Painting Now - Tate Britain

The Painting Now exhibition is one that I enjoyed very much, showing the works of five contemporary artists. Starting with Tomma Abts, the paintings are neither figurative nor abstract but are more concerned with showing the process of the artist as none of the pieces are planned beforehand and result simply by instinct and letting the paint be the guide. By layering and making marks, Abts creates pieces that explore depth, volume and space. This was followed by Simon Ling who paints urban landscapes that appear to be crumpling and swaying. Ling, who often paints en plein air, captures the seemingly ordinary and overlooked parts of urban London, in what could be almost a kind of expressionist manner.

'Zebe'- Tomma Abts

Untitled- Simon Ling

The artists the stood out the most to me were Lucy Mckenzie and Gillian Carnegie. Mckenzie has a more conceptual approach compared to the other artists in the exhibition, which she combines her skills demonstrated through the tompe l'oeils and marble effect painting in 'Loos House'. In her triptych 'Quodlibet XII, XXII and XX- have been subtitled Objectivism, Nazism and Fascism respectively, Mckenzie paints what seem to be proposals for interiors, pinned on a board with paint samples, marbling effects, architectural drawings and furniture pictures (with the odd copy of an Ayn Rand book of a leaflet about socialists. Mckenzie invites the viewer to explore how a person's ideologies and character can be identified through their houses/interiors, how they are seen on the surface, through their fashion statements, their brands as well as their interiors. One might question Mckenzie's role in the exhibition because she is not a 'painter' in the sense that it is the ideas in the her work that matter rather than the material itself. However, she is still incredibly skilled in her craft and revives trompe l'oeils which have not been seen in contemporary art in a very long time. Gillian Carnegie is also a highly accomplished painter who's sleek, glossy, monochrome paintings are strangely geometric. One of her works that I found to be most intriguing depicts a group of houses, painted in the same slightly dull, monochrome palette, with a kind of glaze as if seen through a thick layer of fog. It's almost dreamlike- both heavy and weightless at the same time.

'Nazism' - Lucy Mckenzie

Gillian Carnegie's depiction of the Holly Lodge Estate

Jake and Dinos Chapman's 'Come and See'

Gory, gruesome and carnivalesque- those are the words I'd use to describe the Chapman's 'Come and See' exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler...

They imagine a horrific vision of the future, where Nazi soldiers, zombie like creatures and multi-headed mutants and Ronald McDonald (the victim in some instances and the abuser in others) all torture one another for all of eternity as depicted in 'Hell' and 'The Sum of All Evil'. These dioramas are both large and intricately, every figure is meticulously detailed as they stand frozen in a portrayal of their suffering, and upon closer inspection, doing rather shocking things to one another. Although I personally find that the message behind these two works, if there even is one definitive message, their work focuses on the themes of death, morality, consumerism and corruption.

The ideas of death can also be found in the traditional portraits that hang in the gallery, appropriated by the artists to make the flesh look rotten and decaying, the eyeballs in one painting appearing to be dark and terrifying as they bulge out. The series is titled 'One day you will no longer be loved' and for me, there is no horror in these paintings, only a kind of sadness as the viewer is reminded of the impermanence of beauty, love and life.

I found that although the larger pieces such as 'Hell' were stunning and shocking and brilliant, the true essence of the ideas and slightly childish and humorous approach to very serious issues lay in the smaller pieces such as the mini cardboard sculptures or the watercolour, pencil and pen drawings and etchings, illustrated strange and gruesome scenarios of monsters and unknown creatures emerging from the shadows and wreaking havoc. In several of these smaller works, the artists paint on pages from books, the text from which has either been altered or is written entirely by themselves as it is incoherent and ominous. 

Lastly, one cannot speak of this exhibition without mentioning the rainbow socks clad Ku Klux men dotted around the gallery space, each one complete with white robes with a smiley face, a pointed hat, rainbow socks and sandals, staring intently at the art work. At first their presence is shocking and unexpected (the ever staring figures was quite unnerving) but soon I grew oddly accustomed to seeing them around. Perhaps they are representations of the Chapman's audience? Although I fail to understand why they would refer to their audience as white supremacists. Overall, I found the exhibition to be shocking and strange yet interesting, leaving me with questions about the cynical, nightmarish impression of violence and inhumane world that the Chapman's leave behind.

Animation for 'Bodies, Cities, Time, Borders'

I chose to explore 'bodies' and 'time', focusing on what happens to the body and soul over time and after death. I was inspired by the following poems: 

A verse from Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself': 

'I bequeathe myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

  if you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.'

and Mary Elizabeth Frye's 'Do not stand at my grave and weep':

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not here; I did not die.

Following this theme of death only being the gateway to a different life, I wished to portray the idea that though the body does not remain, the soul may still do; surrendering itself to where it came from, becoming a part of the life that surrounds us.

This is the short animation that I made in response to these ideas..

Flight- One Day Project

For a short one day project titled 'Flight' we created a book sculpture. Our element of 'flight' came from a flock of origami birds that were flying out of a books...

Making and Drawing Workshop

After choosing three words from a list, ours being 'fold', 'suspend' and 'light', we were asked to create sculptures using any of the materials found in the room. These are the results:

Then we proceeded to draw our sculptures, as well as those made by other students, using different methods such as continuous line drawn, and drawing only in straight lines.

Transforming the Everyday - Final Piece

For my final project, I decided to use objects that were personal to me and I had a stronger connection to- my own magical objects. I chose to look at the story of my great grandmother, for whom I had great admiration as she, at a young age, crossed the borders of India to Pakistan during the 1947 partition. I was inspired not only by her bravery while going on this journey, the partition being the biggest migration of the 20th century during which thousands lost their lives, but also the strength it must have taken to leave behind her home and all she held dear to start a new life in a different place. Keeping in mind the stories that my great grandmother had told me countless times as a child, I decided to make a suitcase of my own, much like the ones from Willard Mental Asylum, documenting her journey from one country to the other, using the objects she brought with her to tell her story. Some of the objects I used were actually hers whilst others were those that I collected and imagined she would have brought with her. 

However, that didn't quite feel like enough. I wanted the objects to tell their story but I couldn't help but wonder if people who didn't know my great grandmother as I did would understand the story those objects were trying to tell. I wanted to physically bring those objects to life: If they could talk, what would they say? If we could follow their lives, where would they take us? To answer these questions, I decided to use my newly found interest in stop motion animation to create a short video following the life of one of the objects my great grandmother brought with her. The video, together with my suitcase, formed my final piece..

The animation follows the story of one of my great grandmother's possessions,
a steel glass, as it makes it way across borders with her. 

  

When presented, the suitcase was placed as seen above

Although unintentional, I like how the pages aren't quite covering the glass fully, the edges are lifted as if they are fraying. It gives the sense that the stories that it holds can't be contained as it is bursting with life. 

The glass, an actual possession of my great grandmother, has been covered in pages from the same
book as the one seen in the video to provide a stronger visual link between the suitcase and the video.

The spoons and plate are from my great grandmother's dowry, the pattern on which was said to be hand carved. I decided to put in the 'tasbih' (string of brown beads, the Islamic equivalent of rosary beads one might say) as religion was always a very important part of her life. 

These are some of the photographs I managed to collect from my relatives. My great grandparents can be seen in the first one, with my great grandmother in the middle in the second photograph. Adding the photos to the suitcase just makes the story more real and believable.

When presenting this piece, I played the video separately, with the suitcase placed on a table against the wall onto which the video was projected. I think the presentation could be more effective if the video was projected onto the opened suitcase, so that the story is in essence captured within the objects, physically and metaphorically. 

In Steven Connor's 'Parapharnalia', he says 'such things inhabit space, but are a kind of temporizing with it, a refracting of the white noon of now into a chronic rainbow of times, with their twilight tints and hues. Such things hum with hint and import because they are there without being fully present; to hand, but not exactly here-and-now.' This is the feeling I get when surrounded by these objects. They are haunting in a sense, but beautifully so. But it is I who feels like a ghost; as time passes, it is these objects that are still alive, long after the people to whom they belonged are not- they are unstopped clocks. 

Magical Objects

In 'The Great Gatsby', Fitzgerald describes the objects that Gatsby associates some meaning with as 'enchanted objects', such as the green light with which he associates Daisy and the hope of being reunited with her. Once Gatsby is with her, the green light no longer holds the same significance; ''it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.'' These are the kinds of objects that I decided to look for; those that held meaning, had stories and thus became 'enchanted' because of our emotional investment in them..

Upon interviewing my neighbour, I found just what I was looking for. He had kept a collection of family relics and heirlooms; war medals, brocohes, wedding certificates, birth certificates etc, all kept locked and safe in an old, leather box.

The old, worn out leather adds to its feel of antiquity,
 proof of it's rich and eventful history..

I really like the frayed jute string that
holds the key and connects it to the box.  

 Each individual object found in the box had it's own life, a sense of being present but carrying with them an ancient weight, belonging an altogether different time..

     

Steven Connor, in his book 'Parapharnalia', describes objects like those above as 'magical objects'. He says 'We can do whatever we like to things, but magical things are things that we allow and expect to do things back to us. Magical things surpass themselves, in allowing us to increment and surpass ourselves with them.' Such is the nature of the objects I am interested in and wish to explore. However, for my project, I want to find objects that are 'magical' and 'enchanted' for me; something personal and meaningful. And I need not look very far...

The Lost Suitcases of Willard Asylum

The Willard Asylum of New York was an asylum for the chronically insane. Many of Willard's patients, once having entered it's wall, left only to be placed in it's graveyard filled with masses of, not named, but numbered graves. From within the old, abandoned building were discovered hundreds of suitcases of it's previous patients. Walter Benjamin describes possession as 'the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects' and that ultimately, 'it is he who lives in them'. The lost suitcases of Willard invoke this very sensation: the owners seem to be very much alive in their possessions.      

This now battered and deteriorating suitcase once belonged to a Delmar H. It was originally from a hotel in Bolgna,Italy.

   
Each suitcase contained fascinating objects, from everyday necessities to trinkets and ornaments and the owners most prized possessions. One patient, identified only as 'Anna', contained a list of all her glamorous objects...

It is most interesting to see the objects that they chose to bring with them, considering that they knew that the chances of them returning to their normal lives were slim. It makes one wonder what these possessions meant to their owners, what stories lie behind their decision to take them to their death bed, what deep connection they had to these inanimate objects and how they defined their personalities or even their illnesses..

Eleanor's sewing supplies.

This suitcase belonged to 'Dymtre'. It was said to have had 'notebooks filled with drawings of sine waves and mathematical things like that. There’s a wedding picture of Dmytre and his wife, and she’s holding a bouquet of fake flowers, which were also in the case.'Dmytre was said to have had gotten arrested by the Secret Service because he went to Washington, D.C. for saying that he was Margaret Truman’s husband.

   

Details of objects found in Dymtre's suitcase, including a red cross pin and a postcard.

Looking at these photographs, I am not filled with a sense of morbidity but rather an odd kind of nostalgia for a life I never lived. These objects are brimming with tales of their owners lives, each object unique. There is a strange comfort in looking at them, not simply because of their rarity or historical significance, but because they were part of someone's routine and by extension, them, therefore coming to life before us, revealing the lives of these long forgotten patients in profound and unexpected ways.

As Mrs Ramsay says in Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse': 'It was odd, she thought, how when one was alone, one leant to things, inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they become one; felt they knew one, felt they were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus...as for oneself.'

Transforming the Everyday

To find inspiration for my new project, titled 'Transforming the Everyday', I decided to take a walk down Camden high street, home of the weird and wonderful. During my walk, I stumbled upon a lovely little antiques shop, with an over sized, white wooden rocking chair on its roof. It was in this shop that my passion for all things old and lost was revived. I was immediately drawn to the power of these objects, seemingly ordinary and mundane, but with an undeniable faint glow of a time gone by, of secrets of the life of it's previous possessors. These were not mere plates and trunks and mirrors and tables, these were living creatures, telling stories of their adventures, of what the places they had been and the people they had been loved by, if one only cared to listen.

Mirrors- Final Piece.

The poet Paul Eluard wrote: 'these squares are outwardly similar to existing squares and yet we have never seen them...we are an immense, previously inconceivable world.' The 'squares' that Eluard writes about seem quite similar to humans, in my opinion. Although we all look the same; two eyes, a nose and a mouth form the face of every human. And yet no two of us are the same. We are a complex combination of all that we have seen and heard and done, our deepest desires, our best and worst memories; we contain multitudes. Our physical states could never mirror our true selves. This is the idea that I wanted to explore in this piece.

I was inspired by 'Head of a Hostage' by Jean Fautrier, a sculpture that depicts a tortured victim of the second world war. The physically disfigured head mirrors the hardship and injustice suffered by the unidentified masses. Through this stop animation video, I wanted to evoke a similar feeling to the one Fautrier's piece does. By witnessing the life changing moments of the persona, one is able to form a better picture of him, his true self, making this video a mirror that reflects his life and struggles.

This was my first attempt at making a stop motion animation (one that involved figures, which proved more complex and challenging than the one consisting only of a cookie) so the animation is not as smooth and polished as it could be nor is the background as detailed and well made but I am pleased with the over all product as I think it successfully evokes the feelings and questions that I intended for it to.

Cookie Monster

Stop Motion Animation - A First Attempt

After deciding to use stop motion animation to create my final piece on the topic of 'Mirrors', I wanted to begin experimenting with the technique as it is not something I am familiar with. So, I decided to make a short, stop animation video of a cookie being devoured by an invisible entity. And here is the fruit of my labour...

The process was a gruelling one, taking up more than two hours of solid work, but one that I enjoyed nonetheless. Although this is not the best piece of work I have ever made, I think it is a good first attempt.

There are many changes that I would make when doing stop motion animation again, beginning with the use of a tripod. One of the most difficult problems I encountered during the process was keeping a steady frame throughout the film. Working solo without a tripod meant that the position of the camera changed with ever photograph taken, forcing me to create a makeshift stand to place it on, which did not prove very efficient. Another thing that I disliked about the video is how the frame gets progressively disheveled as the crumbs of the cookie accumulate, making it look less clean. I have thus learnt that the surroundings, despite not being the focus of the video, are just as important as the object itself.

Stop motion animation is definitely something I would like to explore more and develop my skills in as I have found it to be a diverse and effective medium. Despite being laborious, and at times even excruciating, I think I will love the challenge of excelling in this field.

"One man's trash is another man's treasure"

One Day Project - Balance

This project required us to create sculptures made from random, everyday objects found around the classroom as well as the local area, using balance as the central idea. What began as an experiment; an impromptu assembly of mismatched objects, soon transformed into a piece that dealt with the idea of balance in both a physical and conceptual manner. 

The balancing of the mannequin leg on that of the revolving chair symbolised our growing reliability on machinery and technology, making us physically dependant on it. The jute string that envelopes the plastic of the chair, essentially tying the mannequin and chair together, adds another element to the sculpture; one that is more organic and natural, perhaps implying how the technology has become like a second skin. 

One aspect of the sculpture that does not quite benefit the concept is the hoover leg that surrounds the base of the chair. It does not display an extraordinary level of balancing skills and does little to support the idea of the symbiotic relationship between humans and technology. To an extent, it could be argued to resemble shackles that surround the 'android' leg, signifying the limited nature of the support that technology can provide us.    

Ultimately, I found this project both enjoyable and enlightening as I had never worked in this way before, acting on instinct and spontaneity rather than a predetermined plan as well as using random objects, mostly those that had been discarded. There is a certain charm and romanticism in putting unloved objects to use, creating new life out of the old. As the saying goes, 'one man's trash is another man's treasure.'