Exhibiting

Unexpected /  by Justin Harrison

Something happened tonight, an unexpected flurry. I’ve been angsting about the final show. A little lost at sea with my work. I have ideas but didn’t feel convinced. The past week or so Ive been in the studio just making and doing a few drawings around concluding bits.

I sat down tonight to make some drawings, finalising some ideas and have instead generated a whole bunch more work to make. Too much to make for the show but that’s fine it’s work I can continue with after the MA.

The practice based research throws me at times, I feel like I should be in books and papers, which I do - and have too many! But the making and drawing is a valuable form of research and development not an end process - which I keep forgetting.

I now have a number of pages of sketches that I can work up into sculptures or more involved drawings.

But how that’s my question, what occurred to summon this? How do I keep it?

There’s some interesting bit happening for with the pot. (At the back of my head is the smoking pot from Abrams encounter with Yahweh and the question was that a Liminal Moment a generative moment?)

In addition I’ve been wondering about basic needs of the Liminal Personae.

I’ve begun to think about the passage - basic needs. Food, Water, Sleep, Movement.

The circular form a kind of navigational device, measuring the character for travel. I want to put metric markings down the rod.

More paddles just because I can’t leave them alone.

A travel bed - but more.

The cooking pot and stick.

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Shopping

https://www.rapidmetals.co.uk/product/copper-1-4-dia/

 

Show Planning /  by Justin Harrison

I’ve been wondering about this for a while. Let it sit in the back of my mind. Sometimes I find it’s better to let things percolate. I’m thinking about how and what I show, part of me is tempted to make new work…but I also know the dangers with that. It’s hard I always want to be progressing and for that to happen I want to make new work, use the lessons learnt from what I have just made. But its also time consuming, and perhaps more importantly I need to pull on what has happened over the past two years on the course.

A key lesson learnt is the value of me liberating my making, stopping myself from overthinking and working which ultimately leads to me editing all ideas and not making so much. In working quick and dirty I’ve found that my ideas are able to make more connections and resonances, the practice based research goes deeper.

So in many senses it seems appropriate to show all the experiments rather than a polished final artwork. Although this is hard too as I imagine the weight of expectations of others. But then I think making the installation similar to what the drawing is in keeping with my research paper too. A nod to Ursual von Rydingsvard curation.

Hung from hopefully a unistrut using cables suspending the work feels more sympathetic that securing to a wall, but at a push that could work to, it feels kinda big maybe 3.5m - 4m square, but that’s kinda greedy.

But more than that an exploration of the liminal, I do wonder weather objects are allowed, making something physical seems almost contradictory. But I return to the phrases ‘Ritualised objects of the liminal’ and ‘Poetic discovery of the hidden’.

I do have a new piece that might also translate better, in interpreting the Liminal and my investigations, but I need to make it and it’s location bound so I don’t really know how it would show in the gallery context…and I need to make it yet. It could suck.

I want to meditate more on the past two years and reread my paper, so older blog posts, there’s so much that I have already forgotten.

 

Pop up show - Carton Exhibition Space, Catford, London /  by Justin Harrison

I forgot. It’s such a rooky mistake as well. Forgot to take proper photographs of the pop up show. I hope I can grab some images off other folxs but for now I will have to post what I have.

I got to show 3 drawings. Which to my surprise was really good. I was unsure about them and initially felt very self conscious. But discovered that actually I don’t suck and my work is ok and interesting to other people. It sounds silly now, but I realise that showing whatever I am doing is important.

It was surprisingly good to show this time around, a more low key and intimate venue but somehow I preferred it. Showing at Trinity Buoy Wharf was really good too, but I like the simplicity and positioning more of the Carton Space.

It’s a continuing question I am being challenged by - Who is my intended audience? It’s been exacerbated by showing in these two differing spaces. I dream about escaping the current social and economically driven constraints we live in. I may sound naive, but capitalism has been and is a growing concern. Having read a little around Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, and seeing the effects I am increasingly challenged. Especially by people close to me. I am being asked - if I object to the dominant capitalist culture around me, how is that reflected in the work I make, how I make it and how I sell it?

If I want to use my voice, then how and where is that authenitically and effectively done? Whilst maintaining an awareness of my posionality, and not falling prey to common channels that ultimately feed back into the same old canals.

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On another note - I am unsure I will make any more of these drawings as I am unsure where I want to go with them. However I don know I love drawing, its a primary language, a conduit to and from my preconscious. I need to make more draw more - work from notions as well as ideas.

 

Imaginary Bundle 3 /  by Justin Harrison

Imaginary Bundle 3: Ink on paper, 520mm x 380mm

I like it and then I don’t. I tried really hard to keep the elements uniform, but then they’d escape me and my regime. I am a failed dictator in a very small world. I wanted order and perfection but got rebellion.

Showing whatever I am doing is important. But how else can I continue to show my work and escape the limitations of the formal gallery and the clouded water of social media?

 

I bled on it, it must be finished. /  by Justin Harrison

Really wish I’d put a coat of Aussie wax on it, just three coats of neats foot oil feels too vulnerable. But then it is a fragile little piece. The wood is thin, knotted and brittle, the leather porous and sensitive to it’s environment (including my blood - I jabbed my finger several times sewing it).

I think that’s what the piece is about, sensitivity and vulnerability in passage. But its more as well///

I finished late Sunday night - just in time for Monday, an annoying tension of kinda rushing it but then taking too long. ((( Note this started out as a piece that’s supposed to be made in an hour)))  But what’s come out of it is interesting and suggests to me that I should attempt the experiment of’ limited making time’ again,especially as the concept was generated through that process.

I’m intrigued by the artwork thats been made and what it touches on: Restoration, RePlacement, Resistance. Strongholds (my ref - not a theme clearly described in the piece) Momento mori, death as passage, way marker, the fear that permeates change.  

/// I’ve burnt the wood so intentionally, the surface quality is really important, transitions from raw wood into charred wood through to high polished grain and knots. I’m wanting to use the visceral feel of materials and their treatments to articulate.

I am curious to work with the fencing panels some more ( I have a bunch stashed in the studio), sanding and polishing to transform it to find value and beauty. \\\ I spoke in class the other day about ‘Agitating Agents’ people or situations that rub us up the wrong way, how they can work to refine us, teach us. Slough off the surface detritus. Process and change and discomfort.

I also wonder what would happen to the piece if I were to change it’s scale and it 3 meters high. But then I’d really have to love the piece to commit to it.

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Is this work  a documentation of passage or an intercession for change? or both I can’t really decide at the moment but then maybe I don’t need to and it’s in the process of practice I may find answers.