Research continues

The art in a box aspect of fine art research is still ongoing and I have now managed to make a couple of reliefs as a test. See below.

Mick Welbourne who is the manager of the print room in Vernon Street, helped me to think through the process and we screened acrylic ink onto copper plate and used the ink as an acid resist, using ferric chloride to bite away the unprotected areas of copper. The best results came from about 1.5 hours biting. We also found out that ink left overnight and then screened onto the copper sticks much better and provides an even stronger resist. The shiny final look is because I wanted these cards to feel a little like the 'tranculments' or ornaments I used to polish with my mother when I was a child. The years of polishing had worn the images on the horse brasses and similar ornaments down, but at the same time they had developed a patina that clearly communicated my mother's domestic love of being house-proud. I need to keep touch with the source of my ideas and each time I refer to my childhood it seems to be a touchstone that grounds the deeper significance of my practice.

These metal reliefs will  be used to make ‘card houses’ or can be displayed on the floor or on a wall or within the fine art area's 'travelling box’ depending on the final design and or rules for display that the group devises.

I’m also planning to get the cards screen printed in colour on an appropriate card, so that full sets of playing cards can be produced and tarot type games played.

This is a colour test for one image to be printed in three colours and then guillotined to make 16 cards, there will be four of these printed and the dog biting it's tail used as the image on the reverse of all the cards. 

The practical aspects of the research are however taking much longer than anticipated and I’m not sure when I will have all these things completed because most of the Blenheim Walk workshops are being refitted and the Foundation course starts back next week, which means that the Vernon Street printroom and staff will be snowed under with inductions soon.

However, I’m balancing this work with three other projects, one of which is to develop a more theoretical strand, in which I’m looking at going back into specific aspects of drawing research (the grammar and syntax of drawing language) and linking with a member of staff from the Hong Kong Institute who is also interested in this area. I'll post a complete review on this at some other time as it is complex and detailed, but intimations as to where I'm coming from with this are already recorded in earlier posts, look at the posts tagged drawing. 

However I’m also still learning how to use 123d Catch software and have been exploring the ways it can be ‘glitched’ by giving it insufficient information to process by taking out of focus photographs or focusing on unimportant areas and editing out the areas I don’t want. As I’m also working on the forthcoming exhibition, “There is nothing like a good shave to make a pig feel like a man again”, which will open on the 15^th of September, it seemed like a good idea to explore the possibilities of using new technology to go alongside what I’m doing using traditional hand drawn techniques. The image of pigs has been used as a metaphoric substitute for people, (long pig etc) by several cultures and our close relationship with animals and their representation goes back to cave paintings from 30,000 years ago. This aspect of time is something I’m going to explore further in the more theoretical research. Hopefully once the college starts back again and all the workshop areas are in full swing, I will also be able to get some actual 3D objects made using ‘123d Make’ to control the output. As you can see from the image below, the paradoxes of inner and outer, object and environment can be played with and  reconfigured in potentially very interesting ways. 

The knitting of various strands together and the weaving in and out of practice and theory also reflects the design of the new pathway structure in fine art and the introduction of the COP3 module, which is designed to get students to keep being involved with practice while developing theory alongside it. The previous use of dissertations to develop a more theoretical underpinning to practice was felt to often create a schism between practice and theory, students often neglecting their practical work while they concentrated on bookish learning. Hopefully I can get enough work done to provide an example of how the two forms of thinking can be undertaken in such a way that they enhance each other.