WEEK 6 ORAL PRESENTATION

We hurtle together into the future at ever-increasing speed – or so it seems to the collective psyche. Perpetually evolving, morphing, building and demolishing, rethinking, reframing and reshaping the world around and ahead – and the people within it – an emerging, planetary-wide Civilization is our grand, global, collective endeavour. Never before in human history have so many people been so interconnected, and so interdependent.

I began the module with enthusiasm. The work that I was producing around this time was personal in that it had some things to say about how I am feeling about the world. Upon showing one work ‘Plastic world’ to one of my lecturers I got a resounding sense of disappointment with the old fashioned phrase ’What is it?’ I guess the better question should have been ‘What does this represent?’ I recoiled and didn’t really show any more work until later on the module

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In week 3 I found myself experimenting with 5 x 4 film in the form of photograms. When I was working in this way I found the outcome ‘too’ two dimensional. This led to some experimentation of scratching the film. I felt that this way of working has already been done and didn’t hold any personal value for me.

The work below was created in a field with very low light. Somethng that I would like to explore further. The use of available light on long exposures. Soaking the sensor of an iphone with subtle information. I have been using my iphone for collecting ideas.

This work was produced on an iphone. I am drawn to material of plastic metaphorically. It has a volatile message for me. Growing up, perhaps on the domestic dawn of the usefulness of plastic I saw the transition from cardboard and glass receptacles to the plastic the new mouldable, cheap material.

The fact that is made from a natural substance originally fascinates me and yet paired with man made substances it takes on a quality that is ‘invincible’ in terms of biodegradability and non-harmonious with our world. This work is still rather two dimensional and I felt it lacked another dimension.

It wasn’t until I added lightroom to my repertoire of software that I began to play with some more of these works. For this I re-photographed the plastic although I added a small element of reality to the edges of the frame. These images now say something more. They comment on the overtaking nature of plastic and perhaps how we have enveloped ourselves in this vial material. Our world is fully invested in this culture of plastic and there is no way back. I used the bright blue colour to accentuate the texture and man made element of the material.

Around this time I was also experimenting with ‘time’ and the luminosity of full moons. Again,as in Module 3, with the use of a combination of manually focused lens paired with a digital back to collect the image. I find that this type of work really personifies me as a practitioner of photography as I have worked in both digitally and film processes. I concluded this work over a two week period with various ‘hobbyist approaches’ and nostalgic look at the use of photography to depict something. In fact I was actually interested in recreating a horizontal line that might pay homage to the works of Rothko and his obsession with lines in his painting. And indeed Barnet Newman for his ‘zips’, lines. At this time I was heavily into reading about both painters and their lives. During the whole module I found myself fluxing in and out of thinking about depiction and non-depiction as a reaction to having to speak and think on a commercial level about my works.

This work which was created on an iphone format however this work is worth more discussion. It relates to the concrete photography genre and for me depicts an emotion not a fuel receptacle on a farm.

I think of this work as a metaphor for time once again. These two photographs actually play beautifully together… in that they are in some ways negative and positive, a reversal of each other. The two work well together and my only criticism of these two works is the technical quality. The colour balance and the format in which it was photographed The left image depicts the shadow of a hose and the right image depicts the actual hose. Here I am using depiction of an object to create art that is not directly linked back to this specific object. The only art form to have ‘shadows’ as a medium is photography.

Gottfried Jager discusses Concrete Photography as a form of nonrepresentational photography in which the medium itself moves away from its classical role of representing the external world to take on a strict self-referential role, in between both traditional light-images and images of the digital world.

http://www.konkrete-fotografie.de/

Lewis Balz said that ‘Photography is the only deductive art form.’

10 years of Photography and Abstract Art: Shape of Light Tate

Growing up in southern California in the postwar years, he had witnessed at first hand the rapid urbanisation of the countryside and the relentless spread of suburbia. “You could watch the changes taking place and it was astonishing,” he recalled. “A new world was being born ... this new homogenised American environment that was marching across the land. And it seemed no one wanted to confront this; it was invisible.” His images, for all their anti-style, possessed a stark, geometric beauty, making visible this new homogenised America in a way that echoed – and criticised – the soullessness of urban planning and the corporate rationale that lay behind it.

With this I Understand that a painting comes from a place of nothing being conjured by an artist, photography in the traditional sense has been produced or started from reality. Although when I look back at contemporary practices of artists using cameraless photography I see that they become artists in this context as they are not deducting reality they are starting from Zero.

A concept followed by Ellen Carey with her work in push pull series. She photographs nothing while creating her ‘push pulls series. The process ‘is’ her artform: it becomes the subject/object. She refers to her works as an object and describes them as an intersection of process and invention. She challenges the concept of what a photograph is. She produces work that is presented without a picture or depiction of anything real to read. Ellen Carey challenges our cultural and historically prescribed expectations for this medium to narrate and document, all the while revealing no trace of its own origins.

Careys work represents a departure from the picture/sign idea in photography found in images such as landscapes, portraits or still life. Instead, my work consists of a photographic image made without a subject, or any reference to a place, a person or an object.

Carey also cites the work of Barthes book, Writing Degree Zero as her guiding principle as she refers to her practice and umbrella concept. She classifies her work under the title of Photography Degree Zero. Barthes in Writing Degree Zero offers a critical discourse on the departure from a descriptive narrative in French avant-garde literature.

This photograph is an image taken on a woodland walk close to my house.I am drawn to woodlands for the peace and tranquillity. The symbolism of trees as time capules is also very interesting to me. They are symbols of time. Trees symbolise strength and longevity.

The work above is directly inspired by the work of Ellsworth Kelly

In summary the work that I have produced in this module is experimental and at time quite disjointed in nature. My final works in progress echo this dichotomy in practice.

I am still getting to grips with my digital understanding.I have started to use lightroom now for simple editing and storage of my images.The work presented is not finished.

It is not ready to show in an exhibition contect.Howvere the idea of time captured in trees does show promise.If I were to take this idea forwards I would work with ancient trees to accentuate the time captured and work at showing in a historical venue like Blenheim palace which hosts some ancients trees on its beautiful estate.

This is why I have pared tradition photography that depicts a readable sign with a sense of a place photograph that relies purely on the viewers inference. The idea of pairing came to me after seeing the pairing at Tate The Shape of light exhibition. I was really taken by the exquisite way the photographs were skilfully paired with artists of the same period. This created language that was unique. It also allowed the viewer to contextual the time frames for the work in relation to other successful artists of the time.

In the final room (contempoaray)of the show The Shape of Light at the Tate show these words were very strong in importance to abstractionists in a modern day context.

‘How can you pioneer in your own time if you are copying successes from the past How can you make an impact with images when everyone sees so many?I want my images to have a contemporary context.I want them to be images for today.

Maya Rochat

The works in the final room of the exhibition range from minimal compositions that demonstrate control and order to wild abstractions that embrace chance and accident. These abstract works encourage us to engage with the artwork as a whole including the process of its production.

All of the artists here have made work following the launch of the first portable digital camera in 1975.The introduction of digital photography had a profund impact on photography’s place in the artworld. Where a commitment to the purity of process was once the key to creating art contemporary artists have dispensed with boundaries between mediums. Digital technologies offers artists a new set of tools to work with from computer programming to innovative printing techniques..

These artists expand the possibilities of photography. They embrace ways of working that were once seen as contradictions. They use dark room processes along side digital technology question the notion of original and copy and follow controlled processes while accepting the accidents that come with experimentation. For many of the artists in this room the process of production is a performative act that becomes part of their art work. They adopt all modes of image making at their disposal creating work that can no longer be reduced to the title of photographic abstraction. Instead their work reveals photography’s new place in the world.