Roy Eastland and visit to the Beaney Art Gallery and Museum, Canterbury

I went to this Gallery in the High Street in Canterbury because their Artist in Residence for November is Roy Eastland.  I first saw and liked his work at the Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibition.  He is an artist who draws using the Silverpoint technique.  This produces a very lovely soft image, almost misty in appearance.  It is achieved by first priming the surface with gesso, Chinese white watercolour, or acrylic white.  The image is then scratched and rubbed onto the surface using a pointed piece of silver.  A chemical reaction takes place between the metal and the primer, resulting in an image that will gradually become darker over time.  This can also be done using gold or copper.

Roy Eastland’s moving and delicate piece at the Jerwood was called “They looked like silver birds, the sun was shining on them...”

He describes them thus..."Each page records details of one of the victims of the German 'Gotha' bombing raid on Folkestone on 25th May 1917.  Some pages include portrait drawings but some, where there are no images to work from, have only the victim's name, age and some personal details and their injuries and cause of death." 

You can see his work on his Blog page:  http://royeastland.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/they-looked-like-silver-birds-the-sun-was-shining-on-them/

I was inspired to try experimenting with silverpoint on seeing this, and here’s my first effort as one of my pieces for a Life Drawing homework, “Still Life with Objects that are important to me.”  It is hard to reproduce the subtlety of silverpoint in a photograph.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see any of Roy Eastland’s work on display at the Beaney.  I found the building to be a buzzy place, very higgledy piggledy, with a mixture of old stuffed animals and rooms with artworks from different periods. 

I found it quite hard to take in, as there seemed no logic to the arrangement.  An artist called Neil Kelly was exhibiting in the “Front Room.  I didn’t like his work, as I found it kitsch and unfunny, but was interested in the materials he used such as enamel on ceramic.  The Garden Room contained paintings of cattle, which didn’t interest me at all.  All in all, I found it a disappointing experience.

Urban Spaces 2

As part of our Urban Spaces project, this piece of work involves using a classical painting of our choice from the National Gallery collection as a starting point to create a concept for a very different piece made in response to the original.  We don’t need to get as a far as making it (yet).  It’s to teach ourselves about the process of creating an artwork.

I’ve chosen Pissarro’s “The Boulevard Montmartre at Night” 1897

I felt this painting as:

Light pouring, tinkling, shining, reflections, spaces defined by light/shadow/colour

Water, river city as a river

Nature silhouetted and corralled

Celebration

Cars looking benign, space and air

Patterns, repetitions, things moving at different speeds

Idea:

To look at the city made up of buildings, places, areas planned and built, but  planned and never built.

To explore what is in our control and out of our control in the swirl of a city?

To play with the idea of areas constantly occupied, abandoned, occupied and abandoned in building layers

Built on rivers, like flowing rivers, history, it’s all temporary

Proposed Piece:

To use light shadow colour texture and form and sound to show the ever-changing flux of urban spaces, how moods, feels, uses can change from one time to another.

   

The people who come to view the piece will be the architects of this change by being able to physically move the light sources to control where the shadows and light areas fall, and explore how this affects the piece.

Imagine the core of the work will be made of simple shapes, boxes, textures, patterns.  I've realised I need to do more drawing get size, shape

See it displayed as part of an entire dark room, with shadows, and thrown from the centre onto the outer walls.  How does the size, shape, strength of the light affect this, plus size of the objects being lit?

??Not sure about this, but is there a way could get inside the piece and project this onto the walls?

??Investigate the optical illusion element

To accompany the piece I would like a changing sound-scape of layered sounds playing – could I move the sets of sounds around the central space so that different areas get interchanging sets of sounds?  Sounds a mix of what is going on now in cities, and nature, sea sounds.  I've done some recordings with variable success in London, and in Canterbury.  There's an telling contrast between a street with traffic and one that has been pedestrianised.

Well here I go, leaping out of my comfort zone!

Jerwood Drawing Prize Exhibition – Recommended Gallery Visit, on until 27th October

I went to see the Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibition at the Jerwood Gallery http://jerwoodvisualarts.org/jerwood-drawing-prize-2013.  I think this is a lovely airy space, with a very welcoming cafe.

They are exhibiting 76 of the entries short-listed from over 3000 entrants in this year’s competition. 

These pieces stood out for me:

“Pimp my Corpse” by Colleen Brewer, ink and acrylic on salvaged MDF board

The image was a delicately drawn crow, painted to look like an old-fashioned printed plate.  I enjoyed how the painting looked on the watermarked, weathered board.  On closer inspection, I saw patches of ghostly shiney pale green on parts of the bird.  I think this was a strong comment on the taxidermy business.  There is such a revival of interest in this, and I see the piece as questioning the “art” or not of the practice.  I think it’s also a comment about the issue of bits of countryside being “conserved” in isolation, without a way of them being joined together coherently.  Green-wash rather than deep green?

“IPAD drawing: Virtual Domain” by Jordan L Roger

 I thought this was simple but effective use of the IPAD to make and unmake an animated drawing. It conveyed the idea that spaces are continually being built, transformed, erased and shifted.

“City as an Organism” drawing paper and tracing paper

This was an interesting way of using tracing paper to create layers of drawing.  Amorphous shapes seem to flow and move across, around and below each other.

Wastelands and Laguno

These pieces were the least successful ones, for me:

“Saint Stansted” by Gary Lawrence Biro, gel pen, felt tip, oil pastels on paper

This was a gigantic drawing which must have taken a very long time to make.  I found it tacky in execution.

“Apocalypse (My Boyfriend doesn’t care)” by Svetlana Fialova -  1^st Prize-winner

This was a kitsch cartoon-like drawing using felt pens in garish colours.  I think that it’s both personal and comments on how we make religious art very precious and valuable.  Perhaps also it points up how we value painting over drawing.  I did not like it though as a drawing, it made me think of horrible wallpaper.

“Chin Up” by Scott Robinson

The words “Chin Up” are drawn painstakingly in HB, yet this just left me thinking “so what?”  It seemed so throw-away and visually very uninteresting.

“Heads will turn”

This was a nicely executed drawing of part of a head laid on its side, with a slightly jokey title, it did not hold my attention for long.

The definition of drawing for this is interesting and very wide, with anything from careful use of projection, video, etching, sound and 3D, all of which are explored as drawing media.  This exhibition really changed my pre-conceptions about what drawing can be and I recommend a visit.

Saints Alive - Michael Landy at National Gallery

This exhibition is Michael Landy’s response to and re-portrayal of his study of paintings of the lives of the Saints held in the National Gallery.  On first walking in, I was confronted by a bewildering larger than life automaton of St Appollonia.    I thought that she was holding a knife, and was about to stab herself, an image of self-martyrdom.  I realised on reading the guide that she was martyred by having her teeth pulled out with pliers, which she was shown holding.

The first room holds a series of Landy’s 2D drawings, some small, some huge.  He used these to make 3D interactive automata . He has cut-up pieces of the original paintings and combined with his drawings of wheel and other mechanisms and linkages, to create surreal assemblages.  Whilst looking at the drawings, I could hear loud, banging sounds from the working pieces, and I wanted to run away. 

I noticed these drawings, in particular:

“Nationality Saints”

This was Cut-ups of Deer and dragon and different Saint images arranged into a tree shape conjoined at the bottom by a pierced heart.  Saints associated with their countries, a hierarchy?  I wondered what do these symbols mean?  If I was a Catholic, particularly one living in the period of the original paintings, I would be able to read the symbolism of these images easily.  I cannot relate this to my reality, as the context is so radically different for me living now.

“ All the St Catherine Wheels”

I enjoyed the drawing of inter-linked Catherine Wheels in this, and couldn’t help noticing the snake-heads with evil eyes and thinking of the Biblical story of Eve’s temptation and downfall.

“Fingerpoint”

This depicted St Thomas called “Doubting Thomas”, because he doubted that Christ was arisen until he could actually feel his wounds.  This was a literally invasive work, but the 2D image worked better than 3D for me, because I liked the way the elements were joined, coloured and arranged.

And this 3D installation:

“Spin the St Catherine Wheel and win the crown of Martyrdom”

This is a large broken wheel mounted on one wall which could be turned by a handle attached to a smaller wheel.  Around the edges of the wheel, in letters of gold, where written the various tortures that St Catherine, and her converts underwent.  “You eat nothing for 12 days”, “You will convert the Roman Empress who will then be punished for this by having her breasts torn off.”  It reduces that pain and suffering to the level of a fair-ground show, roll roll up, win the Lottery.

Although I think it was intentional, there was an irritating tackiness about the 3D not in the 2D.

The exhibition was absurd and somewhat macabre, highly irreverent, and no doubt offensive to some.  It conveyed to me the idea that the Saints, and by extension, we are linked together in pain and suffering, that we inflict on each other and on ourselves in the name of beliefs.   Also, that there are/were manipulative wheels within wheels of the power of religion, who is doing the manipulation?  What is “in our control” and what isn’t? In the exhibition, we are, and how much relevance do mythological Saints have for us now, in the 21^st Century?

The Curator’s stated wish was to have us go and seek out the original paintings, but it didn’t prompt me to want to do that.  So I don’t think I exactly liked the exhibition as a whole, but it did make me think.  The exhibition reminded me of the Victorian keenness for automata.  I discovered that the artist’s pre-occupations are with consumerism, make, break, and throw away, and that he works within a group named Artangel.

People Moving

I've been doing some sketches of people moving for a homework, and finding it really hard!  I think it’s about getting the shapes and angles down, and not getting drawn into trying to draw details. I took these two sketches below as pointers, one by Rembrandt, and one Picasso.

Prodigal son with a whore

Study for
Les Demoiselles D'Avignon

I did these in the street, pub, theatre, and cafe.

I used this one in an etching I did on Friday, using Aquatint and Spit Bite.

Near and Far

Near and Far

Here’s some of the sketches I've made on the theme of “Near and Far”.  I’m feeling a little like Alice, things growing big, tiny, the disappearing grin...

Scenes disappearing in fog, and how that distorts distance, sounds as well as sights.....

Things seen through screens...

Following a visit to the Sarah Morris “Bye Bye Brazil” Exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey http://whitecube.com/artists/sarah_morris/(now finished, really sizzling) this one.....

 has morphed into my first etching....

War Roofs

Think I've started to "scratch the surface (sorry) of creating abstraction and etching.

Thoughts on Urban Spaces

Thoughts on Urban Spaces

I've been doing some initial thinking towards my Urban Spaces project.  I’m toying with ideas around occupation (enforced or otherwise) and abandonment (enforced or otherwise) of spaces in the city.

Alongside this runs ownership, in both a literal and a metaphorical sense.  I’m interested in why areas of cities become populated or depopulated, and who uses what spaces for what.  I’m thinking in particular of graffiti, do cities have unique graffiti signatures, and what does this mean for “occupation” of a space?  What defines the “usefulness” of a space?

For example, skateboarders who have occupied and shaped the space under the arches at the South Bank for years are now no longer welcome, because the space is being commandeered for other more useful? purposes.

I’d welcome any thoughts/ideas/people & places to visit that anyone out there in the Blogosphere may have towards this.

The Illustrator's Art Exhbition at Rochester Art Gallery

As I've been learning Printmaking, I visited Rochester Art Gallery and Craft Case in Medway over the week-end to see the small, but interesting Art of Illustration Exhibition.  This was curated through the London Print Studio, who are based in Harrow, West London.  Prints by 3 Artist/Illustrators were featured, and the question "What is the difference between illustration and art?" was posed.  Examples of both illustration and printmaking pieces from the artists were shown, for comparison.

Andrezej Krauze is a political cartoonist, who has challenged authorities in Poland and Europe with his satirical pieces.  I was quite intrigued by his works created using intricate paper-cutting techniques, to give a black and white style with spots of colour.

Lynn Hatzius uses collage and assemblage as both an illustrator and a fine artist/printmaker.  The works combine discarded bits of print offcuts, found objects and cut-up litho plates.  Although I was interested in her techniques, I did not find her pieces very interesting, they were surreal combinations of objects and human/animal parts, but I wasn't sure what they were attempting to convey.

Matthew Padgett makes wry, subversive pieces.  In particular, I enjoyed his "Proposal for a Flowerbed, Southwark Park, London"  It is a set of six beautifully drawn and coloured works which on first glance look like the pages of an old book of Botanical Illustrations.  He has used these to explore the ambiguous symbolism in the Victorian language of flowers, where the same plant may have opposite meanings.  He then gives each plate a mordant twist by adding text to the image, as in the one below.

Chisato Tamabayashi and Kaho Kojima are both makers of pop-up books, their works were rather appealing, different ways of using the concertina format to produce engaging pieces.

Links: http://www.medway.gov.uk/leisureandculture/arts/rochesterartgallery.aspx
 http://www.londonprintstudio.org.uk