Head over to the Colchester Art Societies website to check out our Christmas Online Exhibition. All works are for sale, so you might just find the perfect gift there too (for yourself, or for someone else!).
Find us here: https://www.colchesterartsociety.co.uk/
My offering this year, is 'END'.
END makes use of two of my The Road Sign Collection lino cuttings. Designed to be a wall hanging, bring the outside in with this wooden sign.
A Four Lettered Word was inspired by a piece of work that I created for the @lockdownandlight exhibition which took place virtually during the COVID-19 lockdown.
For this virtual open call I created light text which showed the message of 'here' (one of my favourite words to work with, due to its links with time and space and 'nowness'). This was a temporary light installation, captured, uploaded to the internet and then removed.
When considering what to create going forward this Four Lettered project came about.
The two things to overcome are; what word to use - keeping in mind that I have four windows and am therefore limited four letter words (get the title now...). I did not want to use smaller text to include more letterings as readability is key, also by having one letter per window I can easily plan for the spacing between the letters being equal.
The next thing to consider is how to make something that in its nature is temporary into something tangible. They become photos, that is how they exist, but can I elevate them beyond that? The solution here could be prints. This is not something that I have explored before.
The aspect that I have on my side this time around is that it is getting darker much earlier, meaning it should be easier to take photos of the work. Lockdown and Light took place in the summer and outside never seemed to get that dark - darker the outside, brighter the letters.
Word Choice
I have been working with four lettered words for a while now, as I had been exploring their use within my lino work (again, ruled by the length of the lino).
I landed on the word home, it felt fitting as that is where we are spending most of our time. It is simplistic and its reading is open to infinite amounts of interpretation.
Tickets, Please, draws it
inspiration from the train journey that connects Colchester and Ipswich. The
train ticket allows us to cross over the border. It is elevated above what it
is, a piece of card and it becomes something that give your access to a service.
In a similar way, with this piece I am also elevating a piece of card to
something else, a piece of work that exists in the art world.
The work draws on the train
ticket as a symbol and hints at the original with the use of replicating the
size, shape and lines of an original. I wanted the work to be recognisable but
not to be a copy a when working with reproductions something from original is always
lost (Benjamin, 2015) and so I wanted to avoid this by taking inspiration and
elements, rather than the train ticket as a whole.
The medium has been chosen to
add a DIY quality and uniqueness to the objects, something that their
inspiration lacks. As train tickets are mass produced and computer generated. This
addas a human element to the aura of the artwork and is fitting to my art
practice.
The work itself is sculptural –
not 2D. It is intended to exist laying on a surface, preferably the floor –
where it seems from experience most train tickets end up (or at least it seems
that way!). There are parallels here too to the train station floor and
the gallery floor, they are both spaces that are overlooked in everyday life, which
is another reoccurring theme in my practice, the Duchampian unchoice
territories (O’Doherty, 1986).
There is an intended simplicity here
which helps give the audience immediate access to the work (Stiles and Selz,
2012). Just by putting something on the floor, draws attention to it, make it
similar to the everyday encounter of the original train ticket and that
experience of looking down at it (Virilio, 2010) and helps to replicate a
moment from real life. It allows me to try and emulate that immediacy and experience
of being in the moment and spotting something (Hayward, 2004).
The text on the tickets is taken from the letter coding used for each location within the context of the railways system.
It uses, as all of my art does,
our shared language (Wittgenstein, 2007) and social facts (Burke and Crowley) –
in this case social facts specific to train stations (COL instead of Colchester
/ IPS instead of Ipswich). All language aims at communicating something (Delacroix,
1924 in Ullmann, 1962) and
my use of linguistics within the artwork (both of the text and the title) sets out to communicate notions around train stations, to engage the mind of the viewer and take them to that train station context (Saussure, 2013, p19).
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| Tickets, Please at Firstsite |
The work itself has changed since
its inception, in meaning and in placement. I used to travel by train between
Colchester and Ipswich three times a week for work – the pandemic ended that,
and now I do not even work there and never returned before I left due to home
working. This now represents a moment from my past, whereas when it was created
it was my present. The work too changed once in situ at Firstsite, with photos
showing slight movement in placement, something you come to expect with floor-based
works.
References
Benjamin, W. (2015)
Illuminations. London: Penguin.
Burke, L. and Crowley, T. (2000) The Routledge language and
cultural theory reader. London: Routledge. (The Politics of Language).
Hayward, K. (2004) City Limits: Crime, Consumer Culture and
the Urban Experience. Routledge-Cavendish.
O’Doherty, B. (1986) Inside the White Cube. University of
California Press.
Saussure, F. (2013) Course in General Linguistics.
Duckworth; New edition.
Stiles, K. and Selz, P. (2012) Theories and Documents of
Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists. University of California Press
Ullmann, S. (1962) Semantics: An introduction to the
science of meaning. Oxford: Blackwell.
Virilio, P. (2010) Art as Far as The Eye Can See. London:
Bloomsbury.
Wittgenstein, L. (2007) Lectures and Conversations on
Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. ed. Cyril Barrett. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press.
“BORDERS”: A Firstsite Exhibition of work by Ipswich & Colchester Art Societies.
