# 9

crossroads 2 (chelsea set topic), lisson gallery, kensington gardens

CROSSROADS II

(blog set topic: state your choice of area, reflecting upon and analyzing your reasons for this choice) :

Now that the eight weeks of rotation is complete, I need to make a decision about which area I would like to pursue as a specialization. Entering the Chelsea Foundation program with enthusiasm and an open mind has helped me through these challenging weeks, and has helped clarify my mind and highlight the courses I would like to choose and in which I can excel.  So far I have been particularly drawn to the Vis/Com and Fine Art rotations, more so than to the 3D Spatial and Fashion/Textiles ones. I struggled with the 3D aspect of both of these courses, and I think that the final pieces I produced for the crits were not up to my expectations. 

With Vis/Com being the first rotation, what I enjoyed was working to specific briefs and the clarity of what tutors were expecting of me. Working to a brief helped stimulate and explore numerous creative ideas.  A lecture from Dominic Wilcox (an ex-Chelsea Graphic Design student) inspired me, especially as his works were entirely ideas-based, and he playfully explored and tampered with all aspects of design.  I particularly enjoyed how we were encouraged to manipulate and work with images alongside our own drawings. I grew to enjoy the fast pace of this two-week rotation, even though during the first week at times I felt slightly overwhelmed, as I was settling into my new life and my new course.  However, I was thrilled with the outcome of my final piece for the crit, and was delighted that the tutors appreciated it also. This gave me a huge confidence boost as I realised that I could apply my skills to achieve clearly defined goals.

With Fine Art being the last rotation, I was eager to see what was in store for me.  One aspect of this rotation that I did not particularly enjoy was that there was no brief to work to, and I felt a bit lost at times. You could argue that it is better not to have a brief, so that it is possible to freely explore your own personal creative ideas, but this did not reassure me entirely.  I was unsure of what was expected of me (as Fine Art could literally be anything), so I chose to produce a series of drawings, and an animation for the first time. I felt that during this crit, I got more feedback than during the others.  This was invaluable considering that, with the animation, I had tried something that I had never attempted before.  Even though the tutors’ feedback was mixed, one tutor particularly appreciated my drawings and suggested that I worked with Max (a Vis/Com) tutor later on in the year. 

I am quite certain that I would like to continue my Foundation at Chelsea working in either the pathways of Vis/Com or Fine Art, combining invaluable skills that I have learnt during these two rotations. These final weeks will allow me to build on my strengths and challenge some of my potential weaknesses in order to achieve a successful conclusion to a great year!

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i had my assesment on tuesday with a 3D spatial tutor and it was extremely positive. at first i was really nervous but i soon understood that assessments at chelsea were quite informal! after 20 minutes of looking through all of my work, together we decided that i would be suited best by specializing in lens based vis com!

we were also given briefs a few days later on friday in our specialisms. my vis com class have been asked to complete a list of 30 things to do that we have to bring in on the first monday. luckily for me, ive already done something like this (rob pruitt's 101 art ideas you can do yourself) which i brought for my portfolio reviews, so i know what kind of root i should take to complete these on time. some of them include: draw every chair you sit on today, 11.11.11, count something pointless, words fail me.


i also visited csm for their open day. the course i was interested in was a BA in criticism, communication and curation. i find this course fascinating, but i need to take into hand that its very academic and there is a lot of writing involved...

this week i also visited the marina abramovic exhibition at the lisson gallery. her works, comprised of new and key past works in the form of video, photographs, and sculptures were shown across the two galleries. i preferred her works in the 52-54 bell street gallery, the rhythm series, which were her early performance works more so than the newer work from her back to simplicity series in the other gallery. her shocking rhythm series works have allowed abramovic to explore performance art as a visual art form and has been described as "one of the defining artists of radical performance". abramovic continuously broke boundaries of what was acceptable in art, performing shocking experiments on herself, challenging not only her endurance but her audiences as well. below, a section from rhythm 0, which was performed for 6 hours in naples. it was made up of a table with 72 objects on it that the spectators can use on her in any way they desire. the objects ranged from whips to safety pins, alcohol and boxes of razor blades, to olive oil, apples and perfume.

i then walked to the kensington gardens to see anish kapoors "turning the world upside down"  outdoor sculpture installation. his stainless steel sculptures were placed in 4 different areas of the park, and lasts until spring, reflecting and distorting the different colours, elements and moods of the changing seasons.

# 8

tate modern

this week i visited the chinese artist, ai weiwei's installation at the turbine hall (tate modern). his piece entitled sunflower seeds is poured over the entire floor of the hall, looking like a carpet and is made up of 100 million sunflower seeds. it explored the relationship between the individual and the masses. these realistic sunflower seeds are actually made of ceramic and were both hand crafted and individually painted. this piece was originally intended to be walked upon however on the 22nd of october it was forced to be inaccessible due to the amount of dust that was produced and it was said that it could harm public health! when i saw it, it was roped off to the public.

for the second week of fine art we were asked to research and select your own images and objects which have interesting disparate cultural references. from this we had to produce a series of works that explores and exploits some of the following qualities: photographic, naturalistic, historical contemporary, trashy/kitsch, pop, culturally significant, abstract in the form of either drawing, sculpture, digital media, or painting. i chose to look back at the images i took from the previous tuesday (people walking past me at oxford circus) and to draw from them and possibly create an animation.

the tutors seemed to take interest in my drawings (well one of them!) and advised me that i should talk more to max about animation.

# 7

hayward gallery, haunch of venison, royal academy

fine art now (and our last rotation wooo). our project is entitled "epic tour" exploring cultural identity. we were asked to bring in a 3D domestic ornament on our first day, and i brought in a touristic lamp in the shape of a gondola! the fine art studio was much larger than i expected, and was divided into 4 sections/rooms. within each room there was different 3D structure made up of 2D and 4D imagery which we were asked to draw from. i decided to take certain sections of each structure instead of drawing the structure as a whole.

this week i visited the hayward gallerys "move, choreographing you" exhibition. what i loved about this exhibition was that it was extremely interactive, and each piece invited you to touch it, play with it and even move it.  the exhibition was made up of installations and sculptures by renowned visual artists and choreographers, aiming to explore the relationship between visual art and dance. there were many scheduled live performance art, but unfortunately not on the day i visited. 

following on from that i visited the haunch of venison. the smaller rooms included "transmission - 3 young artists from london", and "loud flash" an enormous collection of british punk art taken from newspapers and flyers, but the main artists work that was being showcased was that of tom wesselmann. this painter, sculptor and printmaker is regarded as one of the leading figures of american pop art and the haunch of venison was lucky enough to hold the title of the most extensive exhibition of his work to date in the uk. what i enjoyed the most about his works were the larger pieces, that used assemblage as well as collage. 

a long trip around the royal academy's "treasures from budapest" left me quite disappointed. even though their collection of paintings was extremely vast (ranging from paintings by raphael and goya, drawings by durer and da vinci, landscapes by claude and canaletto, to impressionist works by renoir and monet)  i was hoping to see more of the works of egon schiele, as advertised ... being an admirer of his work, and as his drawings were the main images on the billboards and flyers "european masterpieces from leonardo to schiele" there was only one of his drawings there at the exit to the exhibition.

tuesday led us into an independent project "carnival of the street". i chose to go to oxford street to photograph a busy area, with a passing procession of human figures. my main focal point was a traffic light. i really enjoyed taking these photos on a fast shutter speed to get the feel of  a moving image. when i printed the photos out for class, my printer ran out of ink and gave the photographs this pink ghost like quality to it. i decided to scan them back onto my laptop and create a little gif/animation. heres the result!

thursdays studio time was dedicated once again to the 4 structures in the 4 sections of the fine art studio. we were instructed to stand in a circle around the structures, focusing on a small section. we had to draw that section on an acetate sheet, 3 times, each time moving one step to the left or right. max (the tutor) also introduced us to more artists who worked with animation including david lynch (6 men getting sick 6 times) and william kentridge. 

quick linear drawing from friday on A1 paper and further image based experimentations with a cardboard box.

# 6

fashion, shepherds bush market 

following on with our sampling of multiples, we were asked to photocopy most of our paper pieces, to then work with on monday. our directions were to either slice, score, twist, sculpt our pieces of paper. using one line, we had to do one of the listed manipulations to the line. i chose to simple slice 1 line for each photocopy, and with each photocopy i created 10 different varying shaping ideas. i really enjoyed working quickly and with the photocopies. i feel as though it allowed us to fully explore how a simple manipulation can affect our outcomes.

 from that we moved onto larger scaled paper (A2/A3) and were reminded that less=more. 

at first i didn't see the link as to why we had to make larger piece samples,  however we were then quickly brought into the next section of our rotation: modelling. with the larger scale pieces we made, we had to put reinvent them whilst putting them against the body. 

on a visit to shepherd's bush market we saw a peculiar man with a peculiar dog...we were asked to gather more materials to further develop our ideas, so i took a little trip to the market and found a wonderful rubbery material which reminded me of the metallic qualities of a can. after a talk with one of the tutors i decided to continue with the photographic manipulation for the crit, but incorporate these new found materials behind the images.

       

# 5

lisson gallery

we have now moved onto fashion/textiles. for our first lesson we were asked to think about objects that compress and expand. an immediate thought relating to both textiles and compression and expansion was the works of the fashion designer hussein chalayan. luckily enough, he was holding an exhibition at the lisson gallery that i managed to visit. "i am sad layla" featured many installation pieces, including film, photography, audio, performance and sculpture. this minimalistic show had quite an eery feel to it, even at the entrance. a ghostly song was sung in turkish (chalayan's aim was to explore his culture and heritage). this song was a key piece to the whole exhibition. linked to it was a life size sculpture of the singer, which was made from a 3D scan of her body. her face was then projected and moved on the body, but it was silent.

we were asked to produce a series of 9 photos in sequences of an object being compressed or expanded. i chose a can. these were then put aside until the end of the week, whilst we worked on drawings of installations we created in groups.

with the rest of our compress/expand materials that we brought in, we were asked to make an installation out of them and were given short drawing exercises to do.

 

going back to the 9 images, we were given various tasks to complete. first we had to experiment with the words cut, fold, slide. then detach, reattach. displace, replace. deface. multiples, scale, enlarge, reduce and finally connect, families. my favourite example was deface; connect and families. i enjoyed scratching into the photograph of the can, to make it appear like something completely different. 

we then had to turn over our photographs, and copy the image we saw on the back in various types of paper. we had to consider the change of scale, weight, multiples, and change of surface. the backs of my photographs were quite boring!! so i decided to link up 2 of my photographs, and to copy their combined back images onto different pieces of paper.