Nailing down Visions exhibition

It was a bit messy when preparing and hanging the exhibition. Next time it would be beneficial to be a bit more organized. And also have it decided on what common height to hang the pieces so that everything looks part of one exhibition. But all in all I think we did a good job and I was really impressed of the variety of work we had created.

Aoife Duncan hanging her pieces. And below her beautiful graphite drawings.

Shauna Fee's interactive Kaleidoscope. This was a great idea and I liked the fact that the viewer basically created their own piece of work. 

Steven Gaughins piece was really interesting and well done. I liked how he involved the subject how we "hunt" for food today.

Tim Kellys piece was a combination of painting and collage with natural materials such as moss, twigs and stones. A very striking piece of work but would have been interesting to know a little bit more about the piece in the artist statement.

Finished pieces - Nailing down visions

Here is my finished pieces for the Nailing down Visions project. During this project I used different mediums to try and replicate the after-image on my eye and the result ended up in 3 pieces. Guache on paper, pen on paper and then a collage combined with pen.

The 3 pieces ended up very different but I think that each one communicates the idea in their own way. The conclusion after finished this project is that it was very difficult to do this. No matter what colours or shapes I used I could not manage to justify the vivid after-image that was created on the back of my eyelid. After doing this project a great interest for optics have started and its something that I certainly what to develop my knowledge within.

Nailing down visions

My artistic statement to the project: "Nailing down visions"

Marlene Dahl – What I saw in the dark.

After watching the BBC documentary “The day pictures were born” an interest for the optical aspects was initiated. Researching on the subject Closed eye hallucinations and visualizations (CEV) developed into conducting a study of my own visual experience of what occurred to my vision in total darkness. What shapes and patterns would become prominent without actually seeing them? The study entailed exposing the eye to different light sources and also manipulating the light by placing objects in front of it. And it was then attempted to capture these images and experiences by using different mediums such as crayon, paint and marker. It was discovered that the effect of burn-in images, the images left on the eyes retina after looking into a bright light, was the most interesting.  The finished piece is a result of this study; with colour and shape it is attempted to replicate one of these images that were discovered. It is an effort in trying to define something seen in the dark and then to bring it back into the light again, where it was once born.

artist research and tulca visit.

before visiting Tulca we were all assigned an artist to research. my artist was Emma Finn.
She lives and works in Edinburgh, but is originally from Galway. She recently graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a (BA hons) in Intermedia. Before that she did Psychological studies and Classical civilisation at NUIG and also a portfolio course at GTI.

her body of work mainly consist of video pieces, were the character seems to be almost in between animation and documentary. and the "people" in her films act and look funny, but usually seems to be talking about and solving something more serious. the idea of social experiments comes to mind after watching her pieces and its done with a good bit of quirkiness and comedy.

here is the link to the work that was in the tulca festival:
http://emmafinn.co.uk/works/moreorless


after the tulca visit, i sat down and went through my notes. I stuck in the information sheets i'd gathered and also started making a mindmap of my overall experience.

i also Nuala Ni Fhlathuins  work very interesting. they way she used and combined materials to create really delicate pieces. there was something about the fragile sense of the sculptures that i found intriguing. and also the idea of paying attention to detail, observing no matter how small the thing is.

at times i found it challenging to tie it all together under the theme "Golden Mountain" and after a while I decided not to worry so much about it, and to just enjoy it for what it was. A good few pieces of work was hard to access and understand for me and at the end i couldn't take in more information. All in all it was an interesting experience, but i think for next time i will pace the gallery visits out over the space of a few days so i have enough energy to engage properly with the works.

developing concept and Tulca introduction.

this week in L2L we were put in groups of four to discuss our concepts for the project around the "How art made the world project". before the class I had a few ideas that I was considering but after talking about and trying to explain it to other people made me realize which one I wanted to focus on. but, I have to do a little bit more research to try and narrow down my concept.

we also had a talk from a representive from the TULCA festival which runs from the 8 - 24 of November. she was explaining how the festival is set up, how the curator is and what is the theme for this years festival. we are going to visit TULCA on monday the 11th of November and its something I really look forward to. we were also introduced to a brief were we are asked to create a response from our experience after the tour. it can either be from 1 piece of work, the whole festival experience, or to summit a video to the TULCA competition.

Here's a link to the festival page:
Tulca festival

How art made the world - project.

Yesterday in L2L we were going through the artistic statements that we'd written for our artworks. Mine turned out being too long so I have to work on that until next time. It was really interesting to hear other people statements and how they decided to do it.

After the break we watched the second episode in the documentary "How are made the world" with Dr. Nigel Spivey.

It was about how the first picture came about, and why.We were asked to take notes, and find something that we thought were interesting and then research further on that subject. Then through mind mapping come up with a concept and later on create an artwork. It's an interesting brief and I'm looking forward to get started on this project. I think I need to do a bit of research on a few things before I decide what to narrow down on.

Responding to an article.

Our task was to get a newspaper and then create an artistic responds from an article. I chose I quite disturbing article about a woman who's appealing to the minister of health in northern ireland to have an abortion because she recently discovered that her twins have the something called anencephaly. It is a disorder which means that embryos missing a major part of their brains and skull. Babies with this condition are usually stillborn or only survives a few hours after birth.

The article gave me a very angry, frustrating and disturbed reaction. And after doing some research on the subject and the disorder I almost changed my mind about doing a responds to this article. But it is something I feel really strongly about and I cant understand how similar cases to this can keep happening in Ireland before things change.

My method for this task was to first read the article and then gather more research. Then I wrote down the reactions, feelings and questions I got from it. After that I did a few thumbnail sketches to figure out my approach. I decided on a more abstract responds to highlight the fact how strange and illogical this whole thing is. I used colours and symbols which I felt appropriate to communicate my reaction.

The exercise was really interesting, especially to see everybody's different responds and approach. For the next class we were told to write an artistic statement about it.

cool sketchbook project.

a while ago when I was looking for a bit of inspiration to my own sketchbook I came across this really cool project run by a brooklyn-based company called Art House. Its called the sketchbook project and basically is a library made out of sketchbooks, from everywhere in the world. Anyone can participate and add their sketchbook to the collection at the brooklyn art library. And also they have a digital library so you can view books from your computer. Pretty cool stuff!

so check this out and get inspired!!
http://www.sketchbookproject.com/

more research...

The books I borrowed from the library about Rosemarie Trockel didn't cover any of her work that she's done recently. I knew already that she had an exhibition earlier this year at the Serpentine Gallery in London. So after the presentation I decided to do a bit more research on her work today.

Here's a write up about her exhibition "A cosmos" by Dominic Eichler.

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2013/04/rosemarie_trockel_a_cosmos.html

I find her work very inspiring and interesting. Its so quirky, witty and sometimes extremely strange. And at the same time it is intriguing and I feel the need to figure out what the pieces really are about. Her work has been important to me for quite some time and after doing more research my interest for her has only grown.

Rosemarie Trockel presentation.

This is my mind map about Rosemarie Trockel from the presentation earlier this week. I was very nervous beforehand even though I knew all the facts and had prepared myself well. I forgot to say a few things that was of importance. However, through the exercise I learned a lot about my own ability to hold a presentation and what I can improve for next time. I definitely need to be more relaxed and also in control. And for next time I think the use of key card will benefit me and is something I will consider.

mind map no. 2

so this is how my mind map turned out after I increased the size of it to A2. I decided to go with more colour and go with the idea of the hands to frame it all. Along the fingers I wrote and illustrated things from my personal statement on why I wanted to study this program. The first version of the mind map was fairly concentrated so not easy to combine it all together. I chose to continue using the colours green and red (complementary) because they were the main colours in the original one and I thought it would make it all more connected. at least it now looks more colourful!

new assignment!

Today in L2L we were given a new assignment for next week. Our task: research an artist and then give a 5 minute presentation using a mind map. Everyone in the class got to draw an artist from a bag and i was lucky to get Rosemarie Trockel. I have some previous knowledge about her and find her work really interesting and inspiring; especially her pieces that involves knitting. She's done a lot of various work in different mediums and I'm looking forward discover it further. We're not allowed to use the internet so I borrowed 2 books about her from the library to source my information from.

talk in the GTI on tuesday 24th

I was asked to come in to the GTI to display and talk about my work from the previous year for the new attending students. I arrived early to have plenty of time to put up my pieces and to prepare myself. I had selected and organised my work a few days ahead and also written down a few notes to keep myself on track during the talk. I hadn't talked in public like that in a very long time so to say that I was anxious, would be an understatement.

I started off fairly shaky and nervous. It is quite intense when you have roughly 80 people looking at you. However, after awhile it started to get a bit easier and I found myself more comfortable in the situation. I tried my best to keep eye contact and look around the space to involve everyone. In hindsight, there's a lot of things I could have said and done more smoothly, but all in all I was pleased with how it went. I had a sense that I got my point across clearly and that they found it interesting. They were asking a lot of questions which at times put me on the spot and challenged me. But it felt good and I became more relaxed with the interactions. Also, I was grateful to have Robin Jones to help me out when I got lost for words.

mind map no.1.

so this is how my first version of the mind map turned out. a bit more chaotic that i intended in the planning perhaps. i also realized that mine was too small so i have to figure out a way to expand it onto a bigger paper.

mind map draft.

draft from sketch book where i tried to plan the mind map and considering different ideas. i wrote down a few bullet points of how i could visualize it as much and effective as possible. i also made a list of materials that i would need.

mind map research.

great mind map by Austin Kleon from John Bergers Ways of Seeing.
also, Austins blog http://www.austinkleon.com/ is worth a look! interesting stuff about creativity and inspiration.