Jeongmoon Choi/UV

While i was experimenting with the UV lights i decided to find some other artists who use UV light in their work in some way to see how effective it is and what kind of things the light can be used for. I found this artist and fell in love with her installations. I love how she works with the space and fills it with beautiful thread drawing. For the show i am also planning to use the space and work with it to make my own installation. Instead of using thread i will be using a UV pen and go over the imperfections on the wall making them visible to the audience. Therefore highlighting the space. 

"The artist is known for her arresting UV light and thread installations, in which visitors can roam within a darkened space, illuminated by a fluorescent matrix of patterns and form. Each of her unique works are specific to the architecture of a building, designed to encompass the expanse of physical space."

"Although Choi’s sci-fi strings call to mind computerized wire-frames, used to make video games or architectural designs, her works are not derived from virtual concepts and processes. Instead, the Berlin-based artist describes her installations as drawings in space; an inherently physical practice."

http://www.karst-projects.org/explorer.html

~Ev

Fun Wednesday Lecture 25th March

Four groups of graduates came in to give a talk about their initiatives. 

1)Cactus

2)Set the Controls For the Heart Of the Sun

3)School of the Damned

4)12O Collective

I found these talks very helpful and insightful in terms of what is out there and what some graduates do after the graduation. How they managed to get out there in the real world. That it is possible to join or create your own group with similar beliefs and form something special together. 

These talks were more beneficial for me that the rest of the talks throughout the year, because the artists talked about what they did as a group and what they believed in compared to some artists from different lectures coming in and just talking about themselves and their work. For me it feels isolated if you trying to get out there by yourself as an artist, it is hard to come through. I feel as though you need to be a part of the group and have connection as the graduates from these initiatives have to back and help each other. They have connections and i believe connections are very important in the art world. Networking!  

I felt inspired by these groups and saw my possible future in something like them. 

I also enjoyed the way they expressed themselves through talking. They didn't try hard they were just being themselves. It wasn't boring and through them talking you got to know their personalities. Sometimes artists come in and talk in a very formal way which becomes very boring after a while. But these groups of young artists were informal, free and comfortable with just being themselves and i absolutely loved that! 

I will be showing in Set the Controls For the Heart Of the Sun in a couple of weeks time, and having the person who organised the space to come in and give a talk about the space and how it started was very helpful and very interesting.

~Ev

Walker Art Gallery 17th and 24th March/ Art Rush

17th

We spent a full day in the gallery exploring the space and coming up with ideas for the intervention on the 24th March. I started to explore the space as i usually would do - by looking for marks, imperfections and not even looking at the paintings themselves but looking at the space itself. I started to explore the space in my own way. I wasn't really interested in the paintings at the start and thought that the frames the paintings were in are too big and do not add to the paintings but distract from them. The frames for me are a piece of work in themselves. The paintings are better off with a clean frame or no frame at all so you would focus completely on the paintings. 

I must admit that i was a bit lost at the start, i didn't know what i wanted to do in the space, it felt as though i was waiting for something to happen, something that will trigger me in a particular direction. I took pictures while some of the other students drew and made sketches looking very confident in what they are doing. I felt as though the gallery was too full with all the paintings and information, i felt as though my work anything that i would make did not belong there and i didn't feel comfortable actually interacting with the space and bringing something of my own. However i was interested in coming up with ideas from the space and see where they would lead me. 

I like going to galleries however i always end up criticizing them for the wallpaper and the color of the walls as they again distract from the paintings. It ends up looking very intense in the room, a lot of information to take in with paintings being very close together as well. I feel overwhelmed sometimes and not relaxed at all.  

I had a lot of ideas in my head which were unrealistic as they all required me to actually engage with the paintings physically which the gallery doesn't allow. So it was a struggle to balance my ideas with the practicalities. One of the ideas was that i wanted to draw on top of the glass though which i could trace some of the paint strokes with a white marker. It would not spoil the painting directly as it would be on the glass. So i did a little tryout just to see how it would work but on a printed version of one of the paintings: 

It was a long day in the gallery, had one hour left to explore and suddenly when i entered a room in the gallery full of school children on a day trip to the gallery, i suddenly had a feeling that i really need to make some work with the drawings they were making in front of me! It felt right! So i started talking to the teachers to ask them if some of the children could willingly give me some of their drawings. I was surprised that some children were very excited that their work could be shown in the gallery space! While i was collecting some of the drawings i made sure i knew which painting they were drawing from, just in case i wanted to link their work with the original paintings. 

I started to think about how the painters were all in the same stage of drawing once as the children's drawings that i was holding in my hand. That we all started the same way, slowly learning how to draw and then some of us developed our skills and made amazing paintings. I also couldn't help it but see how much more positive the children's drawings were. Children have a positive look at everything and therefore when they see a painting they cant help but draw everything in a more positive and light way. It is interesting how as we grow up we use more dark colors, compared to children who use bright and positive colors. Can't help but smile at their drawings!

I thought about why i was drawn to work with the children's drawings and realized that again i wanted to use the drawing because otherwise they would not be seen, as most of them would be binned or lost. I wanted for the effort of the children not to go unnoticed. I wanted for the drawings to be visible and appreciated. This appreciation of something that otherwise would not be see is very dominant in my practice. 

So after collecting the pictures i had a week to come up with something for the 24th intervention. I had the drawings however i wanted to engage with the space too and the original paintings. One way that i did that is through Photoshop, by replacing the original painting with the child drawing. However it was on Photoshop and i would have been very happy if what i did though Photoshop i could have done in real life. But that wasn't possible. 

Another idea that i had is overlapping the original painting with the children's drawing, by printing the children's drawings onto acetate and layering the two together. That is the idea that i went for at the end. However i didn't want my work shown in the same space as the paintings as they would get lost in all the wallpaper and frames and surrounding colors as they are black and white.

24th

I decided to place in the hallway on pillars in a square, facing each other. This is the idea i went for at the end:

~Ev