I just can’t stop listening to Nicola Jaar. Space Is Only Noise. It took me all the way (two and a bit times over) through 16k on Sunday and I am still not bored of the sounds.
I also went to see the Chelsea PGDip show and there was some excellent work there. One piece that really stood out was some work that involved mini microphones, an old metal filling cabinet and an MPD player…and a laptop.
So it has been a week since I submitted my heart to the Princes Drawing School. I am now simply existing in a state of limbo, waiting to hear if they would like me to visit them and beg for admittance.
It has been strange not having my books as I had looked at them everyday for the past month as the date loomed painfully close. Leaving them behind was a bit unnerving. They have had my little protective eyes cast upon them at all times.
Now I have a bit of mental space, I can finish the book I am reading ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ by Milan Kundera (thanks Oliver). I can also focus on my guitar practice, get M through his exam and do a bit of writing.
I moved house on Saturday and I am now situated in North London. It is lush. I have access to a roof top and as I was falling asleep last night (far too slowly due to the three cups of coffee I had consumed) I was thinking about making some John Virtue-esk work of the cityscape.
Yes, I think I will do that next.
Friday took a bunch of girls and me to the Serpentine on Hyde Park. It was bitterly cold (honestly, where is the end of March and the spring?) though we spent a while exploring the five sculptures by Anish Kapoor.
Each sculpture managed to captivate us in slightly different ways. We started with the largest disk that stood on the bank 10 meters high. As it reflected the sky, it seemed we were transported to a parallel world. It visually flipped us upside down and we found ourselves walking on a different kind of turf. The clouds rippled across the surface of this alien like object. It hovered, silently humming.
The second sky mirror was smaller and it stood in a large round pond. This one was coloured a hot red and as we walked towards it, it seemed the object defied laws of form and dimension. It felt as if someone could peel the red disk off from the surface of the landscape, two dimensional, a playful bit of collage.
C-Curve was the most interactive and a lot of fun. We ran towards it, and it reflected us reaching heights that about half our normal size. We walked and our reflections bobbed up and down.
It was cold, and we were glad to move towards the Serpentine but it was certainly worth a few red noses and steamy eyes.
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This weekend I visited Chris Ofili at the Tate Britain. Ofili’s work in the first few rooms (in fact all of them except the final three) was beautifully produced, decorative and reminded me of textile prints.
I watched people, how they interacted with the work and many eagerly leant forwards to explore the tiny collaged pieces and the layers of polyester resin. Eagerly leant forward; and then eagerly retreated back into the safer zone at least a meter from the painting surface. Having the canvases sitting on the poo blocks really did drive home the concept of the paintings coming from the earth but after looking at the first ten works, I started to wonder if Ofili ever got bored of this technique.
Ofili definitely moved on and this was evident in the last three rooms of the exhibition. The Afromuses were exquisite and beautifully formed. As a series they worked communicating his enjoyment of working with the physicality of material aswell as exploring the versitility of character portrayal. They shone like liquid jewels, seeping between the glass and the edges of the paper. Alive. The series acted like an army of luxurious form, liquidity and deep colour.
The Blue Rider series. Soft, velvet and moonlit. They reminded me of how I felt when I saw my first Anish Kapoor sculpture - Adam, I stared into what I knew to be a flat plain but which had opened itself to reveal a shifting, edgey world of cool silvery tones. A series of portals.
Finally I entered the room of recent work where the Trinidad colour explodes into scenes of mythological folk law. I immediately thought of Doig and I was excited. Unlike his earlier work, the glitter was absent. The paintings were large scale, figurative and clearly a step forward from his previous work.
These final paintings have a magical, glittering vibrancy – without the use of actual glitter. They are deep-rooted to the earth, they deal with spiritual quests and provoke a shift for the perceptive viewer. They are a celebration of culture, colour, identity and nature. And there is no poo in sight.
Today I went to Kew Gardens with my sister to make some research studies and take some photographs. I was mainly looking for surface texture, colour and composition. I made a few rubbings, took some photographs and made a few quick drawings. The weather was beautiful and the light was golden.
I came across a Eucalyptus tree which was ghostly white. I made a rubbing of the surface and also of the label which came in the form of a metal credit card shaped item which had the information embossed into it.
I am going to make a series of works influenced by this tree so I expect I will be visiting Kew again. The trip reminded me of the footage I saw of David Hockney painting in the Yorkshire woodlands. It will be interesting to make studies of this tree throughout the year, exploring light, colour and mood changes.
I want to talk a bit about Michael Porter. I have been familiar with his work for rather a long time – I think I discovered him at school or when I was doing my foundation at college. I love the work he produces, his impression on the environment in which he is interested in. I also love his process of working because it is a way of working that I feel familiar with. He works by pouring oil and acrylic onto his paper/canvas and he works with it predominantly on the floor.
Porter layers his paints and varnishes working monochromatically at first and playing with creating a composition. He seems to respond to the marks on the paper aswell as imitate the textures/surfaces that he has researched from his walks around the area in which he lives. He is obsessed with the natural landscape and the formation of such things, rocks, plants, moss.
Porter then paints an accurate image of a particular plant or shell on the top surface of the painting, this image looks as if it has almost been placed of the work, representing the beginning of the process as well as marking the end.
