Individual Project Appraisal

The initial aim of this project was to try and recreate my ambition or dream of having an ideal ‘state of mind’.

For me that would be to be able to think of ‘nothing’ or have a quiet mind.  I also created a survey and asked people what they thought of if they were asked to imagine a blank space.

The conclusion was that the majority of people thought a blank space to be of a white nature.  This is also what I imagine.  This might be for me because of the connotations of purity and heaven that the color white represents.

I researched color theory and found inspiration from minimalist artists but found it difficult to achieve the results I wanted.

I examined the work of artists such as Martin Creed, Yayoi Kusama, Mark Rothko, Ute Barth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Yves Klein and Ceal Floyer.

All of these artists produce work that is based on the notion of emotions and analyzing ones thoughts and psychological states.

Rothko used Freud’s and Jung’s theories about dreams and the ‘unconscious’ to influence his work.

This then made me want to discover my reasoning as to why I was trying to create a blank space or a sense of nothingness.

An overactive mind is a negative I feel but after researching theories and reading ‘The Interpretations of Dreams’ by Freud I tried to attempt to access my unconscious and focused on artifacts that remind me of my son to channel my thoughts creatively and brought them to the surface instead of shutting them away.

Freud believes the only way one can have a clearer and ‘healthier’ state of mind is by assessing sometimes unpleasant thoughts and analyzing them before your mind can change these thoughts.  I suppose I have used this project as a form of therapy to assess the absence of my child.

I have used a white color palette and an over exposed technique to produce a dreamlike quality and to introduce color theory.

Even though my final images show still life’s of sculptural objects for me they are loaded with the notion of absence.

Dissemination was executed throughout this work by creating online links and pages on social networking sites.  The use of printed postcards with a barcode on linked to the website of our online magazine can be distributed in many locations providing a low cost and effective way of promoting our work.

The online magazine can also be ordered online for individual and multiple printed hard copies if the viewer wishes to purchase.  This is a cost effective way of publishing magazines.

A photographer contact of mine Benjamin McMahon agreed to feature in our magazine also with his ‘Pictures from Home’ series.  The sense of nostalgia is clear in his work, which is coherent to our overall theme.

I enjoyed collaborating with the three other photographers, feature artists and a student magazine publisher to produce our final outcome.  We will continue to produce quarterly editions of our magazine including the founders and other feature artists.

Interview with Photographer Benjamin McMahon

What would your definition of fantasy be and how do approach this notion within your work?

I’m really not sure, I grew up with being told hundreds of stories and so much of them were filled with fantasy and magic.

I’m not sure my work deals with fantasy though.  It’s more just fantasy that anyone would ever ask me to make pictures.

What do you love to dream of?

I think the nicest dreams I have had recently have been about people that aren’t here anymore.  There was a lovely one about my Grandma.  We didn’t speak in the dream but she was there.  It was very comforting and made me think she was watching out for me.

What is your most vivid childhood memory?

There’s quite a lot of them, my memory has always been pretty good.  I remember falling in a pond when I was two or three as I was staring at a toy tractor someone gave me.  I went to make some pictures in Whitby the other day and that brought back tons of memories.  Being on a boat trip and feeling so sick that the man felt guilty about me sitting below deck and gave my mum her money back.

Do you dream in color or black and white?

Both.  I used to only ever want to make black and white pictures but I’ve gone the other way now.

When you are told to think of a blank space what image is in your mind?

I don’t think I’ve ever managed to empty my head enough to find out.

Do you look for beauty in destruction?

I’m not sure I do that no.

Have you ever trespassed?

Yes.

What are you inspired by?

Everything really, people, photographs, sounds, music, stories, life.

How long do you averagely sleep for at night?

I’ve never really been a good sleeper sometimes I’ll get lucky and get a good 7 hours, sometimes one or two.

What is your favorite book/narrative?

Dumbo.   Ever since I was a kid.

Every time I’d say I can’t do something, or it’s too hard my Mum would tell me I didn’t need the magic feather.

Where do you find the limitations of reality/what’s your definition of reality?

My Mum is a storyteller so I grew up hearing millions of different stories about magic and mythology and things not been quite as you see them so I don’t think I really have one.  Not yet anyway.

Do you collect anything?

Everything really.  I’ve boxes and boxes of things back home I used to collect, yo-yos, mcdonalds toys, cars, now I suppose I collect photographs.

Do you believe in magic?

I used to work as a magician so I should definitely say yes.

Are you nostalgic?

Extrememly.  I save most things.  Cinema tickets, receipts from dates and things like that.  I’ve boxes of post it notes of reminders and notebooks.

What’s your idyllic vision of your future?

Making pictures is all I’ve ever really wanted to do so as long as I can continue to do so and make them better and more interesting I’ll be happy.

Second Shoot

The following images are of possessions that I keep that remind me of my son.  Instead of trying to recreate ‘nothing’ i have tried to constructively channel my thoughts influenced by readings of Freud’s theories.  I have still continued with the minimalist approach seen in my first shoot but instead have focused on items that I treasure to try and understand why I wish to think of ‘nothing’.  I feel the images are still loaded with absence even though then portray an object.

The final images will also be edited to appear to have the same exposure so they sit well as a series.

Research – Ceal Floyer

Floyer calls her work self-reflexive and it is, in a way. But it is also, and in spite of its liminality, profoundly interactive. And as she devotedly directs the viewer with the subtlest manouevrings towards absence: the absence of a light switch, the absence of a subject, the absence of ‘things’ – she is really igniting a sense of presence and present tense revelation. She is a consummate poet of the unseen. Her readymades and their simulacra – the light switch, say, and the projection of a switch – reveal something about the unreality of the world, the abstraction behind the representation and vice-versa. If she champions Marcel Duchamp, she also champions Agnes Martin, so liminal and reductive are her constructive strategies.

Floyer practices a rigorous conceptualism that nevertheless segues with the world of everyday life in startling ways. Her work is like a finger pointing towards absence, offering magico-circumstantial experiences and small explosive revelations that continue to touch us long after we have left the exhibition halls. If Floyer eschews hoopla in favour of slow learning, it is perhaps because she sees the ‘gaze’ as synonymous with experience itself. She sheds welcome light on the phenomenology of everyday life, and rather than making us self-conscious, she really makes us hyperconscious of the making of meaning, and the fact that we, her viewers, are not only fully and consciously complicit in that interior facture but in the process, well, as Tom Petty once wrote and sang: ‘Glad to be here, happy to be alive.’

 

James D. Campbel

Research – James Turrell

“It’s about perception. For me, it’s using light as a material to influence or affect the medium of perception. I feel that I want to use light as this wonderful and magic elixir that we drink as Vitamin D through the skin—and I mean, we are literally light-eaters—to then affect the way that we see. We live within this reality we create, and we’re quite unaware of how we create the reality. So the work is often a general koan into how we go about forming this world in which we live, in particular with seeing.”

Research – Yves Klein

In October 1955 Klein submitted the following text to accompany his exhibition ‘Yves Peintures’ at the Club des Solitaires to show his intentions for this display of singular colour theory.

After having gone through several periods, my research has led me to paint unified monochrome pictures. My canvases are therefore covered by one or several layers of a single color after a certain preparation of the support and using various technical procedures. No drawing is visible, no variation in hue; there is nothing but the UNITY of a single color. The dominant invades the entire picture, as it were. In this way I seek to individualize the color, because I have come to believe that there is a living world of each color and I express these worlds. My paintings, moreover, represent an idea of absolute unity in perfect serenity; an abstract idea represented abstractly, which has made me rank myself with the abstract painters. But I hasten to point out to you that the abstractionists do not understand it this way and they reproach me, among other things, for refusing to provoke relations between colorsÉ. I think that the color “yellow,” for example, is quite sufficient in itself to render an atmosphere and a climate “beyond the thinkable”; what is more, the nuances of yellow are infinite, leaving the possibility to interpret it in many different ways.For me, each nuance of a color is in some way an individual, a being who is not only from the same race as the base color, but who definitely possesses a distinct character and personal soul.… Nuances can be gentle, evil, violent, majestic, vulgar, calm, etc. In sum, each nuance of each color is definitely a “presence,” a living being, an active force which is born and dies after having lived a sort of drama of the life of colors.

 

Klein also entered in the realm of performance art and asked his audience to partake in the works by using their bodies as a tool for which to paint blue onto different surfaces and canvases.

Research – Hiroshi Sugimoto

“Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence. The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light, though that could just as easily suggest random coincidence as a Deity. Let’s just say that there happened to be a planet with water and air in our solar system, and moreover at precisely the right distance from the sun for the temperatures required to coax forth life. While hardly inconceivable that at least one such planet should exist in the vast reaches of universe, we search in vain for another similar example. Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.” – Hiroshi Sugimoto

Research – Ute Barth

“Uta Barth is an artist whose evocative, abstract photographs explore the nature of vision and the difference between how a human sees reality and how a camera records it. In contrast to documentary and confessional modes of photography, Barth intentionally depicts mundane or incidental objects in nondescript surroundings in order to focus attention on the fundamental act of looking and the process of perception. In white blind (bright red) (2002), she investigates both literal and metaphorical modes of perception in ghostly compositions that mimic the afterimages that persist in one’s visual memory after turning away from an object. Her recent series, …and to draw a bright, white line with light (2011), marks the first time Barth has intervened in the staging of her photographs. By manipulating curtains in her home, she created lines and curves of light that expand from a sliver to a wide ribbon across a sequence of large-scale, dramatically cropped images that evoke the subtle passage of time while also highlighting the visceral and intellectual pleasures of seeing. As Barth continues to expand her photographic practice to probe the theme of perception in new and inventive ways, she is encouraging viewers to reconsider the traditional functions and expectations of the photographic image.”

           

   

Shoot 1

Evaluation of Shoot 1

Mt first shoot was influenced by Rothko’s paintings and Freud’s interpretations of dreams.

The minimalist approach and the subtle changes of hue in the image were my attempt of trying to produce ‘nothing’ which is what i wish for in my dreams.  Instead I still produced ‘something’.  I am realising how problematic trying to convey emptiness is and how to represent a ‘clear’ mind.

I have decided to focus on what dreams and thoughts I am trying make quiet.  So my attention will now be focused on belongings and memories of my child.

Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams

Overview [edit]

Dreams, in Freud’s view, are all forms of “wish fulfillment” — attempts by the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort, whether something recent or something from the recesses of the past (later in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud would discuss dreams which do not appear to be wish-fulfillment). Because however, the information in the unconscious is in an unruly and often disturbing form, a “censor” in the preconscious will not allow it to pass unaltered into the conscious.

During dreams, the preconscious is more lax in this duty than in waking hours, but is still attentive: as such, the unconscious must distort and warp the meaning of its information to make it through the censorship. As such, images in dreams are often not what they appear to be, according to Freud, and need deeper interpretation if they are to inform on the structures of the unconscious.

Freud used to mention the dreams as “The Royal Road to the Unconscious”. He proposed the ‘phenomenon of condensation’; the idea that one simple symbol or image presented in a person’s dream may have multiple meanings. For this very reason, Freud tried to focus on details during psychoanalysis and asked his patients about things they could even think trivial (i.e. while a patient was describing an experience in their dream, Freud could ask him/her: “was there any sign upon the walls? What was it?”). As Freud was focusing upon the biologic drives of the individual (a fact that alienated him from several colleagues of his like Breuer, Jung and Adler), he stated that when we observe a hollow object in our dreams, like a box or a cave, this is a symbol of a womb, while an elongated object is a symbol for penis. Due to these statements, Freud attracted much criticism from those who believed him a “sexist” or “misanthrope“, as he was alleged to have overemphasised the role of instinct, as though he believed people were “wild beasts”.

 

Further Research – Painter Mark Rothko

Rothko’s use of mythology as a commentary on current history was not novel. Rothko, Gottlieb, and Newman read and discussed the works of Freud and Jung, in particular their theories concerning dreams and the archetypes of the collective unconscious, and they understood mythological symbols as images that operate in a space of human consciousness that transcends specific history and culture.^[29] Rothko later said his artistic approach was “reformed” by his study of the “dramatic themes of myth.” He allegedly stopped painting altogether in 1940 to immerse himself in Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough and Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.

 

Feature Artist in Issue 1 of Magazine – Photographer Benjamin McMahon

London based photographer Benjamin Mcmahon has agreed to feature in the first issue of our online magazine.

He has previously been commisioned to work with Vogue Magazine, The Gourmand, The Telegraph Magazine, Wire Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Elephant Magazine, and FT Weekend.

McMahon’s personal work is complimentary to my groups theme of illusion and memory and is a great assett for the launch of our new venture.

Please follow the link below to view Benjamin McMahon’s work

http://www.benjaminmcmahon.com

Duane Michals

Research – Yayoi Kusama

“The nine decades of Yayoi Kusama’s life have taken her from rural Japan to the New York art scene to contemporary Tokyo, in a career in which she has continuously innovated and re-invented her style. Well-known for her repeating dot patterns, her art encompasses an astonishing variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, film, performance and immersive installation. It ranges from works on paper featuring intense semi-abstract imagery, to soft sculpture known as ‘Accumulations’, to her ‘Infinity Net’ paintings, made up of carefully repeated arcs of paint built up into large patterns. Since 1977 Kusama has lived voluntarily in a psychiatric institution, and much of her work has been marked with obsessiveness and a desire to escape from psychological trauma. In an attempt to share her experiences, she creates installations that immerse the viewer in her obsessive vision of endless dots and nets or infinitely mirrored space.”

Research – Martin Creed – Work No. 227. The Lights Going On And Off

“We all have our bad days, when you just can’t get it right, like moments of loss and surrender. And we all have our good days, when everything seems to run smoothly, just perfect for no apparent reason. I can see clearly now the rain has gone. You wake up, things are okay, and the sun is shining. And then out of the blue, there you go again, down into the dark pit of depression. It’s not just a matter of mood swings. Its something more basic and perverse: the inability to preserve joy. The need to measure it against a black background. Art is no different. It’s a ride on the roller coaster of emotions. Sometimes I feel so happy, sometimes I feel so sad. I always thought Martin Creed’s Work No. 227: The lights going on and off had something to do with this simple truth. It has the ability to compress happiness and anxiety within one single gesture. Lights go on, lights go off – sunshine and rain, and then back to beginning to repeat endlessly. I do not know what Creed was thinking about when he made it but to me it always looked like a swing, a mood swing. That’s why I never found it funny but frightening in its simplicity, it’s a sculpture for our lithium oriented, Prozac enhanced reality. Are we afraid of the dark or just blinded by the light? I see a rainbow and I want to paint it black.”

 Maurizio Cattelan, 2004

Creed is also interested in the idea of a sculpture behind an object or substance that take on the space of that environment.  He tries to make his audience have spacial awareness between the object the environment and the spectator.

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tateshots-martin-creed-tate-st-ives

Facebook Survey

Lucy Jayne Blanchard

26 April near Finsbury via Mobile

Poll please….. Would be helpful if most commented…….
1. When you think of a blank space what do you imagine? Colours/shade/environment
2. When you dream do you want to realise achievement or emotional feelings or in fact both? Please elaborate
3.would you consider yourself as a visual learner and responder?
Many thanks…….

Like ·  · Promote · Share

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  Jenny Burnage 1) black space, infinite, no edges or corners. Similar to space but with no stars or planets
  2) My initial response would be achievement. I am a person who likes things to be quantifiable and measurable. However I think really I strive to be just stressed enough to not let time slip through my fingers and to have a sense of achievement without loosing sight of the important things in life. (Flippin heck lol)
  3) Not really sure what this means but again my initial response would be no, I like books, figures, science. But having said that I also enjoy film, photography, crafts. I know when I like something visually but I couldn’t always say why.
  
  Does that help? Is this for uni? Jxx

  26 April at 09:48 via mobile · Unlike · 1
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  Dan Burden U already know about number one. Number two, its mainly achievement for me, which relates to whatever I’m striving for at that time in my life! Or in fact if I’m at a low point they will be to do with that subject. Number 3, yes to some degree i can pick things up from visual demos but learn far better and efficiently by hands on practice. Hope that helps xx

  26 April at 10:04 via mobile · Unlike · 1
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  Sophie Collins 1. A plain white sheet of paper
  2. Both. Achievement – career progression, buy a house. Emotional – happy friendships, relationships, marriage, motherhood.
  3. I’d say more practical, hands on learning is most effective for me.
  
  Hope that’s what you needed! Xxx

  26 April at 11:51 via mobile · Unlike · 1
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  Steve Burnage 1) blank white

  26 April at 22:57 · Like
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Further Research – Man Ray

National Portrait Gallery – Man Ray Exhibition

“Focusing on his career in America and Paris between 1916 and 1968, the exhibition highlights Man Ray’s central position among the leading artists of the Dada and Surrealist movements and the significant range of contemporaries, celebrities, friends and lovers that he captured: from Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso to Kiki de Montparnasse, Lee Miller and Catherine Deneuve.”

Dissemination Proposal

The assignment for my peers and I is to create a platform for our work that is highly accessible to all.  By means of researching, creating, collaborating and advertising our group of four photography-based students will work together to strive to achieve a successful source to exhibit our creativity.

After discussions it was decided that the final ‘viewing space’ would be an Internet based source.  I believe we all share a good understanding of editing and exhibiting our work however I am more familiar with showing my imagery in gallery spaces as physical objects.  I have always been more comfortable with the notion of a photograph being a possession, something that you can hold and touch and physically be an object in your environment, having a lasting representation of time and space.

However it stands to reason due to accessible technology and our ever-progressing computer lifestyles that online galleries, online magazines and artistic blogs are become increasingly popular and can rapidly spread through many different social circles.  People can view creative works of art all over the world in their own environments, which is never my first choice of observation as I prefer to see the original piece of art physically.  However if artists do not surpass to this fairly recent form of ‘art viewing’ I fear their work will become increasingly less circulated and unknown.

For this reason I am passionate about making this project a success.  I will learn new technologies including creating blogs and keeping them updated and interesting.  I will also learn to become creative as a team member rather than as an individual.

The group will use our blog to share research, inspiration and showcase our initial thoughts, ideas and work to achieve and create a successful online magazine as our end product.

Issue One of the web based magazine named ‘Dream Catchers’ will consist of works by myself, Selene Alexia Christodoulou, Cassie Molly Carthy and Nathalia Takeuchi.

After the submission of Issue One, ‘Dream Catchers’ will be open publically to other artists working with similar inspirations to submit their work and be an author in future issues.

I would hope if the online magazine is a success we could also publish it to sell within small art bookshops.

I believe this project will give me an insight into advertising and creating networks with professionals to showcase my work.  Other opportunities and avenues of exhibiting my work will be a target to achieve with the recognition of this project.

The members of our group will all be responding and creating work based on the idea of imagination and escapism.  The notion of dream like qualities or fantasy is a recurring element in all of our ideas.

Selene Alexia Christodoulou will be producing a series influenced by the calm reactions of her Cypriot nation during the time of their economic collapse and showing ‘Grace in the face of destruction’.

Cassie Molly Carthy will be creating a series with the theme of ‘Escapism through Imagination’ illustrating her younger siblings dreams as an observer.

Nathalia Takeuchi will be creating work based on the theme of nostalgia and childhood memories.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word ‘dream’ in a number of ways.  I will be basing my work on the idea of a dream being ‘ a cherished aspiration, ambition or ideal’.

My ideal representation of a dreamlike sensation would be, for me, to be capable of thinking of nothing or as little as possible.  Stillness, tranquility and blank spaces with little or no movement or sensory experience would be idyllic.  However this idea is still juxtaposed by the concept of invisibility and ‘nothingness’ being conceptual and meaningful.  I discovered this by visiting an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, Summer 2012 called ‘Invisible’.  A statement from the Southbank Centre described the artworks as

‘works that seek to direct our attention towards the unwritten rules and conventions that shape our understanding of art. Other works invoke invisibility to underscore the limits of our perceptual capacities or to emphasize the role of our imagination in responding to works of art. Some use invisibility as a metaphor that relates to the suppression of information or the political disappearance and marginalization of social groups.’

I will reexamine the artists that exhibited in this show and their conceptual understanding of blank spaces.

I am also interested in why I consistently imagine a blank space to be white.  Is this only because of color symbolism and the purity and innocence that is associated with this shade?  Investigating color theory may be an appropriate avenue for analyzing my own ‘dreams’ and thoughts.

Other research will include analyzing works by artists that work in different mediums and philosophical literature with the intent of using this inspiration to create a series of images to show my aspiring dream like state, not documenting the current and realistic thought process within my mind.

I will continue to update the blog and share resources to progress with this project.

Oxford dictionary – definition of ‘dream’

Definition of dream

noun

• 1a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep:I had a recurrent dream about falling from great heights
• [in singular] a state of mind in which someone is or seems to be unaware of their immediate surroundings:he had been walking around in a dream all day

• 2a cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal:I fulfilled a childhood dream when I became champion
• an unrealistic or self-deluding fantasy:maybe he could get a job and earn some money—but he knew this was just a dream
• a person or thing perceived as wonderful or perfect:her new man’s an absolute dreamit was a dream of a backhand

verb (past and past participle dreamed /drɛmt, driːmd/ or dreamt /drɛmt/)

[no object]

• 1experience dreams during sleep:I dreamed about her last night
• [with object] see, hear, or feel (something) in a dream:maybe you dreamed it[with clause]:I dreamed that I was going to be executed

• 2indulge in daydreams or fantasies about something greatly desired:she had dreamed of a trip to America

• 3 [with negative] contemplate the possibility of doing something or that something might be the case:I wouldn’t dream of foisting myself on you[with clause]:I never dreamed anyone would take offence

Initial Visual Research

Alberto Zamboni

ArtMoorHouse, Moor House, 120 London Wall, EC2Y 5ET

Italian artist Zamboni’s inspiration comes from the works of Whistler and Turner.  (hazy views and nocturnal seascapes).  Literature also influenced his work and he is fascinated my adventure and the unknown.  ‘The human figure becomes the pretext to create an oneiric depiction of reality”