Black and white photograph glued in an open wooden box
40 x 60 x 5 cm (15 3/4 x 23 5/8 x 2 in.)
Subversion of the unique, personal identity inherent in the ubiquitous couples’ photo. Recalls the seaside or fairground ‘face in hole’ cut out boards.
Month: October 2020
Mona Hatoum, Grater Divide, 2002, Mild steel
Gaaahhh! Such an elegant, expressive, gestural work. Referencing the pop art enlargement of Claes Oldenburg etc. but so much sharper, pithier, wittier.
Thinking about the domestic sphere, how its designated and divided. How these divisions are antagonistic and potentially injuring.
Architectural references, Chinese lacquer screens, skyscraper cladding.
Chillingly ‘Grown Up’ but Childlike, The Borrowers, ‘honey I shrunk the kids’.
I AM NOT ANISH KAPOOR
Ogham / Gaelic Tree Alphabet
Potential extension to the diagrammatic language of morse code. Ogham, or the Gaelic Tree Alphabet is composed of 20 characters is an early Medieval language (4-6th centuries CE), of which written evidence on standing stones exists in Ireland and Western Britain.
Common formal characteristics with ladders, alongside a material link through shared materiality – wood.
Artist’s Ladders
Having grown up as a child in the coastal city just across the Straits from Taiwan, Cai became accustomed to hearing explosions as Mainland artillery batteries traded fire with Nationalist batteries on the other side.
It left him with a fascination of explosions and although his latest project lasted only 80 seconds it took weeks of hard work to realise and years of planning.
500 metre-high structure made from wires laced with fireworks, which was hoisted into the sky by a large weather balloon.
Guoqiangs team of hundreds of experts spent countless hours planning the project, but for the artist himself, “Sky Ladder” has been a 21-year-long dream.
Guoqiangs first attempt at his “Sky Ladder” came in 1994, when he launched a similar balloon into the sky.
However, strong winds twice felled his balloon, causing him to ultimately suspend the project.
When Shanghai hosted the APEC summit in 2001, Guoqiang planned to launch the “Sky Ladder” once more, but his plans fell through once more after the events of September 11 restricted access to the skies.
Study Plan
Practically speaking, I feel my top priority in these coming months is demonstrating my commitment to myself and to my art practice.
I have a natural curiosity; a desire to be adventurous with ideas and experiment with material and form.
However, now more than ever I want and need to foster that instinct into practical outcomes. Into material that independently communicates my ideas, my emotions and enthusiasms, my ladder love…
In these shifting, uncertain times, I am particularly responsive to structure and direction. With this in mind, I plan to designate Thursdays + Friday afternoons (if possible) to being in the studio.
This is something I have trialled in C.22 this week and seems to work quite well. Organising my time like this initially appears prescriptive and limiting, contrary to the kind of organic playfulness I want to foster in my work. However, when there is so much going on with the demands of dissertation and the general, tangible undercurrent of anxiety and imminent doooooom, having a fixed weekly commitment designates a focused space within which to explore themes and ideas that have been percolating away in me heid with limited palpable output for some time now.
This is not to say I won’t be thinkingabout or making work outside of my ‘allotted’ days. I think commiting to the security of having at least one studio day will inspire a greater level of focus and remove some of the persistent guilt I’ve always felt around being in the studios ‘enough’.
Consistency is the game here. Along with sanity. And graduating. And not getting covey. Or getting covey and then not knowing that you’ve got covey, then giving it to someone who can’t afford to be covey and then actually gets quite poorly.
Anyhoooo…
Weeks 3-5
Starting with some of the quick-fire experiments I’ve scribbled in my sketchbook, make some actual, real life work!
Something to photograph and record which I can use as a springboard moving forward.
Book a couple of mornings or afternoons in the workshops and see what happens.
Weeks 5-7
Check in with the old study plan. See what has worked and what has been less successful. Take forward some of the preliminary workings out, or make the call to start afresh. Maybe a round of research,playing with a material with no specific outcome in mind, looking at other people’s workingsis required.
Dot Dot Dash Dash
The Language of Ladders?
Studio Ladders
Ladder is Body
On the table laid out. Skeletal body, dissecting examining. Picking apart
Diagrammatic
Ladders as Diagrams. Flat 2D.
As synaptic channels directing energy.
Light and dark, shape and line. Delineating shapes, flow, stop and go.
Ladder as diagram. As intersection, connector, directing energy.
Both static and flowing.
