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exhibitions | live | learning | eat & drink | shop | community |
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Thinking Aloud Blog
Seascape - Susan Collins Every Satruday afternoon, artist Judith Alder will be holding weekly discussions about the exhibitions and about contemporary art practice more generally. Follow her discussions here.
Week 10. 13/06/2009
1. Final Seascapes Thinking Aloud – it‘s been great getting together with people from all sorts of backgrounds and with a whole range of knowledge and experience, taking Seascape as our starting point from which to explore our thoughts about contemporary art. This week it was a pleasure to talk with a group which included 3 artists and an art teacher, who among other things discussed ways in which artists make work – not the practicalities of mixing paint or casting plaster, but strategies for looking & seeing; gathering information, distilling and understanding; making time, taking time; being part of a creative organism.
2. Seeing things differently and learning to look havebeen recurring themes in our weekly conversations – something which Susan‘s work achieves in a big way. Claire had been to see Anish Kapoor‘s C-Curve during the Brighton Festival and told us how the huge mirrored sculpture perched on the hilltop outside
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/may/03/anish-kapoor
3. Making Time, Taking Time – one of the interesting features of Seascape for me is the way that Susan manipulates time, forcing down the speed at which the images are captured, presenting each view as a collection of moments in time. One of the group talked about his experience of having to re-learn the habit of taking time to look and feel simple experiences like going for a walk. Having been to see the Richard Long exhibition at Tate
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/richardlong/
Week 9. 06/06/2009
1. Young Curators (again) – many of the visitors to Things Fall Apart are really moved by the exhibition. There have been several conversations involving people with first hand experience of teenagers who have had to deal with some of the tough issues addressed in the show. They are encouraged to see these issues being brought into the open in the gallery. During the past weeks we have discussed how artists use the process of making their work to try to understand or make sense of difficult issues. Some artists then move on and make work of a less personal nature, but for others their work remains an intensely personal reflection of individual experience.
2.
3. Final Seascapes Thinking Aloud – I‘m hoping for a good turn out for the final Seascapes Thinking Aloud next week because there are still so many things we haven‘t discussed, and I love the way people bring their own thoughts and perspectives on the show, stimulating further discussion and new ideas.
Week 8. 30/05/2009
A hot and sunny afternoon seemed to draw people straight from the Seascapes outside to the sea. People seemed less inclined to stay for “tea & chat” and more inclined to go for ice cream and a paddle, so Thinking Aloud today became a series of conversations rather than a unified discussion.
1. Young Curators, Things Fall Apart - a few of the remarks in the comments book are quite brutally critical and although outweighed by many supportive and constructive comments, we wondered how the YC‘s will deal with such criticism. A Thinking Aloud companion talked about supporting the group by putting an emphasis on questioning what issues the commentators‘ might be bringing to the show, and on the importance of individuals valuing their own work. Some gallery visitors felt that the critical comments came from a lack of understanding of the project, or misplaced expectations of what they would see on a visit to the De La Warr. Others were very accepting that it was “modern art” and therefore some would like it, some would not.
2. A cultural centre – in the last few weeks I‘ve come across many people who make a regular pilgrimage to Bexhill to visit the De La Warr – some once a year, some with each changing exhibition. One of these couples joined me for a cup of tea & talked about their enjoyment of both of the exhibitions (enriched they said by subsequent chat) and the importance of places like the De La Warr Pavilion in towns across the country, as centres where “something” was happening – whether art, performance, music or film, which attract people to gather and enjoy a shared experience.
3. Inspiration – visitors often comment on the amazing colours in the Seascape prints, which inspire artists, ceramicists and textile artists. A visiting textile artist talked about the way some of the prints are reminiscent of tapestries, the colours woven together to form an image.
Week 7. 23/05/2009
1. Young Curators - a mother and her adult daughter talked together about the Young Curators‘ “Things Fall Apart” in Gallery 2, distressed by Jessica Robinson‘s installation depicting disintegrating memories and Jasmin Spires‘ photographs relating to schizophrenia. “Why don‘t the young see beauty any more?” asked the mother. “Well… it‘s a difficult world” said the daughter. We talked briefly about how art can be a way of working things out, coming to terms with things, understanding.
2. Unexpected pleasure - How nice it is that Thinking Aloud gave 5 visitors not only tea and chat in the afternoon, but also a chance to hear a first hand account from another Thinking Aloud guest who told us of her collaborative project with Susan Collins. The project was the award winning Classroom of the Future at MossbrookSchool, Sheffield. Thanks Sarah, for coming to Thinking Aloud & being persuaded to talk to us about your project - it was great to hear your personal perspective and really brought it alive for us - whether we could get to grips with the technology or not was not wholly important - what was important was that we gained an understanding of what was achieved through your combined skills. www.susan-collins.net/mossbrook
3. Light matters - Today we touched upon the diversity of contemporary landscape art and the many approaches taken by artists working with and in the landscape. We talked again about Roni Horn‘s River Thames photographs; about authorship and the touch of the artist‘s hand; about representations of time and tide in contemporary art; about reality, intervention and invention. At the very end of the afternoon, the discussion came round to how much we are affected by changes in light and the way these affect our environment, even our homes. Maxine was talking about how at a certain time of the day she actively dislikes the light in her living room - just for a while, and will go to another part of her house until the light changes again. We looked at some pics of James Turrell‘s Sky Spaces and marvelled at the changing colours.
1. Several times during the past weeks, we‘ve talked about the amazing blue which is present at the beginning and end of each day in the huge “Seven Days In June” print – does that really happen? Why don‘t we see the blueness when it comes? Maybe we would, if only we were looking? Or maybe, like lots of special things, we only see them when someone has shown us how.
A visiting photographer talked about how frustrating it can be to wait, sometimes for hours, to capture on film a special moment - a sky, a fleeting shaft of light through clouds, or a moment of blueness at dusk or dawn, only for one‘s audience to assume that the long awaited moment has been “Photoshopped” in!
I‘m reminded of Tacita Dean‘s piece, The Green Ray, 2001. The green ray is an optical phenomenon that occurs during the last moment of the sun's setting. “If you want to see a green ray you have to have a totally clear horizon, no obstructions at all. When the sun sets into a clear line, like a pencil line of sea, you have a good chance of seeing it. And what you are seeing is the slowest light from the sun. It looks like a tiny pulsating lentil… According to Jules Verne, if you see a green ray, you will be transformed.” Tacita Dean. www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/tacita-dean-in-search-of-inspiration-440791.html
2. The opportunity didn‘t really arise today to talk about some of the things I‘d been thinking about this week - about how contemporary landscape art is so diverse and exciting, with artists approaching it in many different ways; how landscape art has in some cases become land art; how artists are able to work more and more with reality, and how sculptors now work with landscape in a way which has not been possible in the past with traditional materials.
And scale… there‘s another issue. We did briefly touch upon the scale of contemporary photography, with Gursky‘s wall-sized prints, Darren Almond‘s picture-window sized landscapes, and all that this entails – big paper, big equipment, big budgets! But what about the scale of artists working with and in the landscape – Richard Long‘s walks, Antony Gormley‘s installations at CrosbyBeach, or at Lake Ballard, Australia, Robert Smithson‘s “Spiral Jetty” or, the mother of all landscape projects, James Turrell‘s Roden Crater! www.antonygormley.com/viewphotoseries.php?photoseriesid=13&page=1&projectid=18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Turrell
12/05/2009
Today I did a "Nothing Drawing". It consisted of rows of little noughts all lined up against each other, touching each other; rows across and rows down, all touching; to make a 6 inch square of nothings. I liked it. It had a calm and gentle feel about it like Susan's Seascapes. But when I finished it, I turned the piece of paper round by 90 degrees and hung it on my studio wall. How different it looks with its vertical columns of nothings .
1. Someone suggested today that the Seascape images would have a very different feel if the pixels were laid down in different ways. What if the pixels were to drop into their correct position in a random order? It would make it impossible to “read” the changing light I suppose; the image would just become a random jumble of colour and tone. What if the image was produced in an orderly fashion but in vertical columns instead of horizontal bands? How would that affect what we see. It would certainly be dramatically different from these calm, contemplative images. Perhaps vertical columns of changing light would be like curtains of colour, with darkness approaching like the closing of a shutter?
2. I like working in the gallery, chatting to visitors & finding out what they think about the work. Some people are drawn in by the contemplative nature of the work; others enjoy its beauty and colour; I like the way it records the passing of time - I like trying to “read” the story of the hours which are recorded in each image - the changing light and weather, the passing traffic, and cycles of time and tides.
One visitor today though was left untouched. Thinking Aloud, he raised an interesting point about the presence of the artist in the making of the work. As a viewer he likes to feel the artist‘s presence - the mark of the artist‘s hand or eye, something which he feels is lacking in Susan‘s Seascapes. Does this way of making art necessarily mean that the artist is “remote” from the work for part of the making…
3. Thinking further afield - on the advice of a visitor I looked up Hiroshi Sugimoto‘s Seascapes - very beautiful - www.sugimotohiroshi.com/seascape.html and, discussing the recording of time, was reminded of Marine Hugonnier‘s “Towards Tomorrow” a series of photographs taken from a viewing point in Alaska, looking across the International Date Line into Siberia. Due to its geographical position, Siberia is always 24 hours ahead of Alaska. The photographs are therefore, in effect, pictures of a future moment. www.marinehugonnier.com/oeuvre.php?media=2&serie=6&oeuvre=1
Next week… maybe we‘ll get the chance to talk some more about contemporary landscape - this has whetted my appetite.
1. I‘d been to see the Roni Horn show at Tate Modern, as had one of my Thinking Aloud guests. We were both in awe of Roni Horn‘s amazing photographs of the Thames. Like Susan‘s work they show no landmarks, not even the sky; nothing but water. By limiting the subject in this way, Horn shows it to us in a new way - as a mutable substance - sometimes solid, sometimes jelly-like, always changing.
2. On Saturday we talked about the draw of the sea. Why are so many of us drawn to spend time by the sea? One of the group talked about how she walks by the sea every day. We used words like infinity, ongoing, constant, but changing every day. Still not sublime. But getting closer.
3. Later, talking with a gallery visitor about the way the work records the passage of time, the visitor told me about Roger Ackling, an artist whose work records time in a different way. Ackling burns his “drawings” into wood using the sun and a magnifying glass. The time taken to make the work depends on a range of factors, “There‘s the time of day, cloud condition, time of the year, altitude and position on the earths surface. That then is related to what you‘re burning…” Like Susan‘s work, Ackling sets up the framework for the work to happen, but parts of the making are beyond the artist‘s control. http://www.originallittlebird.co.uk/artist1.html
03/05/2009
I have succumbed to compulsion and downloaded the flashplayer which can bring me live updating full screen Seascapes to my desktop! http://www.susan-collins.net/seascape
Week 4. 02/05/2009
Anticipation of the work was rewarded today by a transformed StokesBay! A sunny May Bank Holiday weekend has obviously drawn out crowds of sailors and windsurfers, speckling the sea with scattered pixels of colour.
A small but interested group joined me in the gallery to look at the work, and afterwards for tea & chat. We kept coming back to the “pared-down-ness” of the work, especially when viewed as a culmination of a series of projects, each project a stepping stone to the next - “In Conversation”, “Transporting Skies”, “Fenlandia”, “Glenlandia”… each one more pared down than the last, with Seascapes finally removing all landmarks and allowing abstraction to take over at times.
01/05/2009
I‘ve discovered that I have developed a sense of anticipation about going to the gallery each Saturday. What will the projections show this week. I might have to start checking the Seascape website in case I miss a sunset.
People talk about the compulsive attraction of web-based communications - Facebook, Twitter, e-mail addiction… after Susan‘s talk at Lighthouse this evening, I wonder if she has to fight a compulsion to continually visit her webcam images?
Thinking some more… Susan talked about the surprises which come from working as she does with some of the work beyond her control. I can understand that. As an artist I‘m disappointed if my work turns out as I imagined it - I feel I‘ve failed if that‘s the case.
Five of us met for tea (or coffee) and chat. What a lot of ground we covered: · Rodchenko, the Russian Constructivists and how they thought painting was on the way out at the start of the 20th century & that the machine would take over · Pinhole cameras on The One Show capturing the solstice over a 6 month exposure (have I really understood that properly? yes I think so - Google “pinhole - camera - solstice” and you‘ll see) · “It will be a shame if there aren‘t any paintings any more” (but that‘s the great thing about art - there‘s room for everything, old and new) · the sophistication of contemporary art and the blurring of boundaries between art and everyday advertising, design and film · the reliance of designers & the commercial advertising world on a drip feed of original creative thinking coming from artists to inspire new ideas · how going to art galleries trains us to look and to see differently · Maggi Hambling‘s Seascapes · changes in arts practice over the last 50 years or so
What a lot of stimulating, enthusiastic and interesting thinking aloud! Thank you to my 4 tea guests - it was fun.
Thoughts about Week 3. 28/04/2009 Maggi Hambling Seascapes - One of my tea guests on Saturday talked about Maggi Hambling‘s practice of painting a daily seascape from the beach near her home in Suffolk. We talked about Susan‘s contemplative work with its soothing horizontal bands of gradually changing colour, capturing movement and changes of light as speckles, dapples and dashes in the blue-grey. In contrast Maggi Hambling‘s Seascape paintings seethe with power and wildness and crashing, churning waves - "I draw the sea each morning, very early before anyone else is about when it's still dark and often very difficult to see the sea… I try to get into the rhythm of it - to start trying to make some pathetic little human marks that might have something to do with the mystery of this great, great thing in front of us."
Thoughts about Week 3. 28/04/2009
Changing art - how arts practice has changed in the last 50 years. Thinking aloud on Saturday, we talked about the importance of artists‘ groups and the value of discussion and critical feedback. A lady told us how her late husband, an artist practicing in the middle part of the 20th century, had little opportunity to benefit from this sort of discussion. In her experience, artists were reticent about discussing each other‘s work; time at art college was spent developing practical skills; critical feedback came from tutors.
How different is my experience of art college and arts practice at the turn of the 21st century with group crits, peer reviews, Pecha Kucha, Talk About the Work and an atmosphere of creative collaboration and cross-over. How productive… but can too much talk about the work be a barrier to making it? Is it possible that by talking it out, the creative energy dribbles away… is spent?
Week 2, 18/04/09
No thinking aloud today; just a gallery tour and a rush back to Eastbourne. Sorry - hope no-one came for tea and chat, but we will be Thinking Aloud every Saturday now until the show ends.
1. It‘s a day of ebb and flow – waves of people flood a previously empty gallery space and disperse through the rooms as quickly as they appear.
We (my gallery explorers and I) marvel at the colour captured pixel by pixel in the huge print which is our first stop in the gallery. We move on to chat about the abstraction of the seascape as it settles into strata in shades of blue and grey.
We comment on how the changing colours are presented one at a time, box by box, layer on layer… a new way of seeing reality.
I remember childhood activities of painting by numbers, and of copying, one square at a time, little pictures which were divided into manageable sections by a grid. It makes me smile to think of Susan‘s work inspiring a sort of paint by numbers for Impressionists.
2. Thinking more broadly:
Chuck Close colour charts how many shades of grey? mosaic building blocks tapestry, textiles, patchwork puzzles those computer games where squares drop into place to fill up a row those little hand-held puzzles where you have to shuffle the squares around to establish some sort of order Judith(another Judith) talked about women working with technology in art and her own personal experience of filming seascapes on a daily basis as a visual record
… to be discussed
3. Still no mention of the sublime.
It‘s easy to lose sight of the art during discussions about the technology; but at the same time, it‘s important to understand how the process works in order to appreciate the charting of the passage of time.
On Saturday, once we got over the technology, we talked about art and not art; skills and how we value them, and how art moves on with the times. We talked about pixels and Pointillism; changing light and colour, and Impressionism; framing an image, capturing a moment and photography.
Next week maybe we‘ll try starting with the art and leaving the technology until later.
We nearly talked about creativity and the brain - but steered away from it because it seemed too big. We talked about confidence and how one copes as a young artist, going out on a limb to do something different, and the support systems offered by galleries and curators. We wondered if people would have more respect for the Young Curators if they were called the New Curators?
Thoughts about Week 1, 14/04/09
I‘m also a bit of a sucker for data such as that presented on the Seascapes website. It forms small puzzles for me to analyse and use to build my own picture:
Bexhill-on-Sea < 2009-04-15 10:40:01 >
StokesBay < 2009-04-15 11:05:01 >
http://www.susan-collins.net/seascape http://www.seafort.org/blog/index.html
2. Sublime • adjective (sublimer, sublimest) 1 of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe. 2 extreme or unparalleled: sublime confidence.
Week 1, 11/04/09
Today I showed the group a book with lists in it. In 2005 artist Stephen Turner spent 5 weeks living on a tower in the Shivering Sands Seafort off the coast of Kent. The book, Seafort, documents the project. The lists detail the equipment and supplies he took for his stay.
Here are some words and themes from todays discussions: art not art skills value painting hands on Pointillism Seurat Monet light weather changing capturing technology pixels the World Wide Web and its uses (for artists) blogs Flickr photography time creativity Young Curators New Curators confidence going out on a limb support systems collaboration
2. Sublime
This is a word I don‘t like. I don‘t know why, I just don‘t. In my mind it‘s a sort of oval, soft, slightly unpleasantly spongy word. We didn‘t use it today - in fact I steered away from it. But I know I‘m going to have to face it head on one of these days.
Week 8. 30/05/2009 A hot and sunny afternoon seemed to draw people straight from the Seascapes outside to the sea. People seemed less inclined to stay for “tea & chat” and more inclined to go for ice cream and a paddle, so Thinking Aloud today became a series of conversations rather than a unified discussion. 1. Young Curators, Things Fall Apart - a few of the remarks in the comments book are quite brutally critical and although outweighed by many supportive and constructive comments, we wondered how the YC‘s will deal with such criticism. A Thinking Aloud companion talked about supporting the group by putting an emphasis on questioning what issues the commentators‘ might be bringing to the show, and on the importance of individuals valuing their own work. Some gallery visitors felt that the critical comments came from a lack of understanding of the project, or misplaced expectations of what they would see on a visit to the De La Warr. Others were very accepting that it was “modern art” and therefore some would like it, some would not. 2. A cultural centre – in the last few weeks I‘ve come across many people who make a regular pilgrimage to Bexhill to visit the De La Warr – some once a year, some with each changing exhibition. One of these couples joined me for a cup of tea & talked about their enjoyment of both of the exhibitions (enriched they said by subsequent chat) and the importance of places like the De La Warr Pavilion in towns across the country, as centres where “something” was happening – whether art, performance, music or film, which attract people to gather and enjoy a shared experience. 3. Inspiration – visitors often comment on the amazing colours in the Seascape prints, which inspire artists, ceramicists and textile artists. A visiting textile artist talked about the way some of the prints are reminiscent of tapestries, the colours woven together to form an image. |