Drawings, photo's, montage, from rhythms and movement of water.

"Only observation is the key to understanding". Leonardo

Click on image to enlarge

'How to' illustration in old book - drawing ripples

Swell Montage -  cut photographs 

 Sliced and recombined, sea swell photographs - disturbed and disrupted flow. 

flow-control-obstruct along the River Mole

 Photograph 1. stepping stones

 Photograph 2. ripples

  Photograph 3. weir

  Photograph 4. stir

 Photograph 5. pour

Swelling of the Sea, Furthest West - The Atlantic Ocean. Thomas Joshua Cooper 1990

 Sam Francis blue composition 1954 - oil on canvas

Joseph Beuys is concerned with looking at matter and energy, fixed and fluidity. Principles that organise and other manifestations of force in the universe.

He is exploring drawing in ways to evoke energy in his "Drawings after the Codices Madrid"  Leonardo Da Vinci.

"The energy of the drawn line creates a symbiosis between the life of the mind and of the thing being depicted" Beuys

Joseph Beuys, Unbetitelt, undatiert, Datierungsvorschlag, 1945. Collection Museum Schloss Mayland © Joseph Beuys Estate/VG Bild-Kunst,

Lost in an art installation

On entering the Tate Gallery I notice a large section that looks as if it is closed for re-hanging, I try to find the entrance to Mike Nelson’s Coral Reef and look for the usual white space. A gallery attendant points to the scruffy and insignificant door. There are no signs, no indication of what might be inside.

It looks like an abandoned Taxi cab office. Through the next door, another neglected space and down this grubby corridor more rooms with signs of a shady past, or waiting areas for something unpleasant. I tread carefully in the dim lighting, past old worn couches, random light fittings, and assorted objects left behind after a quick exit. These objects are familiar, reference past fears and are disturbing. There is a variety of office seating and a used mattress possibly taken from a skip?  I had a couch just like that in a bedsit but had to cover it in flea powder before sitting on it. Everything has had a previous use and the feeling of hopelessness builds. I carry on past grimy carpets and temporary floor surfaces, these abandoned spaces continue to imply unease, what lies beneath the layers of old newspaper on the floor? More doors; do I want to continue on or return?

This is hard work, most exhibitions usually have a preferred route, mapping the way through from beginning to end. You know how to navigate it even if you prefer to make your own way around. At least you can be sure not to miss the good bits.
Ah I think I've been here before but now choose another door. I pass one or two people and can hear footsteps elsewhere and distant door hinges squeaking, so many small, hostile rooms seem to interconnect endlessly.

Which way next errm...

Ah here’s an attendant or is he a security guard, is he part of this … I ask, he is not.

Round a corner and through more small unpleasant spaces, (It’s quite creative how many ways you can make a room look sordid) I have seen these places before in films, bad dreams and reality, only this time it is the artist controlling my time in here. Have I been in this room before...

It’s quiet no other sounds, footsteps or squeaking doors ... it’s very quiet... it would be funny if I couldn't find the way out... I feel uncomfortable... why haven’t I bothered to notice the direction I came in... How did I get to this bit...  I acknowledge a slight unease... where was that security bloke?

Searching for the way back I find more rooms I don’t recognise and there are no signs that might help my disorientation. It’s so quiet now, where has everyone gone? I wish I was with someone in here... I wonder what would happen if I had a panic attack... err, don't know if I ever actually had a real one... don’t know how I would react if... and now with this thought I do start to feel very scared. I don't know how I would be if I lost control?

"We do not have to be long in the woods to experience the always rather anxious impression of going deeper and deeper’ into a limitless world. Soon, if we do not know where we are going, we no longer know where we are". Gaston Bachelard – The Poetics of space

Is there a door handle that might be an exit, are the fire exit signs real, if I follow them where will I end up? Every thought makes things worse, my heart is pounding and my stomach churns as the real fear of losing control gets closer, try this door, another room, another room, another room...

Here is the reception and the security bloke, I try to calmly ask “ How do I get out?”
“Straight ahead and through the door.”
This corridor is not straight and the door opens into a sort of bin storage area, do I go through the fire exit over there and possibly into a back street. It doesn't look right. I have to go back but at least I remember how I got here this time. “Yes trust me” he says encouragingly. So back into the bin room I spot a bright sliver of light under the door.

Now out in the familiar Tate corridor I remember my intention was to make a drawing in there, so feeling brave now, I almost liked the idea of being lost inside. I step back in and note each door as I walk through but after the fourth door I have had enough fear returns and I quickly retrace my steps. The attendant outside looked indifferent as I re-emerged so quickly.
I realise how easily I had ignored the fire exit signs when looking for a way out, probably because they are accepted information and never an actual part of the art?

The fear of being lost in there completely transformed my experience of an art exhibition and memories of Tate Britain. Now back to the shop!

Gerard Richter - Panorama at Tate Modern

 Visited Nov 2011 

Words in Italics are from the booklet

A selection of relevant and pertinent words as they appear in the Tate booklet 

Diversity - structured by various oppositions - unpredictable accumulations – contradictory -  gestural – mechanic . Impersonal paintings – readymade images - chance procedures - nature of appearance -capacities of vision. Contradictions and connections - continuities and breaks. Utopian abstraction - unbridgeable gap – compromised role - what are the capacities and limits of painting? Incapacities of painting. Blunt use of unmodified materials without any symbolic or narrative content -  arrangement was unfixed. Images disintegrate. Sense of discontinuity. Neither visible nor invisible – equivalent for indifference -  noncommitment -  absence of opinion - absence of shape. Impersonal surface – regulated structure – chance procedure. Non composition. Random juxtapositions.  Contemplation – paint would be pulled laterally and vertically - imperfect erasures, upper layers of paint dragged away, allowing earlier moments from the paintings creation to resurface. Untruthful. Personal significance. Rather than a linear narrative or a single canvas showing a decisive event - fragmented images with no fixed sequence. Repetitions and differences. The intimate and the monumental -  outcome of a destructive process - brutal erasures. Evoke experiences – grid structures. Juxtaposing accidental and intentional – accumulation of strokes and erasures. Questions about vision. Images are inflated, repeated and blurred - all knowledge of their references vanishes but an imposing impression of repetition remains - forms continue beyond the edges of the painting.  Sense of confinement rather than openness – repeated and reflected - rendered indistinct  - on the point of dissolution – obscures the identities. Rejection of intuition –  total randomness.

I decide not to read the gallery information first but to discover the drawings and paintings that I have a personal response to and that are relevant to my own research.

Sea-Sea  1970

There is something unusual and slightly awkward that at first is hard to understand but I am interested. It appears very different to the next sea and sky painting, executed in a similar realistic method. Why is there more drama, more pictorial or perspective distance and why does this somewhat heavier space disturb slightly. It’s a trick, taken from a collage of two different photographs of waves, the rougher of the two inverted and placed as cloudy sky, with the two horizons meeting and placed at eye level.
 “The painting creates a sense of discontinuity and suggests Richter’s acknowledgement of the gulf separating him from the moment of Romanticism”.

I decide to wait here to see how other people might react to it:

I disregard those with headphones, they are merely following instructions, listening has priority over direct thought.

Some visitors read the label first, move back and take interest but are now aware of the trick.
However there are quite a few, that are immediately interested, stand in the centre of the canvas and move back and forth examining it carefully before reading the label. This painting definitely has the viewer’s spending longer in front of it than any other in the room. There is more discussion here.

Sea- Sea Gerhard Richter oil on canvas 1970

 

Lino prints

A series of recently found older mono prints are very simply made using the roller directly on to the lino. The black ink suggests landscape, as most have a near central divide invoking the horizon and reflections. A moon appears, almost by accident in several. The last few are slightly more involved with 3 tones of grey being used to create a moody atmosphere. A connection is evident to the large dragged abstracts.

Graphite on paper

These small intimate drawings contain the recognisable spaces found in Richter’s early large abstracts. The graphite drawings made since 1999 use minimal marks to explore invented space and distance.

Silicate 2003

Microscopic images of chemical compounds, magnified many times until they become blurred and any previous reference is lost. The two large grey Silicate paintings use the same images. The first is quite static with horizontal, regular rows of smudged dots that form simple pattern combinations.
In the second the bands are set at a slight angle creating a rhythmic flow as the dots disappear and reappear as “the imposing impression of repetition remains”.
I recognise the similarities to Sea-Sea, where the painted image flows down to the lower right hand corner and begins to dissolve, disrupt and disintegrate, like a breaking tide that flows on beyond the edge of the canvas.

Gerhard Richter Silicate 2003 oil on canvas

Meeting Stephen Farthing

Notes on a talk,
the italics are my thoughts

Stephen Farthing talking about his work as the CCW Research Professor in Drawing.

Starting with a small drawing of a sort of ancient fort or burial ground Farthing explained how he is trying to understand all drawing through making a map or plan about drawing itself. He initially placed fine art in a central position on the landscape and all other types spreading out, reaching towards the act of writing which is set near the horizon. He later moved fine art to the outer circle of importance.
Searching for ways to organise his ideas and locate areas of flow he developed a type of underground map to describe connections as a Taxonomy of Drawing.


He discussed drawing as 2D representation, showing an example of an aeroplanes flat, outlined shadow, that should not be classed as drawing because it is made unintentionally. However a vapour trail heart, constructed by two planes as they fly in arcs through exact planning and measurement is drawing. 

The heart image is a beautifully line, drawn in a transparent filigree the line dissolves in a fragile rhythmic pulse.


Drawings can be definitive or instructive, derived from observation, memory, mind and imagination. 

He gave an example of possibly the greatest drawing ever made, developed by a mathematician. An invented sundial that shadows the movement of planets, then translated into time using the kinetic element of a pendulum, this is made as a tonal drawing.

Sundial invention



 Originally drawings may have developed from scribbling but physical gesture is probably the real beginning.

Stephen Farthing is looking at all methods and reasons for drawing. His Taxonomy of Drawing divides into two.

Conceptual  -    Drawings that need to be read via the rule book:
Maps, football pitch, Maori tattoos, because they are complicated and need explanation to enable other cultures to decode them. Roads developing c1920 have become massive drawings when seen with a birds eye view, a highway code is required to understand them.
Where do pathways that mark out routes on the landscape fit here?

Pictorial -   Turner draws a boat on a choppy sea, the latter is signified by rhythmic marks, developed through a keen observation into his method of seeing the world.
We understand the boat as we have learnt to read edges of things, therefore the water is easily understood.

Turner's waves and boats sketch

Farthing’s map is a conceptual drawing but he also makes a pictorial version.

Two plan chests labelled Conceptual and Pictorial.
You can choose the correct chest to store any drawing in but first how do you decide if it is a drawing and to do this, is it important to know who the drawing is for?

To categorise, it is important to ask first what was the point of that drawing?

A question discussed later - Is labelling valid?

I wonder if there is a grey area between the two, in which drawer does the abstract drawing fit?

The games afoot

The games afoot...that line again  (ah that’s where it’s from).
Drawing workshop at Henry 5th RSC rehearsal studios.

Action.
Actors move around, scenery, steps and tower change positions. Lots of atmosphere to capture, I layer and repeat figures to show movement. If a character returns to the same position on stage, I can add more detail. The Shakespearean actors love to show of, making good body shapes. I concentrate and quickly record the stronger angles, speed of drawing changes my way of working. The director remains quite still, he has a stabilising effect on the image.

                   

 

 

 

Later on at Tate Britain

 A very scary place, Tate Britain if you haven't read the blurb on the Mike Nelson installation.

 BUT wait... don't read it, if you're going, it's much better to know nothing...that’s the point, you should enter totally unaware of what you might find!
( see more later)

Ok, now a bit of the Romantics show to recover. Oh connections... more Shakespeare.

Thomas Stothard's Shakespearean characters



 

Shakespearean Characters exhibited 1813 This assemblage of Shakespearean characters is from the most popular plays of the time. Stothard is painting what people like. (1755-1834)  The label says that he demonstrates his literary knowledge and also flatters his viewer.  Something to keep in mind perhaps but today you have to add a little more.

Research Folio

Over the 2 years of the MA Drawing course I will be keeping a Research Folio of interesting things,  and probably a lot of thoughts. I have been wondering how this should look but have now decided to just get on with it and to begin here.

Anri Sala at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park
An exhibition of sound/performance/film/sculpture and light.
This is the first time I had seen/heard his work and initially I am a little confused inside the installation. I try not to read too much information prior to looking, as I like to understand it on my own terms first.
A snare drum is playing on it's own, a pair of rubber hands moving in a set way in a darkened room and in the next room a film. The large windows of the serpentine are covered, cut out slots allowed light to filter in casting patterns. Looking through the slots I can see different chunks of the park. In the film somebody was slowly feeding disorganised pieces of slotted card into a barrel organ creating chopped up sound. Moving on through a dark space and into the next room, a film followed a man wandering around outside a neglected and graffitti covered building, he is carrying a box and winding the handle to play 'should I stay or should I go'.
Now that I recognise the music, I feel a little more comfortable and begin to enjoy how the sounds from each room mix as they pass through the spaces. A real saxophonist begins playing adding to this mixture, unfortunately the mini barrel organ in the window isn't working.

The visual ambiguity of slots of light (the same pattern as the music score) that create both the patterns inside the room and snapshots of outside simultaneously are interesting. These combined with the quiet visual film footage and mixture of sounds leaking through from the separate room spaces, all evoke a very specific atmosphere. It is both a moving and at the same time enjoyable experience.

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2011/03/anri_sala.html

The first week- Thursday

It's been a very busy summer with few visits to the studio, I have started my MA Drawing course and I am excited. On Thursday all MA students and staff took part in the 'One Minute Showcase'.

   

I showed 'Large Spiral and gave a one minute introduction:

'My intention here is to make images that can physically affect a viewer. This one needed to be large to fill your visual space and be a continuous and slow movement. I experimented to find the right weight of the marks and how they should sit on the paper and used the charcoal in a simple and direct way to avoid unnecessary tinkering.
 I am interested in how people might respond to abstract drawings and how there is often an immediate connection. A sort of alternative recognition.'

 I had wanted to add a funny bit (but the minute ran out) about how drawing spirals had had a physical effect on me...it had caused extreme drowsiness. I think I might have discovered a cure for insomniacs!