OUIL402 evaluation

I do feel that overall I have engaged reasonably well with this module, but probably not to the level I could have done. I don’t think that I integrated it with the rest of my work that well and if I had solidly chipped away at it more often throughout the year, then I could have made more use of it and really felt the benefit of using it to take a more holistic view of what I was achieving with my work and what I wanted to achieve with it. Having said that, I have definitely found it useful in a few instances, in particular the brief which required I visit an exhibition and then reflect on it. The exhibition I ended up going to, ‘What can be seen’ (Vlatka Horvat and Tim Etchells) turned out to be very relevant and applicable to the work I am interested in and have started to make and I almost definitely wouldn’t have ended up going if it wasn’t set. It was really re-affirming to see that other practitioners are interested in the same types of creative exploration that I was starting to lean towards. Before I felt a little unsure of myself, and whether my creative concerns were, in fact, worth pursuing or whether I’d just been spending too much time in my own head and turned them into something more than they were. After this exhibition I also investigated Vlatka Horvat’s other work and again found it to be really relevant to what I was doing, specifically for COP. The ideas I had for the final and most conceptually realised pages of my COP journal were, in part, inspired by some of Horvat’s work. I am happy with how the ‘illustrated self’ brief turned out, but still don’t think I made the most it. I made quite a lot of drawings I was really happy with as preparatory work for the poster, but I didn’t find an idea which I developed extensively and to a point where I felt really confident it would express what I needed it to. I sort of flitted between self-portraits for which I tried to apply the same conceptual methodology I apply to lots of my other work, which seemed a little contrived, and images which were really just examples of the kind of work I often make (at least conceptually) rather than illustrations of how I make that work. I ended up opting for the latter for the actual final poster, which I was happy with, though I wish I had put more effort into developing some more complex ideas. I thought my idea for the presentation, having google translate read out the content instead of me, would have been a good way of connecting my presentation to the themes in my work, namely, my tendency to abstract the subject matter through translating it from unusual perspectives, but I’ve been having some problems with it. The slow reading speed of google translate means I’m finding it hard to include enough information and keep it within the time limit, so now I’m considering just speaking in front of the presentation instead but that feels a little boring. Also I don’t know if actually I’d end up waffling a lot and I would still time it really badly. I should have planned it more and then I could have figured out a full proof way of getting the effect I wanted from google translate another way. Next year I want to make sure I make loads more use of my PPP blog. I often do have thoughts about films or TV I’ve watched, music I’ve listened especially which I think would be worth writing down. I could use the blog as a sort of database of all my creative interests which might help me solidify my ideas and give me lots of new directions to explore. If I kept that up, and made a more conscious effort to find connections between things I’m thinking about outside of College work and my practice then I think I could capitalise on my sense of curiosity to a much greater degree than I am currently. In terms of practical concerns, I really would like to start drawing, particularly observational drawing, a lot more outside of set briefs. I’m aiming to make it a habit, in fact, over summer and into the next year; it often really helps me with the generation of ideas and I haven’t really done it that much this year.

Presentation

One of the slides has an embedded youtube video in it which doesn't play on the issuu upload. Here is a link to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uipM6kTTYbE

Another one of the slides has my hand drawn GIF in it and that doesn't work on the issuu upload either.

Exhibition - 'What can be seen' - Vlatka Horvat and Tim Etchells

'What can be seen' was an exhibition at the Millennium Gallery curated (and contributed to in part) by Vlatka horvat and Tim Etchells, as an exploration of the process of curating an art show. It's contents consists of collections of various interesting items from the 'Museums Sheffield's archives, arranged together and with items from the storage facilities, such as product packaging, archival notes or sketchbook guides, as a play on how a person's perspective changes upon entering an art gallery, the context they're viewing these items in changing their perception of them. 

I enjoyed this exhibition quite a lot actually, and it is actually very relevant to the concepts I've noticed have been slipping into my practice so frequently, namely my tendency to present everyday situations/ objects/ scenarios as abstract or surreal through my methods of translation. In the same way I am trying to view my environment from unusual perspectives to inspire compositional ideas or find artistic merit in places it wouldn't typically be, Horvat and Etchells are exhibiting, in the same fashion as artworks in an exhibition, objects which are not in themselves art (or are they?) and challenging the viewer to see them in new ways.

For example, these 'Ariel Surveys of the M1 Motorway (March 1962) - Huntings Surveys ltd'
which are images which were just supposed to serve a practical use, taken by slow flying aircraft with low stalling speed which were able to take photographs of the ground without ostensible movement. The overlap method of aerial photography allowed a three dimensional image of the ground to be constructed from multiple images of the same location (Taken from the label in the gallery). Once these are framed and arranged together in a grid in a gallery, one can begin to see an aesthetic merit to the photographs, the distance the photographs are taken from separates the land up into distinct forms which would work as purely abstract compositions, very close to the process I go through in isolating obscure views of everyday things in drawings without context.     

   
























There was also a big focus on incongruity throughout this exhibition, another notion which I am attracted to, (as discussed in my post about David Lynch) for the genuinely strange results it can yield. There was a massive container in the gallery space, entitled 'Objects, artefacts and specimens drawn from all Museums Sheffield departments', exhibiting different unusual, seemingly unrelated objects, grouped together via an atypical logic, e.g. shape rather than use. An example being a taxidermy platypus, rolling pin and various knives associated by length. This exercise opens up new, unexpected dialogues between the objects, encouraging and demonstrating the importance of inquisitiveness in the understanding and appreciation of art. I also just found it quite funny.

There were elements in the exhibition which I just liked on a purely aesthetic level, such as the photographs of 'Watercolour Sketches of Excavated Burials' (1845 - 54) by Thomas bateman, a pioneering Derbyshire antiquarian, from his book 'Illustrations of Antiquity'.  

There were moments in the exhibition which I thought were in danger of becoming pretentious, for example 'Diana Robing' (1881) - Blanchards, Blackfriars, London, which is a glazed terracotta statue of the Greek goddess Diana, but displayed in this exhibition in the wooden framing which was protecting it during travel.

    










            












The descriptive plaque stated that "supported and framed in this way, the statue becomes a hybrid sculptural object, combining ornate and everyday materials and creating a dialogue between the curved lines of the sculpture and the rectilinear structure of it's wooden container." It isn't this particular example which I actually found irritating, I do think it's quite interesting to see how the statue fits into the frame in a way that almost looks as if it was built in order to fit into it. It was the fact that there were a couple of other examples of this, also labelled as 'hybrid sculptural objects' which didn't , in my opinion, actually work as effectively and it began to feel a little contrived. There were also things like a bunch of frames without the paintings in, wrapped up as they were in storage which, whilst in keeping with the thematic interrogation of what can be considered art, were just not that interesting and paled in comparison to some of the, much more playful, approaches.

Still, there was enough humour present in this exhibition to stop it feeling pretentious and elitist as a whole, and this also kept it feeling lighthearted and spirited enough to encourage people (well me at least) to think about it and consider and appreciate what was being said.
The best example of this, probably, were the photographs of the cards in the storerooms labeling things in the museum's archives, and little notes to self and for others left by the curators. Without the context these become funny and surreal, some examples being "card missing" and "nothing on top". 

Displaying these photographs also gives an insight behind the scenes of art galleries and museums and alleviates somewhat the elusive nature of what often seems another, somewhat exclusive world. It's an entertaining show of honesty which helps to pull back the pretentious sheen of superiority so often found in the high art world, and galleries in particular, where the visitors move slowly, standing a safe distance from the art and speaking in hushed tones.       







     

The illustrated self - Final Poster

I did another drawing of the table and shadows from my kitchen at Liberty Park, which had a slightly more obscure angle and seemed a little more abstract, which i used for my final poster. 

I cleaned it up a load in Photoshop, and also added colour to make it bolder, although I did think it was quite striking already, and I was happy with the result. It definitely feels like it expresses the type of concepts and methods of translating information I'm starting to develop within my practice and I also am happy with it from a purely aesthetic sense. 

For some reason, which I can't quite put my finger on, it doesn't look as good printed out as it does on screen, the colours all came out fine and it's good quality so i don't know why i don't like the printed out version. I also accidentally creased it a little trying to roll it up to take it from Vernon street (where i printed it) back to Blenheim Walk which is annoying. Overall though, I think I think I'm happy with it.  

The illustrated self presentation

To reflect the fact that the work I make is often concerned with abstracting an environment/object/scene through illustrating it from an unusual perspective, I thought I could type out a transcript for my presentation and copy and paste in into google translate. If you make the google translate settings English to English, then it reads it out in this weird sort of robotic voice and the intonation is all off and strange, affecting the delivery of my presentation through the way it is translated in the same way that I try to affect the content of my drawings through how i translate it.

I had the concern that it might be a bit grueling to listen to that voice for 8 minutes straight for my audience, but actually decided that I quite liked the idea of making them feel restless and frustrated, it's in keeping with the surreal theme. I would print off a bunch of transcripts as well so people could definitely understand what was being said as well.

I have encountered several problems with this idea though, unfortunately. Firstly, google translate reads very slowly, so I'm finding it hard to keep enough content in and keeping it under 8 minutes. Also, there is a maximum word allowance on google translate which wouldn't accommodate all the information I'd need it to, so I'd have to keep multiple tabs open with different portions of the transcript in each one, and keep coming out of the power point and into google which might get a bit messy and be a faff. I could of course just use google translate for a bit of the presentation and talk for the rest I suppose but I feel like this is the kind of thing where you have to go all or nothing, otherwise it loses it's effectiveness.

I'm going to keep trying making it work over the next couple of days, by cutting down the transcript and seeing how difficult it actually is to navigate between different google translate tabs and the presentation, but it's looking like it's going to be difficult. I think I might have to resort to just talking in front of the powerpoint, which will be a shame cause that's a bit dry and boring.               

the illustrated self

I've been thinking that whilst I thought the idea of using a self portrait is a little boring, it might be the easiest way to try and represent the connection between the aesthetic of results of much of my work and the methodology behind it. I really like these two drawings, which are an attempt to affect the same type of authentic abstraction upon a representation of myself as I usually do on a found object/environment/ scenario, through skewed perspective. I like them both and think they have the surreal element I'm trying to achieve, but the bottom one stands out to me, as it is much more disorientating.

They would definitely need developing if I was going to make either of them into a poster and at the moment I'm not really sure how I would do that, I like them as just drawings and wouldn't want to over work them, but as a poster I'm not sure they have enough presence as they are.

     























I saw this chair sat outside in the Liberty park courtyardy bit and thought it looked sort of out of place and strangely isolated and, as a result, worked as a great example of the kind of thing I'm attracted to in my work. There were also some really nice shadows around it and when I drew it, I decided to draw only the chair and shadows, leaving everything else out of the scenario, and I think the result is a nice image and quite interesting and puzzling in the right kind of way.

Here I've made an image which is similar, but a bit more bold and refined. I think this image is the first one I've made that is striking and will make the most out of being displayed as a large poster. I think I may try another view point because this one isn't that wierd, but I really like this combination of very bold shadows and actual three dimensional objects existing in the page with little to distinguish between them.

Although I think I probably will end up using something like this for my final poster, my only concern is that it isn't a piece of illustration about my creative process or work, it's more just an example of it. Hopefully that's ok though, I actually think that sometimes an example is the best way of explaining something. I might even go as far as to say that if you can translate the idea of an image back into words easily then it isn't as strong of a drawing as one which can only speak for itself. That's when you've truly made the most of whatever medium you may be working in. I'm not saying I've achieved that here, but it's what I'm aiming for I think.      

The illustrated self

Because I was so unsure about how to link together all the stuff on that list I made, and it seemed actually unrealistic to attempt to somehow connect everything together, I decided I would focus on the creative aims which have begun to surface most frequently in my practice and try to create a piece of work which illustrated them. i started drawing some self portraits first, pretty uninspired I know, but I had to start doing something. 

Seeing as the trait of my practice which currently seems the most essential, is translating information into something which is surreal, or difficult to understand contextually, through choosing obscure perspectives in image making, I started with a drawing of myself looking through my legs to represent this. I quite like the drawing, and in a way it works very well, in a simplistic way, but it is a bit too literal and representational, which actually clashes with the point of a lot of my work.

Fun fact: My cousin told me that when I was really little I had a habit of running into the room and looking at people through my legs like this. That anecdote does lend a bit more weight to the drawing.

   

Again, here, I've just drawn a very representational picture of an unusual view of myself but it still isn't quite strange enough. I then simplified it and used cut paper to impose further abstraction upon it, which made it more interesting as an image maybe, but I wasn't actually too keen on the last image and this whole process is pretty much exactly what I did for the picture book brief.

This is a caricature, in which I've tried to warp the perspective on myself and just generally make a little weird. I just drew this really because I was getting sick of thinking about stuff and it's pretty mindless, but, I do actually really like it as just a drawing. I don't think I'm going to use it because it isn't really saying anything significant. But it is a bit of laugh.

     























I thought this was quite a nice, tidy way of expressing the way I look at things and attempt to translate information through my drawing and think it has potential. It would also look quite good as a large poster I think. The design is clear and simple enough and rendering it in colour would make it bolder and more dramatic.

   























I decided that I was getting sick of drawing myself, and also that actually it probably wasn't the best way of expressing my conceptual methodology because recently I haven't actually been creating very figurative images. These two drawings are a closer representation of the way I think about what i look at, and how I am trying to disguise things through drawing them. They are drawings of Liberty Park, where I have been living for the year. It seems fitting perhaps, to choose a subject which has such a literal connection to a 'first year at university'.

However, these images aren't very dramatic or striking and they don't have much presence. They probably wouldn't translate very well to a large poster.


I am somewhat torn at the moment with regards to where I want to go. I like different things about several of the approaches I have tried. I think that I can work reasonably effectively in lot's of different ways, particularly drawing in lot's of different 'styles', for want of a better word, and whilst that is hugely useful and I'm glad I am afforded so much choice in the way I work as a result, it can also prove difficult as restrictions can often be a great aid in the creative process.