Tag Archives: task 8

Research and Communication Overview

Throughout the duration of the Research and Communication module exposed me to many different ideas, theories and historical movements that have moulded the way that art is today. The segment I took the most from was within week two during a lecture with Dr Callum Kerr. This is because of the many ways that he presented ideas about critical thinking and critical theories, and how exactly they can be applied to our research and practice as artists or writers. Attending the lecture made me realise this is something I have always attempted similar practice within my work personally. This had begun within my studies in Media as that had exposed me to ideas such as Feminism, Marxism, and Gender Theory. These Theories became the foundations for the concepts of my art projects, be it a political opinion I want to poke fun at or create a humanisation of shunned away masculinity. Dr Kerr’s talk opened up for me the idea that when doing research for my projects I should maybe apply the theories more directly to my work.

 One of the ways I have attempted to connect critical theory to my practice would be when a project was completed designed around a list of words. With these words I wanted to capture the least literal explanation for why these words had anything to do with the photographs that where captioned with them. For this project I had tried to apply the Thing Theory, my photos where more about investigating the objects caught in the shot to decipher the connection to the word. I wanted to get the viewer to interoperate a narrative for themselves within the photographs. Infused with inspiration of works from Uta Bath and Rut Blees Luxemburg, I created work that brought more attention to the minor details on the photo that may explain the narrative I am trying to communicate. For example one of the photographs “Kiss” I did not want to take a picture of a literal kiss but capture a romantic location in which both I and my partner shared. The photo was the view of the city of Southampton from the top floor of her accommodation complex through a small narrow corridor with a window leading out to a dark but beautifully lit landscape of the dockland city.

 With all of this I do believe that the Research and communication module has helped me see a new realm of different concepts and theories to add to my practice that can only help strengthen my work into something more conceptual and relevant to current society. I believe that each of these lectures helps in many ways such as the Terminal bar lecture. Upon researching into how this film was made I discovered how we as practitioners of art should be more open and vigilant on keeping our eyes and ears open so we do not lose any strand of inspiration that could provoke a completely new project all together.

 

Task 8 Appropriating Serra and Veilhan

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I appropriated the lines of Richard Serra’s drawings such as Black tracks 2002 and form of Forged Drawing 1980/2008 and combined it with a the motion of Xavier Veilhan’s Le Mobile. Serra’s drawings in charcoal, ink and paintstick have a beautifully organic quality that I find fascinating. The rough edges and high contrast between the white and black give them a two dimensional motion in a similar way to Veilhan’s very static imagery of clean spheres having three dimensional motion in their mobiles. I am interested in translating the two dimensional to the three dimensional and so I chose to recreate the organic lines from Serra’s drawings in wire. This was remarkable difficult because as I was attempting to accurately recreate the organic nature of the drawings the outcome was very static because it was such a controlled process. To achieve anything close to the organicity of Serra’s work I had to abandon any attempt to copy his lines but more to use the style of drawing to achieve the same feel. In wire the shapes and lines lose some of the raw edge that adds motion in the large scale of his work. My own recreation is on a small scale and so I was happy with the level of motion added by the number of lines in the area of each drawing. Similarly the plain black appropriated from several of Serra’s works provides contrast to the untidy drawings. Experimenting with Veilhan style mobile structure, I suppose inevitably recreated the smooth motion of his pieces. Learning how to balance the sides of the piece took some attempts but formed an ever changing outcome.