The idea of an online gallery...

I have just been exploring Saatchi's online gallery and have found it very strange. The typical clean, simple, 'white cube' feeling the physical Saatchi Gallery has seems to have been abandoned and replaced with a confusing, flashing and blinking home page. Far from showing off the work, I feel it disorientates and the viewer. It is a nice concept, and I like the idea that any artist can add themselves to the site and gain a wider audience, but I don't think it has been executed very well. There are so many artists shown that you have no idea where to start, and when you do chose someone to look at, you a presented with another page packed with icons. I feel it would be more successful if the artists were grouped into categories rather than all being displayed in the same place. This would make it much easier to find works you were likely to be interested in, as at the moment, it is very frustrating to use. 

I have been thinking about how my work would change if it was shown on a site like this. I have often thought about how different my work would be in photographic form, because to be effective it requires a physical audience, and their reaction and derived conversation is almost as important as the piece itself. Touching the work is a big pat of this reaction, and in photographic form this is obviously not possible. By taking it into virtual form, i.e. placing it on an online gallery, there is nothing physical at all. So much is created using computers, in films for example, an entire universe, with characters settings and weather can be created from nothing. This takes away the real feeling of anything displayed online; you have no feeling of weight or scale, you can't walk around a sculpture or stand in front of a large scale painting and marvel at the tiny details. Maybe work created specifically for viewing online, photography or work of a small scale  might work, but I don't think mine would. 

I have compared my work to the work of Barbara Hepworth.  Although her work is not designed to be picked up and is definately "behind the velvet rope" it still has a sense of weight and warmth in real life, and I always feel the need to get as close to it as possible. 

Barbara Hepworth -Porthmeor, bronze.

In this image, there is no real sense of depth.  You can't tell how deep the curve of the piece is, or indeed how big it is. I want to look down upon it into the bowl like shape the bottom creates, and (at risk of being thrown out of the Tate St. Ives - again) run a finger around the rim of the holes. This image is a good avert for the piece, because it makes me want to see it in real life, but as a true representation of the work, I think it is unsuccessful.   

The IMPACT exhibition opening

Yesterday saw the opening of the school exhibition at the IMPACT Gallery at The Royal Armouries. The kids from the four school had a 4 hour celebration/opening and they were all really pleased to have their work on the walls, and at 14 have started calling themselves published or exhibiting artists which is great. There has been a real team atmosphere surrounding the whole thing, work from the schools was mixed in with work done by myself and the other students, and work done by the lead artists Lizzie and Peter. 

It was great to see them so excited about it, but I found it very difficult to get any other response from them. They had a very simple questionnaire  to fill out asking them what they liked, something that surprised them, and three words to describe the exhibition. Some of the words coming from myself and the other students for this question were: Empowering, accessible, considered, heartfelt, professional and having great potential. The kids found it much more difficult, and when prompted came out with good or cool.  I think this is a reflection on both art and English education in school; they were so excited about the work, but couldn't find any words to describe it.

The exhibition will be up now for around 6 months. I think seeing it up on the wall along side exhibits which almost glorify weapons is very odd. I think it is confusing for the viewer to look around a museum exploring and celebrating ancient and modern weaponry, then to be confronted with not only art, but art which has the complete opposite message to the rest of the gallery. It is situated in the IMPACT gallery, which was set up by the mother of a boy killed by another youth with a knife. It was intended to highlight the dangers of carrying weapons and provide facts about gun and knife crime that would hopefully dissuade young people from using them. I really don't think it is very successful though. It is very wordy and very stereotypically' 'museumy'. I found it boring and I like museums, so If a board teenager was shown around I don't think any of the messages would get across. I know most of the kids were just impressed with the weapons and didn't seem to feel uncomfortable with the fact that they were real, very sharp and had the potential to kill.  I think this is another example of how today's young people are being desensitised to the things they should be wary of by the media, televisions and computer games.

My work so far....

Above: a "pebble" with a footprint 

Today I have been thinking about my ow practice and trying to come up with a plan for the final resolution. I had a chat with Stephen about it all because I have been so interested and involved in the making of the work, that I had forgotten why I ever started making it. Stephen explained why he thought I was making it:

- To explore the negative space between human interactions; to cast the gap between a cheek and a pair of lips, a hand and a shoulder and feet on the floor.

- To tap into a very small but very important personal memory about the beach and collecting the things found on it. This is a childhood memory that has in ways shaped who I have become, I prefer the country to the city, I miss not being able to look out to sea and see nothing at all, and for this reason I feel very claustrophobic in the very middle of the country. I also like the simple joy picking up a perfectly formed pebble can bring, and I think everyone can relate to that. 

The audience for my piece will obviously be the people attending the exhibition, which will probably be at LCAD. I have decided not to show at the hospital because I think there is quite a fine line in my work between craft and fine art. I think if it is seen by the untrained eye, it could simply appear a representation of a beach, and if that is what I had wanted I would have made a watercolour or taken a photograph. 

I have also been discussing how my work should be displayed, and I was surprised how different the pieces looked when they were taken out of the window sill and laid out in a line. They had a real sense of movement, and therefore a much more heightened sense of human presence and impact. I talked to Stephen about creating a much more realistic looking "path" through the stones by documenting the movements of my feet as a carefully picked my way along a route as you often have to when walking on a very pebbly beach. 

I think it is interesting that the smallest touch can convey human life; a finger tip pushed imprint in a "pebble" shows it just as well as a whole body and I am interested to see how little information I can provide the audience and  still have them understand what is happening....

Audience for the IMPACT Project

Since Christmas I have been working on a project in conjunction with Education Leeds and the Royal Armouries called IMPACT.  We (me, 3 other LCAD students and lead artists Lizzie and Peter) have been working with 4 local school to create work around the issue of gun and knife crime, hopefully to be used to influence kids to take the right choice when faced with using a knife. Today and yesterday I have been working at the West Park Centre editing work the pupils have done for the exhibition at the Royal Armouries. After the exhibition, some of the work will be taken further by myself and the other students/artists and used in a resource pack aimed at year 6-7 - 10 and 11 year olds. Morley High in particular have had the benefit of a visit from a stage make-up artist and have consequently created quite graphic pieces, and as they are the oldest group, most of them being nearly 17, they have been able to be very sophisticated in their analysis and viewing; they can see that although the bloodiness is a bit gory, it is needed to give the piece the impact it needs. While editing however, we have had to really think about the audience. Younger children, and even more squeamish adults may be put off by how real it looks,  and not being able to see past this, may quite easily miss the point. We have really toned down the red for this reason, and I have been amazed how much difference it made. Even though real blood isn't bright crimson, using this colour made the images look too shocking. 

It has been good, but difficult to try to think from the point of view of someone who is both younger, and not at all trained in art.  People who are trained seem to have an ability to look past the shocking because they are conditioned to expect it. Similarly with nudity, artists and photographers tend not to bat an eyelid at nudity, but those who are untrained often become giggly and childish. raaaaaaaaaamble 

Why I hate the internet, yet am still doing a blog...

It's been about a month now I think since audiences started, and I have finally decided to start a blog. I was going to have a stop about it, and not do it, but on reflection, I realise this won't get me anywhere. It's because I hate the internet. I hate the idea of communicating virtually, and not engaging personally with people when you find something exciting. When I am excited about a piece of work, or something I've read or seen, I want to tell people about it, and show them, not battle with a computer, getting stuck behind firewalls and disconnected every five minutes. It worries me that eventually we will never see each other in the flesh, everybody's life will be virtual, with virtual friends and a virtual personality, where we know more about how Facebook operates than we do about our friends. My art is about being, and physical reactions. It's about the conversation that happens around it, and the facial expressions of the viewers; these things cannot happen in a virtual world. For this reason I have been reluctant to start a blog, but after realising that I am more than likely going to be marked down for not conforming, I have admitted defeat, and here it is...