'No Fun II' @ One Thoresby Street, Nottingham

No Fun II is a exhibition of work from Artists Sean Cummins, Jo Mitchell and Mark Pearson. I found the exhibition as a small yet, thought provoking show that showed themes of subculture and a believable tribute to anarchic attitude of punk, with a balance of youth with the experienced. It was great to see the work of one of my tutors at university Sean Cummins, whose work i found to be really impressive when viewed in the flesh. No Fun is described as:

'NO FUN II IS AN INSTALLATION OF WORK BY 3 ARTISTS WHO DISLOCATE STRATEGIES TAKEN FROM GRAPHIC DESIGN. THEY ARE INTERESTED IN ITS WIDER CULTURAL CONTEXT OR SUB-CULTURAL REFERENCES AND ENJOY SUBVERTING ITS COMMUNICATIVE POSSIBILITIES THROUGH FRUSTRATION, REPETITION AND CONFRONTATION.

NO FUN II WILL PRESENT PAINTINGS, TAPESTRIES AND ENLARGED PHOTOCOPIED IMAGERY, BECOMING AN IMMERSIVE, OVERWHELMING AND COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT OF GRAPHIC IMAGERY. THEY INTEND THIS INSTALLATION TO BE A CREATIVE EXAGGERATION OF THE LANGUAGE AND PROPERTIES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN, USING ITS CONVENTIONS AS A VEHICLE FOR ENHANCING THE ABERRANT URGES AND INTENTIONS OF THE ARTISTS THEMSELVES.

ON THE SURFACE MOST GRAPHIC DESIGN WILL SUGGEST EXPRESSIVE POSSIBILITIES THAT ARE OPEN ENDED … BUT DESIGN BEING DESIGN… IT IS ULTIMATELY LOCKED INTO THE FUNCTIONAL AND RATIONAL OBJECTIVES OF COMMUNICATING AND ADVERTISING. NO FUN II READILY EMPLOYS METHODOLOGIES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN BUT THEIR OUTPUT IS JOYOUS, HUMOROUS AND A LITTLE BIT FREAKY WHICH ULTIMATELY DOES MEAN FUN.'

Sean Cummins 

Mark Pearson

Work from a different exhibition downstairs

j

Finished Cardboard Boot

Here is the finished Cardboard boot. I am really happy about how it has turned out. There were various challenges that i had to overcome in order to keep the piece from falling apart. But, I have taken templates from each piece of cardboard i used to construct the piece, so i now have a way of mass producing this work. As my Print workshop is this Friday, i am planning to use these templates to make a screen for screen printing which will hopefully come across as a interesting in look into how a boot can be constructed out of any material.        
                                                 

                                                         

Liverpool Biennial 2014

I have been meaning to write a post on this years Biennial for a couple of weeks. Around three weeks ago I went to Liverpool with my university course to see some of the galleries participating together with this years Biennial called 'A Needle walked into a haystack'. I went to various galleries such as 'The old Blind School', FACE and Liverpool Contemporary. The old blind school was a far out favorite of mine as they exhibited works that really opened my eyes to what contemporary art is. I wrote a thousand word review on this visit, primarily based on the old blind school. Here is a short example of what i wrote:

'My first impressions of walking into the old blind school, was something of a pleasant surprise. My feelings on the way to the gallery was of course curious because of the bizarre name of the place, which did spark some form of interest into going. But inside, the gallery was breath-taking; the walls were crumbling in places, paint was peeling away from years of neglect and a once large brick fire place has given way to time and became part of the floor with broken brick, these becoming more like walkway cobbles than the foundations of a once fiery heart of the building. ‘The Liverpool school for the blind’, founded by Edward Rushton in 1791, was the first school of its kind in this country. The school taught its students trades such as brush-making, Braille, basket weaving, piano tuning and knitting. Over the years, however, the school became other things from a trade union to a famous independent music venue (1984-2004) and a police station of sorts. There is no wonder why the place is worn out'.

Peter Wachtler 'Untitled' 2013, Watercolour on Paper.

 Private Collection.

Still from 'The Waterway' Louise Herme and Chloe Maillet.

 HD Colour film with sound, 25'. 2014.

I am really happy that i went to thr Biennial. If i did not go, i would not have seen such works from artists that i had no idea about before going. It has also made me rethink my opinion on Liverpool, I used to dislike the city from a few times i have been but going to the city purely as a artist, I now find the city colourful and full of life in terms of art and has shown to me a vibrant art scene.

Cardboard Shoe Progress

For the past week, I have started construction on creating a Doctor Marten boot using just cardboard box. There was and still is many challenges that I need to find a solution to. For example at the start of the project I needed to figure out a way of attaching parts of the shoe to the inner sole of the boot. I did think about stapling but after further thought, I realised that this would prove complex as there is not a lot of flexibility that a stapler can offer; this flexibility is what makes the project challenging. The cardboard is an item that is used for geometrical shapes not for organic looking forms. I fund that a combination of a type of glue called UHU Creative foam rubber and flexible materials glue (despite the name) proved an excellent way of securing the card into the shapes needed to create the foundations of the boot.

The creation of making the right shapes that fit the boot together was mostly guess work. I was constantly using my own pair of boots to find the shapes and sizes to create paper templates to use onto the card. Also the templates will be useful in the future as I plan to create boots from other materials such as metal.

To create the pieces needed to make the shoe, I used the same sheet of cardboard. After looking at this and taking into account a comment from one of my friends in the studio who said it looks like the plastic frame the parts to a airfix model comes in when it is in its box. I found it to be a prefect way of documentation of my process to the creation of the boot so far. I wrote some of my notes and measurements I made in my sketchbook onto the cardboard to show my working and off cuts that did not measure up to the actual piece when it came into play.

Nottingham Contemporary- 'Angieszka Polska' & 'Raphael Hefti'

Last weekend I visited Nottingham Contemporary's new exhibition featuring international artists 'Angieszka Polska' and 'Raphael Hefti'. What really impressed me was the first piece of sculptural installation By Hefti. Long metal poles lean somewhat precariously against the walls and roof of the gallery space. There was a great fragility about it because i thought the work could easily be knocked over by gallery goers including myself. But, there must have been some form of security fixing the poles securely in place; this is one of the other things i found interesting is that these attachments are so well hidden.

'Encounter' Task Work

Encounter could be interpreted in many ways as i found out in the task I was given; admittedly i found the task rather challenging. We had to write twenty different encounters we had in the past week. I picked statements such as 'thread to cloth' and 'cigarette'. I picked up on the thread to cloth statement and used that to create the piece that ended up taking the majority of my time, so i had no real body of work in terms of variety. I used collage of people smoking as this ties in with one of my own encounters.

'Scavenge' Task

Last week as one of the introductory tasks that all BA Fine Art students must undergo until Christmas, I had to create a piece of art work that relates to the word 'Scavenge'. On Tuesday, I went to Nottingham's Hyson Green to forage around the urban landscape for objects/sounds. The word scavenge could be interpreted in whatever way fits my ideas. I chose to walk around the place taking photos of various objects and scenes that come across to me as interesting or peculiar. The more I took photos the more I realized a recurring theme of the colour blue.

What was great about these photos was that they were unexpected; they were spotted in odd places. My particular favourite is the bottle cap hung upon a branch in a bush. The writing inside reads 'GDZIE GOLINGUJEMY' which I believe to be some form of anagram as i have managed to find a vast variety of short and longer words such as 'enemy', 'lemming' and 'gin'. I thought originally these new found words could be used as the basis for my work that had to be ready by the following Friday of that week.

Back in the studio I made sketches of these objects by combining them together as a montage on one page using a blue colour marker pen. The lines I created by not taking my pen off the page made me remind myself of the advantages of exciting textures and relief using embroidery. This is how I found my medium to work with for this piece of work. So I used a view finder to cut of a small section of the original sketch to use as my template for creating a embroidery piece of Calico.

From Wednesday through to Friday I created the piece that I chose to keep in its embroidery hoop as it acts as a makeshift frame and a device for the piece to be kept taught upon the wall. I used pins to keep the work on the wall with the excess Calico cascading underneath. Which I find gives the work a rustic quality.

MacGowan's best bitter patch

I have took the beer mat idea further and established another image of Shane MacGowan. I have used the same design as the first but on calico. It was great to try new embroidery stitches I have recently learnt such as the satin stitch and the back stitch.

MacGowen's Best Bitter

This is one of the first pieces for my new project which I have entitled 'Oh be joyful'. This project is looking into alcohol, why people drink, when people drink and drinking culture. This piece based on the singer songwriter of the Pogues , Shane MacGowen. I am hoping to try and put this among other beer mats in a pub and see what the reactions will be.

Finished interior of final piece

My work space in room 101

This is my work space at college currently filled with work for the 'Transparent' project.

Final piece beginnings for Transparent

This is the start of my final piece for my current project. At the moment I have started to build the top compartment for my work that could be said to resemble a cabinet. I want to blend all of the places I have visited, objects I have collected and techniques I have learned in one 'conclusion'. I can say I am happy with the work so far.

Transparent project work

I have been really busy these past couple of months, I have been really wanting to update the blog in a while. Admittedly, this does have to be a rather brief post. This is one of the experimental pieces from my current project ' transparent'.

Samples for Final Piece

I have genuinely been at dire straits throughout this project and the final outcome idea is just the tip of the ice berg. I suppose there are many reasons for this. One, being that the brief of the project did not ask for a certain item/piece/product to be designed and made, but to be thought up completely by the artist. I have been through all sorts of ideas. My main three were; a form of tapestry, a large sculptural face of a bog body and a 3-D multimedia wall hanging. These were not to my liking at all, i felt them being under cooked as ideas and could have been thought of better. But i ended up creating these samples which i believe is a legitimate idea for a final piece; a collection of body parts such as finger, toes, hands etc either strung up by plaited cords of left in a arrangement. 

 I created these samples through stuffing and manipulating materials such as bin liners, tights and a unraveled mesh like fabric found in a scouring pad. It created these abstract, almost morbid looking forms that i think is a new concept from the origin of the project. 

I hope to get my designs done and get to work on making the forms.   

Remnant Progress

The deadline for this project is not far away so i am getting into the swing of relentlessly working in my sketchbook and creating samples in an attempt to reach a final outcome. I am really finding this difficult; this is the only time in College where it has been so close to the deadline and i still do not have a solid idea for the projects final outcome.

Admittedly, this piece above has given me a rough idea for the final outcome; be it very vague, but something to work on. I really like the headpiece of this outfit as it looks like a hangmans hood, which relates to my theme in the sense that a lot of the bog bodies were part of some sacrifice (such as the Tollund man) and were murdered in some way. I am going to build on this idea through the processes i have picked up in this project, so what i need to do is sample.

This is one of my samples for the Remnant project, i have modeled this hand from a reference photo of a bog body's hand. I used a structure of craft straws and masking tape to create a frame, the i used a material like hessian to add bulk. Then to create a rotting skin look i used a layer of tissue paper with a PVA glue mixture. Really happy with the outcome of this, looks really convincing and a life like quality to it.

Sample Page from 'Remnant'

This is one of the samples i have made for the new project i am doing called 'Remnant'. This is project that is about objects, places, people that leave behind something; either it be a memory that is personal to you/others or something that leaves behind something that is physical. I have chosen mummies or mummification. I love how the mummified remains of an individual is the remnant of their former self; a shell of a person that once was walking, talking and breathing. I have narrowed this concept in  my project to the mummified remains that are Bog Bodies. What i find interesting about bog bodies is that usually the reason why they are found in the acidic bogs that mummify them is the outcome of a murderers attempt to conceal the body or a sacrificial rite made by the ancient peoples of the land.

Wall Design Progress

Here is the half finished wall design that i have drawn onto my bedroom wall. This was achieved through drawing the design onto a flattened out poly-pocket and the by using a projector, display the image onto the wall. I then simply drew around the projected image and then went over it again in a large (ish) permanent marker pen. I am really happy with the results so far.

Summer sketchbook: Highlights

This summer I have filled a small A5 sketchbook with watercolour, pencil and pen drawings that I have been updating everyday by going on journeys around various parts of my village, Ashover. I tried to emphasise on the use of colour and the way light reflects upon landscapes to create a impressionistic effect to the sketchbook. Over time I started to learn new things about field studies. Such as sometimes it is best to be quick about what you are doing and not to worry about fine detail. I believe this sketchbook represents a journey and a insight into my summer. I started on one side of the valley in the Fabrick woods, then slowly working my way down to where my house is, then to the bottom of the valley where the amber river is and the working my way up the other side of the valley into Hate woods. There is of course certain anomalies such as the time I spent in Tupton and the Cost cross area. But this shows my summer in great detail. Overall I am very proud of this sketchbook as it acts a diary and a account of my summer through art.

Ashover Caves- Watercolour 

Woods at Tupton-Watercolou

Studio Ghibli Wall Design

This is a final design for the piece that i am going to draw onto a wall in my bedroom. I have taken influence from the prestigious anime film company, Studio Ghibli as i find their style of films and art really beautiful. I started this piece by simply sketching out the design in pencil, to get a idea of what i am going to go over in ink. What was difficult for this piece was finding stills from the films that will fit into the composition of the work. There were times where i had to step back a thoroughly think about what should be drawn where. I had to think about using the still images that i was using as reference for the drawing to my advantage and think where it can fit in the composition.

Close up on detail

Once the initial drawing of the piece was done the inking of the piece was easy to do. It added a real professional look to the piece and it showed to me what it would look like when drawn on the wall. I am thinking to use a thick black marker pen to create the lines in need to capture the same effect of the design composition.

I really enjoyed drawing this piece as it was a part of me captured onto the page. These films are but one of the reasons i wish to be a artist because the amount of effort into the animation of these films are truly staggering. I will definitely update this when i have started work on the wall in my bedroom, but it may be a couple of months until i get started. Hopefully, it will be a joint effort between me and fellow artist Belinda Ayres. I am hoping it will suit the room beautifully.

Studio Ghibli finished design~(fine line on cartridge paper)