Solo Show: Doug Bowen Prize 8th-17th May 2015

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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

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