# 19

une femme est une femme, katie brookes, v&a, orange dot gallery  

 

this has been such a good start to the week. i actually feel as though i've done something productive in the studios... from our 3 days of drawing, we have to unfold and reveal a simple story. we need to create a visual narrative, with a clear developed chain of connected events. it must have at least 6 images to tell that tale. i experimented a lot with developing my drawings (see above .. photocopying, changing its colour/scale, doing monoprints, using tracing paper, multiples, block colour, carbon paper and different weighted materials). it was so much fun! after focusing mainly on my drawings of mice, i made the connection that i'd like to retell the story of the 3 blind mice. paula rego's "the complete graphic work" and "nursery rhymes" were the first books i grabbed from the library.

wednesdays movie screening was jean-luc godard's "une femme est une femme" (1961). it was charming! anna karina plays angela, a parisian stripper who is desperate to have a baby. her boyfriend isn't up for it, so she moves onto his best friend. there are many references to american musicals from the 1950's, with the characters moving around the set almost choreographically, and the music building up to a song but then dramatically pauses. this scene made me laugh so much:






thursday night- i went to the opening evening of (a friend of mine) katie brookes' first debut solo exhibition at the art work space. having recently graduated from camberwell, i was really impressed by her first show. everything was really professionally done. she plays with the themes of heaven and hell, death and life, through the mediums of pen and ink. 9 of her drawings were put on display and they were all for sale. well done katie!

i also finally got round to the v&a's "shadow catchers: cameraless photography" exhibition. it was presenting the work of 5 artists: floris neusüss, pierre cordier, susan derges, adam fuss and garry fabian miller, who all make photographs but without a camera. their images are created through various processes and techniques (chemigram, digital c-print, dye destruction print, gelatin-silver print, lumino gram, photogram) in which they play with shadows, lighting and different chemical treatments on photographic paper. they also had a moving playing. i loved this specific quote that degas said of nadar "toi tu n'es qu'un faux-artiste, un faux-paintre, et un faux-tographe". i particularly liked these works: the first, a photogram by floris neussüss entitled "be right back", and the second by susan derges "arch 4 (summer)" which was a digital c-print from dye destruction print photograms.

my class was also given a short project to do over the weekend. its based on postcards, and we have to physically send one to our tutor by tuesday. our brief is to "create your own postcard for an unexpected location". i chose to do mine on "rio's naturist club" in kentish town! hence the naked body parts (my postcard below)...

i also went to the orange dot gallery. they were showing a selection (157!) of photographs taken on the hipstamatic app for the iphone, that were uploaded to the "hipstermatics blog" (http://www.hipstamatics.com/). the blog was created in 2010 and receives hundreds of photographs daily.  i thought it was really lovely. you could also order prints. the simplicity to the exhibition was charming. i think that the location/gallery was perfect. i enjoyed the minimalist way that they hung the photographs (with miniature wooden clothes pegs). here are a few of my favourites. i regret not asking for them to be reprinted for me!