Archive for the ‘Practical Work’ Category
Staircase construction problems
So, as you can see I started building this without thinking about the support. In some ways I did like the support struts but they were not fixed and totally unstable. In the second picture – I really loved how the top part was unsupported and floating, but this is porcelain – get real – and the whole thing collapsed and was rebuilt as least 7 times before I conceded that it was going to have to have closed sides, therefore making it look much more solid…also some experiments with bannisters – I liked the thought of it getting smaller and smaller like the steps to denounce the perspective but creating these again in porcelain, which will sag and warp was just not possible and I didn’t want it to look clumsy.
Interim Show
Was quite hard to photograph the work. From these I feel like it looks quite minimal, but that was the point, to make it hard to find some of the work. I was pleased that many people bent down to view the pieces under the skirting. The video stills were shown along the wall, next to the video projection. Played with the space and your eye was drawn from the pieces on the floor, to the suspended crate, back down to the video and up to the stills.
I was quite happy with the final show and its been a great opportunity to have a practice run before the final show, we’ve all learnt a lot, and got some good feedback.
Words: My practice explores the landscape of dreams. I am interested in this borderland on the edges of our conscious experience, the tension between illusion and reality, ethereality and permanence. The resulting works are remnant objects, interpreted in porcelain and wax, combined with narrative video projections.
Thursday crit and feedback on the show
Dreams, I’d already been making the objects so this is why we have the black objects here. I didn’t want them to be too highly coloured or realistic so I’ve stuck to a basic colour palette of black and white, which I have been using the entire time I’ve been on the course really.
When I came to look at the space, I’d already made the objects but I’d not glazed them yet, I immediately spotted the skirting area, I liked that area because it was quite hidden and that was where I wanted to put my work.
I really didn’t want them to be in a cabinet, I felt it would give the work a different aesthetic which I didn’t want. All my previous work was in boxes and I didn’t want that kind of edge to the scene. I really wanted them in the space and more site specific than that. It really bugs me that we have to have the white line so people don’t miss and step on the work!
Its been a really good learning experience for me to see whether people do notice them in that kind of context and whether they are going to get damaged and how I feel about that.
So these objects are all travelling, and when I came to place them I wanted it to feel almost like they were coming in and out of the wall. It has reminded me just now of that Magritte painting with the train going into the fireplace, that’s how I feel about it. And I’ve been very pleased with people’s reactions to it. Emily said that she didn’t realise that there was a boat in the middle until a day or so ago. To begin with I was a bit nervous because people didn’t seem to notice things on the floor but then at the private view a lot of people spent time looking and some sat on the floor to have a look at them. I like that people have to do that, making them work a bit for it.
I played around a lot with their order and considered having one of the boats miles away but it was too obscure, bit too much.
Suspension was also supposed to be part of the procession, but when I got it here it didn’t fit and in discussion with everyone decided it looked much better on a plinth on its own, with the crate much higher than I originally planned, the weirder you make it, the more successful it is. I think this is my favourite piece.
Video is difficult for me, something new. I find the ceramics very comfortable, easy and I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert with video. Despite that, I think this is the most exciting part and with the dreams actually having movement and the opportunity to tell a story with the video, this was really a breakthrough that with the ceramics perhaps is not possible, static, fixed. A lot of decisions with the ceramics have to be made about size, shape to make 3d objects, which is not dream-like. With the video, I’m disrupting the formal qualities of the objects and giving me an opportunity to get closer to the dream state.
I initially was just going to have the stills, saving the projections for the final show and with technical problems of projecting in this space and invigilating it but when I did these I had a huge crisis last week because the still shots for me don’t work, you can’t see the movement and I asked a lot of people and they didn’t understand what they were looking at. So I realised I had to have the projection for at least the private view so people can then see the relationship between everything.
I wasn’t going to have the horse video originally, because the horse image needed to be the same size as the horse ship, so the galloping legs of the horse were projected onto the black legs, but when I tried this out, there was not enough flat surface area for you to distinguish anything from the projection. The legs were too thin and all you would see is something abstract/flickering. But seeing the miniature horse on the boat works with the dress projection so it is easier to understand the work, they are tests.
Rosa – the scale of the projection is small, like the work. Could have multiple projections working with the ceramic work.
Wendy – like the stills, tie in really well with the objects as well. Look like night phantoms, ghosts. Although not doing what you originally wanted them too, they have a visual quality which is working with everything else. Loves the suspension piece, surreal and odd, quite disturbing.
Maiko – spectator and dreamer at the same time.
Physically impossible for someone to be inside the crate. The odder it gets, perhaps by scale and content the better they are. The black is new for me, I like them in a sinister way. Maybe is / is not working with the projections. The imagery has to work as well, strong, poetic, can also reverse the colours on computer. White picks up the projection, black diffuses it.
Maiko – the dress projection is really quite successful, because it gives you the feeling of being at the same time on 3d and 2d, moving and not moving.
Want to develop the videos. At the final show, want to show projections live as with the glossy objects, they give a funny aura and glow and it looks a million times better than on the video even.
I’d like a big room and to make maybe 50 objects with the projections, what I project on is very important.
Rosa – could use bisque objects to project and then glaze them and use them as black as well. Black objects sink into the wall, use the objects twice.
The problem with black objects is….
Like the reflections from the objects at certain angles, dreamy…
You can see the horse on the objects, but I don’t really know what this is adding, if its going to work the live horse needs to be the same size as the objects, but this would need to be white because you can’t see the legs on black, and I need a much clearer video clip of the horse…
The problem with black objects is…white is the most absorbent colour, so this isn’t working. Maybe back to the white objects with black background? But at least these objects might work better in the exhibition, being in a darkened space. mmmm.
Julia Bailey - Research etc 