10/10/22
If ever there was a series that could really give the feeling of ‘The Everyday’ it would be Shane Meadows ‘This is England and ‘This is England 86/88/90’. The film and channel 4 series is based on the events of Shane’s life as he was growing up in the 80’s onwards, capitulating the extremes, the highs, the lows, family, friendship and tragedy. This is what the everyday holds for all of us and there are some irreplaceable scenes within the show, mainly due to the incredible performances by the whole ensemble cast and the extremely personal shots, leading to an overwhelming drama.
*spoilers* One scene of note that stands out beautifully is the final scene of the show (90) that shows that even for all the characters darkness’s there is a glimmer of hope at the end for the future for all. The scene gives place to Lol and Woody’s reception at the local miners club where her grandad used to drink when she was a child. It’s essentially a slowed down dance between the cast celebrating an emotional road to their own freedom of their Demons ready to face another day of the everyday life they all hold, with Ludovico Einaudi’s beautiful track ‘Berlin Song’.
It’s an incredibly brutal but beautiful film and show and is highly worth watching for a glimpse into one man’s life and the events that took place around him growing up.
More photos for the 4pm section today. Still trying to keep focus on the observational style whilst maintaining a natural feel to the photos. Soon I shall have a full day of photos when it comes to the 0-5 aspect, this will move even further when I create enough for the 5 days of the week. The creative arts course is such a fantastic opportunity once it sets in and you start to find your edge, no matter what it is. I have never approached photography before in this type of situation and it’s letting me gain such pleasing and rewarding results, especially portfolio wise.
11/10/22
During my other lessons today I managed to snap more photos of people I met at different times, doing different tasks etc.
12/10/22
Today for Interdisciplinary we had a session of blind drawing with sounds and visuals showcased in the Soddy room. Below are the results from my blind drawings:
Compared to last year I really tried to let myself flow and not look at the paper at all throughout this session, some interesting results but unfortunately it doesn’t come as naturally as I would hope it would.
Artist Research 1:
Ducks – Lucy Ellmann
Ducks is a narrative style type of book that consists of a story within a single sentence throughout the entire book. There are brief clauses to this but start with the particular phrase being ‘the fact that’ more than 19,000 times. The book homes over 1000 pages of story and won the Goldsmith’s prize in 2019 whilst also being shortlisted for the booker prize in 2019. Whilst acclaimed critically it has also been criticised because of the style as mentioned before due to the long clause of storytelling within.
Ducks by Lucy Ellmann got me interested due to nature of the of the narrator explaining how the unremitting dialogue of her mind would keep her occupied so that the world around her or in her case the death of her mother would not haunt her as much. This intermittent dialogue would range from pondering on a variety of ideas such and topics such as recollections, and individual words etc.
This is I found extremely interesting as I feel that most of us tend to try to block out the negativity of the world with our own distractions such as music, media and other oddities. I found this relatable as I can tend to focus too much on how bad the world can be and it affects me quite vividly, so I try to switch my brain off with music a lot.
The novel is called Ducks, Newburyport because it refers to how her mother as a child, was saved by her sister in the Newburyport when she nearly drowned in a lake. Due to this incident she would then go chasing the ducks, hence the name ducks.
Lucy Ellmann
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43412920-ducks-newburyport
City Drawings – Kathy Prendergast
Prendergast’s City Drawings provides an etheral yet astonishing interoperation of city life that I’ve never seen before, you could lie each drawing in a line and just ponder on how incredibly unique each drawing stands out to the viewer. The imagination pours from the mind into each city and is incredible. Her series of drawings started out in 1992 as a long sustained project with each city being ambiguous and not stating which city they are, making it even more unique to the viewer once again.
Skeleton in their design, the cities hold contrast, emotion and enormous amounts of effort. Kathy has created a ghostly wondrous project which is deserving of its praise. I took interest in this from the moment because I saw this as like the the person that lives an everyday life, so does a city in it’s own way. And like blood current within a skeleton of the everyday person, a city holds running and energetic passages which run through them everyday also, just like a skeleton, making a similar comparison which makes sense.
Kathy Prendergast
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/art-now-kathy-prendergast-city-drawings
New addition to the project today, approached some people in town whilst travelling to the school of art. First person I approached was feeding a pigeon at the bus stop, was absolutely perfect but he stated he didn’t want to be on camera but the pigeons could. The next person sitting outside Spoon ‘Chris’ was holding his dog and was feeding the foam from his glass to him. I approached and he said definitely. Below are the results:
13/10/22
The collection of photos is building up for each day of the week now, there is a real essence of people when it comes to the everyday. Only thing is I need to concentrate more on people whilst they are working in town or at jobs outside of the art centre/campus so that there is a good contrast between shots.
Tomorrow’s plan will most likely be to go around the town after lesson or before, whichever will feel most naturally. Then switch to taking photos of the public with their verbal consent, if I can’t get enough photos of the public to have good contrast by week 6, I will most likely just stick to the university and school of art and have that as the main focus. Could potentially be ‘everyday life in the student context’, will need to think of a good name for the book of photos once it’s ready to be published in InDesign.
Watch it grow! So cool.
Great Mike, the front page of the book gives a strong sense of where this is going..the photos are strong technically and compositionally, sensitive, beautiful. Not sure why you are mixing images of the public with school of art and uni, i would imagine either or would be more cohesive but if not try to articulate why you are mixing both? great attitude Mike, it’s really taking shape. Good reviews, good vocabulary when describing Preddergast’s drawings, include images and extracts fo text for the post viewer to see and read.