Akram Khan choreographer

Listen in to hear Akram Khan's explanation of the importance of going to the creative space within to reveal the unmediated communication with ourselves we only find in stillness.

In the dance he refers to as 'vertical road'  - a 'new starting point' - Khan makes a distinction between the usual sense of Western, horizontal, linear, clock time which we serve and Eastern time to which he attributes the qualities: feminine, seasonal and human - life and death time.

Khan also reflects on how uncomfortable it feels to be full of potential energy prior to releasing it into kinetic energy. 

Open University S260 Thin Rock Sections

 

 

Video - Magma Arta: Rocks under the Microscope, Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge University

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artfeb04/iwouslides2.html

 

 

I am fortunate in that my husband owned the materials and microscope relating to this OU course. 

I used the microscope to create micro paintings which I spent hours viewing and manipulating with an etching needle and experimenting with ink, paint and varnish.   See post: Transformers. 

Selected slides for the image gallery.

 

 

 

 

General: Gypsum is a mineral and appears colourless in thin sections, it is the chief constituent of gypsum rock. Gypsum when accurately cut to the required thickness was commonly used with polarizing microscopes as a 'sensitive tint' plates or 1st order red plates which could be inserted into the light path of a microscope using crossed-polars.

This slide: Under plane polarised light you can clearly see one of the cleavage planes and from the crossed-polar image some of the interference colours. Gypsum has a low birefringence value of 0.009 and would normally show only weak interference colours of the 1st order similar to quartz in thin section, but this section is much thicker in parts and showing stronger interference colours.

 

Slide [C], Peridotite from Italy.

 General: Peridotite is an igneous rock comprising mostly olivine, pyroxene and hornblende. Chromite [a source of chromium] is often associated with peridotite.

 

 

Some images inspire painting while others inspire drawing

General: Diorite is an igneous rock.

This sample: the left and right images are from different parts of the slide, in the crossed-polar image a central crystal thought to be biotite can be seen surrounded by feldspar showing various degrees of twinning.

 

 

Slide [D], Diorite from Italy.

  

Slide [G], Dolerite from Clee Hill.  General: Dolerite is an igneous rock and is one of the varieties of basalt and coarse grained in texture.

 

I was instantly fascinated by the complex structures of rocks only revealed at a microscopic level and at the magnificent colours created using UV light and coloured filters.   

 

This led me to make contact with the Sedgwich Museum, Cambridge and Essex University on the hunt for a collaborator who would be willing to share a his/her microscope in return for art!  Such sophisticated microscopes are extraordinarily expensive.  See post Bio-imaging of Coral.  

 

 

 

 

Cymatics - Nigel Stanford: Solar Echoes, Cymatics, Timescapes

 

CYMATICS - seeing sound resonate

http://nigelstanford.com

 

 

 

 

http://nigelstanford.com

 

 

 

Behind the scenes - collaboration and technology

 

Next steps - make a video based on these principle to play alongside my paintings.  

 

10/10 PJCT: Mindscapes

 

10/10 PRJCT

Week 7

Monday 23^rd March 2015

11 am – 2 pm

Installation Room (Art Building - ground floor)

 

Mindscapes

Gill Lock-Bowen

 

10 Artists

10 Weeks

1 Space

tenprjct.wordpress.com

 

My contribution to the 10/10 art project is about the construction and MAGNIFICATION of MINDSCAPES.

 

 

The complex structures and forms which emerge when examining rocks under a microscope have inspired me to generate multi-layered ink drawings on transparent sheets. 

 

The images produced by the drawings constantly change according to their interactions with one another and the levels of magnification and light to which they are exposed.  Some drawings can only be viewed under a microscope while others have been photographed and enlarged to A0.

 

I call these images ‘mindscapes’ as people tend to superimpose their constructed realities, based on memories, onto abstract images.

 

Rather than tapping into memories with their constructed and borrowed meanings, can we fast-forward into the co-creation of new empowering realities; and if we can, what does it mean that we have such power and what are we doing with it? 

Responding to the environment:

The Installation Room is approximately 23’ x 10’ with white walls and a grey marked floor. 

It is lit by fluorescent strip lights one of which was not working during week 7. 

The doors are fire doors which need to be kept shut at all times! 

 

Art imitating life: 

I took over the room from the previous artist on Monday afternoon as planned.  However, on the Tuesday morning just as I had set myself up to work, I received a telephone call the fallout from which overtook the entire week both practically and emotionally.

I made the decision that being in the space throughout week 7 was going to be impossible but I could hold the Installation Room in my mind as a room full of potential.  I therefore created my ‘Mindscapes’ outside the room but the empty room, mine for the week influenced my drive to make art no matter what!        

         

 A1

 

 A1

 

Samples of feedback:

'Amazing colours and details! Fascinating to look through the microscope.'  Emily

'Beautiful values.  Love it.'  Andrew

'The microscope images are amazing.'  Lizzy

'Really nice work, well done!' Joe

'Quite incredible, I could spend hours looking through the microscope.'  Bob

'I came upon this by chance, glad I did.  Perspectives interest me – and I really like the concept of macro and micro and back again.  And the colour used is enjoyable – so a very pleasant experience overall!' Sean

'On the surface of it, the pictures look really good but the thought provoking explanation brings it to life.  Really fantastic project! We need more of this!' Ben and Chris

'Really interesting images.  They feel like landscapes.  Really good idea with the microscope – enjoyed looking at them a lot. ' Laurel

 Next steps:

   

Sounds created using principles of cymatics

Project images from microscope and/or video images

Film myself producing art and taking photographs

 

 

 

 

 

Art and Psychoanalysis, paranormal expereince - Susan Hiller

Susan Hiller

 

Susan Hiller is renowned for making works which investigate often overlooked everyday phenomena. Previous subjects have included UFO sightings (Witness 2000), horror movies (Wild Talents 1997), near-death experiences (Clinic 2004), Punch & Judy shows (An Entertainment 1990) and dreams (Dream Mapping 1974). She employs sound, video, text and photography, often creating large-scale installations. Hiller has been described as a feminist, a conceptualist and a para-conceptualist.

 

 

 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hiller-from-the-freud-museum-t07438/text-summary
 

 

Susan Hiller: born 1940

Title: From the Freud Museum

Date1991–6

Medium: Glass, 50 cardboard boxes, paper, video, slide, light bulbs and other materials

Dimensions Displayed: 2200 x 10000 x 600 mm

Collection: Tate        

Acquisition Purchased: 1998

Reference: T07438

 

 

Many of the items included in Hiller’s installation are ephemeral, everyday articles, such as 45rpm records, two china creamers in the shape of cows, the English puppet Punch’s wooden slapstick. Others are objects of historical and anthropological significance, including Mayan obsidian blades and reproductions of aboriginal Australian cave paintings alongside earth collected near Papunya in Australia.

Other boxes combine items of contemporary relevance or modern usage with images of historic significance. In Box 018, for example, titled ‘La Peste/Plague’, Hiller has attached an article detailing ‘the current global situation of the HIV/AIDS pandemic’ alongside a photograph of the artist facing a stone carving of a skull, a typical memento mori dating from the time of London’s Great Plague.

The ‘from’ in the title does not refer to artefacts collected at the Freud Museum, but indicates that this is a work inspired by it. At the museum, Sigmund Freud’s personal collection of art and antiquities is displayed alongside objects pertaining to his professional life as a psychoanalyst, such as the couch used by his patients during their analysis.

As Hiller noted in the afterword to After the Freud Museum, a companion publication to her installation work, ‘[w]hatever might be said to be the “collection” on display in the Freud Museum is complicated by an overlay of settings where historical, biographical, archaeological, familial, personal, ethnographic and psychoanalytic facts merge to produce representations whose meanings are always in flux’ (Hiller 2000, unpaginated).

The diversity of Freud’s own collection influenced the form of Hiller’s installation.



See article http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/the-collective-conscience/ Colin Herd, 2011

Hiller initially trained as an anthropologist, and Dedicated to the Unknown Artists displays an anthropologist’s interest in collective psyche and imagination. In this work Hiller unifies the two meanings of the word “collective”, meaning both a commonality and an accumulative tendency. Her piece subtly interrogates the British tendency to exaggeratedly bemoan our climactic conditions, which is in fact one of the most moderate. A number of themes emerge in the collection, from a belief in naval supremacy, to the sense of Britain’s embattled isolation, aloof from the disorderly and riotous outside world. By taking the hackneyed images of seaside postcards and compiling them in an extensive collection, Hiller reveals and illuminates aspects of our collective imagination.

 

Artist and Scientist in collaboration - Cornelia Parker - Graphene project

Cornelia Parker

 

'Meteorite Misses Waco', Cornelia Parker

'Meteorite Misses Waco', Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker (born 1956)
'Meteorite Misses Waco, Texas'
2001
Printed atlas with scorched mark and burnt hole
Museum no. E.262-2005
Purchased through the Julie and Robert Breckman Print Fund

This is from a series called 'Meteorite Lands in the Middle of Nowhere' for which the artist heated a tiny meteorite and scorched six selected place names in the USA on six maps. Some of her meteorites make direct hits, others are near misses, but all the place names have been chosen for their powerful associations.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31006334 see for full article

 

 

Ahead of her new Whitworth exhibition, Cornelia Parker worked closely with scientists at the University of Manchester, most notably Kostya Novoselov, who, with Andre Geim, was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of  graphene - the world’s thinnest and strongest material.

Working with gallery staff, Novoselov took microscopic samples of graphite from drawings in the Whitworth’s collection by William Blake, Turner, Constable and Picasso, as well as a pencil-written letter by Sir Ernest Rutherford (who split the atom in Manchester). He then made graphene from these samples, one of which Parker made into a work of art to mark the opening of the gallery and exhibition. A Blake-graphene sensor, activated by breath of a physicist, set off a firework display which returned iron meteorite into the Manchester sky. This meteor shower marked a spectacular and unmissable opening to the new Whitworth.

 

Cornelia Parker talking about the Blakean Abstract project for the opening of the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, 2015.

 

 

 

 

Move on to 2'49" for discussion between Cornelia Parker and Kostya Novoselov about their collaboration on the Graphene project.  

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/smap/collection_index/cornelia_parker_artist_in_residence.aspx

Cornelia Parker - Artist in residence

• Another day spent
• September 1998 - March 1999

Cornelia Parker used her residency to investigate, select and transform our understanding of objects from the Science Museum's collections by making subtle additions to existing displays. Another day spent was a series of interventions in the form of objects, drawings, photographs, macrophotographs and photograms dispersed throughout the galleries and her interpretation of iconic objects made mischievous allusions to the formality and grandeur of the surrounding scientific works.

About the artist
British artist Cornelia Parker’s (born 1956) work is concerned with formalising things beyond our control, containing the volatile and making it into something that is quiet and contemplative like the 'eye of the storm'. Her work triggers cultural metaphors and personal associations which allow the viewer to witness the transformation of the most ordinary objects into something compelling and extraordinary.

 

Art and Science - Jo Berry - cells and signals

 

http://blog.wellcome.ac.uk/2011/07/20/hijacking-natural-systems/

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.joberry.co.uk/index.php/exhibitions/article/hijacking_natural_systems/

Art meets Science what an adventure..

http://www.joberry.co.uk/images_8.swf

In a nut shell, the scientists’ I am working with are trying to understand cell ‘messaging’ and ‘signalling’  through investigating how certain hormones can cause an individual cell to ‘switch on’ and ‘switch off’ a signal when a medicine is introduced. I have been doing a range of experiments in the Laboratory and on the Microscope looking at how live cells react and operate when hormones, such as Ghrelin and other compounds are introduced.

Ghrelin and the other compounds I am investigating are ‘hunger hormone’  which the scientists are investigating to see how successful it can be used to switch ‘on’ and ‘off’ hunger;  just think about the potential of that in our ever increasing ‘waistline’ society. 

What I have come to realise is that one little cell is an incredibly complex living organism and that the scientists through researching cells in detail and how medicines can work in them can change the nature of how they function in a very controlled manner.

As part of this project I am currently producing a series of exploratory digital design drawings and animations for an exhibition in Derby in July 2011, all the work produced is inspired by working in the Department of Cell Signalling.

 

Art and Science - Damien Hurst

Damien Hurst

http://www.damienhirst.com/artworks/catalogue?category=10

Exhibitions: Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector

Barbican Art Gallery, London, United Kingdom
http://www.barbican.org.uk

12 February 2015 – 25 May 2015

Group Exhibition

A selection of Hirst's extraordinary collection of anatomical models, taxidermy, specimen and skeletons are exhibited alongside an 'Entomology Cabinet' in this major exhibition of the personal collections of post-war and contemporary artists.
 

        

 

A selection of Damien Hirst's extraordinary collection of anatomical models, taxidermy, specimens and skeletons form part of the Barbican's major exhibition of the personal collections of post-war and contemporary artists. Ranging from mass-produced memorabilia and popular collectibles to one-of-a-kind curiosities, rare artefacts and specimens, these collections provide insight into the inspirations, influences, motives and obsessions of artists.

While some artists are connoisseurs, others accumulate hoards of objects, never letting anything go. Many live with and make direct use of their collections and others keep them under wraps or in storage. Collecting objects for research and study is key to the practice of many artists in the exhibition. Presented alongside examples of their work, their collections, in turn, help to elucidate their art. 

 Medicine Cabinets, 2011

 

https://britishartresearch.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/exhibition-damien-hirst-leeds-art-gallery/

 

 You can only cure people for so long and then they’re going to die anyway. You can’t arrest decay but these medicine cabinets suggest you can.”

Hirst began work on the ‘Medicine Cabinets’ whilst in his second year at Goldsmiths with ‘Sinner’ (1988). Constructing the MDF unit at home, he filled it with the empty packaging of his grandmother’s medication, which he'd requested she left him on her death.

He then created a group of twelve which, explaining, “I like it when there is more than one way of saying something, like songs on an album”, he titled after the twelve tracks on the Sex Pistol’s album ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ (1977), with two named after ‘God Save the Queen’, (‘God’ (1989) and ‘god’ (1989)).

In their arrangement of objects the cabinets link Hirst’s earlier collages (1983 - 1987) to his later work. The used packages that fill the cabinets, described by Hirst as “empty fucking vessels”, were originally arranged as if the cabinet were itself a body, with each item positioned according to the organs it medically related to. However, this system did not last and the “minimalist delicious colours” of the designs swiftly became the most important criterion for their arrangement within each cabinet. Hirst has likened the minimalist packaging to the work of Sol Le Witt and Donald Judd: “They’re not flamboyant are they? They’re not allowed to sell themselves, except in a very clinical way. Which starts to become funny.”

The works explore the distinction between life and death, myth and medicine. Hirst notes: “You take a medicine cabinet and you present it to people and it’s just totally believable. I mean a lot of the stuff is about belief, I think, and the ‘Medicine Cabinets’ are just totally believable.”

<M865/250 Infertility (male), light_micrograph_SPL.jpg>, 2007

 

 

<P520/210 Small Intestine, SEM.jpg>, 2007

http://www.damienhirst.com/

Damien Hirst at Tate Modern, Youtube

 

Transformers - Ipswich Museum

Transformers - National Project for Museums across UK

Purpose: Unlock the museum objects through the story of a Victorian character in a way that will inspire visitors and help support the museum to make a great social impact.

 

Rachael McFarlane, Transformers Project Manager, Ipswich Museum

UCS - History and Fine Art

Suffolk One

Colchester Institute

A Museum of a Victorian Museum   

 

 

 

 

 

The rationale behind the organisation of the Geology section has been lost. 

Some of the rocks and fossils have wonderful markings but many look dry and dull.  I wanted to remind spectators of their value as part of the living history of planet.

 

The vitrines are dark mahogany and because the lighting is dim, the glass  reflects a warm, dim, yellow light (like candle light) which reduces the energy brought into the space by visitors.   

 

My exhibition was displayed in the Geology Section amongst the vitrines. 

The environment felt like theatre.  Everything was organised and displayed in rows in-keeping with the rationale behind the museum - order, categorisation, time passing slowly.  

I felt the microscope alluded to science and to a sense of wonder as created by a kaleidoscope - light, change, apparent control then awareness of loss of control over fleeting, interconnected images.  It provided a metaphor too for looking closely beyond what is obvious - to be alert to new possibilities and to look further than what is presented to as fact, knowledge, real or true.

 

 

 

 

Conservation Room - photograph morphed using Photoshop - looking at hidden interiors in new ways.

  

 



Complex human environments - numerous ancient and modern objects from across the globe undergoing categorisation and conservation. 

 



 

3 views of the Conservation Room

 

A map of a Complex Human Environment

 

I took a line for a walk and created multiple images to intensify the sense of complexity which is felt profoundly in the Conservation Room.

 

 

 

 

 

I created 30 micro paintings which can only be viewed under a microscope.  I tried projecting the images but the intricacies or the lines created by means of an etching needle was lost.   Spectators enjoyed looking into the microscope; in a sense it enhances the sense of isolation in looking (it creates a gallery space for one).  Each painting is on a slide which if moved slightly produces a whole new image.  Once a particular image is moved it is very difficult to find it again so the images mimic time passing, change and alteration.

 

 From 4"x 6" inch to A0

 

 

 

This  drawing based on the structure of Icelandic Spa viewed under the microscope.  The Spa appears crystal clear to the naked under but under the microscope black lines appears showing how the Spa is actually fractured by the pressure in the earth which it carries in its memory. 

 

 

Screen prints.  Ink on acetate, ink removed using etching needle and bamboo mounted on paper. A1

These screen prints are an extension of my drawings.  The application of ink using a roller and screen produces forms I cannot achieve by any other means.  I then use the forms which appear as starting points for relationships with marks and lines and the naturally occurring flacking of ink off the acetate surface which imitates the fragility of the surface of rock. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visual response to poem: 'I come from...'

 Neon nights, 2015

 

'I Come From'

 

I come from an unknown wilderness,

Streetlights glowing,

Sirens sound, lost but not found

I come from a world of rule,

History is formed,

Another cold war, no money for the poor

I come from a life of art,

Monet's paintings

Creating a surge of emotions,

Colours splashed on the page,

Like people escaping their reality of age.

I come from a young generation,

Drinking more than recommended.

I'm a dreamer, a believer, my heart's a

seeker.

Most of all, I come from an open road,

Trying to seek a home sweet home.

 

Roseanne Ganley  

 

This poem begins with a dystopian view of the world. 

 

The narrator creates a sense of estrangement from a world which is beyond the control of its inhabitants. 

The first image is of a wilderness - an open road - then we taken through the bleakness of a world in which emotions are expressed in art or otherwise drowned out by alcohol. 

 

But then the narrator shares her quest: she believes a better life is possible; she is seeking

home. 

 

 

 Time Traveller, 2015

 Vortex, 2015

 

 Untitled, 2015

 

Neon Nights and Time Traveller are my visual responses to Roseanne's poem.  I produced a series of images e.g. responses to the wilderness, to the cold war and to the sense of the individual negotiating the challenges of surviving in a complex world perpetually in a state of flux.

These two images respond to the colours of the emotions generated by the thoughts expressed in the poem.  They reflect a sense of energy, light and transformation; and hope. 

 Open Road, 2015

 

This image is inspired by a sense of the 'open road' of life.  The tunnel like folds demonstrate how thoughts and memories swirl around us; some make us fearful for awhile, others excite and intrigue us; they all hold us into the folds of time.   

 

  Wilderness, 2015

 Cold War, 2015

 

Roseanne selected Vortex and the Untitled image for her end a year show.  The images will be enlarged to 20" x 16" and exhibited alongside her poem in June, 2015.