CPS. Visit to Gagosian Gallery, London. Oct 2013

The piece that really caught my eye when I visited the gallery was the Andy Warhol screen print.
'Little electric chair 1965', is a really striking image. set on a bright yellow background the electric chair and its surroundings are printed in harsh black ink and the eeriness of a death chamber has been caught perfectly. He's highlighted the shape and form of the chair so we recognise it straight away against the shaded, grimey backdrop. On one of the side walls in the print you see a sign with the word silence written across it and this really fixes the final image. Is the word aimed at the viewers in the prison room or at the prisoners who have been silenced forever? The electricity cable, now cut, lays on the floor in front of the chair suggesting its own life has also come to an end.
Warhol has captured an image showing a time and way of life gone by, and a time here and now. As i studied it i couldn't help thinking how sad an image it was.
All the lives it had taken and all the lives it had saved.
A stunning image and a real treat to see a Warhol in the flesh.

Another artist I looked at was Cy Twombly.

His piece 'untitled, (New York City 1968)' could almost be mistaken for a school classroom chalkboard with the scribblings of the children all over it. The ghost like forms of individual letters dance across the surface and the background of smeared chalky patches resembles figures walking in a darkened forest. The piece has real depth to it and was produced with oil based house paint and wax crayon on canvas. I really like his work and I like to use scribbled hand writing in my works, writing that you can't properly read but can just make out a few words, just enough to get the viewer interested in the possibility of a narrative but no final outcome. 

Another painting that caught my eye was 'Ghosts 2013' by Douglas Gordon. The word ghosts is spray painted onto aluminium which is unpolished and distorted and as people walk past they literally look like ghosts floating across the face of the work. The image constantly changes and as i looked at it I caught myself looking behind just to make sure someone was actually there. The harder you stare at it the more ghostly the figures become. 

The word just gives us the push we need to relate what we are seeing to what, as a piece of art, we are supposed to be looking at. 'Yes' says the artist, 'thats right, they look like ghosts'.  

A very simple work but still very impressive.

The Gagosian is a beautiful gallery with some very impressive and intriguing works on display and I'll definitely be heading there again.

PRINT. experimental works. Oct 2013.

Experimenting with left-over things from installation jobs. 

This painting is on an old kitchen unit back panel. Painted with interior emulsion wall paint and brushes were bits of wood from the old kitchen. The view is in Kibworth looking across the fields towards Harborough. 

I like the detail in each line and the random way that the paint attaches itself to the surface when the wooden brushes were pushed against it. I was limited to the colours as these were the only ones used on the job but they really work well in the scene. 

Self directed studio paintings

In my studio time I've been working on new styles and ways to paint, experimenting with papers, paints textures etc. 

This piece is an abstract cityscape painted in watercolour and charcoal. It's a project I'm enjoying and want to produce a series. It filled my studio wall and is 6ftx3ft on fine art paper. The idea is to highlight certain areas in the image but not produce an exact interpretation. 

watercolour, pen and ink. The idea was from a newspaper clip about a girl who would only eat toast?

watercolour, pencil and ink. This is from a series of images I first made as photographs which are faceless portraits. 

watercolour and pen. 'weapons of mass destruction', The things that are going to kill us in the end but we love them anyway.

These paintings are all about the time spent in prison yards in America and how the prisoners become a solid mass as opposed to single figures. Gangs seem to rule these places and they wear certain colours to highlight which gang they belong to. I tried to capture this by using the one colour for the figures. 

                                       

These next paintings are all about certain marks on the paper working together. Each line, mark and colour has to be thought through and positioned just right to get the look I'm after.

Printshop experimental prints

We've been experimenting a lot and learning new techniques in the printshop lessons and the outcomes are really interesting. I think my work needs to be more defined though and aim towards a finished image rather than just an experiment.

I really like the bottom one. The delicate print marks and slight use of colour are something I want to concentrate on in future pieces. 

Self Directed studio work

This is done on one of the cardboard boxes that my new kitchen came in with charcoal and water colours. I really like the way the background drew itself due to the textures on the surface. 

CPS Urs Fischer at MOMA Los Angeles.

A lot has been written lately in the art press about the work of Urs Fischer. 

Is it art? Is it a rebellion against art or is the guy just a genius?

Born in Switzerland in 1973, the contemporary artist moved to New York and his work has been exhibited worldwide in some of the biggest most prestigious shows including the Venice Biennale and Manifest 3.  The LA show is a collection of his previous works coupled with brand new pieces. 

'I work everyday in the studio, its like an intoxication' he states of his obsessive urge to constantly produce pieces which are ever changing, always evolving and pleasingly random in subject, which really appeals to me. He isn't faithful to any particular medium, this week making a towering steel teddy bear sculpture, next week a collection of dust paintings or a massive crater dug into the floor of a gallery. 

using all possible materials his exhibition is a visual funhouse of vivid colours, movement and distortions appealing to the child in us all. He presents his work in a playful interactive way making the viewer walk through raindrops suspended from the ceiling, step through holes chopped out of the gallery wall and dodge the many small clay sculptures scattered around the floor, each made not by Fischer but by a group of 1500 locals invited to take part in the show. These pieces vary in size and subject. Tiny heads, penis', animals and people splatter across the floor in what looks like chaos but is actually organised to by Fischer in a way that leads the visitors through a central pathway and out into an open area of larger sculptures. 

Grand romanesque statues, created out of candle wax, slowly melt before our eyes whilst next to us a smartly dressed man studying the exhibition melts from his head down (also a wax statue).Both pieces constantly changing form as every drop of hot wax disfigures the perfect image making it constantly interesting to look at. 

Reminiscent of Warhol's works, Fischers pop art inspired 'everyday object blocks' would easily sit next to Warhol's 'Campbell's soup tin' or 'washing powder boxes' and his 'Banana cube' almost mirrors Warhol's banana print. Each piece could have been produced buy either artist. 

Fischer is a showman and his exhibition a masterpiece of all sorts and eye catchers and a lot of the work looks very 'American' with bold bright colours and oversized in your face pieces.

He makes art which should be looked at and enjoyed, grabbing influence from everywhere. 

His work  now demands big money and in 2011 his lamp/bear pieces fetched 6.8 million dollars when sold at Christies in New York. 

With no formal art training and no time spent at art school he sees himself as a worker in the art world constantly producing, showing and selling. 

I personally  like Fischer's work, the fun, boldness and craziness of it all, and the fact that he isn't trying to push an underlying message down our throats. I look forward to seeing what he produces next. 

CPS Lesley Halliwell @ Northampton Contemporary arts.

The Infinity show at NN-Northampton brings together artists from around the world with the theme of what 'infinity' actually means to each of them.
Manchester based artist Lesley Halliwell is amongst the group with three of her meticulously drawn spirograph pictures. Using a classic childrens toy and Biro pens she produces pattern flooded works based on constant repetition.
The artist experiments with different qualities of biro. Some run out sooner than others and the feint lines scored into the paper by the empty nibs become part of the images as do the ink splats and blobs made as a pen explodes onto the paper.

'Fanatic 4500 minutes', a wall sized rainbow of repetitive pattern and colour is the largest piece in the exhibition. Each brightly coloured line appears clear and precise and seemingly never-ending. The piece took a total of 75 hours to complete which is a testament to the artists apparent obsessive nature.

The works remind me of old William Morris wallpaper and the shocking wallpaper designs you would see in the 70's. The detail is intriguing as are the depth of line and colour and after a while they become slightly hypnotic, like the magic eye pictures of the 90's.
She also display longer works rolled into long strips of paper and hung on the wall. She says she was inspired by Pierro Manzoni's 'Linee', a painted line, rolled, concealed and displayed in a tube.

The use of spirographs appears in a lot of artists work and some have taken the idea one step further. Tony Orrico uses his whole body to produce beautiful 'human spirograph' pictures which are amazing to look at.

Halliwell's work continues to gain exposure in the UK showing at Turner contemporary, The Pumphouse, Jerwood drawing and the sadly missed city gallery in Leicester. She has taken a very simple technique and used it in her own successful way.