Thats Lace!!

I have been looking at lace making as part of my textile work and have found these wonderful lace images - unbelievable detail.

The start of an idea

Whilst walking during the summer I came across several memorial benches and have decided to look into using them as a basis for a project.  Looking into the positioning of the benches and the memories being celebrated.

 

Wolfgang Tillmans

I saw Tillmans work at the Serpentine gallery during the summer and particularly liked these style of photographs.

Shoot!!

I saw this peice peice in the Tate Modern and just love the idea of creating a completly random image based on peoples choices.

Niki de Saint Phalle - Shooting Picture

Plastic bags are filled with paint and then covered  with plaster, people were then asked to shot at the image - in this case Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

Paddy Hartley

Project Façade is a collaborative piece of work by Paddy Hartley, biomaterial scientist Dr Ian Thompson and the Gillies archive curator Andrew Bamji, looking into the personal and surgical stories of soldiers who, disfigured in battle during the first world war, had to undergo pioneering surgical reconstruction.

Hartley embarked on this series of work intending to tell the surgical as well as personal stories of individual men, not wanting them to be defined purely by their injury and subsequent surgery.

A small group of 10 men were selected to study, and Hartley set out to find as much information on these men as he could, visiting friends and relatives as well as searching the archives at the National Records office. 

Hartley produces digital and hand embroidered sculptures using uniforms similar to those worn by the injured men, to present fragmented personal histories of the men who endured long and painful reconstructive surgery developed by Sir Harold Gillies and his team.

Hartley builds individuality into the uniforms through their service history.  Not just through wear and tear but also with the addition of rank, insignia, service chevrons, wound bars and medals.

Words and text, including case notes and testimony from their relatives, are stitched into the fabric, alongside photographs and other mementos, to make the uniforms speak – to tell their terrible, courageous and personal stories.

“The military uniform, itself a record of the wearers military service, seemed a perfect vehicle to tell these fragmented ‘patchwork’ stories.  The patients ending up ‘wearing their history on their faces for the rest of their lives.” Paddy Hartley

For more information visit http://www.projectfacade.com/

Analogue or Digital

 Examples of my first year photography work

Black and white analogue shot

Panoramic - veiw from a box

And finally some black and white images based on the photographer Vera Lutter.

Vera Lutter

I found this artist during a photography project and her methods of taking photographs go right back to old school but with her own twist.

 This is one of my favourite photographs by Lutter, the slight movement of the gondolas during the exposure give them a wispy appearance in contrast to the solid yet decoratively formed structures behind.

Movement in the pictures of her transport series are the most clear. It is registered as a blur or as ghost like figures, for example in Zeppelin the exposure time for the image was 4 days. 

However the Zepplin spent just 2 of these days in front of the camera as it was taken out for testing; this resulted in the translucent Zepplin that you see here where you can see many of the details of the hanger through the airship.

Lutter practices photography in its elementary form, working with the original principle of light drawn image.

The Camera Obscura technique is one of the oldest methods of writing with light, the camera obscura, literally meaning dark room, is essentially a large pinhole camera.

Lutter begins by setting up large walk in sized cameras using wooden boxes, shipping containers or entire rooms to capture light.

Windows are covered in black plastic, and a tiny hole is cut in the centre to create the aperture.

As light passes through this aperture into a darkened chamber an inverted image appears on the wall opposite.

Huge sheets of photosensitive paper are hung inside the camera opposite the aperture hole, with the distance between the two determining the scale of the image.

The aperture must remain small in order to keep the image in focus; therefore her exposures are necessarily long, ranging from a few hours to days or sometimes even several weeks.

Lutter inhabits her room-sized cameras while her negatives develop, it takes her 20 -30 mins to adjust her eyes to see the projection. Lutter describes what she sees whilst in the camera...

“The fastest movements do not stay in the photograph, but I see the cars driving through the image, I see trains, boats going by, birds and airplanes flying through. It’s like watching a film, but the image is reversed, upside down, and very crisp.”

En Vogue

Another of my peices looking into identity - this peice looks at how the models in glossy magazines often have little or no identity.

Hidden Identity??

After having looked at eyes at the begining of the year and the Wickerman as part of my animation work I began looking at masks as a form of identity. Do masks designed and decorated by an individual show who they are or hide thier identity??

My Eyes Only

After my successful sculpture project I moved on to looking at prints of my own eyes.

Lino print

Drypoint

Monoprint

Mike Roles

During a visit to Broomhill Sculpture Gardens I discovered the artist Mike Roles and find his work fascinating.

Roles sculptures deal with the human condition in an uncompromising and perhaps sometimes disturbing manner, reflecting on the relationship between body and mind, time and decay, life and death. And when seen for the first time, its emotional intensity and rawness of its message may come as a shock.

The Prophet - on display at Broomhill Sculpture Gardens

Some of Roles earlier work

 

 

Using materials such as resins, fibreglass and plastic in conjunction with the life casts.  Roles was determined to produce figures that incorporated photographic elements, which were often printed onto tissue and trapped inside the resin.

In your dreams

So I start off the year and my first problem is - what am I going to base my work on??  I trawled the internet and books searching for inspiration and finally came up with the idea of working on dreams, and more specifically eyes in dreams.

My first peice of work was sculptural and resulted in the following peice...

A New Chapter

In September 2009 I began a new chapter in my life.  An oppertunity had opened and I decided now was the time to get a degree and enable me to choose my career path for my future.  This blog is now going to become my thought process and a place to display examples of artists work that are relevant to my own, and/or work I find exciting :-)

Happy Blogging