Sir Antony

So, Antony Gormley is to become a knight - and I get an excuse to write about him.

I really like most of the stuff he does.  In fact, "like" is an understatement - I think a lot of it is really great and some of it has influenced my current project,  notably his "Field" installations of tens of thousands of clay figures and the many examples of his groups of identical figures.

My current project - "Faces" - will comprise 45 figures, all identical apart from their height and their facial expressions.  Actually, I should say 44 ceramic figures and one glass figure, which has no facial expression on it.  For current progress please go to:

http://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/work_details.php?id=40&s=0

My son Tom and his wife, Kim,  gave me a book on Antony Gormley a couple of years ago and up until now I've focused on the pictures of his work rather than the words between the pictures.

When I first got the book I was a bit put off by the first lot of words - a conversation between Antony Gormley and E.H. Gombrich (1909-2001) described on the cover as "one of the world's most celebrated art historians".

As a former journalist and editor I approach conversations such as these with caution.  To my mind, they are often a lazy way of dealing with a topic.  Two people are allowed to ramble on and, perhaps  because they're supposed to be famous,  little or no effort is made to edit things so some clear messages are delivered.

I thought this was particularly true of the recorded audio conversation between Monika Kinley and Jon Thompson in my previous blog (but I was too polite to say so at the time).

Anyhow, Gormley getting knighted has prompted me to take another look at his book and see whether I'm still irked by its arty-farty text.

Conclusion:  This Context of Practice course must be influencing me!  The first few pages are really interesting:

It turns out that Gormley read Gombrich's book, The Story of Art, while he was at school, and that's what inspired him!   He says it "made the whole possibility of not only studying art but also of becoming an artist a reality for me."

Gombrich starts the conversation by talking about Field, where the clay figures are just roughly human in shape with two finger holes for the eyes in the head.

By pure coincidence, the figures in my Faces project bear some similarity in that they're just a representation of a head and body although I've gone the opposite way in one respect - I'm trying to make the shape of my figures identical and so smooth they look machine-made.

Anyhow, Gombrich says he's interested in the "psychology of perception; if a face emerges from a shape you are bound to see an expression".   He goes on to cite a Swiss inventor of a comic strip, Rodolfe Toepffer, who observed that virtually any scribbled face, regardless of how badly it's drawn, is expressive - it conveys meaning.

This is EXACTLY my starting point for my Faces project; I scribbled some faces on a coffee jar, was intrigued by the emotions they conveyed and decided to try and develop the concept in 3D.

So the bottom line is that I'm warming to the thought processes behind Antony Gormley's art in a similar way to me warming to Grayson Perry, following his Reith Lectures and his penetrating observations of taste and class in his previous TV programmes - see my previous blog: http://peter-heywood.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/taste-and-class.html

As a result, I will make a sustained effort to read the words in Gormley's book - although I wish the book covered the way he made some of his sculptures, in the way that Perry included his sketch books in his "Vanity of Small Differences" book, covering taste/class and the production of his amazing tapestries.

I'll also buy E.H. Gombrich's "The Story of Art" so that I can see what Gormley found so inspirational about it.  Maybe it will also help me sound more intelligent on this Context of Practice course.

I wonder whether Grayson Perry will ever be given a knighthood?  The thought amuses me because of his female alter-ego.

UPDATE: I managed to buy a second-hand version of "The Story of Art" for 1 penny (plus postage) on Amazon and it arrived today (10th Jan).  At first glance I think I'm going to like it.

Faces

I tend to get bored during Christmas so I’ve organised things so I can continue with my main college project at home.  It focuses on facial expressions and how they convey (and sometimes mask) emotions.

Here’s a link explaining how my “Faces” project is evolving:

http://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/work_details.php?id=40&s=0

I didn’t realise when I started this project that a highly relevant exhibition was taking place a few hundred metres from me.  It was called  “Artists Make Faces”, in Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery.  

Luckily, the penny dropped before the exhibition closed (on December 7^th) so I went along and took a look at the paintings and sculptures picked by Monika Kinley, a famous curator and collector who lives in Plymouth.

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Plymouth-exhibition-Artists-Makes-Faces-Monika/story-19852927-detail/story.html

Actually, I’ve now asked the museum whether they can put me in touch with Kinley because it sounds as though we might have something in common – namely, an interest in the way the face conveys such a wide range of thoughts and feelings.

Here’s a recorded conversation about the exhibition between Kinley and Jon Thompson, an artist, curator and former head of art at Goldsmiths:

https://soundcloud.com/tags/artists%20make%20faces

In it,  Thompson says:

‘Two eyes, a nose and a mouth; always indestructible as a sign.  You only need to have these four components and it is a face.’

As it happens, I’ve just drawn a bunch of faces based only on these four components:

I may have to wait a while to meet Kinley.  I’ve been told she’s in hospital at the moment and is rather frail.  Here’s wishing her well.

In the mean time, I’ve been doing a bit of research.  Kinley grew up in Berlin and Vienna and moved with her family to the UK in 1939, to escape Nazi persecution of the Jews.

She came from an arty family and worked at the Tate Gallery and other art galleries in 1950s and 60s developing her knowledge, contacts etc.  She ended up putting on shows in her own flat and taking some artists under her wing, some of whom became famous, including  Frank Auerbach (see later).  . 



She worked with her partner,  Victor Musgrave, to launch the Outsider exhibition (artists with no formal training, motivated by their own visions) and has remained a patron of Outsider artists.

I was going to review some of the exhibits at "Artists Make Faces" but I've now discovered a really good "teacher pack" that does it all for me!  Here's a link to it:

http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/amf_teachers_notes.pdf

Arty Bollocks

This is fun:
http://www.artybollocks.com

Theorists

I've just read a reassuring review of "Art Since 1990", a self-styled "landmark study in the history of modern art" by a bunch of what are probably the word's foremost theorists on the subject, namely:

• Rosalind Krauss
• Hal Foster
• Yves-Alain Bois
• Benjamin HD Buchloh 

I've linked the names to their Wikipedia entries for anyone interested in art theorists.

Frankly, I'm not.

But here's a link to a review of their book by Jonathan Jones, Guardian art critic:

Lost in a labyrinth of theory

A couple of excerpts I particularly like:

This book is the final ludicrous monument to an intellectual corruption that has filled contemporary museums and the culture they sustain with a hollow and boring, impersonal chatter. Art has been lost in a labyrinth of theory. 

There is no good work of art that cannot be described in intelligible English, however long it might take, however much patience is required. And yet this book begins with four theoretical essays explaining the post-structuralist concepts the authors believe we need before we can meaningfully discuss a single work of art. It is the supreme expression of an art culture that sneers at "empiricism" as a dirty word.

The point about plain English strikes a chord.  It's how I sorted the wheat from the chaff as a technology journalist when people were trying to blind me with science.

I find Jonathan Jones' words reassuring because they match my reaction to a lot of the philosophical stuff we're covering in the Context of Practice course.    In my view,  theories belong to science where they can be tested against facts.  The theorists that concoct them to analyse art are being too clever for their own good.

Having said that, I'm becoming a bit of convert when it comes to studying other artists - which I guess is what "empiricism" means in the above quote.

At one stage I would have said that studying other artists ran the risk of stifling my own creativity.  Rather than dreaming up my own ideas from scratch I might end up adopting ideas from other people's work and simply "extrapolating" them.

 Credit to Grayson Perry for my change of attitude on this one. His Reith Lectures and his "Vanity of Small Differences"are full of references to other works of art.  As a result, I end up feeling that there's a lot of depth there.

The same thing could be said about John Grayson's lecture.  I felt as though I was tapping into a mine of knowledge about other artists - which is why I ended up researching a lot of them afterwards and listing them on this blog.

I guess these are examples of other people's "intellectual scaffold" - something I need to develop to underpin my work.  I'd better make a point of drilling down on artists I like in the future - an empirical rather than a theoretical approach.

My thoughts on John Grayson's Lecture on "The Future of Craft"

John Grayson, head of contemporary craft at Plymouth College of Art, gave a lecture on the future of craft on Tuesday (3rd Dec).

There was some agonising over the definition of craft but I'm going to skip over it because it's just semantics and I've figured out why I'm doing a craft as opposed to an art course, which is all that matters to me.

For me, the most important point John made was about creating an "intellectual scaffold" for your work.  In John's case, I think this means "keeping old industrial craft processes alive by finding new ways to use them sustainably in a contemporary context".  This comes from a college blog "introducing John Grayson". 

It's got me thinking:  What's  my "intellectual scaffold"?  I'll come back to that some time.  For the moment, here's a run-down of the artists and organisations John referenced in his lecture:

Maggie Hollingworth
Makes everyday objects such as cutlery out of recycled paper (i.e. papier mache)
http://www.magiehollingworth.co.uk/index.html

Simone Ten Hompel
Metal utensils, jars etc that are more works of art than functional
http://www.tenhompel.com

Jack Cunningham
Treating your body as a showcase for jewellery that "tells a story".
http://www.jackcunningham.co.uk
Eg: Memory Kit (scroll down on the link below)
http://www.jackcunningham.co.uk/jack_phd/chapter06(c).html

Hothouse
Not an artist but a Crafts Council "Collective"
http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/professional-development/maker-development/crafts-council-collective/hothouse

Droog Design
Design company in Amsterdam
http://www.droog.com
One of its products is  "do hit chair" by Marijn van der Pol - a sheet metal cube that you bash with a hammer to make "whatever you choose it to be":
http://www.droog.com/webshop/furniture/do-hit-chair---hit-by-van-der-poll

Gijs Bakker
Jewellery designer.  Founded Droog
http://www.gijsbakker.com/home.html

Timothy Information Ltd.
Tim Carson.  Jewellery meets rebellion/political demos
http://www.velvetdavinci.com/artist.php?aid=147
http://www.dialoguecollective.co.uk/made13

David Clarke
"Mashups" of  old silverware - pots, cutlery etc
http://misterclarke.wordpress.com
John gives Clarke a plug in the college blog I referenced above.   In that blog, he also plugs Gareth Neal, a furniture maker that exhibited recently at college.  I can see why.  Neal's "Hue Line Form" is fantastic - and has got me thinking laterally about the stuff I'm doing at present.

Anton Alvarez
Example of making a machine to make art.  Thread wrapping machine makes (weird) furniture.
http://www.antonalvarez.com/The-Thread-Wrapping-Machine

Max Lamb
Casts pewter desk in the sand of Caerhays Beach in Cornwall
http://maxlamb.org/126-pewter-desk/

Studio Swine
Design, architecture, fashion
http://www.studioswine.com
Collects aluminium drinks cans, melts them down to make artwork, all in an eco friendly way
http://design-milk.com/can-city-studio-swine/

Josh Bitelli
Coating steel frames with road making material to make a seat.  Seemed totally daft to me.
http://www.joshbitelli.co.uk/project/roadworks-proj/

Paolo Scura 
Jewellery from bits of street matter.  Another whacky idea.
http://www.klimt02.net/jewellers/paolo-scura

Tony Cragg
Important UK sculptor, winner of Turner Prize in 1988.  Uses building materials.
http://www.tony-cragg.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Cragg
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/tony-cragg-953

Helen Carnac
 Renowned enameller who styles herself as a "maker and thinker"
http://helencarnac.wordpress.com/each-other/

Minsu Kim
"Living food" - just totally weird and rather revolting
http://minsukim.net/Living-Food-1

Sebastian Brajkovic
Designer that makes "sculptural furniture" using CNC type equipment
http://carpentersworkshopgallery.com/en/Artists/Sebastian-Brajkovic
http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/when-computers-and-classics-collide.html

Les Coleman

Les Coleman was an artist.  He died earlier this year and he seemed like my sort of guy when I read his obituary.  The one in the Daily Telegraph starts:

Les Coleman, who has died aged 67, was an artist, sculptor, author, aphorist, latter-day Dada-ist and all-round rare bird who preferred his work to evoke subtle grins rather than highbrow critiques.

He made an installation called "crossfire" that appeals to me - it was just a lot of arrow heads  and arrow flights (feathers) stuck in a wall.

 I like his satirical commentary on the art world.  This includes a book I've bought called "Meet the Art Students" containing sketches of art college stereotypes.

It also includes the page below, entitled  "How to make it in the art business":

http://www.paulgravett.com/articles2/neal_fox/how_to_make_it_in_the_art_business_neal_fox.jpg

Les Coleman himself never made it big - and he clearly felt sore about other artists becoming celebrities because of their antics rather than their work.

 I must admit that I once thought Grayson Perry was an example of this - wearing a dress to accept the Turner prize certainly got him noticed.

But I've changed my mind about Grayson.  As I said in my previous post, I enjoyed his Reith Lectures and as a result, trawled the Internet looking for something to make it worth while writing a post about him.  I  ended up buying his book, The Vanity of Small Differences, covering his "safari of the taste tribes" of England.

I like it!  I think Les Coleman would have liked it too.  There's no arty farty talk in it.  There's some really thoughtful comments,  the sketchbooks he drew while on his safari,  real close-ups of his final tapestries and some techie stuff on how they were made.

It's just what I was hoping for.    I wanted to understand how Grayson developed his ideas and I wanted to look closely at some of his work.  Previously, photos of his pots hadn't done it for me.

Back to Les Coleman.   By incredible coincidence I've discovered his best friend was my cousin's husband, Jens Janssen, an art collector.

Jens is trying to find a home for Les Coleman's belongings, which includes a sack full of arrow tips and feathered flights.  It's all that remains of "crossfire", which was a temporary installation in different venues.

Taste and Class

 Last Thursday's Context of Practice lecture on "taste, value and judgement" brought up the issue of class, which always makes me squirm a bit.  

 Some of the squirming probably comes from being brought up by parents who thought of themselves as middle class, in quite a snobbish way.  We had a sitting room and a drawing room,  not a lounge.  And I recall being told that Jaguar cars were for shopkeepers who wanted to show off their wealth.

Some of their snobbishness rubbed off on me.  I can't help privately sneering at people showing off their wealth with macho cars,  designer labels,  expensive watches.   

But maybe the term "middle class" is a bit out of date nowadays.  "Professional" might be a better way of distinguishing between classes - not that I want to!  In fact, it really irks me that, for instance, you have to get a "professional" to witness applications for passports.  

Anyhow, the lecture finally gave me an excuse to write something about Grayson Perry.  

I say "finally" because I wanted to write something about his Reith Lectures, which I listened to and really enjoyed.  

Since then I've been trawling through Grayson stuff on the Internet trying to find a way of "adding value" to his lectures in a post on this blog. 

My trawl included watching "In the Best Possible Taste" -  three TV programmes where Grayson goes on a "safari of the taste tribes" of England and then produces 6 tapestries to record his experiences.

I really liked the programmes.  I also like the tapestries, which go under the collective title of "The Vanity of Small Differences" - so much so that I've just ordered the book of the same name so I can take a longer look at them.  I must go and see them in real life at some stage.

Here's a link to the Pinterest page on The Vanity of Small Differences:

http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=vanity%20of%20small%20differences&rs=rs

Museums, Galleries and Utopia

It turned out I misunderstood the "Utopia" homework brief a little.

We were expected to come up with simplistic ideas like "a world without war" and "happy families" rather than my more specific (but still Utopian) ways of how society might be better organised.

Anyhow, Thursday's session on museums and galleries, their purpose and the way in which exhibits within them are organised (or curated in museum/gallery parlance), resulted in small amount of  homework:

Research controversies surrounding Tate Modern, the implication being that  I should have known about a big one that's current at the moment.

I'm a bit non-plussed.   Wikipedia's "Tate" listing has a whole section labelled "Controversies" -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tate

- but none of them seem that "hot".

I suppose Mary, our lecturer,  is referring to the most recent entry in the Wikipedia list, concerning oil company BP's sponsorship of the Tate - one of the focuses of the "Art Not Oil" group:

http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/about

Check out a Guardian article on the latest "protest" in April of this year:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/apr/24/liberate-tate-arts-bp

By the way, I've got my own axe to grind over Tate Modern.  Check out these previous posts:

My thoughts on art galleries and museums
My Art Manifesto


"A Very Moving Perpetual Festival"

In the class on Thursday, we were split into groups and asked to come up with a way of "curating" the Utopian ideas we'd developed for homework - and we were encouraged to think outside the box.

Our group came up with an idea that really tickled me because it was Utopian in itself.

Under the  "art by and for everyone" banner we proposed closing the M25 and staging a perpetual festival of art on it.

As the festival would cause the whole of London to seize up, it would get huge media coverage and attract millions of people from all over the world.

The festival would move slowly forward around the M25 ring as new artists and visitors joined the front and worked their way through the festival to leave from the back.

I liked the idea so much I rather hijacked presenting it, and then omitted to say the magic phrase "a very moving perpetual festival" (sorry!) but I think people got the idea.  I spotted Mary giggling.

As I'm posting all of my "homework" on this blog,  here goes with my vision of Utopia - Utopia being something that has a connection with Modernists, who got all excited about art becoming an organising force in society through such things as architecture.

Utopia

Non art related ideas  

Radically expand opportunities for people to do suitable community work and incentivise them to do it.

 Expand opportunities: 

•          Introduce a working week of 4 days working for yourself and 1 day working for the community
•          Reorganise a lot of community services to accommodate volunteers
•          Get volunteers to run training courses.

 Incentivise people to volunteer:

•         Volunteers earn “credits”
•          Credits can be used to reduce Council Tax
•         Win the right to vote once you’ve earned a minimum amount of credits
•          Entry to further education requires a minimum amount of credits
•         Old age pension increased once you’ve earned a minimum amount of credits

 Goals:

•          Make volunteering an expected activity for all ages
•         Tackle loneliness of old people       
•       Harness skills of retired people.
•            Encourage helping your neighbour
•          Address child-minding.
•          Encourage participation in community affairs

Put tax “carrots and sticks” in place so that cooperatives become the predominant way of setting up and running businesses.

      So everybody is incentivised to work for the best interests of the business they own, and everybody is rewarded appropriately for success.

Impose 100% tax on earnings of more than £1 million a year and use it to raise the tax threshold for hard-up families.

      Try to reduce the difference between the haves and have-nots

Utopia

Art related ideas  

Impose  20% tax on sales of art worth more than £1 million.

Use the revenues from to fund a revolution in galleries and museums (see below).

Make art much more public

• Put a system in place where advertisers have to match whatever they do to promote products etc with an equal amount of “space” for popular art (see below).
• Put a system in place where art can be submitted for public viewing and can be voted for by the public.
• Move collections out of galleries and museums and disperse them among large numbers of public buildings.
• Turn the empty galleries and museums into places where everybody can experiment with making art.  Use the tax revenue from expensive art sales (see above) to fund this.

Recognise gardens as “living” works of art

• Encourage artists to realise that a garden is a giant canvas in which they can immerse themselves.
• Use public gardens to house some of the artwork moved out of galleries and museums.
• Include garden design as a subject at art college.

Edmund de Waal

Without really trying, I've become a bit of a follower of Edmund de Waal (not in a Twitter sense - he has yet to tweet).

It all started with his book, The Hare With Amber Eyes, which I read a couple of years ago and really liked.

As a result of that, I checked out his "Signs and Wonders" installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum - a steel channel running around the perimeter of the dome above the entrance, into which de Waal has arranged lots of pots he's made, pots that echo his favourite exhibits in the ceramic galleries.

Here's a video about it:
  http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/videos/e/video-edmund-de-waal-signs-and-wonders/

I used this as a starting point for a submission for the V&A's "Inspired by" competition while I was going to evening classes on glass at Plymouth College of Art (which got me hooked on doing a degree).

I started out thinking I would make a small section of his curved channel in glass and then place some glass objects in it.    To cut a long story short, I ended up casting the channel as 6 segments, changing the section so the channel looked more like a breaking wave and then beaming light up through them by placing them over a hollow plinth in which I installed lots of light emitting diodes.

More info on this here: http://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/work_details.php?id=17&s=0

In other words, I ended up with something that didn't have much to do with "Signs and Wonders".  I don't like it much.  (Neither did the V&A).

Anyhow, the reason I'm bringing this up is that Edmund de Waal was on the TV twice last week:

In  "Edmund de Waal: Make Pots or Die", a documentary about him, his book, and his preparations for his first exhibition in the U.S.:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03hcmmp/imagine..._Winter_2013_Edmund_de_Waal_Make_Pots_or_Die/

and in "What Do Artists Do All Day No. 6: Edmund de Waal"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03hd9hd/What_Do_Artists_Do_All_Day_Edmund_de_Waal/

I must admit I decided I didn't like Edmund de Waal after watching the "Make Pots or Die" documentary.  The programme jumped around quite a lot and Edmund came across as too much of an aesthete for my liking.  I bet he got bullied at school.

I didn't think de Waal's pots looked anything special and I didn't "get" de Waal's pre-occupation with the way his pots were arranged, the spaces between them, and how that was related to the poetry and music that de Waal is so familiar with.

I changed my mind during the second programme.   I don't think it was spelled out but I (finally) got the message.  It's all about "vitrines" as de Waal calls them - the glass cabinets he used to peer into on his many visits to the V&A ceramic galleries as a youngster.  Actually, it goes back even further - to peering at his uncle's collection of netsuke in a vitrine, the basis of The Hare With Amber Eyes.

So, de Waal isn't just making pots.  He's making the modern equivalent of vitrines and arranging pots within in them.  The position of the pots,  the spaces between them and how much of them you can see (in some installations some of the pots are partially obscured behind sand-blasted glass)  are evocative of poetry and music, and also hark back to de Waal's family history.

Check out de Waal's website for one of his latest installations:

http://www.edmunddewaal.com

I can see the music and poetry in this - the way the pots come in waves, a bit like the way those strings of punched cards are fed into street organs.

I can see the connection between de Waal's vitrines, with lots of long shelves fairly close together, and the single shelf created by the channel in "Signs and Wonders".

It's got me wondering what came first - whether "Signs and Wonders" was an extension of vitrines de Waal was already making, or whether "Signs and Wonders" was the starting point?

Lots more images of de Waal's work here:
http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=edmund%20de%20waal&rs=ac&len=14

My Art Manifesto

1. I will prioritise making art over studying it.
2. I will make art primarily for myself because I get a bigger buzz out of the creative process than I get from showing the results to other people.
3. I will make a point of taking on ambitious projects because I get an even bigger buzz if I push boundaries in the creative process.
4. I won't display artist's statements.  I will let my work speak for itself.  I won't try and influence the way in which it is interpreted.
5. I will seek out opportunities to have my work shown in public.
6. I will make a strong distinction between making my own art and analysing other people's.
7. I won't write pretentious twaddle about anything, even art.
8. I will question the purpose of philosophical navel-gazing about art.
9. I will support any plan to distribute the contents of art galleries and museums among public buildings so it can be studied in more conducive surroundings.
10. I will support any plan to put Banksy in charge of Tate Modern.

A Modernist Object

We were asked to pick a Modernist object and explain why it belongs to that style:

 Crown Hall, which houses the Illinois Institute of Technology’s school of architecture in Chicago. 

Photo from Wikipedia

Steel and glass rectangular 2-storey box with no internal columns.  Glass in lower floor is sand-blasted to minimise distractions.  Glass in upper floor is clear to let in light and allow views of the sky.

It’s considered to be the masterpiece of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a leading architect in Germany’s Bauhaus movement (part of Modernism).

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._R._Crown_Hall

Why it is Modernist:

·       Simplicity and clarity of form.

·       Form follows function

·       Visual expression of the structure. 

·       Use of 90 degree angles

·       Emphasis on horizontal and vertical lines

·       Industrially produced materials – “machine aesthetic”

·       Truth to materials

Red Rum

I'm adding this post to my blog so I've got everything in one place - ie it doesn't quite belong here.  

We were asked to pick an image and write about 250 words on a "formal" and "content" analysis of it.  I didn't have a lot of time so I picked something easy, something I owned.

On reflection, I should have picked something harder,  a work of art that I didn't understand or like  in the hopes of seeing the light.  When I have a spare moment I'll try to do this!

Red Rum

Formal Analysis

One of the most striking aspects of this sculpture is its size.  It’s a life-size bust of a famous racehorse, Red Rum, mounted on a wall in similar way to a stag’s head.   It dominates its surroundings.

The construction of Red Rum is also unusual.  It’s made by hand-crocheting a skin of coarse brown wool over a polystyrene armature.  The direction of the stitching has been used to highlight the musculature of the horse’s body in a very effective way.  The wool gives the surface of Red Rum a “horsey”  tactile texture.

Content Analysis

Red Rum is the only horse to have won the Grand National steeplechase three times.  The race is considered to be “the ultimate test of a horse’s courage” according to Tony McCoy, a famous jockey [1].

The large scale of this sculpture and the method of emphasising the musculature of the horse captures Red Rum’s enormous strength and courage.  The way it is mounted – as a trophy – indicates that this is no ordinary horse.

Some people might also say this sculpture symbolises Liverpool because the Grand National is staged there and Red Rum is buried on the finishing line.  

In addition, this sculpture was given by the artist, Shauna Richardson, to Liverpool Love [2], an art auction, from which 90% of the profits went to a Liverpool-based children’s hospice. 

I bid for the sculpture in the auction and got quite a surprise when I won.  Red Rum hangs on a wall above our stairs in our upside-down house in Looe, Cornwall. 

For me, the sculpture has an additional symbol – the Olympic Games.  When I went to the Olympics I encountered the huge crocheted lions made by Shauna Richardson for the “Cultural Olympiad”.  It was love at first sight – I took a note of her name, searched for other work she’d made and found Red Rum up for auction at Liverpool Love. [3], [4], [5].

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/horseracing/8775130/Tony-McCoy-jump-jockeys-owe-Ginger-McCain-a-huge-debt-for-saving-the-Grand-National.html

[2] http://www.liverpoollove.org

[3] http://vimeo.com/49915502

[4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17915318

[5] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17141964

The Future is (nearly) Here

 I went to the Design Museum yesterday where an exhibition entitled "The Future is Here" is being staged.
Quite a bit of it was given over to machinery for translating digital designs into actual objects - laser cutters, 3D printers, CNC machines and so on.
The message was that small scale versions of these technologies are now sufficiently established and sufficiently low cost that designers can now become makers as well.
Or from my point of view, I should be able to create a 3D design of some artwork on a computer and then get a machine to make it!
In the front of the exhibition there was a timeline tracking the invention of technologies that led to the industrial revolution, mass production, new modes of communication and so on.
It culminated in proposing that small scale digital manufacturing technologies and marketing developments powered by the Internet will deliver another big leap into the future.  Cottage industries will be reborn!
 I get quite excited by this sort of thing.  In a previous life as a technology journalist I covered the emergence of PCs and the Internet.  I  also ended up being at the forefront of a technology-led revolution in publishing.   So I think I understand the huge potential significance of new manufacturing technologies.
I also know from experience that people tend to gloss over shortcomings in emerging technologies and I thought there were signs of that at the Design Museum.  For instance, this cute little Roland iModela CNC milling machine, pictured at the exhibition below, cost  £499 plus VAT but it can only cut soft materials like plastic. 

The live demonstration of other equipment also turned out to be limping a little  - the demonstrators were having problems getting both of their 3D printers to work properly.
All the same, seeing this kit just after looking at how some of it is being used in architectural model making (see my previous post) has got me thinking about ways to exploit these  new technologies in the sculpture I create.

My thoughts on art galleries and museums

I often come away from art galleries and museums feeling frustrated.  There's so much to see or should I say there's too much to see?
I found this to be particularly true of Tate Modern,  which I visited with my wife on Sunday after going to the Contemporary Applied Arts showroom.
The message I'm getting from my Context of Practice course is that I should be looking harder at works of art, I should be looking for the subtle references that will unlock hidden meanings, and that this will help me understand and possibly enjoy more of the modern art in places like the Tate.
But the Tate's environment isn't conducive to focusing on a single work of art.  There's too many works of art and there's too many people.  I end up just being carried along with everyone else spending a few moments on each item and suffering information overload.
It's not just modern art that gives me problems.  I recall quietly groaning to myself "not yet more water lilies" when I went to a much-vaunted Monet exhibition several years ago and groaning "not yet more colourful landscapes" at the Hockney exhibition last year.
There are exceptions.  I really like the contemporary glass in the Victoria and Albert Museum, possibly because there's a limited number of pieces and they're in a quiet gallery.
Personally, I would like the world's art treasures to be dispersed among public buildings so I could only see a maximum of, say, a couple in one place.  But I know that's never going to happen.

My take on Contemporary Applied Arts

For the uninitiated, Contemporary Applied Arts is a charity that "champions and promotes only the very best of British craft."
It's got a showroom at 89 Southwark Street, SE1 0HX, right behind the Tate Modern which is somewhat symbolic of the craft disciplines it represents in that it's in the shadow of a great art institution and is tiny in comparison.
The showroom is on the ground floor of the offices of Allies & Morrison, an "urban" architecture practice, and is split between areas selling stuff and staging an exhibition.
The retail bit included a couple of pieces from David Reekie - he of the "Captive Audience" in the V&A.   In other words, it's classy stuff.
At present, the exhibition is on architectural model-making, quite a lot of it being connected to work carried out by Allies & Morrison.
A lot of the model-making was based on laser-cutting.  In the foreground of the photo below it's used to cut and score card and thin sheet metal which is then folded to create models of balconies.

Some other stuff made with laser cutters and CNC machines:

In the photo below, the mould for this was made from laser-cutting multiple layers of rubber.

Here's an example of another rubber mould.

My take on "Made London"

I went to the "Made London" craft show yesterday.

 I was a bit disappointed.  I was expecting a big show but it was smaller than the Bovey Tracey equivalent last summer and many of same exhibitors were there.

It felt very "crafty" - lots of jewellery and stuff you might find in gift shops and not a lot of thought-provoking works of  art.

Maybe I was expecting too much.   I'd been looking at some magnificent examples of glass and ceramic art in the Victoria and Albert Museum the previous afternoon so the bar had been set high.  And the Context of Practice course at college might be encouraging me to look for deeper meanings  than I had a right to expect at a craft show.

 It demonstrated the difference between craft and art and reminded me of my internal conflict - how in some ways I should be doing a course on sculpture rather than craft but how this might run counter to my primary goal of producing sculpture rather than studying it.

Here's some of the exhibits that stood out from the crowd from my point of view:

Line Gottfred Petersen
Line, from Denmark, makes blown glass objects with embossed surfaces.  She does this in two stages - holding steel mesh on the surface while sand-blasting and then polishing using pumice and the sort of powered brushes used by jewellers.

http://www.linegottfredpetersend.dk

Michael Abbott and Kim Ellwood
In addition to making jewellery they make some really cute sculptures in metal whose surfaces have been printed beforehand.

http://www.abbottandellwood.com

Sophie Woodrow
Makes amusing ceramic objects, all glazed white.  I particularly liked her Foxglove:

http://www.sophiewoodrow.co.uk

Samantha Donaldson
Samantha makes beautiful hot glass sculptures by blowing layered shapes in different colours and then cold working them.   I  had an interesting chat with her about how she organises things: she rents a whole studio for a week, produces lots of stuff which she then works on at home.  She's now also making jewellery from the off-cuts from this process.  Her pieces are now being sold in Selfridges.  My wife and I  bought one of her pieces at Bovey Tracey last summer.
http://www.samantha.donaldson@network.rca.ac.uk

Penny Green
Penny makes ceramic objects and gets some interesting surface decorations using unusual glazes and transfers.

http://www.pennygreenceramics.co.uk

Eleanor Lakelin
Eleanor turns wooden objects and then carves them.  I particularly liked her knobbly bowl:

http://www.eleanorlakelin.co.uk

Yu-Ping Lin
Lin makes fantastic textile jewellery which ends up reminding me of a kaleidoscope the way it can be modified and is always symmetrical.

http://www.yuxiart.com

Raewyn Harrison
Raewyn makes sets of glazed white boxes with transfer printing on them.

http://www.raewynharrison.com

Artist's statements

I’m trying to read “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger, as recommended for the Context of Practice course.

Note the “trying”.

I’m struggling to understand its relevance to the work I produce myself.

As I said in my previous blog, I am leery of deliberately trying to steer observers’ thoughts by incorporating "signs" in my work; I suspect there’s a fine dividing line between looking crass and being too subtle to get noticed.

Maybe other people can do this successfully and I’m not sophisticated enough?

 I was thinking this today while I was admiring a collection of three blown glass objects, made by Adam Johns,  in one of the college showcases.

Adam's Artist's Statement says:

As a studio glass designer and maker I enjoy the constant challenge that glassblowing presents.  In this project I have focussed on the specific characteristics of certain  grotesque insects and amphibians and their associated warning colours. 

I wanted to explore the emotions experienced by the viewer using certain colour combinations, shapes and textures which I hope bring into question our  perception of small insects and amphibians.  

They're presented in small collections to try and enhance the tensions which I feel exist between them.  It brings into question whether the pieces are interacting with or repelling each other. 

Impressive! 

I don't know whether I'd dare ask Adam what came first - making the pieces or coming up with the concept behind the artist's statement.

If it was me, I  can imagine making a bunch of nice looking objects, looking for  a “common denominator” that would justify calling them  a collection and then writing a statement to steer observers into making the same connection.

 I suspect this sort of thing goes on quite a bit.  When students' work is displayed for assessment some of the sketch-books are beautiful, so beautiful that they might have been created once the actual work of art had been completed.

I'm left with a couple of questions:

• Are artist's statements  a bit of a cop-out in that they become part and parcel of the work of art, conveying meanings that aren't otherwise obvious?   Shouldn't the work of art speak for itself?

•  Perhaps I would have found my own interpretation of Adam's work if I hadn't read his statement?

My thoughts on "visual culture"

Our second Context of Practice session on “Visual Culture” was all about looking as opposed to seeing, in other words reading the “signs”, intentional or otherwise, of any visual creation – not just works of art but road signs, adverts or whatever.

The tricky stuff comes with signs that suggest things indirectly through references.  I suspect I often miss them, which raises some questions.

Am I not looking hard enough?

I don’t “get” some works of art, particularly modern art.  Stuff like a canvas painted in one single colour or an old door that’s been charred with a blow-lamp or Tracey Emin’s famous bed.

I look at it wondering whether the artist is having a laugh at my expense.  Is it the king’s new clothes?

I recall having a laugh like this at university.  I found half an old bike handlebar, mounted it on a wire base,  tied a label on it upon which I wrote ‘urge’ in ink with my finger, and fitted an un-inflated balloon on the end.  It sat on my coffee table, wobbling, and everybody reacted to it very strongly, saying it looked obscene.

I submitted it for the university’s annual art exhibition, calling it “Obscenity Number One”.   Eventually, I got a letter from the professor saying the committee had selected it but it wasn’t going to be shown on grounds of its obscenity.

I suppose I should have tried to analyse why it looked so obscene.   Would the exercise have led me down a path of understanding and appreciating art more generally?   Or would it have resulted in hypocrisy - me being able to “talk the talk” in the hope of impressing others?

 

Should I set out to engineer references in the work I produce? 

My concern here is the corollary of not seeing references in other people’s work.  Maybe the references I put in my own work will look clumsy and heavy-handed to observers used to seeking out subtleties that would pass me by?

 As it happens, I’ve recently decided to “plant” a reference in this project:

  

http://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/work_details.php?id=40&s=0

I want to demonstrate how facial expressions convey a myriad of emotions.  I plan to do this by slip-casting around 20 identical ceramic figures in a banked arrangement.  The figures will be very simple and smooth so observers will focus on the only difference between them - the facial expressions.

I started making a very smooth positive of a figure in wood, on a lathe, but then I talked to Min Jeong Song, one of the glass lecturers.   She remarked that facial expressions sometimes mask the real emotions going on inside people’s heads, which got me thinking.

The bottom line is that I’ve now decided to make the first figure in hot glass and then use that in two ways – as the positive for making the mould for slip-casting the ceramic figures and as an integral part of the final installation. 

Observers will be able to see inside the glass figure’s head and I’m hoping it will be sufficient for them to pick up on facial expressions sometimes masking true emotions.

My wife thinks the reference might be too subtle.  As I’m not very subtle myself I have a hard time judging this.  What do you think?

Reflections on tutorial with Chris Taylor (ceramics)

On Thursday afternoon (Oct 3rd), following the first session of “Context of Practice”, I happened to have a tutorial with Chris that brought home the importance of context.

I showed Chris my Column:

http://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/work_details.php?id=16&s=0

 He asked me why I’d positioned it in the garden, and why in that particular spot.  I waffled in reply.  I placed it there because it felt right but I’d never analysed why. 

The same thing with my Ring:

http://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/work_details.php?id=21&s=0

Chris asked me why I’d picked that shape, why in the garden, why was I planning to put it at the end of a walkway in front of our house, why don't I swap the locations of the column and the ring?

More waffling from me.

Chris was demonstrating that I should be asking myself these questions in the early stages of developing a project.    I need to analyse the context!   A great point, well taken!

In retrospect (and with some prompting from Chris), I think both structures have very large scale, strong geometric shapes that provide a big contrast with garden shapes.  As a result, they act as focal points.

The Column

In my waffling, I said the vertical column mirrored the vertical face of the house  just behind it and as it was on the drive, it sent out a signal to visitors about the people living in the house.   I guess there is something in this.   

In retrospect I should have also pointed out that the space between the column and the house forms a sort of gateway at the point where a “yellow brick road” (path made from yellow paving blocks) begins winding its way up our (steep) garden by the side of the house.

The Ring
 I didn’t really have a good reason for the ring being circular.  I made something up about it looking like a port-hole but that’s really baloney because you won’t be able to see the sea through it – even though our house has spectacular views of the sea. 

My wife is campaigning to put the ring somewhere where the sea can be seen through it but I am determined to put it at the end of the walkway.  In this position, people will see it in the distance as they walk to our front door.  It’s a sort of target.  And again, I think it’s a signal to visitors about the occupants of the house.  It’s saying an artist lives here!

Also, the walkway is elevated and comes to an abrupt stop over the top of our neighbour's fence.  It needs something major as a termination point.

Next Project
The main reason for the tutorial was to get advice on my next project:

 http://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/work_details.php?id=40&s=0

Chris did a great job of getting me to focus on the message I’m trying to get across, that facial expressions convey a myriad of emotions.   In this case, it's really about eliminating distractions.  I'm about to make some radical changes - including what the project is called!