WORKS & WORDS

Recursive Structure - ltd. edition artists book

The imagery from the recursive structures acted as an abstract yet instructional aspect to an artists book, which included the structural elements. alongside this when registering the 2 colours for printing the reverse page i found it created a print within its own right.

Mottisfont: A Place For Art - co-creative residency

This summer i was invited to take part in a co-creative residency at the National Trust property Mottisfont. Working alongside the artists in residence Anna Heinrich & Leon Palmer. 

Following the introduction to the project and the ideas of vistas and panoramas that were discussed in the workshops I was immediately struck by the architectural elements within the house.

Rather than looking out at the surrounding landscape, I was looking in, at the interior that revealed the history of its architecture; the romantic period decoration on the walls framing priory motifs, revealing the accumulated renovation of the building over time.

These became more prominent in differing ways; The cellarium’s mix of red brick, flint walls and stone looked almost clumsily jammed together with cement; or the east entrance, leading out to the river, detailing three time periods in collision - Tudor, Priory and Georgian - all meeting at a doorway. To enter you are entering three parallel histories.

These edges and collisions coupled with the illusions present within Mottisfont, acted as a catalyst. Using photographs, sketches and memory; cutting and layering them, imagining peeling back the walls like pages of a book, to see imagined structures of the past embedded within the building, creating fictional architectures to move through.

The project ended with an installation of the co-crreative residency groups responses in the piscina to coincide with Anna & Leon's installation piece in the loose boxes.

 imagery of the Recursive Structures screen-printed directly onto birch veneer and laminated onto polystyrene.

The cut shapes to break out of the frame mimicking the recursive structure imagery, and cut at angles as relief or floor pieces, to suggest the volumes of the structures that had been flattened out through the print. giving a sense of extrusion.

Test Installation with the recursive structure, the wall and floor work mocked out in paper, acts as an instructional figure to the sculpture.

Suggests the idea of recording the movements within and the relationship of the structure to the space.

With Torch And Spear: Constructing Collage - collage workshops

As part of the exhibition curated by Ian Dawson at Winchester School of Art, a couple of students and myself were asked to conduct a collage workshop. For the workshop, we appropriated imagery from artists exhibiting in the show and using the screenprinting constructed new works, this lead me to think about collage and how in art practice it is fairly young, paolozzi's works, some of which were on display were at the time of making (1950's) cutting edge and controversial. Through the work and closely looking at the show i realised how it could be seen as curated as one large collage, and how different artists had interpretted the idea of collage within their own work.

In the workshop we created a body of work that included collage of a formal and narrative structure that was based on the juxtaposition of imagery and others that had a more expressive post modern quality to them. the following week we took part in another workshop with the printmaking dept. using the works we had created and working into them further and cutting them up and situating them in the exhibition space. placing them against the architecture of the building, moving them into the 3d plane and arranging them against the works that they had been appropriated from.

Materials

In scaling the work up larger the choice of material had become a significant issue. As this was not to be a static structure but one that would be performed with it had to be fairly light to work with, ruling out a completely wooden structure. As a result i had chosen to go with a high density polystyrene. initially i had intended to cover this with a thin wooden skin, relating back to the minimalist object however on constructing the frames and panel i was drawn to the whiteness of the polystyrene. In the construction i realised however that the polystyrene would not be strong enough on its own. And while i had intended to veneer it I realised how difficult, through test pieces it would be to completely veneer the structure.

As a compromise veneering one side would give it the strength it requires while preserving the polystyrene as part of the work, rather than creating a simulacrum of it being a wooden structure.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DREDD - World Book Night 2013

We were invited to host some activities for World Book Night at Chapel Arts Studios in Andover. I took this as an opportunity to refine the Lino Printing Workshop I had done there that summer which had made me realise that it was better to have a more cohesive framework to operate in. I decided to test out the idea of a collaborative lino cut where a larger image was cut down into seperate pieces allowing the participants to cut a section of the image that would then be put back together and printed, with the various styles of cutting collaged together.

As the giveaway at World Book Night was of the Judge Dredd comic volume 'The Dark Judges' I decided to go with Judge Dredd as the image. the image was cut in a style that suggested the window panels in the comic.

Study for installation of video based performance work.

Stack and balancing of the monitors, relate the balancing on the monitors, travel through the monitors.

test projections with 'Potential Structure' of motion capture using xbox kinect and processing.

'White Square On Grey Ground' 2013

Following working with the recursive structures, i wanted to consider there relation to painting. In particular the frames relation to the stretcher and also its superficial relation through the Groys quote referencing Kazimir Malevich. 

Initially I intended to experiment with the addition of canvas to the balanced structure with the idea of it  locating it to the wall, the 'place of a painting' yet this didn't provide any further insight or trajectory. The canvas however, due to its materiality could be balanced on its own.

proceeding to experiment with this I performed the action recording its results.  The parameters i worked with were that i had 10 minutes to pick up he cloth and from it being laid out flat on the floor and configure it in a position where it would balance of its own accord. Once it was balanced that particular performance was over.  The 10 minute duration was dictated by the length of recording the video was captured, if i had not achieved it in that time then that performance was completed by the end of the recording.

Test Video : Xbox Kinect Motion Capture Performance

Collaboration with Sam Rains

As well as documenting the performances with video I collaborated with another student who was using the kinect for motion capture, in testing whether this could be done as an alternative, all though unsuccessful it opened up other ideas, In this sequence it was capturing my hands and feet and drawing a line between each. 

Like working with the structures I found the results held both the human characteristics as well as being geometric, although it was a shape it was also distinctly human in its movement. In this clip I experimented with balancing incorporating one of the aspects of the structures and also attempting to form the geometric shape into a 'perfect square'.

This testing opened up idea of how the kinect could be used in performative aspects, and while these were recorded it would be possible to incorporate a live feed.

'Recursive Structure' 2013

in scaling up the structures and working with them in the same vein as the smaller ones, creating free standing balanced structures i wanted to experiment with how this would work as a performative piece. No longer in the hand but on a much larger scale the structures became unruly and attempting to manipulate and work with them became something of a comical act.

Test prints.

'Potential Structures' 2013

Two recursions of 'potential structures' that hold themselves through balance.