Author: Izzy

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‘For something to have the ring of truth it must appear as something we recognize as truthful.‘ Why does it have to be something we recognize? In saying that, are the only ‘real’ things, things that we have seen before? There’s an old saying seeing is believing. Yet so much of what exists in the world are things we haven’t seen ourselves. We rely on the media, science, researchers, and articles to get our information about the world outside our own bubble. Yet there’s no way of knowing it’s the truth unless we see it ourselves, right? This brings in the question of what is ‘real’. A classic ‘not real’ thing is a dragon. Elements of the dragon are taken from ‘real’ things. Wings, scales, horns, teeth, predatory instincts. These are all believable because we know them to be real. So we can look at the dragon and see a creature that could exist within our realms of possibility. Truth be told, it’s beyond humans’ capability to comprehend something completely ‘unreal’. We can only envision what we know to exist. Every person you see in your dreams, even if they are complete strangers, are most likely people you have passed on the street. It isn’t within our comprehension to make something we have never seen before. Every unreal arrangement is just a complex structure of many real things you have taken from real life. But they’re real because they exist within human comprehension.

This brings me to my sculptures. The images above are my response to what it might mean for a sculpture to be more, or less, ‘real’ or ‘true’. How I got there was brainstorming things I believe to revolve around reality, or, what doesn’t. Dreams. Fantastical stories we tell ourselves. Despite being always seen as ‘unreal’, I wanted to create a series of images that are dreamscapes. I wanted to put the impossibility and the odd images that dreams offer us into a proper visual, so the viewers can have a better grasp of what they’d normally be too hazy to recall. My next set of images, beneath the video, is less about the fluidity vs the static of dreams but more about the context and the unfamiliar. I also want to comment on differing reals. Everybody has different ways of seeing the world. Things that are ‘real’ to me maybe aren’t ‘real’ to them. But dreams are individual. That’s another reason I chose them to explore; they contain personal reals and are different from person to person.

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Verisimilitude ‘Real: Dreams’
Heart of Trees by Jaume Plensa, despite the meaning not relating to ‘dreams’, intervenes with the site and creates an image you wouldn’t normally see. This doesn’t take away the ‘real’ aspect of the work. We can step into and engage with it despite the impossibility. It changes the ordinary site it’s set in and elevates it to something more. 

What is it that you want to understand/explore by doing this work? Dreams are of interest to me. Going to sleep each night and visualizing such a complex story is crazy. Your brain, without you consciously realizing it, has compartmentalized things only to bring them out later. I want to explore those odd stories we tell ourselves at night and just how real they are. 

What materials do you need and what processes are involved? I want to do an assemblage of site interventions. I also want to ensure that the site itself fits my themes. I will need recycled materials; I’m aiming not to buy anything for this brief. To start off, I want to create a space that feels almost dream-like to me.

How will you present the work for critique? I’ll present the work with both photos and video documentation! It mostly depends on how my work turns out, however.

Ilvano Salonia

Ilvano is an Art Director, designer, and XR artist. In relevance to what I’m currently learning, I looked at works of his own such as ‘Eden’. Eden is a VR reality, another world beyond the one we live in. Suited to its name, it’s a garden. Bright, colorful, distinctive. Ilvano has a strong interest in world-building and creating narratives as you can see with Eden. One thing I’d love to take away from his work and put into my own is the distinct style in which he works. I looked at his other digital works and noticed he sticks to a consistent theme of bright colors whilst exploring new ways of working. It brings all his works together despite their differences. Also speaking more about the aesthetics; I also really enjoy the psychedelic vibes his work gives off.

Marilene Oliver

Marilene is an Assistant Professor who works a lot with different digital technologies and utilizes scan work such as MRI and CT scans. In her work (a collaboration with many other people) ‘Deep Connection’, we see a full-body scan of her. This work speaks on the relationships we have with AI and technology as a whole. I also see how it offers us a chance to connect more with ourselves as we can see ourselves in a different light than normal. The only time we really see ourselves like this is in a negative situation. By doing this, she’s associating MRI and CT scans with a positive association. One thing I mainly love about her work is her creative use of different technologies like scans. She seems to have a good range of skills she can use to make her art.

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I’m really struggling at the mo to embed the artsteps exhibition into my post so for now, I’m just going to post the link! (https://www.artsteps.com/view/6163eeedd00939f6473f5d8f?currentUser)

So, I chose the assemblages I made on meshmixer that best represented my idea of a real unreal. Or at least, gave off the feeling of the uncanny valley. I took very normal items, things we are used to seeing, and inflated them to something completely new. Also, with the digital realm making size not an issue, I chose to blow up all my installations. This adds to the sense of the unreal, dream-like quality that my installations hold. I also selected the house-like pattern for my exhibition space because I enjoyed how much it looked like a regular house texture but not- fitting for my ongoing theme of the uncanny. I also believe the space is very liminal and gives off an odd feeling for those who walkthrough. I really enjoyed how much artsteps enabled me to fully engage with the space and alter it to my liking to enhance my installations. Although the fully white colors were not originally planned, (I didn’t have time to import colors too), I think it’s more fitting this way. There’s a sense that they’re all made from the same material, all from a strange place. It ties them together without being too representational. All in all, I enjoyed this part of the brief. The digital side was super technical and a little tricky at times, but I managed to make my way around it and I believe this is something I can use in the future.

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After last week’s play with real unreal, I continued experimenting with that! I found that the inflate tool is my favourite from meshmixer and a great way to combine objects to make one whole one. I also think that using inflate on certain objects (i.e tree) gives it a very unsettling look as lots of different parts inflate and look diseased. I want to see if I can pursue the inflated real unreal diseased vibe my works have been going in.

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I wanna try to develop these some more before I move on to more ‘real unreal’ things. I want to create the familiar but have it unfamiliar at the same time. Something that’s not as outlandish as my current assemblages but more familiar to our eyes.

After a little time spent, I finally created something that I think is maybe a ‘real-unreal’? All I did was take a gun and put a balloon over it. I moulded the balloon to the shape of the gun (ish) and then inflated the gun and made both a fleshy colour. It’s a pretty grotesque assemblage.

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This part of the brief is so strange but so freeing. I feel like I’ve completely stepped away from my previous IRL assemblages and stumbled upon something entirely new. What I love about digital work is the ability to create something impossible. Not many people have enough money to buy a statue and weld strange swords and guns to it but you can do this in digital. I especially like my wriggly bed assemblage. What once was a green balloon becomes an alien-covid 19 looking nightmare. I’m definitely enjoying this part of the brief more than before. I think I want to still go for ‘stumbling poetry’ however as I liked that the assemblages made with that idea in mind came out simplistic but had intent behind them. I’ll leave the simplistic assemblages behind though.

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The flower ribcage progression was definitely one of my favourites done today! I want to try and add more variety of plants bursting from the ribcage and maybe more unexpected elements to the ribcage? Flowers and skeletons are a pretty iconic duo so maybe I should try stepping away.

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Sharp and Soft

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I don’t wanna go into too much detail as these are self-explanatory but what took me in this step of assemblage making was the juxtaposition of soft and sharp. Also fragmentation of the mirror and how the wool would pierce through the book as the glass did. From my research from last week, I wanted to take Rosalie Gascoigne’s idea of creating strange poetry with assemblages.

Hanging

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The development I wanted for this one was minute; all I did was flip it so that it was standing on the nail heads rather unstably. My Mum also found a strange metal ring with wood attached and I decided to hang it from the stumps small branch. I love the nail thing the most as it looks incredibly gawky and weak at the same time. I think, again, the main idea of this was ‘stumbling poetry’ as Rosalie Gascoigne did with her assemblages. Mine is simple, yes, but I don’t think they have to be incredibly complex to create an interesting visual.

Cobwebs

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Despite the simplicity of this assemblage, this one definitely took me the longest as searching for cobwebs wasn’t exactly plentiful. It’s odd how much work can go into something so small. Also going into this assemblage, I had ideas of healing and wound wrapping as I researched and discovered ancient Greeks and Romans used it to treat wounds, binding them.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert is an American born artist who is known for his ‘Combine’ works. A lot of his work involved multiple different materials squashed together, hence why I’m using him as an example for assemblage work. After going through his assemblage work, I can see that he is drawn to materials in their natural states. Stains add character and so forth. “He was in love with the nature of the materials and how they looked in their abandoned states.” https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/40/660

Rosalie Gascoigne

Rosalie is a New Zealand-born but Australian-based artist. I selected her as an example because the image of her doll assemblages piqued my interest more than others. Her work is assemblage as she hunts for her materials to bring them together in an oddly abstract way but with poetic purposes. I especially love how she sees her assemblages as ‘stumbling poetry’ which I can see the more I look at her works. Her former practice in Ikebana, the natural arrangement of flowers and nature, is what let her step into the direction of assemblage. “She was later dubbed a ‘hunter gatherer in a station-wagon’, collecting everything from sheep bones to Schweppes boxes for her art.” https://citygallery.org.nz/exhibitions/rosalie-gascoigne/ https://eprints.utas.edu.au/18232/1/Rosalie_Gascoigne,_1985_Final.pdf

Giuseppe Romeo

A few things that stuck out to me about this artist’s assemblage work are the aesthetics. Whilst the other two I have shown as examples have (mostly) let the chosen materials be themselves, Giuseppe has painted a lot of his so that they appear similar. After researching the themes of these particular works, I can see his concern for the state of the earth. By using found materials, ones that we consume and are constantly being mass-produced in factories, he is making commentary on waste and mass production. I love his assemblages, not just for the messages behind them ), but also the disorderly state of it.