siennabarton

[siennabarton]

When I began this semester, I was really trying to rebel against my previous methods of making. I didn’t want to create any more highly detailed patterns that took me hours to complete, I wanted to try something a bit looser – like the works I’ve included by Etel Adnan and Cy Twombly, and the Abstract Expressionists. I started doing more scribbly artworks, but they didn’t really say anything. It was just scribbly drawing for scribbly’s sake. This exercise was probably helpful in that it made me realise that I’m attracted to a highly detailed, obsessively drawn patterns for a reason.

Working within a pattern that I’ve hand drawn provides structure for me, and it allows me to focus my energy on which colours I want to use – rather than trying to split my attention between colour and form. Like Hiromi Tango, Yayoi Kusama and Agnes Martin, working obsessively on tiny details is closely related to my own psyche. Chronic and severe anxiety makes it so that my mind and body are always on high alert, and I constantly feel like I have energy to expend. Painting detailed patterns and weaving baskets gives my busy mind something stable to think about, and it also makes me tired. It’s been the best thing for my mental health by a mile.

I’m really interested that most of the artworks I’ve included in my blog are by women artists, with the exception of works by Dan Colen, Cy Twombly and Damien Hirst – with Colen and Hirst having close ties to the concept of “the edible”. While Colen uses actual chewed-up foodstuffs (gum), Hirst evokes confectionary with his candy coloured dollops of paint.

I don’t know that my work is specifically feminist, but I definitely think it is feminine, and this is reflected in the artists I’ve chosen to feature on this blog. There’s something very domestic and feminine about the way that the quilters of Gee’s Bend and Sonia Delaunay “make do” with materials that they have on them, and repurpose them into art objects. Saving and repurposing materials is very important to my own art practice, and I try to minimise any waste that I can. What I’m learning about my approach to these discarded items, is that I think there’s beauty in them, and I ask myself: why waste these beautiful objects by discarding them, when I could honour them by making them into something else?

Throughout this semester, my focus has really shifted from free-play to understanding my processes of making. I’ve been told, and I believe that (at this level of academia) it’s not enough to just play if I don’t understand why I’m playing – so I’ve been doing a lot of introspection. Through looking at my own artwork and the work of others, I’ve been able to see that my artwork is process-driven, and that the process itself provides me with feelings of catharsis. I’m able to transform old, scrappy objects into something beautiful but I’m also able to transform feelings of anxiety and hypervigilance into something else: a release.

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I’ve also been thinking a lot about Agnes Martin, who used her very precise method of making to help contain a chaotic mind - at least that’s what I gathered while watching the 2016 documentary ‘Agnes Martin: Before the Grid’ (dir. Kathleen Brennan and Jina Brenneman). I see this as being closely related to Yayoi Kusama’s obsessive way of working, except where Kusama lets her work sprawl to the edges of her canvas and beyond, Martin’s work is very contained. I wonder what makes one artist cover every surface with patterned nets (Kusama) and another contain her patterns to a neat square (Martin)?

Agnes Martin

 The Islands, 1961

 oil and graphite on canvas

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Damien Hirst, Veil Painting (2017)

I’m always really fascinated about the discourse surrounding Damien Hirst’s work. Whenever I’ve brought up his “dot” paintings in class, I’ve been met with sighs and occasionally a muttered “I hate those” and I’m not really sure why. Is it related to his use of assistants? Though, I do follow him on instagram and these works seem less reliant on assistants than his sculptural works. Is it because he repeats different iterations of the same thing? Or is it to do with something as simple as tall poppy syndrome? I’m not sure if tall poppy syndrome exists overseas, but I think there is often resentment towards artists who are as commercially successful as Hirst.

Yes, I can admit that these paintings are objectively outrageous. Every individual, thick, gooey dollop of oil paint represents tens, if not hundreds of dollars - and I cannot begin to imagine how much these paintings would have cost to make. Where the quilters re-use old materials, Hirst spends exorbitant amounts of money on his paints and canvas. Like his gem-encrusted skulls, these works are luxurious (possibly, needlessly so). Maybe this is the root of the resentment directed at him?

Personally, I love Hirst’s sense of colour in these paintings. Like my own gooey paintings, there’s something yummy and edible about the combination of the colour and texture of the paint. It’s an indulgent work, and the colours make me think of indulging in a sickly sweet dessert.

Damien Hirst, Veil Paintings

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Sonia Delaunay, Couverture de Berceau, 1911. Courtesy of the artist and Musée d’Art Moderne.

There’s something beautifully feminine and domestic about this work by Sonia Delaunay. It’s a quilt that she made for her son when he was a baby, which she stretched like a painted canvas once he got too big to use it any more. Much like the quilters of Gee’s Bend, there’s a sense of implied pragmatism and aversion to waste. Rather than throwing something away once it’s no longer useful, these women have repurposed those items into something else.

I really admire this way of working, always conscious of the materials I’m using, and I squirrel away anything that’s left over - figuring I might be able to make it into something else some day.

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I’m really inspired by the work of the Gee’s Bend quilters from Alabama, USA. These women created beautiful, intricate quilts for their loved ones made from mostly recycled materials. They would save old clothes, bed-sheets and curtains, that were no longer useful to them (maybe they’d been worn out or stained) and turn them into a useful object: a quilt. Often, when making quilts to memorialise a specific person, these women would make the quilt using that person’s own belongings.

I love these works for a number of reasons. They’re incredibly intricate and completely made by hand, without the use of measuring tools - which is why they’re a bit wonky. But, what I love most is that there is a real sentimental value to the materials used on any given quilt. Not only does using recycled materials reduce wastage, but it embodies the object with a narrative.

In my own textile artworks, I also use recycled materials. I source fabric from local clothing brands, my own collected yarns leftover from knitting projects, and my grandparents scour op shops looking for single balls of secondhand yarn. I’ve even, at times, used rags covered in paint. The process of weaving my baskets takes a long time to physically make, and I think the collective of secondhand materials adds to the object’s implied sense of history and time. The baskets become like time-capsules, not only of the making process itself, but also the histories of the individual materials themselves).

I think that with the Gee’s Bend’s quilters, there is a sense of “making do” and using whatever materials were on hand, but Ihe also believe their method of making to be an intentional way of honouring those materials and they people they originally belonged to.

Agatha Bennett My Way Early 1970s

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Every night for the past week, I’ve been drawing in my sketchbook. My left hand has been sore from pinching a nerve while basket-making, so drawing provides relief in that it only uses my right hand.

I’ve been drawing in an A4 sketchbook with my collection of markers, some expensive and pristine, while others are cheap and scratchy. It’s been a really nice, low-stakes way of creating and I probably wouldn’t have thought to turn back to sketching it if I hadn’t been looking at Minna Gilligan’s Instagram page.

I’ve found it quite freeing because the expense related to painting can make starting an artwork really overwhelming. This has been a really joyful way of making for me.

Sketchbook scan 20th October 2013. By Minna Gilligan

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Lizard Tail (Breaking Cycle) - Hiromi Tango, 2016 at the Art Gallery of South Australia

I originally saw this work at the Art Gallery of South Australia back in 2016. it consisted of a few large soft sculptures, which were comprised of lots of small wrapped fragments of material. 

Part of the exhibition involved a video of the artist dragging along her artwork as she walked across the horizon. This reminded me of her artist statement that goes alongside this artwork: which states that the act of wrapping feels like she’s being visited by an outside entity that compels her to wrap the fabric.

What I find really interesting about her artist statement is that she says this process is not cathartic for her, in fact, it almost feels like she’s being possessed. This is very different to my method of making. While I do feel very compelled to keep making my work once momentum builds, the process is actually very cathartic for me. I think producing a large, heavy artwork can be symbolic of the large, heavy emotions that I feel. 

 https://hiromitango.com/Lizard-Tail-Breaking-Cycle

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[Yayoi Kusama in her studio in New York, 1960

Courtesy of Louisiana Museum of Modern Art]

During my last group critique, I presented a a grid painting and a textile sculpture. My intention was that these works are both objects that were created in an obsessive state. This messaging was better conveyed in the textile work, which was huge - but it was suggested that the painting needed to be bigger to say what I wanted it to say. Creating intricate patterns is very soothing for me, and I can spend hours on one work.

I was reminded of the scale of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Net paintings from the 1960s, and how they were clearly created during periods of obsessive mark making. For Studio 4, I’ve decided that I really need to work with a bigger scale to effectively convey my artistic process.

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Emily Simek - “Limber” (2021) at George Paton Gallery, Melbourne

This piece is part beaded-sculpture and part performance art, as spectators were able to watch Simek continue working on her long line of beads. What I find interesting about this piece is that it directly shows viewers how long it takes to make. By watching Simek bead for a few minutes, one can surmise that making the long chain of beads would take hours and hours.

Recently, I’ve been wondering how I might be able to show how much time it might take to make one of my artworks - and if one way to do that might be through performance art? This is particularly relevant to my textile artworks, which take hours, but uninitiated might not know so.

Another question is: is it important for me to literally convey the time put into an artwork? Yes, each of my works take a long time, but I don’t know if the time itself is what’s most important? Rather, I think it’s about the actual process and the suspension of time that seems to happen when I’m absorbed in creating.

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When presenting one of my more tactile works, a gooey bowl made from dried acrylic paint remnants, someone in my group critique suggested I look into the work of Dan Colen. It’s hard to put it into words but I absolutely LOVE his work! There’s something so clever about using an everyday edible material like gum to replicate the impasto texture of thickly applied paint. A lot of my painting uses thickly applied paint and evokes something relating to “the edible”, but when I showed Dan’s work to my family - they all went “yuck”.

I think there is something interesting to be said here about feelings of desire and wanting to eat something that is artificial, but feeling disgusted when it’s the actual edible thing itself. I wonder if it’s because applying chewed gum to a canvas is subverting its intended use? Or, is it because the gum has been chewed? Chewed gum is something we’re repulsed by when we find it stuck under tables or on the bottom of our shoes - presumably, not because of its stickiness but its intermingling with human saliva. Much like strands of hair that have fallen onto the ground, discarded chewed gum might remind us of something that’s disgustingly human?

I’ve gone on a tangent here, and I’m not sure how this specific conversation relates to my work, but I’m keen to further explore the relationship my work has to food.

Dan Colen

 "Silent Treatment"

 gum on canvas, 2010.

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I watched the 2005 documentary ‘The New York School’ (dir. Michael Blackwood). It focuses on the American Abstract Expressionists - people like Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko: all men.

Though it was interesting to learn a bit more about American Abstract Expressionism, including automatic painting’s relationship to surrealism and psychoanalysis, it was disheartening to see a doco only about male artists.

Lee Krasner did briefly feature but it was only to talk about her husband, Jackson Pollock - even though I’d classify her as an Abstract Expressionist.

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As with Etel’s scribbled pencil drawings, I’m drawn to Cy Twombly’s expressive scribbly markings.

My hope is that the expressive markings that I make in this series of drawings will inform my artistic practice as a whole. My work right now feels very planned, and I’m wondering what would happen if I left more up to chance.

Cy Twombly 1971

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I already mentioned the work of Etel Adnan in Critical Frameworks A, but her work feels even more relevant now.

In Critical Frameworks A, I believe I chose to include her drawings because I liked them and her use of colour resonated with me.

Now that I am in Studio 3, I’m working on a series of quite preliminary drawings. I find there’s a sense of looseness in some of my draft drawings and paintings, that doesn’t seem to translate to my more resolved works.

Right now, I am working on a series of collages where I cut out some of the more gestural markings and reassemble them to make a “painting”. Alongside this, I am trying to develop a looser, more scribbly drawing style. I do find it hard to know where to stop - I wonder how Etel decided…

Etel Adnan at Sfeir-Semler

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Morgana Celeste - Crocus

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Morgana Celeste - Sour Cherry Cornucopia

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Bridget Riley (British, b. 1931), Rose Rose 12, 2011.Oil on canvas, 37.5 x 25 cm.

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ETEL ADNAN 

Lebanese-USA, b. 1925 

UNTITLED, 1980  

pastel on paper  25 x 38 cm. | 9 ⅞ x 14 ⅞ in.