Everyday

Studio /  by Justin Harrison

I still haven’t tidied the studio. Working on concluding various pieces I’ve started. Theres a mess of clamps and indigo stain on my bench. An evolution of this new from that’s been appearing in my drawings and play.

As ever I have fallen for a material, well a colour this time - this deep midnight of a colour that speaks to me in words made of water

///.

Another impromptu piece the peg and wood veneers - which has been assigned the loose working title of ‘passport’. I really need to try and find more titles for the work I plan to show. Also define what other pieces I want to show in the exhibition. How do I pull my audience into this ‘Lore’ the place of passage? Without being condescending or too directive? I find it interesting and odd that again language as such a strong role to play in visual art work, but then it’s my visual artwork and perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising.

I wish I had more time to pull together all the snips of thoughts and theory that have been occurring as I work, I know that the Blog curation helps but I feel Like I still have littered all over my sketchbooks and notes and digital notes a host of thoughts that would benefit from being processed.

Then there are two round forms made up of rectangles that references the bundle drawings I have been making they are an echo or development of that and also if I can sort the clay drawing - ‘Summoning’ on the wall then a reference to that too. All comprised of smaller parts - rectangle blocks. (Everything is divisible).

They feel like some form of navigational device, a compass or sextant. Those terms don’t quiet feel right, but something akin to that.

I do worry that my work is old fashioned - constructed in wood and stain and metal. Everyone else seems to be using AI or film, where does that leave this work? What is the significance of what I am doing making? But then I am learning to make because its in me, that I can worry about galleries and collectors I I want. But that derails the work, the research and forms quiet a different practice. Doing this MA has taught me that. The work that flows from me is genuinely my own and creative. Free. And perhaps has more value.

 

Studio notes /  by Justin Harrison

This is the perils of limited materials - reclaiming stuff means that I only have limited supply of a particular medium, wood button or metal hooks etc.

Of the two wood formations I can’t decide which I prefer best and actually want to make all of them however there is not really enough. I have to make a decision….commit!

Also I have a new obsession of Indigo blue, it actually moves me. It’s like the depths of the sea of the expanse of the universe for me. It holds mystery and passage. Can a colour do that? Is it just me?

I’m cautious about painting wood - it’s a pet hate of mine, I love the grain and the natural colouring and variants. Yet staining the wood is an instinct I can’t resist. Maybe just a bit…

 

Stuff /  by Justin Harrison

Been getting into this guy for a while - I’m taking note of what. I naturally look at and ma drawn to. Lots of outdoor living - forest skills. Exploration of the wilds.

It’s the land, the spaces that are unoccupied, borderless boundaryless. No buildings, no people, no structures.

I am naturally looking at outdoors videos. Crafting temporary shelters. Navigating. Falling down.

Removing ourselves from what has been given to us as dwelling.

Dwelling.

Navigation. Where there is no land or territory.

 

Minor Posts /  by Justin Harrison

I’m super busy at the moment with work and uncomfortably can feel I am loosing momentum. I am in the studio but in a different state, contemplating how my work can develop. I like the results of the fast studies but I do wonder how I conclude some of the work, not finish but draw to moment in the work that makes sense or is at least interesting.

I had a thought today and will try to make ‘Minor posts’ less writing more brief thoughts. I seem to do better when I am not labouring my ideas or work. Minor posts can be as simple as I like - the idea to be continually processing with out the burden of performance and can complment more considered posts. Well that’s the idea…

 

Why the forest? /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

During my first tutorial Jonathan asked me ‘why the forest’? ‘Why am I drawn to it’? Now I think the forests significance is because it’s a strong liminal place, ever shifting and changing, constantly in decay and growth - always moving. It’s a site that is not occupied but free of dominating presence and technology. Natural and free of intent. In the space time feels slower and is of less consequence to the forest, it posses it’s own language, one I only barely understand intuitively and where my words are of little significance, finally the forest shares a rhizomatic consciousness, it thinks in community.

There's a neutrality to it, a reset. I get tired of all the demands that come from the digital world and to be honest I actually dislike a lot of it. I do find it useful and use it, but I don't like the way it kidnaps my time and energy.

I like making work that is devoid of this, and in a conversation with George, he mused on it having a 'prehistoric' feel to it. Which led to us wondering about the final show, could it just be a set of coordinates to site specific work in forest somewhere, or if that warrants the use of GPS, just some hand written directions. In rejection of the capitalist gallery space and commodification of creativity.

 

Colour /  by Justin Harrison

In the past few days colour has come into my frame. I’m noticing a particular pallet - I’m missing drawing and I wonder if this could play a part of it.

 

Materials Matter /  by Justin Harrison

Finally back in the studio.

I’ve taken the clamps off the paddle roughly made form fencing panels - I still like, although it feels slightly out of character for me. There is a curious freedom to it that I would have resisted before as poorly made, lacking craft, and although I do miss my beautifully made items - there just isn’t time to fuss. I have a number of things I want to see completed, ideas manifested.

But somehow the Fence Panel Paddle feels like its not doing enough work. I think it needs a mixture of textures - I wish I had fine sanded and polished one layer to stand in contrast and resistance. Do I make another paddle and put in the fine layer on that one? Do I like the work enough. Especially when there is more to be made. The value to making the faster care free work is that I am more generative. Make more…

I move on for now and cutting the wood for a jointed paddle. It’s hard to do it well and cut straight by hand but I am learning. The cuts straighter - it’s hard working in green wood, everything blunts faster, and it’s super tough to drill. The green wood has a high level of resistance I get as far as I can for now as I left a key tools at home.

I move on to strip some other branches for a bundle and realise that they are not Holly. Most of the time I have been picking up fallen Holly branches and I’m used to the colour and feel of the wood. As I take the bark off a branch it reveals fine stripes and yields it’s bark differently not quiet as satisfyingly. I don’t like it, it feels all wrong.

It makes me think of my research artists Anish Kapoor and Ursula von Rydingsvard. The materials are vital, a core part of the language of the work, even with Anish Kapoor who often worked with negative space and voids, the materials that are the genesis of the void are a vital part of the tension. The rock, wax, glass and fabric. It’s unavoidable, not just the material but the way an artist chooses to work them. The materials matter. Even the spaces in-between the materials, the ‘differance’, because it is influenced by the neighbouring elements.

I feel like in my work there is more for me to do, to find to visit upon the materials, but then I’m not sure I have the language I want yet.

I realise that I am in a transitional place, quiet normal for an art MA, but never the less it’s unsettling, I see that my conceptual underpinning is far more rigourous - especially from all the research I’ve been doing. I’m not there yet, my work still isn’t cogent, but I feel the difference the movement. And it’s quiet ironic yet not surprising that I should enter into this having been writing about it.

I’m troubled by my work which today feel overly simplistic and lacks essence, presence. But I continue accepting that ‘passage’ is rarely a comfortable space and this is my work. The jointed paddle itself a tool of passage, awkward and it’s purpose ‘offset’, present but impractical. The differing of meaning in my work - ‘Differance’

Growth and Decay - I like the abstraction of the process. the gradual loss of recognisable form and purpose, the granular yielding back to constituent elements.

NOTES:

Listening to Homi Bhabha whilst working in the studio - this lecture is crucial to my research - if only I could extrapolate and assimilate it all.

Start at about 25 mins in:

///How we see and where we look.

///The displacement in the angle of vision.

(((UvR and AK displaced through occupation and othering)))

They have a new angle of vision in their displacement.

This is manifested in their work - only it will be translated again.

28 Scale/scalar

30 Benjamin quote: Displacement angle of vision a positive element emerges anew…..Dialectical contrasts

Breaking constructed intention.

Interstices smallest change makes a small difference - scalar notions of translation and history - small movements  - it is from them that Life is born anew.

Translation is a temporal displacement of scale.

 

Interstices /  by Justin Harrison

In the intersticies the edges are blurred , indefined, indistinct. There is no clear demarcation, margin, boundary. Yet the apperature is clearly perceivable.

The liminal represents the free play, the opportunity for change. The change in the angle of vision, the change in space, time, concept. It is the opening up, where deconstruction can operate freely and generate the new. Broader passages of movement.

Hauntology, spectral, third space, void these too are different angles of vision through interstices.

Everything and nothing, liminal and void, inside and outside, interior and exterior. These appear binary terms - where is in between these? Differance?

We fear change. Being in passage. The moments of uncertainty. Movement.

Change - Passage - Is movement.

Again - Differance free play.

Stasis is a little death. Stagnancy.

Do I make ritualised tools of passage?

 

Studio notes Brittle Paddle /  by Justin Harrison

I’ve been in the studio a couple of times in the past week and have been trying to push through some of the ideas that are accumulating. Make lots.

The paddle as a motif and a series is a current preoccupation although I do wonder if it would benefit from abstracting more.

One ‘physical sketch’ came about by just having materials around and placing them together, I saw a relationship between them, brittle and splintered fencing panels)that I currently have ‘in stock’ around the studio) in various shades and tone, gave themselves to a loose form of a paddle - not exact just essences - I liked the departure form a formal representation.

(As a foot not to self the wire brush works really well at selectively removing layers and tones, it enables me to ‘draw’ upon the sculpture).

The paddle feels like it wants be a lot more than a signifier of of a navigational tool. making a series of them in drawing and making gives me time and space to contemplate it’s role which also ties into my research paper. Examining liminal spaces there function and characteristics.

I’m making work a lot looser and rougher than before, I’ve left the craft behind for ‘more production’ I think the work is benefitting from it. Before I erred on the side of craft, which slowed me down and I think sometimes was a cover for a lacking in m conceptual underpinning. That if it was pretty enough I could be forgiven for not really being able to describe what was happening.

All is left clamped up and gluing again, (with a cheeky addition copper that asked if it could be included).

I need to make some room - have a clear up there’s a lot on my workbench still…

 

I AM EVERYTHING YOU DON'T WANT. I AM EVERYTHING YOU LEFT BEHIND #8 /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

This time I took the wood home. Carried it across London for 2 hours, cos I had other stuff to do. Walked into restaurants and shops clutching the abandoned under my arm, a surrogate father to the unwanted.

The plan is to make another paddle from only the constituent parts.

We’ll see there’s a lot of stuff mounting up in the studio that is half made…

 

The Forest /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

Entering the forest requires a different way of being. One's presence needs 'toning down', for you are not alone and your presence perceived. We are not unwelcome in the forest, however there is a better way of moving and being. Sound is felt, pace absorbed, activity registered and at times resisted. It is good to sit, to let your thoughts meander as a river would pass through. Time is measured but not by any clock. Gifts are given freely but not thoughtlessly.

 

Studio Notes /  by Justin Harrison

Little nothings - in the studio and I’m making more quick pieces, they don’t feel deep but maybe that’s ok. What they can lead to is more interesting. I do worry that I’m not landing on any one pursuit. I still like to surround myself with materials, my desk is littered with bits of wood leather and copper piping.

I cut my finger magnificently and there is a fair bit of blood. I curse a lot, not because it hurts, but because it’s gonna slow me down.

These pieces confuse me, they come from me and there are qualities about them that I like, but I’m not often sure why.  I want to draw and yet I end up making  the physical sketches. I think about Matthew Barney and how his work moves between sketches and sculpture. Is this a root that my work also takes? How dp I find the equilibrium between the two.

What is my work about?

Being set apart? Margins?

What about the photography and prose?

I do notice the motif of reclaimed materials, it’s becoming a stronger preference, the motive I suspect is primarily financial, but also a rejection of capitalism and a concern for the environment, I am mindful of my presence. The more I research capitalsim the more objectionable it becomes.

In addition the history to the materials helps me to construct the work. This came up before in Jericho where the provenance mattered - even if it was just to me and definitely influenced the work.

 

Paddle /  by Justin Harrison

The artist's activity is one of compulsive repetition, not under the law of a market as a narcissist among narcissists, but to envelop in the work the generative force of the world. Qua other. Plastic pills https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H13Unfk6UHs

It kinda gets obsessive, I try my hardest to make the marks consistent and always the same. It doesn’t work. But then I like that game.

The paddle feels somehow ‘held’ or suspended, and that if the marks were to disperse… so would the paddle.

Presence and place. Spectres manifested by the community.

For me the paddle has becoming a symbol of navigation and empowerment, a tool of implementing change. There is a deep desire to craft my own paddles in found wood, wrap them in leather and photograph them in place. But I have a lot of things pressing for my attention and it begins to block me.

I’m struggling to focus my attention, between thinking about my research paper, drawing, making. There’s a back log of work bits of sculpture I feel I need to finish to move on. Then there’s all the stick’s I’ve been obsessing over. I feel there should be a thread I can pull which will draw it all together. I also wonder about all the photography and writing that’s appeared in my Blog. (Although not for a while).

Somewhere there is a narrative in what I’m doing but it seems to elude me for now.

 

At the core /  by Justin Harrison

I’m not really sure what’s going on with my art work. Having finished a busy season where I work - I’ve allowed myself some down time. Being in the forest and making whatever I feel like. It’s odd to see what is manifesting when I’m not being observed and there e is no real agenda, or imagined audience.

I see that I am motivated by materials, just having something in my hand is provocative. I keep on stripping sticks, it’s a satisfying ritual reducing on half to a naked white state. Hazel strips easier than holly, and gives a whiter wood. I like the contrast between the dark bark and white wood - some form of binary. Not that I believe in binaries. I find them almost dangerous, treacherous.

I became enamoured with the green of the Holly tendrils, previously I have been only using wood that has fallen. (I am everything you left behind). However I wanted to see how it felt to break my own rules. The vivd green had a diffenret feel to it and felt as though it invited a different response. I guess its the language of materials for me. I worked in a very unconscious manner and let the form evolve with little intervention.

I’m not sure it really succeeds as a piece, however it still falls in to the category of ‘little nothings’ timed pieces.

 

Trapped /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

Strapped and bound
Trapped to the finite vertical
Made an example

I realise I’m making this hard for myself, looking for deep works of art to blog about. There is a mistaken need to perfotm. But I know this is counter productive. I like the freedom of wandering sketchbooks that spill and bleed over, ideas that seep through the pores.
The more I’m researching the more I feel removed form given structures. I like the question ‘what if?’ So now I’m trying to make little pieces frequently. Post without feeling like I have to write lines and lines of deep thinking.