UV lights and practicalities for the solo show in May

I went to visit the space again on Friday last week to visualise the work that i am planning to make there. I am planning to use uv lights and go round marks on the walls and maybe the floor with a uv pen, which i have mentioned about in my previous post. I need to carefully think about how practical it is to fill in the space with uv lights and plan my timing right as it is a big piece of work and i will have only 4 days to do it. 

One of the first things that i though about when i was in the room is how i am going to get uv lights which are strong enough to fill the space and if i wanted to replace every single light with uv light how expensive it might be. I could see that the normal lights didn't shine equally throughout the room, it was patchy, so the marks that i go round with a uv pen near the light source will look the brightest compared to the marks that are further down and some distance away. This made me think about the use of only one light source, however this seems impossible as i don't think there is a light bright enough to fill the whole room and make all the marks on the wall that i work with to show though bright enough to make an effect. 

If i was to replace the lights with uv lights would it be better to then work on the floor alone, as it will get the most even lighting in the room? Would that be enough?

Another thing that i have thought about is the way i want my work to interact with the audience. At first i wanted for the lights to change after a certain time period to normal lights and keep changing between uv and normal so to surprise people and see their reaction to my work suddenly appearing before them. This is a challenge as i don't know how to make the lights change. Can it be done manually? can there be a single normal bulb in the middle of the room that gets switched on after the uv lights are switched off? If i cant have the element of surprise then can i give hand held uv torches to go round the room and interact with my work that way? Will that be as effective? hmm...

The first option sounds as a performance where people physically react to my work as it suddenly appears around them, compared to the second one where people engage with the work differently, exploring it in a different kind of way. Audience would only see the marks that i worked with within the radius of the hand held torch and not the room as a whole. 

~Ev

Mental Metal 10th March exhibition

Although it was a very good day with free food yum! and some amazing artworks which made it more exciting such as the spray painted big bin with a bag of goldfish inside it, it was disappointing in the sense that the work that we had worked on and exhibited was only shown to our peers and tutors. It was a closed exhibition but a good experience to have anyway. I feel as though it would have been more beneficial and even more exciting and fun for the exhibition to be open to other people, to see their reaction and hear their comments for the work we have made.

However i really enjoyed it as it was one of the rare moments where the groups worked together and there were a lot of students that i was excited to find out what their art practices are like and what they are about. It was a bonding moment when we had to talk about our work in turn. In turn we talked about our work and a potential area in the place we would have liked to exhibit, talking about how our piece relates to the space in Metal. It was very beneficial to me as i got a lot out of it, such as noticing how different students had a different approach to work and had a different way of thinking. It was a long and thorough process allowing everybody to discuss the work of others and express what they feel about a certain work or installation of that work.

After talking about each work we were setting up our work to form an exhibition. It was a very quick setup and because my work was half done as it require the place of exhibiting to be part of my art it took me longer than some of other students. My work required me to work on the spot, interacting with the space and marks/ stains on the floor. I had to consider a lot of factors when setting up on the floor such as making sure they would not be stood on or contributed to an accident as well as have a space between other students work. I had to make sure people could walk around it and at the same time though the work, the frames. 

I like how the frames work with the square and lines
on the floor,  adding control of where i place
 the frames and which way i turn them.

All our work in a big circle.

How my work ended up looking and
 interacting with other pieces of work. I like there are
squares that have been highlighted by other art pieces.

Frames up close. There is so much visual
information  you can find though the
 frames and by me tracing one that i can
 see though the screen it suddenly looks
 very minimal with the linear white pen.

Eggsabition? ahah

Goldfish!

Some work outside 

Goldfish inside the bin!

People having fun!

Performance with a mask!

I loved the moment Rory and Brice arrived to Metal struggling to wheel in a big bin with goldfish inside! It was so funny i loved it! It made my day! :D

~Ev

Exciting UV Discovery!/ Solo show idea!

For a couple of weeks now UV pens have been mentioned to me multiple times by different people who listened what i had to say about me and my work. Because it was mentioned to me so often i took it as a sign to try and work with them, give them some thought and energy. After going over again and again over the similarities of my work and how different they are too, i kept noticing that i am trying to highlight the "invisible", "imperfect" or "abandoned". 

Then suddenly the UV pens seemed to have a lot of sense in my work. The possibility of using UV pens to highlight something to make it visible really excited me as the UV pens can only be seen using a special light, therefore by highlighting something i can play with the audiences reaction too as i can control when the UV light can be switched on or off. Play with the impact and the element of surprise with the audience. 

As a tryout i found a dark space in the studio which was blocked out from light. It was a small box like space with white plain walls. I grabbed a UV pen and started to look for imperfections on the walls such as scratches and dents that i decided to go round with a UV pen to make them stand out and form a combination of linear forms on the wall. 

I have found the process very relaxing, repetitive and therapeutic. I enjoyed working under UV light looking how slowly the dents and marks appeared before me. So bright and full of life! I worked very slowly enjoying the meditative process. I really like engaging with things that are present already as in a way the process is bonding me to the place and the marks. 

When i have finished i switched off the UV light and suddenly the marks and dents i worked with disappeared. They suddenly blended with the environment again, with the wall. I had to carefully look for the marks again to remember which ones i have worked with. That transition of visibility and invisibility i really enjoyed and found fascinating. I became very excited to see other peoples reaction towards it.  

I decided to bring students in to see what i have done, and see their reaction to it. They entered the space and suddenly i switched on the UV light to make my work visible. Some people gasped to suddenly seeing the UV marks, some had a physical reaction where they stepped back from the wall to look at it all, as though the marks have invaded their personal space. They looked like the work has physically moved them. I really enjoyed looking at peoples reaction, they seemed to be part of my work, engaging and working with it. Suddenly this made me think about performance which i tried not tho think about as i didn't want to force it into my work, however it touched it. This work is in a way performative, not in the sense of me doing the performance, but in the reaction of others to my work and the sudden light change. The performance is in me switching the light on and off and looking at the reactions i get. 

This work felt right to me and seemed to combine all the recent tryouts i recently made. This work also opened up a lot more possibilities for me. It made me think about what i can do for the solo show at the start of May. The room i am given for the show doesn't have any windows and is 7x10 meters which is a very good size! This works seems perfect for the room. At the moment i am thinking of going round imperfections with the UV pen on the walls and the floor, also i want to play with the timing of the light change so that my work gives the biggest impact for the audience. I have yet to discuss this with the people responsible for the show, but hopefully i am allowed to do it and will have enough time to finish it! I am very excited and cant wait to start it!

~Ev

Metal: Framing marks/stains

For Metal Show next week on Tuesday 10th i have decided to frame marks on the floor by tracing marks that i could see through the glass. This way i am bringing them out from the floor, making them stand out and come to life. 

I have practised with marks in the studio and found out that tracing large marks that come out of the frame works best as suddenly you can see the way the mark carries on and not just sits inside the frame. By tracing a bigger mark that carries on outside the frame it becomes highlighted and stands out from the rest. 

In Metal there is a big square in the middle of the room which i want to highlight and bring out from the rest of the marks and stains. I want to work with the space and highlight what is already there. 

I am still unsure how many frames i am going to go for but i think i can work with that on the spot, depending on other work that is around the space. Because it doesn't take a long time to set up i think i can make decisions right there and then.

I tried putting frames on top of each other to see what it looks like and i really like the layered look of the marks. Framed box?!

~Ev

Forms of Nature Created from Thousands of Ceramic Shards by Zemer Peled

"Zemer Peled's work examines the beauty and brutality of the natural world. Her sculptural language is formed by her surrounding landscapes and nature, engaging with themes of nature and memories, identity and place. Her works are formed of thousand of ceramic shards constructed into large-scale/small-scale sculptures and installations." http://zemerpeled.com/about/

 

After finding this artist i became more and more interested in using the shapes of the marks that i find every single day and transforming their shape to form something more fluid, natural and soft. Transforming a flat mark into something more, giving the mark another meaning and life. The marks i find look abandoned and lonely and i wanted to change that by bringing them together to give them another life through a natural form. First i tried doing that by using paper and making paper sculptures using the outline of the found marks. 

Then i thought of using see-through perspex by laser cutting the shape of the marks out and then heating the plastic to change its form.

The burnt parts on the plastic are from the laser cutter.
 I like little unexpected things like that.

To be honest the process of making this i did not enjoy, i think it was too forced and required a lot of patience which for some reason i did not have, although i like repetition and long processes in my work. This time something didn't feel right to me. Maybe i tried too hard and the work was more forced than produced naturally. After a while i got really frustrated with it and suddenly i wanted to go round some marks that i could find around me. So i did that and sat on the floor of the studio going round paint stains with a white marker. After 10 minutes doing that i realized that in a way the going round the marks with a white pen and working in such a way is therapeutic for me. This spontaneous decision to do that made me feel excited to develop further in this direction. The process of tracing made me feel relaxed and calm. The moment when i realized that the sculpture did not work for me is the moment i realized what really works for me because after the buildup of frustration with the sculptures the true interest came out and i think i need to follow that because it felt right.  

Also it felt performative and natural and not forced at all, i just followed an impulse to do it and did it. After chasing after performance work for a couple of weeks now and thinking really hard about what kind of performance i can do, this came very spontaneous and natural to me. It was like a breath of fresh air because i didn't put any thought into the actions or what i was doing, i just did it and that's it. Most often i like to think and over think a lot and control a lot of things when making art but this time i was happy to let it just happen. 

Now i am going to listen to my spontaneous side when making work and see how far i can push it as i believe this is my unconscious telling me something about me and my work. As the work i produce when i try too hard seems not to work as well because it is more controlled and forced, compared to spontaneous work which happens naturally. I need to listen more to my spontaneous side and see where it leads me.

~Ev