materials

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…


 

Negative Lever by Justin Harrison


I’m in the studio processing materials I’ve collected. It’s been a week or so since I was in the forest and all I want to do is amass wood and bits. I think it’s because I am so led by my materials - the feel and presence and history. However I don’t feel comfortable just making cute little bundles. It feels like a ‘get out’ clause - just tie some bit’s together and it will pass as art. I really want more the presence of the artist upon the material leading to its transformation and meaning.

I’m trying to tie up unfinished/explored  ideas, the wood I cut is for bundle and more pegs. I make another peg but split the wood nailing the leather into it, the wood is too thin the black tack butchers into it - clefting the slim peg I had cut - need to get some simmer tacks.

I then clear my bench and take a drawing from the card form I had made some time back from disgarded boxes. it’s been on my wall for a while, because I wasn’t entirely sure why I had made it. But I did feel potential to it and now it may lad to sculptural work.

The paper is so large it takes up all available space in the studio and I have to stand in my bench and the paper to work.

The drawing is interesting- nothing too dramatic but I still like it. I would like to make it in black ink and in negative with a watered black wash. It also occurs to me that it would be interesting to make the form in stacked found wood. And a version in negative in stacked found wood. I still have more fence panels and I imagine stacking and gluing it.

SO maybe potential. But also thinking realistically about where I take this all for the MA show…

And what is this piece about - I’ve called it a Negative Lever. More tools for navigation of uncertainty.


 

Studio Notes by Justin Harrison


Little nothings - in the studio and I’m making more quick pieces, they don’t feel deep but maybe that’s ok. What they can lead to is more interesting. I do worry that I’m not landing on any one pursuit. I still like to surround myself with materials, my desk is littered with bits of wood leather and copper piping.

I cut my finger magnificently and there is a fair bit of blood. I curse a lot, not because it hurts, but because it’s gonna slow me down.

These pieces confuse me, they come from me and there are qualities about them that I like, but I’m not often sure why.  I want to draw and yet I end up making  the physical sketches. I think about Matthew Barney and how his work moves between sketches and sculpture. Is this a root that my work also takes? How dp I find the equilibrium between the two.

What is my work about?

Being set apart? Margins?

What about the photography and prose?

I do notice the motif of reclaimed materials, it’s becoming a stronger preference, the motive I suspect is primarily financial, but also a rejection of capitalism and a concern for the environment, I am mindful of my presence. The more I research capitalsim the more objectionable it becomes.

In addition the history to the materials helps me to construct the work. This came up before in Jericho where the provenance mattered - even if it was just to me and definitely influenced the work.


 

Paper Spectres by Justin Harrison


I realise I’m missing an opportunity after the MA sessions we have - I need to reflect on the sessions after each one, that I’m missing out on the thoughts and ideas that arise from each Thursday. Sounds obvious now I say it but I’ve been so focussed on my own practice that it didn’t occur to me. Plus I should just pretty much document anything - especially if everything is research.

Thursday’s photographic session was an interesting one as I didn’t have time to think, but just throw stuff together without too much consideration, the speed with which I wanted to work meant that it was very intuitive and unconscious. Normally I would have liked tie to think about what I would do and prepare materials. But coming straight from work and not quiet being sure of what was going to be asked, meant I had to work on the fly.

(((I find an interesting tension between working intentionally and intuitively, I see value in them both, but struggle to reconcile a way to work using both - although I wonder if this is the value to making the ‘little nothings’ that Ursula von Rydingsvard creates.)))

Taking the direnct transfer images I was still working true to my practice taking layered paper and collaging. It’s quiet close to my practice already. Accumulating images and working them back and forth. It’s a part of my visual language t he photographic image. I note how often I use photography as a means to thinking a nd documenting ideas.

What became more interesting was when I collated the images together and place. them as one long block on the Miro board. Putting all the images together made sense of them, the colours and movement through form, with elements being lost and captured.

How the images are captured on the paper has a ‘spectral’ quality (Derrida - Specters Of Marx) , it’s evidence of history, present and future across the same site. Unfixed the image won’t remain, and the image viewed is not how it will be in the future, or how it was. There is a ghostly presence on the paper which cannot be entreated to stay or name itself.

Currently I’m reading - Spectres of Marx by Derrida. I’ve moved onto this text following a conversation with someone more versed in Derrida and other associated writers. There are a number fo terms that Derrida uses in Literary critical analysis, Hymen, Trace, Differance, Spectural. Thera are all similar but different, and I need to get a little more familiar with them for the sake of my research and my sanity.

I’m especially liking the notion of the spectre it’s connects easily to what I am investigating with my research paper and own art practice. More time with it is needed, as there are nuanced motifs in what I am reading that play out in my own work - especially the choice of materials. In discussion with Jonathan during a turutorail we discussed how the history of a material (a fence panel) has a key role for me in the nature and language of the art work I am making. That it becomes woven into the heart of the artwork and it’s integrity, even though it may not be clear to the viewer.


 

Passing Through - Collograph Print by Justin Harrison

‘Passing Through’ Collograph print on paper. (Image my own)


I needed to find a school/studio safe process to seal the collograph plate. This was a test of the new sealing process.

I kinda like it.

He’s got something going for him and he’s going places, even if he is dead.

Another fast piece, made in under an hour. Although not one sitting - more like 10mins, 30 mins, 20mins. I wasn’t timing but you get the idea.

Again there is a pleasure for. me with drawing and by extension printmaking, specifically collograph. I get to draw three times. Once when I first draw the image, second when I cut the plate and third when I wipe the plate.

There is something deeply satisfying about drawing for me, it’s visceral, and somehow beyond my words. I long to make a drawing so honest and from so deep within that it it falls off the page.

Again I’m connecting to my materials trying to find a tone of voice to them, also not thinking too much.

Rhythmns.

I also wondered about encaustic wax, I stumbled across it today reading a web page about it. There’s a quality to it that I suspect could be really delicious. I’ve set drawings in wax before by just dipping but this is a more intentional process, proving layers and tones. In addition it gives me another material - another dialect. I’m concerencd that I’m adding yet another process to learn and adding more time whichh I really don’t have right now…

Tick tock….


 

Disrupted averages by Justin Harrison

Image: My own


Disrupted averages (Concept - Jonathan Kearney)

In the studio I have an hour or so.

Not long///

I have left items out on the desk from my last visit. I do it to provoke myself. It’s irritating and funny at the same time. Pieces of textured leather  - favourite tools. It all makes me want to make things immediately - the materials speak, not a language I entirely understand but it is language none the less.

I hang some large watercolour paper I have plans for - been day dreaming about making huge black ink drawings. Bold and sensitive, ink dispersing to granular clouds of vapour.

My phone is a pain in the arse and kepis turning off ###

Disrupt your averages/// 

I tried to make something in a hurry tonight. 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I decide I have to make something in the next hour, using what I have collected or hoarded around me. This means working fast, the opposite of what I normally do, usually I take long, considering, measuring, crafting experimenting. This has to go out the window.

So I begin, I keep it simple. I take two pieces of wood  cut the other day. I had plans for them, but I can always cut more. (I have a generous supply of old fence panel wood stashed in the corner). Playing with the two pieces in different arrangements I decide I want to join them somehow, I consider plaster but know this will take too long, instead I cut a small piece of leather with the intention to make a cuff to join them.

I’m already breaking my own rules by not sharpening my head knife first - it should cut in one or two passes - it takes too many and leaves slight double edge. I cringe internally and move on.

Then get annoyed an go back and clean it up, but quickly. Next I soak the leather to wet form it. I run it under a tap - ideally I’d leave it in a clean bowl of warm water and watch the bubbles ecstatically escape the back of the leather but again this all takes time. The skin takes long to relax under the cold water. Like me it's cold.

As I fold the leather around the wood and clamp it - I realise that it’s too small compositionally, intuitively I want a larger cuff - to have more presence. I should have seen this before I started.

Then I have a some realisations as the hour comes to a close///

  1. I’m no way gonna finish in time.

  2. I failed and that’s fine.

  3. I will need to cut more leather and reform it and wait for it to dry.

    Thats annoying ### It’s annoying as its wasteful, and is gonna cost me time and finance. Then it occurs to me that this is an issue for me. Like a big issue. I don’t like to waste anything, because I can’t afford to. I realise that historically I have always worked very carefully and methodically and meticulously. I thought it was because I liked well made work. (I do - but that’s not the point) It’s mostly because I’m afraid to make mistakes. I’ve learnt to work this way to not spend money or make errors.

I think about the maxim - the rich stay rich while the poor get poorer. (This week it was announced that the worlds 10 richest men have doubled their wealth over the past two years whilst more people have fallen into poverty).

I wonder if rich culture increases and advances, because it can innovate far quicker, it doesn’t need to conserve its resources. It can afford to waste a few prototypes, raw materials, money and make mistakes. Where as poorer cultures work must work carefully and methodically with the precious few commodities or compromise instead, still creative and innovative, but advancing at a slower speed.

I also realise:

  1. All the work I've done is really useful and informative and it's ok to experiment and waste a little bit of leather. No time has been wasted but well spent exploring. It's informative.

So. interesting. I disrupted my average tonight and I saw something in myself, my practice and perhaps my culture.

IMAGES+++

My own


 

Dead Horses by Justin Harrison


I am everything you don’t want. I am everything you leave behind.
(I realise that the sofa comes under this title too)

Ok so been having a little fun researching dead horses. I’m still stuck on the discarded sofa I found in Brighton. The strong connection to dead horses. Especially with it’s four legs stiffly jutting out like rigamortis. Covered in layers of fabric like skin and fat.

My favourite of all the artists had to be Berlindfe De Brukyer, her relationship to the materials she uses is potent and I’m left unnerved and beguiled at the same time. Visceral and cruel her work is quiet matter fo fact and yet more subtle codes are embedded in her layers.

Some of my deep fears and darker encounters seem to reside somewhere in her work to, unsettled Want to leave yet continue to look, like a bad dream that I can’t leave.

https://www.galleriacontinua.com/artists/berlinde-de-bruyckere-21

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Points I’m mulling over in connection to my research questions:

What does it mean to be transformed? How does this occur?

To Discover Temporal and spacial locations in which a form of transformation happens. 

What are the consequences?

Why are the outcomes?

Can we influence the process?

When does it occur naturally?

When has it happened in history?

How do other artists engage with transformation?

Are liminal places key in all this?

IMAGES USED>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A DEAD HORSE - (JEAN-LOUIS-THÉODORE GÉRICAULT)

Untitled (desiccated horse carcass sitting up) - Sidney Nolan (Australian, 1917-1992)

Hungry ones in Petrograd dividing a dead horse in the street (1917) - Ivan Vladimirov

Berlinde De Bruyckere
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJwkXf5RK4
https://www.galleriacontinua.com/artists/berlinde-de-bruyckere-21
No Life Lost II, 2015
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/berlinde-de-bruyckere-at-hauser-wirth-new-york-6097/


 

Chen Zhen by Justin Harrison


There is something deeply satisfying about the physicality of Chen Zhen’s sculpture and choice of materials. It seems he often chooses to leave the material unaltered but manipulated out of it’s normal context. A particular and specific use of visual language. The black rubber inner tube becomes an almost natural element, like grass or reeds, yet they are unapologetically honest in their use with no attempt to cover up or hide the history of the objects or material.

In fact the presence of the history of the object is imperative, intrinsic to the reading of the work. The language of history and past experiences is. curious one because that too is read and created especially by the viewer and their lived experience. The associations and emotions attached to an old chair or a drum can be multifarious.Yet there is still a specific tone of voice to the work. Awkward and suggestive, nostalgic and melancholic.

I like the work but I wouldn’t want to make it.

“One should learn to break out of one’s own cocoon and be courageous enough to break away from one’s self and to abandon one’s own cultural context. The Chinese proverb ‘the soul has left its shelter’ in fact symbolizes the critical state in which one’s creative capacity has reached the most active zenith.” Chen Zhen
(Quoted in Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea 2003, p.83.)

Connected to this notion of moving beyond one’s immediate cultural environment is Chen’s term ‘Transexperience’, which he coined in 1998 while living between New York, Paris and Shanghai in order to describe what curator Hou Hanru has defined as ‘the dynamic and dialectical process that occurs when an individual is displaced between cultures, societies and languages’ (Hanru, ‘“Transexperience” in the art of Chen Zhen’, in Serpentine Gallery 2001, p.15.) According to Hanru, ‘Transexperience suggested to [Chen] both the fusion with these other influences and, simultaneously, the ability to transcend their impact’ (Hanru 2001, p.15). As a result of his combining creative techniques and influences from the divergent countries and cultures in which he resided in works such as Cocon du Vide, Chen has been described by art historians as a ‘transcultural artist’, as was explored in the exhibition Chen Zhen’s Transcultural Art in Paris Retrospective at Galerie Perrotin, Paris, in 2014. Tate website:
 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/chen-cocon-du-vide-t12941

///Temporary Homes For The Liminal\\\


 

Holly is a sticky wood by Justin Harrison


Out on location in woods. Looked for and found a resource of wood to process for ‘bundle 1’.

A number de-limbed branches were on the ground so I took the opportunity.

Again to hold materials in my hands feels good and adjusts the course of my thinking.

I realise that this project is going to take longer and more energy. The holly doesn’t give up its bark easily and is a stick wood to work with when green but pleasingly dense and heavy, and to process a number of large poles will take some time in addition to resourcing them.

I stripped one shirt Barton and left a little bark which gave a texture that spoke differently to what I expected.

I was short of time and didn’t get to burn the wood or test it against copper. However I processed a pile of wood and worked up a sweat despite the cold. I want to capture the whiteness of the wood Before it greys. The contrast to be pronounced when I burn one end.

Staining paper to in preparation for drawing letting the inks ‘bleed out’, possibley another form of dismantling my work.

Research: artists, context and connecting theory.

During making I also recorded the sound of me working - I thought of my friend who I’m collaborating, with who’s first instinct is a musician, I figured it would be fun and provocative to make a recording of the sounds of me working on the sculpture for our collaboration and send it to him instead of pictures///


 

Bundles by Justin Harrison


Note: The blog doesn’t have to be journalistically written. It’s too self conscious, lacks honesty as it’s more performative. It can be notes, lists, images. A subconscious free flow is perhaps better. I have also included a bad photo and resisted the temptation to edit too much.

Bundles today I like bundling objects - multiples. I want bundles of all sorts of things.

Plaster dipped burnt wood. Pelican feathers. Sculpt a pelican in hard plaster?

It was good to get my hands on materials - finally collecting some copper and wicks. The materials tease me. Just their presence goads next to create, something anything.

I’m conscious that I want this blog to be written in a much more analytical and academic fashion, with pithy insight and formal art history references. But I will leave it at… today I like bundles and materials.

Re Image/// The place of drawing. I love these organic and diagramming drawings. They feel like they have such a strong place in art/ artists process.

Image from: Theaster Gates P112


 

Relief by Justin Harrison

ADurer_Study.jpg

I made the relief as a demonstration for a student. Pulled up an image of a masters work. Albrecht Durer. It was a image of an old man again, can’t get enough of them although I still haven’t ascertained why. (My own aging? A too easy an explanation)

The materials felt good in my hands and the work came together quickly. It doesn’t feel finished but it felt good to leave it where it was. I could refine it to a much more finished level but that seems dull and trite somehow.

Yet there is something that happens when I make things, physical materials in my hands. I love the crafting. But it seems self indulgent and absent of thought.

Why make it?

Who cares?

What purpose does it serve beyond a teaching aid?

But still it feels satisfying and perhaps hidden deeper is a purpose, a thing that needs to be made, an idea as yet brought to realisation.

Elusive in its simplicity.

There are a number of pieces I want to make:

Immerse sculpture

Axe for the boundaries

Portraiture in drawing and relief

Abstract prints

Not sure how they all relate and are they worth pursuing?