I found tis drawing on my way home. I wish I had made it. I didn’t know that cast away fluids had pathos. Evaporating ghosts of a river people. Ones who have since made passage from this world.
Passage
Testing for Exhibition /
Fast and loose. If your reading this before the MA show then your in on a wee secret. I’m not sure what I’m doing is going to work. In theory in my head it sounds and looks great. However the idea is still in development and testing. I don’t normally work like this but the MA has got me approaching things differently.
I have mentioned before that I want to work larger so this is me testing mark making with river clay. It could all go oh so wrong and I need to return to the studio to see how it dries…it’s likely that it wants to shrink crack and fall off the wall.
I’ve collected some clay from the banks of a stream, which feels appropriate to my focus of being in passage and navigation. I’ve found a location where traditionally there were clay works. I like the feel of the authenticity of the material the land and it’s history - they are all important to the spirit of the work - even if no one else knows - I do.
I have some bags made up from canvas and more crafted for performance - I’m not entirely sure how practical they will be. In addition for the test I just used disposable plastic icing bags which felt a little ‘off’.
The test worked well and softening the clay to a looser ‘slip’ consistency gave a satisfying result, which I was able to apply to the wall. I will need to render the slip and remove some of the small sticks and stones as they clog the nozzle and make for less clean marks.
I really liked the clean lines which feels important, something about the rawness of the material giving a fine result feels right. I need to consider scale and the marks felt a little too large and I want the minor to coalesce in community to make the larger. Scale is a key word for me at the moment as a number of people have raised it about my work at a time when I too have been seriously considering. It seems like an important progression and part of the voice of the work.
I also need to collet more clay as I used all the sample up.
As a footnote I love the sound from the video - something I am trying to be more active in - the film and sound side of my practice.
solute summoning /
Made in planning for the show. The format is wrong - I won’t have the space to fit this exact drawing, but I hope to make something close. There has become a deep satisfaction in the repetitive marks and fro what the summon. A variant of the paddle but more evolved, I could almost draw these all day, completely indulgent but who know what it would inspire.
I just don’t have the time in the day to make everything I would like, there’s the rub, to be selective in what I pursue, what feels most potent and alive?
This form that is suggested by the multiple marks is almost incidental but yet equal, the coming together of elementals, community expression. the larger form is empty yet present because of the others. The paddle form is modified - as I mentioned earlier evolving, to move not upon water but upon other. ‘To move upon other’ - I like that.
In the liminal, in passage, what has been ‘known’ is now fragemented, solute. I return to ideas of decomposition, autolysis, not as an end but as a translation of materials, of passing.
Fluid tools of passage /
Having indulged in making clay drawings for the sake of it I realised that I should animate them as I have with some of the ink drawings, the ‘passage’ created feels close to what I have been pursuing. There is a strange tension of pursuing what I feel is so elusive. Yet I need to continue.
Again I am making work in a very loose fashion, just getting it made - so it can exist, if feels right to have a growing number of works that I can focus down on in the future. I imagine this work being animated much more beautifully, the current format of Giffs is perhaps the most accessible but also the crudest. And I do wonder what software would be best I doubt I need powerful software but one that can blend between drawings well. In addition I suspect that I can move the animations further on conceptually to make the work more engaging, I don’t feel like I have to add a lot more narrative - more let the work evolve as I have with the sculpture.
There is scope to experiment more with the drawing, what. and how I render. I do enjoy the gentled looping of it, the constant transitioning and translating, perhaps a peace in the constant changing, that for it to resolve would actual feel uncomfortable.
More a fluid tool of passage, which intuitively makes sense.
This took too long /
This article ahs been on my bench for the longest time, I don’t know quiet why it took so long to make.
I’m really wanting to conclude one or two key pieces as I rapidly draw to a close of the MA. However I’m not sure this is wise as I try to acclimatise to a new way of approaching my work.
I’ve modified it as the details I first drew feel excessive and lack a certain honesty. I’m mindful of the work retaining it’s integrity. I’m mad because I know I can do the stitching better. But overall it’s ok.
I feel the colours the soft dense black of the burnt wood against the burnish copper next to the warm ochre of the leather all coalesce to make something more for me. The item a tool, a ritualised tool with a distinct purpose but obtuse as to what it is. Passaging through uncertainty requires rituals that are ambiguous at best.
I am tempted to fuss with it some more, extend the height of the burn, something about the aesthetics for me isn’t quiet right…
Imaginary Bundle for Passage /
This motif has been recurring, well several motifs have been recurring and I want to pay attention. I sometimes move on too quickly from one idea to the next, when actually I need to pause and contemplate what is occurring. The past two curated blog assessments have been really useful in taking stock of what is happening, seeing common threads and how there is continuity to my work, visually and conceptually.
This drawing isn’t my favourite… today but…that might change. However I do find it informative and encouraging. It’s a development form the ‘Imaginary bundle’ drawings I made last year, taking the more abstracted form of the paddle and thinking about the emptying out and filling. Following the idea fo the Kenotic and the Khora. Exploring the negative and positive spaces in connection to the role of Derrida’s ‘Differance’. The behaviour of the Liminal and passage through.
I want to go bigger is my first response, having finished it. It needs more mass, more presence. To go larger has been a growing feeling for some time and has been affirmed in my last discussion with Jonathan. All the cute little drawings I make in my sketchbook are impotant as they inform and help me to imagine. But the scale is now feeling more and more important. Presence and the tone of voice, seem to require a a different scale.
Things we can fit into our hands are intimate and dominatable, things we can put our arms around are relatabl,e close to human form and equal. Things that are larger than us are beyond us and our control they take on a different gravitas. I guess it’s this gravitas I am looking to engage with.
So I wonder what happens when I go up in scale to A00 or two stories high? How/where would I show this? and would it be worth the effort and resources? I often fall over on these questions and don’t make work because of these restrictions, so maybe I need to work harder to overcome them….
Tools for drawing: Escillation. /
How do I go big? Following the tutorial discussion with Jonathan. I have been meditating on what drawing larger could look like. In addition I found the same topic coming up in the MA session this week. We were discussing challenges to our practice. And again one of the points that came though is how I want to find ways to facilitate working larger now and after the MA.
What practical steps can I take to make it happen? Point that came up was to make the opportunities if I don’s seee them available. To approach people/companies/bodies and propose the projects, using the momentum from the MA and the show. Find ways to escalate things.
I keep on returning to the clay drawings, I like how they are connected to the earth, the ground, the natural world. In addition the work has a lower impact on the environment - which I am becoming more and more concerned about.
Why big? Why does it matter? In discussion with JK part of it was just like it felt as though it was time, a natural progression and desire of the work, permitting it to evolve. Also my preoccupation of materials and the work speaking
I’ve had fun making the tool for drawing, basically a giant icing bag - although that doesn’t sound so cool. However in thinking about my practice its intrinsic to the process and expression. I’ve mentioned before about ‘ritualised tools of passage’ - The improvisation and creation in response to the environment or absence of environment in the ‘Difference’. The liminal almost demands the generation of such items. From nothing comes something doesn’t addiquately expression it but falls in the right direction. The’ fertile emptines’. In folklaw often the protagonist returns from passage with a sacred item a hard won yenta times terrifying tool of significance and assiatance. For exmple The folk story of Bluebeard.
Perhaps this could explain the repeated motif of the paddle and the abstraction of the paddle form. The difficult yet fundamental protagonist. Or a more elusive and fluid character both benign and baneful and neutral.
WORDS:
Antagonist
Protagonist
Irritant
Tutorial 18/04/2023 /
We covered a lot of ground - which is why I like talking with Jonathan so much. Always so much to discuss.
I spoke about my current interest in translation, around Benjamin and Bhabha and Derrida. I’ve found yet another connection that they share. In my work I’m looking at translation as passage , that it too is a form of liminal passage.
I’ve managed to contact a Professor who specialises Derrida and intercontinental philosophy, I’m hoping to discuss with him n Derrida and the divine and the liminal, he’s also studied languages to better read the original works - so I’m hoping this too will expand the research.
I’ve been thinking about the show a lot and the discussion with Jonathan was very helpful to.
We had quiet a lot of discussion about my drawing, looking back at which ones were worth continuing to explore more - imaginary bundles, negative passage and the general drawing of my sculptures. In discussion it came up how central drawing is too my practice, to making sculpture and after. I've always gravitated to drawing and it's become central to my process. That it can begin or end a work. It’s core to the work rather than a means to plan or document.
Another point that Jonathan raised that I have been thinking for some time is about the scale of my drawings and sculpture. That this feels like a time to go big. I need to meditate on this I had been thinking about making 2-3 meter high drawings, but then Jonathan challenged me to work way bigger 2 - 3 stories. That scares me but also excites me. What would I draw? What would merit such effort?
For the show I have been thinking about making an installation of the sculptures that I have been making over the past few months, to hang them in a vertical circle, and to possibly offset a wall drawing in clay (Research Richard Long) The intent is to dialogue about passage/translation through the liminal. Looking at the ritualised tools of passage - especially the modified paddles. There appear to be various possibilities around showing this format, however I could also move away from the circle and show drawings and sculptures alongside each other...but this needs more thought. How would I do it and what would it bring to the dialogue?
JK also discussed with me the titling of my work to help give access and context. This has been a practice whenever I blog about a piece I try and find some sort of title and there has been the phrase, Ritualised tools of Passage and Poetic discovery of the hidden. I also found the phrase 'Middle Voice' which is an interesting term. Originally in a text from Derrida, however it is also a grammatical term.
Middle Voice
A voice that is neither active nor passive, because the subject of the verb cannot be categorized as either agent or patient, having elements of both.
I like this very much and want to incorporate it. Ill need to build a catalogue of terms an titles to aid access to the work, but without oversimplifying.
So much to consider and plan and I’m also need to process a film about mu practice…
Negative Passage /
More animated drawing. This worked well the last one I experimented with and I am keen to see where it might go. First is. a Gif then the second a rendered video - not sure if there is a significant difference.
Still mindful of translation, demonstrating a passage.
Silent poetry.
Looking for my poetic discoveries of the hidden.
The animation lacks a little finesse, I’d like smoother transitions and I think the drawings could be a little more on point. I’m still experimenting with the process of drawing and deciding what feels best. A lot of it seems to be me figuring after I’ve made the drawing. I do like the freedom of just making and not overthinking. I get surprised at times when I like the outcome a day later fo see something of value, yet its also infuriating as its so hard to reproduce the effects I especially like and want to capitalise on. I also made a mistake in the tweeting between frames (In passage) and the timing is out but I like it. I like getting lost in the frames, that it never quiet settles.
Basically I get fussy. When I can’t be.
Liminal Landscapes /
Bodies without flesh or bone
Partially present
Dead Quiet in their slow overwhelming absence
Insubstantial
Far off the light might be fading
Or resisting
The map has bled into the earth
The colours and key, now clay
Navigation a vapour
A whisp
That briefly curls in the air
We stand on the shore
thresholds
We are Unable to cross
Boundaries
We are unable to comprehend
The mist
A veil
The land
Sleeps
I
Wander
Minor Post: Boundaries /
Boundaries and borders not just geographical but cultural, social, intellectual… how are they given, accepted, defined and disrupted?
Salt and Sand /
\\\
Salt and sand
Grains of being
Macro essences built into fragile castles
Born of mold and pressure
///
Coercion
Scattered by the wind
Breath and bone
Fragile structures stand in obedience
Fall in
///
Root Ball /
///
Assigned passages,
managed,
coerced.
Cursed gates
///
Envicerate the machine
Root ball
Bastard knot
Break the lock
///
Dormant /
Image my own
Something lies dormant
An uneasy repose
Suppressed
induced sleep
Leaving a chemical taste
The amnesia of unconsciousness
Respiratory cycles loop
Circadian rhythms flattened
Rituals
of
the
anaesthetised
Ritualised Tools of Passage /
I'm sanding some reclaimed wood for a piece and I hesitate, the colours of the grain - the history of the wood are emerging subtle yet sweet; knots, creosote, grain and dirt, its like a book with an obscure narrative that I'm trying to follow - I'm slightly torn how much to sand, I love the glassy feel of super smooth lacquered wood but it feels like a crime to remove anymore of the paternation, like I’m erasing memories. I'm trying to engage with time in a disrupted way. Keeping the history yet making new.
I accidentally put Danish oil on first - I had planned to use varnish however I know that these mistakes often work for the better so I don't worry too much. Fine saw marks appear, as forgotten half healed scars as the oil soaks into the dry fibres of the wood. Then I put too many layers on and it changes the colouration I had been obsessing over, the oil takes the wood to more warm honey colours and some of the paternation disappears.
/// I lament for a moment///
However these sculptures are meant to be fast explorative pieces, all of which is research and informative. The more I make - the more I learn about the materials and my work.
As the oil is drying I cut a second piece of wood, it's thin and brittle and doesn't have the subtlety of shape that I want, so I take to carving at it in attempt to have a little more control. This works but ads time to the process. I'm able to manipulate and manifest the forms that I feel in my head.
At some point it also occurs to me that I can char the wood that I will get a nice contrast against the Holly pegs I've been making and plan to add. This changes the voice of the piece, more gravitas than the honeyed wood. I like it and putting the two together creates more dialogue that I enjoy. (I do wonder about how I animate this work more a feature of the other recent sculptures)
On reflection of the two sculptures placed together as a piece - I almost feel as tough I've happened upon something that I shouldn't have. Like opening a tomb.
The apertures agents, the pegs agents in conflict. Some sort of holy/unholy moment. The passage at crux. The threat of the outside coming in.
I'm not sure I quiet understand what I've made, I need time to absorb what is going on. A slow burn.
Drawer Paddle - Ritualised tools of passage /
Completed recently is the paddle cut from the front of a chest of drawers. I chose to leave in key details as I wanted to maintain elements of it’s history. The key hole and holes from where the handles were once fixed and the dark varnish.
I like the way it sits when folded back on itself, again a sense of animation, movement, something animalistic. I like how the gesture is minimal but also suggestive of presence. It leads away from the notion of a paddle that works, that is ‘fit for purpose’ and is becoming.
There is a passage to be made through. Through uncertainty, through mystery, through the unknown.
It does feel incomplete - that it need s something to pull the narrative through. When I say narrative I don’t need an explicit story more something of the mystery to continue on. I need to think about whom these paddles belong to and why.
I am everything you don't want. I am everything you left behind #9 /
I love how this chair waits.
So patient and composed - (for one who is waiting indefinitely).
It deserves a portrait or two - I think I’ll draw it,
In-between /
In-between having purpose, being discarded, becoming waste. The wood and cigarette packet lie in the passage awaiting transformation from one state to another. Passing from one territory into another.
Passage is the beginning of movement of all things, references, being, knowledge, place, identity, territory, history, home, meaning.
More materials to process, strip back and rePlace. I’ve taken them back to my studio, to see what they say.
Stacking /
This piece has come from fussing in my studio over various works, I’m not sure I love it, but I don’t hate it either. It needs re-photographing as it’s flattened out in the photograph.
More intuitive making without solid plans or intentions but rather letting the materials find their own voice, working quickly I ask questions of the form and wood, where does it want to be, in what state, why is the harder question I have left aside for now. I’ve been thinking a lot about materials and their role in the language of the work. Dialects and translation and interpretation. Intentional application of histories.
The elements are bundled again, stacked the wood finished and unfinished, left in different states. Histories are stacked and layered.
Benjamin's proposal Cultural translation is a coming to terms with the foreigness of language. Such foreignness revealing the liminality of both the indigenous and the extra territorial. Working with materials and modalities of difference whether linguistic, visual or digital demands something other than finding a consensual form of resemblance or appropriation.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=homi+bhabha+translation+and+displacement 1:01:40
All Changes /
I’m trying to pull everything together, I have various notes and ideas, there feels to be strong relationships between the elements I am discovering. So below are my latest notes and thoughts, for my research paper, which may need to change altogether from what I have submitted as a second draft….
Same not the same
"Strategy without finality" Derrida Differance - in Royale Nicholas Jacques Derrida p 153
There is no answer no unifying theory of everything
Change is constant
Territories and the liminal. Liminal Territories.
The liminal is constant change. The passage to transformation.
There will always be change - difference, differance. It brings creativity - progression - Transormation
Theory of incompleteness.
To accept change as a cleansing agent that protects us from structural stagnation.
"The question of difference within any society or culture is always conjunctural, ever-changing, and conditional. “Race” is not a permanent social category, but a historical product of slavery and human exploitation, an unequal relationship between social groups." Manning Marable Essay: https://items.ssrc.org/from-our-archives/black-studies-multiculturalism-and-the-future-of-american-education/
We cannot fill the void
We are incomplete
We will remain incomplete
The Liminal can never be resolved,
located in time
or space
or concept
The passage facilitates change
Movement
Accepting continuous change
Progressive generation.
"As he puts it in an essay entitled 'Ellipsis' (1967): 'Why would one mourn for the centre? Is not the centre, the absence of play and differance, another name for death?" Derrida in - Royale Jacques Derrida p 16
"For, always incomplete, of an incompletion which is not the negativity of lack, [deconstruction] is interminable, an' interminable analysis', ('theoretical and practical', as we used to say). As it is never closed into a system, as it is the deconstruction of the systemic totality, it needs some supplementary afterword each time it runs the risk of stabilising or saturating into formalised discourse (doctrine, method, delimitable and canonised corpus, teachable knowledge etc.)...[Deconstruction would be] afterword to the presence or presentation of the present itself." Derrida in - Royale Jacques Derrida p 145
The paddle as an agent of change/ movement
The presence and nature of change in UVR/artists work. Passage and Transformation.
UVR's Little nothings complete in their incompleteness.
Are her little nothings incomplete?
UVR Haunting of materials - age, presence agency, repetition
"After Derrida, one has to reckon with 'presences' that are neither simply inside nor categorically outside the text" Royal Nicholas, Jacques Derrida P149
Hauntings an 'incomplete presence' in the art, in the materials physicality, treatment and in the movement of the artist 'passaging'.
Neither inside or outside of the art. The meaning neither inside or outside the artwork
See below also 'Included Middle" as key connection, regarding the position of a thing as neither inside or outside.
The First Incompleteness Theorem provides a counterexample to completeness by exhibiting an arithmetic statement which is neither provable nor refutable in Peano arithmetic, though true in the standard model. The Second Incompleteness Theorem shows that the consistency of arithmetic cannot be proved in arithmetic itself. Thus Gödel’s theorems demonstrated the infeasibility of the Hilbert program, if it is to be characterized by those particular desiderata, consistency and completeness.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/
Heisenberg noticed that there are cases where the straightforward classical logic of A and not-A does not hold. He pointed out how the traditional law of Excluded Middle has to be modified in Quantum Mechanics. In general cases at the macro scale, the law of Excluded Middle would seem to hold. Either there is a table here, or there is not a table here. There is no third position. But in the Quantum Mechanical realm, there are the ideas of superposition and possibility, where both states could be true.
The Included Middle is a conceptual model that overcomes dualism and opens a frame that is complex and multi-dimensional, not merely one of binary elements and simple linear causality. We have now come to comprehend and address our world as one that is complex as opposed to basic, and formal tools that support this investigation are crucial. The Included Middle helps to expose how our thinking process unfolds. When attempting to grasp anything new, a basic “A, not-A” logic could be the first step in understanding the situation. However, the idea is then to progress to the next step which is another level of thinking that holds both A and not-A. The Included Middle is a more robust model that has properties of both determinacy and indeterminacy, the universal and the particular, the part and the whole, and actuality and possibility. The Included Middle is a position of greater complexity and possibility for addressing any situation. Conceiving of a third space that holds two apparent contradictions of a problem is what the Included Middle might bring to contemporary challenges in consciousness, artificial intelligence, disease pathologies, and unified theories in physics and cosmology.
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27155
///
Draw on paddle with clay?
UVR Transformation of materials in form and concept?
What is this deep love of materials for her?
A strong sense of history and of time passed.
"I always have a specific vision of what I want in my head, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to start. Other than that, I rely on instinct. I honestly don’t understand it, but I also know something else so clearly. Earlier today, I was working on a required legal document and I felt like a child. I felt so stupid in regard to my lack of understanding and the fact that I don’t want to understand them, but I have to because I’m grown-up, or whatever. I feel completely different in the world where I make my art… it’s so clear to me that this is what I was born to do. And it’s not as though anything is absolute, or definite, or defined." UVR
"Titles do have a meaning for me, but I don’t want them to have that meaning for anybody else. For this reason, many of the titles I give my works are in Polish and are often not translated. I refer to my sculptures as “bowls” but hate it because they are not bowls. They are an excuse to do all these things that can conceptually feel like fabric, or like the ocean waves. I cannot compete with actual waves, but I can make forms in an entirely new way. Trying my hand at these wave-like structures, I like when there is unexpected movement, or where it does something that it shouldn’t or is not supposed to. It’s as if they misbehave." UVR
When you attended Columbia in the early ’80s, Minimalism was all the rage. Did you ever connect to that movement?
If you made work with a figure, you’d be dead in the water without any hope to show in a gallery. The minimalists were really in power for many years and they had a haughty idea of what was right and what was wrong in art. The minimal look is minus feelings and full of philosophy and erudite high-end talk. It’s so not me, although it’s not that I didn’t borrow from them either. I borrowed the grid from Sol LeWitt, and their use of repetition. UVR
"The grid is my guardian." UVR
"That’s the best thing about art, you can’t label it. You won’t find an answer, ever." UVR
"I come from generations of Polish peasant farmers. I’ve always been inspired by their tools and wood piles. There is nothing that is superfluous." UVR