Tuesday 31 December 2013

PURE COLOUR

Contents of the University Photography Department's
 ink cartridge recycling box

FLATLANDS

DAVID BATCHELOR
Spike Island













Following LIGHTSHOW at the Hayward Gallery, earlier in the year I was eager to get down to Spike Island for David Batchelor's current exhibition which explores his ideas about colour, line, space and perception in both his drawings and paintings from the past twenty years.




Visually the 'white cube' space of Spike's Gallery provided an excellent arena for these works. Unfortunately Batchelor in conversation with exhibition curator Andrea Schlieker, was a little less successful as it was given in the inner gallery, surrounded by his 'blob' paintings. Experiential maybe, but sadly an acoustic disaster. I hope to add a link to a podcast of the lecture soon.  

The exhibition covered four main areas:

The colour and monochromatic drawings and paintings which have informed Batchelor's sculptural and installation works over the past two decades. 












The October Drawings, a series of drawings displayed together in a side gallery. 






























and his most recent 'blob' paintings, pools of poured gloss paint on plinth-like solid black rectangles.













Seeing the work in this exhibition confirmed how vital it is to continue to allow my work to flow seamlessly between 2D and 3D, for one to continue to inform and influence the other boundlessly. 

  











Finally, and of most relevance to my own work, Batchelor has apparently also been seduced by, in this case, shards of coloured glass. This carries an obvious resonance with my research which examines the combination of reflected daylight and coloured acrylic.


Monday 16 December 2013

ON REFLECTION





I'm starting to think about a suitable mode of display for the plates.
I saw these outsized, armatured magnifying glasses in a window display at  H&M a while ago.




These Copper Mirrors by a Norwegian design partners Hunting and Narud were shown as part of London Design Festival 2013.
The idea of using a frame which pivots appeals, as it would accommodate the need for them to be adjustable according to changes in light source.

Featured in Dezeen Magazine September 2013

In 14 Rooms upended 2005 Richard Wentworth installed a series of carefully 
positioned mirrors, part reflective, part transparent into the formal spaces of Felbrigg Hall, encouraging visitors to view the house from different perspectives. His work bears a strong resonance with what I have been trying to achieve with my recent work.




Helen Maurer uses combinations of glass, light and overhead projections to create her site specific installations.





I have used digital projections in previous work and will use this medium in the future to project blocks of coloured light onto ceramic objects.













TOPOGRAPHIES OF THE OBSOLETE: VOCIFEROUS VOID


Images from this utterly intriguing site-specific project at the Spode Factory in Stoke -  the most exciting exhibit at The British Ceramics Biennial.















Wandering around this vast, redundant factory site on a depressing, grey November day further added to weight of the atmosphere and profound feeling of loss.  

An exploration was made of the residual aspects of abandoned industry, which challenged our perceptions, expertly drawing attention to the residual traces of a once thriving factory and its workforce.






Works by artists associated with the larger, on going project curated by Neil Brownsword and Helen Mydland in association with Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHiB) Norway, included film of Northern Soul dancers jiving in the in the Directors hall, Camera Obscurers made from redundant plaster moulds,  and vistas of inaccessible areas of the factory.

However what really grasped me were the most benign aspects of this place (the sort of things that tend to preoccupy my attention generally). 
These played with my perceptions. Unintentional observations or deliberate interventions??



Staff Pinboard - minus content, apart from a 
trace of a 'SITUATION VACANT'  notice.

Workers shoes abandoned,
 impregnated with dust.

Budlia with an ephemeral dusting of  
ceramic dust
 - weeds beginning to take hold.