainless steel sculpture; and 2- the side that explored the process of art and the intrinsic value of making sculpture. A changing point for my work was seeing the Chelsea school of Art’s BA Show work and how some artists used mild steel to create the kind of sculpture I was trying to create with stainless steel. Stainless steel became very limiting in terms of what I could produce and although the high shine surface was attractive, I couldn't create a 3D form with it. Mild steel allowed me to manipulate the material in many ways such as colour distortion and welding, as well as create a 3D object. Here I realised that the sculptural format and creating an 'object' was more important than the obsession with the high shine surface.

Q2. What is the significance of the collaboration of two mediums within your work in relation to value?

My work focuses on materiality, and exploring the potential of a material, so its medium isn't important. I disrupt the notion of sculpture through the language of painting. Each of my pieces have used sculptural processes within the format of painting, and vice versa, combining two-dimensional surface on three-dimensional context to amplify viewer engagement and interaction therefore, this creates a more 'consuming' piece of work, with perhaps a higher 'value'. 

Q3. Why is consumption such a strong theme within your work? 

The value of my work comes from the intricate details of the material and how the viewer interacts with the work by being consumed by the fine distortions featured in its image. When someone looks at art, they are consumed by it and in that moment in time, the work has this power over them through the engagement with it.  

Q4. Have you looked to enlarge scale?

Yes, scale is something I am currently working with.  I'm trying to create larger canvas-style sculpture which echoes that of a white cube gallery style painting. 

Studio: More Paint Tests & Plinth Construction

Paint Tests

• Following on from the previous paint tests, this time I placed the paint across the page in the format of how the colours of the welding work - with the blue's taking up the majority and then blending out into the grey made up of black and white. This worked better to connect with the metals that this piece is inspired by. 
• In the first painting test I did above, the paint is thickest, and this appeals to me the most. The details within the paint work the best to capitate the viewer, and connect back to Glenn Brown's  and Jason Martin's paintings. 

Documentation of making the plinth using plywood:

• While making the plinth/ box for painting, I used polly-filler to sculpt the edges together and create a perfectly smooth and even finish. While using the plaster polly-filler, I enjoyed the process so much that I wanted to cover the whole thing in it, sculpting round the box and revealing the texture of the plaster through the strokes with the scraper tool. 

Reflection:

• After the painting has been complete, I thought about adding a frame/ box, or coating resin over the top of the piece to give a high shine finish, or varnishing the box to link it back to the high shine metal approach. 

Artist Research: Jason Martin; Painting and sculpture as one.

Jason Martin: Painting as Sculpture

"Trained as a painter in oil and acrylic, Martin began manipulating his chosen material in the early 1990s, dragging, scraping, combing, raking and squeegeeing paint across the surfaces of his canvases and aluminium panels until their edges bled colour and the surfaces picked up textures, gestures and happenstance along the way."

"Jason Martin effects oscillations between sculpture and painting, with the vigour of action painting but a controlled hand. He is perhaps best known for his monochromatic paintings, where layers of oil or acrylic gel are dragged across hard surfaces such as aluminium, stainless steel or Plexiglas with a fine, comb-like piece of metal or board in one movement, often repeated many times."
http://www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/jason-martin-painting-as-sculpture

Mais-uma, 2013

Martin Zocalo, 2013

Rijks, 2013

• Initially reading about Martin's process and materials he uses, it connects directly to mine. 'Squeegeeing paint' across the surface of canvas and metals to pick up textures that happen along the way, is a good way to describe how I have chosen to paint. 

• Looking at his artwork it really resembles what I desire and value in art. The details, the metallic approach and high shine affect. The paint is turned sculptural particularly in Riijks, 2013, by the sheer amount of paint on the surface. 

• Comparing Martin to Marchand (an artist researched previously) both of their works resemble this mixture of 3D sculptural form on 2D board or canvas - to be viewed on the wall. This mixture of both sculpture and painting works by being a sculptural form placed on the context of a wall, so the concept of context is important for these artists works. When it comes to the placement of my own work within the exhibition, I want my sculptural pieces on the wall, and my more 2D paintings on the floor to confuse the viewer. 

Further development / experimentation 

• The colours in this piece are not important. High viscosity acrylic is thick enough to create texture. 
• Dragging the paint brush across each way to create a Criss-cross pattern can also be created with the ink roller, just using thicker paint. 
• Varnishing the finished painting using a varnish to create a high shine affect.

Studio: Plinth Painting Tests

Painting Tests: Acrylic, blue white and black

• Using too much black to begin with.  

• A transfer with what's left over on the ink roller picks up the finer details.

• A thick layer of paint which includes the blue, black and white which form the main bulk of the colours from the mild steel manipulation tests. The process at the moment is the same process that I use when welding onto mild steel - which is intrinsic and complete when I feel like the pattern has been evenly distributed for aesthetic affect. 

• A thinner layer of the previous page. This worked slightly better to give an even coverage of paint. 

Reflection:

• The paintings above were created by dotting an even distribution of each colour in a line at the start of the page - which upon reflection I'm not sure is the best way of painting. I think if I try to dot the paint onto the paper in a similar way to how the welding patterns look, then i'll achieve a more coherent look, one which the viewer can make the connection between the pieces more easily. 
• I need to conduct more paint tests before painting on the wooden board, and really define a process of painting.
• The experiments with less paint create more intricate details, however the thicker paint creates more details within the paint, reminiscent of Glenn Brown's paintings. 
• The criss cross effect that I mastered on my last canvas painting would be employed here too, with a constant overlay of the Criss-cross of paint until the  paint has blended into each other and created a subtle fade of tones.  
• Overall, trying to Criss-cross the mediums of painting and sculpture through this painting process, perhaps a thicker and more texturised painting style would work in my benefit. 

Studio: Plinth Painting Designs & Research

Large Ink roller:

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01IN592KC/ref=pd_luc_rh_sbs_01_03_t_img_lh?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
• This ink roller is 200mm wide which is a lot wider than my other one. This will be good for getting wider brush strokes on a larger scale painting. 

Designs:

• Getting measurements correct, making it into a 'landscape' plinth, the same format as my other 'landscape' 'paintings'. 

• All faces being painted.
• Follows 'landscape' format. 
• Inside wooden beam support for plinth when hanging on wall. 

Researching Blue:

Reflections:

• Making the base, the object. Argument between object + base in sculpture, references to Tony Cragg's work. 
• Using painting processes to make sculpture (mixture between painting and sculpture processes) and colour palette inspiration from heated mild steel. 
• The colours I will use are cobalt blue, white and black, and using the same process language that I have used while manipulating the mild steel, so abstraction and details of materials, lack of control (but not total lack). 

Artist Research: Jeannine Marchand

Untitled, clay and wood,

Folds XX, Clay steel and wood

Folds XX, Clay steel and wood, detail. 

• Jeannine Marchand is an artist that I came across on Pinterest. I noticed her use of folding with clay and it reminded me of the clay folding work I completed last term. 
• "Jeannine Marchand is a Puerto Rican studio artist based in Spruce Pine, NC." http://jeanninemarchand.com/jeanninemarchand.com/Jeannine_Marchand.html

• Her work sparks a desire with the details within materials for me, and the lines of brightness and contrast between the light and dark areas of the folds is what encouraged my interest in materiality. 
• For example, her clay folded pieces shown above, evoke such a connection with the material, as the clay is being used not to depict a form directly, but rather what the material can do. Clay, like many other sculptural mediums including metal, is typically used as a means of depicting something. Here Marchand has used the medium to depict a contrast between light and dark, which is what I was enthralled by when using stainless steel. 

• Further work that I would love to produce would be something similar to Marchand's clay folding work. If I could afford to continue using clay to produce a larger sculptural piece that embodies the form of sculpture through the materiality of clay, this would resemble the sculpture/ painting/ form/ materiality argument. 

Reflective Log/ Book: Sweet Dreams by Johanna Drucker

Re-visiting the book 'Sweet Dreams Contemporary art and complicity' by Johanna Drucker, as it was a staple focus point for my research and practice last term.

Key points & Reflections:

• "Artists working today are also keenly influenced by the mass media and material culture as much as by the rich traditions of fine art." (Drucker, 2006, xiv) - a bit about the conscious influences of the contemporary artist. 
• "The term "complicit" is deliberately provocative, since it implies a knowing compromise between motives of opportunism and circumstantial conditions - whether on the plane of production, or reference, or within institutional and social situations." (Drucker, 2006, xvi)

Chapter 2: Current conditions

• The chapter begins with a comparison between art in todays climate (for example 'store bought items trash and mass produced images'), is just an extreme version of the emperors new clothes, as if art is some massive illusion, or all in the concept. 
• "But the relationship of the production values of works to their symbolic value continues to be a key factor in the function of fine art as a distinct category of cultural activity."(Drucker, 2006, 12). 
• Comments on production and value of art. 

Chapter 4: focuses on eclectic materialism, mass media culture... 

A re-read of this chapter this term allowed me to engage with more aspects of what this book was saying.

Co-optation

• "Rendering artistic expression in consumable material always opens it to co-optation, just as any sign of enthusiasm for the mainstream seems liable to the charge of commercial opportunism. Modern art so often and deeply marked its opposition to consumer culture except as a source for "material" (in an almost literal sense) that many current approaches seem to raise the fundamental question of how fine art distinguishes itself from other forms of cultural expression." (Drucker, 2006, 89-90). 
• This quote is basically saying fine art is commercial and has commercial opportunity because it is mainstream, yet modern art opposes its connection with material value other than that of the materials needed to create the work. I think contemporary art is therefore a contrasting development from modern art as artists have learnt to exploit their material value for consumption purposes. And perhaps that is how fine art now distinguishes itself. 
• Glossary research: co-optation: 'to elect into a body by the votes of the existing members', or, 'to assimilate, take, or win over into a larger or established group.' - Dictionary.com
• "Fine art is not advertising. Individual works of art and artistic vision, no matter how complicit, or corrupt, are distinguished by their fundamental undirectedness, by the unpurposed nature of the undertaking." This quote I could disagree with because I could argue some art has a very purposed nature of the undertaking (process). 

Materiality

• "Materiality… seems to resist easy consumption. Materiality can't be readily replicated in reproduction. The thick canvases can't be swapped with mass produced copies" p. 92-93.
• This is a very important point as I suppose it continues the debate between art being a product, and art being something more reminiscent of Richter's theories - a higher spiritual value. 

Books' Conclusion

• Argument: "The argument I have tried to make arises from these many observations and is simply that the critical frameworks inherited from the avant-garde and passed through the academic discourses of current fine art history are constrained by the expectation of negativity."(Drucker, 2006, 247)
• "Fine art, artists, and critics exist in a condition of complicity with the institutions and values of contemporary culture" (Drucker, 2006, 247)
• "We respond to work because of its aesthetic effect."(Drucker, 2006, 252)

Reflections & Further research:

• This book talks about a number of topics very relative to my subject and interests. 
• Art and complicity to the market is a high theme. 
• In our culture, consumerism is an escape from life. Our culture surrounds itself with consumerism and material goods. 
• Jason Rhoades could be a good contrast artist to those working with material value, and comments on labour and production.