Biennial.

So I thought i'd write about my experience of this years Biennial, I did enjoy it this year although I think the previous biennial was more memorable for me, there are many more artists and works that I remember, and prefer, from 08 then I do this year. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it this year, I did, some works more then others to be fair. I had a different outlook on art this time around, I was a lot more cynical and dismissive. I think that's purely due to timing, I react differently to artwork depending on how I'm feeling at the time. Such as with Sachiko, the first time I went to see the performance I was pretty enthralled by the whole experience and atmosphere, it was kinda hypnotic. The sounds, the visuals it was all very alluring in a celestial kinda manner. The second time I went to see it I took my male friend and as we were both staring up at her he said to me,


'Why is she up there?'
'I don't know'
'What do I do if someone asks me a question?'
'Nobody is going to ask you anything'


And just this simple question got me thinking about the whole experience, how was I supposed to react to this? If it all? Do you have to be part of the 'art club' to participate in this performance? Would this art still work without an audience to see her? How would that affect the relationship between her and process? Almost like if a tree falls, and nobody is around to hear it, would it still make a sound? Not that I want sachiko to fall or anything. But I can't help but wonder.


These sort of questions bled into the other artworks i'd seen during the festival, if no one where to view the works, would they still be art? Does all artwork require a certain level of interaction for it to be successful?

Stab, part two.

After making my little book, and after watching that depressing episode of coronation street and five minutes of come dine with me, I decided to cut out all of the pages I had managed to get through to with the pen. And the next day put them up in my studio space in order from top to bottom.

Arranged.

Order.

I'm not massively sure why I decided to do this, maybe subliminally it was some form of metaphor for me cutting out my thoughts, putting them in order where I can see them. Organizing myself? Although I think it was more to do with satisfying my curiosity to see the subtle changes between each page. See how far my pen managed to reach.

Post assessment.

So after my assessment I felt a bit exposed, that maybe I'd taken my process of thought writing too far. Too far for my emotional health anyway, the whole thing was getting quite upsetting, after writing each piece I found myself feeling a little bit deflated, exhausted emotionally. In a way the concept behind the continuous writing was contradicting itself, the concept being that by writing down everything that was racing through my mind it'd somehow leave my brain. When, in reality, it's just started to make me feel everything all over again, with a little bit of guilt thrown in. SO! My new start was to concentrate this negative redundant energy into something else. I was watching Shutter Island and there was a scene in which the guy played by Leonardo was interviewing someone at a desk, and he had a little notepad with a pencil. To annoy the interviewee he started scratching the pencil on the paper so hard that it ripped the paper and formed a hole. I dabbled in this as a way to burn off energy, because it was a fast and rough process. Basically it was created by drawing a line with a Biro and continuously going over it so hard that it rips through each page through to the next.

Stab stab.

More stab.

The purpose behind me using a small a5 sized notepad was for sheer convenience, it's small so I can carry it around, and because it's hardback, it's almost like a little book that I can open and close whenever I want. I can hide the art away when I don't want to see it by just closing it. Open it when I wish to continue. I used a red Biro for this particular book, it obviously has initial connotations with violence and blood. It does look like a big gash of some sort, or a vagina as my house mate said.

Strangeland.

'I find it hard to concentrate, and impossible to relax' - Tracey Emin

BIC Monochromes and BIC Stereochromes.

 My fancy art magazine came through the post a couple of days ago and I prized it open today for something to look at until the heating made the living room habitable. Although this art magazine costs 5 quid an issue (that's 1.5 drinks in heebie jeebies on a thursday night) it's generally filled with fashion advertisements and gallery adverts and this month it had a nine page spread dedicated to an artist called 'Ignacio Uriarte'. An artist I know very little about, but from what I can gather from the pictorial offerings (there is no accompanying text or article to the images) his work is about using different coloured biro pens to build up a spiraled pattern. 

Double page spread in green.

Red, Green, Black Biro.

Purple, Blue, Red Biro.

Red Biro.

Black Biro.

I did a little Google research on the artist and he is a Spanish artist. His website is very crude and simple, simple links with dry captions. No thought or budget it would seem into the delivery of the website, which I actually quite like. Maybe it's supposed to be one of those 'it's so bad, it's genius' situations. Anyway it seems his pieces are quite large and have accompanying audio to go with each piece, although details are a little vague. Generally confusing. http://www.ignaciouriarte.com/ .

'Bic Monochromes'

'Black Monochrome'

Lesley Halliwell.

Lesley Halliwell

Lesley Halliwell Close Up

I mentioned a while back that I was going to post some of Lesley halliwells work up, so here it is. Some of her work consists of producing mass, ambitious drawings using a Spirograph. It's repetitive motion and overlaying reminded me of my own work. 


'Lesley Halliwell…. use(s) these children’s toys in an intense and serious way, working within the limits imposed by the tools but demonstrating that, in spite of the mechanics of process, there is still room for the unexpected – the random mark that hints at the (human) hand behind the controls'.

Deborah Dean, Remote Control (2004)

Sachiko Abe.

I've been meaning to write about Sachiko for a while, I've been to see her art performance in the A Foundation a few times now at different times throughout the day. The work consists of her, seated on a high ledge in the warehouse section of the building simply cutting paper. The paper falls down onto the floor in a waterfall motion and leads across the floor to a tall pile graduating to the ceiling. Her work is all about being in a trance like state, almost mediative whilst cutting paper and it reminded me of my own practice, that of producing work in an almost automatic state in order to escape excessive and repetitive thoughts. 


The first time I saw this performance the room was pretty crowded, tourists, school children and students filled out the cold room. Of course this produced a lot of noise and Sachiko actually stopped mid way through her performance, I asked the gallery assistant what was happening and she said that Sachiko finds the loud noise distracting and it 'stresses her out' and that she would stop until peace and quiet returned. Artistic temperament more like. For what it was worth I enjoyed her work, it demonstrates process and time in a brilliant way, but the whole setup of the exhibition/performance was somewhat strange for me. I didn't fully understand why she had to be situated so high above us, dressed in a white robe, it felt like some form of hero worshiping ceremony which made me uncomfortable. I felt threatened by her, threatened by her perceived superiority over me. She also had a microphone attached the scissors to amplify the sound throughout the room, I was unsure as to how this added to the overall performance.


I've been attempting to research on her life and background to gain some understanding of her drives to produce this sort of work and she is quite elusive in Google land but from what I can gather she started to cut paper whilst in a mental hospital nine years ago in order to distract away from cutting herself, and she hasn't stopped since. 


A part of me really can relate to this concept of engaging yourself into an activity, action or movement in order to distract the mind away from exaggerated thoughts but another part thought the deployment of the work was a little pretentious.

She continue's to grow.

I decided to rekindle my relationship with the ball of wool and have been investing in her, she has grown by three more layers and she must be about 7 weeks old now, the lettuce still encased within.

Layer 14.

Layer 15.

High Quality Foam.

Another way I have been distracting myself through drawing is by drawing lines, simply using a biro and a ruler to draw straight lines across a page. This particular process completely killed my thoughts due to having to focus and concentrate on creating a set of lines and equal distance between each other. As you can see by the photographs, some of the lines are darker, thicker then others they're lapses in my concentration. This process really pressed my buttons, the whole exact nature of the straight lines, the sound the biro made as it zipped across the ruler, the sound of the ruler brushing down the page and the way the horizontal lines clashed with the vertical set up of the page. It was really frustrating.

High quality foam.

Foot Clinic.

Yet more circles.

Haven't updated in a while so I thought I'd hurl up what I've been up to, I've been continuing with the drawing circles/shapes process as a means of distraction. The materials I use on each piece are totally random and I basically just use what I have within arms length at the time. At this point I've used bags, receipts, envelopes, magazines and the yellow pages to draw oh. I'm also trying to start dating and organizing the pieces into some form of chronological order, which is somewhat difficult to do as this process occurs randomly and I have minimal organisational skills. It's something I have to work on. I've managed to date a lot of my work, there is a pattern forming that I usually try and distract myself in the evening, must be the main time I start over thinking and digesting everything that has happened during the day.


As you can see I switched briefly into using colour within my work, this was purely due to my happiness at the time and wanting to be literally, colourful. The opaque circles came about because when I was a child I was really into colouring in books, I used to have dozens and dozens, most of them half complete where i'd only been able to colour in one picture a page due to the felt tip pen seeping through to the picture on the otherside. It got me thinking about how happy they used to make me as a child and the satisfactory feeling I used to get when i'd coloured in a whole picture, and not gone over the lines or anything. I've been striving for that feeling again by making the little opaque circles.

On Kawara

I had a tutorial today and it was suggested that I look at On Kawara, a Japanese conceptual artist who produced a series of paintings simply stating the date accompanied with a newspaper from that date. It kinda relates to my own practice (the pages of writing from specific days) by demonstrating a time line of production. 


I'm going to attempt to organize my several scraps of paper into some form of constructed sense, my usual way of presenting is quite scatty, I'm a generally scatty person so I'm going to source some different photo frames to present with to create a display.


The whole idea of showing the progression of time is a bit like that guy, Noah? I think his name was, that guy who took a photograph of himself everyday for ten years and as the film goes on you can see his face change and hair grow and what not. 

Biro Circles.

Circles.

More circles.

Spirals.

Along with rapid writing I also killed my thoughts by drawing series of circles on paper, more intricate then the words and a lot more taxing. As my work gets interrupted and I leave it semi finished in different stages, I have several separate sheets of different formations of circles, they look almost like bacteria, growing on the paper. 

They remind me of Lesley Halliwells' work with the toy spirograph, I'll pop some of her work on later.

Process with Biro.

Whilst working with the woolen wrapping process it became apparent that it was becoming too heavy, large and awkward for me to carry around and escort on the 86 bus. Therefore I had to leave it behind in my studio space in University. As this process I'm working on is all about distracting myself from repetitive thoughts and over-thinking, I found myself at home with nothing to use as a diversion away from mental tension. I decided to embark on a different way of channeling negative energy by continually drawing and writing with a Biro pen.

Words.

More words.

At first it started off by me writing continually in an almost automatic state, grabbing words and phrases from outside influences such as conversations with my house mate, television and music. As well as my own sporadic thoughts. I felt that if i wrote down all that I was thinking that somehow it might leave my mind, it had left my mind and now existed only on paper and I wouldn't have to deal with it. It's beginning to form a type of personal diary, each page of excessive rambling and chatter summing up my experience of that particular day.

Process.

Layer 12.

Lettuce.

My current work is based on the idea of process as a means of producing artwork, my starting point was to begin looking into the idea of wrapping. It started off as a way to cover objects in an aesthetic fashion, but as this progressed it transformed into a therapeutic exercise. The repetitive motion of wrapping and binding was an excursion of mental and physical energy for me, it took my anxious and overwrought tendencies and channeled it into a creative project.

So I began wrapping a random spear of lettuce, purely out of ease that it was within arms length of myself at the time. I continually wrapped it up until it formed a substantial ball of wool, still slowly growing.