Today was the beginning of our new project called Being Human. To begin the day, in groups we brainstormed topics and aspects which define us as humans and cause us to be different from other animals.

I identified certain topics from the brainstorm which I would like to investigate more. I liked the thought of language, communication and documentation. All throughout history humans have used language both spoken and visual to express ideas, thoughts and communicate stories. When keeping in mind the purpose of our work (to be sent into space in a time capsule which would explain humans to an extra terrestrial), I thought this visual way of communication would be interesting to use. I had the idea of researching cave paintings and found some interesting artists such as Chris Rivers and Jessica Matier, who use similar figures within their works. I found it interesting that although most paintings were created thousands of years ago, they still are able to communicate situations and scenarios across to the viewer in a really clear way. This is what I would like to be able to do within my own work. I also have the idea of using symbols to portray things which mean a lot to humans. I wanted to visually portray the way we almost worship technology and strive for power within our lives. I plan on creating a painting where all of the figures seem to be distracted by various things represented as symbols while a large dark painted shape seems to begin to surround them. This will be representative of the climate emergency in which us humans now find ourselves in. I want this painted shape to almost interrupt the figures, just like how Matier uses paint to interrupt her subjects within her works. The figures I want to use will be simple 'stick men' similar to the ones drawn in the cave art. This is so I can purely represent humans without selecting any particular group of humans. I want to show that no matter the race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, someone may be, we are all still human and deserve to be represented with equality, unlike certain images sent out on the Voyager golden record. 

Today I began creating my painting. I began by painting a background inspired by the etherial atmospheric works of Chris Rivers. I wanted to use soft and natural colours to contrast and highlight my later representation of climate change. Although at first I was going to use acrylic to paint my piece, after experimenting with acrylic, I didn't like the effect it gave, and the difficulty I had blending the colours. I thought acrylic would be more effective to use due to the short time frame we have to complete the project, but decided to use oil instead. To encourage the oil to fry quicker, I tried to use thin layers and watered it down with solvent, which actually helped a lot. This allowed me to build the paint in layers without it drying too slow. 

Kara Walker - Fons Americanus 

What aspect(s) of being human does the artist explore in their work?

To me this artist is exploring the problematic nature of humans in her piece, showing some of the worst sides to humanity and its history, highlighting the fact that even though things may have happened in the past, we cannot just forget they happened. Walker is presenting problems that so many people still face due to the ignorance and evil within humans.

What materials, processes and media do they use to explore their ideas?

Walker has based this fountain on the Victoria Memorial outside of Buckingham palace, highlighting the importance of the message which she is trying to portray and that these issues cannot be ignored. She has used sustainable and environmentally friendly materials to do this, showing that as humans we have a responsibility to care for our planet. The size of the piece again highlights the fact that the issue of racism is still a very big thing and is ongoing even in todays society. The use of water is very important as it shows the interconnectivity of all elements in the work and references the transatlantic slave trade with its ties to the ocean. 

 How successful do you think their approach is? Why?

How is the work installed/ arranged in the gallery?

I think this is a very successful piece as when you walk into the Tate you are confuted with this as the first piece of art you see. This is representative of how racism is so woven into everybody's everyday lives even if they don't notice it. I love how bold the piece is as it really does just stick in peoples minds causing them to ponder on the ideas evoked in the piece over a longer period of time. This makes people think about their feelings towards racism both in history and in the present. 

 

Joseph Beuys - The End of the Twentieth Century

What aspect(s) of being human does the artist explore in their work?

Beuys, in this piece, seems to be exploring the way that humans view the past present and future. When you think about it in depth, time is a construct created by humans in order to have some structure in life and to add ease when explaining situations. Time is one of the most human ideas and what we as humans base our life around, even though in reality it doesn't exist. Humans often worship things that we have made up ourselves, things that don't really exist but we made up to make sense of the world that we are in. 

What materials, processes and media do they use to explore their ideas?

Beuys uses basalt, clay and felt to create the large structure that make up this immersive piece. The basalt was often used by Beuys as he was interested in its status as a volcanic rock. It also linked in closely with his theme of time as these rocks are very ancient and have been around for many years. The use of these highlights how strange the past and present can be when thought of together. 

How successful do you think their approach is? Why?

How is the work installed/ arranged in the gallery?

I really like this piece and do think it is a successful piece. I am most fond of the materials and their connotations to the artists theme of time. The way this piece is arranged is an attempt to curate the work in the way Beuys would as he sadly passed away before being able to aid the curation of this work. People who had worked closely with Beuys were called in to help place the rocks as well as refer to initial sketches of Beuys' intentions for the piece. I like how the work is arranged in a way where the rocks seem scattered around you leaving a small path in the middle for the viewer to travel through. This allows the viewer to actually travel through the whole piece and experience it from many different points of view. 

Bibliography:

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/hyundai-commission-kara-walker

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-the-end-of-the-twentieth-century-t05855

I used the first part of today to get my painting as finished as possible. This including tweaking some of my initial ideas so that I could show my ideas as finished as possible in the small amount of time I had. Initially I wanted to add more layers of oil paint to the painting, to both paint the figures and the spiralling shapes which would represent the issue of climate change. Due to only having two hours before presenting, I decided to not use oil paints due to their long drying time, and instead use watercolour and oil pastel. I looked back at Jessica Matier's work for the idea to do this, as in many of her pieces she uses pastels to work into her paintings with other shapes and patterns. I believe I managed to create the atmosphere I wanted well through these mediums however still believe the painting would have looked better with more areas of oil paint. Although overall I liked the way my piece turned out, if I were to create it again I would use a darker more 'angry' looking colour such as brown or deep red to create the oil pastel swirls rather than the pink I used. Instead of creating the threatening and dangerous atmosphere which I wanted, the pink seemed too cheerful and optimistic. 

After completing the crit, members of my group pointed out to me an aspect of my work which accidentally adds another layer to the meaning of my work. The swirls I created with the pastels reminded them of fingerprints, highlighting the idea of human variation and identity. This then lead me to realise that this could coincide with my intention for the shapes quite well. As they were supposed to represent climate change closing in on the humans, by showing that the climate change with human characteristics like the fingerprint like pattern, shows that this problem was manmade and adds the idea that humans are destroying themselves. 

I enjoyed looking  round at that the other fine art students had created, as it shows the wide variety of paths you can go down when creating a piece. I really enjoyed the 4D pieces where you felt as if you were within the work, as the videos they created combined with the sound really created an atmosphere around you and sucked you into the piece. This is possibly something I would like to explore in the future, not necessarily by creating a video, but by adding different aspects into my work to create a more atmospheric experience for the viewer. 

Today we were introduced to our new brief 'Interrogating the Real'. For todays class I had compiled a selection of imagery to work from, all with the common theme of my personal memories and nostalgia. I collected pictures from old family photo books, my phone and also used stills from films and other art which I have a personal connection with in some way. I thought that by deciding on a theme for the imagery I wanted to collect, it would make it easier to start creating work and to link my work together. 

After todays lecture, I wanted to see how I could manipulate the imagery that I had to make it look more like a painting. I did this by trying to pixelate the pictures through different methods. I attempted to pixelate one image by screenshooting it multiple times until the image became almost foggy, resembling a painting. I also used a more mechanical approach by using an app to pixelate various imagery. After investigating the work of Chuck Close, I wanted to experiment with the ways in which I could pixelate a painting in a more human way, and create a painting with the photographic quality of pixelation. In my work, I want to represent the feeling of nostalgia and also fading memories. I want to do this by creating something quite beautiful and etherial, which maybe lacks clarity or is visually blurry to represent the idea of the memory being slightly faded.  For me nostalgia feels really warm and comforting but has undertones of sadness, knowing that you are unable to live this moment again. I want to create that melancholy atmosphere within my paintings, possibly through the colour scheme. 

In todays class I decided to begin experimenting with paint. I wanted to use some of my edited pictures showing pixelation, and paint this pixelation in a more human and less mechanic way. I thought, due to all of my reference pictures being linked to my past and being unique to me, I decided I would portray this through the pixelation by using my own fingerprint. By using my finger print I am able to portray that the image being depicted is very personal to me and nobody else, adding further distance onto of the blurry visual aspect of the painting. 

After painting using my finger, I really liked the contrast between the small and carefully placed fingerprints which make up the image, with the harsh thick nature of the oil paint itself. The surface of the painting is very textural, which close up creates a very distorted image, yet with distance portrays a figure. At first, when creating this painting I tried to keep the colour scheme quite natural, but after comparing my painting with the printed image I was using as reference I noticed that the printed image seemed to create a different more sinister atmosphere, which I quite enjoyed. This was because the printed picture was actually printed as my printer was running out of ink, causing the whole image to be tinted a blue/purple colour. Although accidental, I actually quite enjoyed this added effect onto the picture and decided to add it into my painting. I did this by diluting some purple oil paint with linseed oil and glazing over the surface of my painting. At first I didnt like the effect it gave much as I believed that despite adding the linseed oil, the paint was too thick and almost sticky, creating clear brush marks where I had painted over the surface. This has now grown on me, however I would like to retry this glazing technique in the future using different mediums to dilute the paint instead. 

Today, I wanted to look into a more mechanical way of creating a composition by using a photocopier. I photocopied many photos from a family photo-book onto the same sheet of paper so that the ink would layer and overlap the photos. The printer was also running out which gave a really interesting blue tone to the whole composition. I tried this multiple times using both plain and coloured paper to print onto. The way the boarders of the photos printed, created rectangular sections within the compositions reminding me of artist ....... 

Using one of these photos as a reference I created a quick painting with oil on grey board. I wasn't very happy with how this experimentation came out however after analysing the picture I know what elements I would change in the future to improve. After being introduced by the tutors to the importance of priming certain surfaces, I believe that if I had primed the grey board, I would have had a smoother and less absorbent surface to paint onto, which would have increased the quality of my painting. Also, I believe that for the quick marks which I wanted to make in this painting I would have been better off using acrylic paint rather than oil, due to the ability to layer more and add fast doing marks. 

Today I wanted to experiment with one of my brainstormed ideas from the beginning of the project. My intentions were to investigate humans ability to reproduce images, human error and  variation of interpretation. To create my composition I began with a printed image of a face. I told somebody to draw this face in 5 minutes in any way that they wanted. I then took this drawing to somebody else and asked them to read this drawing. I repeated this until I had 4 variations of the same face, each drawing copying the previous one. I found it interesting that each drawing was slightly stylised to the artists personality. If given a lineup of the drawings knowing the people involved, I could probably guess correctly who drew each one. 

I then layered these drawings onto of each other in two different ways to create the final composition. I did this firstly by using photoshop to layer all of the images. I also used the method of photocopying multiple times onto one sheet of paper to create a darker version of the layered image. I wanted to use this composition to inform a painting. 

The final image seemed to communicate the idea that one person can be interpreted in so many different ways. Although the interpretations were similar, they were all slightly different depending on the artist, and I think this is true for the way we view people in general. I really liked this idea that everybody perceptions although similar are all different depending on who you are. 

During todays class I used my layered drawing composition to inform a painting. I wanted to paint the main facial features with quite a lot of detail, inspired by artist ......... Because of this I decided to use oil paints on canvas, as that is my favourite surface to create blended and detailed paintings on. I chose to represent each of the different drawings with a different colour. After painting the main facial features in each colour I wasn't sure how to represent the different lines making up the rest of the face from the drawings. I decided to use the same colours ad in the facial features to one by one add in the details of each drawing. After completing this I was advised by a tutor that the composition was almost fighting itself with the bold and quite graphic lines mixed with the sensitive and detailed facial features. There wasn't really one main focal point which meant the piece was quite hard to take in. To try and combat this, I experimented with one of the techniques which we were shown in the painting tutorial of blurring with a dry brush over semi-dry paint. Due to the amount of bright colours I the piece I believe after I blurred them together there seemed to be an explosion of colour around the outside of the piece which didn't really work well with the delicate nature of the centre of the piece. The colours combined in a way which I believed to look messy and I didn't think this worked.

We had a walk around on this day, where I received feedback on some of my work I had made so far. To my surprise people seemed to really like the small finger-painting I did somewhat more than this bigger layered painting. This encouraged me to possibly experiment more with the finger-painting technique next week using different imagery and colour schemes. 

Today in class I created another finger-painting using a photo i blurred by screenshooting multiple times. What drew me to this photo was the colour scheme. The photo contains lots of greenery and natural cool toned colours. These cool toned colours really contrasted with the warm tones of the figures within the picture suggesting that they were out of place. I thought this went really well with my nostalgia theme as this contrast in colour could represent the subject going back into their memories and feeling slightly disconnected, as the memory is so distant. 

I also experimented with the method of cropping as a tool to make a painting look more like a photograph within this piece, and chose to focus on two subjects, who are slightly out if the main focal point of the composition, yet due to the contrast with the background in colour, almost shout for attention. I also liked how the branch between the two figures allowed the focus to flow through the piece from one figure to another. 

When creating this piece I wanted the colours to seem less vibrant and slightly faded. I decided I would try to reach this outcome by painting on the absorbent surface of grey board, without primer. I thought that maybe, due to the absorbent nature of the board, when it made the paint dryer, it might make the colour less vibrant as well. I instead found that the colours just looked more dry and chalky, and the paint held its texture less. The reason I enjoyed the first finger painting I created was due to the unique surface texture it allowed me to crate, however without this I liked the method less. 

After speaking with a tutor, she told me that she really liked the colour work I was doing with the greens of the background and said that it even reminded her of Millais' Ophelia. Being my favourite painting, this was very exciting to me and instantly made me appreciate my painting more. She also told me to go back in and add some more light shades to add more dimension to the work. 

In todays class we were able to project photos using different projectors onto the walls to inspire compositions, or even be the artwork themselves. I found some old negatives from film I had developed when I was younger, from various trips and days out I had as a child. I really liked the red colour of the negatives as it seemed to add a sinister and eerie atmosphere to very innocent photos taken by a child having fun. Although I did experiment with physically changing the negatives in ways such as etching into them and layering different photos, I enjoyed them simply as they were. I thought that just the projections themselves paired with the imperfections on the wall were themselves beautiful enough to be a piece on their own. 

I did however experiment with painting one of the images from my negatives today. I was really drawn to the image due to the ambiguity of the action happening within the piece. Because the subject is swimming, it seems impossible to have this picture as you can't usually take pictures underwater, yet you can see bubbles fising from the borrow of the image and the subject appears to be wearing a swimming costume. The face is faced so you cannot really see who you are looking at. This creates a distance from the image, and an awareness that this photo is from the past, which the viewer cannot go back to. I decided to paint this image with a palette knife, to really add in some texture to the composition. By incorporating texture into my painting, I am able to blur the boundary between 2D and 3D, creating a painting which almost behaves as a sculpture, encapsulating the viewer into the world of the piece by physically reaching out and around them. 

Monster Chetwynd - Crazy Bat Lady

Can you identify the themes or concerns the artist is exploring in their work?

The artist seems to be exploring herself within this piece of work. Chetwynd has constantly changed her artistic name throughout her career, showing different personas through these different names. This collaged self portrait sort of brings all of these personas together in a way that she sees herself or wants her self to be seen. 

What materials, processes and media has the artist used to explore their ideas?

The artist has used the method of photocopying and collaging to add on elements such as the eyes, bat and butterfly, creating a somewhat chaotic image which seems to be combatted by the use of the monochromatic black and white colour scheme. You can really see the artists performative and set design background coming through in the piece due to the way the piece has been assembles. It almost looks like a stage prop. 

How successful do you think their approach is?  Can you say why or why not?

I think it is a very unique way to approach the creation of a painting, although the piece is made up of photographic imagery, the whole piece has a very painterly feel with the creation of an imagined face, which is slightly not human. The composition is very interesting and unpredictable which is an aspect i really enjoy about the work. 

Can you relate any processes, approaches or themes and concerns that you have identified to your own developing practice?

I, like this artist, have been experimenting with the idea of using a mechanical device like a photocopier to create collages which change the context of an already existing image. I really like the idea of adding something to the composition which is already create to change the whole way it is seen and the emotions it evokes, just like Chetwynd has done with the addition of the eyes and bat. 

Fiona Rae - Maybe you can live on the moon in the next century 

Can you identify the themes or concerns the artist is exploring in their work?

In this piece Rae is exploring personal expression as well as quoting cultural sources to create this slightly digital looking abstract painting. To me, this piece really questions the gap between the digital and the manmade mixing very painterly qualities like obvious brush strokes with small painted characters which are detailed enough to be a digital image. 

What materials, processes and media has the artist used to explore their ideas?

The artist has used a combination of both oil and acrylic paint, which is rather unusual. It almost minks the contrasting use of painterly and digital aspects in the work. The combination of paint drips and brushstrokes and digital painted characters. 

How successful do you think their approach is?  Can you say why or why not?

I think this is successful as it almost confuses the viewer. Digital and painterly aspects are not usually used in conjunction with each-other and it is a rather unexpected combination. By also using the contrasting mix of oil and acrylic paint it further represents this idea.

Can you relate any processes, approaches or themes and concerns that you have identified to your own developing practice?

I haven't really tried mixing the digital and painterly however i have used eachother to inspire another. I have used 

Bibliography:

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/rae-maybe-you-can-live-on-the-moon-in-the-next-century-t15083

In todays class I wanted to further explore using my projected negatives to create paintings. I was drawn to one image which I had created by layering two images. I liked the combination of the soft features of the subjects on one picture and the harsh rectangular repeating shapes in the other. I thought the contrast worked really well. 

I cropped the image down to just the subjects hand with the corner overlapping. I began painting freehand however I then had an idea of using my own handprint to create a base form my painting. I painted my hand with the tones which i could see in the photo and printed it onto my canvas which I had primed with red oil paint. I then added more depth and began to blend the colours together on the surface. I didn't like how the hand stood out from the background so used a large dry brush over the whole surface of the painting to give the whole piece a blurred look. By using my own handprint, I am able to portray the ides that  this memory which I am painting is unique to me and me only, however through the painting others can have a small insight. 

Today we had The Application Laboratory, where we experimented with different ways of creating abstract artwork in short periods of time. 

Firstly we created a painting with diluted paint on smooth surface showing the flow of the paint. I very loosely referred to a photo which I found in a book on planet earth which depicted fish swimming in a shawl. I read enjoyed the colour scheme I used in this piece however wasn't too sure about the use of the diluted paint, being someone who really likes lots of texture within my work. 

To begin the painting beyond itself work, we were asked to create something painterly using a corner of the studio to place the work. Working to fit a specific place in a room was something I had never tried before and added an extra layer of problem solving to the process of making.

The day before, I had listened to a podcast of Callum Roberts, a marine biologist and oceanographer, taking about his scuba diving and experience seeing coral bleaching. Some quotes of things that he said during the podcast really inspired me to want to create something using his words as a motif. I knew that I wanted to create something that branched into the realm of sculpture, an aspect which I haven't played with much in the past. I also was very inspired by the use of mirrors from seeing the works of Michelangelo Pistoletto again in our lecture. I went to the shop and let the materials around me give me extra inspiration of what I could possible use them for. I then had the idea that if I used a piece of acetate and placed it over a mirror, it would change the colour of the reflected image portraying the change in colour Roberts described due to the bleaching of the reefs. Although I knew I wanted to use this mirror and acetate idea, I want quite sure what to reflect and how to place the objects within the corner. I had an idea about using easily recognisable human objects that we use in everyday life, but I didn't want to spend too much on the materials and only had a short amount of time. With this idea, I would also have to find a way of placing these objects against the wall somehow or creating some sort of shelf to balance them on. I had a brief talk with a tutor about these initial ideas and they advised me to stick with the ecological aspect of the motif rather than changing the context to human objects. This lead me to go out and look for natural objects that I could collect from around the campus. Luckily, it was the start of January so there were many discarded Christmas trees around the streets of the campus which I could collect small parts of, as well as leaves from surrounding trees and bushes. I purchased a small foam ball to stick all of my found objects into and attached this to one side of the corner, while the other side had the mirror and red acetate. I really liked the way this turned out as it really represented my idea of something recognisable being changed by simply changing the colour of it. The reflected image of the leaves looked dark and sharp. It looked quite sinister which is a contrast to the reality that the reflected object was simply a bunch of leaves and greenery. 

  

 

I had some feedback from a tutor about the composition which I had created and they suggested I try changing the way I include the greenery in the piece. This lead me to experiment with hanging each leaf by a piece of string, going across the corner. This created a less separate composition than the one before as the corners looked much more united, however I did prefer the composition before. 

      

 

We then had a short crit where I received some feedback on my piece by various people on the class. Some people suggested that the composition looked to Christmassy due to the combination of red and green and the use of the leaves from distinctive looking Christmas trees, whereas other didn't notice this. I wanted to use the green to really push the idea of the objects being natural, and the red to show the effect of the heat due to climate change, although I could probably have used an orange or pink acetate instead. Most of the class agreed that the composition before, where all of the objects were placed in the foam ball was more effective as it allowed a better visualisation of the reflected image. 

Today was the start of experimentations on the way to creating a piece of work for the exhibition at The Bomb Factory. I wanted to go for a multidisciplinary approach to this project by including some of my interests from other scientific subjects. From listening to the podcast where Callum Roberts describes his experience in scuba diving I was really inspired by when he said 'storm clouds of fish'. It created a really vivid image in my head of what it would be like to be diving in a coral reef and I wanted to recreate this with manmade objects. I found some objects in a charity shop which all had the colour scheme I wanted to use - greens and blues. I wasn't sure what exactly I wanted to make other than that I wanted it to be a hanging object to reflect the comparison of the fish looking like clouds. This was another piece where I let the objects inform the work rather than having an actual end goal. I found a circular piece of plastic which was shaped like a donut which I then wanted to incorporate into my work. I let this be the skeleton for my work by wrapping my materials around the plastic creating an unintentional shape reminiscent of a jellyfish. Although this was accidental I thought it was effective to portray the scene I wanted. When hung, I liked how the piece moved. It twisted and gently swayed in the air making it look more cloud like. Although I only used the plastic centre because it was what I could find at the time, it actually added a relevant message that all sea and marine life is now intertwined with plastic due to actions of humans and although we may see the oceans as beautiful they are actually filled with tons of plastic. 

Today I wanted to experiment with the idea of visualising 1 billion following the Australian fires which caused the death of 1 billion animals. Although my idea didn't end up working out it was an interesting idea to work with. I wanted to simply place 1 billion dots on one page and then print them out and place them all over the walls of a room so people could visualise 1 billion and ironically I didn't understand how large 1 billion was and soon realised this would take hundreds of sheets of paper which I do not have the space of funds for. 

I was inspired by artist Ivan Alifan to experiment with using paint to create something more sculptural. He does this in many ways including piping directly onto his canvases. I wanted to experiment with this method of applying paint in an unconventional way by piping it onto a surface. I did this using acrylic as i thought oil would take way too long to dry especially when applied that thick. When using the acrylic it seemed too thin and watery to hold its 3D piped shape and sort of slumped onto the surface which is not the effect i wanted. Although the actual outcome of the piped paint itself wasn't very successful, i really liked the way the bags i used to pipe looked. The colours in the piping bags had blended together creating an almost marbled effect, and the way i cut them into triangular shapes to remove the excess paint made the composition more interesting. These were unexpected pieces however i really like the way they look. 

After experimenting with piping paint i decided to try another of Ivan Alifan's methods of constructing shapes out of paint and assembling them once dry. I needed the paint to dry very fast as i had a short amount of time to experiment before i had to make final decisions about what to exhibit in The Bomb Factory so i had the idea of adding PVA glue to a small amount of paint and peeling it off instead. I first tried this method both without adding colour and with by adding small amounts of acrylic paint. I made small samples and left them on acetate to dry so they could be easily removed once dry. I had many ideas of what to do with the samples after dry like sewing them together into one big sheet or even using wire to construct them into a large ball. The PVA dried somewhat transparent which was an aspect which i didn't expect however i really liked.

I was beginning to feel very uninspired at this point as i felt as though i was pushing myself to create something to do with the subject of science and the natural world, while feeling disconnected with the subject. I realised that it was okay for me not to always make something based on research and to sometimes make work purely reflecting on my own emotions and state of mind at the time. This lead me to want to create a piece based on the emotions associated with memories and nostalgia, going back to some of the work i created during the interrogating the real project. This motif is more close to what i currently feel and the emotions which are going on in my own head. 

A colour which i most strongly associate with the feelings of nostalgia is green. Nostalgia to me is very melancholy because you are looking back being grateful that things happened but being so sad that they are over and that you are not able to re live them. My favourite painting is Millais Ophelia which i believe encapsulates this emotion perfectly and probably influences me to have these connotations to the colour green, being the most prominent colour in the painting. I tried creating some PVA samples using different shades of green to see how they worked together and how the green looked with the PVA. 

When all of the initial PVA samples were dry i peeled them off of the acetate and tried different arrangements together to see how they interacted and formed compositions next to each-other. Each one started off as a regular shape of either a shape or square however through the drying process warped and bled into one another creating some very unique shapes. These accidental changed of shape gave each sample its own character which i really liked. It almost resembles the way as time goes on memories warp and become more foggy, the details lose clarity and they fade. I would later maybe like to use this as an opportunity to combine performance and moving image by filming the drying process of the glue, showing visually how memories change over time. 

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After i arranged the samples into different compositions i decided that i wanted to sew all of the ones with no colour to experiment with my idea of sewing them together. Although i liked how it came out i didn't like how messy the stitching was and without colour, the PVA on its own was less interesting. I also decided that if i was going to stitch the samples together in a flat blanket type way, i wanted the shapes to have more regularity or at lease all be square as this would make it easier and more neat when joining them together. 

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I used one of my coloured samples which had combines with other samples making one big piece, to experiment with the idea of using the dried glue to constrict sculptural objects. The piece i created had a shape reminiscent of a rose which was an interesting element. I wasn't as interested by the PVA being sculptural and preferred it laid out together in a more 2D way.

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After deciding that i wanted to use the method of creating many small coloured PVA samples which are more regular  and fit together to create a composition, i wanted to have something to reference when making these samples. I revisited some of the ideas i had during the interrogating the real project and had the idea that if i pixelated an image enough i could create each pixel with the PVA. I collected some pictures of memories that evoked the melancholy nostalgic emotions within me, so that i would have a closer relation with the piece i was creating. I used these to pixelate at different levels and then took small sections of what i thought were the most successful images. 

I chose two small sections of pixelation from two different pixelated images and wanted to recreate these in two different ways. For the pink pixelated image i decided that i wanted to experiment further with letting the glue do its own thing and allowing the different samples to naturally dry and blend with each-other to create one large piece. 

With the green pixelated section i wanted to create each pixel separately and then somehow join them together at the end either with string or wire. I tried as best as i could to create similar shades to the pixels with each one however i didn't have enough white acrylic. I substituted white acrylic for a pearlescent light paint that i had. This gave a subtle sparkly effect to the pixels when they were dry and actually allowed you to see the strokes where i had mixed the paint in the samples. Although this was an accidental effect i think it added a more painterly effect to the work which i really enjoyed. Some of the samples did flow into each-other despite my efforts of keeping them separate but overall the pixels maintained their regular shape. 

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When the green pixels had all dried completely i peeled them off of the acetate and decided to attach them using green wire. I wanted it to be subtle and to not draw attention to itself however be more stable than string with the ability to hold the shape a little better. I created small staples with the wire and joined the pixels corner to corner, following the composition in the section of the pixelated image. I loved how this turned out and although it did look good lying flat against the wall i wanted to experiment with different ways that i could instal the piece so that it could slightly reach into the realm of sculpture. I really liked simply hanging the piece normally but with the top corners attached slightly further together so that the middle of the piece would hang off of the wall. This allows the piece to keep the painterly quality of being a square shape, almost mimicking the shape of a traditional canvas, yet where it sags in the middle becoming slightly 3D and sculpture like.