Sunday 16 December 2007

Transferring the Conveyor Belt Images

Following on from my drawings of rotar devices and creating rotar wheels with resin and iron fillings, I transferred twenty-four of my favourite images onto a cream coloured, slightly elastic material. Once dried I plan to cut the images out and stitch them horizontally together to create three conveyor-like belts.

Saturday 15 December 2007

Tutorial with Emma Rushton

I had a tutorial with Emma Rushton today which proved incredibly useful and inspirational. I was able to communicate to her my interest in abandonment and deterioration and how that had inspired my many photos of wastelands, decrepid buildings and old ruins. I think Emma wants me to press on with manipulating the photographs and perhaps take the images out of the studio, which is something I have been thinking about. However I am tempted to put the images to aside, as it has always been the materiality of the metal and the wool, and the contrast between them, which has inspired my progression.

Unfortunately I had already taken down my wall installation, which illustrated the woollen process, though the photos seem to do the piece justice. One question that did stump me is why I was initially interested in the weaving industry. It seems I have travelled quite far away from my beginning interest in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I have definitely drifted away from Leeds' social or economic industrial history, though as my work becomes more specific, I also think the idea or concept behind the work gets stronger.

Emma really liked 'The Land We Live In' illustration I discovered in the Brotherton's Special Collection. I understand it highlights the industrial pride of Leeds but I find it too Romantic. I find the industrial history of the North really interesting because it exists within two opposing realms; pride and embarassment. Therefore I am disinclined to use anything that will cause an imbalance to this unusual equilibrium. On this point I wonder how Leeds' City Museum will display their heritage when it finally opens in August...

Emma liked how I had transferred the images onto cloth and felt I should try to push this idea by incorporating the cloth into a mechanism so it has direct parallels. I showed her my drawn diagrams of the cloth coming through rollers, which is an idea I want to push further, but the question of how to also display the images on the cloth will now have to be considered.

The question now is should I push the historical or the aesthetic value further... Also if I choose the historical significance, what light shall I portray the work in? A celebration of Leeds' industrial past and the worker's pride? Or a dirty history of bad working hours, dreadful living conditions, smoky atmosphere etc.?

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Claire Barclay

CLAIRE BARCLAY’s sculptural installations use craft and industrial processes, composing precious and everyday materials into poetic and menacing installations. She views each exhibition as a ‘pause’ in an ongoing project: objects are grouped and re-grouped from one installation to the next, refining and adding to a growing vocabulary of forms. 'Barclay uses traditional craft materials such as wood, clay and wool in a traditional way but combines these elements to create powerful works. Often balanced around wooden or metal frames she explores the idea of ‘thinking and making’ through the construction of pots, screen printed cloth, weaving, basketry and other processes. The installations themselves move beyond the innocuous connotations of these acts and arrest the viewer with a quiet sense of unease.’ (Kirsteen Macdonald)

- Gained an MA at Glasgow School of Art
- Represented Scotland in the Venice Biennale in 2003
- Her sculptural pieces should be treated as a whole, but could exist separately
- Interested in the reduncy of museum objects and their ambigious qualities
- Began by creating found object installations- often the found objects would infer the reference, i.e. broken pottery would allude to domestic violence
- Barclay now uses only self-created objects in her installations- believes that by working with the materials one gains a greater knowledge of the object's properties and its creative scope
- However, she has to hire an engineering company when wanting to work with aluminium- therefore the model drawings are very much a collaborative piece
- Barclay's work is very interested in space- often encloses a section of the gallery, using 'barriers of space', to repel the visiter
- She also constructs the sculptured form in the gallery so there is a strong relationship to space
- Some works portray a fragility, which contrasts to the sharp edged forms that have a 'sexualised quality'
- Recently Barclay has incorporated fabric, as she believes by incorporating representational imagery, a psychological dimension is added to the work
- Her drawings do not sit within the installations and are often exhibited in the exhibition's corridors
- Her silk- screen prints often show knot designs, which draw attention to the tightness of space within her work
- The sculptured forms have a seemingly functional appearance, though for different reasons they could never be used for that purpose, i.e- chair legs are different lengths, the bed is unstable etc.
- Barclay constructed the framework of a dining table to mirror the gallery's historical decor in that section of the exhibition- alluded to greed and vanity
- A silk screen of intestines and stomachs was thrown over some of the beams in the dining table structure- from far the design looked floral
- Barclay's Bristol project rejected the viewer from the space by confronting the viewer's entrance with heavy wooden planks
- She also created some smaller sculptural pieces of Bristol's landmark municipal buildings, which dominate the skyline
- Barclay says her work negotiates with space, it does not interact or engulf space- it is more detached
- Her sculptural forms recently have a precarious quality, of balancing or pulling, which adds tension to the work