Sarah Gibson- week 2

The details are our everyday.

We are here one day and might not be here the next. Life is fragile so make the most of your everyday.

October 14th 2022

In Class today we had to pick an everyday object. The choices were:

• A ruler
• A pencil
• Glasses
• Plant pot
• A toy bird
• An eraser
• A tomato
• A teabag
• And lastly a toothpick

I choose the plant pot. We then each had to describe our item without actually naming it. This is what I came up with:

• Scratchy to rub
• Tippy tappy on nails
• empty
• Lonely
• dirty
• earthy
• fragile
• A raging ocean inside, the wind howling in my ear.

This activity was quite thought provoking, it brought us back to our childhood, making us react to everyday objects as if we knew not what they were. It was an alien feeling, describing something without actually naming it. It got us to think, to look at these items like we never had done before.

After getting a feel for our own individual items we each paired up and made our items meet each other. Dee and her glasses paired up with me and my plant pot. To begin, Dees’s glasses attacked my pot using its legs as if my plant pot was its prey. My pot then took the glasses and used them to fill the hole of the missing plant, no longer making it feel empty.

To end this activity we brought all our objects together to make a group piece.

The next activity was unsighted drawings and writing. This was very overwhelming. I think to best way I could describe this activity was ‘sensory overload’. At times it felt that there was too much going on in the short time that we were taking in all the content. Aside from that it was great to get a taste of all these pieces of art.

For the 15 minutes of research we did in class I randomly chose to look at Kathy Prendergast- City Drawings, 1992.

Prendergast made a series of tiny skeletal images. From a brief look of a post on Tate, I found out that while her images are loosely based off maps, she grafts imaginary places into them, often a figure of a female body. Her sites are of speculation and fantasy.

Her drawing are almost like a mind map, they even bare a slight resemblance to that of the roots of trees, of leaves, the wings of bees.

Straight lines, curved lines, circular lines, her drawing are so detailed.

The unfinished aspect of the pieces feel like there is more to come. like these cities are willing to keep growing.

To me some of her drawings, like the one above, look like a brain or the veins and arteries within the human body. They could almost be diagrams in a science book.

When I look at the city drawings there is a mystery to each piece that I am drawn to finding out. Questions come to my mind. Are they fully populated cities? Who lives in them? What do they do in their day to day lives? Are there areas that are inhabitable? Is there much nature or is there just buildings? These questions are endless. I don’t know if it is the nosy part in me or if it’s the part of me that just wants there to be a hidden story in these pieces.

October 17th 2022

Sophie Calle- The Hotel Room,1981. I again chose this one randomly from the bibliography.

The above piece is a two-part framed work comprising of photographs and text. Its one of the pieces within the series, ‘The Hotel’.

Calle took a job as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. There she examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests. Calle’s descriptions of the hotel rooms and their contents combine factual documentation along with her personal response to the people whose lives she glimpsed by examining their belongings.

In this piece above ‘Room 47’, the absent occupants are a family of four – two parents and two children – which is revealed to us from the 4 pairs of slippers found in the room.

What I find fascinating about this particular project is that you are seeing a glimpse into random peoples lives solely through their belongings, without ever actually seeing the individuals. You can interpret what you want from their hotel rooms and their belongs but you will never actually know or understand how they are as people. You can make up a whole story about these people, what their job is, what they look like, but that is just a fantasy that is likely far from the truth.

Self Directed Project

I got my t-shirt painted and ready to walk around the streets.

This was a nerve racking experience. The build up to the day of filming was in a sense scary. I was afraid to see how people reacted but this fear was soon overcome by my intrigue to see how individuals would react.

I had a great hype team and camera woman, Emily Brannigan who gave me great confidence.

I took to the busy streets of Aberystwyth around mid-afternoon. When walking about I tried to have the composure of someone who is lonely, travelling around by themself. I walked along the promenade and through the town centre getting all different kinds of looks from people. I wonder what was going on in passerbys heads as no one approached me but many stared at my t-shirt looking as though they were trying to figure out what was going on.

I wore a black and white outfit which contrasted well with the sunny weather.

There are many more videos we shot but for whatever reason my laptop is unable to upload them. I hope to edit the videos over the next few weeks and compile them into one video, potentially on YouTube.