Week 5: Monday 21st October

Week 5: Monday 21^st October 2013

 It’s important to feel uncomfortable, if I'm doing something I'm unsure about then it is a push in the right direction. The deadline is fast approaching for the dissertation and it is important I have been planning and splitting my time properly between practical work and essay based reading and research. They both aid each other and it is something I am immensely interested in, I do feel my practical work has slowed down a little due to other deadlines and I am focused on material manipulation and three-dimensional building. I intend to experiment and play, with materials until the draft essay deadline.

In addition, I interviewed the curator from Manchester Art Gallery on Tuesday 22^nd October. The ideas and answers she gave me, were brilliant and very installation based.  Although originally for my dissertation, she has now given me some ideas for my own project and at first, I was set on pushing the boundaries of textiles but now I feel I can experiment with the  boundaries of installation art.
For example: a public art gallery has people visit that may not have experienced installation art before.          

‘Within installation art you the audience, are the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle, there is not a beginning or an end; the journey through installation art is personal and can be different for everyone.’ (Jesson 2013). 

Week 4: Monday 14th October

Week 4:  Monday 14^th October 2013: 

Working in three - dimensions drawing with objects by photographing and arranging. The materials are low cost and basic; this is where my problem lies. I have been focused on using materials for their cost; if I am not to so precious over the samples I have already created, I can change and manipulate ideas I already have in order to progress. In turn, I have been squashing, wrapping and moving my sculptures to create new spaces and places.

Week 3: Monday 7th October

Context: 

After university I am very interested in perusing a career  in visual merchandiser, this week I visited town to take photos of the shop displays to give me ideas and inspiration, from the materials used, to the position of the objects in the window.  My Practice at the moment  would be independent gallery based installation like Rachel Whitereads work,  but it has become of a surprise that the photographs can be used as prints. In the weeks to come I am hoping by taking extra time for contextual  research  and contacting stores for a work placement will enable me to have a more skilful knowledge of what it takes to be a textile / installation artist.
These are my own photographs; I was focusing on the use of colour and materials. Visual merchandising has to be cost effective, reusable and seasonal. I am already working with quite rustic colours and going to have a look at the autumn window displays was inspirational for how diverse wood and cardboard are as materials.

Week 3: Monday 7th October 2013.

Week 3:

Monday 7^th October 2013.

Up scaling work  is the priorty I have explored the beauty of the materials and products I have collected.  I have been playing and creating sculptures from the wooden pallets, old flooring, tiles and MDF.  To develop a strong concept and awareness of other people’s ideas I have been reading many different books surrounded by the idea of space and place to help me refine and develop my new samples.

‘...a great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if it has a cellar a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges that are all the more clearly delineated. All our lives we come back to them in our day dreams’ (Bachelard, 1994:8)

The poetics of space, by Gaston Bachelard, has been a real inspiration to my project and samples, his ideas surrounding the domestic space and place along with new materials to work with have inspired the installation works.

Rauschenberg, R.(1971 -1972) Cardboard Series [online image][Accessed on 4^th January 2013]http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/images/interior13/9780300123784/78.jpg

Inspired by Robert Rauschenberg’s Cardboard series I have been sampling with cardboard; the material is cheap, strong and malleable.  Moving, arranging, I document my three-dimensional samples through photography. Taking photographs of my samples is imperative, as these can then be collaged and stitched into; it also enables me to combine two and three dimensions. Working on a bigger scale is challenging, physically and mentally. It is a new idea that takes detailed sampling and material knowledge.

Weeks 1 and 2: Mon 23rd September and Monday 30th September 2013

                           

Using my summer project as a platform, I have begun final year with excitement and a conceptually driven project, my ideas stem from a personal experience last year, where I spent the year living with cockroaches and the anxiety that was provoked in house-mates and me within our home. I am researching and developing ideas surrounding concepts of space and place and revealing and concealing.

 I have started by sampling from my own photographs of the Victoria Baths, Manchester. I chose this environment, as it is run down and historic. I am also planning to visit the Stockport Air Raid shelters.  Specifically my photographs are of the old living quarters above the baths, that were now almost beyond repair. Focusing on texture and colour the peeling wallpaper, cracked windows and bricks were ideal to photograph.  I have begun to create smaller samples focused on a limited colour pallet; I sampled around 25 of these boards. After evaluating them as a whole they were of a small scale, the shapes within the samples were inspired by the photographs I took, the scale needed to enlarge so they would begin to represent and mirror the space of my original photos. The materials I initially will collect need to have a domestic feel from, flooring to roofing; they also need to be raw, rustic, recyclable and cheap.  Many artists from painters installation artists and multimedia artists past and present, like Robert Rauschenberg and Gregor Schneider, inspire me, although very different they provoke emotion through installation experience and this is something I would like to achieve.

 Gregor Schneider’s work: Death House, He created a house in which all the windows door and exits were locked, visitors to the installation felt trapped and contained, the house holds history like the Victoria Baths.

Schneider, G. (1999) Death House[online image][Accessed on 20^th September 2013] http://www.gregorschneider.de/