'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.