Last minute decisions ......

So came in this morning with a firm decision on where my door piece was to be placed... this was thrown to the winds rather quickly. Had a brief chat with Andrew firming up in my own mind that the piece belongs standing accepting of its previous use as a door (regardless of where it is positioned you cant take that fact away). Spoke to Kenny Hunter after this and he pushed me to think more about what was important regarding the piece, whether the writing or the object itself was the most important, which led to about three hours of constant mental struggle! The problem is that I can rationalise both methods of hanging either vertical or horizontal so it really did boil down to what I wanted to promote about the piece.  so here is (I hope) my justification for going with my original decision.

The piece standing up shows on it the physical labour that has been put into it, first the transformation from vertical to horizontal in order to carve then back to vertical for the hang. The struggle with producing the text itself is echoed within the slightly awkward and challenging way of reading (sorry clunky sentence cant quite find the right wording) the text. the endurance perhaps? I dont know. anyway best I could do in the short space of time. more for the viva!

 

Yinka Shonibare

This came up in discussion with Graeme ages ago when I first discussed my plaster discs and their relation to Vinyl records and my plan to produce three different sizes.

Zine Front Page mock up

So yeah the Zine I was planning for the show is running into snags so looks like its going to be abit delayed, got some images wrong before sending them to the printers. Would ideally like to print this myself but just not enough time at the moment. Anyway so here is a rough outline of the front cover which I will probably print up myself for each copy see how it goes though.

Almost disasters and helping out.

Probably should have posted all this yesterday but been quite a busy week. Have been really enjoying all the conversations that I've been having with various other MFA students these have mainly centred around the hanging of work and the flow of the viewer through the room. Really think the strongest room of the show is going to be C9 where Iain Sutherland and Kim Wilson are really complimentary work really excited to see it when Kims peat constructions are completed and out of the shuttering. Helped Sander put   together his billboard the other day and hang it today, looks really good glad it came together in the end despite some close calls really carries across his strong aesthetic.

Start of the Hang

So thanks to Graeme's tutorial yesterday we decided to just put one up, and then another, and then another.... so yeah here it is the start of the final degree show hang! Think the frustration of not having physically put any of the pieces on the wall was what was really getting me all stressed. The formation is growing really organically, instead of trying to hard to get a really tight configuration I have h=been relaying on my eye to balance colour and information content as well as size, also distance between pieces varies quite alot but gives the pieces space to breathe and either be taken in as part of the larger whole or as individuals.

Last Minute tutorials

So managed to have a last minute tutorial with Graeme Todd today, this for me helped resolve hanging issues which has been a struggle over the past few days as my original ideas on configuration (having everything hanging in one random block) I shelved after doing a trial run over the weekend and deciding that it just didn't bring anything to the work and that with the amount of information on display it made for a very confusing aesthetic so after various discussions with others I thought I had settled upon a line of plaster discs hung in loose groups of mixed sizes. This would create the sense of reading something written which is an important part of this work. In discussions with William Mokrynski one of my fellow MFA's he brought up the idea of snippets of information heard while tuning the radio etc, which I was immediately drawn to.

Anyway back to the tutorial.. Graeme was quite insistent on giving the loose grouping another try and Im pleased to say It pulled me back on track, the problem originally had been the floor and not giving enough breathing space to the individual pieces which was desperately needed as due to the information contained on them and the float mounts they need that extra room around them to stop them melding into one large confusing mass.


anyway some pics of various trials...  

Publication

So long time no blog (again). Anyway thought id share a little image I put together for inclusion in our exhibition publication LL Brown which I have been on the committee for this year . Its a re-hash of an older print I did to be sold through the Royal Scottish Academy's culture label website, has been altered to fit with my current disc format. The background colour will be gold with black over printed, like this image enough that I am thinking of making a limited screen print edition on a larger scale so more on that later. Now back to sorting out the order for the degree show hang which (fingers crossed) shall be done by Thursday!

Aberdeen Artists

So my piece was accepted to Aberdeen artists which was great to hear, good show this year a really young and vibrant feel to it. Nice to see.