Assignment 2 - Experimentation - test piece

Research - Article : "Why Painting Still Matters"

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/08/why-painting-still-matters-tate-britain

"The relationship between what I am painting and why isn't 100% clear to me to begin with. The subject is suspended in a way, and the result is more like a poem than a description, something that is evasive and slips away if you try to grab it. This painting is of a real place, but it is not to do with documenting or cataloguing; it is less a celebration of the ordinary than a demonstration of the idea that by painting something that is apparently nothing, it has the opportunity to become everything. The simple act of observation is a deep, mysterious and beautiful thing." Simon Ling

Assignment 2 - Making the Weave Visable

Support : Stretched canvas 60 x 50 cm

Process: Thick layers of gesso applied to the stretched canvas to obliterate the factory produced surface.  The gesso also functioned as a glue to adhere fabric to the support.   I wanted to see how a constructed weave would look on a two dimensional plane.  Many of the weaves within textiles are not readily visible so this was an exploration of how to make that more obvious.





Strips of shirt material were torn into strips.   These were then 'woven' together on the surface of the canvas.  In doing so, a form of 'weave' was made visible.  This was painted with gesso - the gesso allows the fabric to be glued down, whilst retaining its shape and form.  Once dry, the surface can take any form of paint but retain its shape.  The gesso also creates a surface with a good 'bite'.

Research - Lost in Lace Exhibition

http://www.lostinlace.org.uk/artists

Lost in Lace participating Artists

1  Nils Völker
2  Reiko Sudo
3  Chiharu Shiota
4  Piper Shepard
5  Kathleen Rogers
6  Suzumi Noda
7  Liz Nilsson
8  Ai Matsumoto
9  Atelier Manferdini
10  Lise Bjørne Linnert
11  Naomi Kobayashi
12  Iraida Icaza
13  Katharina Hinsberg
14  Diana Harrison
15  Alessia Giardino
16  Tamar Frank
17  Michael Brennand-Wood
18  Annie Bascoul
19  Outi Martikainen
20  Ana Holck

 

Particularly those marked in red.

Research - Alessia Giardino

"Polluted patterns "

 

 

"Conceived as an artistic response to the problem of urban decay and working on the ethos of re-appropriation of negative aspects of the city, ‘Polluted Patterns’ emerge from the surface grime by selective cleaning technologies, creating a sort of ‘Living Wall’. Light-sensitive photo catalytic white cement or paint, have been screen printed to create ‘negative’ or ‘invisible’ motifs, that gradually become visible over time, as pollutants discolor the area of the surface not protected by these technologies. That section becomes catalyst of air bones pollutants, while the nanotechnology breaks down pollutants in the air though preserving the surface from their deposition.

Wrapped door

Pollution is defining a lace-like pattern assumed as metaphor of the poisoned air wrapping buildings, cities, everyday environment and affecting people health. Beyond is decorative aspect, is showing the increasing level of poor air quality we breath." 
http://www.alessiagiardino.com/pattern.html

Research - Shinique Smith

Louise Bourgeois - Fabric Works

Fabric played an important role in Bourgeois’s life. She grew up surrounded by the textiles of her parents’ tapestry restoration workshop, and from the age of twelve helped the business by drawing in the sections of the missing parts that were to be repaired. A life-long hoarder of clothes and household items such as tablecloths, napkins and bed linen, from the mid-nineties Bourgeois cut up and re-stitched these, transforming her lived materials into art. Through sewing she attempted to effect psychological repair: ‘I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole’.The fabric drawings are abstract and heterogeneous, deriving their formal logic from the juxtapositions of patterns printed on their materials and the artist’s long-standing motifs. Over a six-year period their designs evolved, exploring more intricate geometries and increasingly incorporating collaged elements. Stripy and chequered drawings that Bourgeois began making in 2002 weave thin strips of her garments together, bending the modernist grid. Later works adopt polygonal structures, stitching the fabrics so that the patterns form concentric circles and spirals similar to spider webs and the vibrant mirrorings of a kaleidoscope. Rather than being minimalist, these morphing geometries are supple and embracive, softly corporeal.In juxtaposition to the drawings are three-dimensional pieces articulating an inescapable menace. The Cell, ‘Bullet Hole’ (1992), a black half-open, half-closed structure housing mysterious wooden orbs, bears the message ‘Fear makes the world go round’. ‘Peaux de Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles À Vendre’ (2006), refers through its title to the traditional song of the street peddlers Bourgeois remembered from her childhood, yet its elements are unsettling: flesh-coloured forms hanging within a wire mesh resemble body parts – perhaps breasts or uteri or male genitalia – without being clear precisely which. Such suggestive ambiguity is typical of Bourgeois’s sculptures, enabling one thing to slip into and signify another, disturbing the viewers’ conceptions. This is particularly true of ‘Crouching Spider’ (2003), a key figure in this exhibition. Ferocious looking, the spider is also a creature who protects and repairs. In the earlier work ‘Maman’ (1999) Bourgeois explicitly used the spider as a metaphor for her mother who was an expert at spinning and weaving. Yet here amongst the wealth of woven, frequently web-like fabric drawings it’s clear that its symbolic reach goes further, standing for the artist herself.

http://m.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/743/louise-bourgeois-the-fabric-works/cover/

 

Assignment 2 - Play

Support: Wire cooling tray

Materials and Process:  Strips of cotton wrapped around wire.

Assignment 2 - Experimentation - Test Piece

Support : Canvas Board

Assignment 2 -Experimentation - Test Piece

Assignment 2 - Experimentation

Research on Networks

Early in this project, I had taken an interest in the daily journeys of women who worked in the many shirt factories in the town.  I had looked at the census of 1911 and was struck by the vast numbers of women employed in the 40 or so factories in the town.  I had envisaged some form of visualisation of these journeys to an fro and what form that might take as a piece of art.  In exploring weaves and grids, the theory of networks would seem to be worth looking at as well. I've bought this book on the contemporary theory of networks to follow up on this idea.

Assignment 2 - Test Piece - Destroying the continuity of the weave

Support - Unmounted hessian fabric

Process - The hessian was first primed with gesso.  The hessian weave is still very visible in the background of this work.  Again, as in the last piece, torn strips of linen were partially destroyed by introducing holes into the surface of the weave and thereby 'disrupting its continuity'.  The work has been stained with washes of acrylic paint in tones of burnt umber and prussian blue.  I have found that these both help to make visible the surface of the painting while still keeping the work pared back.

Assignment 2 - Test Piece - Fabric and Grid

Support: This test piece began as a  small canvas board (5 x 7 inches)
Process:  I don't particularly like the factory finish of a primed canvas board so I resurfaced this using an unbleached cotton scrim that has an open weave.  Small pieces of white linen were partially destroyed by introducing holes into the surface.  This interrupted the course of the weave - the holes have pieces of fibre sitting up on the painted surface.  These were then primed with gesso which I have found to be necessary if the fabric is to accept paint satisfactorily.

Research - Anne Wilson - Liminal Networks

Artist works with material process of handwork and industry, networks through weave, stitch etc

Liminal - occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.





"My work evolves in a conceptual space where social and political ideas encounter the material processes of handwork and industry, where the organization of fields and the objects they help generate is constantly subverted by the swarming, anarchic energy of the objects themselves. Extrapolating from personal subjective rituals to observations of larger systems within the built environment, I investigate the micro- and macrocosms of networks and matrices through weave, stitch, crochet, knot, net, animation, and sound. Using pixilation and projection, I de-materialize and re-animate work that began on the border between drawing and object making, and remains liminal in whatever new medium it enters. My source materials - hair, linen, lace, pins, wire, glass, and thread - are the props of both domestic culture and larger social systems. I join together the points where these systems overlap, and where issues of sexuality and decorum, vitality and death construct meaningful relationships, and find release."


~ Anne Wilson

Tutor Report March 2014

	Open College of the Arts
	Tutor report

                                     

Student name	Siobhan Meehan	Student number	511948
Course/Module	Painting 3 ad	Assignment number

Overall Comments/ Skype tutorial

This tutorial was agreed as an extra tutorial in the event of you having changed painting course to Painting 3 advanced.

The skype session aimed to unpack where you are at present in your study, what your thinking is and a general direction to re-ignite your learning experience. Hopefully it also re-assured you that your project is worthwhile and valuable on many levels.

We discussed the latest work on your blog with emphasis on the conceptual impetus of the practice, I was impressed with the engagement of your research both practical and textual and was happy to advise you to re-read Luggage by Irrit Rogoff and suggested feminist geographers such as Gillian Rose that you could access. I strongly advised that you should aim to purchase Conceptual Art: a critical anthology. Edited by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, as this will inform your making and writing. Agnes Martin was discussed with relevance to the grid and we talked about keeping pared back and not throwing too much at each piece as you work towards defining your body of work.

With this in mind I advised you to make a series of experiments with the woven strips, grids, nets and paint, thinking about types of supports, paints and other mediums such as thread. The paint should be tested in relation to the tensile properties when the fabric is steeped in it- these sorts of experiments will lead you towards your new body of work.

Think carefully about the notion of absence: we discussed how the shirt could be read as expressive of absence through small indicators of the original material, a crease, fold, seam, button and so on… test these factors in your experiments.

Other relevant artists that you could look at (alongside the plethora already achieved) would be Eva Hesse, Emma Kuntz.

In relation to the history behind the project, I advised that this could be thought of as the impetus behind the work and not expressed as a literal translation into the work.

Your contextual studies tutor will be able to point you towards other reading and research but as a starting point here is some reading that might be of interest:

Kaprow, Allan, (ed) and Kelly, Jeff, 1993, Essays on The Blurring of Art and Life, California: University of California Press.

Kwon,Miwon, 2002 One Place After Another. Site Specific Art and Locational Identity, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The MIT Press.

Lippard Lucy.R. 1998. Lure of the Local, Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New York: The New Press.

You had some concerns about time and I advised that you speak to the OCA to gain advice, keeping me fully informed.

The next stage is to read the new course material carefully, then write your plan as you keep experimenting with materials and mediums. We agreed on a possible first assignment date and this is to be confirmed once you have spoken to the OCA.

Tutor name:
Michele Whiting


Date:11th March 2014

Next assignment due: 17th May 2014 TBC

Research - Diane Savona

http://www.dianesavonaart.com/about/

Christine Massey - Paintings and Installations

http://www.cmasseyart.com/

 

I noted this artist's work because she incorporates fabric and particularly shirt remnants and collars within her work.  Although the materials she uses relate to my area of interest, I want to make something much more sensitive than these pieces.  I don't know what the artist's thinking was but I find the colours slightly garish.  Compositionally, the pieces work and I like the large stitching evident in some areas.

Assignment 2 - Weave test piece

Support:  I used a large (22 x 30 inches) screen printing frame to construct a weave from torn strips of shirt material.  There is no support as such but I'm considering ways in which this might ultimately hang.  Could it work as a suspended piece without being attached to a hard background support or 

could it be work as a weave within a frame?  

Process:  I firstly deconstructed the shirts and then proceed to tear these into strips. Using drawing pins, I  wove these together  - one of the fabrics was dark with a grid like design and the other was light with fine stripes.  I wasn't sure how mixing the pattern/colour of the fabric would affect the outcome since I intended to paint over it.  I deliberately did not obliterate the underlying pattern when I came to paint it so the pattern can still be seen in image 1.

Although this is still early days in terms of what pictorial elements, (if any) will appear on these weaves, I am looking at this from a number of standpoints.  Yes, it is a weave but it also functions as a grid.  It could be digital pixels, it could be building blocks.  It speaks of organisation and repetition and yet its underlying structure is firstly a thread - a thread that functions 

1.  Completed Weave with Acrylic paint

2.  Close up of weave in process of being painted

3.  How the weave was constructed on the frame