Holes in the Texture of Time.

What a lovely find. 

Research by Erik Kwakkel 2014 Leiden University, Medieval Manuscripts



Engleberg  Stiftbibliothek fourteenth century, example of stitched hole

I seem to have found my own hole in the texture of time as I have escaped from the MA in Fine Arts. I decided suddenly I just didn’t have time for all those essays and presentations ...at my age .

I like to make stuff and I am really happy that I have now reversed out of the cul de sac.

I may or may not continue with this blog, not that anyone cares a rats arse if I do or don’t. 

‘Cept for me!

Gotta admit these manuscript holes are cool.

So much to do, so little time.




Ninth century hole used as window to dragon on next page







Repaired rip in page



Parametric grid and the way out

The overlapping grid of the net references a parametric grid, which led me to research other examples. The most interesting result to me is the formation of holes/space by increasing the tension on some threads/lines.

Tension can pull you apart.

Order resolves into chaos, held in place by order, too much control results in rupture. 

The parabola of starlings over the wreck of Brighton West pier is emotive. Control and seeming chaos. Escape from destruction. Syncranised movement. Co-operation at a non verbal level.

Hanging hung

The POP UP Installation was successfully installed and  attended by my peer group of MA students and two tutors.

By enabling the grid of the net to drape both in space and down the walls the installation became more organic and enticing. A contrast of straight lines and angles and circles and spheres.

I had prepared 13 weights but only attached 5 as I did not want the installation to become merely decorative [those of Ernesto Neto are attractive and inviting in the main, losing some of their power]. The empty spaces become here as questioning as the weights, is the lack positive or negative to the viewer.

The weights are accessible to touch, hold, feel the surprising lack of heaviness, are the fears wrapped inside the body bag as weighty as presumed? 

The open entrance to the netted area encouraged people to step inside, but they needed permission to touch.

The installation was site specific in as much as it was big enough to stretch from one wall to the other but the amount of drape was partly imposed by the distance between the walls and the height of the tensile cable above. It would have been a possibility in another space to have the area in darkness to add to the sense of the unknown.

there were many shapes and forms produced within and by the grid which delighted me and the viewers.

Weights and Measures

Tomorrow I am going into ArtSkool to put up my Installation for the Big Crit, an interim stage of the Module Concepts and Contexts. 

Ernesto Neto

I have been encouraged by my tutor to get out of the comfort zone of continuing to work within my comfort zone of figurative art and symbolise Fear itself.

Challenging, and at times enraging as I struggled, but it has been interesting to work more conceptually and perhaps is one of the reasons I decided to continue to do the MA, to develop.

I have already made the netted figures caught in the Net

I knitted the net myself, which is a calming and enjoyable creative action, but I began to think about entering into the net, covering a room from which hang weighted nets.

Eva Hesse   Not Yet

This piece by Eva Hesse has long been a favourite, the gravity [weight] lightened by the undeniable likeness to male genitalia. So I am working on these images to produce and Installation that will symbolise the fears trapped within us, weighing us down, being part of us, making us what we are - a secret blockage, stopping the flow....polyps that need scraping away.

I convinced my husband her needed a new strawberry net, as I decided it was not a good use of my time to spend a month knitting a net of room size.

 

The net is made from a machine stitched thread that is very similar to my hand made work and can be combined with it without obvious difference.  I would have preferred to make my own net, the making of each aperture through which the weight cannot escape has more authenticity, but time constraints do not allow. 

A garden net does carry with it the echo of growth, defence from pecking, lots of overtones which led me to think about whether the weights should all be the same size.

I painted them with black acrylic paint to make them part of the net, but it was a shiny finish so I repainted with black gesso which added to the negativity, sucking in the light instead of reflecting it.

I will decide on size variation when the net is strung up tomorrow.  Problems about when to stitch on the balls abound as I am not allowed to stand on a ladder of more than 2 steps at ArtSkool, but I would prefer to place the weights when the net is being hung.......

Four fabric figures hanging on a wall

Presentation for a Crit.  It was pointed out that I am working in my Comfort Zone   i.e. making figures, and should experiment with challenging myself to work outside my usual interest.                                            

I had previously put these coloured balls in tights, but not sure why, just an attempt to do a Part-Body.   They look rather jolly which is nice, but not appropriate for what I am trying to express.

Working on coloured plastic balls I covered them roughly with strips of fabric and plaster in an effort to make them more anonymous and tightly wrapped. [and less cheery]

 I had in mind to place the spiky balls in a net  instead of a figure, the trapped fearful thoughts that roll around in the mind.   Reminiscent of Not Yet by Eva Hesse, the weight of the balls and the sub-text of male genitalia. Female eggs.....

Hanging about

Thinking about symbolising Fears as the weight inside the body bag that weighs a person down, inhibiting spontaneity.  Taking some small plastic balls I wrapped them in torn fabric to lose the smooth exterior and dipped them in plaster of Paris to give them weight.  I experimented with changing the colour to black to get rid of the airy bright finish.  The acrylic paint has a shiny finish so might try and get hold of some black gesso.

Knitting nets to hold the weights is satisfying but perhaps not a good use of my time as I expect to develop a covering of a ceiling of a room as part of an proposed installation.   Fortunately I have found a large supply of garden netting [in my husbands green house] which is very similar to my knitted netting .

spreading the top of the netting which will be suspended from the overall top net will give a more integral and organic feel to the hangings. [They do look rather like Polyps which can also cause a problem.]

I suspect that grouping some of the weights and varying their size will add "weight" to the symbolism...

I have looked at the work of Ernesto Neto who has created installations similar to this;  I intend mine to be darker and more forbidding.

Working on the theme of Hanging [the vertical is reminiscent of the standing figure], I have used a piece animal skin [suede, with some fur adhering, donated from someone once] it has a fetishistic, feral feel that expresses fear, of the unknown, torture, flaying; it has attracted odd debris [an uncared for feeling] to the surface to which I have added a small tied bunch of feathers [spells, magic, witch craft] and hung it from a jaggedly twisted wire.  This adds action and emotion so the piece speaks strongly to the viewer of unspoken terrors.

The ribbon piece is an experiment in using colour to symbolise fear. Yellow, a sharp acid yellow or a muddy yellow, a red for angry fear, black for despair and death. A wire to add enclosure, it would be interesting to hang fabrics so that hanging in a darkened room they would slide across the entrants face and they would FEEL FEAR.  It is perhaps less successful as it has a rather partyish atmosphere, I will experiment with rough cut fabrics.

Thoughts from Abroad [and a bloke]

Julia Kristeva    1941

The term ABJECT has been explored in post-structuralism as what disturbs conventional identity and cultural concepts.

Kristeva describes subjective horror (abjection) as the feeling when an individual experiences what Kristeva terms one's "corporeal reality“.  Or is confronted by both mentally and or as a body, the breakdown in the distinction between what is Self and what is Other

The concept of abjection is the process by which, one separates one's sense of self from what immediately threatens one's sense of life.

Abjection prevents the absolute realization of existence, completing the course of biological, social, physical, and spiritual cycles. The best representation of this concept can be imagined as one's reaction to gazing at a human cadaver, or corpse, as a direct reminder of the inevitability of death.

The abject is, as such, the process that separates from one's environment what "is not me."

Kristeva's concept of abjection explains popular cultural narratives of horror, and discriminatory behaviour manifesting in Misogyny, Homophobia and Genocide……The Other

Martin Heidegger  1889 -1976

•Heidegger explores the fundamental questions of Time, Death and the underlying Angst of being human.

•Philosophy of Being…..what is Is?

•Being is not a “thing”  it is not available to the senses.

•Ontology thinking about Being

•Dasein…..human life, ways of being In the world, being with others, states of mind

 Eva Hesse  1936 - 1970

•Eva Hesse is associated with the Post Minimal Art Movement. Hesse is one of the first artists who moved from Minimalism to Post minimalism

•Arthur Danto distinguishes it from minimalism by its "mirth and jokiness" and "unmistakable whiff of eroticism", its "non-mechanical repetition".

•Many feminist art historians have noted her work successfully illuminates women’s issues while refraining from any obvious political agenda.

•She reveals, in a letter to Ethelyn Honig (1965), that a woman is

•

• "at disadvantage from the beginning… She lacks conviction that she has the ‘right’ to achievement. She also lacks the belief that her achievements are worthy”.[She continues to explain that, “a fantastic strength is necessary and courage. I dwell on this all the time. My determination and will is strong but I am lacking so in self-esteem that I never seem to overcome”.[She denied her work was strictly feminist, defending it as feminine but without feminist statements in mind.

Male gaze

The Body

Theories of the body are particularly important for feminists because the female body has historically been denigrated as weak, immoral, unclean, or decaying.

In her essay "Women's Time" in New Maladies of the Soul, originally published in 1979, Kristeva argues that there are three phases of feminism.

She rejects the first phase because it  "seeks universal equality and overlooks sexual differences. Kristeva also rejects what she sees as the second phase of feminism because it seeks a uniquely feminine language, which she thinks is impossible. Kristeva does not agree with feminists who maintain that language and culture are essentially patriarchal and must somehow be abandoned.

On the contrary, Kristeva insists that culture and language are the domain of speaking beings and women are primarily speaking beings. Kristeva endorses what she identifies as the third phase of feminism which seeks to reconceive of identity and difference and their relationship. This current phase of feminism refuses to choose identity over difference or visa versa

Kristeva proposes that there are as many sexualities as there are individuals.  Especially in the contemporary culture of a fluid gender identity this seems prescient.

It is generally accepted in  feminist theory that the male gaze presents women from a masculine and heterosexual point of view, representing women merely  as objects

of male pleasure

As the art historian John Berger said, women in painting don’t usually look out at the viewer: they aren’t considering the viewer, but considering how the viewer sees them. They have an inward gaze, rather than an outward gaze.  

Professor Andrew Lear MOMA

The term male gaze was coined in 1975 by the feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in her essay1975 essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. , .^[The male gaze is comparable to scopophilia. Women are depicted in the passive role of the observed

^:Her feelings, thoughts and her own sexual drives are less important than her being “framed” by male desire

Visual media that respond to masculine voyeurism tends to sexualise women for a male viewer. As Mulvey wrote, women are characterised by their “to-be-looked-at-ness” in cinema. Woman is “spectacle”, and man is “the bearer of the look”.  

I have been exploring this concept by placing my roughly stitched and patched life size female figure in the poses of past paintings by famous artists thus taking the place of the idealised, romantic, available, woman depicted

I added a crocheted incubus to the Fuseli  intending that the use of "Female Crafts" would subvert the male gaze.

I

Those who have seen the pose have still found it disturbing, I assume this is partly because the patriarchal culture that persists still holds the power to remind women of their vulnerability even by a cuddly toy

The print of Fuseli's painting The Nightmare sold by the thousands in the eighteenth century