Tatiana Trouve

Artist Talk

I will be giving a artist talk on 18.09.10 at 1pm at PAD, on my current work, Shredding Paper

Shredding Paper

                    

In conversation with Gavin Osborn

Below is an extract from recent email exchange on concepts/ideas/thoughts on my current practice. Dialogue with Gavin started after BUILT in response to the installation at Rogue Studios [01 - 08 April].

Lisa- I am much more interested in body as object rather than a subject. Exploring the reciprocal relationship between the materiality of objects and body. I want my body to be seen as material , moving in response to the other objects/materials and not an act that takes place with psychological motivations. I know that I can't help what the audience read into it, especially if a lot of the performance is left to chance or 'is of the moment' but my interests do lay in body as a material. Matter alongside matter or in combination with other matter, another object in space, I suppose this foregrounds materiality and process?

Gav- I think that's a great idea - particularly the succinct expression of it as 'matter alongside matter or in combination with other matter, another object in space' - it reminds me of certain types of dance. I think, as far as audience perception goes, it probably has to be established over a certain amount of time through how you interact with your materials - it seems to me that most of the things people tend to interact with accustom them to reading overtly psychological & narrative into things to start with, so maybe it takes some time for them to forget about psych 101 & see what's going on - what did you find from comments you got from the BUILT performance? Maybe I'm totally wrong & people lock in straight away!

In speaking of the artists body as a material, I also think that it could relate to the types of materials that I choose to work with, envelopes, thread, sticky dots etc. The materials I use, I like because I don't see them as anything precious. I am not afraid to damage, rip or tear them or do experimental things to them and obviously they are cheap and easy to source but another reason could be [and this relates back to how the artists body is seen within the performance as material object or subject etc] that they don't have instant 'bodily' connotations. Envelopes, cellophane windows and sticky dots on viewing - out of context - don't reference the 'body' automatically, so as a result the viewer doesn't see them as having a bodily relevance so when the body is on view [ the artists ] it could be seen maybe as a separate object - matter alongside matter

there's also the fact that they're 'universal' in the sense that most people will have handled them & will be able to imagine the sensations of your interactions - and perhaps in doing this, this is how they stop trying to read a psychological narrative or whatever into it, becuase as they watch you move & manipulate the material, they can imagine what this feels like - as if they were doing it - and this then removes any personal narrative they're trying to read, because actually they're there with you in the moment? and although the materials may have personal reading for them - opening an envelope, sealing one, using thread etc, even their own personal projections onto the materials fall away, because they're with you at that present moment?

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Whereas if I used materials and objects that where of bodily reference, say for example water, clothes, food items etc I think the viewer would conceive of these items as having something to do with the body and this is even further emphasized by the fact that there is a body to viewer [the artists] responding and working with the materials, so the reading(s) from the audience would be more as 'subject' in the first instance - feminist readings etc? 

well, I guess if anything I suggest above is true, it might be possible to do it with other, more bodily related material (although I do think your envelopes etc are quite body-resonant, because of how we have to physically interact with them to use them); as far as feminist readings go, there's the usual business of people reading 'domestic' materials etc, and also how they manifest in the space, but how would you want it read, if you want it read as a body as material with other materials? is it gendered, or not? just 'a human'? just materials, other molecules that happen to be phuysically arranged as 'human body' not 'thread' or 'cellophane'?

Exhibition - Shredding Paper

31.08.10 - 01.10.10


Lisa Gorton will present new works at PAD, Preston. 

Lisa’s work deals with the nature of drawing. It has evolved out of an enquiry into the relationship drawing has to sculpture and asking whether sculpture can be seen as drawing. Recent research has dealt with material tensions: the dependency of material on material, the reciprocal nature of support. Small, intimate installations generated through fragile everyday materials and the role of the body in this intervention.

New work at PAD will focus on small performative situations, exploring new materials through drawings and installation, focusing and responding to the specific idiosyncrasies of the gallery space.  

Preview - Thursday 9th September 6 - 8pm

Notes on/from - Shredding Paper

Wanted a new material to play with but a material where I am still able to explore notions of' the 'line' and within that, form. A material that can hang and drop but at the same time still open to more manipulations. It seems odd that I hadn't played with shredded paper before since a lot of my interests and research are 'paper based'. It felt like a re - wind: coming across the shredded paper as shredded paper, rather than paper and then through studio experiments, shredding it. Shredding is what happens to the paper and I went through the repetitive process to get the paper to this altered state but I wasn't aware at the time of what I was doing, I was initially shredding so to get rid of 'confidential information' and then the paper sat there for weeks. I like that idea, the paper sitting there for weeks have no function, until it the human interaction and manipulation. Picking up the bag of shredded paper was like handling gristle and sponge: bouncy , soft but extremely prickly. Using the paper in the studio, I soon became frustrated; it wasn't perfectly straight, different lengths and would just move of it's own accord... so I ironed it. The flicks at the end stayed, but I didn't mind after using it with other materials, black plastic pots and biro pen.

I am now shredding myself. Larger sheets of paper, holding the top of the shredder [minus the bucket] at various heights. I quite like the notion of using shreds of paper which are roughly the same height as my body and at the same time making small sculptures and installations. These small sculptures have stemmed from the work I did for Project One, a small cardboard like document which contained various elements of drawing, collage, photography and objects research. Snippets of a body of work and a work within themselves. These and the shredded paper agenda is what I developing for the exhibition at PAD in January 2011.

I also drew the shredded paper.Sublime. The repetition, the almost 'formless' repetition kept me wanting to do more. I drew on cardboard, mainly because I have stacks of it at the moment and because I can cut and bend it and it still stands up. As in the past with my work, the drawings for me, stand in some mid - way 'limbo', I always want to draw from my own sculptures, these drawings can be the start, at the end [not an end, finito but end as in when I just decide to stop] or they can be part of the process somewhere in the middle, a catalyst for new thoughts, ideas, desires. I am committed to their potential as threads of thought, of what they suggest to me for moving into the sculptural and then what the sculpture can provide for the drawing rather than their direct transformation into a product. In there two dimensional state, before any further transformation I feel they hold a certain precariousness, a certain elements of something that could happen that could be out of my control.

Notes on/from - 'DOT.LABEL.THREAD.DOT' Rogue Artist Studios, Manchester. 01.04.10

First. [Studio] I changed the name of the piece. 'encounter' felt a bit too broad, general, encompassing any[every]thing. 'DOT.LABEL.THREAD.DOT' feels much more specific, material and doing. It came from the 'doing' in my studio. It came from the re-action of the same. Thread, sticky-dot, thread, pull, tight, sticky-dot.

Wrapping
Placing
Pulling
Sticking

I tried to make it much more complex then it needed to be. Should be simple? Just 'perform' the main elements, form/action/[line]. Three simple actions, then it became two. The placing of envelopes and cellophane rectangles as action? Why not [dot].

Reliance of one material on another and what it gives back. Sound. Thread on plastic.

Second. [Rogue Project Space] Performed. ?  Changed to eleven small actions. Thread. Align. Place. Stick. Pull. Place. Stick [x7] Trace lines with feet, walk next to line. Existing floor lines, wall lines, material lines. My lines. Sit. Wrap cardboard with thread [forgot plastic] [x1]. Place envelopes on thread lines, place cardboard, place cellophane rectangles [x3]. Re-trace lines. Walk away.

Third. [In my head]  Why am I including my body? Do I want people to see my body in relation to other materials. Is my body necessary to what it is that I am exploring?

To explore new territories within my practice is knowledge building. To be completely shifted out of my comfort zone was adrenaline pumping. To be so absorbed in what I was doing was has changed me. To not think of anything else and to drown within action/process was exhilarating. But to what extent and why does my body need to be seen?

The bodies movement and inclusion within material function and outcome is important to my practice, the reciprocal nature of material, what it does and how when certain forces from other material are added, even the addition of the body. Is it the outcome or the process that I want to be seen? The outcome, suggests a final. No, I can show process without the 'live' viewing of the body in 'action'. Materials in action can be viewed when static. The force, tension, materiality of a specific object, the performative element of materials can be explored without the direct inclusion of the body to be seen. ?? Or can it?

My body needs to be seen and thought of as a material. A material that re-acts and performs to [other] material. That reciprocates, struggles and functions in relation to....

"Practice has a logic which is not that of a logician. This has to be acknowledged in order to avoid asking of it more logic than it can give, thereby condemning oneself either to wring incoherence out of it or to thrust a forced coherence upon it." [Bourdieu, 1990:80]