Tutorial 5 with Jonathan - 28 Feb 2025

 My last, I think, tutorial with JK. I thought it might be bitter-sweet, especially as I was in a rather tired and sombre mood (I keep thinking I'll do 'just one more tweak' to my art and end up going to very bed late after many 'last tweaks'). However, it was actually a very entertaining, useful, and fast moving conversation.

We spent most of the time talking about Open Casket and the 'final show' (poor JK seems to have given correcting me now (I am such a dick!)). 

We talked about:

• How I can source some materials e.g. the base at CSM or nearby
• We talked about the format of the 'base' and I stressed that I don't think it's a coffin - I don't want the loaded iconography of a coffin, and I am also thinking of this as more akin to a museum display than a funeral or grave
• How I should be able to have a space to make simple items on-site on the first day, although we both acknowledged that this was a RISK and that I would need a plan B. It's also good to be aware that the space will quickly fill up with artworks awaiting hanging, and that the general area will be shared with MA Contemporary Photography. There is a darker corner away from the main space that I could potentially use (and which might be a great place to display the finished piece, although I didn't say that bit!). I stressed that any work I would do on-site would likely be only simple casting
• We talk about performance, and JK suggested thinking about it separately from the logistics of making, and considering the value/meaning of it as a stand-alone activity. He also suggested that leading on from that, consider if that changed the nature of the performance I would give. I think this is great food for thought... My instinct is that performance should NOT be an element of the work, as I think absence is an important part of the piece
• Leading on from this, we briefly discussed the fact that the absence of a body was significant, and I talked about my love of Antony Gormley's work
• We talked briefly about how the work has come to summarise a lot of my MA, intentionally incorporating and referencing other pieces and techniques that I have used, and we touched on how performance might be added to that, but also how I might reference my preferred form of performance: participatory art - perhaps as a way to bring change to the piece over the life-time of the show.

More broadly, we talked about my thoughts on the purpose of art. JK asked specifically about the purpose of Open Casket, and whether it is for me, or for others? Is it an act of catharsis? I struggled to articulate my thoughts on this - I think I have a sense of it, but it's hard to put into words, which maybe suggests I need to think more. I said I thought it was easier to explain if we separated motivation from purpose - I said that for me, the PURPOSE of the work is not necessarily the MOTIVATION for producing it. In this case, the motivation is intrinsic (it feels like the right thing to create as an ironic summary of my experience) but the purpose could be more extrinsic - I think it is 'for' other people. I said it's purpose was to record my own experience of 'dying' and in doing so, to act as a memento mori for other people - I observed that a lot of my thinking is around the value of confronting death, and the inspiration for life that could bring.

Leading on from this, we talked about my motivation as being both authentic and ironic. I said that I had come to believe it's hard to know my own intent at times - I believe the piece to be motivated by irony, but I suspect the irony to be a 'shield' to allow me to share something intensely authentic and raw. We talked briefly about the paradox of feigned inauthenticity being a way to access deeper levels of authenticity.

We talked about 'Holey Face' and how JK found it quite disturbing and trypophobia-inducing. I said that I was thinking i have 'trypophilia' as I seem to love adding holes to my work. I talked about Roz's shells and the idea of hidden spaces inside them. I said I have an obsession with hidden spaces, and had a realisation that it links to my obsession with the 'secret life' of spaces - the idea that they exist when you can't see them and have their own 'secret life'. I talked about how it relates somehow to the null-point and the idea of spaces with potential - rooms just before you enter them, vaults and tunnels sealed off and forgotten, public spaces with nobody in them...

Finally we talked about AI and JK's thinking about Hulme and 'ideas' vs 'impressions'. JK suggested that might be somehow related to how AI thinks vs how people think. I gave an opinion that even if AI is 'just maths', if it behaves indistinguishably from a thinking being, how could we assert that it doesn't think? Especially as so little is understood about how we think - which could turn out to be just as 'mechanical'. I said that my experience is that everyone is looking for some 'special spark' that humans have but AI doesn't, but that I thought it was mysticism and fear. I opined that artists cared that their art was made by thinking/feeling beings, that most people did not... And on that cheerless thought, we parted company! :)

Truth and Significance

 A few months ago, I stumbled across the phrase "The Tyranny of Truth" on someone's blog, and an appeal (not directly by the author) not to be bound by it... I can't find where, although I think I remember the source, but it appears to be gone, so I'll let sleeping dogs lie. I am much taken by the idea, although I can't fully understand what is generally meant by it. I know what it means to me, and I know what AI makes of it, and I've read "The Tyranny of Truth" by J. A. FitzPatrick and find much to disagree with! Which leaves me in a bit of a pickle, although also sort of proves my very point... Or at least the point I think I am trying to make.

I (and I think most people in Western culture, at least) have been brought up to place huge value on 'truth'. One must seek out the truth, defend the truth, be bound by the truth. 

The problem with the truth is that it is an act of faith - it asserts that there is one belief that is 'true' and therefore all other beliefs that don't align to this 'true' belief must be wrong... And of course, it's perhaps no coincidence that 'wrong' has come to mean both 'incorrect' and 'wicked'.

Training as a scientist, huge value is placed on facts... But facts are NOT truth, and science does not fall into that trap of suggesting they are. Scientists don't believe that facts are 'true', they simply believe that they are independently measurable values. They don't believe that their models are 'true', they simply believe that they make correct predictions of facts. Is the electron a wave or a particle? Fuck knows... Sometimes it does stuff that is best modelled as a wave, sometimes it does stuff that is best modelled as a particle? Is it both? Yes. No. Is it either? No... Is it even a real thing? Dunno... The electron is a very successful model, but it doesn't mean it's 'true', and I don't think anyone who really understands science would argue that it is.

My daughter is obsessed about lying... Not obsessed with doing it, actually quite to opposite. She's obsessed with not lying herself, and with the reprehensible nature of anyone who does lie. But what constitutes lying? If you show me your new tee-shirt and it's awful, but I say 'lovely'... Am I lying? If you ask me what I am doing on Saturday, and I say I'm going to the park, but when Saturday comes, it's raining and I go to the cinema instead, did I lie? If someone tells me that Jane pooed her pants and I tell someone else that Jane is a pants pooer, but actually the first person made it up, am I now a lier?

When I was in Israel for work, someone once said it was very funny that I started every statement with 'I think...'. Of course you think that, he explained, you don't need to tell people you think it, you just need to tell them the thing, and they decide if it's true or not.

A friend of mine in sales once said "don't let the truth get in the way of a good story". I was appalled (in a silent British way), but actually, is that wrong? Of course, the answer is 'that depends'.

I think truth needs to go fuck itself. Truth is the weapon of despots and bigots and crackpots. I value facts, and I value authenticity. I value intent, and I value significance.

My daughter has placed a group of plastic dinosaurs outside her bedroom door. Sitting on the carpet and on the banister rail above, they guard her room and keep her safe at night. My daughter has seen Jurassic Park, she knows that dinosaurs are creatures of great power. Of course that's not true - they are inert lumps of plastic. But do they keep her safe? They probably do, it depends on what she is being keeping safe from.

When I make art, does truth matter? Do facts matter? Surely all that really matters is significance. The truth does not need to get in the way of a good story. 

Open Casket v06

  REMOVED

ADDED/AMENDED

Motivation

The over all idea is to create an impression of sadness, mixed with humour and tranquillity - people should feel at rest with the 'body' not disturbed

Is this a tomb effigy? Or a burial? Or an autopsy? Or an museum display? Or some combination? What vibe do I want? I think that whilst this is a 'burial', that is perhaps the least helpful since I want an element of examination.

Effigies are designed to be viewed, and to be a tribute to the deceased (or to invite prayer for the deceased). That doesn't feel right - I want a sense of intrusion and examination - dissection of life in death.

I think then, that this WAS a burial, but that burial has been disturbed and placed on show for the viewer's consideration (and perhaps in some senses, gratification). No crime has been committed, so I think this is more akin to a museum piece or an archaeological find. What is on show then, is in the spirit of a reconstruction of something found 'in situ', not the original condition.

Aesthetically, this pushes me towards more of a spartan look - this is not a sumptuous burial, but the slightly 'cold' display of one. It pushes me towards more of a 'scientific' look - harsher lights, designed for examination. It suggests that the elements should be display in a more simple 'frame', against the idea of an elaborate 'casket'. It suggests glass, and dark victorian wooden frames. It suggests, perhaps, in extremis, some form of pseudo-scientific paraphenalia, like moist monitors. It suggests broken and fragmentary and pieced together.

Shroud torn open to reveal elements inside? Like it has been forcefully revealed for study

If this is about 'interring' myself (always thought that word was 'interning'!), what better than to actually 'lay in state' at the PV while my plaster sets, and then leave the cast as my final piece.

Do I want some element of 'decay' over time? Should the piece change over time somehow? Break down somehow? Be buried somehow? Either through the materials or through audience participation?

 Base

• A box? Or flat? Really want people to have to peer in so maybe a box? But weight will be an issue again
• Shaped or rectangular?
• Solid or mesh?
• Covered in something in the shape of my body? Spines of some sort?
• Shallowly moulded to impression my body (somehow? Weight!) - I'd really like to do this - but how? Some form of foam? Needs to be light, stable, cheap, and ideally environmentally friendly. Considered corn starch foam, but would have to experiment to see if it's suitable
• What the hell is the background going to be?? Becoming a limiting factor! Maybe look at real archeological displays of skeletons? Doing so, suggests something very plain - a board with some sort of backing, together perhaps with 'sides' and/or a sheet or perspex raise up as a lid

Life Casts

• Face, hands, and feet
• Face deformed in some way? Skull? Partial? Too much!
• Make sure to cast wedding ring, and guild it afterwards

Body fragments

• Fabric casts - Swags over key areas (e.g. chest, thighs, ankles, neck etc) or more fitted 'garmets' like a shroud? 
• Cast entire body as part of a performance on-site?
• If I make thin casts of enough of my body, do I need the fabric casts? Maybe fabric casts for the trunk, thin life casts for the limbs? Do I want to deliberately break any of the casts?
• Definitely want to keep them white and unstitched (e.g. no actual clothes)
• Some form of 'rib cage' - more interest, and a clearer message that this is a 'body'. Could also bring natural elements in if made from sticks
• "Wear" ribcage over ribs while taking fabric casting so it sits over the 'ribs' but also has the shape of my body
• Build an entire 'skeleton' out of found sticks?
• Lily's fist in epoxy as a 'heart'
• Hole over the position of the heart, as those it has been torn out, but also to allow the epoxy "heart" to be seen
• Threads or wire binding together? Nimbus of thread from back of face? Fragmentary face? Fabric background, with faded outline? Stitched into body?
• Should the body elements (especially the trunk) be sheets of fabric? Or string with a backing like 'holey face'?

Grave Goods

• An acorn in one hand
• A book of Time Management under the other
• Flowers on head?

Doris Salcedo and being 'socially dead'

I came across the work of Doris Salcedo again this morning, specifically her 'Uprooted' (a house made from a thicket of uprooted trees). Naturally it immediately struck me for my interest in thickets. However, I'm terrible with names, so I was pleasantly surprised to see I'd come across her work before, and really liked it, especially 'Istanbul', where she filled the gap between two buildings with chairs. I wish I could show some pictures, but none seem to be licensed for reuse 🙄

Shibboleth at the Tate Modern

I really like her use of everyday objects as proxies for people- chairs are very good proxies. Maybe I need to think about this again - I did it once in 'Waiting Place', but have moved away from it. In general, I think my work shares the use of metaphor, with objects standing in for people or ideas.

Reading her Wikipedia page, she says:

I have come to the conclusion that the industrial prison system in the United States has many of these elements, where people, for really no reason, for possession of marijuana or things like that are going to jail, where some minor crimes have become felonies. I'm really shocked by the sheer numbers of people being thrown into jails. And also I think it's amazing how this system, being in jail and then going out, has so many collateral effects that a fairly large portion of the population are not allowed to be alive. The idea of having a large portion of the population excluded from civil rights, from many, many possibilities, implies that you have people that can almost be considered socially dead. What does it mean to be socially dead? What does it mean to be alive and not able to participate? It's like being dead in life. That's what I am researching now, and that is the perspective I have been looking at events from for a long time.

I find the idea of being 'socially dead' fascinating. I understand the context in which see means it here, but I feel a sense of it more generally - I think a lot of people find themselves 'socially dead', sometimes temporarily, sometimes more permanently. It makes me remember the time immediately after Carolyn died, when I felt 'dead' - not emotionally or metaphorically, but literally, I felt outside of reality - like a restless ghost walking the landscape.

Miniature Thickets Experiment with plaster and string

 Unsure how to approach the miniature thickets, I decided to start with plaster soaked string and see what happened. I split cotton string into bundles of different strands, and threaded them though a cardboard 'lid' cut to the size of one of my cubic silicone moulds. I tried knotting a few bundles along their length. I think dipped the whole lot thoroughly in plaster, poured a bit of plaster into the mould to form a 'base', then put the 'lid' on, with the plaster soaked string dangling down into the 'base' layer. The strings were held quite well-apart at the top by the holes in the lid, but being soaked in plaster, naturally started to clump together.

After it had somewhat dried, I tried to remove the cardboard (which was quite sodden) to allow more air circulation. I immediately discovered that strings were very brittle, but I managed to remove the 'lid' in pieces, and left it to set completely.

I was initially quite disappointed - the plaster had formed 'plugs' against the cardboard lid, given the tops of each string a clubbed appearance, almost like a flower. The strings were also quite sparse in places where they had clumped together. The strings all looked the same - the plaster coating had hidden any differences from knotting or thickness.

Having had a bit of time, it's grown on me, but it reveals a broader problem - it's quite hard to create a structure that is open enough to look into, but dense enough to feel 'enclosed'. I also would like more of a branching structure. 

My next move is two-fold - I want to experiment with real twigs, and I also want to experiment with some sort of 'building' or structure. I started mocking this up in balsa wood, but I couldn't really cut and think... So I've extracted the dimensions of the balsa and the mould into Blender, and I think I'll model it virtually and then cut it when I have a design I'm happy with...

The ever richer perpetual stew of life (a musing on artistic process)

 I used to think about my process a bit like a factory, straight-lines, steps, procedures, tests... I think the way I think about it will continue to evolve, but after almost 2 years of reflection, I have come to think of it like a stew... 

Medieval inns inns would apparently feature something called a 'forever stew' - a bubbling pot from which bowls would be ladled, and into which new things would periodically be added. The pot would continuously topped up, and almost never be emptied. 

I think the artistic process is like this stew. Life throws things into the pot, trauma and challenge stir the liquid. Periodically something interesting will rise to the surface, to be ladled out, occasionally kept, usually thrown back. The miscellany of things continues to cook, infuse, mix, seek connections, growing ever richer, darker, more potent.

Motivation as Vision and Audience in Art (an offensively simple model for fine art vs hobby art)

 I do love a good quadrant diagram - proof you can take the boy out of consultancy, but you can't take consultancy out of the boy - it's like a cancer wrapped around your heart - you don't want it, but any attempt to remove it might kill you... 

Anyway... This was some thinking I did in relation to Open Calls - at what point does an open call become just an unpaid commission?

There are two axis here (it's a graph after all) top to bottom is talking about 'audience', and left to right is talking about 'vision'. To elaborate:

Audience: When you are making art, are you doing so with the aim of making it only for yourself to consume? Or are you imaging an audience outside of yourself, even if you don't expect to actually show it to anyone?

Vision: Is your art driven by your own vision? Or are you working to a brief supplied by someone else?

Of course, this is gross simplification, but crudely:

My vision + audience of me: Making art that is driven by your own vision, but you don't expect anyone else to see it - it's not that you are embarrassed, is that someone else seeing it is not IMPORTANT to you. I feel art made in this way is typical made for deeply personal reasons, and is often a form of art therapy. People do share this art, but I feel that's a mistake - either it's disrespectful to the viewer/maker, or worse it's disingenuous - you are claiming to be making it just for yourself, but you inflicting it on other people because you actually want an audience but don't want to admit it

Others' vision + audience of me: Making other people's designs/brief, but for your own consumption. I think this is where hobby art sits - it's about the process of making, not the urge to communicate something. Broadly I see this as knitting other people's patterns, or copying other people's drawing instructions. Clearly here (as everywhere) there is a sliding scale and hobby art can be very creative, and can be made for others to experience to some extent

Others' vision + audience of others': This is making public art to someone else's brief - I think this is the realm of commercial art, but I think it can also be the realm of derivative art - literally trying to paint like Turner, or more subtly,  making art that you think your peer group expects/requires

My vision + audience of others': To me, this is fine art - you are sharing something that is deeply personal to you, and staying true to that, but doing so in a way that you think will engage other people

All of this is important to me in open calls, because it's about trying to stay in the top left quadrant, knowing you will be pulled rightwards... And deciding when you have 'crossed the line' - I think my piece for the RA Summer Show stayed somewhat left of the line, but strayed dangerously close to it - I definitely made something to fit the theme ('dialogue') and I kinda made it in a style I thought would be RA friendly... But I think I played it well - I made something that was definitely an RA-friendly piece of Tom Grey Art, not an unpaid RA  'commission'

Open Casket v05 - A funny story about nudity, clingfilm, and idealising death

 REMOVED

ADDED/AMENDED

A Funny Story about nudity and idealising death....

Chatting on the MA Chat this morning, I mentioned how frustrating it is that there's no space in CSM for our course to finish pieces during the end-of-year show, or even just hang-out... I lamented not being able to mix the plaster on-site for my body casting, but observed that maybe it was for the best as actually I probably would only be wearing clingfilm (to stop the hairs getting caught in the plaster!). I joked that maybe I should turn it into a performance piece...

And then I thought.... Maybe I should turn it into a performance piece?! Nudity aside, it would actually solve SO many problem! I really want to be covered by a single large sheet soaked in plaster - bummer to carry on the train, totally fine to make in-situ. I really have to lie still for a good hour for the plaster to go off - miserable on my kitchen floor, but much more fun with friends... 

AND actually it makes sense from a semantic point of view - if this is about 'interring' myself (always thought that word was 'interning'!), what better than to actually 'lay in state' at the PV while my plaster sets, and then leave the cast as my final piece.

Motivation

The over all idea is to create an impression of sadness, mixed with humour and tranquillity - people should feel at rest with the 'body' not disturbed

Is this a tomb effigy? Or a burial? Or an autopsy? Or an museum display? Or some combination? What vibe do I want? I think that whilst this is a 'burial', that is perhaps the least helpful since I want an element of examination.

Effigies are designed to be viewed, and to be a tribute to the deceased (or to invite prayer for the deceased). That doesn't feel right - I want a sense of intrusion and examination - dissection of life in death.

I think then, that this WAS a burial, but that burial has been disturbed and placed on show for the viewer's consideration (and perhaps in some senses, gratification). No crime has been committed, so I think this is more akin to a museum piece or an archaeological find. What is on show then, is in the spirit of a reconstruction of something found 'in situ', not the original condition.

Aesthetically, this pushes me towards more of a spartan look - this is not a sumptuous burial, but the slightly 'cold' display of one. It pushes me towards more of a 'scientific' look - harsher lights, designed for examination. It suggests that the elements should be display in a more simple 'frame', against the idea of an elaborate 'casket'. It suggests glass, and dark victorian wooden frames. It suggests, perhaps, in extremis, some form of pseudo-scientific paraphenalia, like moist monitors. It suggests broken and fragmentary and pieced together.

Shroud torn open to reveal elements inside? Like it has been forcefully revealed for study

 Base

• A box? Or flat? Really want people to have to peer in so maybe a box? But weight will be an issue again
• Shaped or rectangular?
• Solid or mesh?
• Covered in something in the shape of my body? Spines of some sort?
• Shallowly moulded to impression my body (somehow? Weight!) - I'd really like to do this - but how? Some form of foam? Needs to be light, stable, cheap, and ideally environmentally friendly. Considered corn starch foam, but would have to experiment to see if it's suitable
• What the hell is the background going to be?? Becoming a limiting factor! Maybe look at real archeological displays of skeletons? Doing so, suggests something very plain - a board with some sort of backing, together perhaps with 'sides' and/or a sheet or perspex raise up as a lid

Life Casts

• Face, hands, and feet
• Face deformed in some way? Skull? Partial? Too much!
• Make sure to cast wedding ring, and guild it afterwards

Body fragments

• Fabric casts - Swags over key areas (e.g. chest, thighs, ankles, neck etc) or more fitted 'garmets' like a shroud? 
• Cast entire body as part of a performance on-site?
• If I make thin casts of enough of my body, do I need the fabric casts? Maybe fabric casts for the trunk, thin life casts for the limbs? Do I want to deliberately break any of the casts?
• Definitely want to keep them white and unstitched (e.g. no actual clothes)
• Some form of 'rib cage' - more interest, and a clearer message that this is a 'body'. Could also bring natural elements in if made from sticks
• "Wear" ribcage over ribs while taking fabric casting so it sits over the 'ribs' but also has the shape of my body
• Build an entire 'skeleton' out of found sticks?
• Lily's fist in epoxy as a 'heart'
• Hole over the position of the heart, as those it has been torn out, but also to allow the epoxy "heart" to be seen
• Threads or wire binding together? Nimbus of thread from back of face? Fragmentary face? Fabric background, with faded outline? Stitched into body?

Grave Goods

• An acorn in one hand
• A book of Time Management under the other
• Flowers on head?

Art and Play Reflections Instagram Reel Lessons Learnt

As part of the Dead Critics group, we've been experimenting with different ways to use instagram. Roz is the driving force behind these efforts, but I often muck in to put together posts. We've experimented with with "Creative Collectives" - micro-exhibition in response to a prompt, featuring our own work, photos, and occasionally other artists that have caught our eye. These have been fun to do, and we've started inviting guest contributors, which has been a nice way to build connections outside of our group, and increasingly outside of the MA.

Today we experimented with "Reflections" - essentially one of the group responding to the connections between the images in the collections, and our own work. I volunteered to do the first one on art and play...

My original plan had been to create a carousel of images and videos, with and without narration. The idea being that people could e.g. listen to the audio voice-over for the title, scroll over to an image, scroll and watch a segment of video etc. Sort of like a slideshow where people can advance the slides as they wish.

I prep'ed the audio separately, and got the whole lot - a mixture of PNGs, MP3s and MP4s - 14 files in total - ready to assemble into the post. 

I was trying something rather new, so I expected setbacks... I wasn't disappointed...

Setback 1 - Insta won't allow you to add audio to an image as part of a carousel

Some lite research suggested that Insta would allow you to upload a custom audio file. I had assumed that it would work for images and videos alike... However, Insta seems to treat posts with videos and images different to reels... I discovered I had to manual create videos with the images and the audio tracks in Shotcut, and then upload them as videos not images.

Setback 2 - Insta won't let you add stickers to videos as part of a carousel

I was hoping to use the build-in captions 'sticker' to add closed captions to the videos with narration However, Insta won't let you add stickers to videos (captions are stickers) if they are part of a carousel. I COULD have just uploaded it without, but I rarely have the audio on when I browse insta, so I really value closed-captions. In hindsight, this was probably the better option at this point. However, I decided to capitulate and do the whole thing as a single reel.

Setback 3 - Insta captions are a bit crap!

Having made significant compromises to get this far, I was frustrated to find that the instagram captioning isn't really very good... It's a lot better than Shotcut, which makes you add the captions manually as text, but it struggles to understand my accent in places (for instance, I talk about play and art being "fundamental drives", but it transcribed it as "fundamental tribes"). Worse, it doesn't figure breaks in the audio into the captions - meaning that the first few words of the next section of audio often appear alongside the captions for the current section, despite not actually being spoken until some time later. Worse, during the gaps in audio it simply leaves the captions in place, often obscuring whatever is on screen.

Really, if I was following my own 'values' I would have abandoned the post at this point, and re-done it as one long reel with extra narration (the things that were going to just be images in the carousel ended up as just weird silent sections in the reel), and with manual captions - it's really annoying to do manual captions, but at least I have the text already. However, I was so 'done' with it at this point, I just uploaded it as it was. Consequently, it's not my best work, which irks me...

Next time, I think I will plan to just do it as one reel from the get-go. There are some pros and cons to this.

One Reel Pros:

• Everything is neatly packaged up beforehand and plays out as planned
• People are used to the format of watching a reel and know what to 'do'

One Reel Cons:

• More work to prepare (everything needs to be brought together is Shotcut)
• People can't scroll around and/or linger, stuff only appears for a long as it's on-screen - if people are slow to read a quote, it will go (you can pause a reel but not a lot of people know this, I suspect)

Carousel Pros:

• People can browse it in a more flexible manner
• Less work to prepare since images don't need to be 'compiled' into a video

Carousel Cons:

• People may not know to scroll
• Sections that are video may end with a "Play this again?" message obscuring the content

Although neither format feels ideal, the carousel slide-show format just feels like it is swimming against the tide here...

Miniature Thickets...

[09:37, 08/02/2025] Tom: Miniature thickets
[09:55, 08/02/2025] Tom: Growing from a solid base? Hiding things - traces? Signifiers?
[09:56, 08/02/2025] Tom: Solid back? More solid side? Gaps and strands
[09:56, 08/02/2025] Tom: String soaked in plaster?
[09:57, 08/02/2025] Tom: White? Grey? Brown? Mottled? Painted?
[09:58, 08/02/2025] Tom: Steps? Windows? Bricks? Rubbish?
[09:58, 08/02/2025] Tom: Plastic/glass front?

I have a strange urge to make miniature 'thickets'! I don't know exactly what form they would take, but they would capture the feeling of crouching down to peer into the interior of a thicket.

For anyone who has not been lucky enough to peer into a thicket, the experience is one of peering through the leaves into a hidden world of stems and clearings of bare ground inside. The canopy forms a miniature world of uncertain scale. A cathedral of stems holding up a roof of leaves.

The urge is strange and strong. For me such thickets have strong associations with my childhood in Cornwall, but also my current interest in history, which often sees me peering into the undergrowth, in search of odd traces of the past - bumps, hollows, a crumbling right-angle of concrete. These places speak of concealment, of traces of the past, of portals to other worlds, of miniature forests of uncertain geography.

I don't know how I want to model these 'thickets' as such - I want to evoke the feeling without creating a weird empty diorama. I want this to be an artistic interpretation, not a literal model. I think they will be cubes containing some form of dense 'web' of strands, perhaps 'growing' in organic clumps, perhaps concealing some form of 'secret'. I'd like to cover each face with glass, but I don't know if that's doable.

Current thinking is to experiment with some form of plaster creation - use a cube mould, and then perhaps drape string soaked in plaster into it. I'll do some experiments and see... I could potentially borrow an idea from 'Reaching Through' and place the cube, which glass tacked to the open sides, into a bigger mould and cast the glass into place (obviously placing something like clay over the middle of each pane to leave an open 'window').

This idea sort of jumped me... But actually has some clear ancestry into 'Reaching Through', into the undocumented experiment with creating epoxy cubes with plaster inclusions, into the branching forms of the Growth Simulation pictures I've been posting on Insta, into the 'holey face', into the uncompleted plaster 'industrial ruins' I keep starting and abandoning... I like that I am becoming more and more aware of the connections between my seemingly disparate pieces.

Submitted 'Undeliverable Letters' to the RA

 I finally got v4 of the piece done to my satisfaction (including a stand) and took pictures and submitted to the RA site:

I'd forgotten that the RA don't let you submit any sort of description for the piece, which I guess is fair enough, but does mean that the piece has to stand-alone.... Hopefully they will be interested enough by the text to look a bit closer, and fathom some of the meaning, although a lot of the nuance is lost... But aren't I always the one saying pieces of VISUAL art shouldn't rely on TEXTUAL descriptions?

I'm not particularly optimistic of my chances - people submit every year and go decades before getting in - but I'm pleased with the piece, and it pushed me to do more and better... There's something wonderfully unsettling/alive about the closed eyes - when I lent in to take a photo, I had the strange unease that they were about to open!

Prototyping was again important - it took 4 attempts to get to a place where I was happy (and about to run out of time!):

The first one taught me that 'casting' paper mache in layers is possible, and was sacrificed to prove that applying the text AFTER the mask was de-moulded didn't work well. The technique is basically to smear the pieced with undiluted PVA and lay them in overlapping patches on the inside of the mould. Bigger pieces for flatter areas, smaller pieces for more curved areas, as usual.

The second proved that the text survived being cast and made me realise that I needed to apply 'loose' scraps of paper afterwards, as the mask was quite dull without it. The second one also demonstrated the importance of applying different text densities to different areas, of orientating the text the same, and of using all the same paper. Finally the second one bought me some time to make while I waited for the wonderful volunteers to complete their real letters. 

The third one SHOULD have been the final product, but having finished it and de-moulded it, I realised I had exactly the wrong idea about where the denser, typed letter should go - putting it around the eyes made it very hard to see the detail of the eyes, and that the lids are closed.

The fourth and final mask was made in a bit of a low-level panic, but with the least-dense script around the eyes, and the most densely marked paper around the outside. I was also pleased that I was able to stand-back and see problems with the balance of the marking in a fairly intuitive way - definitely something I would have struggled with two years ago where I would have been able to see that something was 'off' but not what.

Time now to sit back (ha ha, I never sit back) and wait for the inevitable rejection in March.