27th September, 2022
Ingrid Pollard
Date: 26th September, 2022
Venue:he Roland Levinsky building, Plymouth
The work of Natural England, an association whose goal is to improve relationships between people and nature, I found inspiring because how we interact with nature is central to calls to change how we have impacted life on earth since the ice age. "This practice is a way to question and complicate our relationship with the natural world, interrogating social constructs such as Britishness, race, sexuality, identity, and grounding the human body's deep connection with, and marked effects on, land, sea and planet." ( Advertising blurb) This is one of the aims behind my MAFA women prisoner - seaweed project. An other part of my project is to encourage understanding of both through their interaction.
After having read the blurb to Dr Pollard's presentation, what I was looking forward to seeing the most was how, as I am looking to develop my MAFA exploration using sound, sculpture and installation, Pollard had done hers.
Pollard's response to the lesbian archive in Glasgow Women's Library was her work in No Cover Up. I very much appreciated how she included Suzanne Bonnar's singing as part of the exhibition - a live event, and not something that I have tried - yet! Sound is so much part of our lives that any project, photographic or otherwise, is revitalised with it, in my opinion. In her talk, Pollard commented on how 'sound joins' , which is a very relevant and supporting statement that I will want to use in my practice.
Pollard also mentioned the importance of scale in her work which resonates with my seaweed project. When you mention seaweeds, people think about the range of bladder wracks which are on rocks and are revealed at low tide, but there are also the huge sugar kelp, the Wakame and oar weeds which can reach 2 metres in length. If you simply photograph them people have no idea of their relative size, which is why I prefer to record them in cyanotypes which give a 1:1 print.
Her constructions, going from 1 to 3 during the extra time she had over the covid shut down period, were as fascinating as they were different. Bow down and very low "a trio of kinetic sculptures Pollard made with Oliver Smart, two of which (a pair of bending, scraping metal saws, and a body of knotted ship’s rope) appear to genuflect, and the third of which impotently swings a baseball bat. Behind them is a row of lenticular prints of a little Black girl in a white 1940s dress, trapped forever as she bobs in and out of a curtsy." (The Guardian May 2022)
The work Landscape Trauma 1 & 2 also has scale at the forefront of its presentation with rock formations being printed on fabric pieces 3m square - these must create a huge impact on the viewer in a gallery.
The little sound books in her No Cover Up make the viewer experience more intimate and is another example of how the artist uses sound and viewer interaction in her installations.
The work which gave its name to the presentation, Three Drops of Blood, is currently being shown at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton. The work is a response to the histories of Devon and the South West. As soon as I have seen it, I shall review it on my Exhibition Reviews page.
I found some of the questions posed after the talk, insightful. The first was about the little books which I have covered above; then Pollard was asked if she would consider covering the whole environmental issue highlighted by the current government's decision to resume fracking. Pollard replied that she had not considered doing work on that. Is that because it does not involve a race element, I wonder. there were 2 questions about her use of archives. The second specifically asked if Pollard started with an archive or if the subject came first. It was a question that I was wondering throughout the talk because it became obvious in her presentation what a vital and pivotal role it plays in her work. Although she was not clear as to which comes first, she did say that she would like to explore the archives of the role of a certain line of the aristocracy and perhaps the monarchy in the West Indies. So in this case the archives determine the shape of the work.
Best aspects of this presentation for me were:
* Pollard's use of sound.
*. Her extensive use of archives to drive her explorations.
*. Her use of sculpture to deliver a message.
One thing I wish had been better:
I wish she had spoken more about her Honiton exhibition.
17th November, 2022
J Craigie cinema RLB
Abigail Reynolds: Lost Libraries: Film and talk
Abigail presented her film, taken over 5 months stretching from Xi 'an in China to Rome in Italy in which she visited the sites of libraries that had been lost over the years. Behind Reynolds' Elliptical Reading project in The Box as part of the British Art 9 exhibition is her very deep concern about the loss of our libraries in the UK.
Reynolds explained how she set about the project funded by a BMW prize and what she covered on the way. The film includes her children's responses to the project. The response that struck me most was her daughter's question about how she could film and photograph that vast nothing in the Gobi Desert. Indeed, how do you film a library / so many libraries that is / are no longer there? The inclusion of the children underlined the fact that if our libraries continue to disappear, any future children will be deprived of the experience of exploring our worlds, imaginary or real.
I feel that the film is very successful in many ways: an artistic representation of that absence; a documentary of the Arab Spring uprising in which they were burning the library; the damaged film was in keeping with the loss of the many libraries.
18th January 2023
Jonathan Kay: Photography
RLB Lecture theatre
I had had a look at Jonathan's website & saw some interesting cyanotypes and 3D prints so I was looking forward to seeing and hearing about a practice that included my passions.
Jonathan started by telling us how he gets his inspiration and presented a quote from Philip Pullman:
He picked on 'cloud chamber': something that is contained and has its own atmosphere, and that in his photography he wants to go beyond the visible. to illustrate this he showed us examples from his Elemental Apparitions series which have electrical charges, and then one which looked like he had a jet stream going across it.
He then presented Into the Nadal (2013) which was a series of the sea bed - ringing opportunity bells for me and Derek's exploration.
His next image was from Nothing but dust in which he used an electron microscope to look at possible meteorite dust in the streets of his town. This too rang bells for me because of the conversation I had yesterday with Stacey De Amicis about the possibility of my using the same facility on campus.
He introduced his cotton cyanotypes developed on the glacier in New Zealand - fascinating! I was pleased to see how he had presented them in a gallery setting which reminded me of my presentation at the MAFA project presentations where I had members of the group holding my silk & cotton cyanotypes as a virtual dome:
His cyanotypes are 115 x 280cm.
It was interesting to see that he presented his works sheets but also stretched as if on a canvas next to his other c type gicles.
He too removes the background to his images to remove a sense of scale and to give a sci-fi impression.
Another bit of info: he uses a microscope on his digital camera to take photos of ice.
This gave me an idea of collecting and freezing sea water and photographing it with an electron microscope.**. He printed some of these on vinyl and covered windows with it.
Very useful was his slide on how he plans to take his Ice Field project forward:
I was intrigued and impressed by the public interest he engendered by having his Negative Mass cyanotype exposure in public over 3 days in the city centre. What an excellent way of engaging with the public about your project!
What I took away from the talk:
1. to take photos of the sea bed.
2. to use the electron microscope to photograph not only the seaweed cells under the microscope, but also frozen seawater.
3. To get a digital camera microscope to photograph elements not only on the seaweed but also on the frozen seawater.
4. Where Abigail Reynolds makes seaweed glass, I would like to make a vinyl panel with an image made with an electron microscope of my seaweeds or seawater ice.
5. Can I make something REALLY BIG with seaweed?
25th February, 2023
Sally Baldwin talk on her work and techniques
I have admired Sally's work ever since I first saw it exhibited in Torquay in 2022.
I wrote to her and told her & she remembered my email!
Highlights from her biography: she went to an academic school where art was not encouraged. Her subsequent art schools in Manchester led her to designing and making lingerie.
She went from making lace to making paper lace (appropriate for her talk in Honiton!
She stitches paper, soaks it in boiling water and tea and then distresses it. This consists of soaking the stitched paper & pulling it apart after having soaked it so that it no longer looks like paper.
Sally makes torn tissue paper landscape collages - not to my taste but certainly creative.
Bubbles: chick peas in polyester material, bound with string; cover with tin foil & steam.
Tasmania is the centre of paper making in Australia.
Paper making: tear up paper, soak it & pound it to break threads. Embed dried flowers in it.
Fading to white = after all nature has been devastated.
I love the interplay of the objects with their shadows. In this exhibition, however, the shadows were rather menacing - perhaps that should be part of the piece?
Her quote: We breathe in what the plants breathe out and they breathe in what we breathe out. All life is interconnected.
Thumb print looks like the year rings on a tree trunk cross-section.
To make lace-like paper:
A1 cartridge paper sheets sewn together & stitched in squares. Pour boiling water into a pot with tea bags in it to colour the paper pour mordant into it : alum; rust. Scrunch it & open it up & straighten it out getting rid of the bits of paper you want left behind. The stitching needs to be meshed to keep the structure.
Tissue paper can also be used with different sewing guides - like abstract spider's webs.
Machine embroidery uses a different foot £14. Stitch all the bits you don't want dissolved.
Dissolvable fabric which looks like plastic but isn't - it's made with potato starch.
The interconnecting stitching keeps the 'fabric' together.
Companies that sell the material: George Weil & Rainbow Silks.
Paper pulp:
Tear up paper into tiny squares & soak in hot water overnight. Put Bicarb in it to help break down the paper.
Pour into a large basin with water - the relative quantities depend on how thick you want the paper.
Dip the paper making / nail & thread frame into the pulp & pull out making sure that all the joins of thread are covered. If you want the cord thicker can you dip it in again?
Cotton Scrim aka printmakers scrim can be pulled and pushed apart to make shapes Sold by Whalleys. You can dip it in paper pulp or plaster of paris.
Making paper:
Towels & Jay cloths & paper making frames = 1 frame with mesh & the other that fits in it without.
Flip mesh holding the pulp on to the Jay cloth; scatter petals, seeds, silver birch bark; onion skins; tea bags onto it & cover them with more pulp to make sure they remain part of the paper; put coins or other bits to emboss the paper.
Eco printing:
Fold cartridge paper; interleave it with flowers / any specimen. Bind it tight between wood ends & boil for? Hours. The paper will absorb colours of the specimens.
Shibori
Shibori (しぼり/絞り, from the verb root shiboru – "to wring, squeeze or press"[1]: 7) is a Japanese manual tie-dyeing technique, which produces a number of different patterns on fabric.
Shibori is a Japanese manual resist dyeing technique, which produces patterns on fabric. In Japan, the earliest known example of cloth dyed with a shibori technique dates from the 8th century; it is among the goods donated by the Emperor Shōmu to the Tōdai-ji inNara.
Bound silk habotai, covered in tin foil & boiled.
Mod rock can be used to make moulds.
Covered in tissue paper - cover balloons in cling film & vaseline.
Use PVA glue to bind it & give it structure but it leaves a sheen.
Use a vegetable glue but it goes mouldy : CMC textile Medium mixed with water - expensive. You can use the same with paper pulp.
What I took away from the talk for my practice:
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I definitely want to use her paper making techniques using seaweed pulp.
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I also want to use her threaded lace-like materials to make stuff like 'Fragile Cluster' using seaweed pulp, somehow.
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I want to make moulds using the Mod Rock covered in tissue paper over seaweed pulp.