Staffordshire University Fine Art – Ali Gibson

Working on 3 paintings today.  What will be the AURA painting I want to have many layers, my homage to Walter Benjamin for Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and Malevich Black Square.  He painted the first one in 1915 so I enjoy the 100 year celebration by redoing it in 2015 but this time with pink, so its way women are the Aura, we have an Aura, we have any layers, we are full of imperfections and that is what makes us all unique and interesting.I didnt realise when I order the size for the canvas that he did more than one ‘black square’ so this one mimicks the 106cm square one. The best laid plans and all that.

I have been painting the pipe for the Teachery painting. Again, an update on This is not a pipe. Playful I hope and a little more hand hitting than is my natural style but its a gift horse so I have to use it, The Treachery of Images by Margritte painted in 1929 is recycled as a feminist work saying that men have been treacherous in their betrayal of womens rights. I have left a little smoke coming from the pipe to suggest that the issues are still smoldering and not yet laid to rest.

Last of my, my very personal and playful response to a visiting artists tutorial in which I was told ‘Art is not meant to be fun!’.  Well, this is my playful result. A painting which says just that, which means of course, it is. Or at least, it should for me.  That the creative process should be a joyous and highly personal thing that you must always believe in. A small piece of concrete poetry.  I feel I am finally finding my own voice. The paintings are becoming just that.  Not replications in paint of the existing world, but ideas from inside my head. That for me, is a huge step forward.

After 2 days working on my essay I was glad to be back in the studio today. Lots of bits and pieces to do. I want to put my foot down in the studio as much as I can this week.

I started with the dress and continued to burn out the dummy on which the dress is hung. The burn marks and melting and now spray painted pink to show a dark corporeal melted body inside.  She is becoming a presence and I need to be careful when she is finally presented in the degree show that the 3 legs holding up the dummy are not visible from the front, to add to the presence of a floating dress.   My feeling in terms of title are something like…I am not her anymore…the sacrifice.  Or something similar.  I did add some text which I felt had to be handwritten and totally my own voice.  I realize that the handwritten should be my own thoughts and voice and that topography and font text should be words of authority or at least the third person.  I added 2 slogans to the front but I am unsure about them.  It was not what I had planned in my sketchbook. I had planned to have lots of famous art quotes on the bottom and my own voice on the top but having thought about it, I was not sure if this was the right way to go.  I will leave it for now and think about it.

The shoes I am enjoying very much.  I want to say something like ‘walk I mile in my shoes’.  About the role of women in society.  The paint and printing medium ooze from the shoes, and if I am honest, like a bodily fluid and this is what I want to say really, the corporeal, the body, sex, all of it.   I thought I had worked out one step for me was 17 inches and that over a mile this was 8940 so I wrote this on one of the shoes to test it to see if it worked.  I need to double check my maths. And also, not really feel the way the number is displayed is sophisticated enough. Again, I need to think about this.

I have also been testing the books sculpture. I am enjoying the idea of how women have so many roles and how they juggle them all.  The books seem to sum this up. By testing them in terms of layout I am learning what works better in terms of presentation. Adding the picture frame of a victorian painting adds another conversation. It could really be a separate piece in its own right.

One person will see a pissed off woman, another will know the painting, some will see the male gaze at work but how this has been high jacked by a subsequent viewer and given a new meaning, the idea of the female gaze I think has humor to it.

I am interested how the works as a whole, when displayed will say different things to different people, depending on their art knowledge. It seems important to me that anyone can take something from it, like ‘the F word can mean a critical discussion about embarrassment about a critical discourse or it can literally be a swear word.  The double meaning appeals.

I have been working on my essay today but I stumbled across a lovely quote by Michael Archer which says…”Conceptual Art proposed that images can be recognized as being language-like: an artwork can be read. The reverse is equally true: words can work in a picture-like way too”.

This quote appeals to be greatly, especially with the work now changing from just being paintings to something more conceptual and sculptural using ready made’s with interventions.

I picked up a neon pink photoframe this weekend. I did not know why, just that I was on a roll and it was cheap.  I was thinking what would I put in it. Photoframes hold memories for us, people dear to us, captured. So it I thought it would be rather nice if the image I chose was not my own but another artists. I will put in Sappho, Charles-August Mengin. The original hangs in Manchester Art Gallery.

If my themes seem to be developing on roles from my own personal experience in society and how we juggle the various demands of modern life and our position within them, then she seems to be a great choice and whatever your level of art history you will take something from this image. So on its simplest level, but putting this image in a frame it is showing I admire it, but I like the irony that it is painted by a man in the Victorian era with the gratuitous boob shot but glorified as a historical genre painting for the male gaze to appreciate. But instead, there is a sub text going on.  She is meant to be throwing herself off a cliff after a love affair with a young man but all is perhaps not what it seems. The female poet portrayed is more than perhaps the artist intended, she is bold, defiant, a call to arms and her sexuality is questionable given her island location.   She can be reinterpreted in modern terms as a strong woman.  It also interests me how conversations in paintings change as society around them does.  A good and a cheeky controversial choice I think.

I have had another great day in the studio. I feel that all the sketchbook ideas and time thinking about things is really beginning to pay off now.

This morning I ordered more MDF boards, yet more canvas to work on, including a very special one in the dimensions 106cm squared which will be my homage to Malevich ‘Black Square’.  I want to do something similar with the neon pink but with layers of depth and darkness and AURA lettering, one letter in each corner, which is also a reference to Walter Benjamins Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.  I am trying to say something like What Painting is to me, how painting becomes you, and you become it.  Like breathing.

I really feel the dress lady has huge potential. Last night it was annoying me that the neck and shoulders of the dummy were showing and in my mind, the body that wore the dress was no longer there so it had to be removed. I did try to saw and carve it away but after testing, realized it would be better if I were to set light to it, so armed with a box of matches, I did this outside the building this morning.  I still need to work on it as I ran out of matches and it is a slow process and gives off a hazardous smoke but the material quite literally melts in front of you if you are patient enough. If my aim is to create the carporeal then it is working. Sinews and melting holes are left, just what I want. I have spray painted the arm areas already and they really work. I still need to work further on the chest area to remove it more but which ensuring the integrity of the structure to hold the form of the dress. It really works in this way and ‘she’ is already becoming an presence in the studio space. I know from audience feed back that I am onto something here. I really need to test on paper what text I will add in due course as I will only get one chance to get it right.

I have spray painted the shoes which are now drying, I am thinking of a text like 1000m – cryptic for walk a mile in my shoes?

Also tested today was the actual books which I have spray painted to mimic the earlier text paintings on the way and the reference to looking like Penguin books.  I am really pleased with them although I need some more books and also need to seriously consider how these are presented. After discussion with a couple of other students, we felt the plinth as a form of presentation did not work, but there was a painted white table, that was far more everyday.  Also, to have the most powerful book open and readable, that would add another dimension.  I was drawn to the story of The Prime of Miss Jean Broadie which is a colourful tale about making your own destiny despite societies limits and the advice of one generation to another about their place in the world. I felt this fitted really well with my message. Overall, the actual book sculpture is about ‘language is political’ and I testing actually adding this to the spraypainted covers but I don’t think that this is actually necessary at all now. It is too literal within the piece but could be used elsewhere in the installation.  Each book chosen has a message to women about their various roles in the world.  Its about multi tasking in a way.

Then I was doing a little bit of painting, the bit I enjoy the most.  I am working on the latest painting as per the picture. I still need to add the figure/figures but its coming on. Really pleased with the painterly-ness of the detail shot below.  Suggestion is enough.

Huge Steps.

I have had the best day in the studio this year today.  Having been thinking about introducing found objects and spray painting them neon pink to add to the overall wall presentation, I decided to be really brave yesterday when I was working in my sketchbook in ideas.  If I want to use props such as a brush and pan, and other items of domesticated womanhood, then what is more iconic as such an emblem as a wedding dress.

I decided to get it down from the loft and as I am divorced and I can no longer fit into it, I decided to use it within the work.  Obviously this is a very private decision with its own sensitivities and as such, although I was happy to use it, and in terms of ownership, you cannot get anything better, I decided I did not want to film the initial spray painting of it as it was stage one of the destruction of it and as such, it was a private act.

2 cans of spray paint later, the white is all gone and we have lurid pink.  I have it fastened to a dummy to hold it upright but I like the idea of it floating in some way, the internal body having flown away or such such romantic notion, leaving the past behind.

It is a deeply symbolic move, both in a personal and universal language.  I want it to be about what we do for our art, the sacrifices it demands of us and how, if its in our soul, you have to embrace and not fight against, despite the potential result.  The piece is about metamorphosis, a cocoon of sorts, like the butterfly escaping.   I have also added loads of household paint to the dress, gradually distorting the dress and turning it into a sculpture and not a dress on a dummy.  It is turning into art.  I want to add some words to the dress and I have a few ideas in the sketchbook but I am not quite sure what is the right thing to do yet. I am aware that I only have one chance to get this right so for now, I will play with the paint aspects and further considering the lettering.  It is quite think in parts so its really needs tonight to dry in a little.  I have picked away at the polystyrene body shape to remove the shoulders/neck  as I want it to be like an empty shell left.  I have discovered that the polystyrene melts without catching fire very easily but the fumes from this are dangerous so it will need to be carved out by fire outside at some point.

Huge steps forward.  In addition, to add to the sculptural elements I have been working on some books that will reference ‘language is political’ and all the books/magazines chosen are appropriate to the discussion and their binding title will be visible.

Also, I have been doing some old paint brushes and other arty bits and hanging them from height and starting to build up heavy drips of paint from them.  I will spray paint that part of them neon pink also, to be a metaphor for the female artists body.

Finally, also been dropping some gloop on little high heeled shoes and these also will be sprayed.

So great progress today. I have come home very painty and pink.  and happy.

I sense this is a huge moment for the end of the year show and I am looking forward to going back into the studio tomorrow and starting work again.