Aisha Khalid Exhibit - Whitworth Gallery

This exhibition was interesting as part of it was done on site. Embroidered roses up the wall of the whitworth were a mix between hand and machine techniques, and they worked really well; the scale of the design made it stand out and the accompanying video showing how individual roses were made was nice to see. The colours used were well selected, with bold red, black, green and gold standing out.

'Larger than Life' from www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk

Writing them in a list here has made me realise that these are traditional Christmas colours, though these pieces had a totally different feel to them, because of their combinations and usage in pattern, let alone the subject matter of a post 9/11 world.

Although the subject matter is important and has depth, when observing the art I judged and enjoyed it visually; the fact that there was a subject behind it didn't matter to me, though it did make the work feel less playful when seen in context. Now when I see the pieces, instead of folded fabric or old style theatre curtains I see the bottom of a burqa, and the connotations of female oppression and political clashing that accompany it. I think I would have preferred not to know why these pieces were created, perhaps because art is an escape from politics and reality for me; the world is so far from being an acceptable place to live that an unexpected reminder of this makes the situation seem even more bleak.

Interestingly, when I cover the bottom section of this piece, and can only see the pattern with no form, it has none of these connotations and just feels better to look at. This is definately a form of denial, an effort to ignore problems, but if we thought about all the injustice in the world we would never get out of bed in the morning. Much better to keep yourself busy, to loosely quote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This is a selfish viewpoint, but a necessary one for me; I design, draw and make things because it makes me happy and I feel productive doing it rather than to broadcast a message to the world. There's enough despair without adding to it, and my cynical side says that people who don't consider world affairs important are unlikely to have a revelation because they see one piece of art.

Having said all of that, I admire Aisha Khalid for being open enough to share her personal experiences and views, and maybe if enough people did that, real change could happen, and my narrower view of what art 'should' be could become ridiculous.

BBC Blitz map

I found this map on the BBC News website on the 7th December, showing the distribution of approximately 30,000 bombs during the Blitz of London in WWII between October 1940 and June 1941. It was the result of a project called 'Bomb Site' by a team from the University of Portsmouth using data from the National Archives. The circular nature of the points of the map reminded me of the people in the Hub that I used as data for my 'graph', and I could maybe include information about each person in my work somehow, whether it be the colour of their clothes or their height or a distinguishing feature.

Oblique Strategies

At the end of the Origins Unit, Kate recommended that I should look at Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's 'Oblique Strategies', a deck of cards from 1975 that they used when stuck or producing unoriginal work to stimulate their creativity. They had some really good ideas, so I decided to make my own deck, by whitewashing some playing cards and tailoring phrases to art rather than music, and coming up with some of my own phrases. I made a box for them, so I can carry them with me and use them when I need shaking up or just for inspiration.

Data Project Drawing

We got our next task via a chinese whispers line; the message I received was 'collect graphs numbers and grids'. So I used vouchers from my purse and made my own 'graph' of people sitting at tables in the Hub. The tables themselves form a grid or graph lines, and the people became points on this graph.

Books were provided for us to look through for inspiration, and I found some pictures of grid-like forms, such as a chair by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and circular images such as dandelion clock flowers to demonstrate less bold ways to represent people. In the afternoon we started drawing from this research, and I thought the self-made graphs had the most potential to make interesting marks, so I focussed on them. We were asked to work with wet media, and I chose ink and water to start with. 

Left: grid made from masking tape, ink and graphite pencil. Right: pipette marks forming 'people'

Stencil based on Charles Rennie Mackintosh's chair, and putting ink through the stencil using grid-like lines of text as a base, with ink blob 'people'. These work quite well as the structure is emphasised while the marks themselves remain fluid and inexact.

Using a toothbrush i started flicking ink through the stencil to give a sprayed effect that still has structure to it, and then directly used the toothbrush to make 'table' marks before pipetting ink onto them to form the 'people'.

When experimenting with the ink, I noticed that air in the pipette would form bubbles, which would burst, spraying ink out from the centre and making interesting marks.The bubbles themselves have a special quality about them, and like the people in the Hub are transient.

I enjoyed making marks in this way, as it forced me not to think too much about literal translation, instead focussing on marks and shapes. I think there is something in the idea of gathering my own data, instead of using someone else's. It will definitely produce a personal response and means I will always have something new and current to base my research on. I liked the fact that the people in the Hub would move around, so just by staying in one location I captured several moments of fleeting data, and showed the use of the space.

Data Drawing Day

We were set 3 tasks, to help us broaden our experience of drawing. The first involved trying to draw 200 concentric rings less than 3mm apart in 30 minutes with a pencil with our non-dominant hand. The second was to repeat this with charcoal at the end of a stick. I enjoyed the first task more, as I felt that I had more control over the lines, could tell I was improving as time went on (though towards the end became more reckless!) and liked the end result. The charcoal was a bit more unpredictable, but not enough to make interesting unexpected marks. Alice had a very bendy stick, and that made some really great marks, so that might be worth trying in the future.

pencil above charcoal below

The third task was to use some of the drawing techniques such as setting rules for drawing to depict: instructions for how to get out of a maze. The first thing that entered my head was the practical solution 'put one hand against the wall and walk' - this is guaranteed to work with all traditional mazes, though it isn't the most efficient way. Using text I drew a symbol that represents an extended arm and 2 feet, with a 2B pencil, again in 30 minutes. To make it more interesting I started quite carefully and slowly, and progressively increased my writing speed, mimicking the increased sense of panic you feel if trapped in a maze. This produced good results, and turned legible text into marks.

close up of frantic text

route out of the maze