Category: LEVEL5

Exploring the links between photography and painting 

Mitchel also has a series of works which are somewhat the opposite of how I have been working. The photograph on the left was taken to mimic the painting on the right. He has a series of photograph taken in this way. In my work I have been going out and taking photos, with the intention to make them into paintings later on. These paintings can be constructed with parts from different images and edited how I want the same way that a photograph can be adjusted and staged in the moment and in post.

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Catriona Leahy / Aesthetics of Disappearance

Drawing attention to a sense of loss and disappearance

“I examine time, duration & memory both in a personal and wider social context, giving these inherently ambiguous, intangible and subjective phenomena a material and spatial context. I am intrigued by the apparently enduring presence and stability of structures and form – social, physical, geographical and cultural – and the transitory and malleable nature of memory, a moment in time, where time as well as these constructs are perpetually moving and in flux. Redundant or vacant spaces often pose as protagonists in my work; their structure and form have a virtue of clarity, coherency and vividness but by their curious appearance and ambiguous setting, they remain notoriously evasive and ambivalent with the ever-present possibility of dissolution. As conduit spaces for my exploration into time and duration, they call to mind the brevity of our occupancy of space, and the dependency on our presence to ensure their abiding memory.”

Found photos of purpose built game areas, 3 sided structures to play hand ball in. she was interested in these photographs because they seem out of place, out of time, no longer used how they were made to be, rather they may now be used as places for storage or dumping grounds. These structures are gradually falling into disrepair. Mirrors the gradual decline in local populations and micro communities in small towns. These structures are left behind as emblems of a community that no longer had that community to activate it. Bult by funds, community spaces, people would come to play and as spectators.

Her work developed from this is shown as a projection, the video of the game area is show along with sound which she recreated. the camera is positioned where the spectator would be.

Photo etching of a factory on rusted steel (abobe).  Closed in the 1980, causing the loss of hundreds of jobs. It remained empty until very recently when it was dismantled due to the amount of asbestos used in it so people were reluctant to get involved in dismantling it

This print (below) of the same factory was printed using a laser printer, and then transferred using chemicals onto   Japanese paper, each small piece that make it up is about a5 in size. These pieces mirror the fragmented appearance of the structure itself. They are assembled onto the wall only by the tops of the paper, which causes the fragile paper to move with the audience, which results in a floaty, dynamic appearance.

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These works of hers in particular are of interest to me due to their similar subject to some of the work I have been doing. These abandoned empty spaces which have lost their purpose. Although for Leahy she is more interested In the shift of society and cultures, where mine are more fantasy like,  looking at the  stillness of empty spaces as if society as a whole has vanished.

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As part of developing my work I have gone out to take my own photos, as part of my research and development I have taken a variety of my own photos from around the area where I live. when I went out on this walk, I was specifically aiming for one building that I had seen before and knew I wanted to photograph, bit I found that as I was walking, I saw lots of other opportunities to take photos which inspired me. I later used many of these photos as reference for paintings.

Michael Readecker is a Dutch artist working in the United Kingdom, he studied fashion in Amsterdam and later he art at Goldsmiths in London.

Readeckers work is much more stylised than another artist which I have looked at, George Shaw, and in this way connects more to the work which I have been making. His colour palette is much more limited, the work being made up of unrealistic, close tones which make them appear fantasy like.

Description of Ins and Outs (2000) from Saatchi Gallery, “ins and outs is a sublime dream home. Steely grey in the dead of night, manicured in the expansive landscape, trees in a straight line, boulders placed decoratively for maximum effect: it might be the retirement retreat of a Silicone Valley millionaire, the kind of person who would bother to have their trees pruned into perfect orbs, who’d insist that their sky be as delicate as a Japanese watercolour. Michael Raedecker’s paintings are always little seeds of gossip. Drawn to this house by the impossible intensity of the light – made up of countless tiny pink and yellow threads – the first instinct is that something suspicious is happening within.”

This painting is very dark, with lots of close tones mostly in fairly neutral blues with hints of greens. The light coming from the doorway particularly stands out, its much lighter than the rest if the painting and the yellow stands out against the blue surrounding it.

In my building paintings I created contrasts between the manmade structures and the plant life/ nature growing on and around it. While very different in subject matter, my skeleton paintings have a similar darkness to them, and close tones. They also use more unusual, unrealistic colours.