We wanted to create a physical publication showcasing our work. It was to be about 54 pages, sit flat and be portable. We met at the Tate to talk about how the publication would be launched. Since we don’t know exactly what the space is going to be, we had difficulty honing the smaller details but came up with an overall plan.

We wanted the book to be presented simply on a table of some kind. We talked about getting stickers that people could use and doing postcards for the table but since the minimums were quite expensive we decided to make bookmarks. They were more cost effective, we could put branding that was consistent with our publication and launch video and hoped they’d be interactive and that people would take them home with them. We talked about acrylic but thought it would be too thick and card was a cheaper, more sustainable option. Depending on the space, we would like to have a poster on the wall behind the table, probably vinyl with a simple design consistent with the video and publication – potentially with Active Passive and our names on them. We thought about whether we want someone to stand by the desk but will decide nearer the time when we know the space.

Before the Launch

Each launch promotional video for the launch on our instagrams

Bookmarks – Nayana

Ordering books – Nathan

A3 copies of publication as back up – Chalkie

Posters – Hannah and I

We decided to do a promotional video for the launch so Nayana put together the following. We wanted it to build excitement/awareness about the launch, to be on brand and consistent with the style of the publication that Nate and Hannah had fine tuned.

Since curation was a large part of my work – looking at how the symbiosis of curation changes the reading of the images – I wanted to create a page that simulated this. We all went to the capture studio, and when it was my turn I tried to recreate the “curated wall” for my work, but it never looked the same in the pictures and didn’t quite work.

For my publication pages I looked at how to display them in a way that represented them accurately, that showed the image but also the feeling I was trying to cultivate. Since the pictures of the layout in the capture studio hadn’t worked in my opinion (I asked the group and they agreed) I tried cropping the images down to just the image and placing them on the page as I would the wall. This however felt too sterile, so I tried bringing some of the shadows back in with the lasso tool. This looked too messy and after asking the others, I decided to crop them differently.

I tried to replicate the size ratios so that it represented the pieces and their synergy authentically. Digital curation is very different to physical curation.

On our group visit to the library, we looked at a number of publications. I looked at a variety of publications including Printmaking today and ID Magazine. We all agreed that we wanted a clean look for our publication and liked simple layouts that were image heavy but with few images to a page and not repetitive formats. Where there was text, we preferred clean and simple. We all liked the idea of something physical that was smaller than A4 so that it was easily portable and not too heavy.

Having thought about how I wanted my work to be seen, with no additional description other than what could be seen, I decided I wanted to curate some of my pieces together to create an environment, a sense of fragmented memory and moments.

I wanted to curate my work on a white wall, however my area didn’t have the space so I started to think about how I could simulate the white wall considering my space restrictions. I tried re painting different areas of the room and looked at the hallway, however the work didn’t look right in the smaller spaces. I thought about putting paper over my window to simulate a wall but did not want the pieces to be back lit as it changed the image and depending on the weather, made the image look quite dark. In the end, I found a large piece of abandoned wood which I placed in my area.

I started playing with different layouts with blue tack on the wall. Ian recommend a start by laying them on the floor first as it was more immediate. We started shuffling the images round trying to make them work together. He tried taking out some of the photographs without marks on them and we agreed this worked better. Now each image on display had been physically manipulated, each surface interacted on and so it looked more coherent.

In the end, I decided to present as the first image shows. I wanted to evoke a sense of disjointed memory with the curation, that there were link but spaces in between. I attached the works with a mount behind them so that they were just off the wall and casting a shadow. I wanted to create the feeling that they were not completely stable and solid forms, that they were there but changeable as memory is. I also cleaned and prepared a table and set a small pile of the ocean gouache works. It was no longer just the wall to display on , but an area that invited the viewer in to inspect, pervading the floor space and changing the dynamic of the work. I scattered these pieces on the table in a small pile, like a series of photographs that have been shuffled through and interacted with.

Some of my feedback from stage one mentioned that I could surround myself with more contemporary art in order to deepen my engagement and understanding. I asked Adam what he’d recommend and he suggested I visit some of the galleries involved in Condo. I went to Holly Bush, Southward Reid, Pilar Corrias and Arcadia Missa.

I really liked the gallery space at Holly Bush and Pilar Corrias. This also happened to be where the preferred works I saw that weekend were. It’s hard to remove the work from the space and vice versa, and I wonder how much the space impacted my enjoyment of the works or the works changed my enjoyment of the space. I certainly think both happen to a certain extent, an environment is created by the synergy between space and work.

I enjoyed “In Purple”, a film by Johanna Billing with Mix Dancers at Holly Bush. To me, it conveyed a sense of intention, sisterhood and community in mundanity. I wondered whether the purple glass was about looking through a feminine lens, the fragility of the pane was palpable as it was carried. There was a universality in the sisterhood, what they were wearing, their actions and the nondescript city/suburbia they moved through. I wondered if there was a commentary on the weight and fragility of the female moving through an urban landscape. They set down the panes to dance. The film was repeated, cyclical and it was unclear where it ended and began. The screen was large and located in the corner of the room, removed from the formality of screen on wall.

At Pilar Corrias, the space was more conventional, with floors that almost mirrored the works. I liked the paintings by Sofia Mitsola for the use of colour and scale.

I was really keen to go and see the RCA WIP show as I was interested to see what work was being produced but also how it was presented. Since my work is becoming increasingly print based, I was particularly interested in this department. I loved the variety of work being produced and it was great to get some ideas about how to present my own work. Both Adam and Ekua mentioned that I should think about bringing my work off the wall, and I’ve been thinking about how I could do this in a way that was relevant to my work.

Although I think technological screens can be a really effective way of presenting work, it is not something that I think would be representative of my work since an important part of my practice is about the physical and material. I also feel that we look at screens so much in contemporary culture that I like the idea of art being physically present (unless the screen is being used as an essential medium e.g. for moving image etc.) .

A number of people had presented their work with bulldog clips which I thought looked cool but as objects in themselves, they were very present and a pointed choice by the artist. They come with their own narrative that doesn’t necessarily fit with my work. I also liked the folded works, but they feel indicative of a publication to me and this is not relevant to my work.

I noticed many works had been presented just off the wall, presumably with a mount behind them. I loved the slight shift in expectation that this presented as well as the shadow that was cast. This was something I felt could work for me since my work looks at perception and memory and the shadow has an ever changing quality that references these themes. Being mounted just off the wall, there is something both familiar and unfamiliar which is a quality I hope some of the images have. I also liked the colloquial feel of images scattered on a table, I thought it was intriguing and inviting and felt like part of a process.

I also loved the work that featured branches/roots, presented going from wall to floor, pervading the viewer’s space and the crumpled metal work, casting a shadow on the wall with pieces also laid on the floor. When work is on the floor, the interaction is a little different, somehow closer, it holds a different space. I love the idea of presenting in this way but I’m not sure how I could make this work for my current pieces.

My favourite comment from the silent critique was Hannah saying that the work feels like breathing.

Nico and Eva asked if the pile of sea images on the table could be touched. This had not necessarily been the intention but I had no real resistance to this so I nodded. People ended up interacting with these images more than I had expected. I wondered whether it had been a mistake to put them in or say they were touchable as they seemed to become the focus. The placing of the images was described as inviting to touch. The display on the table seemed to request a different engagement, someone described the ambiguity of whether it could be picked up. It highlighted for me how engaging people found the sense of touch or the desire to touch.

When I had placed the paper on the table, I left one side neatly fastened to the table and the other rolling of the end. I had done this intuitively and decided to keep it as the paper pervaded the area around the desk and shifted it from being just a desk. Some people commented that it seemed unfinished but others read it as part of the curation. I think I wouldn’t make this curatorial decision again as it perhaps looked to accidental, didn’t add to the narrative of memory and perhaps didn’t look like it had a clear though process behind it.

I was pleased that Luisa thought the combination of photography and painting relating to elements of memory were successful.

There was an ambiguity of the image that was discussed, what are they? What was the process. The edges changed the meaning of the reading of the object. A sense of delicacy and poetic, folds, flowers and sea were discussed. Could I make more of the display? Elodie thought there was a sense of emptiness in the curation. Others thought the gaps in curation were like gaps between memories.

People moving the wave images was like the wave moving? It was unclear to people why it wasn’t stuck on wall/why there was no sign saying not to touch. Impermanence.

Clare observed that the dimension of waves on the table like the surface of the sea. It requires an intimacy for people to get close. The movement comments on the changeability of memory and time. A constant re-evaluation within the 25 minutes. They are all static things that are defined by continual movement, plants, bedsheets mirrored by process. Placing on a wall is traditionally a way of assessing time. Since the arrangement is not linear it questions time.

Eva asked why I wanted to photograph paint and was more focussed on the process rather than the content. This was not the process but I was pleased that there was an ambiguity and mystery as to what the process was. An illusion of texture was discussed that made people question if it was a photograph, print or painting.

Painting/drawing on the image was seen as a selective, a covering, a duplication, a recollection, a process. How is the image altered through a selection of processes, how is something transformed.

Memories coming back in different ways, repeating of images in different ways.

Flowing.

Jess thought there were too many different ways of framing image as it was distracting and interrupted the content.

Wooli said that it reminded her of hyper realism, photograph has perspective and opinion – humans can imbue an element into imagery that cameras can’t? Showing feeling on a perspective. Theresa agreed that is was doing something similar to hyper realism but in an abstract way – it seems hyper real but in an ambiguous way – how the artist understands objects – the process abstracts it and it’s more about feelings than the thing itself. I love the idea of exploring how this element of hyper realism related to my work. It is something I need to research further but I love the idea of capturing the feeling of something.

Clare and Ekua suggested I look at Hito Styrl’s Image Circulation and Baudrillard’s writing on hyper realism.

Overall, I found the format of critique so helpful and enlightening. To see people interacting with your work with out me describing it really highlighted what it said in it’s own terms. Of course it doesn’t completely simulate how someone would interact with your work in a gallery space as we all work together in studio spaces and have interim crits in which we describe our ideas and process. However, I found it incredibly valuable and am looking forward to researching hyper realism and how this relates to my work.

I was interested to explore the small floral print with gouache that I had created further, playing with size, framing and clarity/colour. I had created the original print from my own scan and the image was colder and more pixelated than I had expected. I actually quite liked this as it abstracted the image a little, potentially making it more interesting/curious.

I went to the Print Lab to discuss paper options and decided to go for a heavy, good quality paper to see how this impacted the result. I used a different version of the image that was brighter and clearer, and I wanted to have a louder, more robust image. I was pleased with how the image came out and really liked the paper I’d chosen as it provided more weight to the image with brighter colours and a slightly textured surface. I went through the same process with gouache on the image.

Photographs have an attention to detail that is so different to memory. Photographs and memory have different perspectives of one moment. Sometimes the photograph feels less familiar than the memory you’ve constructed. Going over areas of the print with gouache felt like retracing elements of a memory that wouldn’t usually be remembered. The photograph became less and less representative of the memory and felt very different to the moment when I had taken the photo.

Once complete, I felt the large scale had a very different presence to the small scale. The small one was more curious, it was more photographic in size and implored you to step closer if you wanted to understand what it was. The larger scale was more vibrant, clearer, more like a window. In a tutorial with Clare, we had discussed the different framing constructs and what readings came with them. With this in mind, I decided to trim all the edges to make the large scale image more like a bleed print. I wanted to stimulate a sense of being involved in the moment.

Although both images were created with a very similar process, they had very different impacts. Both related to memory but in different ways. The smaller one had the distance of a photograph, being a similar size, while the larger one felt more immediate, perhaps a closer, clearer, more recent memory. Both images played with a tension between figuration and abstraction. Neither had a clear category (is it a painting or a photograph?) and the image was distorted by the gouache, making it unclear or less obvious what the subject matter was. This feeling of ambiguity but not complete abstraction of image is something I try to cultivate in order to activate the “primal brain” (according to Ramachandran’s research). There is a co-location of image, the depth of the photograph which represents another time and location and the paint on surface which breaks the illusion. There is an oscillation between past and present, foreground and background.

Having previously painted a clearly delineated square on a photograph previously, I tried again, this time contrasting it with a roughly painted area that I rubbed into to reveal the photographic surface. One felt like it was concealing, the other revealing, one measure, one roughly responded to.

When placed together, the images work very differently to standing alone. Together, there is a kind of binary opposition. The white paint simple interacts with both images in a very different way.

I tried digitally layering the images. On the black background, the wiped away area felt void like, a hole. I’d be interested to explore this in analogue format.