Visual Arts

Well, the last semester has not been at all easy for me and a myriad of things have impeded my ability to make art at certain points. However, in terms of the final sculpture, I’m incredibly pleased that I managed to pull it together, not to mention a little proud- it wasn’t something I thought I’d manage to do. But in the end, it was very close to what I had envisioned, and I’m always trying so desperately to replicate the image in my mind’s eye when it comes to any piece of art. I think it feels like an accurate representation of where I’m currently at as an artist, and that isn’t the same artist I was a year ago. That person would’ve hung strings of collaged paper, or glass beads at a push. This entire course has pushed me so much further than I thought it would and hurled me into areas I would’ve been so hesitant to explore. I think I see that in my level of resourcefulness and adaptability more than anything else; being able to create my final sculpture out of the time and materials I had and still feel as content as I do with the outcome.

Are there many things I could change? Of course, the perfectionist in me sees minute details that need tweaking and also a bigger picture; ways I could’ve pushed this work so much further both visually and contextually. I would’ve loved to incorporate sound design and digital audio into the piece, to have a dialogue form between the natural sounds and the manufactured, perfected ones. I would have also loved to pour time into researching different voting systems, highlighting some of their strengths and failings and, conscientiously, mimicking these in a warped way for people to interact with. As much as it’s been very touch-and-go, to present a sculpture which contains even some elements I take pride in is an accomplishment I’m genuinely happy with.

The final sculpture demonstrates a) the ambiguity of instruction and b) the importance of sensory interaction.

In regards to the first point; what exactly are you voting for? Is that “ONE OF US IS SILENT” referring to the plaster containers or the wind chimes? And if it is referring to the wind chimes is one meant to touch them? In my mind, the answer to both of those questions is yes. Touch the hanging structures, feel the textures and listen to the different materials collide.

And is that simple statement “ONE OF US IS SILENT” a form of propaganda? Because none of the six standing in front of it is, in fact, silent. But those five words make you want to form an opinion, they are there to seduce the viewer into finding out. So it acts as a not-so-subtle form of manipulation and control.

But aside from that, the more pressing question is how does one show whether they are in agreement? Do you take a bead? Has someone already voted and put the beads in? Once the plaster moulds were dry they reminded me of ballot boxes with little slots on the sides. This brings to mind the, so current, low voting rates in local elections, due, yes, to a lack of interest, care or access to education, but also to a lack of clarity. A lack of accessibility for those without a permanent address, without time, without many things, which, in a system which feels worrying out of touch in a digital world, make it impossibly difficult to have your opinion heard.

And as to the second part, the hanging, mobile-like structures are a sculpture which exists to create sound and movement. But this becomes sticky when the plinth poses a question, it casts a shadow of doubt over the piece so that the sound element has the potential to be made redundant. “ONE OF US IS SILENT” is so blatantly a statement and it risks making the viewer think that it’s a guessing game. Is the purpose to visually examine the various materials and decide whether they’d sing out if touched? No. But how would you know.

So, for the site-specific intervention side of the brief, I wanted to have people participate in a task or vote which was seemingly random, inconsequential and nonsensical.

I decided to set up a dress which would hang alongside a pair of scissors in the foyer of my work. This is already something which is placed in an unconventional place given I work in a bookshop. To push this further, I would ask people to cut the dress- something counterintuitive and mundane but odd.

I set up a question next to this which asked what method they used to cut the dress. There were only two options which I can only imagine made people think they had to choose between the two – and everyone did.

I can’t know if had the only accompanying instruction read “CUT THIS DRESS” the result would have been different. The necessity to note which method you used I think made people contemplate the point of the task more. Is it some kind of personality test perhaps? Or am I being observed? I did watch casually as people partook and noticed that it was primarily people under about 25 and people in groups who chose to interact with the intervention. I would’ve liked to gather better data by observing this and asking people questions about their lives to see if there were unseen factors which impacted people’s decisions. For example, one method had almost twice as many votes as the other: was this because it was the easier and more intuitive of the two or were latecomers influenced by what the people before them had done?

Ultimately I decided that I should let it play out on its own. So I tried not to appear focused on the people who partook, nor did I answer any questions like, “why is that there?”, “who put it up?”, “what is it for?”, or ‘what’s the correct way to do it?”. But I was fascinated as to why people chose to participate; it’s such a trivial and arbitrary request “CUT THIS DRESS”, and yet if I saw that somewhere I know I’d do it.

After the intervention, the dress is almost entirely stripped of its purpose. But how interesting that it’s been cut up without rhyme or reason by 17 strangers just because a sticky note instructed them to do so. With no discussion or collaboration, it retains a part of its functionality; no one cut the straps, no one cut it in half or cut it down, or did anything that would stop others form being able to take part down the line. Nor did anyone stop the dress from essentially being a dress.

Wet Lab:

Because of my absences, I spent very little time in the wet lab, however, even in the sessions that I had, I found so much enjoyment in the tactile nature of it. The way it engaged all the senses so dramatically pushed me down a touch-based, sensory path and away from the digital ideas, I began with.

This realisation made the materials an incredibly important part of what I was doing. Naturally, my sculpture would create a visual response of some type, however, I was desperate to create a dialogue between several senses.

So I decided that touch and sound would also play ambiguous roles in the piece. I wanted to use materials that created a variety of auditory tones; one dull and understated, another jarring and loud, some to chime and tinkle, one that crashes and reverberates, etc. Finding these materials and trying to source a variety of mediums ranging from glass to ceramic to wood and metal was engaging as it forced me to adapt to the different ways these behaved from an auditory and touch-based perspective. For example; smashing op shop plates and cheap mirrors created a wrenching, deafening, crack, but when they were later suspended on wool the colliding pieces merely bounced off one another, dancing and chiming merely; not the character I’d expected them to play in the final sculpture.

I decided early on in my making that I wanted my work to hang as this would likely create an unpredictable but hopefully attractive rippling movement, and allow more readily for the work to create sound. So it was a matter of finding materials that possessed both of these properties/abilities and then slowly problem-solving until I was able to manipulate them into my vision, a mental image which needed to remain fluid; I was trying not to cling too tightly to my control over the mediums.

What is now a tried and tested springboard for a brief is Richard Serra’s verb list. As I perused it the verbs that jumped out at me could pertain to human interaction; like, to complement, or to impress. This morphed into the phrase “to instruct” and this is the basis of my idea. Other words that bear similarity are:

• direct, 
• explain, 
• dictate, 
• educate,
• edict,
• command,
• guide.

The lack of direct synonyms captivated me and I tried to pinpoint the difference in these verbs. It got me thinking; a large part of this comes from the emotion evoked, rather than intention or outcome. Some hold kindness, a feeling of collaboration and skill sharing, whereas others denote authority and a hierarchy. 

Critiques and conversations got me thinking about propaganda; the dissimilation of information. The line between manipulation and advertising as opposed to casual information sharing grew blurrier with every passing day. Our minds are so oversaturated with digital information that trying to distinguish between the two seems arbitrary. 

I think this is because there is a certain attitude of surrender when it comes to technology. It is so prevalent in every aspect of our lives that to fight it would b an immense amount of conscious energy; we’d have to rethink every minute detail of our lives. Not only this, but it can also seem counterproductive because, of course, technology is pivotal to societal advances. 

I do think that such an extreme influx of media has created an almost universal numbness towards instruction and propaganda. The ins and outs of data collection and digital footprinting are too tedious and technical for most of us to make sense of. Instead, we remain willingly unaware of the complex manipulation that we fall prey to at the hands of marketing, news, popular media, etc. It’s something that we accept as a base part of living in the 21st century, it is convenient in many ways and it does not project itself to the forefront of our minds often.

So I thought about some of the basic verbs that characterise this subconscious type instruction:

• entice, 
• lure, 
• persuade 
• seduce, 
• attract, 
• invite, 
• coax, 
• convince.

Essentially, I want my sculpture to have some element of instruction which is balanced with a certain allure of curiosity. 

The experiment was about quickly and light-heartedly playing with the instruction verbs as well as found objects I want to implement in my design. This brief task has helped me land on an idea that I’m very interested in extending throughout the sculpting process; the idea of voting. In this case, the vote was a simple choice between two options and you denote your choice using a tally mark system.

But the act of voting could be much more complex, it’s also something we come across on a very regular basis: having various or limited options presented to us and making a choice when its ramifications, weight on your life or its general purpose isn’t clear- even if that choice is not to vote at all.

These are my chosen works to display for the assessment. I was interested in learning how to prepare my space and process my paintings for an exhibition. I tried to include artwork that worked together and shared cohesive skills throughout. I did find it challenging to line up and measure the pieces as my exhibit situated in a corridor, and I couldn’t take a step back to measure up.

I enjoyed taking a closer look at the details found in my larger pieces. I reprocessed all I had learned over the past few weeks into these larger images. I wanted to combine Richard Serra’s verb list, and then create some studies from images I had chosen previously. i enjoyed how the breif flowed from week to week it allowed me to build up a better responce to the breif.

the Black painting was inspired a Paua shell design but I chose to explore this with other ways/looks to make a work of art. I didnt leave it to being all the same all the line became different. And the broght spots were lighter or not seen as much

I genuinely struggled with this brief missing so much time in the first semester not getting much done then the last few weeks of trying to get these done Im not the happiest with how these paintings came out. I could have done better and I know that but Im not going to beat myself up about it what has done has done. I also struggled with the making marks process as its was out of my way of painting everytime id do something I wouldnt like it and I just wished I could ignore it and move on but every time i wanted to just paint over it and start again. I feel like next year is going to be a lot easier for me when it comes to the painting as I will have a little bit more freedom than this year.