Modern Art Simplified

Credit (and kudos) to John Atkinson

Heike Brachlow

Heike Brachlow gave a talk at a Contemporary Glass Society meeting on Saturday (5th September).

I'd come across Heike already because my latest glass project (currently stalled) has some   "geometric" aspects, and Heike's work is very geometric - lots of rectangles, cylinders and so on.   Here's a link to a Pinterest board of her work.

And here's a few of my take-aways from her talk:

Photographs

Heike says she spends a lot on photography and it's clearly paid off.  For instance, it led to her being on the cover of an exhibition catalogue, and that led to her getting noticed.

Her last slide listed the 3 photographers she uses - Ester Segarra, Simon Bruntnell and Roger Lee.

Precariousness

 Heike's website lists the "drivers" behind a lot of her work.   They include "the slightly odd" and "precariousness, stability, equilibrium, imbalance".  

Some of her more well-known works are cylinders with a slightly pointed base, so they move when touched.  They evoke quite a strong reaction in me (and probably everyone else) because it feels as though they could easily fall over.  It puts me on edge.  

I'm not sure whether I could handle owning one of these sculptures because I would be worrying about it all the time!  

Glass classes

Heike listed some places that run workshops:

Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, New York State)

Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle (mostly hot glass)

North Lands (Caithness, north east Scotland)

Cesty Skla (Czech Republic - recently started."affordable".)

Cold Working

After her talk I asked Heike about cold-working.  She says she does most of it with Suhner angle grinders.  Since then, I've been checking them out.  See this video. 

They are REALLY expensive and would require quite a lot of other equipment, but I've got a milestone birthday coming up in a few months...(ahem)

Derriford Follow-Up

A little follow-up (and rant) on a project that went to sleep.

My previous post is here, but in a nutshell:

In 2014 all 1st and 2nd year Contemporary Craft students were asked to come up with design boards for various projects.  I picked a sculpture for the main entrance to Derriford Hospital.   After 3 cycles of  designing and model-making, 4 proposals were shortlisted, mine being one of them.  We went along to Derriford to present our projects, some voting took place, the results were disseminated, and then.....

SILENCE 

After a few months I emailed the person in charge of the project at Derriford, asking what the status was.  

NO REPLY    

It's pretty maddening (and incredibly discourteous of her) considering the amount of time and effort that was spent on this project by myself and other students.

Anyhow, I recently visited Derriford and guess what's in the spot reserved for the sculpture:   

 M&S Simply Food

Clare Twomey

I've volunteered to help in the "Acts of Making" festival of performance art that's happening in Plymouth and Mount Edgcumbe from the 12th to the 26th September.

I was "interviewed" for the task, which involved picking one of the 6 artists in the festival, researching them for 30 minutes and then talking about their work for 10 minutes or so.

I picked Clare Twomey, partly because I knew a little about her already (mainly the thousands of ceramic birds that she scattered around the V&A - see later) and partly because she seems very thoughtful, well organised and articulate.

The upshot is that I think I will end up being one of Twomey's helpers in a repeat of one of her previous installations, called "Is it Madness.  Is it Beauty."

I decided I ought to do a little more research on Twomey before the event, so here's a rundown of her more notable projects:

 Is it Madness.  Is it Beauty. 

First performed in November 2010.

"Is It Madness. Is It Beauty" was a work commissioned for the Siobhan Davies Studios that communicated ideas about the futility of human action. Twomey responded to the repetitive actions of dancers in The Score, and conceived a performance piece that involved the periodic filling of a large number of unfired ceramic bowls with water; however, as the bowls were unfired they collapsed, visually emphasising human endeavour and desire to achieve.

Video

Everyman's Dream

April 2013

 Everyman’s Dream was a work commissioned for the exhibition Marking the line: Ceramics and Architecture, inspired by Sir John Soane's house and collections, challenging where and how we view both ancient and modern works of art.  For Sir John Soane's Museum in London Twomey asked one thousand men to tell her about their hopes of personal legacy. This is in reference to the legacy that Sir John Soane left in the form of his architectural contributions as well as his collection of artefacts at the Sir John Soane's Museum in London.

Guardian article on this

Piece by Piece

October 2014 - January 2015

Piece by Piece was staged at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche.  Piece by Piece features an army of more than 2,000 ceramic figurines – all inspired by the Gardiner’s rare Commedia dell’Arte Harlequin collection – and demonstrates the conflicting emotions of everyday life. The exhibit also featured an on-site artist/maker creating additional statuettes to add to Twomey’s ever-growing ghostly white world.

Video

 Exchange

June - September 2013

Clare Twomey's concept for her work, Exchange, was inspired by the acts of exchange and philanthropy that lie at the heart of the Foundling Hospital -- the UK's first children's charity and England's first public art gallery. Each day of the exhibition, ten people were invited to choose a cup from the hundreds laid out on tables. In exchange for agreeing to complete the good deed, they were allowed to keep the cup.

Video

Trophy

September 2006 Trophy was commissioned by the V&A Museum and played with notions of value, permanence and the culture of collecting. The artist worked in collaboration with Wedgwood to produce 4000 small birds made from Jasper Blue –an historical material created by Wedgwood in the 1800s– that were then displayed throughout the Cast Courts; the concept was to create a unique object for the museum’s collections that would be both beautiful and desirable. Within five hours of opening, the public had stolen each one of the 4000 birds that made up the collection; although they were not formally invited to take the birds home, many followed the behaviour of others in the space.

Video

Consciousness/Conscience

2001-2004 Consciousness/Conscience was a ceramic installation that comprises several thousand hollow unfired Bone China tiles laid out on the floor of the gallery space. The work is installed so that visitors to the exhibition need to cross the work to encounter other parts of the exhibition. By walking across the work they effectively destroy the floor to gain access to other works. The floor tiles record their path within the space. Consciousness/Conscience is conceptually linked with ideas of human interaction, social convention and appropriateness.

Video

Stanley Gibbons

This is going to sound like sour grapes but...

Earlier this year I entered a competition for a work of art on the Hoe to commemorate 150 years since Stanley Gibbons set up a business in Plymouth which ended up becoming a world leader in stamp collecting.

I was quite disappointed when I didn't win this commission because I thought I had a good idea - one that made an oblique reference to the fact that Gibbons is suspected of being a serial wife-killer.  Here's a photo of the key aspect of my proposed design:

Gibbons was born in the same year as the Penny Black stamp was issued so I proposed a sheet of Penny Blacks with selected stamps replaced by Gibbons' portrait to create a question mark - one that hangs over his private life.

The image on the Penny Blacks, of Princess Victoria, might also be seen as a reference to Gibbons' four young wives, all of whom died in mysterious circumstances - possibly poisoned by Gibbons who was trained as a pharmacist and had access to chemicals in his father's pharmacy.

My view was that Plymouth City Council should celebrate Gibbons' achievement in the stamp-collecting world but also acknowledge the suspicions about his private life - which were the subject of a BBC documentary a few years ago.  If they ignored it, they risked being made to look foolish.  Also, the public would be much more interested in Gibbons' possible "dark side" than in stamp collecting!

Wrong!

I went and had a look at the winning project today and (a) it makes no reference to the suspicions about Gibbons and (b) it really is quite disappointing.

It's just some flags put on the existing flag poles.



There's going to be different sets of flags designed by the artist, Joanna Brinton, working with local schools and community groups.  I suspect the community involvement was a big positive for the selection committee.  (I tried a similar idea, without success, on the Energy from Waste sculpture - see previous post).

If you didn't read the board explaining the project (below), you'd be hard pressed to figure out from the first set of flags that this had anything to do with Stanley Gibbons or stamp collecting.

There's also a long strip of polished stainless steel further back.  It's supposed to reflect back different aspects of the surrounding environment as viewers walk around the site, but I don't think it works.  The mirror is too far away from the flagpoles for people to realise it's part of the installation.

Also, it's hard to work out what's being reflected in the mirror.  It's angled so you can't see the flags or the Hoe's fantastic waterfront (missed opportunity?).  All you can see is, er, maybe it's the top of some trees?

Essay Topic?

I have to write an essay in the next academic year at college, and I've been toying with what it should be about.

I think we're meant to do some naval gazing stuff, which I would struggle with,  so I've been thinking of doing a journalism piece on the marketing tactics of a few artists.

Example 1: Anselm Kiefer.  I went to the exhibition of his work in the Royal Academy last autumn (see previous post) and just recently I've been looking at documentaries about him.   His work sells for huge amounts of money which gives him the freedom to do whatever he likes - which in his case, includes messing about with construction projects with no commercial result.  It's great!  I wish I could do it!  But I'm puzzled by a couple of things.  First, how did he get into a position of being able to sell his work for such huge sums?  Second, who the heck buys his work?  Most of it is enormous - it wouldn't fit in a normal size room - and it's fragile - moving it would probably damage it.

Example 2: Damien Hirst.   Just been reading this article in the Guardian about Hirst creating his own gallery and in a way, going back to what he was good at - curating.  In the past, this was curating other YBAs.  Now it looks as though part of his motivation is to halt the slide in value of his own work.

Example 3: Banksy.   I really love his stuff and I like his supposed attitude.   However, he's also managed to make his work valuable, which in turn has enabled him to take on projects that wouldn't be financially viable.

Example 4:  Grayson Perry.  In this case, I think I prefer his observations and analysis of social conditions more than his actual art.  I like his tapestries but I'm not so keen on his pots and the jury's still out on his "chapel".

I'm not sure whether this would work as an essay topic.  What do you think?

Ghosts: Evaluation

Please see my online photo journal.  The comments below will make a lot more sense if you do this!

I give myself the following scores out of 10 for this project:

Overall: 7

The creative process:
Idea                                         9
Design                                     9
Make                                       9

The outcome
Visual                                      6
Thought provoking                 8
Quality                                    6

My attributes
Ingenuity                                10
Effort                                      10
Persistence                              10
Experimentation                       7
Seeking advice                         9

Positives and Negatives 

Positives

• I think it succeeds in getting people to consider their attitudes towards abnormalities in nature and imperfections in their own bodies. 
• I think it succeeds in raising a philosophical teaser about the existence of the carrots – their presence as shapes/surfaces even though they’re not there.   
• I overcame a lot of technical challenges in the making process.    
• My persistence is notable. It took almost a year to complete. 
   
• I gave quite a lot of thought about the right way of presenting it.

Negatives


• It might make you think but it's not beautiful  (but then, neither is quite a lot of modern art)
  
•  It's over-thought - it doesn't have the pizazz of something that's put together quickly in a sudden burst of creativity.     
• Quality-wise, it's okay as a student project but just isn't in the same class as the exquisite specimen jars of Steffen Dam in the V&A. They are *so* beautiful! (On the other hand, they are just lovely objects - no goal of making you think about philosophical issues

Meeting My Goals

I started this project thinking I would try and create something that worked on 2 levels – it was appealing to look at and it made people think. 

On the appearance side of things, I would say that I’ve only partially succeeded.   I think the shape and surface texture of the individual carrots is appealing, as are the strings of tiny bubbles in the largest specimen jar. 

However, I think the outer shape of the specimen jars isn’t refined enough and I’m not sure whether the plinth was the best way of presenting them.  A glass shelf might have been better.

After I’d practically finished my project I came across these specimen jars by Steffen Dam in the V&A:  

Their exquisite quality put me to shame – made my efforts look decidedly amateurish by comparison.   Yes, I know; Dam is a master craftsman with decades of experience whose work sells for hundreds of thousands of pounds so I shouldn’t feel too down-hearted (see my previous post).

Another measure of my project’s attractiveness (or not):  I submitted it for the Warm Glass competition and didn’t come anywhere.  In some respects, I think judging a 3D object from a single 2D photograph is a little unfair – particularly for projects such as mine, where it pays to look at it from all angles and also zoom in on details.  I’m not sure whether my photo (at the top of this page) was up to scratch.  I took it myself using the college’s studio.  

Thought Provoking

As noted, I wanted my project to make people think as well as appeal to them aesthetically.

 To start off with, I wanted people to think about abnormalities in a number of different ways – why they are squeamish about eating anything other than perfectly shaped fruit and vegetables, how they feel when encountering humans with deformities, whether they feel as though their own bodies have imperfections.  

I think my artwork addresses this quite well.  At first glance, the hollows look like medical specimens of some sort, in formaldehyde (echoes of Damien Hirst?).  The plinth with the Latin inscription on it reinforces the perception that they’re something unusual that deserves closer attention.

Closer inspection reveals that they are misshapen carrots, and then I think people see them as a metaphor for human deformities and imperfections.   

Up until fairly late on in the project, I called it “No One’s Perfect,” implying that everyone probably has some secret hang-ups about their bodies.  

In the end, I changed the title to “Ghosts” after pondering over existence/absence – the fact that carrots were no more and yet the space they once occupied was preserved.  They were ghosts!  They even looked like ghosts! 

I think the existence/absence angle works really well and lends itself the philosophical navel-gazing much loved by the art world.

Marie Toseland

I think it chimed with artist Marie Toseland when I showed her my project in a tutorial.  Earlier on, Marie, had talked about one of her installations, “Being and Nothingness” – a melting block of ice in front of a collection of large loudspeakers (see my previous post).  I see some parallels with my carrots’ presence “in spirit”.  

Marie is also interested in hidden surfaces, like the inside of her mouth, and sex (expressing it in her work!). She agreed with me that my project pressed similar buttons.  The carrots aren’t there but their surfaces are.  They are penis-like.

Antoine Lerperlier

A lot earlier I also showed this project to Antoine Lerperlier, a very different artist from Marie Toseland in that he takes great pride in his craftsmanship and the quality of his work.  (Marie quite candidly admits she’s poor at making things).  Lerperlier has some similarities to Steffen Dam, in that he traps bubbles and other items inside glass. 

One piece of advice from Lerperlier proved pivotal in this project.  I had been struggling to polish the surfaces of my first specimen jar and lecturer Glen Carter had remarked that he quite liked the idea of a translucent, ground surface making the interior more mysterious.  I didn’t really agree with this because I’d put so much effort into recreating the surface texture of the carrot, but I liked the idea of avoiding endless hours of grinding.  Lerperlier said I had to polish the surfaces and that was sufficient for me to keep going.  The right decision, I am sure.

I would classify the other suggestions made by Lerperlier concerning my work as food for thought – ie, I looked into them in detail and decided I wouldn’t take them up.

In some cases I disagreed with him on the aesthetics.  For instance filling the carrot hollows with a colour, which I think would have destroyed their ethereal, ghost-like, qualities.

In other cases, I thought his ideas were impractical.  For instance, fusing the pieces of the specimen jars together by heating them in a kiln.  I discussed this with experts at Bullseye in the U.S. who strongly advised against it, saying it would destroy the surface detail of the carrots.

I thought hard about bonding together the pieces of the specimen jars and in the end decided against it, for aesthetic and practical reasons.

Aesthetic: I found that handling the individual pieces of each specimen jar was pleasurable – it introduced another sense beyond the visual.   I might take this discovery forward in a future work (see below).

Practical: If fusing was out the other option was glue – much frowned on by Lerperlier.  I frowned too!  As I saw it, if I used a small amount of glue I would be able to see it in the join; if I coated the whole surface of the join then I wouldn’t be able to stop the glue dripping down inside the carrots, spoiling their glistening surface texture.

What Next? 

While working on this project I was encouraged to treat it as a starter for a series of sculptures.  

At the time, I dismissed this, partly because of the huge amount of time and effort that went into this project, partly because I don’t have a great interest in trying to sell my work,  and partly because there’s so many other things I want to create.

However, an interesting idea was floated when I asked fellow students to criticise the end result of this project on Facebook; namely that I should encourage people to address their squeamishness concerning deformities by encouraging them to pick up and handle my artwork.

I’d noticed that picking up and handling the pieces of glass forming my specimen jars is a pleasant experience, which has got me thinking. 

Obviously, people can’t pick up and handle the deformed carrots in this project because the carrots are no more.  But maybe I should make some positives of deformed carrots, place them on a velvet-covered cushion and invite people to pick them up?

One attraction of this idea: I might get away with doing no grinding and polishing!