What was highlighted from my solo show last year is that there are five main threads to my practice:
Process, Performance, Sculpture, Materiality and Craft
and I would like to pursue these subjects in more depth.
So how and where do I go from the work that I made for my solo show, that is the big question for me having made something so big, so 'spectacular' and for so long (1 year)?
The first port of call was to take a look at Mark Rothko, the painter who my work has been referenced against a few times. I love the black pigment that I have been using but it is extremely messy and can be difficult to work with. How could I 'contain' the material whilst still retaining it's powdery quality? I mixed up two solutions of paint, one oil based, one water based, as samples to try, but the powdery texture seems to have been lost. I think I was more excited by the dust that collected on the paint surface whilst it was drying! What did come out of my investigation is that I should work in series, using small sections to make a large work, and continue to retain an overall blankness in initial visuality which on closer inspection is full of life (as my work does).
On the craft side I have been experimenting with crochet, having purchased a bigger hook which has made my samples a bit more successful! I am looking for a process that doesn't involve the formality of sitting to a table, something I can pick up and put down, and perhaps can be making when watching telly or taking a journey for example. I don't want to make clothes and I want to remain within a fine art context, but there are times when I like to be using my hands, 'fiddling' about. My drawing at the table can make my arms and hands ache and I need other methods of making to alleviate this from time to time whilst still enjoying the act of making. My crochet samples aren't that brilliant but I found the process very comforting which was a surprise. Perhaps it is a form of mending rather than the destructive process of piercing holes in paper?
From the crochet samples that I made, I traced their patterns onto paper and have started a large embossed series from one of them which I am still working on. I like the visuality of the patterned marks I have made and I need to think how to highlight some of these marks, bring them out, perhaps with graphite dust or ink? I don't want every mark to appear and I don't want every repetition to be exactly the same, but I would like to bring out some of the marks by the processes I employ, at random, like a trace, from the original embossed drawing.
The tracing template that I have used from the crochet sample could perhaps be plated up as a collograph, mechanical drawing verses hand drawing?
I also moulded another one of the crochet samples around a bowl as an exercise to see the potential of the crocheted material as a sculpture. The shape of the object produced isn't brilliant but it shows the possibilities for sculpture.
My work is usually repetitive, as process can be, but has always been as one whole piece. I have never worked with blocks of repetitions. I have read a new publication called
100 things not worth repeating: on repetition edited by Marianne Holm Hansen. Repetition can appear a negative but it can also be a way of working something out, learning something, an emptying out. What was interesting is the suggestion to what is happening in the gap between the repetition? And when is a repetition complete?
At some point in the future my partner and I hope to head out on the road again to travel a while and we have been talking about our possessions and what to do with them and what to get rid of. I often talk about the idea of de-cluttering and this is an ongoing 'project' of mine. I was reading about the artist Abraham Cruzvillegas in Art Review this last month who describes how some Mexican families build up their homes bit by bit, over time. It feels like I am taking my home down, bit by bit, material wise anyway, which actually is very refreshing.
When researching how to crochet, I came across how to make yarn from recycled materials. I love the idea of 'make do and mend', especially in these difficult economic times, but the concept of recycling, I suppose I'm thinking on the home front, feels problematic to me as it seems you just take one object and convert it into another object, and the object still remains, just in a different format. You still have all this 'stuff' and clutter.
I've had a go at making yarn from newspaper, tissue paper and then dress - making pattern paper, which I have carried around with me for the last eight years. I tried knitting with paper yarn which was disastrous as it kept breaking and had no 'give' at all. I had a rage and threw it on the floor!
I'm wondering if crochet and knitting are not the way to go forward in terms of art making, although the process has fed into some of the drawings I am making. I really like the look of the dress - making pattern paper yarn, but it feels complicated by it's subsequent knitted process. My work is simple, for example, a pierced hole in paper. What could I do with the yarn itself, as a material to look at and play with?
Finally, whilst making my paper yarn, I have been questioning how does or how can, or where, does (my) 'performance' come into this? I have learnt of the artist Ivano Vitali who will sit in a gallery space knitting on a gigantic scale, and another artist, Emma Noble who is currently at Aspex in Portsmouth, where she is sewing in the gallery cafe, producing new work as part of her exhibition. There is also John Court who exhibited and performed last year, sharing his drawing processes, at Spacex in Exeter, and Ralph Macartney who filmed himself drawing a banana, the film presented at the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2006. I'm sure there are many more examples to be had.
Next week I head off to the island of Iona for a bookmaking course. I don't necessarily want to make books per se but I am keen to open up the possibilities of paper, form and text, and take part in the opportunity to create in a new environment.
