Jeremy Gilbert - Rolfe

This is an artist that i stumbled across today. I was drawn by the matt colour pallet and how he creates an unbalanced form that looks as though it is about to topple over. The flatness of colour brings this colourful pixelation to life. The positioning leads my eyes from left to right sinking into the red void of the canvas. He discusses his work in terms of beauty, a commonly known term traditionally, but played down in the contemporary world as 'low art.'

"I want to discuss this beauty in terms of a differential relationship with a sublime found, nowadays, less in a now finite nature than in an infinite technology which has overlaid or surrounded or otherwise appeared, irreversibly, alongside it. But here I have confined myself to a question about beauty." To me a work is successful if it is aesthetically pleasing, if it doesn't play up or down any cultural or political concerns, it is as it is for its genuine beauty. Which is what Gilbert - Rolfe presents perfectly. 

If you are interested in reading more on aesthetics and beauty here is the reading that I retrieved that quote from: http://www.strikingdistance.com/xtra/XTra100/v2n3/jgr.html
 

Kathy Prendergast

Prendergast's city drawings create a sense of spreading one that seems never ending, like a bacteria. The drawings are highly detailed, yet lightly sketched with pencil. I am interested in the grids, subtlety of detail and the form that emerges through this process of drawing. This obsessive interest in mapping, creating a longing, belonging and a nations identity continue to take place.

"City Drawings is to articulate a sense of displacement.  Even as the eyes wander over the streets that one knows and identifies with as one’s own, the lines signifying the streets are too removed from the familiar.  This alignment with the familiar creates the most successful art of the grotesque, because the viewer feels drawn in by the comfort of the familiar, only to become disoriented, confused and ultimately repelled by the constant feeling of “out-of-placeness”.

Inside the gallery, surrounded only by the City Drawings, a sense of nausea occurs as the excess of the miniscule criss-crossing and swerving streets, page after page, cause each place to become almost indistinguishable, to the point of becoming placeless.  The work, as a result, creates for the viewer the feeling of eternal displacement, when one is uprooted from the place one has always known to a new and unfamiliar place with which one cannot easily identify or feel a sense of belonging.  Due to the anonymity of the piece, the artist cannot be located or placed within the piece, no more so than viewers can place themselves.

The work then operates in the mode of disgust as it impinges spatially on the viewer’s sense of self and subjectivity. “The disgusting unfolds its affective power in the context of the aesthetic.” Boundaries are endlessly open and fluid in the work of Prendergast, allowing the flow between locales in City Drawings, but also between nature, science and art.  Thus the skin of the world is re-ordered and the new spatial re-organization ensures that hierarchy is disregarded."

This critic of Prendergast's work was written by Shellie Dickson (2010) in the article City Drawings as a Spatial Grotesque. The article reveals that although these drawings are visually pleasing they can also lead to disorientation and an overwhelming sensation of detail. I see her work a scope for new beginning. There are no tiles in these citys no names for the streets so it is left for the viewer to interpret the work and capture a memory of their past.

Starting with a Portrait

Selina Foote interests me as she creates transparency with opaque in a way that creates a paradox. I picked this article up from eyecontact of an exhibition she had at the Sue Crockford Gallery. Critic-ed by John Hurrell 22 February, 2012.

Foote's linked polygons (as shown above) usually render in ochre or oxide colours, Their plastic like silk exploits the shadows cast on the wall behind the paint and the wood grain of the stretchers, while the softness of the faint gray brown silk makes the configurations seems like hunched over figures or loosely tied knots. Some hybrids exist as well, where the flickering triangles are clear so that the wall is visible behind them, and the opacity and translucency are juxtaposed.

I am interested in Foote's idea to create translucency and shadow, this is a different way of layering in terms of my work but it creates a sense of depth ans illusion, the painting almost hovers in front of the picture strainer focusing your eye upon the flatness of line and shape, that appear as 3.D.

Foote's work involves a demanding process, each having set rules and chosen visage , repeating key colours in order to create what looks like an exploded or magnified view of something bigger.  Her love for geometric abstraction interests me as I too am trying to incorporate this,  the forms are irregular implying they are edging towards a more fluid, organic structure, but the lines begin to inform you it is not a surface of simplicity, it is hard edged geometric structure. The push and pull of organic and geometric co - existing is also of interest to me.

Joseph Marioni

"...Paintings which unfold in time; paintings that initially present as simple, almost accidental even, but which slowly draw us in until we are fatally enmeshed within their designs, with only our own thoughts, experiences and memories as the most tenuous of footholds to the situation at hand."

Butler, R. (2000) The Touch Between the Optical and the Material - Joseph Mairioni. Brisbane, Australia: University Art Museum: The Museum of Queensland pp.24 -29.

I think this quote above relates a lot to the idea of 'emergence' as paintings unfold over time, with the responding viewer. Alike Marioni's paintings, my paintings require close attention too. It is not until you become immersed in both the painting and the white wall that surrounds it, that the tiny details of the work become apparent a sort of unfolding, revealing the truth of these optical shift, yet not intirely giving it away.

Marioni's work may seem a surface of simplicity, but through the many layers of opaque and transparent acrylic pigments are applied. And in the end it is a process that is more or less transparent to the viewer perceiving them. The materiality of paint reveals its process edging toward the corners and bottom of the canvas, there will be ripples and drips, overlays of a complimentary colour or texture emerging through the layers of the paint. These are also aspects i would like to highlight in my work.

Process Art

I see my practice as a continuous process where failure and success occur. I think of my practice in terms of Tomma Abts' statement 'It is an intuitive process of making, where I paint until I feel that the painting can be independent and fend for itself.' This process relys on its materials and how they contextualize the surface of a canvas.

In terms of process I see my works reflex upon the following artist

• Karla Black 
• Eva Hesse
• Ann Hamilton
• Roger Ackling

Karla Black - Continues to find her process through materiality she states "the things themselves are actual physical explorations into thinking, feeling, communicating and relaxing. They are an ongoing learning or search for understanding, through a material experience that has been prioritized over language." I see Blacks practice as experimental and a sense of lightness as she does not want her work to fall into the everyday life of cultural and political understandings of the world, which I am also interested in for my practice.

I really enjoy this quote as Black states in her statement for the exhibition - Open Frequency, "Known rules and techniques are intentionally not learned or adhered to. Instead, more haphazard, individual methods are found."

I think this relates to my focus as I don't want to make an easy path for painting, I plan for the bumps to happen along the way, as my work explores the idea of failure, it is not until I thing that the work can be independent and can control the audience (viewer).  This is through the changes in optical shifts, transformations and transitions.

Eva Hesse - 'prefers to work with shapes and structures that were both organic and geometric at the same time - as if art were a way of making a contradiction in terms of a material thing.'

Hesse states that both organic and geometric are present in one form at one time. In away I see my paintings a lot like what was stated above as  there is a centain push/pull of fluid forms and geometrical forms, but i tend to see the geometrical forms are a connector or an anchor for the painting, so it can be balanced.

Rodger Ackling - "you set up a procedure, an experiment and then things happen. You have limited control. What you end up with you can choose to accept or reject."

Ackling also works with materiality, this quote reminds me a lot of Sigma Polkes quote that I mentioned earlier where thing begin to unfold before your eyes. I see this as a positive as my work can look like one thing and the next only the presence of its underlying colour is revealed. This process in making is to highlight the contingency of materials and how they reveal a sensation both in making and viewing, this is where painting ‘happens’ as it begins to unfold on a surface. This is an artistic perspective both imagined and experienced. The artists selected resemble a close investigation of ways to reveal a work, as Polke puts it, “this ‘happens’ not when you try really hard, but in the moment when you let go. Things can fall into place in a way that you couldn’t have conceived before” (1960, p.101). This is suggestive to the way the work is being made and viewed. It is through this moment that it becomes an exploration of the materials; and how they operate through layers and when exposed to light their detail becomes something other than what it was before.

Pinterest

http://pinterest.com/jennyhorrell/

Last Monday Debbie and I were discussing with Anna Miles about 'Pinterest.' I made an account with them to further my knowledge in the art world. I am currently following 22 people and their artwork and/ or artist's work. This is a great way to find links as well, when you click on your desired image it will take you to the original link via google. I am still trying to get the hang of the program, when I find it gets easier to use I think I will categorize each artist and works and also look into more readings via printerest.   

This is a great website to build on your knowledge and find images that may help in your practice or artists that you can further look into that you may not have known existed.

Everyone should check out my page - the link is shown above.

Starlings Flocking

This starling murmuration i find not only is beautiful but presents from far away tiny black dots or marks in the sky. I see this video in terms of my practice as tiny pencil marks of the paper or small incision marks that cut into the paper to create this sort of sweeping, organic motion of movement.


I try to make work that reveals a similar motion of movement, like an optical shift. The flocking creates this illusion too as they present accumulation of clusters together causing this repetitive motion, through the duration of the clip, the starlings emerge and subtract dividing themselves to form new clusters. I am trying to demonstrate a similar process in my practice as i want lines to connect and disconnect, emerging and declining the image as it plays of the natural light.

Definitely a video to check out!