This is part three of an evaluation. Parts one and two are my last two posts, though I always want to write a blog about running every time I finish a run... then I just sort of die and forget.
So here it is:
At the same time I also made a video of myself collecting every single bit of litter in a room-sized space in college grounds, in an attempt to make the finding of the objects more of a performance. This was just before the Easter holidays, and I had gone completely ‘off the boil’ with my whole project. It was one of those “what has art ever done for me” periods of hating art and hating me and trying to find any working method that required no effort, in a sort of backlash protest to art. I considered exhibiting the video, or a series of stills, above a case of the litter I had collected, or several cases and sets of stills.
My excavations had already been compared to Marc Dion’s ‘Tate Thames Dig’ (1999) and ‘Tate Thames Locker’ (2000). This piece had seen Dion and a large team collecting waste from the Thames at low shore for fragments of history. Like archaeological findings, the objects were cleaned and displayed in cases, alongside photographs of the beach and tidal flow charts. Themes of geography and natural processes, as well as those of childlike curiosity and rescue missions, are within the work. Having never seen the work in person, I imagine it to be similar to Susan Hiller’s ‘From the Freud Museum’ (1991-96), which I saw during her retrospective at Tate Britain in 2011. Hiller displayed various small, solid objects within wooden cases, then behind glass, rather like an anthropological collection – something that can only be truly appreciated up close.
(Image belongs to MOMA)
After the Easter holiday I continued to go on walks finding objects, cleaning them up in an attempt to make them better. In one heated argument that month I was told that I “wasn’t good enough” and continued to contemplate how and why objects could be good enough not to be discarded. Around this time I tired of collecting dirty and boring objects. At best I found lots of plastic bottles, crisp packets, rarely anything particularly inspiring. A big problem was that these mass-produced objects often had logos or colours on them already, so if I tried to make new objects from them it was hard to tell whether my transformation was interesting, or whether it was the existing design.
Studying sculptures by Blue Curry reinvigorated me – as he often worked with found objects too, but a slightly larger scale than the ones I had found. Also, rather than having any dirt on them, his were always immaculately polished. It was as if it all made sense – I wanted objects which were unwanted to be desirable again, but how could they when they were still covered in dirt? Nobody would put that in a home, least of all for sanitation reasons, but it just isn’t attractive. Curry had tapped onto what a modern day market want from decoration. There are generally two categories of people nowadays: people who want antiques items for their historical value, whimsy or aesthetic; and people who opt for clean and sleek finishes such as metal and glass. By recycling objects such as bottles, shells, plates and vases, Curry’s sculptures instantly look domestic, yet they are not quite antique or new. They meet in the middle – they are ‘one-offs’, but they look very shiny and new. An environmentally conscious viewer would be impressed by the use of found materials. Curry exhibits work with the aim of selling to private buyers, unlike Hiller, whose cabinet would be better enjoyed by a room full of people in a gallery than in a home.
(Shockingly, again, not my photo. I didn't manage to see Curry's works in the flesh.)
Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray were also rather essential to look at when I started thinking about larger ready-mades. Duchamp’s ‘The Fountain’ was incredibly controversial in 1917 (he infamously signed ‘R. Mutt’ onto a urinal) and would nowadays still be dismissed by many as ‘not real art’.
The whole idea of ‘real art’ started to bother me a lot over the following weeks. I was aware that whilst my tutors and peers may be able to understand and appreciate rather untraditional (and by untraditional I mean ‘fast’) working methods or final pieces. However, the exhibition of FMP material would be open to the family and friends of students, who will often go along to support an individual, not because they have a big passion for art. For my FMP in first year I exhibited seven photographic prints with one sketchbook (with several blank pages) and I never forgot the brother of a fellow student looking at my work and remarking to her “Is that all?” I eventually realized that I did not want this audience to view my work and think I was completely taking the piss.
But just before that realization I came up with another idea, inspired by Abraham Cruzvillegas ‘Blind Self Portrait as a Post-Thatcherite Deaf Lemon Head. For ‘K.M’’(2011) which sees hundreds of magazine pages in various sizes painted white on one side and pinned to the gallery wall. I saw this work at Modern Art Oxford in late 2011 and thought it was a load of rubbish at first. On my second visit I was seduced by the part-painting-part-installation quality of the whole thing. Viewing it straight on it looked like a flaking white wall, and from the side colour and text became visible. It was like torture to a curious person such as myself – I had to force myself not to lift the pages to reveal their identity. Cruzvillegas introduced me to the idea of paint as a transformation for objects, but more importantly he made me think about discarded paper.
I almost kept going there! Hope someone, somewhere, is enjoying reading this... Or reading it and hating it anyway.
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