Recent and first inclusion in the annual Art Language Location 6th exhibition, artists from Italy Slovenia and Bosnia featured alongside new work from British based contributors. The work was sited at Anglia Ruskin University’s Ruskin Gallery and Gallery 9 an independent contemporary art gallery in Cambridge UK.
Other collaborative work with Physicist Simon Engelke, at Cambridge University for Artiist in Residence Melissa Murray’s Project NanaoVignettes, showcased at the Maxwell Centre Cambridge University Cambridge UK, 2018 Science week.
This professional studio practice engages elements of translation as thematic reference realised through painting and drawing. Linguistic concepts of fidelity, equivalence, and departure relative to idioms inform the methodology of image-making. A correspondence with scientist Simon Engelke’s work with graphene and my artist aesthetic and visual reference create content and metaphor for a public context. Utilising figurative and abstract visual conventions, the work creates an opportunity for new narrative readings or structural translation informing scientific/artistic experimentation. These works represent an experience where meaning can be lost or found between media subject and a personal paradigm, whether scientific or artistic.
This project is a development of the dissertation research on the theme of visual translation. It explores the concepts of latency correspondence and departure relative to a painter’s practice.
Station Road Pendlebury (Latency)
2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 150 cm
My work engages elements of translation as critical reference realised through Painting and Drawing. Linguistic concepts of fidelity and equivalence, relative to the ideom inform the methodology of image making.
My formative and contemporary aesthetic influences and social experience provide visual reference. Subjects are derived from personal and public contexts. This include observed discussions in collaboration with Melanie Manchot’s Cross Talks project as part of her Artist in Residence at the Cambridge University Office of Post Doctoral Affairs, and also the poetic writings of Ted Hughes specifically The Remains of Elmet (1979 Faber and Faber).
In these works the voices and association attached to memories and conscious thought are applied to a 17c. idea that successful translation is only possible into ones own language
Utilising figurative and abstract visual conventions the display creates an opportunity for new narrative readings. Each work or combination of works represents an experience where meaning can be lost or found between media subject and a personal paradigm.
Fitzwilliam, (Correspondence 1)
2017, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 185 cm
Latent aspect for this image is the ruined chapel at Heptonstall Wets Riding Yorkshire and the Fitzwilliam Gallery Cambridge.
The correspondence aspect takes Ted Hughes’ poetic words from Remains of Elmet (1979 Faber & Faber) as a reflective perspective to inform the evolution or outcome of these elements into a visual image
Mill Road, (Departure1)
Acrylic on Canvas, 140 x 150 cm
This image has a high degree of visual reference to well known historical works as its latent aspect and a correspondence with lens based reference such as camera-obscura and Deguerreotype. The Departure can be read literally or metaphorically and alludes to aspects of community as revealed by an ongoing collaborative project with Artist in Residence Melanie Manchot at Cambridge University’s Office of Post-Doctoral Affairs.
In the following discussions, updates and and images I hope to explore and unpack the methodology process and discovery made during this project.
Heptonstall, (Correspondance 2)
Acrylic on Canvas, 140 x 150 cm
This series is shown here in chronological order regarding the production. Although the endings of the paintings overlapped this sequence is based upon the order of starting each image. The point of stating this is to highlight a dialogue during production where progress on one or more images informed the others. Broad content such as motifs or signs of barriers or boundaries can be seen and they explore by varying the context within each image.
In this way the pictorial space becomes a place in which to interchange in an iterative way starting points or continuation of narrative meaning. Elements of the ruined church at Heptonstall in the West Riding of Yorkshire are exchanged and correspond visually with images from a different point in time and place creating a new juncture and therefor reading compared to that in the Fitzwilliam rendering of contemporary Cambridge.
The visual reference is wilfully resistant in order to engage and offer an opportunity of re-writing a narrative or producing a bad translation, with only a viewer written outcome. In each image as stated there are manifestations of aesthetic influence that hopefully add to the experience and the opportunity to engage in decoding each image. Given that I believe that aesthetic influence is as fluid and personal as other drivers or personal perspectives they are incorporated as a visual element as much as a specific meaning allowing a recoding based upon the viewers personal visual or aesthetic lexicon.
Recent work by Hurvin Anderson at the Whitechapel Gallery London have informed the Heptonstall, Correspondence image in a process based textural or chromatic way. In Andersons work the motif of a well thumbed paperback is employed or mimicked in the application and painterly narrative. These are contested by the literary content of the re-coding of familiar or plausible book titles that challenge reading narrative and assumption. Nostalgia is a reoccurrence in Anderson’s work and the softness employed by the second hand texture appealed to me as a way crossing or traversing a boundary created by wall based art using the semiconscious validation of history, reassurance of age or the comfort of familiarity demonstrated in a well thumbed paperback book.
There is in contrast a rescaling of elements and an intertwining of vista in order to cause a visual tension in the de or recoding of narratives possible or plausible. The modulation of objective rendering and underpainting of the walking man is further reduced to a silhouette ignorer to increase a semiotic reading or association that is more speculative.
Having done this, there are three main vista that in rendering have fidelity to the accuracy of observing the “real” things.
In the centre of the composition there is an authentic collection of road signs and markings relative to the building adjacent.
The primed canvas is evident here and would be the lowest point of the valley if the painting were horizontal and subsequent layers were measured as higher in the painted topography. The idea of a valley and locating where you are is a latent element that I feel strongly about. From my earliest childhood memories of wandering alone on the hills north of Salford and beyond Rawtenstall, the Rossendale valley and into the West Riding is where my connection Elmet comes from. There is a sense of loss abandonment and value that is pervasive in the theatricality of this image. None of this information is necessary for the image to be read successfully because it is not my intention for the viewer to follow any narrative perceived as my own. In the same way we remake our memories time after time it is essential that these images resist fixated meaning. The calculation and reflection during production has re-reading or rewriting any narrative as a high priority. It is in this way that I attempt to create the opportunity for an inaccurate translation in the hope it bears new fruit.
Site specific work from 2016. This is a scene from a real location that has been rendered with the themes of looking and being looked at. In this image there are contested focal points and visual devises employed to unsettle the viewer or encourage the viewer to break the gaze of the convivial cafe owner (Jay at Black Cat Cafe Mill Road Cambridge UK) and wonder around the scene in a “free-junctural” way. By this I mean that this ordinary scene is frozen and has detail that is functional and in competition for your attention. As you wonder around the image you are challenged to dip into your own semiotic lexicon of meaning and relate and collate your own narrative.
As the maker of the image I have done the same and in doing so have created a work that explores my own perspective or fear and curiosity, learned and adopted ritual and behaviour that inform my semiotic paradigm and how this translates into my own experience. The lack of colour for example is employed to highlight detail or texture in a timeless way rather than an emotional, nostalgic glaze.
I hope that this allows other translations by the viewer suffice it to say that the resonance or correspondence between artist intention and audience reading is loose enough to allow a misreading or bad translation to make something more personal or meaningful to the viewer than mimicking my experience or anxieties of the addition of pervasive ennui v the persistence of vision of my latent aesthetic referencing (in this case Edouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies–Bergère“)
This is week 11 from my first semester on MA Fine Art at Anglia Ruskin University, in the Ruskin Building I am part of the Cambridge School or Art 15-17 cohort.
My practice is located in fine art painting. The terms I am currently aligned to are relative to Abstraction and Landscape reference and response.
Landscape – key hole painting
The images and information go through a reductive process that retain colours and quantities from remembered real places but abandon literal reference such as labels or more direct figurative reference. The Juncture of reference is from October to December in the following pieces.
Landscape – key hole painting
The images and information go through a reductive process that retain colours and quantities from remembered real places but abandon literal reference such as labels or more direct figurative reference. The Juncture of reference is from October to December in the following g pieces, and started of with some small (key-hole) studies.
Landscape – key hole painting
The questions I am dealing with are the accountability of memory and the process of painting as a test of the contemplative or iterative activity, in a hope that this may reveal an outcome that is self supporting.
Landscape – key hole painting
In essence, to find out if a connection with me as a maker and consumer of art has any recognisable correlation with consumers or viewers that did not make them.
Twilight – colour, quantity and order
The decisions that refer and relate to memory are also a subject for exploration in terms of authorship. Whilst making decisions about what to include or how to create the paintings there is a dialogue that relates to paintings I have seen, read about or discussed with third parties. This dialogue is inseparable from the process and it is contested consciously, and negotiated outcomes often only revealed in reflective practice.
Studio wall
It is in this way that the process and practice, challenges and exploits tacit knowledge to expose, reveal new or next decisions for work. Possible, probable or plausible opportunities, relative to the defined area of study follow.
Diptych – underpainting
As the work is produce and reflected upon there are stages of decision making that have a degree of resolution in this way the images find or develop a self-supporting state, that is a point where the image or work has a value that requires retaining, usually this is a resolution of terms in the process of making that seem to satisfy or contest the ingredients of the remembered.
More resolved and complex painted situation, process and practice reaching rational state.
It is at this point where reference to an aesthetic value may be from the subject or the set of conditions that are learned or negotiated values are confirmed, rationalised or contested making a work that is retained in it’s current or suspended developmental state, are actuated.
Studio with stretchers for developmental work that incorporate scale and sensation as factors when making the work
In subsequent posts I will explore how the reading that relates to this practice has supported the analysis of ideas and theories that inform Process and Practice as Research and hopefully the momentum and discovery that this provides will be of interest.
Extended studies prepared for by applying a coloured ground as a primer and first statement, also an informed starting point
New or recent work is now being made and the terms of the production or the outcomes are additional ingredients that explore the interpretation and intention aspect of authorship which form considerations, not least because the work feels and is more planned.
Images are developed simultaneously
These are now not initial ideas or responses to the concepts attached to or the history of Landscape painting. There is a question of process and practice about how much there is a capacity to plan and realise work or still discover when making the extended works as a continuation of research or of conclusion.
Experimentation still exist in more complex work and are an opportunity to test ideas and challenge content
For the viewer ideas that exist relating to paintings conventions, vary in the type or remit of different gallery types. These images will be on display, as works on canvas, a gallery setting traditionally sets the terms for the viewer and the relationship is formal. These terms are set and learned not without the experiences of the view and the occasion. These images are made with these terms in mind.
The visual or abstract language explored is not a fixed decision at this point and are an aspect of practice revealing probable, possible or plausible outcomes
These are aspects that need to be dealt with as decisions are made.
There is still room or a requirement relative to what is possible probable and plausible, beyond the idea that scale or sensational are part of the planned response to the ideas and subject.
The response as work is made still allows for risk and evolution of imagery process until each work is at a stand alone state. Issues are reflected upon and contested in these works the final outcome is still new ground for the creative journey and is often discovered only as it is revealed through working and reworking.
The layers of coloured canvas add or challenge the smaller works and also the visual reference to Diebenkorn was not accidental but then again it was not intentional it was a logical step relative to a point in the images optional step, a good example of a point to reflect.
In the project proposal there were aspects of authorship that were expected to clarify issues of locating a fine art studio practice and words such as freedom relating to creativity or aspiration and expectation. As work develops that idea of freedom and creativity have taken on new dimensions in particular with the theoretical accountability of the work relative to decisions made and ideas explored of authorship intention and interpretation.
Triptych under development, continuity of visual language are at this point a contention, the work is happily ambiguous but the abstract terms seem more incongruous.
95.5cm (D) 4.5cm
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