Monday 1400-1530: Lecture - Artist as a Conceptualist I was apprehensive as to what this lecture would entail after watching a BBC documentary about conceptual art / artists. I feel that a lot of the time, conceptual artists are in the business of making artwork for their own amusement. The fact that it bemuses and frustrates the majority of people seems to satisfy a mischievous element of their personality. Michael Craig-Martin’s The Oak Tree is a prime example of this. I don’t by any stretch disregard Conceptual art. I appreciate and accept that it has a rightful place in the art world. I also have to admit that there are certain pieces that I enjoy, such as the Duchamp’s ‘Readymade’ In Advance of the Broken Arm, and Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs is incredibly thought provoking. ‘It is the objective of the artist who is concerned with Conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry’ LeWitt, 1967:12 In the lecture, we were offered this quote from LeWitt and asked, ‘Do you agree?’. For me, I find it impossible to believe that one piece of work can be globally ‘emotionally dry’. Artwork can intentionally lack emotionally-provoking elements, but I think it is too much of a generalisation to assume that artwork is emotionally dry for all spectators. It is also not a view that is shared based on the examples given in the lecture. Another interesting piece, which does not appear ‘emotionally dry’ is John Baldessari’s Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line. The first adjective that comes to mind for me when looking at this piece is, ‘playful’. As I type this out, I find myself incredibly conflicted. I think a fair evaluation of my personal opinion is that I appreciate thought provoking, minimalist artwork. I agree that the idea behind the artwork can be more important than the piece itself, but not always. That is too broad of a thought. If the idea was always more important than the piece, I don’t think we’d ever have had Cubism or Abstract art. Tuesday 10-1130am: Seminar – Conceptual Art Following on from the previous day’s lecture. Today was the first seminar that I (intentionally) contributed nothing to the group discussion. I felt that perhaps my outlook on conceptualism is too negative, somehow tainted by the interviews I’d watched with Martin Creed. Perhaps I’d confused his apparent awkwardness and inability to give concise explanations to his artwork, for an uncomfortableness in front of camera or even an aloofness. I left the seminar rather underwhelmed. It was more of a discussion on the writings of LeWitt and Kosuth than personal opinions on specific artworks (I’m aware that that’s a very selfish way of looking at the resulting conversation in a group seminar). 1615: Individual Tutorial With the Berlin trip being the week prior, I didn’t really have much to present in respect of ongoing practice. It was however a chance to explain my idea for the Berlin-inspired artwork* I was developing. *Berlin-inspired artwork. On the return coach trip from Heathrow to Birmingham, Steve Harris announced that we (everyone on the trip, including tutors), are encouraged to produce a piece of artwork inspired by Berlin. It could be any medium and inspiration can be found from any aspect of the trip. The submission date was set as 11th November 2016, so just over a fortnight to produce something. I knew that wanted to keep with the analogue and collage theme of my current practice. My original idea was to collage on to the departing and returning boarding passes, so that I could present two separate collage that are linked together through the journey and also their medium. I wanted to use images and text sourced entirely from items taken from Berlin – magazines, leaflets, flyers, tickets and brochures. My initial reservation is that, usually, two can be problematic when presenting artwork. The ‘magic number’ when displaying work is generally three, or any odd number, as aesthetically it is more pleasing. I also didn’t want to present two boarding passes and have them mistaken for an ‘equals’ symbol. Wednesday 10-1130am: Lecture: Artist as Digital Native. The afternoon after the lecture was spent developing the Berlin piece. I had thought long and hard about how I want to make the boarding passes. Directly collaging on to them would possibly take away from the nature of the ticket – printed and mono. I decided to photocopy all of the paraphernalia I had accumulated from the trip, in order to have monochrome images and text which would work better with the boarding pass (white ticket with black print). I think using the photocopier is as close to digital that I could get, without it actually being digitally produced. Before moving any further with the piece, I needed to find out how the printer operates in terms of orientation with the scanner bed in relation to the paper tray. I copied a piece of paper with a dot drawn in the corner, then, put that piece of paper through again and copied another piece of paper. This helped me decipher whether the paper is being turned over or around as it goes through the machine. I experimented with overlaying and re-printing on to copies. After the initial experiments (above), I removed my passenger details in order to have every pass identical and anonymous. Then, using the technique of copying a pass and then putting it back in the paper tray, I managed to overlay the departure times for the outbound and return dates/times/gates. From here, I am in a position where I have 43 identical, anonymous passes. Thursday 1030-1630: Moving forwards, I can now concentrate on collaging on to the passes. I photocopied all leaflets, Collaging was approximately 30% completed at the end of Thursday. Friday 1030am-1630 Continued with collaging process. Approximately 60% complete at the end of the day.
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