Major Project (1-1 tutorial), Dr Dale Holmes 8th of October

As this year's major project tutor and guide, Dr Dale Holmes is well placed in providing studio practice guidance and mentoring as he is a successful contemporary artist of many years and brings a wealth of knowledge and teaching experience from a number of institutions.

During this phase 1 of the major project, modelling our ideas is key in order to proceed. We need to start making work straight away. We need to develop prototypes straight away. Our conversations are about ideas at the moment, but we also need to create objects such as paintings, sculptures, videos, photography etc as soon as we can in order to crystallise ideas into models. He termed to this as "concretization".

In essence what we are trying to do in this planning phase 1 stage is to articulate our ideas using different materials and mediums in addition to our ideas of representation. His advice is "do not be embarrassed" and he cited some of the work following an interview with Martin Kippenburger where he said "I'm never satisfied with a piece of art unless I'm slightly embarrassed by it".

I need to explore my drawings / painting by producing more and more with much faster outcomes. Speed is of the essence. I am labouring a little too long on creating accuracy.

The recommendation to me is to now think about how I connect all of my ideas together. I need to document and understand the process of making in my own specific case. Dr Holmes suggested that I explored my use of watercolours in order to make quick sketches in my notebooks, to investigate the relationships of objects within the frame, yet provide quick structures outside of the object in order to form the frame.

Artists recommended that I should look at would be William Kentridge, and his wonderful black-and-white charcoal sketches which explained the narrative of his ideas and political context. Another artist to explore is Michael Torsig, and his works regarding Walter Benjamin's briefcase. Equally the works of Bella Tarr, and the Turin horse, which is based on what happened after Nietzsche's breakdown, before his death, whilst he was in Turin. I have already explored the works of Bella Tarr (with reference to Nietzsche) and William Kentridge, and I understood precisely the direction in which Dr Holmes was guiding me. I do however need to explore and read the works of Michael Torsig, as this is a new piece of work that I have not yet come across.

Finally it was suggested that I read some of the philosophy by Heidegger, in particular the reference to Heidegger's hammer, in his assertion that something only exists when it is broken or not there (it's like in the moment of rejection). This is also related to the work by the philosopher Dassing who is also worth exploring.

 

The next series of works that I created, were much faster and flowing, I did not use pencil sketches as outlines, but just copied the immediate shapes by using a mixture of the base material that the garden gnome was manufactured from, that being plaster of Paris, which I mixed with a standard acrylic paint and applied to 120 g/m² Fabriano paper.

 

In conclusion, I need to speed up my painting and simply create more!