Ascension by Bill Viola. (still from video piece)
I went to the sainsbury centre of visual arts yesterday to see Viola’s recent video pieces. safe to say, they were amazing. Especially Ascension . We sat in ore of this piece. it was quite uncanny as well as peaceful.
polly morgan
‘Quelled’ from the Conflict exhibition. Pencil on paper
‘Stratagem’ from the Conflict exhibition. Pencil on paper
‘Dissimilarity on common ground’ from the Conflict exhibition. Pencil on paper
‘Alteration in deception’ from the Conflict exhibition. Pencil on paper
‘Adherent’ from the conflict exhibition . Pencil on paper.
Daniel Sheehan and myself set up and opened our ‘Conflict’ exhibition, the conversations we had when deciding as to where the work should be placed was quite interesting. We wanted to place the work so it was ‘balanced’ i.e. wasn’t over crowded. It was agreed that it would be best if my work was displayed on the largest wall in the room, as it seemed best as my drawings created a sort of narrative between the eachother. Dan’s pieces were then placed in a way that they were crammed, leaving enough space for the viewer to not be distracted or overwhelmed.
I have still yet to start my essay, it seems i have put it off for far too long so tomorrow this will have to be started. I have been considering what to write about, and decided to base this essay purely my relationship with the act of drawing, something i shouldn’t have a problem writing about.
I can’t wait to get working again once assessment is over, i feel my practice is continuously growing and developing, with fresh ideas to explore the boundaries of drawing, whether this be traditional, or conceptual. I will try and explore drawing conceptual through the summer break, as well as explore my Ultraviolet drawing idea.
The conglomeration exhibition has now finished, it seemed to be a success with good amounts of feed back. I think it may have been a good idea to maybe have a group crit so everyone got a good idea as to what their work was really about. The exhibition featured two of my drawings; ‘affrayed of the dark’ and ‘affrayed of being’ (these were images of the solar eclipse and the shotgun. After leaving m works with the curators to chose a place for the work to hang, i was surprised to see the works were totally separated from each other. i was told this was because it was felt the works didn’t necessarily work together, which, i must say i disagreed with, the idea of a natural disturbance and a human disturbance i personally thought was obviously being shown through the works. Although i was tempted to speak out to have the pieces moved i chose not to, maybe the relationship between the two works weren’t that obvious. This is something to be considered in the studio.
I have been thinking more about the concept of ‘conflict’ for Dans and myself’s exhibition on the 8th. I have created two more larger drawings of the solar eclipse as well as a drawing of a deterioratingbuilding, still using the ‘blue print’ effect. However i feel i may move on to using different colour papers and grounds to help suggest something within the images, as suggested by Mark Harris in a one to one tutorial.
After the ‘Conflict’ exhibition i will focus my attention in architecture, and the idea of support and collapse as this seems to be a prominent and interesting subject, especially the use of the archway and bridges within historical and modern architecture. The book; ‘Bunker archeology’ by Paul Virilio was suggested by Mark to read on the idea of battlements. The book talks about battlements on the coast of france and britian, and how these were built to withstand any form of attack, but now become useless, and unable to be destroyed due to the strength. I have yet to read more and fully understand the reasoning for writing about something that is quite aesthetically ugly and boring pieces of architecture.
My practice is growing everyday and i am getting very comfortable in the understanding and reasonings for what i am doing, next years degree show piece(s) have also started to cross my mind. I am thinking about using UV reactive pens to create drawing, only when these drawings are exposed to uv light they will be revealed. This is all i will say on the matter.
I have received the brief for BA6, ‘Collaboration, Exhibition and Audience’. We are given the task to collaborate with another student(s) and create an exhibition, external to the university. I am slightly concerned about the preparation required, and the need to have a finished article, as this seems not to be a huge strength of mine. I have teamed up with a painter who creates black and white paintings depicting historical events (mainly related to the Iraq and Afgan wars). I feel it will be interesting to see how the works which reveal a sense of the broken, and destruction relate into a small space. Is this going to be to juxtaposed? And will the audience be able to grasp the similar qualities the works have? This is something which will be revealed.
Throughout the second half of BA5 i have been studying the sense of the lost. I think this is a theme in which I will carry on, and use within the works I create. After and 1st and 2nd year group crit, it was mentioned i may use colour within my work, which I have to admit, i dismissed very quickly. However, I have recently discovered through reading Rebecca Solnit’s ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’ that the colour blue has lots of connotations towards being lost. Through light, blue is created within water and the sky, it is also shown as glaze over cityscapes that are far into the distance. It is curious how wen we head towards this colour of blue it disappears around us, like chasing the end of a rainbow. I think i will use blue pencil to create my next set of drawings (after finishing my current ones).
Another subject i have been thinking about is the use of writing and text in art. Through todays lecture for contextual studies i was interested in how language was almost created from different regional languages, lost in translation is something that interests me, mainly due to my interests in creative writing and poetry. I have an idea for a piece which i think i will definitely be a worth while experiment. I will create a piece of writing on A4, translate it into a different language and then translate it back. The sense of the sentence will be lost, this will also be framed in a huge frame, engulfing the text, as though it is totally lost, i think this would work next to the large scale boat drawing i have yet to complete.
i think general play with text and language will be my next mover, but still carrying on with drawing, creating poems through my work.
We also visited a piece by Rory McGrath, an artist who supposedly wrote the entire book by Thomas Moore; ‘utopia’. It was amazing to see the extent of the piece, stretching around all four sides of the building. another interesting thing i noticed was through a metal guard we were able to see inside of the old industrial building. images to follow. The interior shows of something lost in time, forgotten, and neglected, it was a place of almost horror, maybe this was felt after seeing a couple of needles and old beer bottles scatterred on the floor, like the people forgotten or ignored by society.
So it was hand in today. Least to say, I wasn’t entirely happy with my essay. I felt it started very well, but seemed to tail off at the end, I suppose this is due to subject matter I chose as its quite a difficult one. And I just ran out of things to say. I think I’m guna do some more writing for BA6 just to get ky skills up, as well as do tonnes of reading.
My drawings are sort of coming along, although they lack quantity. I’m please with the large piece, looking forward to completeing it as I think I’m only going to draw the boat, one because its going to be quicker to complete, secondly, I think it will look better and more visually stimulating.
ok… So it seems I have set myself a huge task within my practice this year. GREAT JOY!
After my tutorial with Paul, it became apparent (because he actually said this) that ‘drawing as a method of working is a bit complex and diverse’ ,MAYBE more so than painting or sculpture due to the large amount of history that is behind the two what can be described as classical methods (not saying there is anything wrong with these disciplines. just saying). Another mean feet is the theory I am basing my 2000 word essay on is the theory of ‘lost’, which is a bit heavy, and hard to explain, but i’m still going to give it a go. (why not)
I’ve been reading a fair bit recently, which I’m starting to get comfortable with, and slowly getting my head around art lingo. It was a bit obvious that I need to learn a lot more about the thing I’m basing my practice around, so reading is the only option really.
And on an off the subject note, I’ve started to private tutor a young girl to help her with her creative writing (something that has always interested me since secondary school), I’ve set her a task to describe something, and I will draw it. (going to be interesting)
haha. sorry! agreed though, sounds much better!
