Swedish MFA

I visited Gothenburg at the end of last term and happened to be in a gallery as their school of art unveiled its equivalent to the MFA graduation show.
There where some interesting things but it was a little tricky to grasp everything that was going on as they had Fine art and Design mixed together and some of the design show is still a bit of a mystery to me.

There was one piece in the show that i especially like, I loved the used of the material and just fell in love with the presence they had in such a crowded space. There's more pictures on Flickr just click on the picture.

While walking home...

I passed the old BBC building just off Queen Margaret Drive. I think its a shame that it'll eventually be turned into just another giant hotel but there you go.
What i did see in the old car park was this!

Ive no idea what it is or was but i think it looks fantastic now. So i took lots of pictures and stuck them on flickr.

And speaking strange things you find while out walking I came across this tree in the park about a month ago. I spotted it because it was shining bright white and bare in amongst all the other freshly leaved trees.

I don't know what insect caused this web of silky stuff... it could be silk worms but I didn't think we got those in Glasgow?... It really was completely covered in the stuff and there where hundreds of little wiggly worms.

summer time

I thought, as its only a month till school starts again, it might be nice to write a few more things on my blog.Ive been doing a little bit of personal research but as its just for me its been fairly erratic, a bit hit and miss?

Two books I took from the library and keep flicking through are The Art of Lee Miller and Tim Hawkinson.

Tim Hawkinson in particular has some pieces of work that I found interesting. He makes some fascinating machines, most of which are made from found objects, like clocks made from tubes of toothpaste, envelopes or plastic bags. I love the intensity behind the making of these objects, the idea of someone being so dedicated and devoting themselves to making these things purely for the joy of making them. One of my favorites was signature

its made from an old school desk with a hand built machine which seemingly endlessly churns out the artists signature.

Another is Wall Chart of World History from Earliest Times to Present

I find it staggering to think about the patience and obsession it must take to make something of that scale. Its really the obsessional nature that i find most fantastic.

Also the materials which he chooses in his work are really interesting, the way they are carefully chosen and reassembles to create something new. This is done so carefully that at first glance you probably wouldn't recognise it was anything other than what it pretends to be?

Eggshell made of ground hair and nails

Feather made from the artists hair

Spiders web made from Hair

That its so well made makes me question the point in making it at all but i suppose that is the point, the novelty, the patience and the skill is really the interesting thing not the finished object.

Head in the railings

I went looking through the artist books in the mac library today. All the books I looked at where of a pretty standard format, not anything like some of the pictures I was interested in online. This has made me think that perhaps artist books aren't really what I should be looking at? I want to make a book that could be seen as something apart from the content, something like the camera in the last post.
What I did find in the library though, which I think is fantastic and applies really well to what I was trying to do, was a book of photographs by an artist called Sion Parkinson called Head in the Railings. It shows a series of public interventions made by the artist and under each picture there is a description of how he experienced them.

Artisit's Books

With all the pictures I have taken this project I have been thinking about making a book, not to be part of my research instead of the blog but to go along with my final piece, like an explanition or a guide to the finished thing.


With this in mind Ive been trying to look at more Artists books for aome ideas. I have found quite a few that I'm looking forward to going through but they are all in the Mackintosh library but as its the bank holiday weekend I wont be able to look see them till Tuesday. I have managed to find nice examples online.

Lygia Clark 2

With the questions I had in mind yesterday, I decided to have another look through my Lygia Clark book in more detail and to my surprise I found lots of her performances that where similar to what I have been doing.

There where hoods that she made

and particularly one piece called tunnel

In this piece she had participants crawl inside a long cloth tube, which clings to the body like a stocking. Along the way they are helped by others and if one participant feels suffocated a cut is made in the cloth. It sounds fantastic to me, all the work that she made was to do with approaching materials and actions from a new perspective. Putting them and yourself in a new context in order to experience them freshly and as something new. I really feel like finding this has helped to understand what I have been doing a little better.

Questions

The day after the bag pictures where taken, I've been feeling a little bit like I don't quite understand what it is that I'm doing? I know I'm learning new ways to work, I'm trying new techniques and enjoying it but what is behind it all, where is the meaning?

I made a point of talking to Ken about how I can understand it better and he gave me some interesting ideas about how to approach things from another perspective in order to understand it from a new light. For example, he suggested I look at the relationship between self and other rather than just self and self, so looking at how others perceive the action of being in the bag not just my experience of it. The traditions behind women being made to cover up, this restriction of someone and contrast that with my volunteering to do it. The idea of a woman in a bag being a pre-packaged object, ready to pick up and take away. I found all of these ideas really interesting, I'm not sure if they are a direction I want to take but it's certainly opened it up to a new light.