Tools of Passage

Testing for Exhibition /  by Justin Harrison

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 /  by Justin Harrison

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.

 

This took too long /  by Justin Harrison

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…

 

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…

 

Follow on from post: 'It seemed like a good idea at the time' /  by Justin Harrison

There are a few experiments that I’d like to follow up on, from the past year. One of which is the mud paddle drawn on a tree. It’s been busy season and hopefully I’m moving into one where I can give a little more time to expanding upon my practice and research, and upon previous experiments. A season of development following on from season of generation.

If the Liminal is generative then ideally following is growth and development. Perhaps a sign that one is exiting the liminal.

The drawings are sketches that I am keen to collate as I tend to deposit them all over the place and loose the thread of my thinking.

I’m still interested in boundaries and borders and translation which carries us across. Another form of transformation from change.

These drawings I plan to make at my next opportunity. Another chance to spend time in the woods. The rhythmic lines articulating an absence. Clay taken from the nearby earth. A passing. A passage. An emptying? And then what comes to rightfully occupy?

Why the tree? Because it feels like. partnership. There may be other reasons but I’ll figure those in the making.

Also could I cast the whole trunk of the tree?

Something about these drawing as I look at them feels like a form of positive agency, ’ assistance in the liminal’. For what guidance do we have in disruption?

Foot note could I use an icing bag to apply the lines? Must visit a cook shop… or can I make a heavy duty one out of waxed cotton and thread?

Can that become a part of the work?

///

On another note.

A key element to this course is finding rhythms of researching and making to support and augment our practice. Initially I had understood this to be a regular repetitive rhythm, however I am now beginning to realise that it’s much more complex, that the rhythm is ‘seasonal’ and follows a more organic structure. Perhaps closer to the rhythmic cycle of of a bear, hibernate when it’s cold, eat fish when they are in season, eat berries when they are not, rest when your tired, fight when under threat.

“Biological rhythms, such as rhythms in activity and body temperature, are usually highly synchronized and entrained by environmental conditions, such as photoperiod. However, how the expression of these rhythms changes during hibernation, when the perception of environmental cues is limited, has not yet been fully understood for all hibernators, especially in the wild. The brown bear (Ursus arctos) in Scandinavia lives in a highly seasonal environment and adapts to harsh winter conditions by exhibiting hibernation, characterized by reduced metabolism and activity. In this study, we aimed to explore the expression of biological rhythms in activity, body temperature and heart rate of free-ranging brown bears over the annual cycle, including active, hibernation and the transition states around den entry and exit. We found that rhythms in physiology and activity are mostly synchronized and entrained by the light-dark cycle during the bears’ active state with predominantly diel and ultradian rhythms for body temperature, activity and heart rate. However, during hibernation, rhythms in body temperature and heart rate were considerably slowed down to infradian rhythms, influenced by the amount of snow in the denning area, whereas rhythms in activity remained diel. Rhythms in the transition states when bears prepared for entering or coming out of hibernation state displayed a combination of infradian and diel rhythms, indicating the preparation of the body for the change in environmental conditions.” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2022.785706/full

Diel Rythmn: involving a 24-hour period that usually includes a day and the adjoining night.

Day and night. Night and day.

Ultradian rhythms: are your body's biological cycles that take place within 24 hours, which can include everything from a human heartbeat, to blinking, to digestion. While the more commonly known term “circadian rhythm” occurs over a 24-hour period, ultradian rhythms are shorter and are repeated during that time.

///Shopping notes

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Piping-Nozzles-Stainless-Decorating-Cookies/dp/B085DL7RSW/ref=sr_1_41?keywords=extra+large+piping+nozzles&qid=1679841459&sr=8-41

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tabiger-Oversized-Decorating-Stainless-Supplies/dp/B09VGHPJS2/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=extra+large+piping+nozzles&qid=1679842267&sr=8-5

 

Ritualised Tools of Passage /  by Justin Harrison

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.

 

Jointed Paddle - Ritualised tool of Passage /  by Justin Harrison

It’s take all summer and I was supposed to be working on fast pieces. But I had this paddle planned for a time since I cut a joint in a section of thick Holly wood. This is the progression from the initial idea. It’s just so hard cutting and drilling Holly. It’s a defiant material and somehow I like it’s resistance.

It feels good to work at a larger scale and I’m keen to find a better way of displaying it and perhaps contextualising it. I do wonder about the previous discussions on animation and film. How would this lend it’s self to being filmed? Could a short looped film of it in the forest with a liminal persona?

There’s a lot I like about this, the surface with some under bark left for texture, the pegs holding it together are kinda cool, brought cut and also from nearby Holly, a little like tuning pegs, I enjoy their prominence - somehow they add something more to the piece. I like the way the blade moves the animation that comes through the articulation. Again it asks to be animated, but how and why?

I do imagine a multiple sectioned paddle spiralling round with a figure in the centre. Or could it abstract more, and focus on essences?

 

In-between /  by Justin Harrison

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.

 

Studio 22 Oct /  by Justin Harrison

It was quiet a feverish time in the studio today, I’m trying to make everything that is in my head, it seems the simplest response. I’m stressed because I want to be making MA worthy work again. I’m carrying the voices of imagined peers and imagined criticisms. ‘Everyone disapproves of my use of time and resources’. The power of our imaginations - I’m using my powers for evil not good. SO my response is to try and just make everything that I currently have in my head, just dump it all out because at least I am being productive and hopefully I can free up my thinking into more productive paths.

I managed to finish the last joint on the draw paddle, it still pains me that they are not well executed. I hate that the cuts are tatty - it really bothers me …like alot…it needles away inside my head. But I just don’t have the time to be fussy right now, I need to make everything that I am seeing, feeling. I am also hoping that out of this pushh will come work that really interests me. I am getting a little bored of just making paddles they aren’t talking enough for my liking.

I make a number of hasty pieces putting ,materials together to ask what they might say. I fabricate another peg, this is a self indulgent exercise as I get some kind of pleasure from making them, I like putting the leather and the wood togeher. It does leave the question to what purpose, what are their purpose? What do they hold? But then that’s maybe useful, pegs are my markers, simple and impermanent the temporarily can hold onto something or mark it’s place.

I’ve also had two lumps of tarmac sitting around the studio, that I’ve not known what to do, but today they got bound up in some leather I had left on my bench to provoke something to be made. Again led by the materials I tried to find something that they were happy with. It’s become some sort of sling or hammer, again I bashed it out, no measuring or marking. Photographing it on the old wood felt right, the placement and reference to an older history. I like the idea if ignoring chronological time. Anachrony. Derrida’s hauntology comes into play. I like that the sculpture has history in it’s materials. It’s lived two lives already;

Life 1. The Raw Material, the evolution/ life span of the wood, leather and tar, is one life time that has passed.

Life 2. The Given Purpose, The draws, the pavement, the garment. The material exists in an assigned purpose.

Now it exists in a third and yet still retains the previous histories, lives, they are still present and palpable.

I’m close to finishing the Holly Jointed Paddle, I just need to peg the blade sections. I drill the wood and have already bunted on bit and broken another. The holly is tough, I respect it for that, it again gives character to my materials for me and it’s important that I listen to them. Also in looking through my sketch book I notice a detail I had forgotten to add. I must upload my drawings as they carry important details and noters that I often forget and I don’t often look back through and read everything.


 

Passage /  by Justin Harrison

There is something about this that I like, I’m not sure how I feel about reducing my drawings to a gif. But then I’m not sure it’s reduced them, it’s done something else for me. I wonder where I could take it, and what it means right now.

I think there is an element of strangeness that I like, the transitioning the movement that is somehow honest, it’s not trying to be an animation with a distinct narrative. It’s a broken moment, a haunting, ‘time is out of joint’.

I’m now obsessing which can be a good and a bad thing. The paddle is now a key object, I’m making them in my studio and in my drawings. The tool for navigation, immediate and resides in our hands, yet partners with a craft of some description.

I’ve been listening to Anish Kapoor interviews and reading text as research for my paper - and them there was a brief discussion about making a series of the same object or work can up, and I found it encouraging, to explore an idea - open it up and out. I think I worry that I am just repeating iterations endlessly and that there is no value to it. I am annoined that I feel like I need permission.

The drawings are strangely pleasing for me, I’m connecting with the way the ink bleeds out to granular and the empty negative that it creates.

This particular media I’m using was ironically made by Stuart Smeple in a reaction to Kappor’s Vantablack, it has a quality in its miss use that I especially like. When diluted it has a granular property that separates out into delicious bands of gradients, leaving small tidal marks and tracks. Something deeper in me connects to specific marks, moments. Yet it leaves this gritty feel, like BhaBha’s scalar interstices, the bundle divisable. Collective moments spread across time inconsistently. The bleeding through, the threshold melts, margins fade.

This is a slightly modified version form my first attempt. I worry that this could mean hours on my computer. Have I really only discovered animation now?

 

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?