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Dear tutors,

To view my research file, I'd like to ask you to go through it section by section (first look through the Landscape section, then Sci-Fi, then Lone figure etc), instead of all at once on the home page.

Please also note that most sections have multiple pages, and you'll have to click through. If at all possible, please use desktop and not mobile.

Also, please don't be disturbed by the username Researchforuni, which you might find all over my research file. It's just the username of my research file from last year, so still my work.

Thank you!

Isobel

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MATERIAL RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION

I've only put "true" material research on this page. The rest can be found on my sketchbook page and process work page of my online archive.

https://yuckyarchives.tumblr.com/tagged/sketchbook

https://yuckyarchives.tumblr.com/tagged/process

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Details on how I choose the images for my CMYK photopolymer prints

These prints are of course alternative CMYK colours. I will try to briefly outline how I choose these images and how I then choose the four colours to print them with. I hope this will lend you a better understanding for my choices made in the Photopoymer works shown in this document. ​

Tone: To choose the image I like to start by looking at the tonal values. The tone is what affects the amount of ink sitting on the final print, which is something immediately noticeable by a viewer. The darker an area, the more ink. This is especially important for CMYK, as a dark colour means that potentially fourlayers of ink might be layered on top of each other, which is a lot of stress for the paper to handle, which will require extra care when printing. ​

Because for these, I wanted dynamic prints, I choose images with a wide tonal range. I like the slightly weird look of flash photography at night, though shade and sunlight would also be good. If I wanted a more soft picture, I would choose a photo with a low tonal range (as seen in Return).

Colour: Ideally it's good to have strong primary and secondary colours, as well as a few more mixed shades in the print. Hysteria Summer'scolours are so intense because of its origial strong primaries. That way if printing in colours in CMYK or close to CMYK (for example baby blue, ruby red, lemon yellow, and dark purple) the primaries will come out strongly. Only very little ink is needed for a primary colour, even dark ones. A deep red might just be made of magenta, a tiny bit of yellow and perhaps some black, whereas any areas with more complex shades like brown or grey will carry a lot more ink, as more of each colour will be required to mix the right shade. ​

It also means if one chooses colours that don’t fit into the CMYK system, eg. pink, orange, sage and red , one will likely only get various tones of reddish grey on the final print. Again, the tonal range of the image would still be strong as even non-CMYK coloured inks layered on top of each other on paper together will still look dark, so the image would still look dynamic. ​

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Texture: It is useful to choose a composition that has a kind of texture in at least two diagonally opposite corners (brick and branches in Drunk Walk Home), as it makes cutting the plates and registering them on the press much easier. Clean registration is essential for CMYK to work properly, as if the layers are off, the colours won’t mix properly and the image will look muddy and blurry.

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List of PPD engagement

I'm finding the PPD page a little confusing, so thought I'd write a list of things I have done for PPD this year for clarity: - PPD lectures at uni

- applied to the RCA for MA Visual Communication: Illustration (I messed up the application and accidentally ended up applying to Visual Communications graduate diploma. They gave me an offer, but I unfortunately had to reject it due to the financial cost). I will be reapplying to MA Visual Communication: Illustration next year

- applied to Graphic Design Communication at CSM (unsuccessfully, they did not give me an offer)

- applied to MA Design: Expanded Practice at Goldsmiths (successfully! Though I have officially deferred my place until 2022)

- made several portfolios for the various MAs I applied for

- organised and produced a zine for me and my friends called Yucky Disgusting . see it here: https://yuckyarchives.tumblr.com/tagged/yuckydisgusting

- dyed and screen printed bags and t-shirts, which I will sell, with the Yucky Disgusting logo

- organised and will run a short photopolymer CMYK workshop at WCA for first year students from Camberwell

- completed a three-day print studio work experience

- applied for a summer course for art and design at schoolsos.xyz

- got a job to run a two day photopolymer CMYK course at Artichoke Studios in Brixton

- got a job to photograph, edit and upload an artist's work onto the internet (from Artichoke studios) in return for free access to the studio

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aSci-fi art, painted by the great Vincent Di Fate. He is my favourite science fiction artist and has a vast body of beautiful, dynamic work depicting space ships, aliens, and robots. His and similar work is what got me interested in this kind of theme in the first place, and I looked at his work a lot specifically before I started making paintings again, hoping that his works might inform mine. I especially enjoy how generous he was in his imagery, with explosions, beams of light, and bright colours. I just can't get enough of it.

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Night Ride,by James Prapaithong (an old WCA student!), oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm

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Cartel II by Julia Sololeva

What an incredible painting!!! Eerie and threatening, and I like the ambiguity of the writing at the bottom. This piece is an album cover, so the writing is just referring to the musical artist, but at the same to next to the image it's like a semi-joking reference to drug cartels from middle america. I love when work is both dark and funny at the same time. Apart from that, the painting's composition is incredibly strong and direct: the near symmetry of the figures and the red moon in the background remind me of a composition one might find on a tarot card. This artist has been infulential to my practice both conceptually and visually, and I'm excited to see what she makes next.

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Film stills from No Country For Old Men.

The plot was fine, but what really impressed me in this film was the lighting, and the dramatic compositions. It sometimes even went as far as being a bit tongue in cheek (which I appreciate), for example the shadow in the last still.

The set lighting was often coloured, and in a lot of night-time scenes there'd be a weird glow emanating from somewhere undefined.

While I know I said I am influenced by science fiction cinema the most, a good creey western has the same appeal.

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Oil paintings on cotton or canvas by Richard Burton. I met him when he worked as one of the tutors when I was on foundation and was happy that he had been invited to Wimbledon to do a seminar and artist lecture on world-building. He might be my favourite current artist as I find his work SO beautiful and touching and eerie. Hearing him talk about his work was incredibly interesting and insightful, and it made me realise that our practices had a lot of topics in common: the lone figure, an alternative world, an oddness. His work seems incredibly cinematic, which is fitting because on foundation a lot of his workshop days were film-based (we might draw from film stills, or look at lighting), which has also influenced my current research.

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PPD LECTURE: WORKING IN MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS WITH ART HISTORIAN, SARAH JAFFRAY. ON MAPS

Detournement – Take something that already exists and reunderstand its context .Line mark and tone as photographic mapping

Derive – a technique to understand your drawings and maps, no conscious understanding of where we’re headed

Space closing in or moving outwards.

Rigid forms contain us OR don’t contain us and we have to spill out.

The perception of what a map is: a great system of how and where we are. Light and organisation of space- its all about relationships between concepts and spaces and gaps.

Counter maps : tend to be more emotional and subjective, instead of cold and factual and informational

Counter-mapping: Evocation of space and expension. Julie Mahretu :”I am interested in the potential of psychogeographies. Which suggests that within an invisible and invented creative space, the individual can tap a resource of self-determination and resistance […]. This impulse is a major generating force in my drawing and larger conceptual project as a painter.” à A system, a tool, a new way of understanding and engaging with the world. Marks translate to emotional perceptions of space, which is vital. Hearing smell… tracing corners with your hands…. All of this can be transposed

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Artichoke studios job!!!

I am delighted to report that Artichoke studios are letting me run a CMYK photopolymer workshop in their studio in September! I think it will only be a one-off, but I am really excited for it! I think it will be held over a weekend, and I will be paid, which is great! It's also a nice coincidence that it'll be the same workshop I will be running at WImbledon (though the Artichoke one will be longer), so it'll be great for me to not have to go in completely inexperienced.

Aditionally, they offered me another opportunity: I will be photographing, editing, uploading, sorting (etc.) one of their resident artists works, and in return they will let me use the studio for free!

I'm nervous but excited!

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PPD LECTURE: ALICIA PAZ ON RESIDENCIES

Apply with intension: research and preparation are essential. “Personal touch” contact even better a truly successful residency is achieved once artist, place and organisation have formed a web of connection and all influence eachother.

Psychological geography in a building and studio

Utlise the community around you mgreatest resource

Adventure is useful and nice and can feed your practice, if you’re open about it. Travel is eye-opening etc, but be safe.

Institute must provide a good service, but you are here to work: Make sure to pack everything you need and take the chance to let this organisation’s “house style” come into your work a bit. (They may have already seen it in you and would like to see you develop it, within reason!!)

Openness, experimentation, a new space and time for making and other activities. Seen as a chapter, rather than a stint.

Make sure to apply early, bonus to get in contact the months before

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All of my screen printing inks from my time at university, which come to a total of 123 colours. For my base colours (not specifically transparent or opaque colours) I used a 2:3 ink to medium ration, using the system 3 paints and a medium on the runny side, around 3 drops of 1816 retarder and sometimes a few drops of water. I typically do not use gloss, although on my Visit Saturn! series I did a final coat of TW gloss over the whole image.

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2021 More books I’ve read this this past year that I’ve been thinking about recently:

A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver. She is my favourite poet and her work is a great source of hope and joy for me. If each person has a deep, fundamental fear (that they might or might not know how to name), I also believe that there is a brand of art that helps soothe that fear. This is what Mary Oliver’s work does to me. Here is an example, the first two lines of her poem Wild Geese:

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.”

It’s like she knows my innate shame of being alive and that of wanting something, but forgives me for it. Her poems carry the feeling of relief above any other emotion. Here is another quote from a different poem, part of I Worried:

“Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, can I do better?”

Even though the first poem speaks about freeing yourself of your regrets and sadness and the second one speaks about that very feeling of regret and shame, they both strike a similar chord in me. In any case, I think my interest in Mary Oliver’s work is that same as my interest in landscapes and emptiness and the old question about solitude versus loneliness. I think all of these topics are intimately related, and I try to find the essence of the link through my practice.

Crush by Richard Siken. Another poetry book I’ve greatly enjoyed and thought much about.

In the foreword Louise Glueck describes Sikens’ work’s main emotion as panic. He writes all of his subjects, be it love, longing, desperation or loss through that emotion, which gives the book as a whole a particular sensation. Kind of like a musical album?

I have found that I admire and can relate to the way Siken builds a world out of his work around himself. He writes about his emotions so viscerally that it seems to have genuinely shaped a kind of place where he can go to, and I appreciate that and try to use my practice in the same way. I really love being in this space where I can work as much as I want and am around such inspiring people that I want my practice to reflect that intensity on the conceptual side of my practice.

The New Me by Halle Butler. A depressing but somehow touching story of an office worker Millie, a snobby and privileged woman who despises herself and her life, act pathetic and entitled at the same time and somehow still manages to get the reader to feel for her and side with her. I also really enjoy the violent tones throughout the book, it makes it unexpectedly dark. For example, when an obnoxious colleague is speaking to Millie: “I fold my hands in my lap and re-create him in my mind … his young girlfriend’s jaw setting compulsively when she smells his breath, his father’s dying words (I wish you had been less of a dick) …”

Obviously this is a joke, but who jokes with the intension of humiliating somone about their father dying ?

In any case, reading this book made me think about time and my own daily actions differently. Millie thinks of everything she does as a chore, but that made me start to think about everything I do as a task. This has shifted my view from a more 24 hour, cyclic system to more of a straight line that just goes per week. Every week I have a number of tasks to do ( tasks being uni work, folding laundry, watching Netflix, texting a friend, 7 nights of sleep etc.), and every week I complete them. I enjoyed that this book gave me a new perspective.

Outline, Kudos and Transit by Rachel Cusk.

This trilogy is the story of a British female writer called Faye, who goes to Athens to give several interviews and to take part in a writer’s conference. While Cusk writes at length describing Faye’s environment and the discussions other people have with her, what Faye says is barely mentioned in the books. It does not feel like she has been silenced, more that Faye deems it unnecessary to tell the reader her point of view, and rather focuses on that of those around her. These are curious little books, and while sometimes the discussions in them felt a bit slow, I never got bored. They made me think completely differently about meeting strangers and how a conversation should be built, and I really enjoyed them both the first and the second time around. Cusk writes with such restrained but still engaged interest about other people, that I really feel like I met them myself and have myself experienced this Greek writer’s conference.

McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh. My god, what a book. McGlue is the story, set in the late 19th century and across several oceans and finally Salem, NY, of a severely alcoholic sailor by the same name, who wakes up (still drunk) tied to his cot, and is told that he killed is friend, Johnson. McGlue spends nearly the whole book in denial about his friend’s murder, and it is only weeks before he is set to hang that he finally accepts his actions. Most of the book is spent in his head, either clouded by alcohol or in dry pain of a sober comedown, and he recounts stories of himself and Johnson. Johnson, Johnson. McGlue pines for his friend and doesn’t understand why Johnson won’t come to visit him before going off on another adventure together. Needless to say……. I think there’s a little more than friendship between them, though McGlue never suggests anything gay. This is truly one of my favourite books, as I am transported into McGlue’s world of agony and ecstacy, carelessness about his own life, addiction, love, loss, and desperation. The tenderness with which he thinks and speaks of Johnson, his longing…

Books I’ve read in the last year that I’ve been thinking about

Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett. A book of 20 short stories about an unnamed woman living in a small costal village, alone in a stone house. They’re about solitude, nature, pleasure and domestic life –> FERALISM. This is my favourite book!

Can’t and Won’t by Lydia Davis. A book of short stories on her relationship to herself and the rest of the world. Again, it’s about joy and nature and the noticing of small things. Incredibly touching and sweetly innocent, but without being coy

My year of rest and relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. A book about a girl who self medicates on prescription drugs and tries to sleep for a whole year, only finding purpose in her sleep. Incredible and touching and somehow relatable. I love this book!

Homesick for another world by Ottessa Moshfegh. Fucking fantastic short stories. The blurb on the back correctly claims “…big mind, big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick”

This is how you lose her by Junot Díaz. A collection of short stories on love, love, being “foreign in the west”. Made me cry more than I care to admit

Diary of an oxygen thief by Unknown. An account of a real bastard who lost everything when the woman he fancied humiliated him and stripped him of his facade, and how he tries to recover. Made me think about forgivness, healing,  and what attracts us in another person

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Academic reading Bibliography

As seen in my MCP and sketchbook.

Bennett, J. (2009) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press

Oelschlaeger, M. (1991) The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology. Yale UP

Gleick, J. (2016) Time Travel: A History. Pantheon

Gleick, J. (1997) Chaos: Making a New Science

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Paper experiments - white screen print on various paper colours and textures