22nd of August 2022 - From my World to the Virtual One (Creation of the Blog / Digital Notebook)

As an ardent collager and poet, I find myself often contemplating Ugo Carrega's words from his manifesto on concrete poetry "Everthing is language [...] Language is everything". I often imagine that everything in my bedroom and studio is language, and following this what kind of poem could be read from it. 

The most prominant feature of my room are the walls. They are painted in a titanium white; this serves a dual purpose of allowing me to use my room as a flexible exhibtion space, whilst also serving as a neutral background for all of the collaging and art materials I store on it. In essence, these walls and my room are similtaneously my biggest collage and a womb from which new artworks are created. To clarify, the interior of my room are constantly changing and in flux, as myself, my youngest sister and one of her friends remove items from the wall to make their own artworks. In the spaces that are left behind, I put up new materials I (and sometimes others) have made or collected on my travels across earth. Furthermore, even if some of these collaging materials are not used, they may still inspire another collage. Aside from Carrega, Kurt Schwitters and the sculptural walls of his Merzbau has also influenced the way I think of my room as an artwork in itself. 

My Collage Wall

The footage was taken from my phone, then edited into a GIF on Photomosh.com.

This blog is a translation into words of: my art, the process of making my art, everything in my bedroom, and studio, and all of the happenings within it. With this in mind I would like to take some time to document the other key points of inspiration and context surrounding the artwork I make in my studio / bedroom - many of which I see as artworks unto themselves.

[1] Petri Dish Palletes: 

The use of petri dishes was first initiated by a visit to an event held by the Society of Biology. Here each attendant was given a pet slime mould in a petri dish, with instruction on how to look after it. Sadly I don't know what happened with the slime mould; may his soul rest in pizza. I do however know what happened with the Petri dishes I acquired to look after the slime moulds: starting from around the year of 2017, I have been using them as palletes for my paintings!

Doing so not only allows me to preserve the colours I mix, so I may admire them in the future and remind myself of what colours can be mixed from paint. Moreover, since the petri dish itself is transparent, you can observe a rough history of the colours mixed for paintings by comparing the colours on the exposed surface versus those on the underside. Viewed from close up it's also fun to imagine the layers of paint on the petri dish as a bird's eye view of a landscape, and what this landscape would look like close up. This connotation of a living landscape existing within the Petri Dish is excerbated by the fact that petri dishes are often used in a lab setting to grow lab cultures, bacteria and other microbial life.

Having used petri dishes as palletes, I never want to use anything else as a pallete. Disposable paper palletes are flimsy and wasteful. Glass palletes feel too delicate, almost like I could accidentally break them at any point. Cardboard and wooden pallets absorb the paint too much, thus becoming a less efficient use of paint and becoming harder to clean as well. MDF planks of wood with non-stick surfaces are heavy, and need to be cleaned regularly, leading to the loss of paint which can not be documented other than through photographs. Finally why would I spend any money on a plastic pallete, when plastic Petri dishes exist?

Going forwards I also plan on exhibiting these petri dishes somehow, exactly how depends on the materials, the space I have available to me, and what I am inspired by now as well as in the future. Currently my ideas for exhibiting these petri dishes revolve around Damien Hirst's polka dot paintings and an artist showed to me by Eva Masterman - that of Ryan Gander. Gander painted a series of portraits, only to then destroy them, and exhibit only the palletes used to make the portraits. The pallete's Gander used were also circular, however they were arranged in a shallow arc. I was thinking I could expand upon this structure, and arrange all of the petri dishes I make within my lifetime in a more sprawling organic form. Hirst's paintings on the other hand make me want to try arranging the pallete's in a uniform ordered grid pattern on a gallery wall; this would give each pallet an equal amount of space to breathe. There is also a related additional idea I have yet to realise, which was born out of my Life Work Art project of 2nd Year, that of making a crowdsourced website exhibiting many different people's palletes. Each of the palletes would be cropped into a circle shape and moveable, so that visitors to the website could arrange the palletes into whatever form they wished. In this way, I would be facilitating the construction of an interactive pointillist collage. Though, I think this last idea will something I do when I have limited money and physical space to work in, transferring my artwork to the digital space instead. Likewise, my own exhibited petri dishes shall be reserved for a retrospective exhibition of my own: a prospect I am very much looking forward too.

Petri Dishes scanned on a HP scanner, with edits made using a graphic tablet and Krita Software. 

[2] Bird Pillow Embroidery: 

This work started during the summer leading upto 3rd year, and has been something I work on to keep my hands busy, either whilst I am playing board games, watching anime or engaging in a conversation with someone. It was inspired by my youngest sisters wierd noises that she would make; they sometimes sound almost inhuman. Thus rather than getting constantly annoyed by these noises, I decided to animate them and give form to the animal sounds she was making. I wanted to make the pillow to serve as a piece of memorabilia to commemorate the bird she gave a voice to. Recently though, I have been finding that making this pillow is serving as an excellent opportunity for me to practice my embroidery skills. 

My embroidery bag and pillow photographed on my phone, with edits made using a graphic tablet and Krita Software. 

I now have a list of things I would like to embroider on to pillows, once I finish this current pillow I am working on: 

> Black and white chess board - either on a white background or coloured background. This could also be an opportunity to practice a singular embroidery technique over and over again, or practice a different embroidery technique for each square. 

> Rainbow light to dark chess board - I think the background would suit either a black or white background best, though the best way to test out my colour matching theories would be to sketch it out.

>Chromatic black / white / grey chess board - Once again, I think these colours would be best complimented by a black or white background.  

[3] Rock Collection - These are rocks that I have collected, since I was around 14, from my walks around my local village, Newcastle upon Tyne, and elsewhere in Europe. I really like to observe the patterns on the rocks, and identify the type of rocks and occasioanly crystals that are found on the rock. Of all the ones I have calcite is my favourite. Part of the reason I like collecting rocks is the humour that arises from the question: "Why is your bag so heavy, have you packed some rocks in there? Answer: Yes, yes I have." .

R

Rock collection and my painted koala mask from RAG week in my 6th form years photographed using my phone, edited using a graphic tablet and Krita drawing software. 

[4]Desk sculptures and hourglass -  The middle two items are sculptures I made during my foundation year at the Royal Drawing School, whereas the the glass jar with a submerged plastic chinese lantern was made during my gap year. These three items all involve glass and water, and as such I very much enjoy observing the way light is bent through and interacts with these sculptures. When my mind wanders off into daydreaming, I often find my gaze drifting off into and through these sculptures. 

The hourglass on the other hand was something I found in Newcastle, in the Flea Circus - next to the Star and Shadow Cinema. Since the transparent part of the hourglass is made from plastic, and not glass, it is not as fun to watch the light travel through it. What I do admire about it though, is the simple design of a Chinese garden engraved into the top of the hourglass. Furthermore, I appreciate the reminder of how time is passing, as well as the potential for a non-electronic timing device that could be used in any chess variants and games I design in the future. In this way, I can also imagine ways to entice myself and others away from phone and computer screens, and engage with the real world again - rather ironic given that I am currently writing on a laptop.  

Desk glass sculptures and hourglass up close and from far away. The photos were taken using my phone and edited with the Microsoft office photo editing tool.

References mentioned:

1. Everything is language. 

2. I therefore do not see why poetry must continue to make use of only words.

3. My senses reject a theory that is not operative. 

4. I write what I think in the moment in which I write and think. 

5. We need an art like the science of art. 

6. What I write must be presented like I write it. 

7. A stone is a word. 

8. A sign on a page is a graphic stone. 

9. I can not write about what I do since I do it. 

10. Language is everything.

Carrega, Ugo and Vergine, Lea. Manifesto on Concrete Poetry, Art on the Cutting Edge : a Guide to Contemporary Movements. Milan: Skira, 2001, https://libsearch.ncl.ac.uk/permalink/f/rm84mo/NCL_ALMA2157124250002411.

Gander, Ryan. 2016. Group Portrait - The Artist In The Act Of Experimenting With Self Image Production Alongside Pierre Huyghe And Florian Lüdde, The Japan Society, E 47Th St, New York City. Image. https://www.estherschipper.com/artists/30-ryan-gander/works/14561-ryan-gander-group-portrait-the-artist-in-the-act/.

Hirst, Damien. 2012. Esculetin / Color Woodcut On 410 GSM Somerset White Paper, 48.3 × 55.9 Cm, Edition Of 55. Image. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/damien-hirst-esculetin.

Plesen, Daria. 2022. Portrait Series/ Skin Surface Swabs. Image. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb0udHWLw9n/?hl=en.

Schwitters, Kurt, and Wilhelm Redemann. 1933. Teil Aus Dem Merzbau. Image. https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en/schwitters/teil-aus-dem-merzbau-1933/photo/asset/7274145.