Video

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.

 

Obsession /  by Justin Harrison

For some reason I am still obsessed with the movie The Revenant. I found a documentary on it and have watched it as I make in the studio- I’ve totalled about 6 times now. I love so many elements, the story of making, the relationship with the land - it’s importance, the narrative of people and the forest. The Music. It picks on elements from my dreams, and deeper parts fo my subconscious.

There is some deep mystery in the forest and it moves in a different way around the frozen waterfall. The water somewhere between pouring out and becoming, the space around creation. Differance.

I want my work to connect, touches upon these elements.

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Foot note: The director and another individual talk about racism - their beliefs about what it is and it’s consiquences. I disagree. They makes the statements from a white perspective, which will always be problematic. He and understates it’seffects and consequences. He over simplify what is a complex and dangerous issue.

 

I don't know why I like this /  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 y 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.

 

Spectral Interstices /  by Justin Harrison

Crossing boundaries and boarders

Forms never to be repeated

Appear and disappear

Present and yet not present

Geographically ambiguous

Free

“Shrouded in a forest of signs that render the conditions of speech and action barely intelligible or translatable. We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings we glided past like phantoms wondering and secretly appalled as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a mad house”. Conrad Joseph - Hearts of darkness.

An opportune moment, light in constant flux, crossing boundaries and margins, formal demarkations denoting space are ignored. The small spaces giving an ‘angle of vision’ - generating the new. A fleeting demonstration of the liminal, impossible to possess or repeat.

I like that this was another video opportunity, a sketch in time. It may benefit from editing, taking out some of the less successful moments. There is a pace to certain excerts that I prefer. To slow and it becomes static, too fast and the spirit is lost. As for the rogue leaf - well that can stay.