rachaeljwilliams-blog

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Final Piece

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Pattern design 

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Intaglio print 

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James Gardener

James Gardener comes from a catholic family in Glasgow and is a gallery owner. Although he went to art school he always felt more interested in the work other people had created and would always walk around the gallery at the end of the day to see the progress people had made with their works. After realising he was more into viewing others work and discovering new people than creating his own pieces he decided to open his own gallery. He said that one of the most important things to think about while trying to do this is your relationships with others and building up these relationships in order to create good working relationships where you can both help each other out with developing your galleries. James will always have a personal feel with the work he chooses to display in his space because he wants to only show work he loves and can find relatable to himself. I think one thing that has really interested me within his work is the way he plays with the time spent in galleries for the viewer. I think this is a really interesting factor because as Mike Pratt said in his lecture people in modern times rush by life and don’t really take the time to look at the art. In one of James’ exhibitions he used curtains to cover the works and they were on timers slowly moving causing the viewer to have to spend a longer time in the gallery in order to see the works because they would only be revealed at certain times. I think this is such a cleaver idea and changes the perception of the way the art work is viewed and could cause the viewer to focus in on certain parts of the piece and really allows time for the work to be studied properly.

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Mike Pratt

Mike Pratt classes his works as paintings although personally they would be viewed to most people as probably sculptural pieces. He likes to explore using different materials and prefers to work with his hands and go with the flow of experimentation rather than use his brain and create plans for his pieces. The colours used in many of his pieces often relate to the colours of flags and this comes subconsciously from Pratt’s personal obsession and his love for flags. I think Pratt really has a confidence issue with his works as when he started to create paintings that most people would view as actual paintings rather than sculptures he would cover them in writing almost as if it covers the image behind. This makes me feel sad for him because you need to be confident within your practice to be able to love your works and show them to others in the way they deserve to be shown.

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Tom Railton

Tom Railton focus’ on research-based practice contrasting story and facts. He likes to look at more traditional means like comic books but also more modern ideas like social media and smart phones. Tom found many correlations between the colours used in smart pones and social media with different forms of gambling for example fruit machines. He believes they are designed in this way purposely to change society to be addicted to this online world.  One thing that is important to tom when creating his works is the materials he uses and how and why he has used them. He likes the materials to be visibly seen within the piece and have clear reasonings for doing so. Another thing that is important to tom to be shown clearly in his works is the subject matter and any conceptual reasonings behind his pieces. He believes if the piece must be explained it is a failure because in the fast-paced modern times people don’t have time to invest to read up on a piece of work. If he feels a piece isn’t portraying the subject or concept clearly enough he will see this as a failure and continue to develop the piece until he is happy with the outcome. The placement of Toms work is crucial to him and the way it is photographed is also another main factor. He showed us an example of a way one of his pieces had been displayed successfully compared to the way he viewed to be unsuccessful. For example, he had created a large net and displayed it in front of a window with leaves at the other side of the window. The leaves completely took the look away from the piece and drew your attention to them instead of the work. Furthermore, the leaves become part of the piece leading the audience to question if the leaves were playing a part in the subject matter of the piece. I think this is a really important thing to think about when creating work because you have to consider your audience and the placement of the piece carefully before running away with an idea that will then become unsuccessful.

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Sarah Stringer

Sarah Stringer delivered a very spontaneous lecture with no PowerPoint and just delivered her words from the heart. The way this lecture was delivered was really unusual to how everyone else had done theirs and I personally am appreciative of this because it makes a more memorable statement because of how different it is to the others. Sarah was literately inspired by everything and anything and I love this about her work she has such a spontaneous way of working and I find this really relatable to my own way of working. Sarah carries notebooks round with her all the time to write down her inspirations when she comes across one. I think this is a really good idea because there are many times I think of something when I’m in a social setting and forget my ideas because I had no way of remembering them. During the lecture as she had no slides she passed round a few pieces of her work. Although I understand this would not work for everyone’s practice, but I really liked having this up close and personal relationship with the pieces and think It takes great confidence to work in this way. Having people physically touching your work is completely different to this stereotypical separated piece and viewer relationship seen in traditional art and I love the feel as a viewer it gives because its almost as if you are being too intrusive on the work because you are man handling it. One interesting view Sarah has is she thinks controversies are often formed by ill-informed people having a say on things they have no clue about. I totally agree with this idea because I think many people these days are just too opinionated and want to have a say on everything and act passionately towards things they have no clue about. Personally, I find myself really frustrated with this idea far too often because people often look upon important matters like a trend and want to be part of it and have a say when in actual fact its nothing to do with them and they don’t have the first idea about the situation. For example, in one of her works she had a taxidermy gecko trapped inside of a large clear ball. All these so-called animal rights activists were far too quick to jump in saying it was cruel to kill the animal for art purposes when if they would have let her finish her story before creating these ill-informed opinions they would have knew it was illegal to do so and she found the animal already dead. My favourite thing about Sarah’s work was her vast variety in different subject matters and techniques. Her experimentation with different materials I think is like my practice although none of the subject maters were relatable to mine. Overall although none of her pieces really related to mine I love Sarah’s way of thinking and think our minds work similar.  

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Angelo Madonna

Angelo Madonna explores the relationships between objects and humans. His work is often site-specific pieces because he liked to look at how specific places can cause emotional responses and memories for the viewer. Although I like this idea during his lecture this point wasn’t made clear as he was talking more about mark making and fictional landscapes. I think if he would have talked more about the conceptual meanings behind his work like what can be seen online I would have had more of a connection with him and his works. Overall, online it says he is trying to spark memories and an emotional response through his work for the viewer but he has failed to do this with me during his lecture so I think it would be interesting to see one of his pieces in real life to see if his art could change my perception.

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Henry Cham

Henry Cham is an artist who creates some amazing sculptural pieces. His skill level at sculpting is so high and his sculptures are so lifelike and would be real collectors’ pieces. Although some of his works are cartoon based rather than realism he sometimes likes to create political pieces which say something about society at the time. I really like political artworks because I normally find them relatable and easy to understand. Although I love how talented Henry is and how skilled his works are I don’t really find any connections between our works and find his talent intimidating because I know I could never create anything of that technical skill level.

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Ami Zanders

Ami Zanders from Bermuda is an artist who loves Greek goddess’ and tries to use humour in her work. One of her latest pieces was a performance piece using a weaved blanket she had made herself. During the performance she was on the floor on her hands and knees and wore the blanket over herself and wrote all the comments people were saying about the performance on the floor and then began to cross them out. She said she wore the blanket like a shield protecting her from people’s comments and hoped covering herself up would encourage people to talk more about the work because they couldn’t directly see her. Although I like the conceptual meaning behind the piece I don’t think this really relates to my practice much and I don’t fully understand the piece. One thing I do really like about the piece is the interaction between the viewer and the work. It being a live performance is inclusive of the audience and the fact it was their actual words being written on the floor makes a personal approach to the work. I think this makes the work memorable for the viewer and stands out against other pieces. I think in this way her work slightly relates to mine because in my bingo work I heavily rely on my audience participation for the performance to work. Personally, this is a scary way of working because there is a lot that can go wrong within the piece as the public can be very unpredictable and you have to be brave and quick thinking to work in this way. Therefor I relate to Ami very much in this way and hold lots of respect for her practice.

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Charlotte Hill

Charlotte Hill is an abstract painter who likes to juxtapose line and form within her paintings. Charlotte said she struggled at first to get into painting because she found it hard to find new ground because the technique is so traditional ad has been around for so long. However, she found it was best to just overlook this matter and use painting as a form of language and create very large-scale paintings experimenting with different textures and priming’s on her canvas’. One way she experimented with texture was by adding grit and sand into the paint creating a thicker texture to work with and almost adding a sculptural aspect to her paintings. I really like this use of experimentation because I think painting is a hard technique to explore because as she said it is so traditional and has been around that long most avenues have already been explored. One thing I really live about her work is her use of bright colours in her pieces. The bright colours and the abstract shapes create a happy feel to her paintings and makes them radiate positivity. Charlotte backed up Matthew Merrick’s point about always finding a way for your work to be transported first because if the work is not accessible it can’t be made successful in a gallery space. One-way charlotte combatted this problem was if she was doing a large scale painting she would use split canvas’, so it could be easily separated to fit through doorways and into vehicles without being damaged. One thing charlotte has taught me is she said during the lecture if something doesn’t feel right within your practice don’t force it because that won’t create successful work because your heart isn’t in the right place. I have found this relatable this semester because I was working on my Hospital bingo game last semester but after recent personal issues entering a hospital environment didn’t come comfortable to me so because of this I decided to leave this piece for the time being and allow myself to focus on other things. I was really grateful to receive this advice because I have always hated leaving things unfinished before starting new things but this piece of advice took the guilt away for me not finishing the piece because if your head isn’t in the right place it wouldn’t have been successful anyway.

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Matthew Merrick

Matthew Merrick presented his lecture in the form of a video where the sound was delayed compared to the movement on the video. This was an interesting way to present a lecture because it really made the audience concentrate on what was being said and kept your attention for the entirety of the speech. At first, I think the audience were confused and thought there may be a technical problem with the video. However, this was soon resolved because he began by talking about his fascination and frustration for delayed things ie trains. Another aspect he loves to look at within his work is conspiracy theories. One example he gave was to do with NASAs first landing on the moon and If this whole story was true or not because there is quite a lot of controversy to so with editing on some of the photos. I find this a very interesting thing to investigate and would have never thought to create artworks surrounding conspiracy theory’s myself. I think to do this successfully an awful lot of research would have to be done beforehand to know the situation from every angle. Another part of his work I found interesting was him questioning why people use the word ‘sorry’ so freely perhaps without meaning sometimes. For example, instead of saying excuse me people will sometimes continue to push past saying sorry as they do so. Saying sorry in this situation you don’t mean it because you have the choice to not do the action but continue to do so anyway. Although his practice in no way relates to mine I still find the concepts he is discussing very interesting and could be maybe something I can investigate in the future. One thing I have been able to take away from his lecture is the emphasis he put on thinking about how you will transport work and make It accessible for galleries and to move about. This is a really important factor which is easily overlooked when creating work. One way he overcome this problem is by creating a series of works which had to fit into a hand luggage bag. This way no matter where in the world the work needed to be it could always be transported easily. This really made me think about the fragility of pieces and the durability of them because I know in the past with some of my pieces they have been very fragile and I have took risks hoping for them to survive being transported.

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Cross year crit - Record disks 

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Record disk practice prints

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Record disk print in progress

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Completed Record Disk Prints 

After choosing to put my hospital bingo work on pause for now I decided to follow with the theme of record disks and use this on the print project I have been put on this semester. My first idea was to take an intaglio print using the disk itself. To do this I put ink all over the disk and rubbed it off, so it went into all the lines on the disk. After this I put it through the press, so the ink would go onto the paper from the lines on the disk. I was happy with this print and the style of it but felt it was too simplistic to leave the way it was. My next idea was to create a screen print of the record disks in a repeat pattern. However, I thought a drawing of a record disk was too immature and didn’t create the feel I wanted for the piece, so I thought a great way to do this would be to create a screen print using the intaglio print I had created earlier. I think this would create a well-developed piece using what I had already made.

To design the pattern for the print I had developed an idea about the circular shape of the disks relating with the primary colours overlapping them to make the secondary colours. As my first experimentation with this I used Microsoft word and the circle tool to change the colours of the circles and experiment overlapping them to make a pattern I deemed successful in my eyes. To add to this, we had our cross year crit so I thought this was a good time to experiment with the pattern through other ways rather than printing due to the time scales. So as the crit was in a large bright room with windows I thought I would try and experiment with tissue paper to show the change in the colours as they were overlapped. My original plan for this was for the colours to shine through the paper and display on the floor but because of the direction of the sun this was unsuccessful. However, I did really lie the way the pattern showed up on the window and how bright it was.

Next, I began to practice the print on paper but was really struggling with how clear the print was coming out on the paper. Although some of the odd patterns that developed by mistake were nice I wanted to create something with some sort of regularity and structure for it to be a successful repeat pattern print. After battling with the screen for quite a few very long and frustrating days the print technicians discovered I had a faulty screen and a new one needed to be made. This came as a large relief for me as I had done screen printing in the past and had never struggled with the technique quite as much as what I had been doing. After receiving my new screen, the practice prints started going a lot more to plan so I felt confident enough to start using the fabric for my print instead of the paper.

I quickly discovered the design I had chosen to do for my print was very complex and difficult to execute. However, I battled through and I now love my print and am happy with the way it turned out considering how hard a design it was. Originally, I had planned to have my piece as a fabric wall hanging. However now it is completed I think it needs to be stretched over some sort of frame to show it at its best.

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Bluey Bonkers Bingo - March 2019

This semester has been a difficult one for me because I had big things happening in my personal life. The main thing that happened was my best friend Passing away from Cystic Fibrosis. This event in my life made me want to spend my time raising as much money as I could for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. This passion of mine very quickly began to spill into my artwork with me creating a socially engaged bingo piece in the pub I work at combining bingo with music to create a tasteful but fun night to raise money and remember my friend in the fun way she would have liked to be remembered. The game works using puns and relating them to songs. For example, ‘stayin’ alive fifty-five’ and the song ‘Stayin Alive’ will play and the people participating will get up and sing alone and dance until the song stops and then the game will continue. The prizes for the game are normally quite humorous so this was a massive learning curve when I first began to host these nights because you had to look at the audience I was aiming at to see how far I could push the jokes before they weren’t humorous anymore. I think I have developed this idea now and perfected it mostly with the help of my friend who dresses up as a woman and dances with people to get the audience going.  Overall, it was a very successful night raising over £1200 for the charity.