Arthur Ganson's Machines

Arthur Ganson is an American sculptor, inventor and award-winning toy designer. His exhibition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum presented sculpture works embodying clattering contraptions of wires, gears and pulleys. However Ganson's machines are a lot more than just clever gadgets. The art part comes in the way his mechanical gestures so intuitively and eloquently convey human feelings. Wriggling inchworms, mincing feather dusters, Kabuki-dancing miniature plastic swords. Ganson's work celebrates life with a sense of wonderment and humour that's rare in mechanical scultpure. His 'Machine with Oil' spurts grease on itself at four minute intervals adding an erotic and suggestive dimension to his work. Nicholas Capasso, the curator of Ganson's first one-person museum show in 1993 at the DeCordova Museum & Sculpture Park in Lincoln, stated that he was 'astounded that someone could make a machine with such nuanced and complex emotional resonances. Anyone can make a machine that waves, but only Arthur can make a machine that waves good-bye. There's a big difference.'

Leeds Fine Artists

I offered to help Heather Jones, a third year, with her performance piece at Trinity Church yesterday. The exhibition was put on by fifteen of the third years, all of whom displayed their work. The exhibition was to explore the human condition, however the context of the previous Church of England space automatically gave all the work a religious connotation. For some peoples' work, I think this added an extra dimension, as Kimbal Bumstead's performance piece explored ideas of dehumanisation, which linked well to religious connotations. However for other people, such as Eloise Kerr and Lucy Huddart, I could not help but think the religious connotations drowned their work or made their pieces almost unnoticeable, which they do not deserve to be.

The central location of the exhibition space was good and I am sure that accounted for some of the vast numbers of visitors. Also Lorraine's publicity was obviously well executed and Kimbal even had his performance written about in the Leeds' Metro! Richard Bell wants our year to get into groups and put on an exhibition, so this has shown me how important well directed advertising and a good location are if we want to attract a big audience.

Out of the Ordinary: Spectacular Craft

I went to see the Out of the Ordinary; Spectacular Craft Exhibition at the V&A a few days ago. I can't state how impressed I was at the level of skill within this exhibition. Furthermore all eight of the artists seemed to offer a different area of expertise; carving, welding, sewing, animation, even modern technologies such as laser etching, which first came to my attention after the October 2007 issue of Creative Review, which had laser etched the structure of a crystal into the black, glossy cover. Another reason why I believe the exhibition struck such a chord was because the artists had mostly used cheap materials, such as nails, paper, thread, dust- all very accessible to the average artist. The artists were also all highly imaginative, which in this modern art industy and artist-as-businessman role can sometimes can be lost. For instance, Susan Collis' work played with the idea of the mundane and familiar with paint-like splatters sewn onto a dust sheet and Yoshihiro Suda's hyper-realistic wooden flowers and weeds.

Susan Collis- 'Craft in my mind, has that 'good' label and that's what draws me to it. To make something look bad, dirty or stained using these processes that are usually deemed to be good and worthy, to jumble up the two.'

Better days (2006)
Dust sheet, embroidery thread

The oyster’s our world (2004)
81.3 x 38 x 58 cm
Wooden stepladder, mother of pearl, shell, coral, fresh water pearl, cultured pearls, white opal, diamond

Untitled, (Rawl plugs), (2007)
Jasper, black onyx, red carnelian, garnet, brown goldstone

Paint job (2004) 160 x 45 cm
Boiler suit, embroidery thread

'Paint Job' is typical of Collis' deceptive work, as the boiler suit initially looks like it has a collection of careless splashes and stains upon the fabric of the worker's overall. However, in fact, these splashes and stains have been meticulously stitched onto the material, replicating the typical accidental and spontaneous marks. Collis, similarly to Suda, also enjoys playfully positioning the works in overlooked areas of an exhibition space, which heightens the likelihood of the viewer misreading the works. The deception within her artworks constantly forces the viewer to recalculate and reconsider the work, which is something the modern day, 'culture vulture' doesn't do.

Yoshihiro Suda- 'Simply, I want to know how detailed I can make it, how real I can make it. This is an old-fashioned way of thinking, to make something so naturalistic that it looks like the original. It is not the fashion now, to observe something and make it very skilfully, the idea itself is very deep. To make this kind of copy, the technique is very important. There are no goals as such, just that I can make it better next time.'

Suda's work was incredible. I often work with a variety of different woods so I can only appreciate and envy the painstaking detail in the work. What I also liked about the Japanese artist is that he chooses native plants commonly found in the city where his work will be exhibited, so his webpage showed a great variety of plants! The idea seems so simple and almost unconsidered yet by placing the plants in unexpected areas of the gallery space, the viewer automatically reads more into the skilful work.

YOSHIHIRO SUDA, Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2004

It is such a shame that craft seems to be so dismissed within the art community and it is for this reason why I try to focus craft elements into my work. I absolutely love the Jerwood Metal and Wood exhibitions, as the artists seem to have such a connection with their materials, which I believe is necessary if the work is going to really promote the concept.

Jazz Green

Jazz Green is an artist who seems to share my fascination with decay and erosion: the intricacies of colour, fragile structures, the delicate processes of gradual deterioration. He utilises a range of salvaged and reclaimed materials in his work, and maximises on the forensic capacity of macro photography to provide him with a range of initial visual references and appropriated compositions.

Many of his mixed media artworks are characterised by earth colours and multi-layered, textural qualities: deliberately intricate reinventions and subtle explorations of surface and patina. What I love about her work is that when each piece is looked at individually and detached from their original visual source, the artwork becomes more abstract and multi-sensory. All the work has a strong metaphorical pictorial language: quiet, gentle, with symbolic renderings on broader perceptions of abandonment, loss, transience or impermanence.

Her photographs:

Shed 2004. Digital Photograph 30cm x 30cm

Plywood 2004. Digital Photograph 30cm x 30cm

Fence 2005. Digital Photograph 30 x 30cm

Floor 2004. Digital Photograph 30cm x 30cm

Wall 2005. Digital Photograph 30cm x 30cm

Jazz Green's paintings also have a beautiful textural quality. This is a close-up of Rubel, which was begun in late 2004 and has been through many stages, adding successive layers of pigment (mostly red oxides), ink and diluted white paint, then finally burnishing with carnuba wax to give a subtle lustre to the surface. Rubel is merely an old English spelling of rubble.

Here is a detailed close-up image of Sylte 2006. This work merges from a textured, crumbled brown, bronze black into a more mellow and eroded surface. Many of the markings are not directly applied paint, but a myriad of negative traces, made by a process of layering and then revealing colours beneath. Silt, when separated from mud, is quite exquisite to look at, a mix of tiny, almost shimmering fragments of sand and other mineral traces. The marsh river valley in which Green lives is very windswept and the roads flood frequently, and so mud and silt in all its forms is a daily encounter.

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.

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.?

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