Summertime and the living is (not that) easy (yet)

It's a while since I was on this train… writing my blog. And it will be a few weeks before I am again. I am on my way to Manchester, and there's a party tomorrow, starting at 5pm. Exactly when I need to leave. So a rethink is required, I think I shall spend some quality time on the embroidery software, visit the Richter exhibition at The Whitworth Gallery then just go to the pub early with the keener partygoers. At least I am being conscientious and doing MA work, also taking (some of) my library books back - how exciting. 

In other news; we have now got our own 'part time MA students' Facebook page which will be a useful place to post ongoing work/ideas and get some peer feedback seeing as there won't be much going on at MMU for us over the summer, note however, we ARE still supposed to be doing work, no time off here… although I may get some days in Devon if I'm lucky. My trip to Auschwitz is still on the cards, paid for and all. It is not something like a holiday to look forward to but it's there.

Work-wise I have been rather busy in the print room but, as is usual, I don't seem to have an equivalent amount of work to show for it. I always forget how long it takes and that it is imperative to: print, take away, look at it for a long time, decide what to do to it next, go and do that something to it then repeat, ad infinitum sometimes, whereupon it is usually 'overdone' and ready for the bin. From about 20 samples I have one resolved, 15 that require further work (but I'm supposed to be limiting content!) and 4 that are good for nothing. My intention being 'to capture a moment'...mmm.

I am supposed to NOT be continuing with portraits but I kind of have, just as it is easy to carry this (pre-printed spare) around to work on at opportune moments, like now for instance...

Ivan's eye in colour

Ivan's eye in black & white

MIA

I've been to New Designers, London with my students, one of whom turned out to be an (especially) big winner :-) and I luckily had a little bit of time to do some extra research and really enjoyed the Sonia Delauney exhibition at the Tate Modern, especially her textile design (of course), we also were invited to 'The House of Dreams' by Stephen Wright which was amazing and eye boggling, I love how he interprets his own experiences and losses into his art 'world' (rather than art 'work') and is organically transforming his all encompassing space into an heterotopian delight. 

In The House of Dreams

I haven't done any more 'art' work myself except write a proposal for my next (well, this) unit. Unfortunately doing it (and consequently after my tutorial - changing it) meant no more new 'real' work, but this week…I have learned:

1. You shouldn't take a break or you lose your thread or momentum
2. You shouldn't work full time (in a dream world - maybe Stephen's!)
3. You shouldn't try and fit too much into your concept, thinking what you have is not enough, or you will confuse yourself
4. You should draw a chicken
5. You should keep it simple and just do what you do…don't change because you think you should. Change will come naturally at the right moment (I hope)
6. Go with your instinct and don't doubt yourself, your first thoughts may actually turn out to be your best
7. Time spent thinking is WORKING
8. Time spent on things that don't go anywhere and seem to come back to the beginning is LEARNING
9. Your idea's probably sound better to other people than they do to yourself
10. You should never forget that you actually have artwork in your bag you can show in your tutorial instead of just typed words
11. Ten things are quite enough for one day or your brain might explode.

I am happy I have had a tutorial with my personal tutor at last, not least because I feel I have been given ‘permission’ to get on with it and do samples, experiments and investigations - whoop! And whoever said I had to do digital stitch anyway?

To finish this drawing is my next job, then the fabric will be out :-)

The house that once was

Part 2

Shaft

Today I had an appointment for a tutorial with Alex. Not Nigel. But neither came anyway.
It was for my feedback (but I did get emailed my mark) for my first unit (apart from the Contested Territories option, which played an important and incredibly influential part).
I am wondering what everyone else in my pathway/group has got. I have no idea.

I got 69.
69 per cent.  I'm fine with that.  I think I know why.

I do know 3 other people's marks, they all got 78+.
They all do photography.

I now have until December to work forward from my initial idea's,  it's kind of the development part, I've done the research and visual studies, drawing and photography/recording and now its time to play with it. And obviously, CONTINUALLY researching more. From January I expect I may be starting to produce a final collection of work. I have started to write this (new) proposal which I need to present to the group next week...

Practice 2:

Does an aesthetically beautiful piece have an innate inability to convey the magnitude of horrific and disturbing events such as the holocaust? (Bathrick et al., 2008), is it unacceptable even to use aesthetic means to draw attention to such issues? I need to further question the ‘intentionality’ of my work and imagery.

Aims: 

-Focus on ONE main area and produce some solid work from initial ideas generated in P1.
-Extend and develop these through materials and techniques (in depth investigation)  
-Concentrate on the Chernobyl disaster (Democide: many deaths arising through various neglects and abuses by a government, as opposed to Omnicide: the destruction of all life especially by nuclear war) ? And the Holocaust (Genocide: the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group) and related issues. 

-Produce work that will be noticed, possibly by using shocking imagery but more likely thought provoking text

-Understand what I want to achieve and convey it to the critic.

-Research 'Aesthetic Theory' including moral issues and how other artists have conveyed and dealt with sensitive issues

-Leave final outcome ‘area’ open.

-The fundamentals and essentiality of my research is condensed into the acceptance or rejection of the possibility of beauty in disturbing imagery, content, background or suggestion of such – ‘external beauty, internal ugly’.

I recently put some images of my initial Practice 2 sketchbook pages on Facebook. Here I will explain my thought process whilst producing them.

   A great quote from a poem by Ivan Drach, a Ukrainian poet that I found after my concept development came to exactly this point...

Just to get going and get rid of the blank page 'look' I had going on I cut up a test screen print, tore up some black sugar paper I had been using to spray paint things on, 'found' a photograph and Maria and stuck it all down. (That's probably not actually a thought process).

Leftover bits of work on Ivan

The caption explains EVERYTHING about this piece. I do have a printed sample of him on silk that I am going to start stitching on, just to do something while Big Brother's on.

Some Chernobyl forest drawing with non Chernobyl imagery that seems to fit anyway

Maybe I need to paint on this with gouache. I will come back to it, all in good time. I had the laser cut offcuts from an experiment which didn't quite work, but left a 'trace'.

Using negative space and block shapes to indicate what isn't there anymore, many small villages thought to be too radioactive were completely buried after the explosion

I just fancied getting the Quink out here. The result is that the sketchbook is started and now I need to get serious - I will NOT put in anything without an excellent reason and conscious thought. From tomorrow.

Oh, AND I've made a zine about Chernobyl, which is a small taster.
Come and buy one from me at The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead on July 10/11th.
Only £1.00.
If you don't want to pay that much you can download it here for free… (click on 'share') - you just don't get the hand finished effect.

N.B. I am halfway through 2 more: 'BOX' & "Found!' so you could have a collection 

Discovery of the week: The reason that I really like coming to MMU.

After 2 minutes of long, hard thinking I realise it could be because it's taking just one day a week out of ordinary day to day usuality and doing something completely different. It's like a holiday, split up and spread out to try and make it last longer. It's my parallel universe.

Disclaimer: this is not professed to be a good example of evaluative, in-depth or analytical writing, I'm just too tired.

Early doors but not there yet...

Early start... up at 6am killing me. A day return. This is only a possibility when I don't have to start at 10am.

Today I need to pick up my (assessed!!!) work, and be introduced to Practice 2: our new module. I am VERY excited...now is the time that I EXPLORE my idea's practically and creatively.

I have been advised that I need to SHOCK to get 'my' message across, in order to draw attention to the Chernobyl issue and/or other major issues and horrific atrocities, and NOT to (necessarily) produce something aesthetically pleasing (which was always my intention), so the upshot being that as soon as I think I know what my intention is, there comes the proverbial 'spanner in the works'. I was also advised that it would be VERY difficult (argh).

So although I have my concept, which although now much more focused, continues to need much more research and another trip to the Ukraine (Chernobyl again but I have also just found about Babi Yar - how/why did I not know about this already?!), I still don't know what I am doing. ALSO after intense thinking and sweating about WHAT I am designing for, I have been advised that I now don't need to know this - which is very free-ing in a way and very scary in another. Hopefully I'll know by the time Practice 3 comes around.

Babi Yar

And in other news: I am all booked up to spend 5 days in Poland in September, again for research purposes, incredibly luckily I have funding to do this. I am not excited, I am afraid. I will be visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau. I need to allow myself to be emotionally immersed in the experience in order for it to inform my practice and influence my work but as a rather closed person (I think??!) it will absolutely destroy my composure (and I feel selfish for even worrying about this).  

Book I'm finishing on the train

 

List of immediate jobs:

• Finish reading 8 books (interesting)
• Start a new sketchbook (delicious) 
• List the main (shocking & relevant/appropriate) points I need to raise (thought provoking)
• Think about how to do this (impossible)
• Research 'memorial art' and 'shocking work on big issues' (time consuming)



Holocaust Monument, Berlin

 

The End (of something) is Nigh?

Ivan of Chernobyl - Hand Embroidery

I am handing in my main project work for assessment today/tomorrow... I have a suitcase full AND an A2 portfolio. I have already submitted the written part which took me much longer than it should have, due to nitpicking and formatting troubles, the words only took half of the total time, the rest was spent stressfully getting text to line up and images to stay in the correct position. I ended up having to do the whole thing in 'InDesign' as 'Word' is so awful. 

My main concern at the moment is getting it all off the train quickly enough, once that is done my next concern will be 'curating' my sketchbook, notebooks and file on a table (?!) then the presentation of it tomorrow, and filling 25 minutes up with talking.

To help me I will get some preparation done now:

Introduction:

The summing up of my timeline; where I started, where I am now and how I got there.

I'm assuming the tutors will have already read my in depth, reflective essay about that and my process, so hopefully it will be more about the artwork than the theory this time although I'm not so sure!

Show/flick through examples; A2 paintings, my sketchbook, best (mounted) photographs, and fabrics. I must say it IS professionally presented.

My strengths during this project- Practice 1:

• primary research
• visual interpretation/communication of idea's
• testing of initial thoughts
• relevance of materials and techniques to concept/subject
• presentation

Ivan - Detail/Reverse

What didn't work technically?

• digital stitch programming - so far I haven't been able to get it to do what I want, BUT I just need more time.
• laser cutting matching/combined with print (as above), need to sample 'printing' WITH the laser (which I used to be able to do. cf rastering)

What I intend to develop (further) in Practice 2:

• it all feels a little 'bitty' i.e. not logical, due to my ideas jumping about - I hope to focus on ONE main area, at least for a while and actually produce some solid work... I am starting to worry that I have only 18 months left and it doesn't seem long enough to produce an embroidery collection at couture level based on whatever... it could take me that long just to do ONE sample (from past experience).
• confidence - I am confident with the practical aspects regarding the quality, skills, aesthetics and initiative evident within my work, but I need to better articulate my thought process and intellect with regards to the not yet, completed project. My confidence will come from believing that I understand what I want to achieve, and have the knowledge and imagination to convey it to the critic and feeling that it is personal to me but shared and appreciated by others.

I am happy with what I have done, even though it never seems enough and there are too many idea's to try and then to progress and to develop further until they are beautiful... AND I STILL have to research the theory of Aesthetics.

So my conclusion is:

• that I will produce (by the end of practice 3 - the final module) 'a collection of pieces on a theme/addressing an issue, for exhibition' (probably) about Chernobyl and the related issues surrounding the world's worst nuclear disaster, and on it's 30th anniversary. 
• to forget about the fashion fabric design collection, I have decided I am NOT a commercial designer AND I can produce that anyway later if I so choose, from the experimental samples I produce whilst doing the above...can't I?

And, the FINAL conclusion is:

... there is never an end. Is there?

Chernobyl and Pripyat in the Ukraine, next to Russia. 29 Years after the nuclear disaster…

Hotel in Pripyat Plaza

Some said 'brave', some couldn't understand why we would even wish to go there, some were envious…we (me, my partner, my 2 x 21 year old daughters and one boyfriend - I was very impressed they all desperately wanted to come) were excited and really had no idea what to expect.

Personally and ostensibly it was for my MA research (though no excuse needed) and I was looking forward to meeting the re-settlers and to discover their reasons for choosing to go back and live on the edge of the exclusion zone which is still a very dangerous place to live due to the invisible enemy  'radiation poisoning'. It has been said that the longevity of the re-settlers lives is due to their quality of life and happiness in being 'home' which negates the effects of the radiation. The danger of which is more  preferable to them than living in a city's high-rise away from their farms and the countryside. 

Ivan (Mikhail) Ivanovitch, Security (!) and Ivan's house

Me and a happy Ivan

However, after my visit, I realised there were so many other aspects regarding the 'Chernobyl issue' that I couldn't confine my interest to just the re-settlers and I have reverted to my original thoughts about dark tourism, collective trauma and collective memory, then overarching or underpinning this, the 'correctness' of interpreting such unspeakable, atrocities and heinous issues via an aesthetic means. (N.B. I may be visiting Auschwitz later this year).

The trip itself was mesmerising (for want of a better word) from start to finish. There were days either side spent in Kiev and an airbnb apartment which were fantastic, although kind of 70's, and unbelievably cheap.

Back to the 2 days spent in Chernobyl. Radiation dose expected equivalent = one hospital x-ray.

We were with Chernobylwel.com (fantastic!) - a tour, only/easiest way to get in, and of a very mixed group, 17 persons and a guide. There were other families and some couples, some groups of friends and a few people travelling alone which was a very nice mix. People from USA, Finland, Germany, Austria, Spain, Sweden, UK and Switzerland at least, which I loved and people of all ages 18 -70.

On the minibus on the way to the power plant + Laura

We weren't quite sure exactly where we were going and in what order but this was where we went, in order (I think!) This was after we checked in at the hotel, in CHERNOBYL, within the 30km exclusion zone, which extends on the north side into Belarus, Russia.  We have stayed in much worse Travelodges in the UK. The food was, shall we say, interesting - plain and typical Ukrainian food,  and the blob of tomato sauce on the side of plain pasta or rice we found quite amusing. Every meal was a set menu (all inclusive :-) and we were all served at the same time, it reminded me of school trips abroad years ago.

Itinerary:
DAY 1: 

Abandoned house in Chernobyl town

• Chernobyl Town: 
The Angel of Death monument/memorial 

• Rusting boats - docks (quickly & from a distance)

• Robots (used in the clean up operation)

• (small) Kindergarten 

• Cooling towers of unfinished reactor 5 & 6, due for opening in 1988 for Reactors 5 and 6 

• Chernobyl nuclear power plant

• Reactor number 4 - viewing platform and VERY close
• 
Fireman memorial
• 
Bridge & giant catfish

• Reactor number 4 & Memorial

• New sarcophagus ('safe' distance)

• Pripyat ''Ghost City'': (inhabitants were given two hours notice to evacuate, almost two days after the explosion - already too late)
• 
Cafe 
• 
Prometheus cinema

• Local Council Admin Building
• 
Pripyat Plaza-

• Polesie Hotel

• Palace of Culture: "Energetik" 

• Amusement park

• Soccer stadium - Stadium Avangard
• 
Middle/Grammar school 

• Swimming pool 
(in use by the liquidators and other people working in the Zone up until 1996)
• Tower block 

(roof of)

We got back to the hotel sometime before 8pm (there's a curfew), had dinner and sampled the bar.
Oh, there are no toilets in Chernobyl/Pripyat that you can actually use, only bushes (!) so be prepared to wait up to 6 hours if you're like me, then also be prepared for the most awful toilet ever which is located at the checkpoint... not sure it was better than a bush to be honest.

Radiation detectors going in and out of the exclusion zone

DAY 2: 


• Chernobyl Zoo (I would say small farm or pets corner)

• Bridge of Death; where people flocked to watch the flames of the explosion and consequently received lethal doses of radiation. I think if it had happened at Hartlepool, the people of Billingham would have probably done the same. Also, there were people travelling on a train going under the bridge on their way to Moscow at the time of the explosion who also received very high dosage of radiation, an extreme case of wrong place, wrong time.

• Pripyat:
 Hospital, one of my favourite places, very emotional and evocative.

• Combined School (collapsed in April 2013- the snow that falls in the winter has caused most of the damage to the city, I think soon it will all possibly be too destructed to visit)
• 
Greenhouse

• Telephone exchange?
• 
Jupiter Factory (could have stayed here all day)
• 
Police station and cells with exercise yard
• 
Old Fire Station (with garage), all the men who worked here died.

• Kindergarten 2 ( a bigger one)

• Open air military museum (possibly, it was somewhere with trucks)

• Meeting local inhabitants in the Resettlement zone (unbelievable and great for my research) I have recorded an interview but can't get it off my phone as yet.

• Late lunch at power station (an experience, I wouldn't like to eat there every day - rumour has it it's always exactly the same) - there are still workers building the new (overdue) sarcophagus which will protect the world from the radiation that is still being emitted and possibly escaping as we speak through the holes in the old one.

• Vehicle graveyard - Chernobyl (possibly through the red forest - I wasn't even sure where we were at the time)

Swimming Pool, Pripyat

Gymnasium, Pripyat

Pripyat, can't remember which building it was

I am now desperate to return and hopefully this time next year I will. I found out so much information, one thing I hadn't realised was that a second, more powerful explosion was only very narrowly avoided, one which would have wiped out the whole of Europe -completely. We were so unaware. And 'Tens of thousands of Soviet citizens filed into Chernobyl to help, considering it their patriotic duty; all were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation with no warning from the government.'
 And did you also realise that the Chernobyl disaster was instigation for Glasnost and the fall of the USSR. It truly did change the world in many ways. 'According to Gorbachev, the Chernobyl explosion was a turning point that “opened the possibility of much greater freedom of expression, to the point that the system as we knew it could no longer continue.”

Reactor No.4, the bad part is behind the concrete blocks

Inside the unfinished cooling tower

An overview of the disaster and situation is here.

The whole experience was like NOTHING I have ever experienced before. The pictures you see on the internet give NO indication of the feeling you get by being there. It is truly amazing, I have never seen anything/anywhere like it in my life… it is the most unbelievable, disconcerting, silent, strangely beautiful place I believe I will ever see.

I still haven't managed to work my way through all my photographs so these are just a very small selection of the first lot- it is SO difficult to give a good indication of the whole trip. I will publish a couple of albums on my Facebook page as soon as possible.

Men working on the new sarcophagus

Housing block in Pripyat

Changing rooms - football stadium

Ferris wheel built for Mayday 1986

Children's coat hooks in the Kindergarten

Kindergarten

Inside the cooling tower

Poster inside the school

Print-cess...

These are some of the prints I did at the weekend... there is one I love as is (for now and not shown). There are 4 that have potential within a collection (of what I'm not sure/worrying about) with more work; i.e. more layers of print, perhaps some overdying and some embroidery. There are also two that are awful and unresolvable. They are all loosely connected to my concept in terms of distressed surfaces, negative space, a 'void', part or age worn objects. 

Trace left by an object

Faded and worn detail

But as I am itching to get started on some design work I am just flinging out initial ideas using 'materials', I'm sure whatever they finally turn into in another 18 months or so will be a million miles away from these samples. In a way it's quite nice not to have a definitive end use in mind but I'll probably get into trouble about that! Since September I have swung from creating haute couture level fashion fabrics (my ambition) to making huge 3D sculptural embroidered light pieces (not my usual thing but a challenge) to producing an installation for exhibition (as that is not commercial so it must be art must it not?!), and this is looking like the beginning of a furnishing fabric collection. My own suggestion to myself is that I aim for a collection of just beautiful fabrics for now and worry about that or see where it goes in about a year.  (That's a must...I MUST think they are beautiful)

Discharge on Indigo, screenprint

I will be writing an essay this week and I must include my intentions (so I had better decide what they are). My journey through the process of reading, research and thinking has led me now to some fairly specific, narrowed down and in depth, conceptual yet vague, ideas of what my 'subject' will be but not necessarily of my practical outcomes.

I think this has got something