Laundry Project,/ update

For the laundry project I started to experiment with stains on clothes, going round the boundary of the stain with stitches and in a sense capturing the stain before washing it off. Working with a trace of a person was very interesting, engaging with something that happened momentarily. I began to be too focused on a stain and perhaps started to be closed minded about other opportunities and allowing my work to evolve. These are some of the images of work I did where I engaged with stains on clothes.

 

 

Pair of jeans with dirt stains, perhaps
by walking in the mud in the park

A woman's shirt with green stains,
possibly a green marker? 

 

Perhaps I should have not cut out the rest of the clothes out around the circle but left the whole piece of clothing intact for people to understand what it is. With the embroidery hoop around the spot which I worked with it looks crafty and the hoop acts as a boundary which I don't like.

 

Later I found a tea stained tablecloth which I also started to stitch but in a different way, experimenting with colour and stitches. Something about stitching became very appealing I think this is because it is very time consuming and completely different with the sudden stains that I engage with. By spending time on the stains they become meaningful in a way.

 

 

For some reason I could not get away from stitching stains, I felt addicted every time I saw a new stain on fabric. I even found an old dustsheet with paint stains on that I started to work on also.

 

 

 

 

 Again everything that I tried was with the stains and slowly I began to realize that I need to keep an open mind and try and do something else. For example I forgot that I was interested in stories, whether it be the stains or the sentimental things that are very important to the owner. 

 

 

Consider:

-capturing moments in a different way

-Recording stories

-taking clothes apart

stitching into water soluble fabric?

 

~Ev

British Art Show 8 / in relation to the Laundry Site Intervention

About the exhibition

The British Art Show provides a vital overview of the most exciting contemporary art produced in the UK. Organised by Hayward Touring, this multi-venue exhibition is presented every five years in four different cities across the country.

 

The curators of British Art Show 8, Anna Colin and Lydia Yee, have selected the work of 42 artists who have made a significant contribution to contemporary art in the UK over the past five years. The result is a wide-ranging exhibition that encompasses performance, film, sculpture, installation and painting and design. Twenty-six of the 42 artists have produced new works for the exhibition, making this the most ambitious British Art Show to date.

 

A central concern of British Art Show 8 is the changing role and status of the physical object in an increasingly digital age. While some artists engage with this question through traditional craft-based techniques, others experiment with modes of industrial production. As the curators comment, ‘We were particularly interested in the rereading of objects by artists and other contemporary thinkers as active agents, generative entities, mutating forms and networked realities.’

 

http://britishartshow8.com/page/about-exhibition-1599

 

 

I went to see this show in Leeds where it will be until 10th January 2016, before moving to Edinburgh and so on. I found that one artist stood out to me the most.

 

As you walk in into the art gallery and up the staircase you could see a big piece of work hanging in the middle, dominating the space which I loved and at the same time looked isolated form the rest which wasn't bad either.  



Jessica Warboys - Sea Paintings
 

Jessica Warboys works across painting, performance, film and sculpture. In her series of Sea Paintings Warboys explores the connection between painting and performance. To make these large-scale works the artist submerges a damp, folded canvas scattered with coloured pigments into the sea, and allows the movement of the waves to ‘paint’ the canvas.

I love how she uses the sea to leave a trace on the canvas. She captures the natural through performance which you don't necessarily see but you are left with the canvas to see the movements of water and the process. Reminds me a little bit of Jackson Pollock in the sense of movement, performance and horizontality. However Pollock draws with paint and captures the movement through it and Warboys concentrates in my opinion on trace and the natural interaction. Both however focus on the process enormously and yet visually both Pollock's and Warboy's work is very appealing as though they found a balance between visual and the performative process.

 

“I am not concerned with how the tableau looks or appears as I make a sea painting, but with the result or record of the process."

Jessica Warboys

 

 

 

For me the strength of this work lies in the process and I absolutely love it. The canvases capture not just the movement of water and the Warboys performance but also capture the history and memory of water so every canvas is unique and cannot be replicated. The interaction of the artist and the water with canvas and pigment is a moment in time experience which I try and explore myself. Not only creating something but through the process being involved with it and capturing the moment that will be felt from the artwork.

 

At the moment for the Laundry Site Intervention I am looking at old clothes that still have traces and memory of the owner, the smell, the imperfections etc. Thread by thread I am taking a wool cardigan apart that I have found in the charity shop. Literally picking away at its history that I don't know but engage with through the threads that still hold the memory. By picking at the threads over a long period of time through repetition I try to go backwards in time to the point that the cardigan becomes a ball of thread where it began. Although I don't know the memories and the experiences that this cardigan with the owner went through, I try to grasp the ungraspable through physical repetitive process. I don't need to know the stories for them to be important, engaging with the traces of them stories is enough for me. 

 

~Ev

 

The Laundry Project

As part of the course there were 4 projects to choose from for the first semester or so. Different projects to suit different practices and how people work. I chose The Laundry Project. As part of the project as a group we had to visit nearby Industrial Laundry where we communicated with the people who work there and explored the space in order to start and develop our research and response to the place, history, experience or the people that work there. It was an open project where we were led by the experience of visiting this place.

 

My first visit consisted of me just exploring the space and putting down notes about what I am interested in. My first impression of the laundry was that it is not an art space and that it might be quite hard forming work. On my first visit ideas didn't form and I found that quite frustrating,  however I did not work that way before, it was exciting and different. I had to remember that ideas will form when they are ready to form and that I have to trust myself. Responding to this sort of environment is what I needed as I already decided at the start of the second year that I will try and move away from studio based work and space and try and work elsewhere or form ideas elsewhere as I believe that studio space is quite restrictive. Maybe that is why I decided to choose the laundry project. It is a non art space which has a different kind of opportunity and approach to it.

 

Notes I made on my first visit:

 

 

My first reaction was to figure out what I was interested in most, the people or the space. After that I decided to compare my interests in both categories. I realized that although I wasn't particularly interested in the space itself, how it looked, what it had there in terms of equipment and procedures, I was still interested in the clothes they sort out and the process the clothes go through especially the ones with stains on. I cant say that I was particularly interested in people either. I think that I became interested in the people bringing the clothes in and then leaving so me as an art student couldn't see them, so the clothes were the only things that linked me to their owners. I guess I became interested in the unseen.

 



 

I realised that yet again my love of stains and marks is very strong so I decided to start working in that direction. The more I thought about stains on clothes the more I realized that it wasn't just stains I was interested in, but also the people who created them that I never got to see in my visits to the laundry. The stain itself has a story, a captured moment in time that happened to its owner. Obviously stains are unwanted and people wash them off, that is why I thought of maybe capturing stains somehow before they perish. For the next two weeks after the first visit I have talked to the laundry staff and arranged visits in hopes of taking pictures of stains on clothes and keep the connection going with the people there. However I wasn't so lucky, I was informed that people don't come in with a lot of stained clothing and that they usually don't inform the staff if their clothing is stained too. I visited a couple of times and the only stained item that I took a picture of was a mouldy white shirt which wasn't that impressive. Apparently the owner left the shirt in a car for too long and the stains cant be removed. Unfortunately I could not have the shirt.

 

 

 

I wanted to work with the laundry however I couldn't because my work would only be photographic as I cant physically engage with the clothes. So I had an idea of going to near by charity shops and asking them whether they will have some stained clothing that is about to be thrown away. The charity is a Cancer Research trust, where the staff sort out the clothes that come in themselves and then place them on shop floor. I spoke to the staff and they informed me that sometimes they do get stained clothing which is not suitable for sale, so I gave them my number in hopes that they will ring me when they have some.

 

This was a completely different situation than at the laundry and I didn't know how to feel. Both gave me opportunity and something different. If I got some clothes from the charity shop that meant I can physically engage with that piece of clothing and experiment with it for my project. For example my plan was to thread around the stains and then wash them off so what is left is the threading that I did. My input of preserving the stain. I started to think whether to know the name of the owner is important to me or the story behind the stain. There are a lot of opportunity here but I have to focus on something and develop it and not jump from one and the other which I kept doing and which stopped me progressing.

 

 

 

 

 

 





To consider: 

 -why am interested in the boundaries of stains?
- process and stories
- do I have to know the story?
- consider installation work?
- Chiharu Shiota
- Susan Collis

 

 

~ Ev

 

Crit no.1 / Displaying work as a group

For the crit we had two days to come up with an idea of how we going to display our work together in a gallery space. We had to work together to get the best out of our work and the space we were displaying in. It was a good experience communicating our ideas to each other and be confident doing so. Sort out our differences and argue our points across. I actually deep down enjoyed it but it was a bit stressful because we had two days to do it.

 

At the start I was concerned as I didn't have anything to show as my work is site specific and I cant just bring it to a different space or recreate it as that would take away from the piece and the idea. I make work and then decide where it belongs or while making it in space it belongs, so it felt a bit forced to show all of a sudden in a gallery space. I prefer displaying elsewhere, and if my work does not suit the gallery space I will not show it. And just because I was asked to show in the space as everybody else, I wasn't going to quickly come up with something that is completely not my practice. I decided I am going to stay true to my practice and if some idea came up then ill do it, if not then not and I would have to at the crit itself explain myself and my practice and why I wasn't showing. My work is quite intuitive and in the moment so I was definitely not going to go against that.

 

The first thing that we did in the space is discussed what kind of work everybody are thinking of putting in the space and then people who had work already brought it to the space and we tried to see links between them and discuss them. Slowly we started looking at the space itself and considering where the works will go. From the start we have all decided that we aren't going to use the white wall on one side of the room as we wanted to think about other ways of displaying. Thinking outside the box. The space itself is quite big and spacious, with a white wall running on one side of the room and glass windows on the other. A lot of light and brightness which was great. There was also a statue already present in the room which I found very interesting.

 

We started getting plinths out and trying to put work on top of them, experimenting the setup of plinths in the space. We started to put them in line and seeing how they work together.

 

 

Slowly I started to see a link between the statue right at the back which was already there and the plinths. I proposed to the rest of the group to maybe put the work in line with the statue. It works better in the space and is visually pleasing as well as includes the statue as piece of artwork and as part of display. There's also another link, the statue looks like its sitting on a plinth so visually all the sculptures that we also place on the plinth work visually together. It makes sense and I think it works. However I didn't think drawings and paintings worked on a plinth and slowly I was starting to think that maybe there are too many plinths as well, and maybe just the statues should be on the plinths and that's it. However we did all want to place our work in line so now we had to think about non sculptural art and where to display it.

 

 

 



 

 

After a while after some discussions we started to think that maybe the works were too straight in a line, looking too strict. To soften a bit we decided to play around with the plinth, turning them diagonally, on top of each other or making a domino effect with them by making them look like they are falling on top of each other. However we still stayed with the idea of a line that ran from the statue. We added movement and life to it without changing our aim. Still I felt that there were too many plinths, and because they are quite sculptural themselves they look like they dominate the work. Maybe it is also to do with the colour of the plinths. Maybe if we painted them black it would bring the work out more.

 

I also felt that it was a bit empty around the line of work. I knew that we decided to use the space itself as our guideline of how to set up our own work but maybe that made us too focused on the line and therefore we forgot about the space that surrounds our work. This is where I thought of how I can change that and suddenly I knew what I would do as my interaction and contribution to the space. 

 

As you can see we chose to stay away from the wall and closer to the windows and that made me think about how I can bring the outside in.  I decided that I will collect leaves and scatter them round the space. I wanted to change the whole gallery experience for the audience. Make it more interactive. I wanted for people to walk on them.

 

 

In my opinion the leaves bring everything together. Both filling the space, interacting with the work through the colours as well as with organic theme that seems to run quite a lot in the works too. It also creates interesting juxtapositions such as the metal circle which is man made and lifeless, contrasts well with the organic leaves. The leaves also bring out the colours of other pieces with similar colour, they bring each other out.

 

The leaves are randomly scattered however you can clearly see its boundaries and the gallery boundaries. You can clearly see where the display starts and how we decided to section out the space. Staying away from the wall and being closer to the window and working with parallel lines of the building (the pillars that run in line, the floor boards, the windows, the ceiling details that are right above our linear setup). 

 

Overall I think it was a success especially when we had 2 days to do it and we didn't know each other. We had to work fast and communicate well with each other to achieve this. Yes there are things that could have been improved and reconsidered, however based on how much time we had, we did really well.

 

~ Ev 





Shop Window Interaction/ Performance idea

I was walking down Bold Street, Liverpool looking at different shops that surrounded me and noticed a closed shop with windows being painted in white so people cannot see in. At the time I thought nothing of that except that it was unattractive to see and walk past. The next day I kept thinking about the painted windows and slowly an idea formed. I thought about how I can interact with such shop by scraping away at the paint and make a temporary piece out of it. I didn't know what I would do on the window but I knew that I was interested in it.

 

The next day I tried finding the same shop with the painted windows and couldn't find it, however I found another closed shop on Bold Street which had perfect big clean windows. This is the shop:
 

 

I thought about finding the owners number and discussing my idea with him. The idea consisted of me replicating the painted look on the window and then interacting with it. I didn't know what I would do with it, but I trusted that I would respond to the space at that particular moment. It is quite intuitive and exciting. At the moment i'm trying to get a hold of the owner through a company which might take a while because I am an "art student".

 

During my wait for some kind of response I decided I needed to try it out somewhere else to see how I feel and whether I enjoyed it or not. So I found a big window in studio balcony which was perfect for the try-out.

 

I found out that the thing that the workers mostly use on windows to prevent people from seeing in is Windolene emulsion, but because I couldn't find it anywhere I decided to get white emulsion and mix it with water to get the same effect.

 

After covering the window in watered down emulsion which took me about 5 minutes I was thinking about what I can do on it. I knew I wanted to scrape off at the window repetitively but I didn't know what. So I decided to start with something simple, a spiral that keeps growing out the centre, slowly appearing and expanding on window surface. Very subtle and meditative process which I am a fan of. Throughout I kept taking pictures and analysing this experience and how I felt about it being in the studio and not in a shop. How that impacted the meaning of the work and the whole experience of the process.

 

 

Moon through the spiral on window

 

 

While in process new thoughts began to form. From the start I was interested in the window because of the workers working on it, but while working I got to appreciate its transparent quality. I began to think that by forming a spiral I slowly uncover what I can see through it and as a result I interact with the scene too and not just the mirror. Not only that but the scene interacts back, adding to the spiral. Its a conversation between both. Under different angles you can see the spiral better or worse depending on the background and that is very interesting to me.

 

Another thing that sprung to mind is that this experience is completely different to me doing this on an actual shop window. If I did it on shop window it would have been more interactive and performative in the sense that I would see people from the other side walking past the shop and as a result being a part of my work. That is very interesting. The spiral if I was to recreate it in that setting would not only interact with the background but also with the motion of people walking past and that information would be imprinted on my mark making as I have to concentrate really well to keep my hand steady, so if people walk past I would have more of an interesting spiral with all its imperfections where my hand moved from the line. I love this idea being in the moment and interacting with something that can capture it.

 

This spiral took me 5 hours, its not that big, but I will keep adding to it so I can fill the whole window in it. I really want to see how much time it will take me so I know if it comes to showing in a shop that I know n advance how much time I need.

 

 

Moon through the spiral on window

 

 

 ~ Ev

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 



 

Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots | Tate

Earlier this year I wrote an essay on Jackson Pollock so I was really happy when Tate Liverpool opened an exhibition showing some of is work. I visited it 3 times! Here's a link to Tale Liverpool about the exhibition!

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) is one of the starters of radical painting who was considered to be an “action painter” at the time because you could imagine quite visually the actions that went into the making of his painting. Therefore by pouring paint onto canvas in an act of expression, Pollock broke away the anatomical connection that had traditionally linked the artists hand, brush and canvas. He uses the brush and paint to make lines so you could say he is drawing with paint.

Jackson Pollock who was part of Abstract Expressionist movement stood out from his contemporaries due to his original approach to painting. There were two major differences in Pollock's approach to his art compared to other artists of his time. The first major difference was that Jackson painted on the floor. The second difference was that he used a stick instead of a brush.

I love his approach, it makes people engage with the painting more on a physical level as we can see looking at the paintings the movements that he went though. The actions he took to paint I consider quite per formative and repetitive and meditative. The simplicity of action and the intensity of the paintings is beautiful!

Because of Pollock's unique approach to painting I was a bit put off the protectiveness of the paintings in the exhibition and the way they were displayed although I know it was done to preserve and protect the pieces. For me Jackson Pollock's paintings should have been displayed on the floor as I believe the nature of Jacksons approach asks for that. I think we as an audience would engage with his work more, ad the processes and movements that the artist wet through. Being on the wall framed they give a different meaning to the paintings. On the wall and behind a screen they look uninviting and unapproachable. I think art should be approached easily and engaged with. If work was on floor we could have walked around the painting the way Pollock was creating it, retracing his steps, experiencing the painting in his shoes and from his point of view.

However I know that it is important for pieces to be preserved although I don't understand that as my work is temporary and I see nothing wrong in natural destruction of the work. For me it is important to stay true to the work and its nature.

~Ev

Artist: Catherine Bertola

I came across Catherine Bertola by flipping through pages of a book on my break, and immediately was interested in her work as I could see similarities between her art practice and mine which I would like to talk about here. But first more about the artist!

 

What interested me from the start is the residency she did with other artists in Liverpool, called 'Further Up in the Air'. Further Up In The Air was a project which commissioned eighteen artists over two years to respond to the demolition of the Linosa Tower block in Liverpool, and the regeneration of the area local to it.  Further Up In The Air built on the success of an earlier pilot project in another tower block on the same estate - Up In The Air. A broad range of artists spent a month working in one of the tower's empty flats in the period leading up to the block's demolition. One of these artists was Catherine Bertola. To read about the residency in detail here's a link:

 

http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/casestudies/housing/up_in_air/description.php

 

Catherine Bertola reworked an embossed ivy pattern wallpaper by cutting round the outlines of the embossed leaves and partially pulling them away. 

 

Catherine Bertola, If wall could talk....., 2002.

 Installation at Linosa Close, Liverpool,

as part of 'Further up in the air'.

 

 

"Catherine Bertola subtly intervenes within specific locations, often empty spaces – be they temporarily vacated prior to renovation, long-since abandoned or even derelict and destined for demolition." link:click here

 

This is interesting to me because my work is also site specific and I constantly try and find places to work in, as I am not satisfied working in a studio all the time. My work develops from the place itself so working in the studio is quite limiting.

"Seeking out the traces of their departed occupants, she uses these as the base material for her work. The markers of our physical bodies – such as fingerprints and dust – and the locations they inhabit – from bricks and mortar through to our choice of fabrics, wallpapers and paint colours – remain long after we have departed."

 

I am also interested in traces such as stains, marks and other things that are left in the space and the things that people don't appreciate or notice anymore e.g. the solo show where I was searching imperfections. In the solo show I went round imperfections on the wall which you can count as a trace from previous artist who was showing there, bringing audiences attention to that. However I believe Bertola has a more of a strong connection to history and the people who lived in the space.

 

"Nothing is ever really destroyed, only concealed or altered. Whether painted or papered over or reduced to dust, fragments of the original remain. Likewise, Bertola’s work is as much about the processes that take place both before and after the actual public exhibition of an individual piece of work."

 

I would love to work in an abandoned space as I believe the space would generate many ideas for me. However at the moment I am working with any space that grabs my attention to experiment, and work forms from there. It is temporary and I am ok with that.

 

"Labour intensive and repetitive in their creation, these processes often mimic the methods of archaeology or forensic science, digging beneath the surface to uncover past histories, architecture and functions."

Interestingly I found myself explaining my solo show work in exactly the same way. As I was forming work, going round the imperfections on the white gallery wall, I could not help but feel as though I was an archaeologist, digging up and bringing forward information lost and unseen that was a trace made by previous artists work.

 

"Largely site-specific and outside of the conventional gallery environment, individual works often remain in place for months or even years, their eventual erasure dependent on the future actions of those other than the artist."

The solo show was made particularly for a gallery space and it was temporary, however I really want to move away from gallery environment and concentrate more on other spaces which I believe will trigger for more ideas to form. 

I feel as though Catherine Bertola's art work has opened my eyes that I need to work in different spaces more and get out the studio more often as I am a site- specific artist and being in the studio is limiting fro my ideas. At the moment I have several ideas I want to try out that includes me working in a different setting and out of my comfort zone which will be interesting. A project that I chose at uni will also help me to get out of a normal gallery/ studio setting as for this project I will be working with people of a different discipline and their setting which the people of that discipline are used to. This will be new to me as I will be responding to what happens there in some way and that Is very exciting.


~Ev