In the course of thinking about the narrative project and coming up with very little, I began (16th June), putting some mirror foil to the test to see how it performs with veiling (a white watercolour wash) which we discussed … Continue reading Part 3, project 3, constructing narratives, and project 4, reflective surfaces
3rd June 2021. After considering a number of other possibilities, including ‘modernising’ some of the classics as I have with Degas’ Petit Rat and Woman Sitting on a Balcony, and Matisse’s painting of his wife Amelie (the green stripe painting), … Continue reading Parallel project – magical realism, first sketches
“We are the people we’ve been waiting for” My preferred news radio programme is BBC 5Live. Never pompous, good incisive journalism, and plenty of humour. There’s also a lot of sport which I tolerate to the extent that I often know who manages what team because it seeps in when I’m not looking, and right now it’s in a full-on excitement lather about the 2020 (yes, it is) UEFA Euros. This is such a massive footie fest that it has its own song but I’d heard it before I knew that, and it was that line, “We are the people … Continue reading Parallel project #5
Research point 2: Boo Ritson, Rachel Russell. Boo Ritson: my first feeling about these images (and what are they? sculptures, paintings, paintings of sculptures?) is a slight revulsion. They look dead but they also look strange and it occurs to me that they fall into that uncanny valley whereby something purportedly a human proxy, is too real to be a proxy but just misses being real. The idea that Ritson uses the sitter – body, hair, clothing – in her work gives me the creeps. Boo Ritson | Artnet Rachel Russell: is this her in the – what is it, … Continue reading Part 3, project 2, becoming an image
Yinka Shonibare | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts This man makes products of his work and his work is in the Bisa Butler mould of total colour and like her he addresses colonialism, race, class, and identity. Fab. Another … Continue reading Part 3, project 1, working with clothing
COVID permitting, this will be happening over the August Bank Holiday weekend and the weekend following; that is the 28th-30th August and the 4th-5th September. So the paperwork is in and I’m waiting to hear where I might be exhibiting. … Continue reading Steyning Arts Trail 2021
Group think in art – is this a fundamental problem for the critique? Summary Creative arts are, by their very nature, subjectively received and evaluated. Reviewers and critics, on the basis of education and experience, are arguably the ones who draw lines for the rest of us between the populist and the critically acclaimed. But use of language is itself an art; influencing others and persuading them of value and merit. I will argue here for raised awareness of the power of language to influence the setting of subjective criteria, introducing researched techniques that place opinion under scrutiny and avoid … Continue reading Critical review, option 1 – communication
This relates to Michael Fried’s 1967 essay published in Art Forum in response to Donald Judd’s earlier essay ‘Specific Objects’ and Robert Morris’s ‘Notes on Sculpture’, both circa 1965 and possibly from an interview with Bruce Glaser(1) I struggled to make sense of this, possibly because of the absence of context (the earlier essays) but also because of the introduction of numerous terms for movements/ideas/groups/ways of working with which I am not familiar. There was no anchor. It also exists in a specific time – somewhere in the mid 1960s – where pop and op art were flying high and … Continue reading Part 2, contextual focus point
For reasons discussed elsewhere, upright flat surfaces and film are my primary expressions of artistic enterprise rather than anything requiring manipulation. With that in mind, I have still produced work that has surprised me, and found techniques that I know … Continue reading Assignment evaluation Part 2
This requires a reflection on previous work involving space and three dimensions. Without rehearsing the problems I’ve had with close compliance with those tasks, I’m taking a slightly different path, at least in this experimental phase, and using whatever the … Continue reading Assignment 2
Strayfish Arts 