Degree Final Year Blog

In this set of works I have focused on working on the beach using sand. I began feeling like I was going through a creative block. To bring myself out of this stage I looked at landscape photos I had taken and did some pattern drawing on them, the pattern shape developed from a certain influential detail in the image such as stone, patterns of the sea. Through repeating this pattern I find it encourages my mind to explore itself more and become more creative. After this exercise I started experimenting with some wire in the studio, still feeling uninspired I decided to take myself to an outdoors location. I got on bike and cycled to the beach, similar to Hamish Fulton, I’m realising how vital the bike ride/hike to a location is to my work, it begins the process of clearing my mind.
I found I understand a location which to me felt like a blank canvas, influenced by my image of the patterned beach, I recreated these patterns in the sound. I spent 2 hours on location drawing these patterns non stop. The process ended when I was unable to carry on due to blisters. I find this interesting as it demonstrates the obsessive focus I enter, I feel this focus is another world I enter,away from the constrainting, judgemental world I live in.

I realised during the process my drawings started going a certain direction, I believe this was because I was aware of someone sat on the beach and in my avoidance of this person my work changed direction. I feel when other people around, it breaks my cycle, and brings me back to the real world.

The person walked past me and my work, avoiding stepping on my drawings. I noticed he’d been sat drinking a beer. This amused me, I wasn’t the only one escaping to nature however his method of response was alcohol, mine is art.
He threw his beer can into a bush, this bewildered me and encouraged me to question man’s relationship with nature, although my work was natural and non permanent this person avoided stepping on my work, but didn’t care about throwing rubbish over nature. It makes me wonder what if all of nature was ‘decorated’ or moulded into something beautiful, would man kind have more appreciation and respect? Perhaps, this is what I am unintentionally doing with my work. I have decided I would like to create an engaging piece of work to encourage the spectators/participants to think about this and the impact on nature.

Title: Slioch Hilltop Cairn/Circling Buzzards.1980. Medium:2 photographs, black and white, on paper and transfer lettering. Image: 1181 x 870 mm.

Title: Eroded Rock Outline Beinn Mheadhoin. From Ten Toes towards the Rainbow: Date: 1988, 1991.Medium: Screenprint on paper. Dimensions: Image: 632 x 911 mm

Title: The Pilgrim’s Way. Date: 1971. Medium: Photograph, black and white, on paper with dry transfer print mounted onto board. Dimensions: Image: 150 x 225 mm. support: 570 x 625 mm

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/hamish-fulton-1133

Hamish Fulton: work resulted from walks in landscape. His work represented his walks through a combination of words and photographs. His reaction to a walk depended on the length of the walk and the number of photos taken. His walks were an essential part of his work. There wasn’t any work created if there was no walk. Hamish described how the physicality of walking helps evoke a state of mind and a relationship to the landscape. Fulton believes that there is very strong correlation between the state of mind and walking performance. During his walks he tries to empty his mind, enhancing meditative quality of walking.
I like his work because it shows a different response to a natural setting, his use of words, repeating and photography. Although his work looks fairly simple, there is a lot more to it when you look into it, it captures the simplicity of the natural world, what one tries to achieve in this setting. His work also showed me the importance of the process of the physical aspect of being in a natural landscape, the walking/biking/running is all part of the process that I should from now on document more of.

In this book, Kastner describes the importance of a person’s connection with their environment. It is one of the contributors of the human condition. We worship and destroy the environment. He describes how as human’s we “We aspire to leave our mark, inscribing our observations and gestures within the landscape, attempting to translate and transgress the space within which we find ourselves… Landscape functions as a mirror and a lens: in it we see the space occupy and ourselves as we occupy it.”

Landscape art first began by a group of artists who all shared the idea that sculptural creativity could exist in a world away from institution, in an organic location. These artists were Michael Heizer, Robert Morris, Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim, Wa;ter De Maria.
The critic Barbara Rose also described how artist’s turned to landscape art through
“A dissatisfaction with the current social and political system results in an unwillingness to produce commodities which gratify and perpetuate that system” (critic Barbara Rose, 1969, Artforum article).

I learnt from this book there are many different types of landscape art, which include:

PLATFORM: This is when artist’s work with the local community to restore damaged environments caused by human intervention. Goals :”to [provoke] desire for a democratic and ecological society… [and to] create an imagined reality which is different from the present reality”.

Performative: process based nature of land art based on mark-making, cutting, agglomeration and relocation.

Landscape interruption: joining the environment and human activity by employing man-made materials ranging from asphalt or glue: the works expand to match the large scale of the environment itself. They use manufactured substacnes and structures; to harness natural elements.

Involvement: Works here focus on the artist as an individual acting in a one-to-one relationship with the land. Some artists use their bodies to make a performative relationship with an organic environment. Emphasizing a primal link with the earth. Others react against, by making transitory and ephermal gestures. Examples of this: an artist taking a walk across a field, subtly realigning elemnts within it to mark their passage. Artists also use their bodies to map the landscape, presenting photographic documentation of their journies. Relevant artists:Kazu Shiraga. Peter Hutchinson. Charles Simonds.

Reflecting on my own practice I believe I work within a combination of these categories, such as Platform, Performative and Landscape interruption. Although I like the idea of creating more performance based work as an important aspect for my work is to be able to cycle/run/walk to a rural location and “discover”. This is a vital part of the creative process for me.

The Nature Of Things: An exploration of beauty, utopia and decadence. Yvonne Hindle & Henry Rogers.
Here is another book I have been reading which I found some interesting quotes I feel are relevant to my work.

“metaphors of natural growth, of roots, burrowing deep and burgeoning shoots reaching for the sun made us think not only of representations (of the natural world) but also of the processed of artistic production, of how art “becomes”, of how art takes its place…deliberate acts and random movements towards the blossoms and blooms of summer, moments of intoxication and pleasure, realisation and embodiment“. (pge 5-6).
This quote encouraged me to think of my practice and the process I follow. I questioned how my work is influence by the natural weather, I realised I only create outdoor installations when the weather is sunny. The sun naturally increases the beauty of nature, making colours, forms and materials much more pleasing to the eye. Perhaps this is what I am drawn to, the beauty is my escape. I also thought about my creative process and the way I move, are my behaviours a natural response to the setting or do I pre plan? I tend to go to a setting with materials I have already chosen, however my response to that setting is not deliberate, I respond to the elements of nature naturally.

(pge 16): European philosophical aesthetics, dating back to Hegel, represented nature in virtue of its mindlessness, as boringly prosaic and unworthy of aesthetic consideration. Hegel: “the beauty of nature reveals itself as but a reflection of the beauty which belongs to the mind, as an imperfect, incomplete mode of being, as a mode whose really substantial element is contained in the mind itself”.

(page 17): the kernel idea in creativity is that of a making of something that was not there before. nature’s “works” (hives, nests, webs) have always been distinguished by those of art by reason of the absence on the part of their makers of any conscious intention to produce them. This quote encouraged me to think about the reason for my creations, the pattern making I do appears to be trying to fill a void, a void which I feel is being created as we slowly lose the natural word to urbanisation. The void of relationships. The void of understanding.

“Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the land-scape- he is a shaper of the landscape. In body and in mind he is the explorer of nature, the ubiquitous animal who did not find but has made his home in every continent.”

Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, 1973.

Here is a quote from a book I am currently reading. The book is written by the scientist Jacob Bronowski. He explores the origin of man, when and where we evolved. This is making an interesting read for me and demonstrates the original links to nature man had, and where we evolved from. It take’s me back to the root of our species and shows the significance of nature to our being. This quote from the book, in particular, as it shows how man influences nature and has always been an explorer of nature. Something I feel my life lack’s nowadays, and is why it appears in my practice.