beatrix7robinson

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STUDIO PRACTICE 6 RESEARCH FILE 

CONTENTS OF KEY THEMES:

*DEGREE SHOW DISPLAY 

*THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE

*FOUND OBJECTS & ARCHIVING 

*DOCUMENTING PLACE & MAPPING & LIMINALITY IN THE LANDSCAPE

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DEGREE SHOW DISPLAY-TEXT PIECES

RICHARD LONG, Documentary from textworks

Text pieces describing walks that Richard Long took.

When discussing his use of text as part of his practice, Long commented:

one of the reasons why I started making text works is because it gave me another possibility, not using the camera or not necessarily making a sculpture. I can use words and they can give me different possibilities than I would get from using a camera. So, taking photographs does a certain type of job, records one moment, makes an image. And words do a different job. They can usually record the whole idea of a walk. They have a different function, sometimes a more complete function.

Although there are graphic qualities to the text, the text pieces are very straightforward, only descriptive words and not very long pieces of text.

What I’m taking from this research:

-Long saying the words do a different job to his photography/drawing. Usually recording the whole notion of the walks he’s been on. The same applies to my use of text within my inventory. The reason I want to display a piece of text alongside my work is to supply the viewer with a little more information than just visual elements. And add to my forensic investigation quality to my work- the facts of the project making it look forensic. 

-Reconsider my text pieces, maybe a sentence or two is just enough?  -I think, leave my inventory codes out of the piece of text that is going on the wall, that information is already in my books. 

What ESSENTIAL INFORMATION do I want to supply ON TEH WALL???

-GLOVES -THAT ARE FOUND -OVER 200 IN LESS THEN A YEAR  -PEOPLE HAVE ALSO NOTICED THEM AND CONTRIBUTED

maybe that is all the information I need!! 

To do next: Print text pieces on vinyl and TEST

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DEGREE SHOW DISPLAY

Rachel Whiteread

The work itself not strongly influencing my practice, however, Whiteread’s use of the floor- displaying these objects as a collection? in a grid format. 

In relation to me displaying my found gloves on the wall or the floor in a grid.

The final image in this post, Whiteread's resin cast of a door. The item is a fragile and very delicate piece of work but it’s displayed in a very simple, leaning and propped up way. 

What I’m taking from this research: -The simple way of propping up the work against the wall in a care freeway, it’s making the work noticeable and being in an art gallery.

-Whitehead's use of the grid and how the floor is the surface that objects are displayed on. The colour of the floor? is that important? 

*If I want to display on the floor, Ii need to consider the floor which I present the work on. 

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DEGREE SHOW DISPLAY-FRAGMENTS ON THE WALL

These Images show research into ways to display flat fragments of imagery on the wall, leaving enough room between the images to give them space but also relate to one another. 

From this, to consider with the display of my own work: -The rule of the odd number- allowing the eye to lead on from one piece to the next, just the right amount of information. If not displaying a small amount of imagery in a total of an odd number, and having lots of fragments, then a variety of large and small scale is important. 

The first image in this post, shows a cutting from some sort of newspaper, with text and imagery. Displayed on the wall with a bulldog clip, it’s interesting what this suggests 

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FOUND OBJECTS AND ARCHIVING/ THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE

Source Magazine- David O’mara 

Walking and collection found detritus from the street, mapping his routes through the items which are found on the floor (finding and searching becoming the purpose of wondering in the streets.)

Combing these found fragments, two parts photographs of found things in the streets and collected found papers. To create and put them together as a piece of work.

What I’m taking from this research: -Bringing very different things together in the ways that they are displayed, he’s building a collection within itself by linking these photographs and the attaching onto collected paper. 

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THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE

Ian Breakwell-The walking man diary

-Breakwell seeing the extraordinary within the ordinary, noticing curiosities within the banal everyday routines -1970′s observing the daily passing of an unknown old man he often saw walking around. He began photographing him from his window. Although the man appeared to be walking purposefully, he never seemed to be going anywhere in particular. Out of the blue, disappearance from this man’s routine walks, and a sudden reappearance a year later. Lead to the making of the work. -Collage, photographs, diary pages and written text pieces.

What I'm taking from this research: -observing the empty space, with a focus on someone’s presence -Although there is little information for the viewers about the man, the format of the work represents the repetitive, yet seemingly aimless, the route through the landscape of the city.  -Measuring this observation through diary form- Generating a documentary and factual element to the work creating an almost forensic investigation. -The use of typography in the work is not subtle but it’s it consistent and categorized in order, the work is essentially made up of typography and photographs, but still drawn into the work. 

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THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE

Keith Arnatt-PICTURES FROM A RUBBISH TIP 1988-89

Series of large colour photographs featuring close-up shots of rubbish that has been dumped at a local tip.

Photographing select pieces of discarded food– such as bread, chicken bones and vegetables – that lie on clear and pale-coloured plastic bags. Sharp focus on the closest part of the rubbish and in natural daylight. The plastic bags work as an element to both reflect and diffuse the surrounding daylight, highlighting the various hues of rubbish so the scene becomes brightly coloured and partly abstract.  

*Everyday subjects being photographed but captured in a way that the viewer doesn’t quite get what they’re looking at, immediately, despite the object being something we are all familiar with.

*The series of photos are about looking – about the difference between knowing something and seeing something; the fact that we might know that this is a bit of orange or a cake, but when we see it taken out of context, photographed in a way we don’t normally see, it can look like objects of beauty. OBJECTS OUT OF CONTEXT

In this way, the discarded, mouldy food items can be seen as objects of beauty when presented in a different setting, especially when using framing techniques, colour and lighting and that enhance the visual appeal of the images.

 What I’m taking from this research:

- Within my current body of work, photographing lost gloves is just a means for becoming fragments of other pieces of work. It’s useful in general for my interests in documentary photography to consider taking photos of found everyday objects in better quality. It would benefit the notions behind what I’m photographing and why. 

-As a separate  Arnat is attempting to conceal the context of the image, so that at first glance, the subject of the photograph is unidentifiable as such-putting the viewer in the same position as he was when he first noticed and picked up these half-buried objects’

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FOUND OBJECTS AND ARCHIVING 

The Object, Documents of contemporary art-Antony Hudek

Introduction to the book, asking what is an object? Which object? Aestheticized and spiritualized objects, like the artwork or the idol? Or flotsam and jetsam, rejected objects and other detritus? 

This book attempts to answer these questions 

Can we consider imaginary things objects — dreams, concepts, others still more formless? And what about objects that, though dead or lifeless, are nonetheless not mute, like fossils, glyphs, and other excavated objects, which can be animated and made to speak across centuries? Indeed, how are we to think about this rapport between objects and subjects? And what role does this subject play — the one who apprehends, dominates, and make use of the object?

. The book’s aim is to defamiliarize the inquiry into the object, as well as expand the perception and experience of the object in more everyday, playful, or artistic contexts. 

Objects are not reducible to the material, perceptible, and consumable goods we commonly refer to as ‘objects.’ The world of objects, however ‘ordinary,’ is a trove of disguises, concealments, subterfuges, provocations and triggers that no singular, embodied, and knowledgeable subject can exhaust.

What distinguishes The Object in an essential way from many of its sibling volumes is its structure and the multiple parameters for reading that this structure allows, not to say dictates. Whereas previous books in the series are comprised predominantly of longer, more conventional essay-type pieces, The Object is formed out of an abundant constellation of excerpts, many of which don’t even exceed a page’s length. (The Object’s table of contents is more than three pages longer than Participation’s.) Owing to this dispersed formation, the book summons the active involvement of the reader to organize meaning and navigate more personal trajectories through the disparate — and in some cases opposing or incompatible — texts. The reader can also duck in, consume a page or a paragraph, and then set the book back down. Either way, The Object is not a uniform literary product with definitive boundaries and prescribed modes of reading.

The first section, “Subject, Object, Thing,” serves as the philosophical scaffolding. In it can be found a grasp of the object as it occurs in the (mostly French and German) philosophical tradition of the 20th century. Hudek draws upon structuralist psychoanalytic theory, for example citing Lacan’s text on the “true secret” of the thing (das Ding), which stands for the dumb object that precedes and therefore resides outside of representation, consciousness, and language. As an ontological analog to Lacan’s argument, there is Marcus Steinweg’s defense of the foreignness and uncanniness of the object, or in his words, the “side of the object that is necessarily turned away from the subject.”

Though it’s the dominant trend, the texts in this section don’t exclusively study the object from so abstract a perspective. Hito Steyerl’s “A Thing Like You and Me,” another highlight, proposes a renewed consideration of the image as a material thing subject to contingent forces and energies, rather than an idealized representation: “[the] image is … a thing simultaneously couched in affect and availability, a fetish made of crystals and electricity, animated by our wishes and fears—a perfect embodiment of its own conditions of existence.”

The rest of the book takes aim at the object from the perspective of its obsolescence, its everydayness.

Ultimately, the book is a messy but fleshy and substantial weave of very diverse material, and is therefore meant more to be used — as reference, inspiration, education. One may also choose to take some of its lessons more seriously and manipulate the book, convert it, and use it beyond how it was meant: as a doorstop, an oversized coaster, a bludgeon, as tinder, as decoration (it’s not a bad looking book), or as a present to an MFA candidate you know who, inside or outside the classroom, is liable to complain about “society’s” limited conceptions of objects and objectivity.

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FOUND OBJECTS AND ARCHIVING 

Sherry Turkle- EVOCATIVE OBJECTS BOOK- things we think with

Autobiographical essays where the author asked contributors to explore the emotional and intellectual connections that people make with everyday objects. The book of thirty-four short essays where the titles for each section categorise the type of emotion and intellectual stimulation that the objects have inspired for the authors. 

Chapters of the book which influence my interests in objects: -Objects of Transition and Passage------Finding liminality within the                                                                               emotions linked to these objects. 

-Objects of Mourning and Memory

The author is interested in the reasons people develop emotional attachments to objects and the extent to which such attachments can inspire thought.

Within each of the essays, there is Turkle has paired each of the essays with a further description consisting of a "short excerpt drawn from philosophy, history, literature, or social theory" These extra chapters of information connect the emotions linked to the objects with more theory and concerns of social history.

What I’m taking from this research:

-Turkle explains in the introduction that working on the book made it an evocative object in its own right. The same could be said for my own documentation of the found gloves. Without meaning to I’ve become attached to the notion of finding gloves, as well as etching these textures.

-Although the objects themselves are not of great influence to my practice, it seemed the authors writing about these objects and their emotions shifting over time, ageing. Not necessarily the object as a companion in life experience"

-Paired with the texts about these objects, are black and white photographs framing each essay, assist in making direct visual connections with each reader. Having so many photographs, which in parts of the book take up whole pages is highlighting the importance of the visual connections between people and objects.

-The images lend the book an aura of immediacy that encourages readers to reflect upon the pictured objects and upon their own evocative objects- the same could be said with my work-Immediacy of the photographs finding these gloves, whilst still allowing time for the viewers to consider these object with my coding/inventory.

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FOUND OBJECTS AND ARCHIVING

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FOUND OBJECTS & ARCHIVING

Artist Talk-Laura White-OBJECTS IN ART

Laura White’s work is very broad in process with work in sculpture, installation, workshops and digital. -Engagement and negotiation with the world of stuff, material and objects

-The stuff you work with, the materials, is what changes the work, not your thoughts or narratives that change.-Understanding the world around and human conditions through stuff and categories of objects.

Key points made in the talk: -The start of her work and inspiration is from categories of objects and collections of objects. Everyday encounters with stuff. How the relationship with objects depends and materials changing throughout the year. 

-Gaining information from stuff around me’. Humans intertwining with objects

-New ideas of what work happens in the location from the objects that can be found. With this, writing text in the locations-citing text. 

-The artist relationship to handling stuff materials that you interact WITH the accessibility of materials 

-Measuring time passing through things and objects breaking and deteriorating is a way of learning the qualities of objects. The vulnerability of objects they are on the edge of something

Space and location- the digital and physical cannot be separated anymore 

-Understanding the value we humans give to objects-object biographies how these objects change and shift Text alongside these objects.

What I’m taking from this research:

Notions of the use of objects in art, from a different perspective other than finding everyday objects. It is interesting seeing an artist work with everyday objects when the focus is not location, finding these objects. It’s is the qualities of an object as it is, and the properties it has in relation to humans-as the viewer of art. 

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FOUND OBJECTS AND ARCHIVING

The Object Book-Documents of Contemporary Art from Whitechapel Gallery

Gabriel Orozco This post shows me highlighting key points from the chapter in this book on objects in art. Although It was not what I was expecting, I was hoping to get information on ways objects can be used to map locations. It discusses the work of Gabriel Orozco, where the artist gathered a selection of abandoned items, fragmented and whole, over 1200 and had the items organised and categorised into groups. Also in this piece of work, is 12 framed photographic grids.

Questions and ideas raised in this research: -Without Orozco intervention, nothing would have happened to these fragments, they would have decomposed into the ground. -The narrative of these objects only comes from the way they are displayed on a large platform, like specimens -What these remains suggest about the owners of the objects- questioning human identity _What has been found has been categorised into groups

What I’m taking from this research: -Categorizing the found items, I’ve done the collecting and the documenting but not categorized. Framing imagery in a grid! I’m excited by this idea of a grid being used for categorizing the found gloves and I think It will translate well to the flat imagery I have on the wall, my etchings tiled. 

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FOUND OBJECTS AND ARCHIVING

MARK DION Archaeology, Tate Thames Dig

These photographs show my research in to American Artist Mark Dion

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FOUND OBJECTS & ARCHIVING 

Artist Talk-Fay Ballard 

Studio practice is comprised of drawing which focuses on autobiography interests in psychoanalysis. Work has for the last five years been based around searching for her mother who died when the artist was seven. Memories, presence and absence, investigating, documenting narratives and identity through found and collected objects. Ballard's practice is drawing the real thing and then drawing from memory. Displaying in one place, a box of imagery- the things you’ve collected become your own personal cabinet of curiosities. ‘Bringing the human absence back to life’.Alongside the box of drawings ‘memory box,’ the artist has an inventory. 

Questions and ideas raised in the research: Having an inventory, giving factual information makes it forensic. This is a very relevant point the artist made which can benefit my practice of wanting to create a forensic investigation of finding the gloves. Making an inventory is a simple way of documenting and organising the collection and have text and codes in and remain consistent in the display. Not get overwhelmed with too much information, literally categorize what it is which I have found In a document, as my issue at the moment is that I have a variety of visual information. 

Drawing the objects Photography is supporting the artwork, the finding and documenting but the artist feels that drawing has a more tactile approach ‘small drawings about collision’. For me- maybe drawing and collage? I photograph because it is immediate and the gloves are not permanently where I find them, I spot them when on route to somewhere else but as I’m gathering information and my practice has leaned more to psychogeography maybe drawing is a good way of bringing the landscape into the work through memory? 

What I’m taking from this research: Creative an inventory of the gloves I have collected. The facts of that glove. The name, date, location, bring coding back into my work from sp5 with the coordinates of that location. 

Further Thoughts: Evocative Objects: things we think book-companions to our emotions. Maybe objects in an artwork is a thing which suits a certain generation as today for the younger generation, waste is such a big thing. People don’t hold onto possessions as much, it is a memory to a time when people kept hold of things. However, the witty thing with lost gloves is that this an object which will never be worth lots because of its impractical use. This is just a thought at the back which is worth remembering when considering the aim of the work I make for the audience’s- what I want the work to say.

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DOCUMENTING PLACE & MAPPING 

LIMININAL LANDSCPAES

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DOCUMENTING PLACE AND MAPPING

Edgelands- Paul Farley and Michael Symmons-Roberts

Writing about the unnoticed, forgotten and ignored spaces of land between countryside and rural land in a poetic way.  A contrast of something we should disregard but being observed in a poetic beautiful way .

What I’m taking from this research: -Discussing and observing the human footprint in the ignored landscape through old scrap yards full of old abandoned cars, pathways, shipping containers, debris and landfill in waste spaces under bridges. It has been interesting to read this and helpful in thinking about objects, human presence and human absence in relation to my own work, It’s helpful to see someone else writing about how the artificial remains left from humans in the landscape can evoke ideas of time passing and a way of measuring the changes/ contrasts of man-made and artificial in the landscape.  Visually there is not much to extract from this book, other than debris like mattresses abandoned under bridges, toasters and furniture by car parks. but it’s helped me to reflect on what key idea’s I want the viewers of my work to notice and how I can communicate human presence through objects in the landscape. 

Quotes: -Rubbish is a part of the textures of edgelands. it can be encountered, singularly here, often in surreal juxtaposition….summery -The landscape always changing, never the same, seeing disregarded objects neglected in these wastelands is a way of measuring time passing. 

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DOCUMENTING PLACE & MAPPING

Richard Maybe- The Unofficial Countryside, BBC Radio 3-Edgeland Documents, Memories and Explorations

-Alongside my earlier research into the term Edgelands by Paul Farley, this article which references that book, it’s useful to have photographs alongside the text 

Further research into the book written by Mabey- a link to an article discussing the republishing of ‘An unofficial countryside’ 

https://gerryco23.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/the-unofficial-countryside/