After nearly three months working completely remote it was time to make a return to campus. Apart from needing to find everything; bag, access pass, water bottle, lunch box, etc. it was also quite a nervy time. I'm 55, not yet vaccinated and the idea of mixing with more people in one day than I have in three months is quite unsettling. As much as I knew the uni had everything in place for a secure return, with hand sanitisers everywhere, extra cleaning, limited sized groups and only certain years on each day I still wasn't sure I really wanted to come back yet. Was it a risk I was prepared to take. I decided to come in for the morning and keep very vigilant, I could have joined on Teams had of wanted to which was a good reassurance.
The Workshop we were coming back to was one where we were tasked to collaborate with others by creating a task for others to undertake. The idea being you combine the idea of print and sculpture. Print could be an impression, a repetitive mark, a sound, a shadow... and the sculpture could be anything, even yourself. The basic idea was cause and effect, come up with an idea and get someone else to create something that leaves a result.
I had a look around the studio and then went for a wander in the city to see what I could make work, after a few ideas and tries at things I started to think about what I could do with some cheap food, crisps to crush and mould, an Easter Egg that you had to do something with apart from eat, cruel...
This first one shown below is one of the ones I created where I asked people to take a slice of bread and make an impression in it. The crust is the frame. Make a gallery... at 35p for a loaf of bread it really was cheap art material.
I had other ideas as well, one was to create a sculpture with a set of chairs that were stacked in the corner, topple them over and record the noise but don't show the actual sculpture. Or take an image of the shadows that sculpture made but again don't show the sculpture.
This was much in line with one of the examples discussed in the briefing. Artist Andreas Slominski created a dry ski slope at the Serpentine Gallery in London and employed a skier to repeatedly ski down the slope and the wax collected from the skis was turned into a candle. The ski slope was removed prior to the exhibition opening and nobody saw the evidence. He also took a glider fuselage into the gallery by taking down a wall and making an impression on a bed of foam and then replaced the wall and took the glider away. (https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/andreas-slominski/).
A slight aside but in researching Andreas Slominski I found this article from 2016.
10 Remarkable Recent Sculptures That Show Where the Medium Is Going Today: (https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/book_report/twenty-first-century-sculpture-list-1-54144) Slominski's 'Traps' are discussed here alongside nine other very different pieces of work. I couldn't work this one out at first glance, I wish I had seen it for real.
JOANA VASCONCELOS - Lilicoptère, (2012).
A Bell 47 Helicopter almost completely covered with Ostrich feathers and rhinestones. At fist glance all I could see was one great big eyeball covered in a fleshy material.
Back to the workshop...
One of the other ideas I had was to go outside and find an area that you could distrub by walking through it or on it. There was a patch of grass near the uni that was covered in leaves fallen from the willow trees, this would have provided an interesting canvas. Very much in the mould of an early Richard Long piece.
I only walked through it once as I didn't want to disturb it too much in case someone else wanted to use my task for themselves. I might go back to it next week and do some more to define the track more.
The main subject for this unit is 'Collaboration' and we put ourselves into small groups to enact out the various tasks we came up with. In my group Catherine has set up two tables, one were you collected a piece or pieces of clay, moulded it and inserted two holes in it before taking it to another table and making ink prints from it. Very satisfying.
I could have played with this for ages, creating different shapes and making prints, each print was different and the idea of making two holes in each piece not only liked everything together but also defined the print.
Amy in our group created a task that had to be completed at home, unless you happened to have a slice of bread and a pat of butter on you...
On returning home I did do this task, it wasn't easy physically as the butter was pulling at the bread and to keep piling it one meant you were actually spreading butter on butter, it did make you feel a little ill at the amount of butter presenting itself. It was also quite tricky mentally as it seemed such a strange thing to do and goes against your 'normal' behaviour it could be seen as a waste of butter but rules are rules and I had to complete it. It wasn't a waste, I scraped most of it of and toasted the remaining and ate it!
Another task I took on was set up by Zoë where you had to simply take a sheet of foil and make and impression of something. Straight on the face!
I really like the outcome, I spent quite a while working the foil into my eyes and around my nose and mouth. I didn't know how it would turn out, even the straggly base part resembles my beard somewhat. A very satisfying procedure and result. Would love to have taken it on to create as a full bronze or aluminium cast but the foil is so fragile.
A good morning of playing. Well needed.