Professional Development research

In the past few months I’ve been looking around Cardiff for volunteering opportunities to build up my contacts for when I leave uni and start looking for a job in the Cardiff art scene. I’ve emailed WARP, G39 and Made in Roath, including the festival coming up. However, only Elin Meredydd from WARP replied and added me to the facebook group that advertise the opportunities that are coming up. I will, however, start attending the coffee mornings G39 host.

I’ve also been in touch with Kongs, hoping to exhibit my work, along with a few other students who are interested. I found out the possible cost, which day would be suitable for us, and what time the exhibition would be on for. I’m still planning the exhibition, that will hopefully take place before Christmas, and we’re hoping on following a theme for it and curate it that way.

Update on volunteering;

I recently heard back from Made In Roath to get involved with the festival itself and a dye workshop that I’ll be attending on the 6th of October. I’ve already started on the bunting for the festival, which I will post the progress on in a separate post.

We’ve also been looking around venues to hire to organise an exhibition of our works around November time which will be a collection of around 8/9 students’ artworks based on the theme “the notion of loose”. We found The Cons Club in Cathays where Rat Trap has held exhibitions and events in the past, who were happy to help us when we went for a look around. I took pictures to make it easier to plan our exhibition, which are below;

Life drawing 28/09

This morning I attended a life drawing class to draw Barry, which turned out rather interestingly. This was my first time drawing for over a year, therefore I really didn’t know what I could expect to come out of this, but I knew I needed to get back into the swing of drawing after such a long break from it.

I used a mixture of chalk, soft pencil, pencils and pens to draw the model, which all created an array of styles that were pushed out of me from having to make quick drawings, ranging from ten seconds ones, to two or five minutes, and then ten minutes.

I’m fairly happy with how some of them turned out, and I found that making the quicker ones especially came out well, most probably because I wasn’t sat there thinking about making an accurate drawing for too long.

These are close-ups of the quicker ones I made, where I like how the shading came out with the use of chalk;

I then moved on from drawing on a large paper on an easel to my A5 sketchbook, which would be more challenging for me as I think larger drawings allow more room for ‘mistakes’. I wanted to see how well I could proportion the figure on a smaller scale, which didn’t end too well. I kept making the figure too large to fit all of the page. However, I do think I kept to the same level of drawing as I previously had, especially when taking the styles of the drawings into consideration. This makes me think that I should attend the life drawing classes weekly to improve on these difficulties.

I also wanted to use chalk and pen/pencil separately rather than all together to see which ones I was most comfortable using. I found that pens and pencils gave a lot more accuracy, but I don’t think it suits my style well. Therefore, I do believe that the chalk is what I enjoy most, since it flows and shades a lot nicer with how I draw. These are a few quick examples below;

 

 

Chapter’s A Slight Ache exhibition

This exhibition was organised by artist James Richards who represented Wales in the Venice Biennale. Drawing features prominently in the show. Scratchy and delicate, these works on paper by KHISHVI, Dani ReStack and Torsten Slama bring a sense of emotional immediacy and desire. In the works of Cathy Wilkes and JX Williams the sculptural assemblages of found domestic materials are conjured into something dramatic, erotic and deathly. Familiar objects suggest a narrative – of the figures that they evoke and through the marks that they carry.

I really liked the nudity and “peeping Tom’ work from Dani ReStack called “Mixed Media works on Paper”, 2013-2015, as well as the “WHICH BITCH IS A WITCH” work by Tolia Astakhishvili, 2000, as they reminded me of where I left my work at the end of my second year. I enjoyed watching the film, but it was difficult finding its meaning. It consisted of women speaking at the camera in different languages, implying you had to guess ‘which bitch was the witch’, and couldn’t find any information online either. It has an undercurrent of misogyny, which is something I’d like to question in the near future.

Pieces from KHISHVI, 1995-2018, Mixed Media.

Cathy Wilkes, “Untitled”, 2011

installation presented an anguished scene inspired by Old Testament narratives, comprising papier-mâché sculptures of two dark-skinned women and a boy. One of the female sculptures was topless – and, like a mannequin, nipple-less – and kneeled in a black mini-skirt, gazing skyward with her arms raised. The other woman appeared frozen in frantic action, mouth wide open. Next to them kneeled a boy closely inspecting a collection of pinecones and green pipe-cleaners. Other objects filled in the rest of the surreal scene: a metal plough, a water tap, two toy rabbits, electric kettles, an unfinished papier-mâché sculpture. The loaded metaphorical content and poverty-stricken drama of the work appeared to be manifestations of the biblically inspired lyrics of Billie Holiday or Robert Johnson. It also alluded to the types of Dust Bowl environments famously depicted by Walker Evans.

Notes from the performance art lecture with Andre Stitt

Janine Antoni’s “Loving Care”, 1992-1996

Janine Antoni’s work blurs the distinction between performance art and sculpture. Transforming everyday activities such as eating, bathing, and sleeping into ways of making art, Antoni’s primary tool for making sculpture has always been her own body. She has chiseled cubes of lard and chocolate with her teeth, washed away the faces of soap busts made in her own likeness, and used the brainwave signals recorded while she dreamed at night as a pattern for weaving a blanket the following morning. In “Loving Care” 1992-1996, she used her hair as a paintbrush using hair-dye, looking into female body issues using everyday, mostly female, items.

“I mopped the floor with my hair…The reason I’m so interested in taking my body to those extreme places is that that’s a place where I learn, where I feel most in my body. I’m really interested in the repetition, the discipline, and what happens to me psychologically when I put my body to that extreme place.”

Elke Krystufek’s “Satisfaction”, 1994

In 1994 at Kunsthalle Vienna, she created the installation Satisfaction, in which the public was able to watch Krystufek through a glass pane, masturbating in a makeshift bathroom with multiple erotic accessories. Through this provocative gesture, she reached the extreme boundaries of the expression of intimacy, if not straightforward exhibitionism, by placing the viewer in the unavoidable position of the peeping tom. This hedonistic statement, experienced in public, acts both as an ultimate quest for the inner self and as a will to legitimate female pleasure. She also experiments with the psychoanalytical of the male and female body and self harming, like in “Aktion”, 1990.

Annie sprinkle – collage was important in her work to express feminine issues, especially as a sex worker, as we see in “The Goddess”, 1990, and “Anatomy of a Pinup”, 1985, with written complaints behind the glamorous and sexy image, such as “my feet are killing me”, implying we take women for granted. We also see body modification and objectification for the male gaze, as it explains her bra is too small to make breasts appear larger.

Male artists

Vito acconci’s “Seedbed”, 1972

In January 1971, Acconci performed Seedbedintermittently at New York’s Sonnabend Gallery. On days he performed, visitors entered to find the gallery empty except for a low wooden ramp. Below the ramp, out of sight, Acconci masturbated, basing his sexual fantasies on the movement of visitors above him. He narrated these fantasies aloud, his voice projected through speakers into the gallery.

The following text, which documents and transcribes Seedbed, was published in Avalanche magazine in 1972:

. . . I’m doing this with you now . . . you’re in front of me . . . you’re turning around . . . I’m moving toward you . . . leaning toward you . . .

Under the ramp: I’m moving from point to point, covering the floor . . . (I was thinking in terms of producing seed, leaving seed throughout the underground area).

I’m turned to myself: turned onto myself: constant contact with my body (rub my body in order to rub it away, rub something away from it, leave that and move on): masturbating: I have to continue all day—cover the floor with sperm, seed the floor.

Therefore he is planting the Seed, making him part of the architecture of the room, which is the place to spread seed, like a worm under the floor and almost starts a relationship with the audience by talking to them about his fantasies.

Other interesting pieces;

Heli Rekula’s “Hyperventilation”, 1993
Notes: Grotesque female body – eating, drinking, elimination of the body, pregnancy, self enclosed body, recycling of the female body, fetishisation, 1994 “untitled”