Thinking in shapes.

Across RCA is a great scheme where students get to do something completely different for a week.

I went to the Princes School of Traditional Arts and joined the current talented MA students for lessons in geometry and biomorphic patterns.

We made platonic solids from sticks and thin card.

Geo = earth, metry = measure.

Having recently read Raymond Williams ‘People of the Black Mountains’ which tells stories of a burgeoning civilization spanning thousands of years it was interesting to connect the theories of the early measurers in his book with what I was learning, to think about this knowledge in terms of history.

The teaching was very much from a spiritual perspective, highlighting the balance and harmony in the universe present in mathematical relationships.

I found these ideas quite relevant to the ways I have been thinking about my work. I am thinking of introducing pattern into my work and I want the shapes to have meaning, to be from the very structures that the world is built from. If I am searching for paradise in the everyday then looking at the construction of the universe seems a good place to start.

Heaven and earth linked by consciousness.

This painting, done using a brush with just a single hair, makes me think of stone circles.

Writing this blog helps me pin my thoughts down. To pause and consider what I have recently seen or read or discovered feeds my practice.

Coming back to think about the history of clearing our space in the forest.

Building – burial – marriage – ancestors – (wild men)

The forest as dark, dangerous and profane as opposed to enchanted, sacred, shelter.

I haven’t made this work yet.

This year the RCA Printmaking study trip was to Belgium.

We visited Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven at her studio in Antwerp.

Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven

Her interests are in the intertwining of the female body, mysticism and technology.

Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven

She believes she could almost be a reincarnation of the mystic Marguerite Porete in that she shares so many mutual concerns.

Porete was executed for heresy as a result of her poetic mysticism in  Le Miroir des âmes simples anéanties (The Mirror of the Simple Souls Who Are Annihilated and Remain Only in Will and Desire of Love) which lists seven stages of annihilation of the soul necessary to become one with God which fell foul of current Christian thinking.

Again the mirror.

We visited Museum Plantin Moretus home of the oldest printing presses in the world.

The current exhibition was Dissected Anatomy

The sphere is a symbol of unity and completeness

I have asked my optician for the scan images of my eye to use in my work

Always searching.

We visited M HKA Museum of Modern Art Antwerp

There were beautiful evocative photographs taken in Moscow’s Museum of Natural History by Russian artist Olga Chernysheva. The illumination of the light boxes emphasized the illumination of the museum display cases within, making the images ethereal and other worldly.

Olga Chernysheva Cactus Seller 2009

Social realism. Hans Eijkelboom set himself very clear rules about what he would photograph each day.

Hans Eijkelboom Fotonotities (1992 – 2007)

From the swarming figures on the streets he picks out the individual and then places them back in the group setting up taxonomies and cultural relationships

Hans Eijkelboom Fotonotities

Faith and hope – the fulfilment of desire must never happen – it must always be in the future

Francis Alys When Faith Moves Mountains: Lima, Peru

We had a trip to La Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image Imprimee in Louviere. A soulless print archive in a soulless place.

Like a crematorium built for function on the outskirts of town, it seemed displaced from locality and devoid of the spirituality of the temple or shrine. An archive seems a sad place somehow.

The theory is, it’s only a resting place.

First proof of soft ground etching – Chapel of Rest

Wiels Contemporary Art Centre had a big retrospective of Mark Leckey with the wonderful title –  Lending Enchantment to Vulgar Materials

There was a new interpretation of the Universal Addressability of Dumb Things. This time the material icons had been 3D printed. The status of the object has been questioned throughout the various incarnations of this exhibition. Where does the aura lie?

Mark Leckey

Ana Torfs ‘Echolalia’ exhibition also at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre was tantalising for me. It contained research and imagery that I am drawn to yet the presentation of so much factual text alongside turned it into something a bit dry.

Ana Torfs

The installation piece ‘The Parrot and the Nightingale, a Phantasmagoria’ worked well

and I liked the vignette images of islands like the view through a telescope but the text was intrusive

Ana Torfs

I can understand why you might want to include all your research, she talks about an archaeology of knowledge

Ana Torfs

I have a similar problem, I am grappling with how to make known my research and narrative in my own work

It’s hard to make it evident in the image but I don’t think it matters that everything should be disclosed, ideas should be sparked and then threads can be followed that may lead elsewhere even.

French artist Emmanuelle Laine at c-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e gallery in Brussels had made a colourful intervention creating a sculpture on site that she then photographed and repeated around the gallery walls. She has found a way to include her research and incidental thoughts in her work, her tools both for process and inspiration are left scattered around the space in evidence

Emmanuelle Laine

The traces of construction and thought processes are not discarded or hidden – the sculpture becomes an exploded view of the artists brain during the creative process

Emmanuelle Laine

Great to see some more video work of Philippa Kuligowski at New Sensations.

She has a wonderful way of collaging imagery and media in original ways to create engaging magical narratives.

Philippa Kuligowski The Plover and the Crocodile

The Plover and the Crocodile link to film

Other work I liked also at New Sensations –

Vivien Zhang Porcupine Hair

Nicholas Johnson Mildew Swoosh

Felicity Hammond Restore to Factory Settings

Ben Woodeson That Bit From The Omen, Yes That Bit

I haven’t seen The Omen so I don’t know that bit.

I am looking at invisible planes made visible, the threat of collapse and the possibility of violence.

The new media animation by Charles Richardson was intriguing. It was not a hologram. The figure turned and writhed out of the screen in 3D but no glasses were  involved –  it was like a ghost had entered the room  – it was uncanny

Charles Richardson Rehearsal

In an inspiring lecture Esther Teichmann made suggestions of work to check out including Marie Darrieussecq ‘My Phantom Husband’, Claire Denis ‘Beau Travail’ and Janet Cardiff and George Bures Millar ‘Blue Hawaii Bar’ link here – Searching for the light in an evocative installation in a Victorian water reservoir.

All the time I thought I was looking at landscape but maybe I was looking for what was held within the landscape. The nooks and crannies where the myths hide.