My next piece... (I think at least)

You know that annoying feeling when you find an artist who has literally done everything you have been trying to do but better and about fifty years ago?

Yeah thank you Hans Haacke and your Condensation Cube..

Now though I'm going to take this as inspiration. The next piece I wish to construct (and I WILL be documenting it on here) four of these cubes, taking direct influence from Haacke. I want to experiment with the ideas of condensation and constructing an environment, perhaps placing plants or leaf pulp in these airtight cubes. Additionally I want to embrace sound in my work and potentially have these cubes on plinths with speakers inside. I wish to source political speeches on the environment and climate change and stretch and distort them so much that I can layer them into tones. In my opinion the more that climate change gets mentioned the more distorted the facts become and politicians all start sounding the same, yet not acting on anything at all in their policies.

We shall see anyways.

Auction Pieces!

Our auction is a week tomorrow!
www.nufineartauction.weebly.com
Fancy them?

'The Green Deal'

'Y'know, I just thought it would be around forever...'

Woon Prize Submission

I have just submitted my application for the Woon Art Prize. Should be interesting... I always find that photographing my work definitely alters how I perceive its function. The joy in this piece (currently untitled as I am going through a phase of retitling my work) is that, like most of my work, it almost comes in an assemble-it-yourself form. By this I mean that the works never have a solid form and apart from the cubes, can be changed and moved around. This means that although I do sometimes forget the exact way the piece looked previously (professional I know), the work seems to be more mobile and the inconsistency allows the piece to function in a more dynamic fashion.

Rob Kennedy

Having a tutorial with Rob Kennedy was very useful in opening up areas of my practice that I had been considering whilst writing my dissertation. These particular elements were focused on ideas of collaboration and participation and additionally the subversion of the traditional white cube gallery.

During my tutorial we touched upon Kennedy’s past exhibitions, especially his show at CCA in Glasgow. In this show he invited a group of artists and used their work to create a dialogue between the sometimes contrasting practices and methodologies. Also he broke down the conventions of the gallery space by relocating walls and integrating detritus from the back rooms of the gallery into the curation and the actual works. One piece that I found interesting was a tennis table piece. The table was set up in the gallery space and invited the gallery viewers to interact with it. This idea of interaction is something that I have struggled with throughout my time at university and by placing such an almost confrontational object in a gallery, the interaction was bluntly thrown at the viewer.

These ideas rather excited me as I have been looking into involving a more curatorial context with my work. Kennedy suggested having an exhibition in my university house, again something that me and my flatmates have been considering for a while. The subversion of traditional exhibition spaces could allow my work to function in a different context to that normally associated with the white cube. I am going to look into the politics of hosting an exhibition, if any, mainly regarding health and safety and see what the likelihood of this coming together could be.

As I was between studio spaces there wasn’t much of my work around which was quite useful in a way as I focused mainly on the conceptual areas that I had trouble with. We addressed many of these issues through conversations that lead to the above.

The lecture was slightly underwhelming after how inspiring the tutorial had been, though it was interesting to see images of the CCA show and to hear Kennedy go into more detail about certain parts of his practice.

I also went to a video screening/performance later that evening and was inspired to see some of Kennedy’s recent work. A particular piece stood out above the rest as it had a political context. It was an intense piece that essentially overloaded the senses through sound and moving image. This made me consider the use of sound in my work and also how I could potentially integrate video into my work. I particularly enjoyed the stretching and warping of speech. Now I am looking at distorting speeches from political statements and seeing if I can turn them into tones or choruses.