undoing

Pulling Threads together /  by Justin Harrison

Different elements of drawings and thoughts. This is the least considered post which may be a good thing///

Horizontal and Vertical. 

Aggregate and liminal. 1 + 1 =3

Made and unmade

Undoing

Sunday was a day of attempting to consolidate some of the drawings I’ve been making.Somethimes I need to just quickly visualise some of my thoughts, even if it’s to dismiss them. I’ve been given some new ‘super black’ paint which I kinda like, it sits on the page so matt, but also fragments well into particals.

‘Immerse’ (forest project with Jon) hangs in the air frustrating me with its lack of flow. I want more but am unsure what it is/// I need to write more - more lyrical stuff. Somethings the words carry more of the idea.

I like my work best when there's a strong element of craft to it. Something Jon mentioned too>>> Drawn or made.

Drawings - direction maybe doesn't matter dead horses? Can I visit a slaughter house? Or animal crematory?

To do: Ink wash drawing of Revenant - Glass climbing inside horse 🐴 

Current artists of interest: Barney, De Brukyer, Boyce, Theaster Gates. Really need to widen my exploration. Must find more artists.

Are there films I should be researching into more? Taking stills and making drawings, looking for the threads of transforming places/moments?
Return to Joker? Saving private Ryan? Revenant? Other?

“making a destabilising passage through them”
Collins Jeff, Introducing Derrida P90

 

Pulling threads - everything is divisible /  by Justin Harrison

Not deconstructing just dismantling.

Derrida says everything is divisible, so I divided the canvas into threads warp and weft. It could continue reducing to finer fibres, then to chemical compounds///atomic structure///neutrons and protons///up quarks and down quarks and gluons///

I liked the stages of undoing. An abandon to the process and loss of form and purpose, yet still remaining with some memory of self. I could paint 4 canvases and dismantle 1. As a set. All equal in the sum of their ‘constituent parts’. The Horizontal and Vertical. Undoing.

(I also felt ridiculous doing it, like I was performing being an artist, really an imposter. Trying so hard to be conceptual - I’m not convinced - It feels smug and empty at the same time.)

Taking photos as the canvas eroded and reverted to threads. A partial dismantling  - the first division.

I’m not sure I understand deconstruction or Derrida anymore.  I read him and think I grasp it then when I got back I have no idea how I thought what I did. 

Read Anthony Gormley today - I love his drawing and felt encouraged by how he’s free to draw and let the connection to his more involved sculpture work itself out. The are ties between the two practices but not always immediate or linear. 

Reading/// Derrida’s ‘Letter to a Japanese friend’. /—— again

Researching/// Matthew Barney. I love the vast expanse of his narratives, along with the interconnected themes that relate and reference. His work had such a strong relationship to materials, although I know a lot of his work is made for him, which I would find hard - not to get my hands dirty but have someone else make my work..

Things I want to make:

Stick bundle
Bundle drawings
Immerse installation
Etched copper tubes 
Stick feathers -wood and plaster
Bundle and wall set
Small natural linen drawings 
Axe for an angel - etch on axe cheek.
Immerse diagram drawings
Portraits
Large wing drawing representational to abstract.
Plaster sculpture abstract for. With inserts.
Large gestural drawings