Strive to Fail

"Failure by definition, takes us beyond assumptions and what we think we know and can be represented... Experiment and Progress, examines failure's potential for experimentation beyond what is known, while questioning the imperatives of progress. The act of testing takes on a different register when considered as a process rather than a result-orientated search for progress"
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Feuvre, L. L. (2010). Introduction: Strive to Fail. The Whitechapel Gallery, London: The MIT Press. Pp. 12 – 19.

 

 
When Thinking about failure I think of how paint operates on surface, it becomes transparent or subdued or illuminates marks that where attempted to be covered. Although my choice in colours and form are very structured, I am Interested in the way the pigment attempts to break a way from is confined form, through either a drip or a water mark, these attributions are out of my control acting either in a failure or succuss - the process of trail and error tends to form my practice by repeating it over and over, until I exhaust the materiality of paint through repetition.

Materiality and Random Interference

" Chance is a role that providence has reserved for itself in the affairs of the world, a role through which it could make certain that men would have no influence"

"The ability to open up to chance is triggered by a personal desire to set something in motion."

 I see my work as the artists hand the guides the material of paint to a surface where it operates freely depending on the pigment. There is no determined outcome in this process but through consideration of the materiality which pigments operate differently as the watermarked pigment drys in away that I had perceived before, resulting in either the so called master piece or dissolved with another layer of paint. where it is still presented every so quietly emerging from under the top coat of paint.

The Aesthetics of Affect

"Art Operates as a fissure in representation, and we as spectators as representational creatures are involved in a dance with art, a dance in which through careful manoeuvres - the molecular is opened up, the aesthetic is activated and art does what is its chief modus operandi it transforms, if only for a moment, our sense of our "selves" and our notion of the world."  

I see this quote important in terms of my practice, it is through the viewers movement and connection with the works that makes them come alive. From every viewer point a new form will emerge or recede on the surface of the paint, creating a subtle optical shift. I see this as an aesthetic of the work operating through light and shadow. It "transforms a sense of ourselves" I think for me this peice of writing becomes important through this engagement both in making and viewing, I repeat my process over and over again, yet the paintings never become what was intended, through this failure and absurdity it becomes about how far as an artist I want to exhausted this material and move onto the next and through making it is an engagement with oneself placed in the world, the paints call out for attention yet not so much load mouthed, they speak softly, charming the viewers with their colours, yet they are far from being perfect, they displace a certain amount of elegance as they are propped up right on the wall.

I intend the viewers thoughts to linger in the depths of their minds as they become some what as the banality of the everyday, things that go misplaced, or lost for many year are recoiled and displayed as an abstract form. 

I will leave you with another quote that I also found interesting from the same text by Simon O'sullivan which also make connections with the paragraph I have written above.
"The work of art is a block of sensations, that is to say, a compound of percepts and affects. Percepts are no longer perceptions: they are independent of the state of those who experience them...They go beyound the strength of those who undergo them. Sensation, percepts and affects are beings whose validity lies in themselves and exceeds any lived." Affects are not one to be pinned down to one definition it is much more than a sensation it is something this is unlocked through the viewer as the artwork then reveals its Secret "affect."

Julian Hooper

Julian Hoopers Statement

"I worked a lot in watercolour and gouache painting. I work in acrylics now because I find they can do most of the things watercolour and gouache can do. But for years, even before art school, I would be doing quick paintings on paper and I think developed a kind of fluidity with working flat and working with thin paint – paint that could move on its own accord"

When I was having a discussion about my work to Amber the other day we were talking about my work in terms of composition, the way things become disjointed and don't want to connect in a way where we would perceive. Julian Hooper took get interest to me as his works display a similar disconnection in form. Where line and shape don't want to connect, layer appear and disappear on the surface of the paint. It is through the mix media that both Hooper and I use juxtaposing transparency and fluidity with a solid form or ground.

"the activity of painting is generating the image, whereas for several years I was making quite planned images. Still, a certain amount would happen during the process of doing the painting, and I’ve made decisions along the way that could change the course of the image – but things now are much more kind of utilising chance and accident in order to create an idea for the painting"

I see this process a like mine as there is room for a  random occurance to happen that, this may reveal a certain failure, that could change the discourse of the practice. Corrosponding with the reading of Jan Verwoert's reading of 'Emergence' a process of become through a commitment to materiality.

Text/ Quotes Retrieved from the reference bellow:
Artist Profile, Issue 19 Melbourne Art Fair Special Edition (June/July 2012) pp 96 – 101

Colour!

".. Paint as a factory - made commodity. The colour that possesses no higher truth than the materials that were required to make it"

This quote was taken from the book Colour Chart: Renivating colour, 1950 - Today, written by Ann Temkin. I think it is interesting to view colour through a process of materiality. The use of a 'colour chart' makes us (the viewer) more aware of the everyday and the surroundings. I tend to notice that in terms of my practice the colours chosen cause a further interpretation into the surrounding architecture. It invokes not the realm of fine art, but rather the non art purposes for which the overwhelming majority of paint in the world is made.

Colour Beyond the Frame

This artist is one that I looked at last semester. Tomislav Nikolic is an Australian Painter that work a lot with the casting shadowof pigment. " The teasing manipulation of the visible - what is chromatically barely detectable around the outside of the conspicuously framed rectangle or within it." this artist presents blank or extremely delicate stained canvases delineated by the starkly painted boarders and / or dark frames in florescent chroma to diffuse the contoured presence of the painted stretcher. He uses this process to create colours that float outside and inside the frame, on the canvas and on the surrounding wall. This casting of light catches the viewer in a space that encloses them as discrete entities.

Working with a similar process, I want the viewer to move around the work consider each side of the painting, through colour. I think Nicolic's process works well in a very subtle way, I went to this exhibition at Fox Jensen Gallery and only then did i see the reflective side of the frames, they act in a very subtle way but they draw you in wanting to know how the process is done, which I find interesting.

Ruth Thomas-Edmond

Ruth Thomas-Edmond is interested in how paint operates in two and three-dimensional form and produces drawings, paintings and sculptural works that reference "multiple landscapes and experiences, seen and sorted and later remembered".

Thomas-Edmond's work renews our wonder of the meandering journey and the particular passage that is the exploration of visual space. Her work operates at both the level of the map and the territory simultaneously, for she creates spaces while recording them. Yet because she generates her own territory, literally making her own terrain, she evades having to actually refer to any location or real place. The paintings are reminiscent, they resemble and they float like thought bubbles, ideas or memories... The work is imbued with aspects of our everyday lives; tracts of time, momentary tea breaks, interruptions and concentration. They hum, shiver, shimmer, vibrate and oscillate. James Robertson

Im interested in the way Thomas - Edmond using transparent pigment to create depth, texture and the history of what was left and what was covered in each work.  The forms are bold and stand out not just in colour but they give a sense that these forms hover over the paper, into space.