MA Week 78 – Curation as Disruption, the pains of aquatint and endless writing up

Reflection on the past week, 24^th July 2017

 Curation as Disruption

The early part of the week was taken up with the “Curation as Disruption” exhibition. My pieces were hung on Monday morning, so on Monday lunchtime I went over to college to stick some of the small acetate squares on the wall, as Sharon had agreed the previous week.

I then ended up cutting more squares in the evening as I’d more or less run out, and I nipped back into college on Tuesday dinnertime to sprinkle these on the floor. The show opened that evening.

Almost 20 artists had responded to Sharon’s call out for work, resulting in a real mix of pieces on display. Textile pieces, a massive oil painting, a single photograph, a sound installation – all of these were there. Some artists had sent existing pieces, and others had responded directly to Sharon’s call out. The curation was also a mix. Some pieces had been hung in the classic way – in rows at eye level – and others were displayed in more disruptive ways, such as a photograph stuck on the floor, some ceramic pieces on a windowsill, and of course my own acetate fragments down the wall and onto the floor. The pieces were united by the relatively small group that had received the call out and their desire to support Sharon’s venture. There was a lot of visual interest due to the disparate nature of the work – areas of visual rhythm punctuated by areas of visual discord.

With my pieces - the top two and the bottom one

I had agreed with Sharon how my pieces would be hung. By chance I’d put the square and rectangular framed pieces next to each other on the kitchen table when I’d just framed them, and they seemed to work well immediately next to each other. My idea had been for the poem to hang underneath them. I’d envisaged them to be on a section of wall on their own, but Sharon suggested incorporating them with the other artists’ pieces. This then started a narrative with the neighbouring pieces, which contained a lot of greens, yellows and browns. I’d therefore tried to stick acetate squares of these colours nearby, to form a link with the other artists’ work. The hanging of the poem piece very low meant people had to stoop to see it, which was subversive, but perhaps not inclusive for less mobile people, which I hadn’t thought of.

View down into the exhibition space, showing my three pieces in a narrative with other artists' work

As a thank you, everyone received a badge – curator, disruptor, warrior, professor, artist. I took “disruptor” because I felt this was the most disruptive I’d ever dared to be with my art. I thought my pieces worked well, linked as they were by the acetate fragments. Each piece was strengthened by the presence of the others, and by the fragments. It was a departure for me and something that gives me food for thought. By sticking the fragments to the wall and scattering them on the floor, three fairly unremarkable pieces became an installation, something more to look at, something that stood out. . Food for thought. What else could become an installation? What wouldn't this technique work with?

Fragments of my practice

It was a lovely evening. I knew many of the people there and it was great to have a catch up and a drink. It was a celebration for Sharon, too, her last exhibition before she leaves. I am so pleased I made the effort to contribute.

 

Printing: aquatint

I’ve pressed on with the new version of the Royal Park plate and it is now more or less at its final state. The aquatint was frustrating. Having done the test strip, I had decided to do a second aquatint bite for 7 minutes. However, the result wasn’t nearly as dark as I expected. I’d had real trouble spraying the aquatint solution onto the plate and it seems I might have sprayed too much, effectively blocking the plate from biting. I’d found it really difficult to get an even spray, although the test sprays onto paper seemed fine. I took several prints from the plate not withstanding this, then stopped it out again. I had intended to do a final bite for another 10 minutes, but I decided to go for 7 again. I re-bit some of the areas that should have gone darker at the previous stage, plus some new areas. Again, I had difficulty spraying – I got half way down the plate and the airbrush suddenly stopped working. I think the nozzle had become blocked with the solution. I switched to another airbrush and managed to get a full layer on, though it took me quite a while to convince myself that there was a layer on. When I bit it this time, it went much darker than the previous time, and much darker than I expected (or desired, really).

 

First print from the plate after the second 7-minute bite

The final stage was to apply another liquid ground and etch some detail into the foreground. This didn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped and really the foreground needs more detail still. I also got quite a bit of foul bite in the sky, despite cleaning the plate well beforehand. I now suspect that the plate needs to be cleaned with Cif or similar before applying another ground if it has already been printed many times. I am toying with the idea of drypointing some more detail as I don’t think the plate will take much more biting.

This piece will form the last part of my final submission. It shows a journey from a relatively simple line etching to a more visually complex version. In some ways it is a metaphor for the MA journey, as I have grown in confidence in the techniques I’m using.

Writing Up

Less than three weeks now until hand-in, so the weekend was spent blogging and writing up. The writing up still seems endless even though I am approaching it differently! I’ve also now caught up four further blogposts:

Week 72 – Selling at the Art Market and looking ahead to hand in

Week 73 – Monoprinting with Movement!

Week 74 – Submissions, Submissions

Weeks 76 & 77 – Preparing Submissions, and time management to the fore

 

 

 

MA Weeks 76 & 77 – Preparing submissions, and time management to the fore

 

More reflections on the past two weeks - Monday 17th July 2017

The movement exhibition wasn’t the only activity this week – it’s been a really busy week, and there was also a lot going on the previous week, which I’ll catch up here.

 

Curation as Disruption

As I mentioned in this week 74 blogpost , my tutor, Sharon, is putting on an exhibition at college called “Curation as Disruption”. I’ve been making some pieces for that. I’ve gone back to the idea that I mentioned, namely that of cutting up acetate photocopies of the Manchester Metropolitan University paintings into squares, supplemented by squares from the photograph of the City of Mabgate inn from the walk last November . These pieces had been well-received on social media, so I thought there must be some mileage in them!

 

I’d intuitively thought that these pieces would work well on a yellow background and a couple of weeks back I tested them on a pale yellow monoprint from the “Movement” series. They looked quite good, so I did a few more yellow and have spent lots of time since then cutting up small acetate squares. I’d envisaged a “path” and a “square” , as per my ideas in April, but as the exhibition’s title is about “disruption”, I decided to disrupt the path and fragment it as it moved across the work. This then seemed to give rise to the idea of sticking squares onto the mount, and onto the frame itself. These times when the work directs itself are the best – the creativity takes over. The cutting and placing developed organically as did the squares spreading out to the mount and frame.

Experimenting with the acetate squares spreading out from the collage itself

I’d also had a poem brewing in my mind from the outset regarding the effect this invitation had had on me. When I’d seen it, I’d just thought that I didn’t have anything to put into it, but the invitation wouldn’t go away. It seemed an opportunity too good to miss. I called my poem “The Bunker Breached”, a reference to Bob Dickinson’s talk at the Troubling Time conference on 1st June  which continues to resonate. My own print room bunker seemed very much breached by this invitation.

 

I delivered them to Sharon during my tutorial on Tuesday 11th July, and we agreed where they would be positioned within the exhibition. Sharon also agreed with another idea, that of sticking some of the small acetate squares on the wall. The pieces are now called Vacuus – Via – Vox. Vacuus, the square framed piece, because the centre square is the building numberplate of the City of Mabgate pub, which is standing empty. Via, because the rectangular framed piece started out as a path. Vox, because the poem gives an almost literal voice to the work.

 

Postcards from Woodend

Also at the start of the week, I cut the prints of the small etchings to postcard size and sent these off to the Woodend Gallery in Scarborough for their annual “Postcards from Woodend” Exhibition. I’m still awaiting hearing from them.

 

Other work

My tutorial confirmed what I’ll submit for this module. I also discussed with Sharon a different way of writing up my creative journal. Previous ones have tended to re-write some of these blogposts, but in more detail, and I’ve wondered why I’m doing it that way.I’m going to write holistic reflections on each topic (e.g. drypoint etching), which will go into more detail than the blogposts and serve as reference material post-MA. Hopefully writing up by topic will be more useful and less onerous than writing week-by-week information.

I’m having to put quite a bit of effort into sequencing, planning and prioritising my work at the moment. My overall plan has rather been abandoned in favour of detailed to-do lists! There just seem to have been so many opportunities come at once. It’s a good job I have decent time management skills! For example, alongside preparing the above two submissions, I also cut up some of the rejected prints from the “Royal/Library” series to make business cards ready for the Movement opening on the Wednesday. In the end I hardly used these as I didn’t have as much interaction as I’d expected with other attendees.

I’ve also made a lot of headway with the deep reflection on the Troubling Time conference, and I’ve published a blogpost about that event here.

 Finally, on Sunday I also picked up my prints from Left Bank, then I went on to the Kirkstall Art Trail where both Mel and Michelle were exhibiting – a busy week indeed.

 

 

 

 

MA Week 74 – Submissions, submissions

Reflection on the past week, 26^th June 2017

 Last week started on a social note as I met Mel on Monday at Left Bank Leeds. She had some of her analogue photos of Leeds in the showreel for the “Humans of Leeds” exhibition which opened that evening. It was great to see her work and also to have a look at Left Bank with thoughts of exhibiting there. Working on exhibitions took up a large part of the week. College was closed so I couldn’t get into the print room, more’s the pity.

Submission for “Movement” Summer Group Show

I spent quite a lot of time choosing the prints to submit. I’d decided to submit four, mainly quite arbitrarily as I’d had four prints in the MMU conference. I tried to choose some that related to each other but didn’t effectively repeat each other, which ruled quite a lot of them out. There was a deep red one which my partner, Nick, really liked but I hated. That kept going in and out of the selection but in the end Nick argued it in. 

The prints are A4 and I bought some 40x30 cm white Ikea frames to house them. I had thought of spraying them, two yellow and two red, but having looked at spray paint I quickly came to the conclusion that it would be a tortuous undertaking and would probably detract from, rather than add to, the prints.

 

A rubbish image of the controversial deep red print!

I spent a lot of time trying to get decent images of the prints in the frames. Mel had given me some advice (two light sources at opposite sides) but I only have one small desk lamp and my little compact camera, and it’s not enough to negate my reflection in the glass of the frame. This effort is ongoing and I am becoming very aware that I don’t have the kit or the expertise for this. I’ve got decent images of the prints unframed, so I may well have to run with these. Most of the rest of the submission is drafted so just the images need sorting out tonight. The submission needs to be in on Wednesday.

 

“Curation as Disruption” call out

About ten days ago I received an email from Sharon inviting submissions for the last show she’ll put on at College, called “Curation as Disruption”. I’d read it and rather dismissed it in the drive to get everything else done, but it’s kept coming back to me. It seems stupid to turn down an opportunity to exhibit, and more to the point, it is very important to me that I support Sharon after all the help she has given me. A poem has started to form in my mind, about Sharon’s invitation disrupting my concentration, so this could form (part of) the submission. I will allow the call out to disrupt my plans, and I am thinking of going back to develop further the “squares” or “tiles” idea from April, which seemed to generate some interest but which I never took further as I wanted to concentrate on printing. The pieces will need to be small in order for me to be able to manage the work, so I bought a couple more frames when I was in Ikea with a view to doing this.  

I am continuing on with the deep reflection on the Troubling Time conference, too. Reflection on practice and pestilent reflection on the glass of picture frames.