Venice and Moving

I got back from Venice over a week ago now, and it was a highly enjoyable experience. Listing all the work that I saw would take ages, and to be honest I probably wouldn't be able to remember it all. For now I'm going to talk about the different spaces I went into and the highlights from each day.

On the day that I arrived I went to a number of exhibitions, some of them were simply normal galleries whilst others were pavilions that were part of the biennale. One of my favourites was the Taiwanese Pavilion featuring the artist Wu Tien-chang with work titled "Never Say Goodbye". The works featured light and sound performances where (in the majority of them) a genderless person would walk across the screen of a T.V on a never-ending treadmill, whilst the backgrounds would continually changed. When the figure eventually walks off the screen they wave goodbye to you, the audience. Lots of ideas about life and death within the era of post-war westernization was being looked at within the work. It was a wholly unique and interesting experience to observe and has stayed with me now for nearly two weeks. I got to see many other things that day, but nothing got that close to this piece.

The second day was consumed by the Giardini, which is a space that contains many of the different pavilions. You could definitely spend a few days just soaking up the art in that place. After googling it just now there are about 30 pavilions in there, so I'm not over exaggerating. Some of my favourites were the Canadian Pavilion (BGL - Art collective), where half of the space was turned into a shop that slowly became blurry as you moved through it. Making me question whether I should get my eyes tested. Another was the Swiss building (Pamela Rosenkranz) that was filled with a monochrome liquid that matches the standard Northern European skin tone. It also smelled like a newborn baby. All of these aspects of the work ask the question of what it means to be human. I also enjoyed the German Pavilion, which had so many different aspects to it, one of which saw artists in residence on the roof of the building, every few hours showing themselves to throw a boomerang. I like the idea of doing something that you may or may not see, but is there because you say it's there. So even if you don't see it you presume that someone else has. So you could create an entirely fictitious project, but only if you have the work and writing to back it up. Another space that was truly spectacular was the Austrian pavilion. When you first walk in it appeared to have no art in it, but in fact the whole building had been changed, which was in itself the art. The artist Heimo Zobernig took away all of the arches and visual details of the space and created an incredibly minimal pavilion, that allows you to sit and contemplate the area for a minute or two. This idea of reducing something but adding a new element (the dark void that consumed the inside) to the mix is interesting.

On the day after that I went to the Arsenale, which is another area that's filled with lots of art from a number of different artists/countries. I really liked a few of the films within this, which was surprisingly, as I'm usually not a huge fan of them. "Ashes" by Steve McQueen is a two part film, where on one end you're watching footage of a young man being buried in a coffin and on the other you're seeing the same man, alive and well on a boat, enjoying life. It was a terribly distressing film that was incredibly moving. Another piece of work that I liked was part film and part sculpture (Games Whose Rules I Ignore). The artist (Boris Achour) created six different games to be played by two people. In the film you are shown different people playing these games, allowing you to take a glimpse into their relationship as well as the seemingly made up rules that the games employ. Another interesting piece (Latent Images, Diary of a Photographer) by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige involved a set of books on a wall. The work itself is a performance, which is incredibly complicated and awesome. I would recommend looking it up as I can't really do it any justice by attempting to describe what was going on.

The next day was the last day, which was mainly made up of visiting the Palazzo Grassi which had a great exhibition that was curated by the artist Danh Vō. In each room the different pieces of work from different artists had a dialogue with one another. For example, one room was solely dedicated to artworks that featured sex in some way. This is a very obvious link, but in other rooms the link between pieces was a lot more obscure, making the handout that was given to you vital. Having an artist curate an exhibition isn't always successful, but in this case it was. The rest of that day was spent looking at some more of the exhibitions dotted around Venice, one featured Sean Scully which was fun to see, as I do like his large, simplistic paintings.

Looking back now I feel like I should have definitely taken a few pictures whilst I was in Venice, but unfortunately I did not. However I did take a few Snapchats:

Afterwards I was very exhausted, so much so that when I came home I unfortunately didn't really do any of my own work, apart from updating my main website with the pieces that I'd made over the summer. So I didn't complete my book, which I do still plan to do, but it won't happen for a while now, as I'm currently living in London, away from home. And a printer. I think the description of the work on my main website encompasses the ideas within the project perfectly.

I moved in to my halls on Wednesday and have been going to two or three galleries a day since then, which has been incredibly fulfilling. I was going to write about that in this blog post, but I think if I do one in a couple of days detailing all that I've seen it'll be better than writing a huge one now.

I've also started to watch Community, which is an enjoyable comedy that's centred around a study group at a community college. The creator, Dan Harmon, also makes Rick and Morty, which is an amazing cartoon that looks at the relationship between a young boy and his drunk, super-scientist of an uncle. Both shows are pretty great.

My course starts on the 5th, so until then I'll be going to galleries and seeing interesting things, which I continually look forward to.

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Finishing Things and Seeing Chris Dobrowolski

My work has been slowly moving forwards for about a week or so now, going towards an end point that is about to overwhelm me.

Towards the end of last week I continued to think about the name of the book, and changed it from Ageing Onwards to Moving, as this encompasses the concept of the work a lot more than the previous title. "Moving" allows one to think about traversing forwards and backwards, rather than just onwards.

I then didn't do much with anything (apart from watching a new T.V drama called "Narcos" which was very interesting, detailing the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar) until Monday, where I went into Butley to work. This was quite a surreal experience, as I hadn't been back to work for nearly a month. So I felt a lot like how I did when I first began working there, enjoying the manual labour rather than groaning when I had to jet wash some sculptures or crush grog.

In the morning I had to open up a load of moulds that had been poured on Friday, this is, as I've said in the past, hard work. At the same time it's oddly satisfying to peel away the skins, revealing the bronze inside. Using an axe is always a lot of fun too.

I then jet washed all of the bronze pieces that I'd just opened up. This was fun, for the first ten minutes or so. After that it does become quite dull and boring for the next two hours. I do always have thought-provoking podcasts to listen to though. This week nothing new, just This American Life and The Moth. Speaking of The Moth, I recently booked tickets to go and see a live show in London sometime soon, which should be a lot of fun

The rest of the day was spent using grinders and hammers to remove all the unwanted bronze parts from a couple of small scale sculptures. This was the first time I'd really done proper metal finishing on a detailed sculpture, and it was quite tough. The whole process was made a lot worse as I was wearing a short sleeved t-shirt with a slightly loose neck, so all of the tiny bronze pieces were repeatedly sprayed into my skin. Within the first five minutes I'd made a mental note to always wear a long sleeved t-shirt whenever I thought I would be doing anything concerning metal.

The next day I came in again to do some work on my own bronze sculptures and to collect all of my waxes and work that I had been doing for the past few months. I spent an hour or so working on a few of my bronzes that had been cast, but eventually gave up on most of them, as the majority were too messy already, and wouldn't have been improved upon with any more metal finishing. I also put one of my first bronzes onto the metal scrap heap (the larger of the two), as it was incredibly heavy (meaning it would be expensive) and wasn't that good a piece anyway. I was fortunate enough to get two bronze sculptures out of the process though, which are in my opinion, quite successful in doing what I set out to achieve.

During the day I also set out all of my work on a table, choosing which ones to bring home and which would be destroyed/melted down. It was a relatively easy process as I knew what aspects of my work I wanted in the different pieces. It was also necessary as I had to pay the material cost for the work, which (after I weighed it all) came out to about £150.

 Before:

After:

Over the next day or so I started to document the work, to put in my book and on my main website. It was really hard to get a sense that the work was coming out of the wall with some of the pieces, at times I overcame this problem but with a few of the images you can't quite tell what you're looking at, which is really annoying. These are an assortment of the edited images: 

On Thursday evening I went to see a performance called Antarctica at the New Wolsey Studio in Ipswich. It was written and performed by a guy called Chris Dobrowolski, where he gave a sort-of lecture where he talked about a trip he (supposedly) took to Antarctica. I say supposedly as the entire performance may well be an entirely fictitious affair, this is hinted at throughout, be it through his general manner of being/mocking an art lecturer, brandishing a long stick to poke at the different parts of his slide, or showing the audience the surreal image of a scene not unlike his final works of art, but being made entirely within his fridge freezer. Calling into question whether he actually went or not! This was, of course, all a part of the theatrical performance and added to the ambiguous nature of the thing. I found the whole performance utterly hilarious and enthralling, especially parts where he mocked "corporate suits" and their team building exercises.

On Friday I went to Butley again to work for the final time before I go to uni, which was both sad and happy at the same time. I feel that my summer has definitely been improved by working there, learning new skills and meeting interesting people, and I would definitely like to go back next summer to experience it all over again.

I began the day by cleaning out a bunch of plaster moulds that hadn't been used since they had been made, so lumps of clay and all sorts of crap was imbedded within the cracks and gullies of the rubber. 

After that was done I painted the moulds with wax, which I've done many times in the past. After it was dry the moulds were screwed together so that liquid wax could be poured into them and swished around, connecting the two parts together. This is something that I'm yet to do with a large scale mould, as it takes a lot of skill and strength.

Then the wax is cooled down in the bath and eventually the moulds are carefully opened up, revealing different parts of a sculpture.

During this time I also moved a load of moulds to the kiln and crushed some grog.

By that point it was the end of the day and I had officially finished my summer internship. It's very weird to look back on my blog post talking about going to the foundry for the first time, and to think about how I was then in comparison to how I am now, and how I will be in six months time, and so on. It's something to think about...

Over the weekend I'm now focusing on writing my book, talking about the different aspects of the project and the general concept that started it all. It'll probably be completed in the short time that I'll have when  I get back from Venice.

I do have a few regrets for this project, mostly about time management and not being able to experiment with things as much as I would have wanted to, for example colour. I do however think that I've been successful in achieving what I wanted to in the beginning, which was creating something that was entirely motivated by my own self, rather than being told to do it by my school, college or uni, as well as learning new skills and using them effectively to create something aesthetically/conceptually interesting.

For the next week I'll be in Venice, enjoying the Biennale and looking at as much art as I can hope to see. When I get back I'll probably write one more blog post wrapping up my entire project before going to uni to start something new!

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Rain and Entertainment

For over a week now I've been slightly neglecting work, I'm going to blame my lack of motivation on the terrible weather, but it's probably because I grew accustomed to not working whilst I was on holiday and haven't been able to shake away the feelings that begin to grow inside you if you haven't put any effort into anything for a while.

However I have made a little progress within my artwork. I took part in a short workshop last week which helped to generate some new ideas within my project. This was helpful, but would have been better utilised if it had occurred about a month or so ago, rather than two weeks before I'm going to finish it. The idea that enticed me the most was centred upon creating the pyramid shape out of thin metal paper, and crushing the sides slightly, making indentations within the shape. Wax or plaster would then be poured into the mould. This would effectively destroy the ideas surrounding the straight and smooth body of the sculpture, as it would become jagged and random, but it would be interesting to experiment with. Before this project finishes I do want to try this out at least once, the work would have some interesting conceptual ideas behind it as well as being aesthetically intriguing.

Yesterday I went to Butley to check on my work as I hadn't been back there since I went to France. The wax that I poured before I went on holiday wasn't successful, as predicted. A few of my bronze pieces had been poured and were ready to be metal finished, which I will probably do at some point in the next few days. I'm really happy about how one of them looks, and it will probably become the main bronze piece of the project.

I also went to Snape Maltings to dismantle an installation that contained 42 bronze sculptures that were scattered around the area. These were the sculptures that were made by the school children who came to the studios a month or so ago. I was taking them down as a favour to Alice who's project it was. It was a relatively easy process and I only had to use a chisel once or twice for the pieces that were thoroughly glued down. The only problem was that I didn't know where they all were, as I hadn't helped to install them all, so I had to do a few laps of the area until I was satisfied that I had found them all, as they were hidden as part of the work.

This is a Snapchat that I took whilst disassembling the work:

In the past week I've also been working a little in Google Sketchup, creating some of the sculptures that I've been making using pure colours. This just helps to visualise what I want the actual pieces to look like.

As well as this I've been thinking a lot about the name of the piece and eventually decided on the title "Ageing Onwards". It attempts to capture the ideas within the project, surrounding moving forwards but being sucked back at the same time, but I'm not totally sure that it does that effectively enough, so I may change it in the next few days. I need to think about it further.

I also started to design the book that will wrap up this project. It will contain images alongside some text talking about the individual works, highlighting the main points of the project. I'm going to begin to document the best pieces of work over the next week.

Whilst it's been grey and cloudy outside I have been indulging in a lot of T.V and film. I watched the whole of The Newsroom, which was a very enjoyable series that gives you an interesting insight into a world that I haven't really seen before, apart from in the film Network. I also started watching 30 Rock, which is a hilarious show about a female writer and producer of a hit television show. On top of this I've been watching the new show, Fear The Walking Dead, which is actually not too bad for a spinoff, as they are usually not that good compared to the original.

I also watched a few films including The Falling, which I liked a lot, but it was much more ambiguous than I thought it would be. Slow West was another film that I saw which was pretty great, telling a tight and intriguing story in a compact 84 minutes.

It is quite unfortunate that I haven't used my time as well as I could have done, but that's something that can't be helped. I do however want to spend the next week and a bit fully concentrated on work and finalise all the parts of this project, writing my book and creating a few more sculptures. That is my goal.

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