Portrait Miniatures

Lately in the studio its been serious production time.  I've been painting away at my portrait miniatures and some larger anamorphic works of Arthur Wick's bust.  The strategy is to make a bunch of them, see which ones work and why and then tweak them to work better if need be.  The above miniatures are of two specific people:  Errol Fielder and Marilyn Thompson and from these ten or so images of each, one will be chosen for the exhibition in October.

The larger anamorphic paintings are painted over some other anamporph's which failed because they weren't gridded up from the beginning.  The result is that they pop into place when you're in the sweet spot.

Studio Update: Portraiture

I've been buying timber to make frames to strech canvas over for my project.  It took me about two full days to saw, screw, nail and stretch the canvas last week and only half a day to go through half of them today.  The drawings aren't complete but it their getting like how I want them.  I'm going to put them up on Everything.


These portraits are workings from the bust Arthur Wicks gave me.

Arthur Wicks' Head, Everything and DIY Stretcher Bars

I looked into the price of stretcher bars and realised that my budget for the project couldn't fund the amount of stretcher bars I would need plus the canvas and paint for the project.  To cut costs I decided I'd make my own from 42mm x 19mm dressed pine.  Above is a picture with three stretched canvases from my DIY activities.  

I have begun working with intensive studies of the bust Arthur gave me, for Everything.  My supervisor for this project informed me that I have to fill out a risk assessment type of form for portraying people as part university of the University's policy.  When I told him that so far I hadn't been drawing anyone from life and that I'm drawing the bust Arthur gave me he said that I don't need to get consent from an "inanimate object".  This particularly interested me because of the recent Archibald Prize winner Ben Quilty whose Portrait of Margaret Olley was painted from a photograph.  A photograph is a flat print of a rendering of light usually resulting in a picture.  I wondered if I was painting a photograph of Arthur would I still be required to get the consent?  I probably would, but not if it's a cast bust from Arthur's face, which is still a depiction of Arthur.  Ben Quilty didn't depicted his portrait of Olley as a painting of a portrait photograph.  There was no mention of the surface and texture of the photographic print, or the thickness or weight of the paper, or the pixels as viewed from a computer screen, or any clues about the fact that he had worked from a photograph, other than that he said that he had.

I'm doing something a bit different in my use of the bust.  In my work, Wicks' bust isn't a technology for me to reference the face of my subject, it represents the negotiation between myself and Arthur around the limits of Arthur to be involved in the work.  When I met Arthur I asked if I could meet up with him once a week and draw, and I drew a parallel to the therapist patient relationship in psychoanalysis.  Arthur didn't want that level of commitment in my work for whatever reason, he might not have wanted to spend so long with a stranger or maybe just doesn't like to plan his life that far in advance - whatever the reason, the result was that he loaned me this bust which I accepted.  This bust is an artifact of the story between the artist and the subject, an event that occurred from the meeting.

Portraiture made up entirely of objects isn't a radical notion.  Michael Zavros' painting Ars longa, vita brevis was a finalist in the 2009 Archibald Prize and features cosmetic items with no depiction of the facial likeness of the subject.  The subject is portrayed through the items selected and painted by the artist  and arranged to appear like a skull.

In the previous blog post I mentioned the portraiture practice of Riceke Dijkstra, whose portraits outline the awkwardness of certain subjects revealing their individuality through their deiberate attempts of concealment and blending in to avoid the dangers of intimacy, the result is that we get clues about them, about how they attempt to do so which can reveal defenses, prejudices or expectations about them which we can make inferences from about their character and personality.  The same types of inferences can be made when the subject offers a bust instead of commiting to a regular session meetings.  Maybe it tells us that Arthur has better ways to spend his time?

Anamorphosis

Anamorph from Tony Curran on Vimeo.

I'm experimenting with using anamorphic strategies for drawing portraits in the white cube.  The anamorphic techniques have been used since the Enlightenment but it's still a strange experience.  It's a technique that confuses perception researchers because the image doesn't exist on one surface and thus raises difficult questions about realism and distortion (Hyman, 2000. p27).  I've been looking for a way to develop a sense of perspectival dependency in the work at the end of the show that doesn't depend on technology which could break down, or cost more than I have for budget.  By perspectival depenency I'm refering to accounting for what the viewer sees in their particular space.  In doing so I'm looking into the pre-electronic modes of interactivity.  Currently Everything is completely electronic, but to extend the work beyond the internet and into a physical space in the white cube I'll need to rig up monitors, projectors and maybe sensors to detect where the viewer is and project what they are suposed to see.  Once I start thinking about monitors and cables my head starts to cramp up because of how unelegant artworks like that are, unless it visually consolidates some themes in the work.  If I can pull something DIY off and have it looking neat then that'll be much more enjoyable to look at.  There' pressure from arts institutions like Ozco to get good with electronics, and I'm always trying to fight that.

Some other strategies I've looked into are lenticular printing which would eat up my budget and give me enough space for a fraction of what my ambition is.  By experimenting with anamorphs I'm hoping I can direct viewers to see hidden surprises in the portrait.  Also the anamorph works for inconvenient surfaces to produce a flat image - which portraiture conventionally is.

Anamorph (study), 2011.  Charcoal on paper.

This is not a picture of anyone in particular, just a sketch of some head proportions so that I can make some decisions about how to proceed with this line of enquiry.  Mike Parr's early self portraiture is interesting for anamorphic stuff because he used to do endurance work locked to one area making self portraits.  Because he was fixed to a certain point his portraits were often distorted like this , because the drawing was consistent with his oblique perspective.  Others of his were mediated by flexible mirrors which he would use to deliberately distort.
 

Hyman, John. Pictorial Art and Visual Experience in British Journal of Aesthetics 40, no. 1 (2000): p27.

Studio Update

I began the laborious task of collating all the images that I've produced for Everything.  It took a lot longer than it looks but I'm using this image to show me how detailed my work is at present.  I've moved in to a new studio area which is double the size of the space I was in but the wall area isn't as nice for pinning.  This gives me a virtual studio wall where I can see which areas need attention the most.   I want to get a lot more information than this image depicts, and to start including the torso.

The design for the installation has begun.  Today I made my white cube which I will use to start experimenting with the space.  It's at the scale of 1:200 of the size of the room it will be exhibited in before the end of the year.

I made contact with the subject of the work.  I'm not sure I want to reveal his name yet, or ever for that matter, but I'll be meeting up at his studio next week to discuss my project, hopefully to begin his involvement.

Whites and cubes

I'm getting more and more interested in the idea of presenting my portrait as a "white cube" portrait, which is actually what I set out to do the whole time, but I hadn't really considered the role the white cube was going to play in the presentation and reception of the portrait. By the white cube, I'm referring to the aesthetic convention of the gallery space being "white" and with space enough around the works that they can have a "neutral" context. It is perhaps the neutrality that is important and not the literal white. Some white cubes are black for certain shows, and some have a colour which aesthetically or conceptually ties the works together. In saying that the same could be said for the actual cubeness of the work as well. I doubt of all the white cubes I've been in hardly any of them qualify as real cubes.

I'm pushing and pulling in two different directions for this work. There's the direction that I could have a minimal display of Everything as a digital projection of some sort, an other way is to not have the digital part at all but to literally have all of the drawings that make up the space that has been explored by the work. Ie every drawing that I've done for it arranged like a spatio-sequential mapping - a room with thoughsands of drawings of different scales depicting different angles of the same figure. The interesting thing about this would be that it would be similar to the old Salon type exhibitions where paintings were hung on every inch of wall, even the ceiling. I like the maniacal obsessiveness it would suggest too. I suppose another manifestation would be a synthesis of the two types; white-cube and pre-white-cube.

As you can see there's plenty of work to go.

These are photos from the Daily Advertiser covering the exhibition at the Art Scoeity. I'm standing there with Sonya Gee and Sue Dyde (President of the Art Society). It's a good opportunity to brag that it's my third time in the Daily Advertiser, this time no longer a budding artist; I am an Art Enthusiast. This exhibition was a great example of a non-white-cube exhibition.

Everything is going to be OK

After one oficial week of being in the studio I have made some intereting additions to Everything, including some more coloured bits which add dimensional complexity to the work.  I'll soon be at the stage when I need to upgrade my studio as I've been told will happen this Wednesday because I am quickly running out of wall space for the this project.  While I have plenty to fill in as you can see above, I have already started to stick extra bits of paper and board so that I can build up the height of the work.  I only neeed a space big enough so that I can organise each drawing, it's not an issue of display so much.

I've been reading a book which Sonya Gee bought me called Internet Art: The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce, by Julian Stallabrass, which talks about the history of the internet, the internet as a medium for artmaking and all the political stuff with file sharing etc.  I finished it in a few days, partly because it's so interesting and partly because I'm having to go through books at an enourmous rate to cover the research I'm working on.  It's raised a few interesting ideas for the project which include what the finished work will become, how the work can evolve and what the work is right now while it is hosted on the internet.  It's also made me think of some interesting parallels between the internet as a space of universal consciousness which plays neatly into the conceptual elements that are forming around the portrait and subjective realities.  

I realised that I'm also making a portrait and I haven't chosen my subject yet.  That's going to have to be decided soon because it's going to greatly inform the rest of the development of the work.  I had an idea to complete the work as a self portrait...............  I might be a good guinea pig.

New Studio at Charles Sturt University - Wagga Wagga

I've settled in nicely in my new studio at CSU Wagga among the rest of the other Fine Art students.  At the moment I've just been setting up Everything.  Because of the space that I have, I'm able to put the drawings up on the wall so that I can visualize each part of the whole.  I couldn't do this previously because it's a hassle to stick things on the walls at home (rental property).  It's amazing to have a studio again that I can mess up even if guests come over.

A few people are asking me about what is going to become of the project and at this stage I'm not sure.  It has a few, some potential stakeholders including the Wagga Art Gallery as well as CSU which will both shape the outcome of this project to some degree, but I'm expecting it to turn into an immersive installation work for a gallery.  If you still haven't checked it out, do it.  In a few days I'll put up a colourful update.

My Layered Perspex Landscapes

Early evening, home studio from ABC Open Riverina on Vimeo.

Early Evening, Home Studio. Video taken by Sonya Gee for the ABC Open project: One Small Window.

Want to contribute your own One Small Window to the project? Go to the page that tells you how.

The Further My Practice Moves Into Zeroes and Ones

As I've been revamping my website away from the old Google Site I used to have, I've been noticing that content is king and cleanliness is godliness.  The flashy animations and spectacular introductions to a website are hard to do and they alienate certain web browsers including mobile devices.  However the ambition of producing a simple website to act as a conduit between my practice and potential netsplorers becomes complicated because of the small scale of the studio practice I have been running to date.  With the exception of artist residencies and work produced while studying, my practice has consistantly existed somewhere within my place of resiedence (like a second bedroom for example) and because I am renting I am extremely limited in how I can use the space:  I require permission for every hole I wish to put in the walls and landlords are reluctant to let me drill willy nilly while I experiment on how my work can develop within the space else I might have to forfeit large sums of money on repairing whatever alterations I make to the space.  Moreover, because I am renting the space I am unable to customise the backgrounds of any photo documentation.  This means that documenting my work risks an unproffessional context.

There have been some opportunities to document my work in a professional context such as on exhibition in a gallery but because of all expenses reserved for producing work, I do not maintain a budget for hiring project spaces or studios to set up and document my work.  Occasionally with small work I can create space in my studio to photograph drawings or small sculptures or scan them.  However there is a serious limitation on how legitimate the publication of the work is.  For example, there are works of mine which have been made and published as a zine or straight for this blog.  While they are modes of publication and distribution, there are also other ways I intend to publish the works such as exhibitions and .pdf.

Recently I have begun production of a work which is an interactive website where the users cursor controls from what angle the subject is viewed.  Everything is in a unique project in the context of my practice as it is made with ink and brush drawings, scanned and then set as a coordinate in a .html document.  The work has already been uploaded and it is far from completion.  The audience has the capacity to view the work in various states of its progress, but they have no capacity to view past drawings once they have been updated.  It is a real time development of a work.  In some ways, visiting this work is a digital analogy to visit an artist studio where you can track the progress of works.  As I have just recently moved regionally (5 hours out of any capital cities) to Wagga Wagga this is a crucial part to having a practice and being connected with the artworld centres of Australia (and hopefully the world).  This is one example of the nexus between the internet and the studio and in some ways it is an online studio.

This is reminiscent of Gary Carlsey's idea of the laptop ateliaer.  In the video below he outlines his practice revealing tha this studio is concisely packaged digitally within his laptop which he can access to manipulate his art ready for reception in the world of the real.  This allows Carsley to go between Sydney and Amsterdam (both places of work and residence) with relatively little inconvenience.




Another important distinction between the artist in the digital realm and the artist in the physical world is the portfolio.  The online portfolio becomes of mode of publication particularly at the point of managing ones professional discourse.  Also a website can act as a tool to publish new material not yet exhibitied or published for a public audience.  In many cases this is the role of my blog - which started as a way to track progress of my work, ideas and artistic direction.  The success of this is hazy to date because of the compulsion to use it as a marketing tool and the inevitable desire to censor sentiments that move against desirable marketing sensibilities.

This same tool can be used to quickly publish material so that it is out there in the artworld ether and also to act as a marketing tool in case this work might attract attention from galleries or future patrons.  This is a blurry side of the website and of an online practice in general - to what extent is the material that you publish legitimate art when it is published by the artist but hasn't interacted with any artworld institions such as ARIs, Museums, critics, etc.  Not to say that my work does not interact with these institutions but there are a number of works that I have published both on my blog and / or on my website but have never exhibited in a gallery space.  Becuase of the limited distribution of the work it means that it is primarily an online publication and hence primarily internet art, despite the very tangible nature of the work.

This problem of the changed nature of the work via it's internet morphology changes the dynamics of exploring the works because of arrangement, scale, interactivity of the online form and the artists' ability to document and reproduce an online analogue to the website.  An example of this is when looking at a work that was made as a zine with a front cover, back cover and pages in between may become a .pdf file which reads by scrolling down, changing the experience of the layout and making each page an individually aesthetic experience.  I can also animate images as .gifs or as image rollovers and links which make elements of the page more dynamic.  The result is more than making a visual work but involves designing an interactive experience for the audience.  Unfortunately that isn't always what I want to spend time on but it turns out to be a necessary part of sharing visual ideas.  If I don't design this interactive experience it is difficult for people to engage with the work and it inevitably changes the reading of the work.  This problem is messy, however it is a good problem to have because it is one that provides an opportunity to grow an audience base but it demands a specific skill set in order to be successful.

Two very successful artist websites that achieve this are Olafur Eliasson and Richard Goodwin where their practices are quite well simulated and backed up by free downloaded research which requires several visits.  Their websites are a resource of content which builds on the user engagement over time.  Both have a budget to develop that in a broader studio with staff and experts in the field, however they are both inspiring in how they can manage the public perception of their practice by providing an engaging resource and thoroughly outlining the aesthetic and theoretical framework in which they work. They do not however make their work to be published on their website.  Both recieve commissions which fund their projects, such as Eliasson's work with BMW, the Sydney MCA and more as well as Goodwin's research with UNSW's College of Fine Arts and his recent exhibition at Australian Galleries in Sydney.  Both artists have a strong sculptural and architectural background which might explain their consideration for structure and explorability of their websites.

Hopefully my new website will be finished soon but I keep finding new opportunities to enhance the explorability of certain projects which makes me think that it might never be finished.  In some ways it is like I am making these works all over again or that I made them once as a study for how they would end up on the web.  It is a labourious surprise but I'm starting to see that it will all be worth it soon.

Everything

I've been adding more detail of my new portraiture experiment called Everything, where I am creating an ever increasing amount of information into the scene.  I am developing it into a comprehensive account of a slice frozen in space and when I have done this it will be taken further and unfrozen. 

The project is simplistic in its design.  It relies on some very basic image rollovers in Java and HTML.  Some of the script has actually been appropriated from Olafur Eliasson's website.

The work will continue to develop over time.  Each of those squares pictured above will become smaller as the resolution of the scene gets bigger.  There is a futile side to this project which is similar to that depicted in the Kauffman 2008 film Synecdoche New York, however it fulills the dream to work on a project that will never have to be finished.

Gestating

I've been playing around with watercolours since I've been out of Fraser Studios.  I've been painting under the concept of Individual as I develop the first issue of the Quarterly Collection, which is a fine art by subscription package.  Although I am still working through these images I find it interesting to save them at different stages of the process.  I always have a fear of ruining an image when I continue working on it and so I want to keep a logue of the stages for my own reflection.  It also provides any readers the opportunity to make any early comments and to see my artistic process.

As you can see with these images they each have very different processes, intents, and themes.  I will post updated images as I make significant additions to each.  Please forgive any "dirt" type noise in the images as I've been having difficulty getting acrylic paint off the glass.  I'd love to know if you have any favourites from these.