The Real Digital

Sad news this week, some first hand, some second hand. This regards the steady decline of the commercial craft industry, particularly pottery, that started some decades ago in Stoke and now extends to small private enterprises and even worse - education.

Why have I titled this blog entry "The Real Digital"? I will explain.

Apparently, and I have it on good authority not just from students and their friends but also from tutors who have long feared this day, courses in ceramics in colleges and universities are closing down (with the excuse that it saves money, probably), and the departments being stripped of kilns, wheels, shelves and equipment and filled up with yet more Macs. The microchip is replacing all other art media, it seems. Certainly as far as attracting students there is nothing that is going to get bums on seats and fees in the bursary than computer courses that give youngsters and mature students (false?) hope of a job at the end of 3 years accumulating debts. But at what cost to society? Soon the only "digits" we'll be able to use will be 0's and 1's and not our own fabulously evolved five fingers. In an age when young adults cant even wire a plug, surely there is a need to maintain and improve manual dexterity and imagination that enables the human being to form something in real four dimensions (3D and time), consideratley, patiently and skilfully.
I will be sad to see Camberwell's renowned Ceramics department wound down, and my local ceramic painting shop closed down.
One day we will realise the folly of being stuck behind keyboards in sterile air-conditioned offices, and how demeaning and damaging it is. I hope the day of realisation dawns before we completely lose track of what it is to be intelligent self-sufficient beings...

If You Cant Be Good, Be Good At Being Bad

(or.. how I learned to stop worrying and love painting)

I am now, officially, a Bad Artist.

This is the story...

For a laugh, and because I wanted to know what the definition of "bad art", I entered some work for inclusion in the Bad Art Salon at the Vintage at Goodwood Festival this year.

I dont often enter competitions or make submissions, but I saw what examples they had and I knew in my attic I had similar works that were truly breathtakingly awful and deserved recognition as such.

I have to admit I am not the world's greatest painter, I might do the odd poetic composition but really I dont have the patience for all the techinal minutae and really like to be frenetic and colourful. This technique does not lend itself well to life drawing unless you are a really good expressionist painter, rendering the figure usually means taking one's time and using subtltey..!

(This is why my recent work has been more in the arena of the found object)

So, in a marked moment of insight, I selected my ugliest work,and sent my application and JPEG. Imagine my surprise when I was selected as a finalist and rewarded a pass for Vintage for the weekend as a "prize" (more about that later).

This appeals to me in the sense of the ironic. Having waded through my MA and having to be very serious and "good" it was lovely to be "bad" for a change. Its great that an artist can have this freedom and I embrace the whole idea of a Bad Art Salon! The irony is perfect for someone trying to cultivate a Postmodern persona.. I dont know if this is what I'm trying to do but the way I see it, any publicity is good publicity!

The Poetic Phenomena Of Light

“ The solid is for the dead, but the transparent is for the living ”
— I.M. Pei


For the last few years, I have been exploring the importance of humans being a participating element in an artwork instead of just a watcher or reader. This statement by the architect I.M Pei, about his creation The Louvre Pyramid, sums up the concepts I have been recently been dealing with neatly and concisely.

The transparent certainly does allow light to filter to the viewer, but the viewers are more than just passive – they are also a part of the effect of the structure, as the incoming light negotiates the physical presence of the human figure, casting shadows and creating ever changing effects. The life of the work is in the fact that it lives itself, it is not “dead” – in fact it moves and exists in a time frame that is as long as the structure stands or the person inside stays. In that instant it creates an exquisite collection of phenomena – an experienced moment that can never be repeated in its minute detail.

Transmission

Transmission of light through a tinted window, is like transmission of an idea through a filter.
Language is a filter. It only allows certain information through. Hence the word “transparency”, and and the phrase “to be opaque”. Transmission of ideas takes place through technologies of transmission. Radio itself uses transmission: radiation of radio waves, sound waves. Sound waves are in our voices and our environments.
Ideas are transmitted through speech. Word of mouth. People chatting about the weather.
The volcano transmits ash through the air, and affects air travel – incidents around this event are transmitted on the radio, the TV, and by word of mouth.
(The newspaper is a static form and therefore is a complicated kind of transmission, not flowing but a dead text on dead wood, obsolete and still as soon as it is printed).
Sometimes corrupted information can be transmitted like a disease, a virus that changes from host to host.
Transmission doesn’t care where its going, the endpoint always moves during time.
Radiation is transmitted by the sun, and burns our skin. It also makes our grass seem greener and makes us feel better. It sparkles off the sea, and off car bodywork. It is beautiful but deadly. It brings out the glorious colours in the garden, but dries out and kills the flowers....

Words dont come easy...

I'm really jealous of people who can write books, who can devote themselves to one subject, focus like a raptor on the details and sieze the ideas like so much hidden prey and make them their own. To be an authority on a subject. To be able to digest and re-present. To actually have the working memory to be able to remember names, dates and conceptions and put them in the right order - and then write fluently with enough factual evidence to impress academics and critics but with enough fluidity to make the passages readable. Having said that, there are plenty of books out there that are reading for the sake of reading, insofar as they appear on reading lists on courses up and down the country (even when there are far more interesting books on the same subjects out there, often more accurate and updated); and plodding through these is like bog snorkeling. But to be able to write ANY sort of book would be a pretty amazing dream for me. I already have enough anxiety writing a few thousand words in an essay. I read and write copiously, give myself a bad neck and a headache, and end up with chunks of typing that start off sensibly enough then end up as either a rant or a barely readable stream of conciousness...

Occupation..?

I like to tell people I'm an artist, but in reality I dont know what I am.
Quite apart from the fact I dont know if what I make is "art" in the contemporary and exhibitable sense, there is the employment aspect.
Employing oneself in an activity doesn't necessarily make one an expert in it, even if its 8 hours a day. Being paid for doing so counts for a bit more vailidity, but then one can feel trapped. Being an officially self-employed artist may mean you have more contacts and business, but setting oneself up as a limited company and getting a loan and insurance and all that that entails makes for a pretty big gamble.
Getting some sort of part-time job seems to be the option for many artists I know. Unfortunatley this does not leave a lot of time for networking, let alone making work, and they never get further than a few small local shows or a bit part in a group show somewhere better known - if they are lucky.
I'm at the point now where I have to make this big decision. The MA is all but over, I'm out of my comfort zone, and despite all the discussions and seminars on careers I'm still no clearer about my future plans than I was 2 years ago!

Invigilating the MA Show

Its been a lot cooler of late weather-wise in the South East of England. The Private View felt like vegetables in a boiling stew, and the first day I invigilated I thought I was going to pass out from the heat. The Gallery, being as it is fully glazed and facing West, pulls in the sun, from the afternoon especially. Now, this is all very useful for my work, which, from 3pm takes on some real life as all its coloured shadows extend, but for someone who has to sit by the window and watch the public to make sure they dont damage anything (including themselves) its the equivalent of sitting in a greenhouse!



However, being in Brighton was a joy rather than a chore on Saturday. No oppressive heat and sweltering people. I could've easily spent the day outside! Walking to Grand Parade, surrounded by shoppers and tourists of every description, in their summer pastels and colours, pinks and blues and cut-off denims (the boys AND the girls!), with the sun gently warming and the air fresher and cooler than it had been in weeks; I felt invigorated and energetic. The train down to the coast was packed with a gaudy rainbow of bodies and happy voices, loud in their abandonment of responsibilty; the windows were open - it was like a fairground ride where the air whips you and you are surrounded by noise and colour. It made me excited too, it was catching, even though all I had to look forward to was sitting in one spot all afternoon, and getting warmer and more uncomfortable. Compared to Tuesday when I had to invigilate, the little drop in temperature caused a great deal of relief and happiness. Even when the full heat of the sun had not yet flooded into the Gallery, I still felt confident that the heat inside would be actually bearable. And, as I said before, it needs to be sunny! The sun needs to shine! Not just because my coloured transparent work inside "depends" on it (although I did make it have more interest than merely shadows), but to also lift the spirits of everyone under the canopy of the blue and add sparkle to the surfaces and faces of this dense and busy seaside city.

A Hot Pepper Pot

At the end of a Tuesday at Uni, one of the MA First Years said "There's a PV at the Pepper Pot, d'ya want to come?"

Well of course not being from Brighton I had no idea what the Pepper Pot was or where is was. I thought it was a pub or restaurant or something like that, and was assured it wasn't far.

After a long uphill walk in the heat which would've challenged Ranulph Fiennes, we arrived at something in the middle of a grass island surrounded by houses, something that looked most out of place, appearing to be a folly of some kind. "Is this it?" I thought "Its rather small and poky". And cylindrical. And rough looking.



Yet inside young artists had made good use of the old damp crumbling walls and the sense of history by setting up sculptures and installations with classical poetry. Brown leather, evocative of another time, a time of saddles and bridles, adorned a space. Outside two small birch trees looked vulnerable in their pots against an older and much more majestic tree, their slim white trunks making them look almost skeletal and anorexic against the wide black gnarled-bark trunk of the old tree (the species of which alludes me for now). Nearby what looked like a coffin with portholes was in fact an outdoor sleeping chamber, which I was assured was very comfortable although did make the occupiers feel rather uneasy as late night and school run pedestrians passed by while they snoozed inside. A lump of gooey dough holding all number of French sticks and loafs together - the bread head - had fallen apart and parts of it lay on the dry summer grass.



The overall feeling was one of vulnerability in an urban area, something I think the residents would really connect with given the chance. There could've been a bit more information given to the community, but some locals took advantage of the free drinks to have a nosey around and a chat to the artist, and a man from the local council with earrings and a casual shirt mingled with everyone and seemed really pleased that this little used venue was finally getting a new lease of life.

Shevanara and the Shade

I met a cat called Shevenara today.

Driving around Redhill is a bit of an adevnture for me, what with all its one way systems and tiny cul-de-sacs; as I have no sense of direction and my sat-nav consists of a small BlackBerry screen that I cant easily look at while driving, and doesn't talk to me, connected via Bluetooth to a little GPS gadget that I keep forgetting to bring with me anyway. This has been my fourth or fifth trip into Redhill over the last month to pick up materials (glass) for my final MA project. The idea was to use recycled glass in my work, thus promoting the idea of sustainability, non-consumption and to save me money. Well, apart from the fact that its cost me a bit in petrol money, and driving isn't exactly eco-friendly, I think I have achieved my aims. I now have enough panes/shelves/cabinet doors/coffee table tops/chest of drawer surfaces etc to construct an installation/indoor sculpture park that's really interesting.

But to me the stories behind the work have been the most interesting. I have met quite a few people and in the main they have been very nice - but that is no surprise, the Freecycle community is made up of folk with goodwill, kindness, and a passion for keeping useful things out of landfills, rather they contribute something to strangers and keep commitments than contribute to waste and rampant consumerism. They are decent, thoughtful, interesting people mostly and often as self-sufficient as they are giving: one lady even keeps chickens and geese in her little suburban front garden. They seem to like animals, and if an animal is happy its usually a sign they have good owners. Hence "Shevvy", the lovely moggy, who despite being hot and bothered in this sweltering June weather, came out of the shade to meet me and escort me to his front door, where his owner in sandals and floral prints meeted me with a smile, and offered to carry the glass all the way down the street to where I had left the car after trying to turn around. She told me all about her cat, who was like mine from Cats Protection, and we swapped rescue cat anecdotes as we loaded all the shelves and panes into the car.

A Section Of Time and Light

I wanted to include this passage in an MA essay but decided it was too "diary" like...

April 2010

It’s a beautiful spring day in the South of England, typically for April the sun comes and goes, warmth barely touches the earth before grey cloud cover blots it out, and its quiet. Quieter than normal, in fact. I live near Gatwick Airport and not a single plane has taken to the skies today. In fact air travel over the whole of Northern Europe has ceased. People are fussing and complaining and being stranded at crowded airports or being turfed out of hotels, if they could find one. What could’ve happened to cause our communication systems to collapse so spectacularly and leave our skies so eerily peaceful? Terrorists? Global conflict? Fuel reserves finally dried up? No.

Nature has proved herself to be master over man once again. The event this time is a biggie, 100s of miles away from my tranquil back garden a volcano has heaved tons of ash into the air. Its drifted from Iceland in the winds and nobody can tell where it is going next, and aircraft are at risk from the particles being sucked into the engines causing them to fail and the planes to crash.

I’m sitting here smiling. Whenever nature does something like this it always makes me smile. Easy to smile when no life threatening events come to your island, easy to smile when people who can afford to take air journeys are slightly inconvenienced: but even when my village in Kent was cut of by snowdrifts in the early 80’s and no food could get through to the supermarket, and then later in the 80’s the violent winds brought down trees and roofs and cut us off once again, I still smiled.

This is why I revere nature in my work, and use it to power my colours and images without trying to control it and guide it. I rely on acts of chance and changes of light that are unpredictable even though the role of an artist is usually that of a controller of environment and the smallest details are thoroughly designed and conceived. I am neither a scientist nor a designer, I am an observer, and my role is to simply encourage others to observe as well, to look at what they take advantage of every day, lest they forget how easy their life is and who or what is actually in control.

Pathological Colours

There is a certain feeling amongst intellectuals that colour is unrefined, primitive, naive, and the use of it a system for those who have limited or underdeveloped forms of communication.

Goethe says*

“... it is also worthy of remark,that savage nations, uneducated people, and children who have a great predilection for vivid colours; that animals are excited to rage by certain colours; that people of refinement avoid vivid colours in their dress and the objects that are about them, and seem inclined to banish them altogether from their presence.”

*from Theory of Colours, quoted in Chromophobia by David Batchelor

This is an interesting passage, even though it was written in the first decade of the nineteenth century, because a lot of what is discussed here still holds true. Bright colours are not seen as desirable by most adults, either to wear or to live with, and highly coloured art evokes disgust in some viewers who see it as coarse and unrestrained. I witnessed this reaction when I visited The Triumph of Painting show in the Saatchi Gallery, the most saturated colourful paintings seemed to literally repel people, I heard very few comments that weren’t derogatory. Colours are demoted to children’s toy departments in fabricated plastics, dyes are seen as harmful in food and sometimes in clothing and an unnecessary process creating polluting chemicals. The beige sack-cloth is more desirable in the minds of the ecologically and ethically minded. Yet what is colour? Its merely a perception of one species of the light waves being reflected from certain substances, and animals are not as gifted as us in being able to distinguish all the colours of the rainbow (as well as “non spectral" hues like purple, brown and pink). Human beings are highly evolved creatures so to equate colour appreciation with primitivism and low development seems to me to be insensitive and illogical. Animals may use colour to mate or to frighten, the reds and blues of a Macaw and the vivid yellow stripes of a wasp didn’t occur by accident, they are functional, therefore it follows that animals can see colours, but can they go beyond instinct in being able to describe the various hues and be moved by visions of rainbow colours, or have certain shades evoke memories or emotions above those of “fight, flight or fornicate”? People, of all races, ages and abilities can think of themselves as worthy to appreciate colour, as it is part of our complex cognitive function.

To Show The World

Even though I have had 2 group shows since my degree show I still have internal tremors when it comes to letting my work out into the public arena.

The first question is "Is it good enough?"
Well, there are an infinite amount of answers to this question.
The answers come in the form of more pressing questions:
Is it good enough compared to what?
Is it as good as I can make it?
Is it good as a final piece?

Is it good enough compared to what?
This is the biggie.
This is the one that any person in a creative industry has to battle with. If you make something, perform, or are engaged in any act that brings what we call "art" (and by that I myself mean something unique that has been brought about by the talents of oneself, or an invaluable part of cast, contributing something to a production or show), then you are constantly holding yourself up to those who have come before you or are your contemporaries. The songs "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful" (Morrissey), or "How Do You Expect To Be Taken Seriously" (Pet Shop Boys) always ring in my head when up against "the competition". Failure is not an option, but its pretty inevitable in some degree. Even the best lose sometimes.

Is it as good as I can make it?
Well, at some point work has to be finished doesn't it? Or does it. I get regaled with stories of artists who have turned up to galleries daubing paint on their work because they weren't happy with it, even after the shows have opened! They can never be happy with it, so why should I? Time runs away so fast, and even when I think I have enough confidence to face deadlines head on, thinking what I have makes a really good show, this melts away for no apparent reason other than just pure stage fright. Like an actor or singer (I have dabbled in both) who never feels they have had enough rehearsals, that terrible feeling of not being prepared or not reaching a level of perfection weighs heavy. Your materials might not be the most expensive, the work may look a bit ragged and not put together well, there's something wrong somewhere...
But the good news is, there's always next time, even if it's a disaster and you are met with a wall of apathy - you can learn from it and move on. Even if it means self-funding your own show.

Is it good as a final piece?
If your work has a strong research element, you might feel that nothing you make is worth showing in a gallery, as it is just part of an investigation. But a great many artists display work that's part of an ongoing investigation, like Gerhard Richter, and a lot of people pay a lot of dollars for his paintings! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and what you find interesting along the way someone else probably will too. Human beings have a lot more in common than is made out in the press, how else do you account for all the good mood in spring when the flowers come out? If a work is visually pleasing, not just pretty but has some deeper poetic qualities, it doesn't matter if its polished to perfection (see previous question) or not, if people look at it, its a winner. Quite often what I think of as a preliminary investigative piece seems to hold more interest for other people than a piece developed later on from the same idea, presumably because its more "fresh" and less contrived.

So in the spirit of optimism for my MA Final Show here are some photos of some of my works...