#he made a sculpture of paper flying away. multiple times. to make it look light because sculptures are normally heavy.

[tonimckeon-finearts]

Jan Vourvert - Painting in the expanded field

Does a painting have to happen on a canvas?  

Today’s art-world can be characterized by what, for lack of better term, is called “pluralism.” The term “pluralism” designates at least two different tendencies. On the one hand, it signals the fact that there are no dominant art styles these days and that to continue searching for a pure language in any visual medium can become a fruitless task. On the other hand “pluralism” is also used to describe an attitude of “anything goes” that leaves qualitative concerns aside in favor of a kind of tolerance that accepts everything as equally valid.

Arthur C. Danto proposes that the first understanding of the term “pluralism” is the result of the changes in the art world since the 1960’s. When the artistic object came to be considered as neither superior nor inferior to objects in the real world but too similar to them to allow for a visual distinction “minimal art”  

Sculpture and painting/ installation

Both expanded painting and expanded sculpture have no define definition and can have overlap. An artwork could be characteristic of sculpture and painting but how is such an artwork categorised. Last year, I was interested at looking at the in-between space between painting and sculpture, taking characteristics from both and combining them within an artwork. Realising I come more from a painting perspective and my research tended more towards the history of painting, in contemporary art, I have chosen to focus more on my art practise as expanded painting. I have been overwhelmed at times at how limitless expanded painting is and had to narrow my focus to down to the repetition in the process as the key aspect of my work, this term.

Instillation can be seen as a combination of other art mediums all placed in one space, what makes it an instillation is the taking up of space. I don’t want my work to seem like multiple different artworks presented in one space.  

Minimalism/ minimal art  

Stella’s statement ‘What you see is what you see’ became the Minimalism art movement’s mantra.

In 1958, the young Frank Stella, who had just graduated from Princeton University, moved to New York City. There, he became immersed in the Abstract Expressionist scene while working as a house painter to pay the rent. However, it was the work of Jasper Johns that inspired his Black Paintings (1958-1960), which he created using plain, commercial paint and brushes similar to the materials he used for his day job. These works made him famous at the age of 23, and were instrumental in paving the way for Minimalism. Stella’s statement ‘What you see is what you see’ became the Minimalism art movement’s mantra. What is Minimalism and minimalist art? The Minimalism art movement is one of the most influential of the 1960s, emerging in New York City among a number of young artists who were moving away from Abstract Expressionism and favoured a sleek, geometric aesthetic instead, which would manifest itself in minimalist art.

Artists Model

James Turell

For over half a century, the American artist James Turrell has worked directly with light and space to create artworks that engage viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception. Turrell, an avid pilot who has logged over twelve thousand hours flying, considers the sky as his studio, material and canvas. New Yorker critic Calvin Tompkins writes, “His work is not about light, or a record of light; it is light — the physical presence of light made manifest in sensory form.”

Anne Truitt

In 1961 Truitt began to work in the style for which she later became known: painting multiple delicate layers of color characterized by subtle variations onto wooden constructions fabricated in accordance with scale drawings; the structural elements of these sculptures constitute armatures supporting color. Writing in April 1965, Truitt stated: “What is important to me is not geometrical shape per se, or color per se, but to make a relationship between shape and color which feels to me like my experience. To make what feels to me like reality.” Abstract yet rich with feeling, the works are grounded in memories and sensations accumulated over a lifetime. This referentiality is in stark contrast to the literalness of Minimalism, a movement with which her work is sometimes associated. For Truitt, abstraction provided a syntax for her impressions — of people, places, ideas, and events. She wielded color and form as metaphors for thought, developing a visual grammar that remains unique in the history of art.

Blinky Palermo

Palermo was best known for his spare monochromatic canvases and "fabric paintings" made from simple lengths of colored material cut, stitched and stretched over a frame. He painted on aluminum, steel, wood, paper and Formica, often making lines out of tape instead of paint.

Under Beuys, he became increasingly interested in the organized spatial relationship between form and colour, a polarity which is manifest throughout the rest of his oeuvre. In the mid 1960s, Palermo moved away from conventional rectangular canvases and increasingly opted for surfaces such as the circle, triangle, cruciform, totem pole and even the interior walls of buildings.[5] For example, Untitled (Totem) (1964) "...is simply a vertical strip of wood, 7 feet by about 2 inches. It is painted orange and punctuated, like a primitive ladder, with five short, horizontal pieces of canvas-wrapped wood, each painted white with a portion of a blue triangle".[6] Between 1964 and 1966, Palermo produced a small series of paintings on canvas in which he experimented with constructivist principles of order.[7]

Between late 1966 and 1972 he produced a series of circa 65 Stoffbilder (Fabric Paintings), consisting of colored materials of different widths sewn together along horizontal or vertical seams and attached to stretchers. He took the colour and material quality ready-made from department-store fabrics and had them stitched together by others.[2]

[markwatkinsconsumerguide]

Consumer Guide / No.50 / Artist Ros Burgin MRBS with Mark Watkins.

MW : You're a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. How does that work for you?

RB : I love it. When I first walked in to an event at 108 Old Brompton Road there was a palpable sense of being amongst my own kind of people namely sculptors. The RBS is an independent and artist led organisation that promotes high professional and creative standards among sculptors and members share skills and experience. It is committed to making the full range of contemporary practice accessible to all.

MW : What places and spaces do you source objects in order to create art?

RB :  Anywhere and everywhere. I notice particular things  that are part of everyday  life and they stand out because of their inherent qualities and characteristics. What ends up in my hands is usually down to curiosity  about the unfamiliar. The things that end up interesting me don’t always immediately suggest a piece of work. I will keep them around the house so they remain in sight and in mind until I get an idea for a piece of work.

MW : What makes an object potentially upscalable?

RB : Probably, the intent of the Artist governs whether to change the scale from life-size and almost anything is possible nowadays with advances in science, technology and materials. Perhaps the main limitation to realising larger pieces is the availability of a location and the necessary funds.

‘Stella V’ is an example of this. I received a commission from Amesbury , a local school with an age range of 5-13, to make a sculpture for their grounds. I worked with one year group and decided to focus on the part of the school day they spend in the playground and introduced them to the game of Jacks or 5 stones as it is universally known. We made multiple scaled models and scattered them outside to assess them collectively and chose a particular size that related in scale both to the location and the average height of the group.

MW : Tell me about 'Stays, Holds, Ties’ (2009)...

RB : ‘Stays, Holds, Ties ‘ literally reveals the shape of women at the beginning of the last century. Society changed the shape of women’s bodies imposing a desirable form and used the corset to achieve it. I combined it with the covers of romance novels because they are stories which end in marriage another way society proposed women’s lives should be lived and offered few alternative prospects. By revisiting this period and reviewing women’s history and the unenviable lot of previous generations in the light of contemporary society we can see how far we have come and consider how far we still have to go. I tend to find that the pace of change towards equality for women is excruciatingly slow. So I make pieces which comment and draw attention to issues surrounding equality and I am a founder member of the Women’s Equality Party. 

MW : Tell me about 'Skylines' (2015)...

RB : I am a member of the Fawcett Society who published a blog about my project for the installation ‘Skylines https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/Blog/female-pilots-flying-face-of-adversity which addresses very relevant issues of women in the workplace and their underrepresentation in certain professions. After 100 years of aeroplane flight women make up less than 5% of pilots and there are only 450 captains worldwide out of 130,000.This installation features the names of 301 female pilots who, I believe, are role models and an inspiration to others. As an artist I want to encourage dialogue and Skylines draws attention to the number of female pilots increasing the visibility of them as group of women in this workplace and by making them visible encouraging women into the profession …you have to see it to be it.

MW : Tell me about ‘Totally Thames’ (2016)...

RB : ‘Totally Thames’ is an annual celebration of the River Thames with a creative and diverse programme of events throughout September which is curated and managed by the Thames Festival Trust. I joined them as a partner for the first time in 2016 to launch another piece from my ongoing series of work called ‘Thames Drawings’, which all focus on a particular 42-mile stretch of the Tidal Thames flowing through Central London, from Teddington Lock in the west to the Thames Barrier in the east. “Thames Drawing #2” is a new map of the River made using names of boats that use the Thames woven into a continuous piece of text written in graphite on paper which exactly charts its twists and turns.

The exhibition was held at St Katherine Docks in Devon House which looks out onto Tower Bridge and they extended the show for 4 months. I made a second very similar drawing to exhibit along with Thames Drawing #3 – a gold leaf drawing and 2 other pieces, ‘Island’ and ‘Lifeline’, at Trinity Buoy Wharf in the Chainstore at an event organised by www.5x15stories.com commissioned a full sized print of the work to be made which is now on permanent display in Orchard Place at the entrance to the Wharf. It is 1m x 2.8m and looks great as an unbroken line of text. The print works really well anywhere between 50% - 100% of the original size. And the reduced scale is easier to place in a domestic setting.

MW : Away from your studio, what do you enjoy seeing / doing in and around Godalming, Surrey, where you live?

RB : I love getting out and exploring both towns and the countryside. We are never really far from a coastline on this island and I adore the sea so frequently head off to the shoreline wherever I go.

Sport is a regular thing for me, currently tennis and skiing - but I am about to focus more time on learning to surf.

MW : How aesthetically pleasing is your garden and what makes it so?

RB: I have a small garden, and a little borrowed landscape from my neighbours, and the Lammas Land edging the River Wey running through my hometown. It is south facing so I have planted and shaped a couple of olive trees, a fig and the local apple tree bramley to take advantage of the shadows they cast across the space as the sun moves from east to west. I enjoy a crisp shadow; mark making on a large scale with a light touch.

I have a friend who is a beekeeper, and so have come to learn more about bees’ patterns and needs. As a result, I have replanted my garden over the last few years with bee-friendly-plants and let them escape into the lawn, which now grows to full height for the spring and summer months. Incidentally, this brought an enormous variety of other insects, moths and butterflies into the space. They seem to fly at different heights and rather like pilots stick to their routes. Inadvertently, I created a habitat which suits all these different species.

MW : Earth, wind and fire. Discuss how these three elements are represented by design in your home and work spaces…

RB : Earth, wind and fire, powerful stuff. I have specifically played with fire and burnt materials to see what happens. I have a wood burner stove which allows me to sort of control the flames and burning time by choosing how much fuel, what matter to burn, and stopping the airflow to arrest the burning. I burnt animal and bird bones, saved from whatever I was eating, and they took on beautiful patinas and became fragile, reminiscent of porcelain sort of taking on the aspects of the plate from which they were eaten. They sounded quite different when strung up in the wind. I have learnt how to burn some pages of an open book and want to make a large piece like this. It will need to be done in the exhibition space and immediately covered with an acrylic case to preserve the delicate leaves. Fire will come up again in a future piece in Thames Drawings. I will be using wood from a burnt boat.

I engaged somewhat with air/wind through the Skylines work, by looking at and thinking about the marks made by pilots as they fly their planes to and from points on earth through the space above us. They are creating temporary traces and lines and these lines informed the shape of Skylines.

Earth comes into my work either as a fired substances, or, as a temporary vehicle for imprints and traces left by people and things such as bicycle tracks. The latter produced installations called Spin and Twist. I also carve stone now and again which is some of the oldest material I work with. There is a small piece on show until October at David Hartlands’ www.elementalsculpturepark.com near Cirencester along with a few installations of Spin.

MW : What was the last film you saw, and which one are you looking forward to seeing next?

RB : The last film was ‘Cloudstreet’ adapted from Tim Winton’s book of the same title. He wrote the script with Ellen Fontana and Matthew Saville directed it in Perth. It was shown as a mini-series and I was blown away by it. Not only a beautiful film but great observation through the language, pace and cinematography. I have now found many of his others books through the library and they have not disappointed. I look forward to catching up with this years film releases in the autumn when my current exhibition closes and daylight is shorter.

MW : Which TV programmes do you never miss, and why?

RB : I like series such as Spooks and heist movies, the twists in the plots appeal. I enjoy Scandinavian series too for many reasons not least they show women in roles other than decorative and victim and don’t flinch at showing women in positions of authority, lead roles and letting them keep their clothes on. I am now watching Montalbano set in Sicily and it helps keep my struggling Italian language in tune.

MW : What do you have ongoing, and planned for the rest of 2017, and beyond?

RB : My current exhibition is now open until 1st October and features ‘Thames Drawing 4’ which is a 4 meter long wall mounted sculpture made from wood salvaged from decommissioned boats that spent their lifetime on the Thames. The project is supported using public funding by Arts Council England and exhibited in partnership with Totally Thames 2017.

I worked with Mark Edwards MBE, a master boatbuilder and set up as an Artist in Residence (AIR) in one of his boathouses used by the Thames Wherry Trust. The AIR was open to the public to reveal and demystify an artist’s process. We adapted techniques specific to wooden boat building, and employed them to produce a piece of sculpture made from unique materials which pay tribute to their history. The work marks the points where the tributaries and ‘lost’ London rivers feed into the Thames . It was amazing working on the riverside and I documented the whole process which I will shortly publish as a blog. I am at the exhibition every Friday (12pm-6pm) and weekends (11am-6pm) in September for informal Q&A with the public. I share the space with ‘Working River’ a Thames Festival Trust project film and story boards about the remaining boatbuilders on the Thames.

For the rest of the year, I will be seeking permanent locations in buildings along the River for bespoke scaled commissions of my work in the Thames Drawings Series. There are additional pieces to be made from parts of wooden boats which suggested themselves during the AIR at Mark’s and he seems to have a bountiful supply of old boats to choose from.

A future project includes working with light in partnership with photographer Nick Joubinaux who is based at Trinity Buoy Wharf and photographed Thames Drawing 2 enabling it to be made into a print.

MW : Where can we find out more?

RB : www.rosburgin.co.uk current projects section of the website and via my newsletter if people send me their contact details I will add them to my mailing list.

© Mark Watkins / September 2017