Much of what I learned during the drawing weeks revolved around patience. A theme Icould not escape. So embraced. Patience for me is something that comes in waves. And it isn’t something I can turn on and off as I please. Within art, I am most patient with pieces I am doing because they are the pieces I want to be doing. Asking me for precision and patience with a piece of work I don’t want to be doing is like asking me to sneeze with my eyes open. This is my downfall. I know that given enough patience, a piece of work I don’t enjoy working on can become a piece of work I love. I am most delicate with pieces of work I enjoy working on, which is a blessing and a curse. I end up limiting myself to what i know. These weeks were about stepping out of the space I knew, and into a world of greater possibilities. I just needed to find the patience to be patient, and the courage to make a few mistakes along the way.

The Jerwood Drawing Prize seemed a feat beyond human capabilities. I remember seeing a photograph in a frame on the wall wondering ‘Why is this here? This surely has little to do with drawing. Perhaps there is some meaning – cryptic, subliminal, symbolic – that I’m just missing?’

Of course, it was no photograph.

Piece after piece my mouth slowly crept open in admiration, as if releasing the wonder that filled my head. I was constantly impressed by the pieces on display. The artists all definitely knew their ways around pens and pencils. It wasn’t all pens and pencils either. Several pieces were of cuttings; in one, graph paper cut so very precisely and layered, sheet after sheet, to create what looked like a small futuristic town, or an enlarged abstract chip you would find controlling an electronic device. Other cuttings included a piece with colourful spirals intertwining with each other intricately. The artwork in pencil, charcoal, paint and pastel amazed me for two reasons. The most obvious reason was the skill behind the pencil. The discipline, precision, and knowledge of the practise and the tool. Drawings of trees you can feel the texture of, people you want to wave to and landscape you want to lay on. Curtains you can feel the weight of. Ships you can feel the mass of. As well as the realist images, there were abstract pieces just as impressive. There were backsides of envelopes that were transformed into detailed patterns, graph paper that had been drawn on tiny block by tiny block, and delicate drawings built up from tiny images into large scale pieces.

The second reason behind my amazement may be more personal than a general observation. But the cleanliness of the pieces was so impressive. My work rarely stays very clean for very long and this exhibition has taught me to start rendering this. Whether its smudging my pencil without realising or working too quickly or being too careless. Unless of course it’s an intentional mess (which I have used as an excuse before). The presentation of crisp paper or canvas behind such carefully produced work showed an understanding of the importance of each piece produced. It made the relationship between the artist and his work seem more intimate, more tender. It showed care. It showed skill. It showed patience.

12/09/11

It was a wonder anyone could find the Bold Tendencies exhibition, let alone hundreds of confused students. Though what a treasure it was once found. The fact that one had to work hard to find it made simply discovering it feel fulfilling. What a modest place it was. It reminded me of the work of South African artist Elana Wessels. She worked with neuroscientists using MRIs to scan the brains of volunteers from different cultural and financial backgrounds while they were exposed to different stimuli – from the sound of a toddler giggling to videos of baby sloths on Youtube, sentimental adverts, the feel of money and the smell of of apple cinnamon muffins. Videos of the brain imaging and documentary footage of the volunteers giggling and chortling in the MRI scanners were exhibited in the Brodie-Stevenson Gallery in Braamfontein, but the real art happened on the streets. She launched a nationwide campaign and posted pop-ups or samples of the most effective stimuli in unexpected places, using backpackers recruited through notices stuck up at youth hostels and other similar methods. But she is not willing to disclose exactly what the pop-ups are or where you can find them. “It could be an unusual piece of graffiti, or a message scrawled on a bag of frozen peas in the supermarket, or a looped bit of audio embedded in a traffic light, or a Polaroid stuck up at a shebeen. You wouldn’t know it until you encounter one, because part of what makes the brain happy is being delightfully surprised.” That was exactly how i felt. Delightfully surprised.

The gallery was an unused multi – storey car park. It was an ingenious place for a gallery. It brimmed with stunning contrasts of lights and darks, echoed with space, and twisted and turned endlessly. It was easy to get lost, but you didn’t mind. As you started the exhibition on one of the upper floors you were constantly surprised with wonderful pieces of work; some that stuck out as soon as you turned a corner, others that hid in the corners or on the ceilings. There was a piece that took up a small space at the far end of the car park. It consisted of  masses of hay that had been stuck onto the walls of the car park, following them as they turned around corners and into smaller areas. It was a sudden and unexpected juxtaposition of a hard, industrial, concrete world and a farm-like barn. The look and smell of the hay was like a portal, transporting you out of the car park and into a horse stable.

But i wanted to stay. The roof of the car park was also gallery space. One notable piece for me was the tail of an aeroplane that had been carved into with beautiful, delicate patterns. I didn’t know the tail of a plane was so big. Or that anyone would think of using it as a canvas. The view from the roof was wonderful. You could see for miles. We spent the morning sketching the view individually from different points in and on top of the car park. The wind was a playful nuisance on the roof, blowing countless pens and papers overboard. I loved the squares of sunlight that separated the darkness neatly inside the building,                                                            as if framing the view outside. It cast mathematically straight edged shadows onto the floors and ceilings that were just as interesting as they bent on ridges and edges. The space was freeing. Its easy to feel trapped and claustrophobic in a small gallery space with hundreds of people moving in crowds around you. This gallery gave you the space to appreciate, to think, to breathe, to procrastinate, to meander, to linger, to sit, to stretch, to run, to jump.

In the afternoon we were asked to create pieces that would represent how we responded to the space and the use of the car park as a gallery. I chose a shady wall on the rooftop as a canvas and began drawing a cash machine sinking into the cold wall. I chose a cash machine because i felt like the gallery was a mundane space that had been turned around into a beautiful space. An ordinary, industrial building that was now a work of art and genius. I figured i would try to turn something common and industrial into something beautiful. I thought about the different levels of the car park and how they felt like different streets, and every street has a cash machine. I liked playing with the idea of ‘drawing cash.’ And I also liked playing with the idea of value, and thought about how as a functional car park, one would pay to leave a car there. But as a gallery, a visit was free of charge. Beauty is free. I wanted it to be out of place. A cash machine up there would seem as out of place as, well, an art exhibition in a car park.

In the middle of our drawing fortnight students were given the task of creating drawing machines. I had never heard of a drawing machine before, but I did not limit my imagination to what i knew. I soon discovered that drawing machines are much more diverse than the robot with a pencil that kept whizzing around in my head.

Albrecht Dürer Woodcut

A drawing machine can be any instrument used to draw with. Simple right? By definition a pencil is a drawing machine. Albeit a rather common, unambitious drawing machine. A viewfinder is a drawing machine as it is an instrument we use to draw with. An example we were given was a viewfinder designed in the 15th century (seen left) by two Italian architects called Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Baptista Alberti.

Perspectives

Our goal was to create a mediator between our brains and our pencils. A way in which to bridge the gap between the images in our heads and images we can see, only adding a few extra steps between our hands and our pencils. We were given words like suspend, heavy, lightweight, extend, tension, push and down to think about.

We were given the advice: forget that you hold a pencil in your hand.

Drawing Machine by Jean Tinguely

Then we were told to create several drawing machines with the materials we had brought in. We could use any other material we could find such as a chair or a table or the wall if we wished. Another example we were given was the work of Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, who created sculptures and constructions that made sounds, rhythms and some of which drew. I found these intricate machines spellbinding in the contrast between their delicate calculated marks and their brutal mechanical form. But I had to remind myself of time. We didn’t have much.

Drawing Machine 1

My first machine relied on the principles of puppetry. If I had to choose just one word it would have been suspend. Its form was not unlike that of a spider, and it provoked similar apprehension.

Drawing Machine 2

It was a wonder of a machine. The ‘spider’ only had four legs. These were created with two pieces of wire criss-crossing in the centre. Simply an ‘x’ shape created and bent to stand on it’s points, in a dome-like fashion. From the centre where the wires met I suspended a marker that just touched the paper I laid underneath the machine, and to the marker I attached four thin pieces of string. These each reached around a spider leg and extended back to my hands. This was how I controlled the marks i was making by tugging on the strings. Apprehensive as I was at first I soon gained some control and figured out how to manoeuvre the tip of the marker as I wished. Well, to some extent. I also learnt that there was a point to which I could take the tip of the marker before it lifted off the paper entirely, and if I marker out that point in every direction I would get a circle in the centre of my spider. I tried to write my name. I considered changing my name to make me feel more satisfied. I moved on.

Drawing Machine 2

My next machine would have been born from the word stretch. I determined from the spider that I had a thirst for control and order, so i decided to lose it. I grabbed a chair and began winding elastic string around its legs, close to the groung. within this chaotic web I attached four paintbrushes, with I’d dipped in paint.

Drawing Machine 2

And then i started stretching and releasing. I had no control, and I liked it. I also like the unexpected, jagged marks i was creating, as well as the colours I was using, rather than the thin black line my spider was weaving into a messy web.

Drawing Machine 2

It was when we were told to work in groups I discovered that if given the choice I’d rather work alone. Same concept, just with four more brains. There were too many ideas, too many decisions, too many compromises. I Know I’m opinionated. I like having my own opinion and I’m hard to crack. We came to an idea we all liked, after much twiddling and fiddling. We used suspend And stretch this time. That was just the beginning. We found some water balloons which we filled with a mixture of water and paint. We also found a large crate on wheels outside. It had a big wooden base on four wheels that turned in all directions and the steel frame of a box on top of this that was about elbow height. We attached large pieces of paper onto the base and created walls for the box with more paper until we were looking down into paper covered room with no roof. We then strung some taught pieces of elastic over the top of the construction. From these we hung our dangling ‘babies’ (we had drawn emotive faces on all of them, affectionately). Our final ingredient: safety pins. We said our goodbyes and poked small holes simultaneously into all of our babies and as their blood shot out furiously we spun the crate over and over and over. The result was two babies that popped prematurely on needle contact creating a watery mess and two babies that successfully sprayed thin watery streaks onto every wall of the room. We dismantled the room and laid the walls out in the sun.

I enjoyed the drawing machines project and how it made me think a little differently. Looking at the world with my head tilted a little to one side.

The Imperial War Museum 07/09/11 – Women Artists exhibition

The Women Artists exhibition is unique in the way in which the content and the subject matter of the pieces is not necessarily something to which the viewer can relate, having had little if any experience of living in wartime. However, evident themes such as discrimination and justice are ones the viewer can relate to. It is very clear that the experience and treatment of women war artists has until recently differed from that of male artists.

Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech-ring - Dame Laura

The pieces in the exhibition gave the viewer a look into the world of wartime through many different perspectives; of women in the war, men in the war, and the perspective of ordinary middle class citizens in their home towns who were also inadvertently affected by the war to name a few. One of the themes that is evident in Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech-ring by Dame Laura is that wartime brought with it many opportunities for women. In this painting we see an ordinary woman working in a factory and perfecting a skill that men at the time struggled with. During a time when women were thought of as undoubtedly inferior to men, a painting of a woman in a male-dominated environment having a rare talent that many men did not possess would have changed the way men saw women and the way women saw themselves. It would have empowered women, and proved to them that they too are as capable as men. It is interesting to note that every person captured in the painting is female, despite the factory setting and masculine overalls. This would have been intentional to emphasise the empowerment of women in wartime and their slow and steady increase of respect.

Sketch of Mary Kessell's 'Waiting for the train on the Anhalter Banhof'

Mary Kessell - Ruins Near The Docks, Hamburg

Another view into the war was that of men by women. Portraits and studies of the troops in wartime and what they would experience in their journeys as documented by women artists. Mary Kessell had a unique style with her sketchy, chaotic charcoal and chalk drawings. This is very effective in portraying the chaos of the death and destruction in wartime. Her two sketches of ruins, Ruins in Hamburg and Ruins Near the Docks represent this chaos in her small, quick, emotive lines. The graph paper on which these two pieces are both drawn is too indicative of struggle; how she would not have had the preferred materials for her art while with the troops. Perseverance and survival are evident themes here, which many would have been inspired by during wartime.

Women's Canteen at Phoenix Works - Flora Lion

Priscilla Thornycroft - Camden Town, 1939

Frauke Eigen photography

The exhibition had a range of different styles, from the photography of Frauke Eigen to the impressionistic cartoon style of Priscilla Thornycroft to the realism of Dame Laura. This emphasises the vastness of the war and how prolonged the first and second wars became. How the war affected every person, ranging from families to soldiers to middle class working men to ordinary townsfolk. The diversity of the of the pieces represents the diversity of the people affected by war and effectively evokes a sense of sympathy for those affected, and gratitude for our own lives.

I have never had a blog before. In fact, the entirety of my internet use before coming to London could possibly be accomplished by a person in less than a week. Since the move however, I’ve at least developed enough skills to Start a blog <brims with pride>. Now for some trial and error, and hopefully, some interesting content.

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