BA5 Reflective Journal

15/12/12

As per usual, I started off this unit drafting an introductory artist's statement. I processed it quickly and almost viscerally, just letting the words flow and I found my end result was rather concise, an usual approach for me.

"The end of BA4 saw me looking at the idea of intimate, domestic spaces, this came about from researching into the teenage bedroom and artists like Jeremy Deller. Recently I have found myself looking back on my Art Foundation project of Fear and Spaces, in which I visited institutions that typically strike up fear in people and then created pieces that illustrated or explained these places and the emotion commonly associated with them. I want to delve into this idea again, except I plan to work more viscerally, making work as a reaction to a certain “fearful” atmosphere. I intend to work in a far more visceral methodology, letting the work almost create itself, and letting my emotions and thoughts on a space take the reins and guide to a finished piece. In my research and gaining of inspiration I plan to use reportage a means of obtaining resources, through recording sound (a medium somewhat lacking in my previous body of work), creating transcripts from recordings, and photographing.

   I have already visited a hospital in Norfolk and documented what I saw, an empty waiting room completely devoid of sound or people. I plan to revisit a hospital and record voices and conversations as a starting point for my enquiry into this concept of space and the institution."

22/12/12

Today I began my investigation into the quiet fearful, public place in an institution. I re-visited the empty hospital in Norwich and took new photographs on my iphone on a filtered photography app. 

29/12/12

I have discovered a real gem in textiles art! Lois Albinson is a recently graduated textile designer, her works focus on turning somthing seemingly ugly and abandoned into something intricately beautiful. Using detailed and fragile woven materials she weaves a moulding detritus of a textile sample, reflecting a abandoned environment that was once upon a time, new and fresh. She says about her own works;

""As a textiles innovator I am driven by a passion for working with delicate surfaces and beautiful textures. My collection of knitted fashion garments and samples have been inspired by the theme of ‘Neglect’ which focuses on aspects found within derelict and abandoned environments. I am keen to explore this area and by reinventing its elements with new challenges I was able to produce this body of work which captures the qualities of elaborate and stunning surfaces found within unexpected surroundings."

Lois Albinson using found materials from derelict spaces to create something new.

A garment created by Albinson

03/01/13

I'm beginning to wonder if I am more of a textiles or surface based artist. No matter how hard I can never escape making a 2-D, flat creation. I love flat textures and one dimensional textiles, like the samples seen above by Lois Albinson. I am drawn to loose, intricate details pinned up, hung and cut against a flat wall. Like Eva Hesse's more 1 dimensional pieces. It seems natural to me as a began making art in the first place in an illustrative or painterly way.

Wednesday 16th January

I always start things and never really finish them. Like how my cupboard at the top of the stairs at home is filled with old notebooks that contain the beginning dregs of stories, the first few threads weaving together, to be abandoned at a later date. The notebooks themselves are all filled. But the content is mismatched. Such hopeful beginnings versus some misplaced conclusions.

I dont know what this says about me. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week. Do I have the Red Setter, ADHD syndrome of beginning things with great gusto and energy, just to flake out near the end? Is that an artistic temperament? Or is this just the wrong craft for me? Have I still not found my life’s great “occupation” yet? I know I’m maybe possibly some sort of artist I just don’t know what or how. Or sometimes even why. 

It's been a slow week indeed.

Saturday 19th January

After a few tutorials on Monday I have realised that I need to create art on what interests me. And what interests me and powers my work forward is people. People and their emotions, or to be more precise fears. So I began to look at fearful places again, and I reflected on what frightens me. Insanity frightens me. It is my biggest fear, so to speak. And electro shock therapy, and I return again to the idea of the institution. I have began to read "The Bell Jar" again to get a feel for what living in an old mental institution was like, another aspect I'm interested in is the approach to mental health now in comparison to what it was like in the past.

The "Tower of Fools" or Narrenturn, Vienna, 1784. Replica of an older model of the tower.

"The 'Tower of Fools' still stands in Vienna, now housing the Pathological-Anatomical Museum. The Tower originally confined 140 men and women, one or two to a cell. Inmates were chained to the walls and provided only with straw mats for sleeping and the most rudimentary nourishment. Builders of new psychiatric institutions around 1900 admired the building for its rational plan, but at the same time saw it as a relic of an inhumane past. This picture shows a replica of an older, undated model in the Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, St. Pölten, Austria."
- Taken from "Madness & Modernity" Press of Wellcome Collection websitehttp://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/madness--modernity/image-galleries/tower-of-fools.aspx

"Casa De Locos" by Francisco Goya, 1819.

"Space2" by Francesca Woodman, 1976

"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream." - The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath.

So after looking at all this visual stimulus I decided to visit an old sanatorium myself, and luckily there is one very near me, the St. Andrews Mental Institution, which now lies East of Norwich, a crumbling half-demolished building which once hid mentally ill patients from the outside world. I plan to exert there next week.

23/01/13

   Visited the old sanatorium mentioned above, and I feel as though it really has given my work a significant element of focus and boundaries. No longer am I skitting between different subject matters with no restraint or organisation. It has given my work direction, this building is the platform to my practice. It is dilapidated and has such a strong history to it, it is so perfect for initial primary research. I took some old blinds and a few other materials that I thought i could manipulate to see fit. 

And I have started making work in response to this space, I picked up from where I left off in BA4 and began to draw with a sewing machine again. 

I dont know whether to go ahead with this use of material, I intend to try again on a larger scale with less gaudy colours, I feel as though the colour choices has diminished the harrowing subject matter.

30/01/13

   Here are some photographs I took this week at the old asylum. I have began to focus more on some of the forms observed here, such as these old blinds rolled up and the plaster and paper detritus left behind, along with some wires and old electricity cables. I am definitely responding to this space just solidly on its own, but documenting the space has proven useful as well, and I may even exhibit these photographs/sound recordings too. 

   I have noticed that a lot of these shots are long shots down along empty corridors, often at (accidentally) jolted angles. I feel as though my composition is successful here and I have really captured one of the main essences of the building which is the isolated loneliness, an atmosphere that could even echo from inmates of the past. 

My only qualm with the photographs I have taken is that they are on black and white film, and that is like almost recording the old with the old, the aesthetic I have created is too vintage. I have some colour photos too however that dont look as "old school".

Rolled up blinds I discovered on the site. Their aesthetic interests me. 

04/02/13

I have written a short piece on the history and context of St. Andrews Asylum, I have realised that I can intervene my journalistic and research skills into my practice and have read into the Asylum's past. On top of this I also plan to interview people who have visited the asylum or know people who have stayed there years ago.

" St Andrews form has changed a lot over the years, from starting out as a psychiatric institute, The “Norfolk County Asylum” was intended specifically for pauper lunatics and was only the second institution of its kind when completed in early 1814. But just a hundred years later in 1915 the Norfolk County Asylum became the Norfolk War Hospital during the outbreak of World War II. 

During WWII the hospital was used as a multi-purpose hospital, providing the additional functions of an Emergency Section hospital such as receiving refugees, evacuees and civilian casualties in cleared wards whilst maintaining its complement of mental patients.

But in January 1924 St. Andrews became the Norfolk Mental Hospital, and had been handled by the NHS ever since. 

The hospital eventually closed in 1998, and up until 2007 was NHS Norfolk’s offices until last year when it was put on the market.

Now it is being demolished, and when I took these photos the building was being torn from the inside out. Cables, asbestos, glue, plaster and concrete decayed all around us. Weird mementos such as old calendars, white boards and even sanitary towels being left strewn all over the hospitals corridors. Funnily enough I wasn’t that frightened walking through the jet black darkness upstairs. 

It was bizarre seeing such an old building that used to detain human beings being surrounded by a modern age business park that only deals with matters of industry. Like a group of bitchy schoolgirls these modern buildings look up at the asylum as if they are staring at it’s alienness and wondering when it is going to go. Well now it is. 

What saddened me so much about the loss of this building is simply the waste of materials, call me a hoarder but all these old items that used to be part of somebody’s every day life are just going to be burnt away into the air. Not only the sentiment part of it, the fumes and energy wasted during the process is on the abundant side. I just suppose in contemporary life it is easier and cheaper to knock down a building like this, instead of buying it, paying the rent and trying to make something new of it. Part of me also wonders if maybe noone wants to buy it on account of it’s not so happy past? It’s just the sad reality of these old ruins. "

12/02/13

   As the end of BA5 seems to be drawing to a close I examine my methodology and concepts as a practising artist more intensely than ever. I have noticed that like the influence of other artists, i.e. Louise Bourgeois, Sylvia Plath, I have indicated to my upbringing and family as part of my identity in my work. I see this through my use of industrial materials suggesting my father's influence on me, he is a retired cameraman cum electrician, and I see my integration of the wire and rubber materials as a reflection of his influence on me and my artistic practice.

"The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother. "
- Louise Bourgeois

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"Worry" a piece made on site at St Andrews mental institute, rubber cables and wires.

   I also reflect on how I intend to portray the arguments that my practice revolve around, I said early on this year that the current state of the British mental health system is something I feel passionately about, particularly the stigma and discrimination surrounding it, and now instead of focusing on the current, I revert back to the days of the institution. This has been an interesting bypass from my beginning conceptual focus which was spaces and spaces of fear, yet I still see the coherence. I have been drawn to media such as My Mad Fat Diary, Girl Interrupted, the Bell Jar (all contain elements of psychiatric institution in them) and more academic texts such as the Poetics of Space and Freud's introductory lectures on Psychoanalysis. All have shaped my work in some way. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rebecca-walton/derek-can-help-reduce-the-stigma-around-mental-health_b_2667860.html

"My Mad Fat Diary", E4 Series

   With regards to how I present these concepts, I feel as though I have learnt to do so with more trepidation than last term. Instead of spelling the concept out in big obvious letters, I have moved away from text more and have focused on the aesthetic at hand, and how to provoke thought in the viewer. I aim to surprise and stir up intellectual argument with my work, and hopefully I have done so with my use of found materials from the derelict and empty old mental institution. I have been investigating through these concepts with this material this week, particularly my set of old blinds from the institution.