cordaylux

[cordaylux]

Shooting 35mm film!

Based on my interest in where time may be different for different people, I asked my mother to join me in a minute of silence, and asked her to tell me when this minute was up as I timed it. She stopped me at one minute and 14 seconds, and I liked the idea that this was, to her, a minute.... I’ve decided to shoot some film featuring circles that I’ve drawn overlapping some of her sketches from many years ago.

I plan to develop the film and then to process it, but to alter the processing times- so that every minute is a minute and 14 seconds... A way of smuggling her perception of time into the making of the photographs!

Just as I worked with time in a very basic sense in my Spending Time Together film, I thought that the most simple way I could approach the visuals of time would be to use circles- in a way I feel at the most basic way to approach composition is using outlines, boundaries- the edge of a page, where a space or an image begins and ends.... so seeing where the outlines of these sketches intersect with the circles is actually really exciting to me...... Where they cross over and the circles leave the composition...

If processing the film is going to involve using measurements of time that are personal in an ‘inaccurate’ way that kind of does wrong to the process of printing, then I wanted the images themselves to also represent this disjointed relationship between time and individuals’ lives, to show different ways this relationship can exist, or different ways these outlines can clash or intersect....

[cordaylux]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fJTME9h6etM

Throwing the mozzarella ball back and forth- a more literal examination of how works of art exist in a past context between my parents - and now involving me, whereby the works exist as documentation of their lives that excludes them to an extent...

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2AGHYrYPZrU

I think that this film explains itself quite clearly...

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PTyWppi4Jx8

Working with ideas of giving away and repurposing time- I gifted my mother 20 minutes and she used this time to take a phone call- spliced audio and visuals from each of our activities also suggest my presence in the manoeuvre- I am scrubbing the tiles at the front of our house.

The idea of giving time as a gift to my mother came about because she is often complaining of how she does not have enough time in a vague sense - how ‘there is never enough time in the day’, or how it is something that she generally craves more of.... it is a major priority for her..

I decided a gift of time seemed appropriate based on Johanna Burke’s work Make Time, 2018:

An extract about the work from Tick Tock, Time in Contemporary Art:

Burke’s whimsical embroidery is a cheeky reminder that there is never enough Time for everything we intend to do. She transforms an embroidery hoop, traditionally the symbol of a woman’s handiwork with a needle, into a clockface. The embroidery is purposely left unfinished, and Burke’s title calls upon us to “Make Time.” The piece brings to mind the adage “a stitch in time saves nine,” meaning a timely effort will save work later. This work was originally created for the famous windows of the department store Bergdorf Goodman, which front New York City’s 5th Avenue, and was titled Seize the Moment, Make Time for Friends, Lose Track of Time, Make Every Minute Count, Share a Secret. Burke’s work posits the query: What exactly should we “make time” for?

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Looking at the intersections between letters and shapes: my flyers above insinuate c’s and o’s might obtain different personas or biases based on the addition of a line... I wondered if I could say something about open and closed lines within my explorations of the cross section between text/ letters and shapes and for this reason took O’s and C’s to be circles and curves.

I decided to make a statement that used text in an active, inflammatory, quite heated way, to convert my desire to explore visual and conceptual ways of opening... into anger at closed shapes... I like the idea that leafleting is a proactive way of hoping to make change, so made these statements into flyers, or propaganda...

A page from a 1968 zine: Guerilla, Vol 2, which also exists as a poster (above) helped me with the wording and also when thinking about activism that involves words- though my concept is absurd I was inspired to think about words in a revolutionary way by the idea that poetry has been used to revolt or rise up....

Also above- an Instagram account I set up that is linked to the flyers and an email I received from somebody- a refreshing take on these ideas...

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More examples of drawings using bold curved lines or opening up a composition ...the last one has more of a focus on how white leaves the composition and competes with the outline of the composition...

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Works on paper by Kayleigh Harris - a big inspiration when working with ‘open forms’, curves, c’s... a lot of my interest in broken lines and ‘opening up’ forms and composition came from the way that my drawing habits ‘grew open’ or became much more dynamic over time ...

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Acts of opening...

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An image I took of bright light which bounced dramatically off of my kitchen door and into my dark hallway.

I am obsessed with the sharp, clear cut lines of the chair, and it’s shadow, and also of the radiator and wall... and how these lead into fuzzier areas where midtones are interrupted by the brutally bright white in the centre of the composition.

The way the light disrupted the room reminded me of these prints by Dora Maar:

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‘Losing Time’

Experimenting with how I might work ‘collaboratively’ with increments of time, using them as a guiding structure that decides visual elements of a work... here I bath salts to stain my bath as I drained the dyed water from it... every ten minutes I released water from the bathtub for progressively less time- to see how losing time changed where the ‘rings’ formed

This was inspired by Kysa Johnson’s ‘Blowup series’-

An excerpt from the book: Tick Tock, Time in Contemporary art

“Johnson looks at Time on a universal scale in her blowup paintings. She draws her designs from subatomic decay patterns, the signature pathways of unstable particles that travel through Time and space to decay into other more stable particles. Johnson notes, “These marks are an alphabet that I find myself returning to again and again. They are for me shorthand for the longhand of change over Time, of falling apart.”

I loved the idea of an alphabet or series of symbols determined by time...

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Photograph from the second Saturday of ‘Four Saturdays in March’

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Four Saturdays in March (I)

Inspired by my continual interest in Tehching Hsieh’s ‘One Year Performance 1980-1981′ I want to spend time in a purposeful way, forming time spent socially to the constraints of a structured calendar and documenting it in a way that is practically clinical. I have decided to go on four walks on the Saturdays through March and take a photograph at a point during each with a moustache. This was inspired my Movember, where moustaches are grown throughout November to raise money for charity- I wanted to reframe time spent with friends as a ‘campaign’ (Moarch?) , the only aim of which is to spend time in each other’s presence... perhaps an attempt to ‘raise time’ instead of money...  

The first photograph appears unnatural because of our stance- the photo is the opposite of candid but doesn’t seem to offer any sentimentality- it is comparable to a mug shot or other formal recording. 

Though the use of moustaches is not intended to be comical, or to raise questions about gender, they ‘accidentally’ add to the absurdity of the image. My friend and I discussed how we felt like we were in drag as men... It frustrates me, to some extent, that as a female artist and subject of the image, it becomes impossible to avoid these questions or assertions, which don’t seem like they would be applicable to a man taking the same photograph. But I also found it interesting to think about how performance is a medium where it becomes impossible to remove oneself/ gender from a work...

I am yet to decide how I want to show the images as a collection...

Another inspiration for the work is this work by Bob Chaplin- a print titled ‘Four Days, Four Ferries, Four Songs’. I like the simplicity but also the rigidity of the work’s presentation- it almost appears like a key- each song title connected to the boat on which Chaplin listened to it, but in an almost melancholic way, the difference in the wake of each boat marking the only difference between the images.

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‘I never asked when you were born’

Working within the outlines of a pool of spilt blue emulsion (see first pic) - I came back at three intervals throughout the day for an hour each time to paint and eventually sculpt into the shape. I enjoyed how little control I had over the work, the consistency changing rapidly and deleting much of what I drew into it, particularly in the earlier stages of working. I worked with various tools, including the sharp edge of a ruler, wire mesh and tiles, and setting tiles into the paint in the earlier stages made me realise it’s strength when still very wet, as it was almost impossible to pull out...  Between time intervals, various things happened in the street - cars backing in and out meant that I had more or less space to work, people walked through the paint, etc... traces of the previous works can be seen throughout- I enjoy that it felt like a collaborative work whereby I engaged with time as a construct that defined the work alongside me..

Initially I decided to work into the spillage because the outline was undetermined by me- I couldn’t change it, and I didn’t know how it had come to be. This still interests me greatly, especially with the involvement of time in the work, and remains the greatest unknown: what time the work began.

Time intervals:  (11:00-12:00, 14:00-15:00, 17:00-18:00). 

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On a day when I had no energy.... Considering how pointing is the most basic form of communication, and only requires the showing of something else... re-directing someone’s eye or focus to something beyond yourself... This was also partly based on my drawings experimenting with where lines can exist as arrows and whether arrows can exist as works or art or focal points in themselves ...

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Images to do with an oily perfume stain on wood, processes of cleaning the stain and notes... The final images show works by Anthony Gormely using oil ...

Plans in the making:

When recreating the image of the stain, which transformed as it was cleaned, I want to work with the limitations of my body, and to see how I can remodel the shape as best I could- but not going beyond what I can‘t do.

I then want to work within the limitations of oil to recreate the shapes made by my body - a funny kind of back and forth process that ensures the final image- in oil, will look vastly different from the original stain, as according to the influence of me and of the material properties of oil.

I think of this as an exploration of boundaries that exhibits visual change.

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Looking at processes of making art; how complex, conflicting spaces and concepts give way to ideas that can be isolated from their context and worked with in a new way. I took the petals from a bunch of tulips, crushed them, then compressed these remains to fit a square as seen on the wall. The ‘headless’ flowers, show the complex natural form that is the physical and conceptual source of the petals. These have been ‘extracted’ and reframed within the format of a square.

Below is a photograph taken roughly two weeks later, the tulip stems visibly dead and the tulip petals compressed into a square having been detached from the paper. The change in light, the visibly dead flowers, and the separation of the square from its mould, all mark a new stage to the process that I was excited to convey... a sense of completion, both to my process of compressing the flowers to a square, and, as they are placed below the stems, an end to the process of the petals falling from the plant.

I liked that placing the square of petals below the stems insinuated that they had fallen- but also that I had intercepted them and changed their format, adding precision and homogeny by forming them to a square.

After making the work I was advised to look at Felix Gonzalez-Torres ‘Untitled (Placebo)’ series because of the strict outlines he uses when working with tiny candies- I love these constructions of precision, and like I was hoping to do above with a natural process like falling of petals, I like that he has intercepted and altered the way that sweets usually exist and made them into something that focuses on them only as small forms that make something larger- I like particularly the works where all of the candies are the same colour... somehow I don’t think the works are as ‘believable’ when the sweets are very obviously all different flavours or brands, and i prefer to forget that they are sweets at all...

I am really fascinated by where the sweets are in the corner of a room, so that they spill out from between two walls like the side of a pyramid... I like that he is working with the contours of a space but also simultanously making these dissapear, or hiding them

I have been reading press releases for the works and am fascinated that the candy was replenished as it was taken- a false sense of ephemera but also a way for viewers to have part of the work but not to alter the work in any way? When thinking about process this idea really fascinated me .... I like the idea that processes of making or interacting with artworks might not really be ‘productive’ or lead anywhere, but still can exist as processes that shape the work... even though I like that the above work I have made exhibits a change over time, from idea to visual realisation, I would also like to explore such ‘counterproductive’ processes that add something conceptually to works of art...

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(Posted in the wrong order and supposed to go before the last post)

Drawings with progressively less oil based on a dream I had where vases from a still life passed fluidly through my stomach and and remained visible inside my body- I couldn’t get over the image, and used oil to sustain a connection to the body as the idea of fluids, trying to cull the idea that what occurred could exist as such a clean transition.. However, as the oil, which poured through the pages (and hence disappeared slowly) became less and less part of each drawing, I felt that the process was to give in to this possibilty and to allow the jars to below in a compositions that united them with my body (represented by single lines or not seen at all)

I believe this image is a nice visual metaphor for the way I have been thinking a lot about the interesections between art and life recently.. a still life entering the body seems like an argument between these two cliches that represented art and life in a very traditional way, as they move through each other...