23/12/2017 - WHITE TIGER PAINTING 1

Although I still was not entirely satisfied with the face of my tiger, I decided to leave this area blank for now to return later with a fresh eye, and start instead by working on the complex tonal forms of the body and column. Initially I blocked the entire form of the tiger and column in with white gesso paint and allowed it to dry completely. I was aware that I was working onto watercolour paper and in doing this I waterproofed the top layer of paper and gave it increased resistance to the wet paint medium I was about to apply, I hoped this would decrease warping as the paper absorbed water.

15/12/2017 - TISSUE COLLAGE STREET TEST

As tissue paper was an entirely new material for me, I was mistrustful of its ability to survive on a street setting. I felt like before I developed these ideas much further I wanted to give them a really solid test run focussing on a few key queries I had with the medium. Firstly, the ability of the tissue paper to adhere to the wall, and to other pieces of tissue paper. Next my concern was the extent to which tissue paper would stand up to the weather. Finally my mind wondered the practicalities of installing tissue paper, and how much it would stand out against a wall surface. These were all things I definitely needed to explore further.

As a simple prototype I cut out an orca silhoutte from black tissue, as I knew this would stand out initially against any light coloured wall, and was also a highly characteristic and recognisable silhoutte. Working to a slightly larger scale than my previous experimentation, it was a little easier to cut the shape, however the fragility of the material was still a hinderance and meant careful, slow handling was essential.

A prominent dialogue surrounding orcas is that of their captivity in institutions such as Seaworld, and their part in performances for entertainment, much to the detriment of their mental health. I thought this was an obvious context to suggest within this piece, so added a small blue square behind the main orca form. Although it was only subtle, this allowed me to give a suggestive didactic nature to the work which could be interpreted in a variety of ways. The nature of the orca's freely curving form spanning widely over the small blue box suggested behind it, hinting towards the inadequacy of such a tank to provide for such a large, complex and diverse beast.

I then went out and stuck the piece up in an alley on the way to a supermarket near my home, as I thought this would make it easy for me to regularly survey the piece for any wear or damage. When placing the work in the street the only technicality with tissue paper was it's flimsy quality. It had no strength against the elements before being stuck to the wall, and flapped wildly in the slightest breeze. For a larger, more intricate piece, getting the work stuck down correctly without bubbles or folds and tears would definitely be a job for multiple people. However even in the middle of night when I installed the work, there felt something inherently different about the act itself. Because of the transience and obvious impermanent nature of the work, it felt almost like a craft based activity instead of an act of graffiti, or even art. Akin to drawing on the sidewalk with chalk, or placing a sticker. It may very well just be myself hardening to the risks of the activity over time, however particularly on a small scale like this, this felt like an activity which could almost be carried out in daylight!

Day or night aside, the real test would come in the following weeks to see how well it stands up on a longer term!

12/12/2017 - CURATOR MEETING 3

Although the group had initially planned to meet on the 14th, the day before the deadline for the proposal form, a couple of people in the group couldn't make this date as they were going home for the holidays, and it was instead rearranged for Tuesday 12th. Me and Tessa decided to send out a message to the other curators the night before just to prompt the artists along with their proposals, but I wasn't sure if there would be much turnout for the forms yet as only half the time had passed, and indeed unfortunately Tessa had only recieved one form by this point. Only a few people came to this meeting and there wasn't really much further we could discuss alone so we discussed some ideas for leaflets.

Claude had brought in a lovely example leaflet which, aswell as boasting lots of information and a neat folded design, also folded out into a fullsize poster. This made the leaflet feel much more like a tangible art object in it's own right, and gave it a permenance as something that could be taken home as a souvenir, for both us, the artists and audience. We decided to use this format instead of supplying induvidual pieces of information for each piece to encourage people to drift through the space and absorb the artworks and information in their own way. This also allowed us to associate larger pieces of information with each piece, which helped as the works were dealing with such a broad range of themes, some of them highly personal and delicate for the artists.

11/12/2017 - TISSUE PAPER COLLAGE EXPERIMENTATION

I wanted to try working in tissue paper to create collages which could be potentially pasted out onto the street, however I had no idea how such a thin material would stand up to repeated gluing and sticking without the added support of a material base. As an easy theme I chose the recognisable forms of the turtle from my trip to The Deep, and I was also well aware of rising social awareness of ocean based plastics and the harm these can cause all marine life, however turtles in particular are effected as they often confuse floating plastic bags in particular for the jellyfish they naturally feed on. These turtles are a great example of charismatic megafauna, for their iconic and familiar appearance makes them a great poster species to front the ocean plastic awareness movement; their image strikes a chord with people and highlighting their endangerment can be a particularly powerful tool.

6/12/17 - WHITE TIGER DRAWING

I started sketching from my photoshopped collage onto a large piece of textured paper with soft hand torn edges. I considered this format because I wanted the piece to sit on a raw background, the isolation and of decidedly composed pale tiger and column against an equally pale yet raw background. This then in the further white cube gallery space I think could be quite effective. Both archival and fine art in nature, I felt the thick roll of fine paper was better suited to this than unstretched canavas as it maintained its rigidity, and make the work feel innately more formal.

4/12/2017 - CURATORS MEETING 2

For the first of our curation meetings we decided the best way to collect the results of our liasing work with the exhibitors would be to have all the artists fill out proposal forms giving a brief sumamry of their proposal for the exhibition. Tess expressed a specific interest in the writing elements of the project, and so wanted to get involved in the creation of this and a leaflet aswell to run alongside the exhibition. I hoped this would provide an open format for the artists to lay out their hopes and direction for their work and give us all an idea from which to develop as curators. Already some of the group hadn't turned up to the curator meeting however, and it was already starting to show that without timetabled sessions it was harder to keep the group all on track together.

I tried my best to keep everyone in the loop however, and also work together to set reasonable guidelines for certain things to be ready by so that we all had the same goals to work towards. I wanted to start planning ahead with placements and ideas, but because of the nature of the project, most of the artists simply didn't have fully formed ideas at this stage and it was felt wrong to push them to commit to concepts they didn't fully support yet. This way perhaps we can work out a dialogue in a way which both supports the artists and also gives us a strong idea of where we are headed.

2/12/2017 - WHITE TIGERS EXPERIMENTATION

After thinking about white tigers and considering the conceptual implications of their majestic physicality yet troubled genetics, as well as what they reflect  back about humanity and our excesses. I thought this would also be a good area to suggest how badly formed our understanding of nature is, with misinformation so widely spread and many people simply uneducated to the truth directly infront of them.

I wanted to suggest that we as humans had put these creatures on a pedestal of exoticism and rarity, disguised as conservational and in the best interests of all, yet also suggesting to the darker corporate truth that these animals were infact being exploited for their falsely constructed value and used as a promotional tool. Another key theme I wanted to capture was the unnatural nature of the entire situation, and an overriding sense that this is not how things are supposed to be, an accident waiting to happen if you will.

As well as combining these themes into a fine art context, I considered the image of a white tiger balanced precariously atop a classical column pedestal. I thought this could call on many powerful connotations such as humankind's pursuit of aesthetics, something the tigers have truly fallen foul of since the start, as well as almost colonial ideals of desire and acquisition of the rare and exotic. Just as columns are taken out of their classical context and re-purposed for use and abuse as an iconic symbol, so was the tiger taken from its environment and genetically altered to suit our unnecessary cosmetic desires. This also critiques our general right on the whole to obtain and display living creatures, casting wider speculation on our rights to consider living creatures as aesthetic objects of visual interest.

On another level there is also interesting juxtaposition between the realms of classical human achievement in the column and the evolutionary prowess of what is typically a magnificent predator, but this is interrupted when we consider that actually everything within the image is actually a product of human dominion. We are then confronted with the unnaturalness of the scenario, and also a sense of gradually impending uncertainty, as there could be no doubt in anyones mind that this is a poor place to put a tiger and will undoubtably not end well. It is irresponsible to try to put a wild animal into the confines of a very human institution, such as displayed on a pedestal in a gallery, not entirely unlike the irresponsibility demonstrated by selectively breeding in extremely negative genetic traits just because they are 'beautiful'.

Although I liked the sketches, something that was important to me was making the piece look convincing, despite its unrealistic composition, and I felt my initial sketches looked a bit proportionally false. So I had a go at creating some photoshop collages from real images in an attempt to blend the juxtaposing formats together with increased realism.

At first I tried using images I had already found correctly posed and simply sticking them overtop, even attempting to add multiple tigers just to see what it looked like. However I still felt like these images were too static in appearance and didn't really do anything to connect the viewer with the subject. They also werent dynamic enough for the sitaution I felt, and didn't give the composition any fluidity or emotion.


Next  I tried to create a collage from lots of similar images to actually fit the form of the tiger onto the plinth. By doing this I was able to contruct the tiger sitting a way which looked much more natural in its place.

When I took these initial ideas to Matthew in my tutorial he was actually very impressed with this final collage in itself, and suggested that this also lended a kind of genetic mismatch, frankenstein quality in itself, which I had not considered. He also likened the collage quality to the black and white works of Peter Kennard and asked if I would consider it standing as an outcome in itself.

Although I agree that I did quite like the collage on it's own, especially now when considering it in a genetic chimera sense, a big part of my enjoyment in my work is the hands on process I go through to create my images. One of the things I am most excited about for this piece is actually getting to work in very close detail on a tiger to create a powerful image, so I definitely want to continue working on this composition further in a traditional medium. However I would now also like to print out the source images I used to create this initially and also create a proper physical collage from the photos. I think this would also aid the visual synthesis of my ideas whilst I work on the motif of the white tiger.

Matthew also suggested I could make the piece into a sculpture, which would be entirely another challenge in itself and would continue to lend a labour intense nature to the work. It would also increase my exploration of the white tiger motif as a metaphor for human desire and excess.