Getting ready for assessments...

I’ve spent the day exhibiting existing work, experimenting with the layout and considering what will be most visually interesting for the assessment set up.

Print seminar interactive piece

Here is a video i made during the event, and the first video i've attempted to edit... i hope it works!

Untitled from Victoria Lafford on Vimeo.

Print Seminar performances and workshop

Second year print students came together in the main lecture theatre to create a morning event exhibiting ideas and interacting with one and others practices... i put together an interactive piece here are some photos of the outcome...

Una Grimes- visiting artist lecture

Her work explores the narratives, of both historical as well as fictional characters. She is very influenced by film and costume, and spent some time during her childhood in the constume department at the Victoria and Albert museum. I really love the idea of spending time with contume and being able to escape into different eras or continents, the costumes work as a time machine transporting people whether their in the performance or watching it, the clothes are given so much power. It must be amazing to have the opportunity and the skills to be able to create such things. The clothes hold so much narrative and even more so when they are actually put to their function in a performance.

I had a tutorial with Una this afternoon, we discussed a few ways in which I could take things further….

• Try presenting latex on concrete
• Language
• Ethnological displays
• Questioning where things come from and their cultural use contrasting
their museum surroundings.
• Dallas Seitz
• Lindsay Seers
• Pitt Rivers
• Yinka Shonibare
• Susan Hiller

London exhibitions

A friend sent me a link a while back about the opening of a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, I rarely go to this gallery space, but this contemporary South African photography exhibition looked as if it could definitely fuel my practice further. I found the exhibition very interesting visually and also how prominently political the imagery was. This is something that I’m afraid of within my own practice, but here it seemed verymuch the point to be expressing these political messages, it seemed very much about the honesty of a photograph and exploring this honesty through every individuals eye. The imagery because of this honesty was shocking as well as moving for the viewer, you were seeing people who are really passionate about what they believe in and it felt like it was shot through the camera lens of someone who shared a similar passion.

Images from installation space

back on english soil...

Being back in the studio after a three week trip to Kenya feels really strange... Going from a texturally and culturally rich environment to a bare white walled institutionalised environment is an odd shock to the system! i have the installation space booked for the rest of the day and tomorrow, i'll have to embrace this polar setting to make the most of the space that i've got...

whilst away, and being aware that i'd have this space soon after returning, i'd made some latex samples of interesting textures found surrounding my everyday living space. i also documented each latex sample by taking a photo of where i took the peel from, as after peeling it has proved fairly difficult to tell where i pulled the samples from. i intended to make each piece of latex a size that could be representative of the formatting of a standard photograph. i wanted to steer away from photographic documentation as i was uneasy with how it can be mistaken for a colonial or more political representations of the area, or as just holiday photography...

A looooooong break...

so after Reflective journal hand in and easter holidays i've been away from blogging and the internet for a long old time... but back at home in winchester and back into the rhythm of things at WSA more blogging is definitely on the cards too, i think i need it to help me to maintain a dialogue between the work that i'm producing over long perios of time and between my own work and the work of contemporary artists too.

more screen printing...

Susan Stockwell

I have this idea to take latex out to Kenya on my next trip; it would be brilliant to use latex that was abstracted from a tree there. I am really excited about this as I think my frustrations with how my work is read contextually will be lessened if I veer away from documenting using digital media and concentrate more on material. I’ll look into the work of Susan Stockwell to help me to engage with materials. My only concern with this matierial is, if my use latex is contextualised as making a statement about something more political, for example contraception. However, it makes sense to be using latex for me at this time in my practice as it is such a malleable material and I can be making a really interesting trace of my own western gaze without using photography. I really need to veer well away from being concerned about how work is read to enjoy creating whilst letting things happen fluidly. I also really must bear in mind what Louisa said about the school being “a perfect and safe environment to test” (Minkin 2011) my ideas and to engage with other peoples perceptions on returning.

...and binding the book

Lydgia Clark seminar

What an incredibly interesting and inspirational way to start the day! This weeks print seminar was with a visiting artist from the Royal Collage of Art Trish Lyons who predominantly works with sound, music and performance. I felt that this seminar would be quite separate from my practice and wasn’t sure how well I’d engage with it. I often shy away from sound and music, as I automatically relate it to technology, which I need to get over my irrational fear of using, and I’ve never used performance in my practice before either. I definitely need to reconsider these choices after this morning. Lyons spoke about the work of Lydgia Clark and we all participated in recreating a performance piece by the Brazilian artist, titled Baba Antropofagica that was one of a series of her “psyho-sensorial” (Rehberg 2006) experiments. Our participation involved one student laying on the floor, whilst the rest of us stood around her decorating her body with saliva stained coloured thread from the spools we has in our mouths. The performance felt oddly ritualistic, especially being inside four white walls in an institution. The lights were off so nobody could see the effect of the laying down of the threads, but the sound of the clicking of the spools against our teeth sounded like the clicks in some dialects or the call of a rare bird of paradise perhaps! This idea of hearing and “feeling the work rather than seeing the work” (Lyons 2011) is a really interesting concept, likewise with the using other parts of your body to create the work, these are some methods that I’d like to explore. When we turned the lights back on we were able to take photos of the event, it looked almost as if the body had been pollinated and was ready to grow beautifully coloured flowers, it also alluded to masks or maybe skin grafts. There was also a strange correlation to the way the thread was left scattered and the way I had used thread in binding my book!

Instalation space

Over feedback week i stitched together some photo documentation from Kenya together, highlighting with the stich the gaze of the people depicted. I had in mind that I was later on going to bind this into a book. However, after making these stich marks in the photographs I decided that the imprint of the stich both on how it was intended on the front, but as well, how the imprint of the stich on the back turned out was all too interesting for it to get lost within the boundaries of a book. I decided to take the unbound makings of a book into school to see what came to mind to do with it. Seeing that the exhibition space was available I decided to make the most of it by hanging my unbound book in there.

...and finally getting round to using latex

Silk Screening

I’ve spent the whole day preparing and pulling prints from my silk screen. I got really involved with it and haven’t prepared for formative feedback… ooops! I feel quite stressed now. I must get on with writing my artist statement to ensure it encapsulates what I want to say. I have just considered why I’ve left this till so late to set up for the feedback. Reflecting on this time passing and me steering away from making any changes to my studio space in terms of setting up for formative feedback probably has a lot to do with trying to take ownership of my practice, and having successfully made my studio into a space where I feel at ease and comfortable, but also inspired to get on and create more. This is something I obviously find it difficult to now move away from. I need to back down on this and embrace movement and change; just like how I had to consider setting up for the world book day exhibition thinking on my feet, and more site specifically.

Silk Screening

I’ve spent the whole day preparing and pulling prints from my silk screen. I got really involved with it and haven’t prepared for formative feedback… ooops! I feel quite stressed now. I must get on with writing my artist statement to ensure it encapsulates what I want to say. I have just considered why I’ve left this till so late to set up for the feedback. Reflecting on this time passing and me steering away from making any changes to my studio space in terms of setting up for formative feedback probably has a lot to do with trying to take ownership of my practice, and having successfully made my studio into a space where I feel at ease and comfortable, but also inspired to get on and create more. This is something I obviously find it difficult to now move away from. I need to back down on this and embrace movement and change; just like how I had to consider setting up for the world book day exhibition thinking on my feet, and more site specifically.

World Book Day Event and Exhibition

Hand bound book of collages

Susan Hiller EXhibition at the Tate

The Susan Hiller exhibition was really refreshing to see after the British Art Show at the Hayward. It felt like really honest work. She collected what she liked the look of, understood from her postcard collection. This felt like she’d been really passionate about the archiving of something she was interested in or appealed to her, perhaps even for just aesthetic reasons and didn’t have any concerns holding her back with presenting to the subjective eye of the public some sort of political remark.

Preparation for World Book Day Exhibition

Making experiments with latex, I feel frustrated with not really knowing where I’m going with this, mostly because I’m completely unsure of how it’s going to work, will the seeds actually even sprout properly in the string, will it all just fall out when I go to hang it. I wished I had considered my time management earlier on. Though there is a part of me that thinks this could be a positive thing as not knowing how its going to work entirely will mean I’ll have to make sure I engage with the space more specifically on the day.

Eva Hesse

I’ve been looking at Eva Hesses work recently, through doing this I’ve been inspired to work with latex, a material that she uses often within her practice. I’m aware that I really need to engage with artists who use materials I want to experiment with to be most successful with them. Having this contact or knowledge of Eva Hesses work I will be more confident to go ahead and experiment with this new material, latex.

Copy stand workshop

Cognitive eye movement

I think it is so interesting how our eyes engage with the world around us, how everyone is having a completely different experience with their personal sight. One person’s journey through their system of viewing would be very different to the next. During the multidisciplinary week I attended a seminar where an artist and an experimental psychologist paired up on a research project about cognitive eye movement. I will have to keep this in mind when considering my own gaze in terms of my research and the cognitive process my own eyes are engaging in. Acknowledging this in relation to others gazes would be of great interest too.

Exhibtion Theory and Practice

Overall the exhibition did come together and everyone felt like they had been ambitions with the work they installed. There was a definite sense of interaction between all of our work as well. I think the exhibition felt very vivid as well as ambitious. Our title ‘Translation. Transition’ helped to contextualise our exhibit because of the way all our work engaged with one another’s (for example Matt and my overlapping sound pieces), as well as how the viewer would interact and feel more involved with the exhibition due to the array of media and context (film, performance, photography, sculpture, etc.) and of course exhibiting work that was produced overseas. Having the opportunity to get together with artists from other pathways and gain an understanding of the way they work and how they construct and consider space was all very interesting to observe too, this was as interesting itself as the exhibition for me. It was so valuable to watch how people would engage with materials and space, I think this is what makes being part of an institution and having a studio space surrounded by other creative minds such a golden experience!

Thinking about the opening of the exhibition now I wish I had considered putting a camera towards the audience to get an idea of how they were reacting to something I had viewed so much as exotic. I wonder how it being projected in this space also alters how it is viewed; is it now ‘art’ only because it is viewed in the context of an exhibition space on white walls? People at art school would be so familiar with projections, so would the technology the film is passed through narrowing the viewers gaze and diluting the possibility of it being viewed as exotic? I tried placing material objects in the eye of the viewer also to extend the gaze further as they are now able to engage with something more material and perhaps ‘exotic’ to them.

What is exotic to me, then captured through my eyes, through my camera lens then played back through (familiar to many) projection technology, in surrounding familiar (yet completely disjointed to the video) surroundings and then understood through someone else’s gaze who has had a whole different set of experiences, has different cultural values and I’m sure a completely different idea f what is exotic.

some pointers to consider...

• Datelessness
• Glamorisation of the rustic
• Cutting off, contextualisation and the exotic, orientalism.
• Our own changing cultural climate
• Tracing of the Gaze
• Eva Hesse and Adrian Piper

Assessment set up, and struggling with focus after a long break...

Aesthetic value of forms really started the balls rolling this year in my studio practice. The very fortunate for me, yet random series of events that lead for this organic form to be in my own hands highlights the importance of trusting in the unconscious. Before assessments I had been in my element; exploring, documenting and interacting with material and object. However, having this period of time where I have been out of the studio and have been less play-full and subjected myself less to these forms I feel a slight paranoia that these objects could become redundant likewise with the research and documentation I collected in Kenya. Reflecting on this now I think it could have something to do with the dialectic between my collection of documentation, very obviously intriguing objects and material forms (for example the collected and decorated gourds), in contrast to the flatter more institutionalised videos and photograph documentation. This could have something to do with the eclectic mixes of cultural values and where one culture finishes and the next one starts… how many cultures does one actually belong to? This is problematic for the contextualisation of my work. I have taken this imagery out of the context and put it into a completely polar one. The objects are now surrounded by a whole new set of cultural values, whether this be of certain individuals, or how about the idea of the institution of WSA having its own cultural identity and set of values?

paper experiments with screen printing...

this print is on papyrus. Papyrus is a plant found mostly in fresh water lakes and rivers, it serves many purposes and was the first material used to make paper. i will research further in to the multiple functions of these organic forms (gourds and papyrus)...

Colour experiments with screen printing

Photograph lithography...

Waste from the exhibition space...

... where the seeds had been growing and watered had been left with an interesting imprint, i decided to exhibit the results in our print exhibition 'the eleventh hour'

Instalation space

i spent a few days of semester one in the bookable print exhibition space. Here i made an installation piece using natural forms grown within domestic dish scrubs, continuing with looking at objects functions and how things can be adapted to serve another function...

i made a video of the space too but it definitely still needs editing!