31/01/2018 - DRAWING WORKSHOP - INTERVENTION - ORGANIC

For our 'Intervention' drawing workshop, we discussed the ways in which artists affect and intervene with environments to shock and interrupt audiences out of complacency or expectation. This was one of the last drawing workshops of the year, and took place much later for me that 'Visual Scaffold' had in year one. Because of this I had tried to think of some preparatory ideas ahead of the workshop, and I had already been inspired by the ways in which nature is able to intervene and overtake urbanised areas in subtle ways. The ways in which moss grows between crack in brickwork, or a tuft of fragile grass pushes as if by magic through inches of thick solid asphalt. They remind us that, although we have invented many materials, and built many great structures, in the end everything is subsumed back in to nature, and in doing this we only temporarily deny our inescapable contract with the carbon cycle. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

In the workshop, I started by sketching areas of the room we were in, and transposing garden flowers onto these sterile white spaces. I chose a hydrangea, firstly because of their attractiveness of butterflies and other flying insects, but aso because of how the colour of the flowers varies depending on the acidity and aluminium content of soil at their location. "Not all plants are able to grow in acidic soil, primarily due to aluminum toxicity; the metal interferes with the nutrient uptake. Some plants, including hydrangea, have adapted to grow in acidic soils by either excluding aluminum or inactivating its toxicity. Hydrangea is the latter, “aluminum accumulator” type. By incorporating the metal as an aluminum-anthocyanin complex, the harmful effect of aluminum is held back, while giving the sepals a blue hue. Biochemistry is amazing!"

I also chose a foxglove, a prevalent wildflower in Britain which despite being decorative and visually impressive, are also highly poisonous and causes massive heart slowing and attack. Conversely to this the exact same poisoning element in Foxgloves has also been used as both a diruetic, and also to control heartrate in victims of heart failure. It is a perfect example of the complexities of nature, and defies human interpretation with a multitude of hidden, yet still incredibly important and fundementally dangerous to ignore, meanings and applications.

Next we had to take to the streets to find inspiration for further intervention from public spaces. As all of my work reaches public intervention stage eventually, I was less interested in discovering new sites for intervention, and instead wanted to discover areas where nature itself was intervening. These points were incredibly interesting to me, as these areas are places of uneasy collaboration between the manmade and natural. These are not ornamental, planted flowers, but weeds or ornamentals blown as seeds into spots just large enough for roots to take hold.

Ultimately these interventions become gradually destructive, as the architecture they permeate eventually becomes weakened and destabilised by creeping stem and root systems, and allow water into the fabric of building materials, as well as trapping moisture and detritus from rainwater runoff. However there is something subtly anarchic about the gradual, gentle invasion. I was also surprised to see, even though it was winter, it appeared that some of these plants had produced flowers in the warmer months. Our tutor for the activity likened this to guerilla gardening, however there is a particular disonnance in this concept.

Guerilla gardening is very much a human ideal wherein public spaces are reclaimed with food or decorative plants, humans claiming back land from bigger, more powerful human insitutions as activism, protest or beautification. The whole idea of guerilla gardening lies within our ideals of human territories and land owrnership, yet to compare that to the act of a stem of grass pushing it's way up through the pavement is like likening the fine-tuned hunt of a pride of lions over their home territory of decades, to a lone white western-world human hunter with a large hunting rifle and a land rover.

Yes, we have the tools and the options to do it as humans, with human tools and human context, but nature is the undeniable ultimate of all the guerrilla gardeners, at the end of the day it is the one massive garden of nature that we call planet Earth. It is important to appreciate these subtle acts of reclamation for what they are, and not try to impose human acts of protest onto them, as Nature is not planting these things here to subvert, or undermine any human system or authority. The wind is sowing these seeds atop this buildings and in the cracks and crevices and the rain and sunlight from these vantage points helps them grow, purely because that is the great system of life we live within. It is very much a typical human trait to rationalise this wild growth practice down into a form of casual organic protest through the lens of human understanding, much as a large amount of the literature I am currently reading also discusses.
 
These plants are not reminders of a breakaway from human systems, or subtle nods to life going on beyond urban environments. This IS the life going on, not only beyond and within urban environments, but everywhere in the entire world, constantly. Before us, after us, within us and around us. Intervention at it's most fundemental, biological and undeniable.

The final task of the activity was to propose our own interventions from the material we had gathered. So in preperation for this I tried to find some ground level areas which felt similar to areas from which I had witnessed plants bursting forth. Alleyways, or edges of buildings which provide shelter from the wind, and flat, relatively undisturbed areas, enough to allow new seeds to build up in leaf litter and settle for long enough to secure themselves with roots. One of the example locations I photographed was in the small alleyway on St. Andrews Street near the uni.

I was also thinking about the mural works of Mona Caron who supersizes weeds to exalt their status as a pest species. Her work deals with exactly the same themes as my photographic exploration, and also combines them with stop motion animation, to actually give them the power of movement and illusion of life.

With my opaque POSCA acrylic pens, I transposed enlarged versions of highly recognisable and iconic British flowering plants onto these environments. Their height really lent themselves to the areas I had photographed, which made the scale seem instantly more jarring and almost intimidating, in a very bright and inoffensive way. To see plants such as these supersized in such a way enhanced their otherness and unsettles the sense of the mundane which pervades functional city centres and busy highstreets.

I thought these ideas and experiments were very effective. I had played with ideas of changing scale in my large painting for the 'Balance' exhibition, and also read about Henri Rousseau's naive experiments with scale and exotic otherness in Jungles in Paris for my essay. From these sources it is becoming clear that scale can be another way to disrupt the power balance of man over nature, especially when coupled with unexpected intervention in the functional urban concrete sphere. This is definitely something I think I could explore further to great effect.

23/01/2017 - FIGURED FABRIC SQUARES

I wanted to get involved with 'Figured Fabric', a collaborative art showcase wherein the key format was that each and every work had to be based from induvidual squares of calico fabric. The initial brief was to represent our home, ourselves or our home country. I thought about all of the lovely representations of the British ecosystem I could create, some  native species or underapprecited or prehaps threatened local species, or perhaps an exploration of myself through my fondness for nature. But I also thought perhaps instead of painting a rosy picture of ecological harmony and sense of the self, this could be a good opportunity to instead suggest a fly in the ointment; the creeping threat of ecological destabilisation.

The brief seemed to suggest the fabric squares would be sewn together, or incorporated into a larger patchwork in some way, where the many seperate elements are brought together in a random configuration. I wanted to plan my squares specifically to benefit from this configuration, and to lend it further conceptual merit. In order to represent these themes of threat and instability, I also wanted to demonstrate a lack of biodiversity, particularly on our own home turf where many people may believe the British ecosystem is a stable one, without the exotic threats of far flung environments. This is of course completely untrue, and there are many threats which British ecosystems face even in the domestic territories of England. One of the most subtle and generally undetected ways our ecosystem is being destabilised is with the prevalence of invasive species, many of which were brought to England during colonialism, when we introduced many new organisms to our ecosystem for qualities such as decoration or functional use, before we understood the further reaching implications this would have for our ecosystem.

One of these plants in particular was Japanese Knotweed, or Polygonum cuspidatum, a large herbaceous species with broad green leaves and thick red notched stems which bear unrelated resemblance to bamboo (see left). For these decorative features, the plant was brought from it's native habitat in East Asia into Europe, where it was favoured for it's bamboo-like appearance and ability to flourish anywhere. However aided by water and travel networks, the plant quickly spread beyond it's intended locations. Knotweed grows quickly, and the stems from each growth remain across each new year, allowing these plants to cluster in dense shady populations of foliage, crowding out any other plants which may have existed there previously. The plant can adapt to a wide spectrum of soil types, pH and salt levels. It is listed by the World Conservation Union, as one of the worlds worst 100 invasive species, and not only causes widespread ecological instability, but also has an aggressive root system which can disrupt and destroy architecture and road systems, and also increases risk of floodingg along riversides where it flourishes.
When cut, the plant regrows vigorously at the base (see above), and it's roots can extend up to 7 m horizontally and 3m deep, making digging out extremely difficult. Because of this, once established, the Knotweed is very difficult to remove, and poses a real threat to British hedgerows as we know them (see right for large knotweed growth, lacking biodiversity). In the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, it became an offence to 'plant or otherwise cause to grow in the wild' Japanese Knotweed, aswell as a whole host of other plants listed in Schedule 9, Part II of the act. As is so often the case with the animals and plants which feature in my work, they are classic symbols of misinformation and human meddling in the pursuit of aesthetics, which then leads to dire consequences. Nowhere else in natural life would a plant be transmitted to another ecosystem in such a purposeful manner, and then become able to spread so quickly, unfettered for so long by any kind of regulation or recognition. Our objectifying vanity has quickly turned around to bite us, and there is something poetic about the idea that a plant we uprooted from it's native territory to stand as ornament in our gardens should flourish and promptly begin to cause great damage to buildings and infrastructure. This could be an interesting dialogue to explore in my piece.

I wanted to depart from my normal medium to really get in the spirit of this collaboration, and chose to use green felt and thick red rope to create the leaves and stem of these plants. I hoped that rendering these leaves in fabric will give them a more natural, lifelike quality, and will for a more organic arrangement of the pieces. Once I had cut a large selection of leaves in different sizes, I then stitched over them with some simple embroidery to suggest vein structure and shape.

This also textured the leaves and gave them depth. This looked very effective on some, but I also chose to leave some with more simplistic, suggestive forms. I felt like this also gave some appreciation to the medium, allowing for larger swathes of uninterrupted felt, and softness. As this was a medium I didn't usually work with, I wanted to fully explore the properties of the material whilst creating an artwork which was still suggestive and potentially educational.

Now I had several key elements of the work in progress, I tested some trial arrangements against the fabric squares, to check I had enough to fill the piece and also try some natural compositions whilst making sure the pieces looked unique to one another. I also wanted to suggest how the work was spreading out and creeping over certain areas, and so tried to arrange the rope in a way which would allow gravity to pull some of the leaves across other areas of the final assembled artwork.

Although in these pictures the light and dark ropes are just gently intertwined, I want to sew the induvidual branches together to give some of the notched effect on the stem. It is also something unique to this fabric medium, that any fabric can in some way stitched to another fabric, it opens up many new sculptural opportunities.

I also felt that these squares were too light here, and lacked the threat element I sought. I blocked the entire background in watered down black acrylic. This allowed me to build up the colour gradually. I really liked this effect, as it also had connotations of the suffocating nature of the dense shade that these plants create.

Next I began to cut and affix the stems together, and then the leaves to the stems. I tried to give the leaves as much three dimensional depth as I could, curving and gathering them to help them bend away from the fabric. Felt was the perfect material for this as it has just enough rigidity to hold a curve when gathered, and allowed me to easily make small cuts and resew to tighten the edges and give structure.

I was also being aware throughout of the 2cm border we were required to leave so as to allow the works to be sewn together. I had left the background edges raw, hoping that atleast some of the rawness would still be seen when sewn. I hoped that when sewn, whoever was overseeing that would see to it that the leaves were left above the sew line to achieve the desired effect, and planned to speak to the curators about these intentions.

Overall I was really pleased with these outcomes. It had been a really pleasant exploration outside my main media, and something about working with the soft, responsive materials of fabrics had been a very tactile and enjoyable experience for me. I definitely felt a change in relationship between creator and object from working on a painting to creating an applique tapestry such as this. I can only assume this comes with the barrier of touch and the object; with a painting, very rarely are any of the materials besides a paintbrush actually touched, whereas the act of both machine and hand sewing and embellishing requires a lot of touch. When coupled with the soft feel of fabrics, this leads to a very different creative experience, which registered very strongly with me. I would like to potentially explore other fabrics in the future, however they are difficult to take to a public format, aside from obvious examples such as yarn bombing, and in general do not do well outside. It could  definitely be interesting for me to explore further however, even as a potential practice outside of my professional sphere, but as a process I undertake for personal enjoyment. I am really excited to see the whole project come together and be hung!

20/01/2018 - WHITE TIGER PASTEUPS AND PROTOTYPE

After successfully painting my white tiger on the gallery wall, I knew the next step was to print these as pasteups so I could take the design to the street. To do this I isolated the tiger from my high definition photos taken on the day, and turned it into a halftone screen bitmap.

18/01/2018 - WHITE TIGER EXHIBITION INSTALL 2

Returning to work the next day, I was glad I had gotten started on my work the day before curation began, as now the space was a hubbub of busy activity. I no longer needed my projector, which was thankful as it would certainly have been a trip hazard in the active environment. It was much easier to set up against the wall and simply work from my laptop to finish the rest of the painting.

17/01/2018 - WHITE TIGER EXHIBITION INSTALL 1

As I was painting my entire piece directly onto the wall for the exhibition itself, I went along a day ahead to sketch out my design. As I was working on a bigger scale and had the benefit of legal permission to work as long as needed, I decided to use a projector with my collage composition to allow me to sketch the design in perfectly proportion.

13/01/2018 - WHITE TIGER PAINTING 2

Now I had laid down most of the linework and form of my piece, there was just a final amount of finishing off to do. I wanted to try different ways of creating the tiger's impressive coat and markings, so played around with a few ideas without looking at my source collage at first, to think about different ways I could aesthetically represent the intricacy of the natural forms, and explore the interplay between their functional purpose in the wild and our decorative human interpretation of the patterns.

11/01/2018 - INTERIM EXHIBITION INSTALL

Today was the day and we collected together in the space to begin installing the artworks. A lot of the artists had devised their own hanging solutions, enabling us to delegate certain roles out straight away. As a start we thought about how to group the works between the two rooms. I suggested grouping Emma and Jodie's works together for their shared colours and pictoral format. By including a piece from Emily, who's work featured in both rooms, we tied the exhibition together across the two rooms and gave it cohesion.

We had a few artworks relying on projectors or screens alongside installation elements, which made logistically setting up within the space somewhat limiting. I suggested moving Hannah D's work slightly further along, and use features on the walls to 'tie off' her hanging paper while also affording the centre of our exhibition some extra breathing room. However Chloe, who was working with Hannah as a curator pair, had brought some no-damage wall hooks and was quite set on using them either side of the pillar. As it was her curator pairing and an aspect she was quite passionate about pursuing I did not question her decision any further although I felt like this middle section could have been better spaced and less clustered. This was becoming harder for me as I was not prepared to challenge my coursemates and risk personally fall out with anyone over differences in vision, or treading on peoples toes with regard to their contribution, especially when I know my own tastes sometimes differ or challenge the general art establishment. This would not have been the case in a purely professional format, and I feel like a much more open dialogue is promoted within an established institution and the creative processes of people specifically employed for their roles, without worrying about everyone having 'equal' participatory roles.

I had been in conversation with Jake for his piece and he had sent me a photo of a prototype format for his boxes (left). It was quite rigid and simple however and I felt that it would be possible to create something more visually interesting and that could perhaps interact with the film itself in some way. He specifically left the entirety of the curational decisions in my hands, beyond the prototypes he supplied. This trust really boosted me to make my own decisions and made me feel like I had the power to affect and pose the works in my own way. Instead of having them simply stacked side by side, I upturned and intervened with the boxes to give an irregular surface. Turning some on their side allowed the projection to venture inside the object, whilst others held the projection simply on their surface. When paired with the projection, Jake could be seen passing from the surface of one box to another. When the perspective of the film changed, he could instead be seen adding bricks to the pile, creating a stack on a stack. Instead of the boxes just being a substrate for the projection, in this way they actually became an essential part of the film itself.

Another interesting aspect of our curational process was the work of Harry, Evan and Joe, who had specifically posed their piece as an extra curational challenge for us. I thought this was an inspired idea not only in itself, but also in terms of the rest of the curation project, it acted almost as an additional lighthearted game or challenge as we all interacted with the items and considered potentialities. The manifesto stated that they had provided us with all of the materials, yet they did not provide pins or nails to secure the frames. Someone suggested we leave everything stacked artfully in the corner, as a tongue in cheek response to their passing of responsibility onto us. However we had such a beautiful big wall space, and a great deal of base material, I thought it would be not in the spirit of the challenge to respond so sarcastically, as as we were all being challenged on curation, why not arrange the images in a way which was curationally suggestive, and conceptualised the piece in a new way? 

Initially I noted certain symmetries in some of the items they had given us, and suggested creating a kind of symmetrical mandala of the everyday; arranging them in frames spreading outward from the central manifesto, as mandala are supposed to represent universes, this piece could represent aspects of the tangible universe for the artists. Others suggested arranging the objects in a way which could suggest interaction, such as positioning the pink gun pointing towards the pierced condom to suggest the action of a bullet passing through, the blue pointed towards the blue balloon to suggest another potentiality. I liked these ideas as they opened their own narratives.

We forced the burnt christmas tree which we had been given into one of the frames, completely reforming it and giving this particular frame a lot of texture and depth. Finally we settled on an arrangement of the objects in frames, which we mapped out and interacted with on the floor beforehand as you can see above. I suggested having the mountboards added to the walls to suggest spaces or unknowns between the tangible objects, whilst also blending into the fabric of the wall. Hinting that this was an incomplete picture, and perhaps that it is the spaces or interactions that happen between these objects which also tells a large part of the story. This was very fun to get involved with and create. Out of all of the curation we worked over as a team, this was definitely the most enjoyable to me. 

Finally as this was all underway I gave Jodie a helping hand with the installation of her piece. She had brought Command strips; adhesive strips which were specifically designed to not damage the wall. Her piece was painted onto foam mountboard and was very light, but had warped slightly in the process, and so did not easily sit against the wall. The strips did not succesfully hang the piece, so we tried using superglue to secure the command strips to artwork and furthermore together, as this was the area which was proving problematic. However they then detatched from the wall altogether. Not wanting to glue the wall, our final option was a series of small flatheaded nails which held the piece securely with minimal damage. This was a very practical test in the logistics of hanging pieces painted on an unsual medium, and really tested our problem solving. It also reminded me of the essential nature of having artists nearby or at least contactable during the exhibition process, as I would not have felt comfortable nailing her piece to the wall without her go ahead.

10/01/2018 - EXHIBITION FITTINGS AND HANGING - WORKSHOP

I booked out a session in the workshop to prepare French Cleat fittings on the heavier artworks on board, because I knew that these would be the trickier parts of the exhibition to hang securely, and wanted to know we could rely on the pre-prepared fittings to hold out on the day. I had never used these fittings on my own work before either, and thought it could be good experience.

9/01/2018 - CURATION SOCIAL MEDIA

Ahead of our exhibition opening on Thursday I created a social media event to publicize the show and allow both artists and curators to invite people to see the result of all the hard work. I reworked the images and styles from Tess' posters to create a social media banner and also included the direct definitions of both Process and Progress to serve as a description for the event and make the links between the artworks and the theme more explicit.

8/01/2018 - CURATION TUTORIAL AND MEETING 4

As many of the group did not get back until the day before our curation tutorial, we did not have chance to get together for another meeting over the christmas period. So we had to instead meet up ahead of our tutorial in order to quickly reconnect after the busy christmas period and assure we were all on the same page. The day before this I had also sent around some pictures I had taken from within the space, hoping this would give everyone a chance to think about possible placements and also refamiliarise us with the space after a period away.