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