I got roses.

The Northern Art Prize- Leeds City Gallery

We were lucky enough to see the shortlisted artists for The Northern Art Prize on the same day that the winner was announced at Leeds City Gallery. Although, after seeing the work first hand I think it'd be fair to say that none of the work really captured my imagination, I didn't have an immediate connection to any of the pieces the first time round. I did however warm to the work of James Hugonin, probably just because of how labor-intensive each piece is and the amount of time and dedication he must have put into the collection. I think I'd have liked him to win the prize. Unfortunately he didn't and Leo Fitzmaurice did. My least favourite out of all the shortlisted artists. 

 Leo Fitzmaurice

Liadin Cooke

Richard Rigg

James Hugonin

http://www.northernartprize.org.uk/2011-prize/shortlist

The BLK Art Group- Graves Gallery, Sheffield

One of the exhibitions I visited while in Sheffield was The BLK Art Group's in Graves Gallery. Full of really interesting stuff- very relevant at the moment. 

"The BLK Art Group is the name of a group of four influential conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in the United Kingdom. Keith Piper, Marlene Smith, Eddie Chambers and Donald Rodney, initially based in the Midlands."

"The group were all from the British African-Caribbean community and exhibited in a number of group exhibitions in both small and prestigious galleries throughout the country. Their work was noted for its boldly political stance, producing dynamic conceptual art that offered a series of inventive critiques on the state of inter-communal, class and gender relations in the UK. They were themselves influenced by the a variety of artistic currents including ideas associated with the USA's Black Arts Movement."

Donald Rodney -Britannia Hospital 2

David Rodney- The House that Jack Built

Eddie Chambers- How Much Longer You Bastards?

Keith Piper- Black Assassin Saints

By far my favorite piece from this exhibition. I think that without even reading the words written on the canvas there is a sinister feel to it. The colours themselves aren't particularly angry or threatening but when paired with the repeated faces at the top they seem to change, to me anyway. I think it might be something to do with the way the poster paint has been applied, being allowed to run and dribble, that reminds me of blood. 

Out and about.

The last few days should have been really lonely with so many people on my course being in either Valencia or London, but, strangely enough, they weren't lonely at all. I spent Wednesday in Sheffield and Thursday in Leeds, visiting the galleries and meeting up with friends for coffee etc. etc. etc. 

As always I ended up coming home with a bag full of leaflets and booklets, but I also picked up a few napkins, some lovely pieces of corrugated card- one plain and another with an amazing pattern and a length of string. 

We ended up spending a lot longer than we originally intended in Leeds City Gallery, mainly because of the ArtSpace- probably aimed at children we but really enjoyed ourselves! It was so so nice to sit down and just be creative without having to over think or over analyse things. We lesarnt to make origami chairs and shirts and threaded ribbon through hessian. But, it has to be said the activity we enjoyed most was the colouring in- it was so therapeutic just to sit down and colour the squares.(There was a game to go with the colouring sheets but we couldn't find the dice to play, disappointing as we'd have loved it!!) I think the sheets were designed to mirror the work of James Hugonin's in the gallery.

Twigs.

Twig shape covered with map copies, painting with emulsion 

and detail added with acrylic paint and felt tip pens.

Twigs

Twig shapes cut from plywood with found marks.

Second twig after sticking photocopies of maps in areas, 

covering parts in white emulsion and binding with blue electrical tape.

Zander Olsen

Cadair, Oak 2010 

 Untitled (Cader) 2008

 Untitled (Corbi) 2005

No Mans Land 2004

An artist that I stumbled across during this project is Zander Olsen and the photographs of the trees he has wrapped.

‘This is an ongoing series of constructed photographs rooted in the forest. These works, carried out in Surrey, Hampshire and Wales,involve site specific interventions in the landscape, ‘wrapping’ trees with white material to construct a visual relationship between tree, not-tree and the line of horizon according to the camera’s viewpoint.’

 Text and images from http://zanderolsen.com/

Viewing the work of Genzken made me want to try similar techniques for myself using the same twig shape as I have been doing throughout the project. Peeling the top layer of cardboard off left me with a much more textural surface to work on, two I left alone and the third I painted with white emulsion. As the scale of the twigs differs quite dramatically from that of Genzken's mirrors I decided against using any newspaper or magazines over the shape but still wound thin strips of electrical tape around the shapes. I really like the effect created by this method and it really is pretty simple!

Out of the three shapes I bound this is my favourite, painting the shape white made the shadows stand out more. On the first twig I feel that there is too much conflict between the colours, probably because the shape I was winding the tape round was so small. I chose to just use a couple of colours on the final twig and think this looks much more successful.

Isa Genzken at Saatchi Gallery

Isa Genzken- Kinder Filmen

I viewed the work of Isa Genzken during my most recent visit to London as part of the Gesamtkunstwerk: New Art From Germany exhibition in the Saatchi Gallery. In this particular piece she has used newspaper, magazine pages and paint over mirrored surfaces and bound adhesive tapes in different colours over the work. I imagine this is a relatively easy, and rather quick method to use. 

Giuseppe Penone at Tate Modern

Giuseppe Penone- Tree of 12meters

During the summer I spent a fair about of time down in London; visiting exhibitions, sightseeing, shopping etc.ect.ect. I came across 'Tree of 12metres' in the Tate Modern gallery, it interested me at the time so I took a quick photo and I guess after that I kind of discarded the image as it had little relevance to what I was interested in at the time. It is only through the Collecting, Walking and the Creative Process that I rediscovered Penone's work and thought about how I could encompass some of the ideas behind this particular piece into my own work. I think it was more the scale of the pieces that I found attractive rather than anything else, although I do love love love the idea behind Penone's work (looking at the relationship between industry and nature, suggesting that a sensitive approach to materials is still possible in such an industrailised world.) So I began transforming my filmsy paper cut outs of the shape of the twig into larger shapes cut from plywood. 

Twig shapes cut from map and bookpage.

Twigs cut from large scale plywood board.

Guy Laramee -book landscapes

http://www.guylaramee.com/

Incredible!

Terry Winters

After studying the twig more and more I decided to start drawing the basic shape out in an almost blind drawing kind of style. This really allowed me to concentrate entirely on the shape and the twists and turns rather than just drawing what I thought the shape was like. I used a variety of materials (brown paper, book pages, fine liners, pencil, charcoal and chalk pastels) to make the shapes more interesting, I also think it adds a slight feeling of texture to the twig shape.

 

There are some similarities between the piece in my sketchbook and the work of Terry Winters in that the colour pallet is made up of the same shades and tones, the drawing is of natural forms and the marks that have been made have a naive quality about them. Although Winters' work isn't something I would usually like I am starting to appreciate some of the qualities of his pieces. 

'Defying Gravity'

Out of all the objects I have collected from the walk this twig is the one I found most interesting. I like the way it feels in my hand and the twists, turns and knots in the wood. I also think the lichen growing on the twig is quite intricate and almost pretty.

Photocopy of the objects

Herman de Vries

A comment was made about the way I'd arranged the objects for the previous photo- that they were lined up in an almost categorical way, similar to the collections by Herman de Vries.

example of de Vries's work

Collecting Objects

I wasn't initially intending to gather objects on the walk, I was more interested in the photos at the time, but I found myself picking up small bits and pieces at regular intervals on the journey. I hadn't really paid much attention to what I was collecting at the time, just whatever caught my eye I picked up and put in a bag. I gathered quite a variety of objects really. Not sure how useful they'll be.

Collecting Photographs

So, after the disaster that was the first walk, I decided I needed to go back and take some pictures that I could actually work with. Since I spent most of my time on the first walk looking at the ground I concentrated on the texture and patterns of the paths we walked on and the contrast between the more rural areas of the route and the more urban areas. I took a photo every so often along the route and arranged them in the order they were taken. 

I was expecting the photos taken in the woods and the park to be more interesting that those taken in of the tarmac pavements and roads simply because I thought the leaves and pebbles etc would be more visually exciting than the grey pavements.. However, I have to say that this isn't the case. The shapes and patterns made by the road markings etc are quite exciting and I think there's something about the photos all being similar shades of grey that I like.

Collecting, Walking and the Creative Process

Collecting, Walking and the Creative Process. As a starting point we were taken on a walk in an area which we could revisit easily. We were told to gather examples in the most effective way within the time we had.

The weather was terrible, my choice of footwear was inappropriate and my umbrella snapped. So, unfortunately I spent more time looking at the ground so I could avoid puddles and mud rather than making the most of the walk and gathering information. I did however, take a couple of mediocre photos.