Unfortunately, due to poor weather conditions and timing, I haven’t had the chance to progress with the graffiti as of Thursday, but I intend to spend the majority of the day doing so on Friday.
Instead this week I went to an evening of artists’ talks and discussions conducted by the Centre for Material Thinking as part of a public engagement strategy, for which they commissioned four visual artists over three months to create pieces of work in response to the theme of ‘material thinking, which would then be exhibited on the CMT website.
The artists included:
Doug Burton:
- Open College of the Arts where he’s the programme leader for the BA (Hons) Creative Arts.
- His practice engages with digital and physical media across drawing, print, sculpture and site
Aim King:
- A filmmaker and poet
- They’re undertaking a practice-based PhD at Aberystwyth University.
- Their work is inherently interdisciplinary and often involves collaboration with environmental activists and other artists.
Tanya Syed;
- Swansea based artist
- She’s working with film, digital, sound and installation, making single-screen and gallery-based work.
- She’s collaborated with artists who work with performance, dance, theatre and music.
- https://cargocollective.com/tanyasyed
Simon Whitehead:
- A movement artist.
- Situated in the lower Teifi valley, west Wales.
- His practice is improvisatory, responding to the circumstances he finds himself in, and moving in correspondence with other beings and things.
- https://simonwhitehead.net/
While it didn’t fully relate to my project, I found it incredibly insightful and inspiring for possible future projects and an enjoyable experience as a whole. My favourite artist would have to be Aim King whose visuals in her filmmaking are incredibly pleasing in their framing.
In addition to this, I really enjoyed the beginning of Simon Whitehead’s audio art, able to create stunning visuals in my mind, however, as it progressed the tone of the audio introduced other elements shifted to sounding more ominous I found myself becoming stressed and the scene I was imagining becoming more hostile.
Katharina Grosse
In addition to this in response to last week’s comment, I researched Katharina Grosse, a German artist active since 1995 and continuing.
- Born 1961 in Freiburg / Breisgau
- Lives and works in Berlin
- 2000 – 2010 Professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee
- 2010 – 2018 Professor at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf
Grosse is a painter who often employs electrifying sprayed acrylic colours to create large-scale sculptural environments and smaller wall works.
She’s in the shifts of scale between ‘imagining big’ while being small in relation to one’s surroundings, exploring the dynamic interplay between observing the world and simply being in it. By uniting a fluid perception of landscape with the ordered hierarchy of painting, Grosse treats both architecture and the natural world as an armature for expressive compositions of dreamy abandon, humorous juxtaposition, and futuristic flair.
Despite her projects often suggesting complex narratives through the inclusion of everyday objects, psychedelic vistas, and evocative titles. By building up layers of colour with an expressive immediacy, she enables her work to become a material record of its own making and, perhaps, an inscription of her thoughts. But, Grosse says, “I am the painting trickster. Don’t believe me!” (“Katharina Grosse — Art21”)
The point of this research was in response to her use of colour and spray paint which I found truly beautiful and inspiring, creating an immersive experience through the incorporation of her entire space allowing giant installation pieces.
My favourite would have to be her inclusion of fabric, the way it drapes creating texture is incredibly visually satisfying.
Finally, the last of the first three pictures was taken on my walk home from the artist’s talk, in contrast to the loudness of my current work for this project, the photo is calm and quiet, the orange colouring from the autumn leaves and lampost reflects warmth and comfort which is emphasised by the night sky. In addition to this, I like how the light has bled from the lampost, reflecting that of a bleach-damaged old photo reminding me of the photo album I have back home full of pictures of my childhood and my parent’s life at my age, which I suppose lends to the comforting feeling I feel in response. It holds no deeper meaning except something I found beautiful in a moment of peace and felt the need to capture; which I believe is reflective when contrasted with my project of the improvement of my mental health.
Works cited:
(“Katharina Grosse — Art21”)
- “Katharina Grosse — Art21.” Art21, 2019, art21.org/artist/katharina-grosse/.