Process, performative, gestural, fluid, energetic, interactive, spontaneous, rebellious, playful, documentative

My practice has evolved within the past few months and is moving towards performance-based work. Movement is an important aspect of my work, mainly due to the fact that I want to celebrate process as opposed to the idea of an outcome. I believe artists put too much emphasis on the importance of outcomes, and should focus more on how art is made in the first place. Therefore, documentation is also a big part of my work: without documentation, I wouldn’t be able to show the initial process.

The way I channel movement is energetic, fluid and gestural. I utilize performance to make marks, and this is evident within the film I created for the artist film project (as shown in the screenshot attached). Dramatic movements and gestures are important to emphasise concepts of a celebration of process. I find my work almost rebellious because as mentioned above, I’m not invested in notions of outcome: I want my work to be spontaneous as a way of rebelling against the confines of how we view art. Furthermore, I have attempted to be rebellious in my material choice, to move further away from traditional mediums. Using paint and paintbrushes in a ‘traditional’ way is something that I believe is outdated: instead, I have been looking into using materials such as carpet stain remover, roll-on deodorant and clingfilm. These mundane materials are not only obscure, but the fact that there isn’t a ‘set’ way to use them allows for playful, authentic experimentation. 

Marina Abramovic doesn’t explicitly label herself a feminist artist. However, aspects of her work arguably speak of feminist ideas and notions, especially in the context of the time period in which her earlier performances took place. Rhythm 0, 1974 suggests how Abramovic was readily giving her physical self over to the public, and the violence and abuse that the performance escalated into perhaps shows society’s lack of respect for women. It’s interesting to think about how conducting the same experiment with a man in Abramovic’s place could have worked out: would the public respect a male performer more?

Contextually, this performance happened during the period of Second Wave Feminism, and so it’s interesting to consider how Abramovic may have been influenced by the movement when coming up with this idea. Certainly, Abramovic would have attracted a much different reaction had she attempted this performance in a time where feminism progressing. It’s without saying that this performance was controversial, but Abramovic’s gender would have definitely been an alarming factor had this been done pre-feminism, for example.

Bibliography:

CUJAH. (2017). Reading Marina Abramović’s Performance Art as a Feminist Act. [online] Available at: http://cujah.org/past-volumes/volume-vi/essay-8-volume-6/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2017]

I have utilised a holiday photograph that belonged to strangers for the purpose of this task. I think what interests me the most about this form of appropriation is how personal photographs of this vein are. This personal aspect is something that I can appreciate, and yet not fully understand as I don’t have any connections to the original image myself. I see my perception of the value of these photograph to be distorted, and so I wanted to distort the original image as much as possible while still maintaining the original image itself. As I’m interested in process, it made sense to me to document the distortion process, creating a series of images that documents  this. 

This use of other people’s photographs was very much inspired by the work of Richard Prince, in which he exhibited strangers Instagram posts without their permission. This task allowed me to explore notions regarding how we define art in relation to ownership of material, which was thought-provoking. I believe questions regarding appropriation hold diverse, subjective answers. Nevertheless, the conversation of appropriation is a very important one that artists should continue to consider.

The first text, Leo Steinberg (b.1920) from Other Criteria, explores Rauschenberg’s work in depth, recognising the ways in which Rauschenberg challenges the classic ‘head-to-toe correspondence with human posture’: that is, he experimented with the composition of his work, to the extent that it would disrupt the viewer’s ability to relate visually. Steinberg recognises how most artists revolve their work around a horizontal positioning due to the way humans observe: the audience of artwork expects to be able to visually relate. The way in which Steinberg concludes this piece of text by bringing in the overarching idea of change suggests his recognition of Rauschenberg’s innovation: he challenged the norm of composition.

The second extract, From the Yale Lecture by Richard Serra discusses site-specific sculpture, and the contrast this has with non-site specific sculpture. Serra believes site-specific sculpture forms a relationship between the environment and the sculpture itself: they are ‘inseparable’. Serra suggests that if sculptures are created in a studio space and then taken to another location to then be adjusted accordingly, the initial context of the work has been tampered with. Serra is essentially challenging the norm of creating work within a studio space.

This idea of challenging norms is what connects the two texts together. Both Rauschenberg and Serra reject certain elements of practice that would ordinarily be considered ‘fundamental’ to the work ethic of an artist.

Bibliography:

Art in Theory 1900-1990 : An Anthology of Changing Ideas. (1992). Blackwell Publishers, pp.948-953 1124-1127.

When given the task of reinventing a mode of practice, I immediately thought of Jackson Pollock’s processes, and the expressive way that he creates his paintings. His process is something I hold a particular interest in, due to the performative, gestural aspect that his paintings hold. Although Pollock’s pieces are very much about the outcome, I wanted to focus on Pollock’s mode of practice by paying more attention to the actual process, and celebrate the gestural movements that this process possesses.

Personally, I am very interested in both performance art and the concept of process, which is why I consider Pollock to be an interesting artist to explore for this task. Looking at photographs of Pollock creating his paintings is what inspired me the most to develop his working process, and so I feel it would be interesting to perhaps create a piece of video art which documents the gestures and movements people make when trying to adopt his working process. This could perhaps become a participatory activity, and it would probably be more effective if I kept my true intentions of focusing on their actual movements rather than the outcomes covert, so as to ensure the footage I gather is as authentic as possible in regards to the individuals mimicking the process. This would allow me to not only reinvent Pollock’s process, but document and celebrate it as well.

Crop. Unrecognisable. Flesh. Zoom. Thick. Wrinkle. Pink. Disfigure. Crease. Squash.

I chose this painting from my contemporary project to represent my practice. It is a painting of a very zoomed in photograph of my hand. I chose this painting because it’s subject of flesh, and hands in particular, is something that appears consistently throughout my personal work, whether it is painting, drawing, or even embroidery.

For this painting I used oil paint, which has become my preferred choice of paint to work with in the past years because of the way it’s so easy to manipulate, blend and layer. I’ve recently began to experiment with the thickness of the paint I use in my paintings to create texture to my work. This painting is one of my more successful examples of that. I’ve also been experimenting with colours and the decision to choose only one as the main colour, such as blue or pink, and then working within their tonal spectrums; similar to monochrome, which I use in my drawings where it is just black and white. Again this painting is an example of that.

I would like to continue this style of painting and experiment and explore with the idea of zoomed in photographs to the point where they appear almost unrecognisable. The scale of the painting, being a small squared canvas also, for me, almost suggests it has been taken from a larger painting. Therefore if I was to continue this project I would like to do a series of paintings like this one but from different sections of the hand to create this idea that it’s some kind of puzzle. Also this idea of taking something so common and beautiful as the human hand/body and turning it into something unidentifiable and almost grotesque is something that I think would be fun and interesting to explore further.

Creating a piece of art generally has a similar structure within the development process in which you look at the ideas of size, composition, colour schemes and materials. My new mode of practice would look closer at the idea of development instead of the actual outcome; taking the little things that you experiment with and placing them in full view. As part of this practice I would create the final outcome as usual but instead of displaying it I would create an exhibition of the process with all of the colour palettes, mock pieces, first hand images and tools to build an interactive piece. This outcome style would allow the audience to participate with the work that I was creating; so that they could also create art using the same techniques and products. This would build up a large collective piece of work where many different pieces of art that were created by lots of individuals could be compared in a reasonable way, since they have all had the same working situations. By doing this you could involve many people with completely different walks of life to be part of the art world and also have a collaborative project without a developed final piece.

The work of Rebecca Louise Law is an installation in style so an entire exhibit is only classed as one piece, therefore making the individual work the main focus point. Her work “life in death” is a hanging piece where over 375,000 dried flowers are displayed on copper wire in a singular square room, the effect of this is enormous due to the fact that there is no one piece that you have to focus on. You could argue that each garland is an individual piece.

Being within the installation was an amazing experience, something that cameras can never fully capture as you cannot see the panoramic view or the depth in which the exhibition is based on. Being able to walk between the garlands created a particular atmosphere that is hard to describe, but the entire piece definitely wouldn’t have been so successful if it was created as a singular flat piece instead of an installation as the main enjoyment for the viewer was the ability to see the art from many different angles.
The question to consider would be whether each garland is an individual piece, they have all been thought out with colour schemes and textures in mind but individually they would probably look more like a decorative house wreath instead of a fine art piece; looking closer at this you can clearly see that the garlands work as a collective, the display within the room shows swaths of particular colours and textures that blend seamlessly around the room. Taking this into consideration you can see why the ability to take a photograph within this exhibition is hard as you cannot capture the panoramic view the entire way around the room as every different angle shows off a new collective of colours and textures placed together, therefore being able to walk around the exhibit is really the only true way to get a full understanding of the artwork.

The Queer British Art 1861-1967 exhibition held by the Tate modern explores the connections between art and the range of sexualities and gender identities during the time period. The exhibition depicted many different styles of showing queerness with a closer look at particular artists or specific works that are notable for their relation to the topic. Going around the exhibition was an interesting experience because the design of the rooms was very simplistic with a basic presentation of each piece of art, this brought the viewers attention straight to the art however it forced the atmosphere in the rooms to be quite timid as people tended to follow each other around in a basic clockwise manner.
Based on the context of the exhibition you wouldn’t expect there to be a clear theme between all of the works however I found it very hard to connect anything together at all just by eye, the main information given about queer art was within the texts and without those small descriptions the art would not create a collective that flowed.
I found that the more in depth rooms such as the David Hockey and Francis Bacon were the most rewarding as you got a real sense of a personality/character behind the artwork that was created, along with being given so much more information that related to the topic. So overall the theme of the exhibition was very interesting with sections of it giving lots of valuable information, however some of the areas were a little disjointed and could probably do with more of a narrative.

Nikki S. Lee
Part (14), 2002

This particular image created by Nikki S. Lee is part of a series that explores the idea of unknown relationships, with each photograph in this series having a different settings and different characterisations the only similarity is the familiar arm being pushed into frame. The arm in this particular image is draped around the shoulders of the figure of Nikki S. Lee and is unidentifiable, this however is different for the character in shot, she is positioned slightly off centre and is gazing off to the right of the image indicating that she is clearly not looking at the figure to the left of the image, the reason for this is unknown but by the expression on her face you can infer that she is not entirely comfortable with the situation; this is shown further by the depth of colour used within the imagery as the surrounding areas are dark and gloomy with one bright window of a car highlighting the focus point. Overall the imagery in the piece leaves the viewer with a number of questions; Who is the mysterious figure?, Where is their destination? and lastly Why is capturing this moment in particular important?. By doing this the artist has created an outcome that sparks debates, on both the individual artworks along with looking at the ideas of the dynamics of different relationships.