DIY Presents... Saturday 26th September 2009- A reflection.

Featuring; Lisa Gorton
Jade Blood
Jonathan...

An afternoon of experimentation, playing, process, responding, mixing and on the spot thinking.

Materials: Electrical tape, elements of sound, found objects, walls of Space 109, typewriter, biro, graph paper, old film tape, tin containers, tulip lights, fairy lights, plastic piping, wires, laptop, speakers, glass jars, rugs, banner, bodies, Happycat, ginger-bread men and green tea [with a hint of jasmine].

Outcomes: Installation, new sound/music, collages, working process on view, new drawings/sculptures, a new path for constructing - re constructing - deconstructing line, material and form.

I enjoyed the spontaneity of it all. The not really knowing before hand, not prepared, only small formal experiments in my own studio before hand. Responding to the interior of Space 109 but also to other bodies and works. The placement of my materials was not only dependant on the architecture of the space but on the position of other bodies and their placement of materials. Their work dictating mine and vice versa.

Space-Materials-Bodies-Placement.

Thinking Space. Sarah Sze, Baltic Centre of Contempoary Art, Newcastle.

Date Visited 01.07.09

Colour and form hit you when you walk into the exhibition space on the fourth floor of the Baltic, Newcastle and then the mass of objects. 'Ecosystems', cleverly constructed around the space, made up of everyday objects such as plants, floor lamps, tape measures, paper, wool plastic, burnt paper, pins...the small everyday objects we all take for granted. One can only say that the path that is taken around this installation is integral to each individuals experience. Playful manipulation of the space, lines of blue and red wool, pull taught from wall to wall, inhibiting viewing, the neon orange of an electric cable zips underneath, drawing the viewers eye to a spiral of colour in some far away point. The careful tracks one has to take in order not to stand on some miscellaneous object and then be stopped instantly as you are about to walk into something in front of you. Measurement tape on the floor. On first viewing this and the positioning of many other objects seems random, accidental but looking again means thinking again, seeing again. Nothing in this exhibition is random. Is it? Positioning is far too controlled but at the same time be planned out to the nth degree? Impossible. The exhibition space has been played with, experimented with. Like a studio it seems that Sze has used the space to experiment with her objects, play with her material, highlight the idiosyncrasies of this space, playing, placing, re-placing. A site of discovery, which can only come from knowing a space, thinking space.
Tension. In movement of the viewer and in objects. A craft knife positioned in front of a fine line of elastic. On tenterhooks.
Part object, part sculpture? Sculptural/structural? Not dream like but made real by those objects that are apart of all our lives. The material asks no questions. And that's fine. There is always that want to know. Why the artist has chosen that material, how and why does the material perform. But it doesn't have to. Because once we know theres a tendency to have cracked it! We understand now! It is all clear and makes more sense! The haze has cleared!
But not this time. I don't want to know, I want the constant fuzz, I am happy to walk away from this exhibition and just marvel in the beauty of our every day objects.

Photographic experimentation 29/06/09

The above experimentation's are a result of having too many photographs of my degree show, so i decided to play with them. Experiment with perspective, illusion, form and line and also with the re-representation. Representation? What is it that I am representing. Can a photograph only ever just represent or can it be seen as a material that we handle/manipulate with our hands and eyes. i don't mean the camera, I mean the given out-put, the photograph. But then I suppose the camera can not be separated from the produced image, it is part of it's materiality. Can a photograph have a materiality? What i also like in these images is the line that travels through, the extension. The line that plays around with what is real and what isn't in the images. The line that draws and disturbs, but represent?

Degree Show Finale

The week of viewing has finished and I just wanted to write some thoughts about it.

Why 4o'clock closing, we could have had one late night until 8/9 o'clock and had free York St John wine! Yeay!!

Only a week?

When I first put my exhibition up it felt like it was uncomfortably sat at the edge of a sofa...

But after going in everyday and seeing it, getting used to it and seeing it in a different way each day, documenting it and writing some notes it now feels it's sat back comfortably. So comfortable it doesn't want to move...

Even though I feel it sits comfortably were it is I also feel that there is so much more that can be done with it. If I had a bigger space, smaller space, a different space what could it look like? I know a different space wouldn't hold this exhibition in the same way that Studio one has but a new space would have new characteristics that I could play with and manipulate.
Whilst viewing my exhibition thoughts of floor came into my head. Ripping up floor boards, half tearing them, bending them, use them as a sculptural material. That's if they were wooden floor boards. Looking at my exhibition I also feel that I could have done so much more with the fine black elastic that I used. But too much would have turned it into silly maze. Maybe...
And for now those hooks. The hooks in the ceiling. How I love those hooks.

That Black Void...In the image..

Transitional object. It goes from drawing, to 3 dimensional object to photograph. It's always there but what is it's function? Does it have to have one. It's there because of me.

I play with it.
I like that.
An object of play
and my relationship to the object of play?
I use my hands to move the object.
Play with the tape
Play with the graphite
Play with the camera
Play with the audience
What is it that they perceive?
Void?
Maybe the object its self is enough?
String makes it heavy
Look heavy...