http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 Scratching the Surface Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:34:54 +0000 a-n rss generator a-n The Artists Information Company and contributors edit@a-n.co.uk technical@a-n.co.uk http://www.a-n.co.uk/img/logo.gif http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 I had a really interesting lecture from Tavs Jorgenson about 2 weeks ago. He's a research fellow at Falmouth and is involved with autonomatic research there. I was really fascinated by the digital drawings that he had done by using a data glove to capture the motion of his hand. Even though it was using technology it was almost a truer line than one you would make with a pencil or paintbrush. I've got quite a few different strands of my work that I want to explore. I want to investigate how I can use colour to create movement or how I can distort an image or mark by my use of colour. Some of the groupings that I've put together of my marks are almost reminiscent of DNA type structures or code. When I inverted some of my drawings they had an almost etheral quality like they were floating in mid air. I'm approaching my work on paper in a very empirical manner and I'm going to take the same approach to the work I'm starting with ceramic materials. I'm really enjoying reading the material for my theory lectures, even though some of it is not easy. It's helping my to develop more of a theoretical framework, so I can talk about my work within this context in a more articulate and informed manner. Paul Crowther says in 'Art and Embodiment' that: "the experience of an artwork can bring a unique reflective awareness of the nature of the human condition itself. This moving revelation and celebration of the enigma of embodied consciousness is what I shall call emphatic experience. In a sense it marks the logical extreme of all human self-awareness, in that the only way beyond it is to invoke communion with a transcendental reality, i.e. religious experience." This sums up for me the kind of experience that I think is important for the viewer when encountering a work of art.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 I have realised that I need to set myself an agenda for my days in uni if I am going to achieve anything. I need to organise myself better. Perhaps giving myself a script to follow, or timing myself would help?   It had been my intention and it still is my intention to set up an interface between drawing and ceramic materials and surfaces. I didn't realise how important the drawings were going to become to me. They're entities in their own right now, they have a certain independence, which has surprised me. Perhaps a continuing translation and retranslation of different materials will make me more informed of my visual language and how I choose to express it.   I need to carry on being explorative with materials and not rush into final outcomes before I even begin to investigate the potential of the materials that I'm working with. After my group tutorial I realised that my work in clay needed to express more of the qualities that I had achieved through my drawings and work on paper. I need to be more conscious of why I am choosing different materials.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 I've been experimenting with ceramic surfaces using different stains and slips and I've been trying to set up a similar interface to the ink and paper drawings. I've had varying results so far. I've liked the qualities that I've achieved with the pieces where I've applied a thick brush stoke of slip and then applied a mocha stain over this. The stain bleeds into all of the feathery lines left by the mark of the brush on the slip. I'm currently reading about phenomenology as I'm going to write my first essay on this particular position. I think the idea that metaphor can contribute to perception and the creation of meaning is a really interesting one. I've been examining Clare Twomey's pieces as I'm going to examine them through phenomenology. The interaction between the artworks and the audience and her response to the gallery space is fascinating.                          ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 I feel as if my work is all about discovery at the moment, I'm learning a lot about the different materials that I'm using; their limitations and possibilities. I have only a certain degree of control over the materials. I am to a certain extent initiating the interplay between materials but then standing back and allowing chance happenings to occur. Dropping the ink onto the water saturated surface and then watching as it disperses and follows the form and direction of the water. Drawing or markmaking can express what language cannot. As Heiner Bastian says in relation to Cy Twombley's drawings: "No artist has in his work, as radically as Cy Twombley, substituted language for an expression that suspends and interrupts the discourse, the rhetoric of occidental culture. Twombley insists on the transparency of the most transient of all forms, the state of conception and comprehension, when the form itselfis the untranslatable event." ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 My work is beginning to evolve from a flat 2-dimensional surface to a more 3-dimensional object that is becoming independent of the flat object. There is a sense of emergence out of the surface. The plaster mould that I made for the purpose of forming flat rectangle shapes has now become an object independent of it's original task, which was to serve as a tool or a former. Through the process of working through my ideas, I'm now revisiting my previous work and I'm relocating it by putting it back into its point of origin. My approach to materials has become more sensuous, I'm more respectful of the potential and properties that are inherent within the mediums that I employ. Previously, I may not have been so respectful as I was very much concerned with how I was going to express my idea or concept. I'm still interested in communicating ideas and concepts to the audience, but through the art objects material qualities. This is a very Hegelian idea, Hegel believes that art inhabits a space that is somewhere in between our sensual/bodily experience and our intellectual understanding. i.e. the 'sensual presentation of the Idea' ('Drawing: Towards an Intelligence of Seeing,' by Howard Riley, from 'Writing on Drawing')... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 Trying to figure out where your work fits in, where it should be shown and who your contemporaries are can be minefield of confusion! I've decided to continue with what I'm doing for now and worry about all of this at a later stage when my work is more developed. Maybe there won't be a neat category that my work will fit into, and does this matter?  I've been exploring drawing through my work on paper, on clay, and also through reading critical writing about drawing. There has been some really beautiful writing about drawing in the introduction to the book 'Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing': "Drawing offers us the most extraordinary range of possibilities: it is a map of time recording the actions of the maker. It is as Michael Newman writes a record of 'lived temporality', and in the sense that a drawing is by essence always incomplete. A line always suggests a continuation and infinitum and thus connects us with infinity and eternity. A drawing enjoys a direct link with thought and with an idea itself. It's very nature is unstable, balanced equally between pure abstraction and representation."  (Emma Dexter, p. 10) This extract expresses a lot of ideas that I have concerning both drawing and sculpture albeit in a more considered way. Drawing is a very pure form of expression and perhaps this is why when I've chosen to work with ceramics I've used a black and white palette in order to exploit this pure quality.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 Where do you stand in relation to your practice; are you a modernist or a postmodernist? This is a question that I have been taking on board as part of the theoretical side of my course. I'm postmodern in the sense that I feel postmodernism has broken down a lot of boundaries that have only in recent history existed between craft and fine art and in relation to the materials that artists use. It's encouraged us to examine meta-narratives such as the art historical canon and to think about who is speaking and what their agenda.    I feel that there is a lot of opportunity for artists for whom ceramics forms an important part of their practice to write about their practice. There is a general lack of good critical writing within the field, obviously this has improved a lot within recent years. Artists like Clare Twomey and Edmund De Wall write very well about ceramics practice. Indeed, this has been very beneficial to their careers because they have been able to apeak about their work with a great deal of authority because of their engagement with the written word. Many ceramicists seem to think that they don't need to write about their practice, that it speaks for itself. However these are the very people who then complain about a lack of critical writing in the subject or feel marginalised because their views aren't represented.   http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/crafts-magazine/bl...... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 "I think it is a record of the workings of thought that we see embedded in the drawn, in the sense that it is both the actions of which Valery speaks as 'willed attention' " (Avis Newman) Avis Newman's ideas on drawing remind me of Merleau Ponty's use of the example of two halves of an orange, to represent the conscious and the unconscious. The inbetween point where you are neither in one state nor the other can be achieved by various means. One of the ways that this can be achieved is through drawing as it is a very immediate activity and all that is needed is pencil and paper. Language can be limiting in terms of expressing abstract concepts such as these. The creation of a visual language through drawing and mark making has the potential to express such concepts in a transparent manner.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 I've been examining ways of filling the spaces or reservoirs in the grid of the form. I've been using slips and glazes to expore this, letting some of the glaze spill over the boundaries of the spaces. This is leading to interesting results and is changing the sense of boundary that the reservoirs have. A question that has arisen for me has been the purpose of the former, is it subordinate to the mark making or does it play a more important role with the context of the mark? So, I'm going to explore this question and see how I can manipulate the form whether through the making process, the material or the firing process itself.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 I've had some really good news, I'm going to be taking part in an exhibition back home in Ireland in October. I feel both apprehensive and excited at the same time. It's a really good opportunity for me. I work quite a lot as I'm doing my Masters part time and I'm self funded, so this is going to make me extremely busy.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 It seems that my practice is continually evolving and changing. I was quite enjoying that feeling of knowing what I was doing for a little while. It's a cyclical process and once again I feel that I'm back to square one so to speak. It's not unlike snakes and ladders, where you feel you are progressing and then land on the snake and go back a few places. I need to add something new that is fixed to my work. Perhaps an image or a trace of an image that is barely glimpsed amongst the interplay and alchemy of materials?... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 Working with an image has definitely helped me to push my work forward even though I felt uncertain about what the end results might produce compared to my results so far. Producing work for an exhibition has accelerated my development and it's made me make decisions about my work. It's helped me to realise that my work is ongoing and that what I exhibit is just showing my progress at this particular time. My early pivotal drawings were about capturing or encapsulating a particular moment through the pooling of the ink on paper and the image that I'm using is also of a particular moment that I am capturing but in a sense also abstracting to a small degree for the viewer. There will I hope be a sense of weight in the ceramic pieces that the drawings have. I would also like to allow the viewer to experience the artwork in a more phenomenological way, so I don't want it to be too literal.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 Finally, all of my work for The Table of Contents exhibition is finished! I just need to make arrangements to get myself and the work to Ireland and buy the materials necessary to mount the work. Working, doing my MA part time and making work for the exhibition has been really wearing. On a more positive note though, I don't think I have ever been so concentrated or so immersed in my work before. I feel like I've been in another place for the last two months. In becoming so immersed in my work, I've become more aware of my interests and concerns within my practice: I am concerned with the materiality of the materials that I employ; their potency or potential as mediums. Whether it is the pooling of ink as it dries on cartridge paper or the print left on raw clay as the print is registered upon it. I am interested in how my actions can suggest an encapsulation of an action or event. A recurring theme within my practice is the use of multiples, structures, and repetitions. I find myself continually revisiting previous work, taking new elements and relocating them by putting them back into my points of origin. The role of memory and the central role our body plays in our understanding of time makes it possible for us to simultaneously experience the past and present in the same moment. This can facilitate the reliving of a sensory experience. The ambiguity of the marks and images I'm using allows the viewer to project their own subjective experiences and memories onto the artwork, thereby reliving a particular moment in time.      <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -->  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 It's certainly been interesting being involved with The Table of Contents exhibition, it's been quite a democratic exhibition, unknowns have been welcome as well as students. I've been really impressed by the hard work and dediction to the project by the LSAD staff: Roisin Lewis, Peter Morgan, and Alan Keane. http://www.limerickcoordination.ie/2010/10/19/lsad... This has been my first time exhibiting my new work, and I'm pleased with it's developments so far. The porcelain prints seem to invite interaction with the viewer. The viewer has to stand back at a certain distance to be able to take in the whole image and has to move closer to examine the details or just try to figure out what the image is that they are looking at. I'd really like to make an audio recording of the viewer's thoughts and views as they try to figure out what it is that they are seeing and the differences that their proximity to the pieces makes to their perceptions of it.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 I am a problem finding artist as opposed to a problem solving one. I pose questions to myself that I don't always have the answers to. My current question is: How can I make the image move or create a sense of movement? It's a more interesting way of developing work as you have to look at your area, set out your criteria, identify the problem and then look at ways of tackling it. Reading about creativity research led me to think about this and by chance I came across a quote by Chuck Close which sums up the benefits of this approach quite well. "Chuck Close has described himself as "an artist looking for trouble, because pushing the limits of a technique gets him in trouble, and extricating himself from a technical corner becomes an essential catalyst to his creativity."... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 My dissertation has now been handed in so, I have until the beginning of September to focus on practical work. The dissertation examined definitions of creativity from different fields and looked at approaches to understanding the creative process within artistic practice. It's really starting to feed into my practice, I'm using it to improve the content on my website. http://www.elaineflannery.com/#/table-of-contents/4547548999  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 Several questions have arisen within my practice that require exploration. The first of these is: ‘How can I enhance the visual experience of the viewer?’ I am going to explore further the layering of different halftone shapes and frequencies of halftone to create patterns or optical disturbances. I can explore the grid further by creating differences within the components of the grid through their size or the shape of halftone that is used. Other approaches to the creation of a visual experience include: CAD to create a low relief pattern, resist processes or a flexiograph to create texture. These processes could be used to explore the pixilation and dispersal of the image.   Another question is: ‘Is the frame as important as the concept of the frame?’ Perhaps the manipulation of perspective could be employed by using different sizes of the same image as in slide nine or playing with the perspective of the frame .                                                                                                       This issue of the use of perspective relates to another question that I wish to explore which is: ‘The room, the wall, and the way in which the image is used within this context?’ This relates to installation art, but also to architecture as it is possible for my work to be built into the fabric of a building.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 I had a tutorial with David Ferry the printmaker which was really good because he was looking at the work from a different perspective. He highlighted the significance of the object and the handmade which, I can sometimes overlook because ceramics is the discipline that I'm trained in. I had become very focused on the image and the print, forgetting that the prints on clay were also objects within their own rights. He also highlighted for me the fact that I was dislocating the impact of the photograph by the use of the grid. I've been looking at work by Andreas Gursky, Dieter Roth, Louise Nevenson, Antoni Tapies, Gerhard Richter, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Vito Acconci.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450 I've been exploring the potential of solarplates; I like the relief quality that they can give to both paper and to clay. I've been very focused on the image to the point where I stopped thinking about the prints as being objects in their own right. I want to really exploit their sense of objectness and make the print and the material that it's printed merge together more and almost be the same thing.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/579450