Flat Packed Love

'MORE'

I am really interested in playing about with a number of quotes i have collected for a book titled 'Great love letter of men and women'. the next quote i am going to experiment with is 'Can you bring a piece of your bed linen to me'. i want to create this in an image of a bed sheet and after seeing this piece from one of the blog i am following i thought about the sizing and layout to me piece.

 For now i am going to keep with the same size as my other imagery, but i love the strong use of the word 'MORE'. In one of my last pieces i concentrated on chosen words from phrases but i believe layering an added simple word on top of my text would work effectively.

I have also been researching Tracey Emin 'MORE' 2005 for my dissertation.

I find this word so aproprated to women espeacialy in the content Emin has incluede it. This is why i believe creating it in textile on top of my, almost seedy quote would have a dramatic effect. I am also considering what symbolism to use with the text, at the moment i am considering using the heart shape as a continuum from a past piece of work.

Reflecting on assessment point

Within the assessment I believe I got all my views about where my work is and where my work is going across effectively. The use of text and stitching is one of the ways I am going to further my project, at the present time.

I discussed the quotes I have collected from the book titled, ‘Great love letters of men and women’ and how I am going to illustrate these obscure references to ‘love’. The tutors suggested as well as using love letters maybe look at contemporary reference points such as movie quotes, sections from women’s magazine on love and divorce, and speaking to people directly about their experiences.

Another thing that I considered when talking about contemporary love references is the way of telling someone you love them, the book is older love letters, but nowadays loving affections are normally written in cards or in text messages. I see this comparison as being a great continuum to my work, and something I will defiantly research.

I believe my next step forward with my work is to start creating illustrations and drawing using the quotes I have already collected, and also gather added ones along the way. I am going to work with stitching, textiles inks and screen printing, which is why I will heavily carry on looking at the work by Careen Garfen.

Assesment One

This is what i wanted to discuss and ouline about my work as an ongoing process;

I outlined in my ‘statement of intent’ that I wished to investigate ‘The loving connections between people’. So far I have been concentrating on marriage as a way of ‘connecting’ couples love. I am currently researching and identifying how I am going to display and illustrate ‘love’ ‘bonds’ ‘connections’ and ‘relationships’ in my chosen medium textiles.

Textile’s is key to my projects development, it is a technique that I believe creates a visually beautiful finish to a piece, but also holds a lot of weight and historical meaning. Textile’s as a craft is mostly, still to the present day, done by female artists which influences my way of working as a female student.

For example when creating this piece ‘Trust is the foundation of a successful marriage, if there isn’t any trust then it simply can’t work.’ I considered the quote to be the importance of the piece. I thought about the connections between two people and the sanctity of marriage. Relationships from the outside can appear stable, romantic and ideal but when you look deeper sometimes it can be full of insecurities and doubt.

I see divorce as sometimes being a liberating event especially for women. When creating this piece I thought about the women’s movement and how women can find empowerment through such things as divorce. The reason I believe my piece made me consider these ideals is because of the way I created it, through the use of textiles. I really wanted this piece to contain a hidden narrative; I wanted it to appear beautiful from a distance, from the outside, but full of insecurities within the piece.

In my first discussion about my project, I talked about using cliché forms of love as a way of accessing my project, because of the hidden message in this piece, I believe the use of the cliché heart shape, and it works affectively without making the piece itself cliché.

I have also created a piece that’s essence originate form a stereotypical sign of affection, ‘flowers in a museum (esk) display’. The piece is basically a series of five flowers created out of divorce statics. I wanted, again to create something that appeared visual beautiful from a distance but contained a hidden message. Each individual flower includes different information about divorce; I have carefully chosen a word or phase from each flower and typed it on the front of the flowers display box. I have used a Dymo typer to emphasis the ides of a museum setting as I believe the typing fits with this theme. I then placed the boxes in a particular order as I believe when read it as a continuum it leaves the viewer questioning the piece as a collective and as individuals. It reads; Infidelity, Last 15, Average Female, 58 million, End.

I want this piece to contain a museum like felling, the reason for this is because I wanted the piece to question; is everlasting love, till the day we die love, a thing of the past? It seems almost too easy to have quick marriages and quick divorces; I sometimes wonder do couple get married because they know it doesn’t have to be forever; divorce almost eliminates ‘cold feet’ syndrome. To contrast this I do believe divorce is liberating and essential for some couples, it’s just got to the points in our society were marriage doesn’t hold that ‘forever after’ notion. Something to me that really highlights this it that in shops you can get ‘Congratulations on your divorce’ cards. It is all of these research points that brought me to my piece being displayed in museum (esk) boxes.

At the same time as creating this piece, I also made a wedding bouquet of flowers out of ‘fantasy film’. The bouquets of flowers are delicate and fragile, like most relationships are. When creating the bouquet I thought it looked like a group of brownie girl guides had made it, which made me think about actually getting in contact with a group of girl guides to produce a set of flowers for my project. The reason I considered this is because I have always been agitated by the concept of artists not creating their own work, but taking credit for it. An artist who I admire and have research for this project (and for my dissertation) is Tracey Emin, she famously, like a lot of the YBA’s, has a group of assistances helping create some of her pieces. I wanted to see how this fells, if it felt like my work or whether art created by a group of brownies was just that, theirs. I have recently got in contact with a guiding unit and I am going to undertake this experimental activity.

The other side to this piece was making it look more like a wedding bouquet, but with a hidden objective. Keeping with my current theme of divorce, I used pale cream ribbons and gold thread to emphasis the bouquet theme. On the cream ribbons I stitched divorce statics and quotes. Such as ‘More people today are part of a second marriage than a first’. I love the ribbons as a piece and I love the decorative colourful flowers as a piece, but as a combination it visual doesn’t work. I believe the combination of colours takes away from the essence of the text.

This is why I chose to re create the piece using a single white rose. White roses are often associated with death, and to me divorce is the death of a marriage. So far I have just experimented with a single white rose. I believe the play on the word ‘single’ is the centre of this piece as after being in a couple for ‘x’ amount of time, divorce makes a couple two separate individuals. I believe this solemn white rose contains much more of a thought process making the piece additional developed and finished.

The final piece I am going to talk about today is an ongoing piece, a piece that moves away from divorce and toward the ‘positives’ of love. This work is just developing it is something that I started initially creating but needed more research before I felt comfortable producing the piece. The piece is going to be a collective of images illustrating lines from a book I have been reading titled ‘Love letters of great men and women; Inspired by sex and the city’. I am picking out references to love that are unusual or that would create an intriguing illustration, such as ‘You turn my affections eastwards’ and ‘It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love and yet attend to business.’

I have already created these two quotes and I believe they are visual affective and the stitched imagery is fitting especially for ‘It is the hardest...’

 I wish to further these images by translating some of my drawing into screen prints. I have already obtained my induction for this and have past experience with the screen printing technique. Another aspect of this collection of pieces that I am considering is how I would go about displaying them. Over the summer I visited the Quilts exhibition and saw the work of Careen Garfen, which was a blanket out of small images all sewn together.

This is one way I am considering forwarding my work, Quilts have such a historical meaning and for quotes such as ‘I shall want some linen from your house tomorrow’, I believe this method of display would be visual affective and appropriate.

Overall I believe this next step would move away from cliché symbols of love allowing me to evaluative the past works in comparison to my future developing pieces.

Biennial - Rapid

John Bryne has recently taken us to visit the exhibition at Rapid hardware store, which is part of the Biennial. Before entering the exhibition John asked us to each pick a piece that we were most drawn to, a piece that interested us. He then posed a series of questions to us to open our minds to viewing and critiquing work differently. 

What is interesting about it?

What is the artist trying to communicate?

Do they do this well?

Has the artist used the most appropriate medium for the meaning they are trying to get across?

How is Rapid curated, and is it affective?

The piece i chose to discuss was by the artist Lee Mingwei, titled 'The mending project'. The artists uses threads to stitch up torn or damaged clothes that the public bring into the gallery, but instead of hiding the rip he embraces it with colourful threads and sometimes adding beads. To me this is a beautiful way of commenting on how much as a nation we threw away. Normally when our clothes get damaged or torn we don't embrace it we simply throw the item away. this is what i find interesting about this piece, it got me thinking about as a individually person how materialistic i can sometimes be. This project made me think of global warming and the effect of our consuming ways on the plant. The piece deals with these ideas in a visual bright and dynamic way. 

When walking into the gallery space there is a hanging on the door that say mending. i found this display of the piece welcoming and it gave me a sense of craft based work before even seeing the piece. i almost felt as if i was walking into the environment of the art not just walking into a room were the art is displayed. This 'mending' sign gave the piece an automatic atmosphere, as it closed of the viewer to any other piece of art work apart from Lee Mingwei. 

In the biennial guide book it states that the work is 'Hemmed in by tailor's curtains to create an atmosphere of intimacy and calm', which it truly does. 

I believe because of this way of creating a section of space the piece uses the layout of the rapid building to its advantage. Other than the architecture space of the room, the work has striped any relationship to the Rapid hardware store away, as like most galleries it has been white washed. To me this is not necessarily a bad thing as the white walls highlight all the individual coloured threads, and allowed me to follow each thread along to the garment it had mended. On the last day of the biennial the artist is going to cut the garments free to give them back to the owners. To me this is the being of the end of the project, i believe the project will never end as long as the owners are still wearing the clothes. 

The activity of mending each garment is key to the ongoing project within the gallery space. The artist is creating the work on the clothes whilst in discussion with the audience. the artist asks the viewer to sit next to him whilst he stitch's the item of clothing. the idea of this relationship is key to the project!!

i wonder what will happen to the piece when the artist leaves, the artist can only stay for the first two weeks, then he has organised for other menders to take over. This relationship between the artist and his assistance is something that interests me. i wondered if Mingwei will be happy with the garments his assistance mend or whether he will be more critical of these garments. i am going to go to the gallery this week to see the other menders at work. i am interested in the origins of textile and craft based work and the idea that it is mostly a female orientate activity. The artist Mingwei is a male artist who uses sewing to get his message across effectively, i am interested to see if he gets female menders or male menders to carry on his work. 

Emma Rodgers: The Capstone

Last Thursday I went to the open of Emma Rodgers show at The Capstone. There was a piece there that I hadn't seen before, it was a ceramic dancer with nine clock work joints.

On the base there are three holes for the dancers pole to be placed in, this changes the position of the ceramic dancer. To me it is very interactive and it is almost like getting three separate pieces in one.  

This piece is so delicate, and the idea of being able to move it becomes quite a daunting task. I believe that art, especially with in gallery settings, should be more physically interactive, which is what this piece is including. 

Lettering Book

Recently I have been looking at book on 'Lettering', I have found a few different artists style of writing that I found really influential.  

I love the use of objects to create this writing:

This next style of writing is really poetic and beautiful, and it really fits with my romantic love letters style.

Contemporary Textiles: the fabric of fine art

I have recently brought a book titled; Contemporary textiles: the fabric of fine art. I purchased this to influence my major project and my dissertation research. For my dissertation i am researching the way artists use textiles to create their work, and the different techniques this involves. 

The first artist that really inspired me was ....... I love the use of lighting as it makes the piece really ornate and delicate.

The way the piece is constructed using the stitching to hold the piece together adds a crafty feeling to the work. When I create my work i draw out images on paper then translate this onto fabric. This piece is created out paper and threads which makes the piece more delicate and detailed. 

Another piece that interested me was by the artist ... The piece uses text and imagery to illustrate their message. 

A lot of my work is created using text and imagery in a similar way, on the free hand embroidery machine. I am intrigued to find out whether this piece is created on a machine or hand stitched.

I believe the simple line drawings work effectively and add a child like quality to the piece, making it more humorous.

This collage of textile material by the artist ..... is visually interesting and is something  havn't tried before.

Within my work i am incuraged to start working on top of fabrics i have collected., beileive this will add a visual depth to my imagry.

Contemporary Textile: the fabric of fine art, book is really inspiring and is a tool that i beleive will really furthure my dissertation research and textile techniques.

Liverpool Biennial 'Touched' private view

I attended Liverpool Biennial, 'Touched', private view on Friday, were i visited the Open eye gallery, Bluecoat, and Tate. To me Bluecoat's  exhibition stood out as the strongest, it was full of diversity and the layout was curated effectively. The piece in the largest gallery space created its own atmosphere, the locker room gym. Within it was teddy Pandas with dentures holding bamboo, i didn't understand the artist reasoning for this but i found it really amusing! 

Also within the same space there was a video of a sneezing baby Panda, this again i found amusing but didn't really understand the concept of the locker room setting for this work.

Within the smaller gallery room space there was a ink painting by 'Bricolage'.

When working with my textile pieces i want to work on top of screen printed images, and ink drawings. i find the use of the simple ink colours of this piece effective, which has made me consider the use of the colours to impact my pieces. I have started to create a flower out of paper which i will later make in material, i was going to use bright ink colours and stitches  on top with white. But after see how strong the base colours make this piece i am considering using a very light red base with strong stitching colours on top. 

Within the same space as 'Bricolage' work there was a piece by Abito da Sposa 1983 titled 'Wedding dresses'. 

I love the use of black material for a piece titled 'Wedding dresses' because i associate the colour black with funerals not weddings. I am basing my work on the ideals of love, and i am looking at the symbols of love. Weddings are the ultimate connection of love, it is two peoples together for the rest of their lives, this is what i think of weddings. Which is why i heavily question the colour of these dresses and the damages heart organs created on the front of them.

This destruction of love got me thinking about divorce and the percentage of couples that do separate. This death of love is something that truly is black!! 

The artist Nicholas Hlobo truly involves the Biennial's theme 'Touched' in the work, the piece 'Ndize' 2010 entered into the biennial was my favourite piece of the evening!! I truly did feel touched by the work. 

Within Fine art galleries the viewers are not normally encouraged to touch or physically interact with the work, but this piece was the epiphany of interaction! Within the maze there were two manikins with ribbon coming out from the back of their heads, the characters looked like they were from a doctor who episode. 

Caren Garfen: Animation of line drawings

Within my own practise i am creating the majority of my work using material and textiles, which is why i have found the artist Caren Garfen (i have discussed in a past blog) very influential. i have been conducting research about her practise from her website;

http://www.carengarfen.com/ 

There is a section on the website titled animation, were Garfen has created a moving illustration of her line drawings. She states;

'I was interested in the way that the images moved and appeared to clean up the jobs we hate without human intervention:  in a similar way that the role of the housewife is performed - housework appears to be done 'as if by magic'.'

http://www.carengarfen.com/caren_animation.html

Tim Noble and Sue Webster

Within my first group assessment of the semester i was told to research the artist Tim Noble and Sue Webster, who work together, their work is a little clique but affect. 

As my project is based on the connective love i see this is being a relevant source of research. Their work is very in your face because of the use of lights, it almost becomes a comical symbol of love. 

I like the use of these obvious symbols of love and it is something that i want to use within my project. I love the use of text, text is something that i have always worked with and see as an important part of my work. 

I love the way the artists have used the text to create the image in this piece, illustrating text is something that i have already started working with within my project.

Quilts 1700-2010

The exhibition 'Quilts 1700-2010' at the V&A was amazing! My project is heavily influenced by textiles and i am using the free hand embroidery machine to create the majority of my work. In the gallery itself the walls were painted PINK!!! i found this choice of colour to be really fitting as the majority of textiles work is create by female artist. Textiles has always been a female associated practise which gives the subject matter of artist such as Tracey Emin and Caren Garfen gives added layers of feminine meaning to their practise.

For the majority of my essays and projects i research work by Tracey Emin, which is why when visiting 'Quilts' i was so existed to see 'To meet my past'.

The way the gallery had displayed the piece gave the viewer no room to move about the piece, as you could only view it from one side. This was disappointing as i couldn't see all of the imagery or read the majority of the text. This layout gave my something to consider when creating my work.

It was at 'Quilts' that i first saw work by the artist Caren Garfen, 'How many times do i have to repeat myself'. This piece, like the majority of her work, is based on the subject matter 'Women and Housework'. I think her choice of medium, textiles, is well suited to her subject matter. She also chooses to work from home and not in a studio which adds to the homely feel of her domestic subject matter.

Since visiting 'Quilts' I have conducted further research into the artist Caren Garfen.

In this months Embroidery magazine there is a 6 page article dedicated just to Garfen, there is a really inspirational quote within it that says 'I'm an artist who uses textiles to convey my message.' This is key to me as i want to use textiles to portray my subject matter.

I love the use of Caren Garfen line drawn images on appropriate items; Tea towels, table clothes, tea pot (ect)

The idea of worked onto relevant objects is something that i considered in my last blog; my idea was to use the quote 'I shall want some linen from your house tomorrow' and sew this on top of bedsheets with added imagery.

The Forth Plinth

The new forth plinth in Trafalgar Square is inspiration to me because of the use of historical material and textiles. I have researched Yinka Shonibare for past project and i love the use of his native African textiles that originates from Manchester. 

I find this piece amazing because of my past love for the artist, and as I associate it with a childhood of floating paper boats on rivers. 

The piece to me is all about the historical references, the ship in the bottle is a replica of Lord Nelson flag ship from the battle of Trafalgar. 

I particularly love this photograph of mine as it captures the essence of the piece; the historical reference to Lord Nelson that meets the new contemporary art of Yinka Shonibare.   

Exposed; Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera

Over the summer I visited the the Tate exhibition 'Exposed; Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera'. The exhibition was curated effectively, i particularly loved the use of black walls as it created an automatic tense atmosphere. When walking around the exhibition i found myself watching other people as i found the relationship between the viewer and the exposing images to be truly voyeuristic. 

As i am researching the ideals of love a found this piece by Yoshiyuki  particularly revealing, not of love but of lust (which to me is a form of love connection). 

The third person in the photograph becomes the first viewer, the camera the second, the viewer the third and i almost felt like the four, watching people within the gallery react to the work. This overlapping layers of viewers to me demonstrates the essence of Voyeurism. 

Another image that i found when conducting further research was from a photograph competition for the YoungTate  

 http://www.tate.org.uk/youngtate/exposedcompetition/inspiration.htm  

This image is a beautiful representation of affectionate love. I am wanting to research the hidden touches of affection and how i could represent this within my work. I am wanting to create the majority of my work through the medium of textiles which I believe has a 'loving touch' which will create an underlining meaning to my work. 

Influential Blogs

I have set up this blog page as a way of visual communicating my ideas, thought models and research. There are many reasons why i have chosen to do it in a blog format;

- Reflecting from second years modules i obtained the highest grade in learning by context. A module were i had to evidence my ideas in a blog format. I believe i gained the highest grade in this because i enjoyed the work process.

- When conducting research for my major project i followed the blog http://littleyellowbirds.blogspot.com/  were i found many inspiration images and techniques. I have also just started to obtain research from the blog http://connectivethread.blogspot.com/ 

One image that i loved from this site was from the exhibition 'Tongue'. 

This is a collection of different artists work displayed effectively. The piece that stands out to me is the 'To do list: 1. Get new job 2. Pay bills 3. Buy milk 4. Find true love'. The reason i was so drawn to this pieces is because for my third year major project i am basing it on 'Love and Intimacey', i want to explore the different love connections between people. This piece makes love seem so disconnected as if love just another JOB!!!

Another image that i found visual inspiring was 'More', I love the use of bold text and the bed sheet look to the material. 

I particularly find this piece influential for a potential piece for my work.i found a quote from a book of love letter, 'I shall want some linen from your house tomorrow.' I believe i could illustrate this quote effectively using a similar technique to 'more' but on a smaller scale.