ASU 1
Overall this unit has enabled preparation to begin ideas for the Masters
Project. My starting point will be to look at Metamorphoses By Ovid
written 1 A.C.E and to research and collect written iterations that have
stemmed from this writing that features the experience of Leda's rape by Zeus
in the form of a swan. My intention is write and visualise a new history for
Leda that will aim to change the outcome for other classical characters that
have been written down as victims or monsters. I will examine the writing of
William Butler Yeats and the effect of this writing into the visual and
theatrical arts. The overarching theme will continue to be socio political
feminist conceptual art.
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13th December 2018
The finished painting has elements that are interesting and effective
but I have not achieved the intensity I had hoped for using this medium.
Despite layering the colours and using a wide tonal range, as yet the painting
does not convey the same finish obtained using a digital print process. It has
enabled a decision to be made that to complete this response set of 48
portraits I will continue to overlay the images, digitally print and mount onto
a stretcher board to complete the work. At present it is my intention to
complete the full set of prints to build into a feminist political installation
to challenge the patriarchy built out of myth and legend.
A comparison of the plain mirror outcome and the green multi-faceted mirrored outcome.
The
multi-faceted mirror was a difficult and time consuming piece to make. I am
pleased that I made it to complete the original concept of multiplying the
images, however, when comparing the look of both pieces I find the effect of
the plain mirror sits with the work more effectively and creates a stronger
feeling of a ‘whole’. To refine and re-develop the piece further I may explore including
a plain 800 x 600 mm mirror to sit inside the box and make use of the housing
box to hold the perspective frame proud of the mirror. Overall, it does not sit
together as effectively as the first iteration, the simplicity of the mirror
and frame created a unity which the subsequent development did not maintain. If
the multi-faceted mirror had filled the whole space behind the frame it may
have created the unity required and so perhaps two further developments may
need to be pursued until a permanent final outcome can be created.
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6th
December 2018
Today I
was able to complete the work and join each part together. I was also able to
install it ready for submission. The component parts of the sculpture are more
disjointed due the difference in each material used. The housing box I painted
green as I have used green throughout previous bodies of work to reflect the
green screen and the idea of women’s experiences being hidden and silenced.
The
mirrors may have worked more effectively at a larger scale but this would have
affected the scale of the box to house the steel frame. The green colour is a
strong and bold statement against the mirror, acrylic and steel, but perhaps
adds too much distraction to the piece. The positives of the piece are the
clean lines and what I hope to be intriguing female figures suspended between
each rectangle that present questions to the viewer.
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29th
November 2018
The
multi-faceted mirror
The
process of making the mirror using mirrored acrylic has been extremely
difficult and due to the nature of the material, I was not able to match the
precision achieved with the mdf and mirrored adhesive. The resulting effect was
haphazard and I lost the possibility of adding a grid system with further
mirrors due to the difference between each zig zag length. The need to be able
to make as much mirrored area as possible and to incorporate all waste into the
piece meant that many pieces had to be recut. One hundred and twenty pieces
were sanded on two edges to create the sixty degree angles and cemented
together. The mirror on its own does create exciting reflections and by careful
spacing I feel that the overall result is effective. In the photograph where the portrait is
included the figure may be referenced at least thirty two times. That the
mirror can create a reflection that can multiply an image thirty two times
achieves in part what I set out to do.
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17th/18th
November 2018
Exhibition
at Ickworth House
Over the
weekend in November I exhibited a selection of paintings and digital prints
made for SNU to display with the intention to gather feedback about the work. I
wished to explore using a detailed account of the context to see if visitors
would engage and write a comment to express their views about the body of work.
The exhibition was well attended and a number of people spent time looking at
the work. It is always interesting to talk to people about the work, but this
is not something that people will always participate in. By using literature to
provide answers for visitors who might be interested in discovering more was an
introduction to my practice as an artist, therefore, more likely to enable
discussion about the work. I include the text below that was displayed
alongside the work in this exhibition.
The Silencing of Women
This work has explored how to visualise the
historical evidence of women being silenced. I have been influenced by examples
found in texts, by classical imagery of women and by my observations within
contemporary society. ‘Through understanding and identifying the word silence
to mean something that is imposed in contrast to the use of the word quiet as
to mean something that is sought and obtained through choice’. (Solnitt,
2017, p17) Underpinning the reasons and desire to create the work is my
own identity of being a parent, with the responsibility to lay the foundations of
learning for my daughters and son, and therefore, to initiate debate and to
ultimately lead to change within the patriarchy.
My starting point began by looking at Mary Beard’s
Women and Power and her explanation of a woman’s voice being silenced by her
young son in public, written late 8th Century BC, into Western text
through Homer’s Odyssey. In understanding the scene, Telemachus, a teenage boy
sends his mother back to her women’s work and proclaims that authoritative
speech – ‘muthos’ - is for men. ‘It is still the case that when listeners hear
a female voice, they do not hear a voice that connotes authority; or rather
they have not learned how to hear authority in it; they don’t hear muthos.’
(Beard, 2017, p30)
The idea emerged to combine a classical
representation of female characters that have been subjected to some form of
compromise; these include Leda, Medusa and Io, in conjunction with women from
the present era, speaking out on behalf of society. The misogynistic abuse
against women who use their voices to speak up and speak out in society meant
that I chose to include those who use their voices such as Mhairi Black, Park
Yeon-mi and Ifeoma Fafunwa, women from around the world.
Output
The work of the German painter; Gerhard Richter’s
48 portraits of 19th and 20th century cultural figures
inspired me to make a female response; not least that he had omitted women,
artists and politicians from his collection. The intention has been create a
main piece of work that features a mass of women in speech, using the medium of
oil paint which is still viewed as a male domain.
Inspiration also came from Lorna Simpson’s use of
multiple mouths and Nancy Spero’s incorporation of the classical image to write
a new history for women. Spero wished to continue ‘depicting woman as
activator, to get away from this “lack” – the loss and castration of the
tongue’. (Reinhardt, 1992, p39)
To disrupt each portrait and enable the idea of
women being in speech led me to include the speaking mouth of the contemporary
woman collaged in colour. The green monochrome colour scheme for each
portrait was selected to reference the chromakey, a colour used to mirror the
‘green screen’; the idea that women’s inequality, lack of power is hidden,
disappeared and silenced. The colour green has a history of being a difficult
colour to make and manage in addition to being used to represent ‘depraved’
women such as witches. As the portraits are placed in a grouping, the intention
is for the composition, monochrome colour scheme and use of scale should replicate
that of Richter and the mass grouping of the portraits together aim to create a
striking effect. At present I have produced twelve paintings and twelve digital
prints. Despite the digital images conveying a strength and contemporary feel
to the work the intention for the work is to complete as a full set of 48 oil
paintings and to pursue painting from the digital amalgamation of the classical
and current women.
The work examines the parallels of repetition
though history from the classics. The plethora of visualisations that present
the submissive and dominated female as victim requires analysis to counter the
domestic and casual familiarity of that imagery. As Mary Beard states ‘It may
take a moment or two to take in that normalisation of gendered violence, but if
you were ever doubtful about the extent to which the exclusion of women from
power is culturally embedded or unsure of the continued strength of classical
ways of formulating and justifying it – well, I give you Trump and Clinton, Perseus
and Medusa, and rest my case’. (Beard, 2017, p79)
Do the arts have a vital role to visualise a new
future for women that is different from the existing history?
By searching for platforms to potentially keep
these questions current and alive builds upon the momentum produced when women
unite as a critical mass.
The feedback obtained during this exhibition was
overwhelmingly positive and encouraging. The majority of people who stopped to
write feedback for the exhibition were mainly female although some of the
discussions I held about the work were with male visitors. It is encouraging to
read the comments and continue to find methods and visualisations that enable
the opportunity to continue to find ways to initiate change within the
patriarchy.
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The MA
Interim Show
15th
November 2018
The work
was installed on Thursday 15th November and displayed for 1 week. Due to the
complications of making the multi-faceted mirror to stand behind the work, I
installed the work against a plain 700 x 500mm mirror to create the effect of
the reflections.
Tutor response
and critique
Desmond
Brett suggested the work could be developed into an installation and this took
me back to the inspiration from Lubaina Himid’s work and the life sized figures
into thinking about how this could be developed from a neat, contained,
designed wall sculpture into something far more immersive. With the timeframe
remaining, it was not possible to pursue at that point, but this is certainly
something I wish to consider further. Other comments from Mark Wilsher were to
encourage greater experimentation with the materials and the process of making
in 3d. I can see that I have made a clear design and created a precise model
from my drawings. Having seen the organic making of the footage from Elizabeth
Frink I aim to build in time to experiment more freely with materials before committing
to the make of the final outcome.
Overall I
was pleased by the look and effect of the work and I made the decision to
include literature to explain the context, something I considered to be
important to display next to the work and also to encourage a response from
visitors. The image of both pieces of work displayed next to one another is
below along with the text that accompanied the work.
‘Passive
Observation’
800 x
600mm
Steel,
acrylic, mirror
This work
explores the idea of ‘tipping points’ and ‘happenings’ in history that
challenge our notion of humanity. Notably, when a tipping point results in war,
whereby rules and laws break down and the resulting effect of these conflicts
are catastrophic in human suffering and loss. Combing two classical myths, a
version written by Livy in the late first century of The Rape of the Sabine
Women and the classical writing of Homer, the twelve slaves of Penelope have been
used to represent a mass of women and their experience of war, abduction, rape
and murder. Using the clear rule of perspective, the three dimensional drawing
of one point perspective aims to disrupt our notion of what we see.
Antiope
and Mhairi
550 x
700mm
Oil and
digital transfer
The
painting is part of a series that responds to the series ‘48 Portraits’ by
Gerhard Richter. Using the mouth of Mhairi Black in speech, an MP who has
spoken out about misogyny as a hate crime, is overlaid onto a representation of
Antiope who is raped by Zeus in the guise of a satyr.
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13th
November
Acrylic
Forms / Figure
The clip
of the acrylic figure and light reflection was intriguing. When activated into
motion a second figure appeared and the movement is unsettling. Further
developments of this reflection and motion may be considered for future
iterations.
Acrylic
Figures
Using the
oven to heat the acrylic enabled to figures to be shaped to give them form. By
comparing the flat shape to the three dimensional form enabled the decision to
be made to use the shaped acrylic figures. By placing the figures against the
mirrored background created greater shapes to reflect light into the figure and
also from the mirror. I heated them for 2 minutes which gave enough malleability
to form them over clay jigs (clay figures made at different sizes for each
acrylic figure). I also experimented with heating the clay in the oven to see
whether this enabled a more successful shaping of the acrylic. I found that the heating of the clay was not required as enough shaping was possible just from the heating of the acrylic form and therefore the cooling process and stabilisation of the shape was easier using a cold jig.
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08-11-18
WELDING 2
The
disrupted perspective sculpture was welded together today. Things to consider
were to add in a fastening means to enable the sculpture to be attached to the
wall at eye level.
Trials
were made onto a sample steel rectangle to practise how best to attach hooks to
enable cord to be strung onto the sculpture. The first set of pegs looked too clumsy. I found and used a much thinner wire to create a
method of attachment that could also be more easily hidden.
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01-11-18
WELDING
Looking
at the different types of metal to use, round or square? I chose to use 10mm
square steel to begin to plan and make the rectangles to create a 3d one point perspective
model. It gave a more geometric and structural effect. New skills learnt were
angle grinding, grinding and Mag Welding. I was able to join together 2
rectangles in addition to the lines used to represent the one point
perspective. What I found most surprising was the speed that the structure was
made. I had considered this element to be the most laborious and difficult part
of the piece to make, when in fact it was fairly simple to construct. The edge
of short lengths were ground away to create a space to infill and join when
welding. By grinding part of the join away it was possible to create a clean
and geometric shape.
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31st
October 2018
Elisabeth Frink: Humans and Other Animals
Sainsbury
Centre
This
exhibition was powerful and haunting. I have seen Frink's work in and around
the Yorkshire Sculpture park many times, however the work inside and
'contained' was distinctly different and conveyed a power that I had not felt
when the work was outside. The film footage of Frink working and her work being
discussed by her and others was a fascinating insight to the artist and her
practice. Seeing the urgency and speed through which she built her forms using
plaster covered paper or wood onto a maquette was inspiring and a process I
hope to experiment with in my own work. That her work captures the violence of
war that men and animals suffer and endure is contextually relevant to elements
I wish to pursue and is viewed from a different perspective that uses a male or
animal protagonist. Her work seeks to convey the relationship and balance
between life and death the respect for the life that is always threatened by
death.
Frink
stated "we are becoming brutalised, we no longer respond properly to the
atrocities" She was a member and supporter of Amnesty International and
used her sculpture to comment on cruelties of the twentieth century.
Through
further research around the 'Geometry of Fear' a name given to a group of
sculptors who exhibited at the Venice Biennale and responded to the horrors of
war, I discovered that Frink had also illustrated a set of prints capturing the
stories from Homer's Greek poems 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey'. Seeing this
myth, Penelope's slaves, portrayed by Frink is astonishing and disturbing and
this body of her work is an area I shall return to.
Elizabeth Frink
The Odyssey
I will not give a decent death to women
who have heaped dishonour on my head
Lithograph 24 x 15.5cm (image)
1974-75
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25th
October 2018
Mirror
Maquette
Exploring
reflections and attempts to create multiples using a 60 degree angle which
through research appears to give the highest number of reflections.
Using 3mm
mdf I sanded the sides to create 60 degree angles.
Using a
mirror adhesive sheet to join to the mdf I was able to make a sample maquette
before extending into mirrored acrylic.
The effect was improved by making a cube of
mirrors rather than just a zigzag. The precision obtained using the mdf was
surprising and encouraging. The adhesive mirror gave a distorted effect and so
made the decision to pursue the mirror using a more rigid material – mirrored acrylic.
I trialled the reflection of the mirror against the clear figures which gave
the feeling of there and not there – this inspired the decision to shape the acrylic
figures to give them form and so create more planes to reflect and bounce light
from the figure and against the mirror.
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23rd
October 2018
Yayoi
Kusama
THE MOVING MOMENT WHEN I WENT TO THE UNIVERSE
3 October - 21 December 2018
Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW
This exhibition features new paintings, painted
bronze pumpkin and flower sculptures and a large scale Infinity Mirrored
Room created for this presentation, Yayoi Kusama’s twelfth exhibition at
the gallery. Continuing to address the twin themes of cosmic infinity and personal
obsession, the new works in this exhibition are testament to an artist at the
height of her powers as she approaches her ninetieth birthday.
I visited
the Yayoi Kusama exhibition as I was curious to see what infinity mirrors would
reflect. The lights were disorienting but the creation of an environment was
overwhelming.
I had
been researching infinity mirrors to see whether they would create an effect of
multiplying image - the idea of creating multiples from the twelve slaves. From
seeing this work it was clear that to be able to create an 'infinity' mirror,
lights would be needed to be incorporated into the objects to be amplified and
repeated into infinity. The idea of the image being infinite was my ideal
solution, however, I have realised I need to find an alternative solution to
create multiple figures.
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Silkscreen
Iteration
Development
into a photo silkscreen and multiplying the image by printing as a half drop
repeat enabled exploration of multiplying the figures. The addition of the
green circles are to represent breasts to focus upon the sexualisation of the
female form. The idea to use silkscreen printing could enable me to revisit the
idea of representing data - numbers and correct quantities, however, this would
have still made a very large piece of work. The print that only contains
the figures appears to me the most successful and the thread grid used to
position the screen also adds to the design and makes sense of the lines - an
accidental find. If I were to return to resume this iteration I would explore
using a grid to include into the print.
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Developments
into clay, both flat formed and solid clay figurine. The problems encountered
were the finish into a glaze and how that would look when seen from behind?
Further developments led into clear acrylic figures which allowed the larger
figures behind to be seen but also the potential to include reflection.
The figures,
made of clear acrylic will allow for the largest figures at the back to still
be seen through the piece of work. The idea of the rule of perspective to be in
reverse is to create questions - how can we see and yet not see.
How does
our humanity not enable us to change?
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Experimentation
of using the female form to see how to suspend them inside a frame began with
paper and card. I was searching for a solution to suspend the figures, pertinent
as the development of the figures into clear acrylic or even into clay meant
that it was important to discover how to hang them. Was it important to not see
the figures from the back? If so, how would they look and how would the thread
be finished off and tied?
The
solution to hang the figures from their breasts, both a suggestion to the
sexuality of their form and also homage to the hanging by Telemachus.
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Using a
text book drawing to illustrate one point perspective, the intention is to
disrupt the rule using a 3d model that reverses the perspective. The smallest
rectangle will be the closest to the viewer and the figures will be suspended
in a grouping of twelve.
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Experimenting
with using the shape of the figure in a similar way to the simplification of
the male disrupted perspective to outline, I used the ancient figurines of
women, The Venus of Willendorf and The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük. These
figures are of great interest as they pre-date the beginning of written history
which include the Enuma Elish. The ancient figurines are representative of a
time before the patriarchy and the gender division of labour and power.
I had originally
hoped to have found a solution to visualise the exact data - to represent the
women abducted and raped during tipping points in history - catastrophes that
are described and likened to the Rape of the Sabine Women - this repeat of
history to visually acknowledge the individual and see the sheer volume of the
violence. The quantities needed made this unachievable in the timeframe and so
I sought a representation to articulate and elucidate meaning and so I
referenced the story of Odysseus's return to Penelope and his order to his son
Telemachus to kill the maids who have slept with the suitors.
In Emily
Wilson's re-translation of Homer's Odyssey, she refers to the maids as
slaves, to make clear their lack of power and choice and highlight their
tragic murder by hanging. My intention is to find a solution to multiply and
achieve a reference to the massive numbers of women subjected to brutality and
violence is to reflect the twelve suspended figures back towards the viewer.
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Fitzwilliam Museum - 9th October
2018
Tuesday 2 October
2018 to Sunday 9 December 2018
Galleries 12 & 13
'This exhibition is inspired by
the work of celebrated author and pioneering feminist Virginia Woolf
(1882-1941). Using Woolf’s writing as a lens through which to explore feminist
perspectives on landscape, domesticity and identity, the exhibition follows Woolf’s
notion that creative women ‘think back through our mothers.’ It draws attention
to the many connections between Woolf, her contemporaries and those who share
an affinity with her work – whether such connections are tangible, anecdotal,
geographic or imagined.'
This exhibition was brilliantly
curated; a thought-provoking celebration of women artists and their visual
voices. To be within an environment of art created by women is something that
is slowly becoming more accessible and acknowledged but also something I am
increasingly seeking to find. The work of Carol Bove and also Barbara Kasten
was particularly inspirational to enable ideas to develop into three
dimensional iterations focusing on the rule and laws of perspective. The use of
line in both works gave vision to my own idea forming and the use of the steel
structure in Bove's work to suspend, support and display unrelated objects to
the framework made sense - a certain nod to a display cabinet, arrangement of
objects placed to draw attention to the individual yet belong together.
The pedestal and display strategy
is extremely important to Bove in her use of the readymade. A gallery space
signals that the work is art and the use of the pedestal and display enables
the antiquities, natural forms and objects to be grouped together and therefore
change the understanding of what it is you are seeing.
Carol Bove
Le Sphinx Rouge
2015
Barbara
Kasten
Untitled 13
1979
_________________________________________________
"In ordinary perspective the
foreground is madness"
(2013 - Hockney on Perspective
and Looking)
_________________________________________________
13th September 2018
'Zeitgeist
- the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the
ideas and beliefs of the time'
By
thinking about the myth of the Rape of the Sabine women it is difficult to
believe that two thousand years later that mass abduction and rape is still
possible and that women still have so little autonomy.
The focus here was to make use of
the male form to see whether the articulation of violence was achievable with
the absence of the female, or did it merely convey that fighting, strength and
power is and remains a male domain. Having explored using the male form I am
visually confident in my selection to build the story that has female
protagonists with the exclusion of the male figure.
Experimentation
with block colour and line.
Experimentation
with colours.
Experimentation
with line
Experimentation
with the addition of green to include the female
in block
colour, surrounding the males figures.
Having
looked back to the classical myths I wanted to find a way to disrupt the
continuing re-enactment of the violence towards women. By posing a life model
into stances taken from the many visualisations of the Rape of the Sabine Women
I photographed the figure in action from different viewpoints. His outline was
used to block in the shape of the figure and then overlay the figures in
reverse perspective. The male form was rendered using different skin tones, the
opposite of the green screen (which I have used to represent women and
silencing, the invisibility of violence and inequality) and used to represent
males of different colours.
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18th August 2018
Digital
Overlay - digital print
The
Ifeoma Fafunwa, a Nigerian architect and theatre director challenges the
patriarchy through her theatre. Her portrait is overlaid with the classical
image of Demeter, the Greek goddess whose daughter is taken away by Hades and
is also raped by her brother Poseidon. The mouth of Ifeoma Fafunwa reversed and
resized to transfer onto the canvas. The use of the digital print transferred
onto the canvas was to further create the image of a mouth in speech and to
bring that into the current timeframe and further reference the contemporary
counterpart. The desire to further develop the work using paint was to respond
to the paintings by Gerhard Richter.
My
starting point for ASU1 was to further focus on improving and developing my oil
painting in an attempt to create in paint the strength of image I felt I had
managed to achieve in the digital prints for the Self Negotiated Unit. I
researched and used rabbit skin glue and gesso to size the canvas. Noticeably
the surface holds the oil paint which enables blending. Concentrating on
building up layers 'lean to fat' to create a depth to the painting I aim to
experiment with painting the mouth in flesh tones but also to use a digital
print which I will transfer to the surface of the canvas to compare the effects
of both. By using the digital overlays which combines both portraits; the
classical female alongside the contemporary counterpart, allows for greater
variety of tone and colours to incorporated into the work.
The image below is of Antiope who according to myth is raped by Zeus. A visual representation of Antiope is overlaid with the portrait of Mhairi Black, an MP who has spoken out against misogyny as a hate crime. My intention is continue to comment upon the silencing of women and the oppression experienced by those who do manage to speak out.
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