Textures in the Day

All is visually rich. Beautiful. From concrete, to flowers, string, wood, metal  etc. From shop windows, to building sites, to galleries...

There's nothing better than taking time out to look at your environment. Really look: textures, colours, forms, patterns, shades, shadows, everything stimulates.

Today I took a trip from home to the Gallery of Modern art... my reference photos (some below) were taken on the way there, very few come from the gallery itself. In a way, a gallery shows you what is thought provoking or 'attractive', whilst travelling through the streets, past building sites, or shop windows, you have to find the beauty yourself. The thing about urban design today (especially in Brisbane), is that these elements are consciously incorporated, not just with mirrors and glass, but in every metal stud, piece of string, hole in a board or concrete slab. I need to do a photoshoot just of concrete. It's an amazingly creative 


The visual make up of most objects, or the aesthetic often doesn't come from the colour or lack of colour, but from the use of light and shadow, which is reflected up on refracted from it's surface or the way surfaces are incorporated like glass and plastic, to creat something like a moth dance or spinning concrete.

I love shadows and reflections - second hand textures I call them - not in a derived or unoriginal way, but in an artfully 'reusable' way. Even the way colours change in certain lighting, adds to the experience of form and tone.

I'm taking some of these beautiful textures, and I'm going to explore them further...

100th Follower - thanks for your interest and support....

I have just checked back getting ready to do a few more submissions, and I found I have reached my 100th Follower... THANK YOU!

To the Followers who do return, thanks again, I often visit followers sites, and I have come across wonderful artists, writers, poets, conceptual visionaries, radio stations, photographers, digital artists, sculptors.... the list is endless....

I have much work to put up, but have taken on an additional course to broaden my understanding of visual culture - a diploma of commercial arts (graphic design) which incorporates the visual language and cannot be discounted as just 'crappy corporate' mind bending... it's all about how we perceive and communicate our culture and thoughts and views....

Thanks again,
Tanya

Materiality - Detritus and Decay Final

The Final images for Detritus and Decay... The concept of light/shadow, decay/nature/rebirth, is of interest to me, from a variety of angles:
urban decay/renewal
nature's turn (an area I investigated after the Brisbane floods in 2011. This concept of life always belonging to nature, whatever it's form or gender or purpose...)

I enjoyed the idea of the 'glass coffin', or a 'vulnerable place' place of rest. Nature is delicate, even more so, exposed to urban elements - cars, roads, pollution etc. Another layer to this concept is the form of 'restriction and rest' we allow ourselves and nature in built up environments. Slight juxtaposition. An idea of 'we want nature, but as long as it grows where we direct it to grow'. I guess that would be the simplistic version...

To the point that there isn't just leave and natural objects encased is important. All things degrade, even man made 'ojbects'; in the case you'll find old pattern cuttings, newspaper pieces, string, black bags... they all have experienced the same change - that of decay. They are no longer the up to date article from the daily newspaper or the pattern for a new dress - their identity is lost, and they become detritus. Another form.

The idea of 'coffin' wasn't an area I wanted to explore, but more the concept of an 'exhibit', where even nature has a price, value and expiry date... 1. what will we archeologically/socially or enviromentally determine about our culture in a thousand years when we gather around an exhibit of bones, or papers or crafts in a musuem type arrangement? 2. To a degree, I also want to poke fun at the fact that if I put this on exhibit at a gallery showing, people may pay money to look at it, no matter how well executed, if the 'concept' is right... just a thought.

Materiality - Detritus and decay

Following on from the materiality of bark - exploring its nature and form - I began to think about it's natural decay. From here, I found detritus was the key to space and form for me, not the bark specifically. i began to investigate forms found in everyday settings that would become part of an 'urban decay' - fallen leaves, dropped papers, decaying natural and unnatural objects, hornets nests etc.

I also experimented with how they may be recepticles for space and time, or vice verse... movement, reflection, shadow... change... all actions decay takes on:

ambient decay - reflection/refraction
natural decay - organs disintegrating
element change - soaked, dried, discarded papers etc.

I added some of these 'actions' to my detritus objects (leaves, bark, hornets nest, papers), such as movement, lighting, burning, hanging, preserving etc.

Preservation of detritus seemed like such a contradictory action, that I would base my further explorations on this.












I took a fair few photos against a lightbox, and even took a few of myself on there, which became a new area of investigation in terms of decay, space and form.

Materiality - Initial Investigations II

Investigations into Bark - progression to decay - detritus...
This was an interesting journey... over 3 weeks, almost daily, I gathered pieces of bark that had fallen from the tree, and took them home. I preserved what I could and over time I photographed the bark.

Bark - connotations (material and immaterial) paper, nature, redevelopment, change, skin, removal etc. It smells like musk and wet and dry and ants... it feels dry and fragile. It can be pinned, sewn, glued, broken, etc. which I find very appealing.

My initial photography of decay was in the form of 'urban' situations - street, concrete, graffiti. I didn't want my final piece to be as directed as 'urban decay' - although this is one of my areas of interest. So the concept of taking Bark and moving away from reflections/light and urban decay was my solution to this.

Materiality - Initial Investigations I

What is Materiality?
"... The words material and materiality carry ambivalent meanings in vernacular English. On the one hand, material is defined as "things that are material," which emphasizes the physical aspect of things; on the other hand, it means "(in various non-physical applications) something which can be worked up or elaborated, or of which anything is composed." The second definition can be better understood through its relationship to the first definition that, again, can be differentiated into two major meanings: 1) something material is that which "pertains to a matter as opposed to form"; 2) that which "pertains to matter or body; formed or consisting of matter; corporeal." [1] Thus, although material designates physical matter, it also assumes potential from its association with non-physical matter." (http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/material.htm)


My first thoughts revolved around two concepts, 1. of being immaterial and 2. of the material.... I watched moths fly towards a light one night and decided this would be an interesting way to think about 'immaterial' - everchanging, intangible because it acts as a sort of 'verb' for the nound - material. The second was something more corporeal - a bark tree I passed every day. The bark changed each day, and although I couldn't figure out how to use this concept without it being an obvious 'material', I investigated the concept of 'materiality in decay' surrounding the everchanging nature of well, nature....


Investigations into Light/Shadow, Reflection
The corporeal that is 'elusive' - light/shadow, reflections, and decay, whereas bark was a 'quantifiable' matter, so it was beneficial to explore.




What lead me to investigate light as a medium - an exhibition (Lumia - art light in motion) I'd seen and then how light and shadow exists as a reflection across a surface, or movement or shadow could alter the meaning of a light...

Photos - the 'everyday'.... urban investigations

Sculpture: Material and Conceptual Investigation

READY-MADES III - Time and Space

So, as a final experiment I set myself a few rules for the Time and Space concept. I knew the final photos had to represent the idea of elevation, space and how time reacts with/out motion (try both).

I chose to use six materials only - I chose perspex (transparency), feathers (light and weight), balls of various sizes and weights (sinker, polystyrene), tape and black paint.

Artists worth looking into, in terms of how they represent texture, colour and space (in the form ready mades or other)....

Man Ray - avantgarde photography and wonderful ready-mades
Marcel Duchamp - exploration of ready-mades
Nike Savvas - contemporary, great representation of space (including sound - it's a complete sensory experience)
Portia Munson - colour collection, creative use of ready-mades to tell a story and incredibly space exporation

I found researching a particular artist often lead me to a larger group of interest. I felt it was difficult to state with this project that any one artist influenced a singular piece. For example, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, as well as Nike Savvas and others influenced my thoughts on how I wanted to represent Time and Space on most of the pieces....

Duchamp's use of glass and Savvas/Calder's use of kinetics their works often come up in the pieces I've made. Transparent perspex in (this exercise), was an idea from Duchamp's 'Bride Stripped Bare'. The incorporation of 'happenstance' and spontaneity (as seen with Jessica Stockholder's work) affected the creating of most of my pieces, for this section.

The photographs were influenced by Man Ray, I've tried not to manipulate them, instead experimenting with filters on the camera and reflections from the perspex, along with natural light and limited exposures.

I'm not sure how successful the outcome is, but the experimentation was very beneficial, in terms of how I can use the camera to experiment with black and white, to find depth (time&space) as well as being a good investigation of weight and how colour influences that. Example the balls - black painted ball, is actually the lightest in terms of weight, but when painted black, 'visual weight' is added. And the feathers - various tones of grey - don't seem to enforce the idea of 'as light as a feather'... many investigations were done here.... documented in my visual diary.