Raqib Shaw at Manchester City Gallery

Today I visited the new exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery featuring work from Rabiq Shaw from the last 10 years. His painting are breath taking. At first glance, the bright, clashing colours, jewel and glitter embellishments immediately grabbed my attention. But beneath the beautiful surface are much more sinister scenes inhabited by cannibal, SM monkey warriors! and other mythical creatures. His paintings are inspired by  the work of Holbein and Bosch, revisiting their often controversial subjects. Whilst his style often reflects that of Persian minatures and Japanese textiles. The scale of the paintings considering the detail is amazing. Most of my photos are close ups as you wouldn't be able to make out the scenes otherwise. I watched the documentary being shown which featured Shaw himself taking you through his processes and themes. As a student at Central St. Martins School of Art, Shaw had little money (as most of us do!!) So instead of spending 2 weeks worth of food money on a tube of oil paint, he rocked down to the hardware store to buy the cheapest wall paint going. He then experimented mixing the paints with other mediums such as enamel. He has since been perfecting this technique for the last 30 years and, although he has now upgraded to better quality paints, still uses it today. The marbled effect created using this technique looks fantastic and the detail had me squinting inches away from every piece. His main theme is satire of the human race, and although monkeys are the main subjects, their actions are not far from those of people all around the world. I really enjoyed the exhibition, and had a little grin on my face all the way round. I think it's important to not take life too seriously, and that definitely come across in Shaws work.

 

 

Sampling-Data Project Evaluation

When I started this project over 2 months ago I felt slightly overwhelmed by the Data concept. The word 'Data' for a start felt like something I would never find interesting. Luckily I keep all of my food shopping receipts to keep a track of every month, so I knew at least I had some kind of Data collected already. After trawling the web for 'Data' artists I finally came across a way of displaying Data that spoke to me. The 'Of All the People In All Of The World' exhibition got me thinking of more exciting ways to do this. For some reason 100s&1000s popped into my head and I decided to go with that. Last term I got too hung up on all my work having a meaning, and having a solid reason for everything, and I felt this held me back massively, so I was determined this term to just go with the flow and get doing instead of just thinking. The more abstract the better.

I think over the Christmas period I could have got a lot more work done to get a head start in the new term, but self motivation is something at times I can struggle with, as I think everyone does at some point, and getting started with a project before you have any ideas can be daunting. However, as my ideas started to flow and I actually started to create, I became more inspired and more motivated, and that drove me through the whole project. 

We were set 3 colour tasks to start the term with, one of which was to create a moodboard to extract colours from. I just quickly threw one together which sunsets as the theme. I worked with this colour palette throughout the weave workshop but as my work with the 100s&1000s progressed, by the time I came to knit those colours were no longer relevant and I was not happy sampling with them. I decided to make a new moodboard, created a new colour palette and was a lot happier for the last 2 weeks.

For the first half of the unit I did weave which I really enjoyed. It took a long time to measure out the yarns and set up the warp, the whole of week 1, but once I was able to actually start weaving it was worth it. I mainly experimented with materials and pattern at first, trying out selection we were provided. By week 3 I had more visual research from my experiments to work from so started to translate those qualities. I found some yarns that reminded me of 100s&1000s so I experimented with them quite a bit. I also used strips of receipts as well as nylon monofilament to give a translucent feel which was inspired by my glue experiments. I would love to go back with my more developed ideas but I know that I would have thought that of knit if I had done that first too.

I carried out lots of experiments during this project which have informed my work massively. I made sure I documented everything I did so  that I could go back any time I needed for inspiration. 

Next I went onto knit. At first I found this a little boring and very frustrating. But by week 2 we had learnt new techniques and I had changed my colour palette so felt a lot more inspired. And by coming in to practise every day, I got a lot more confident in the machines, and the frustration went away, well most of the time. At this point in the project I had some really strong ideas that I wanted to translate. I focused on fluidity and bleeding of colours, inspired by the colouring bleeding off the 100s&1000s in my experiments.

The skills I have learned during the 6 weeks are going to stand me in good stead for the rest of this course and I can't wait to learn more. I have become so much better at motivating myself, and I think coming into uni everyday, even if I only planned on using the computers, has really helped with that. I feel I have a really strong collection of samples backed by strong ideas that I would love to carry on exploring and probably will go back to at some point. I have pushed my self out of my comfort zone and it has paid off as I feel way more confident than  last term. 

Visualisation

If we were to carry on with this project and come to a realisation, I would really love to create an installation. I scanned a few of my samples layered over each other to look as though they were falling/hanging.

This then got me thinking about actually hanging them somewhere which is when I photographed them. After doing a few studies in my sketchbook informed by my photographs of the 100s&1000s falling through glue I thought it would be good to try and incorporate that shape into my work. This is just a quick visualisation idea I did on Photoshop of the kind of thing I would be interested in developing. The photo was taken by the 1st floor computers looking over onto the ground floor.

Visual Research

I had this idea weeks ago after photographing the 100s&1000s falling through glue. I bought some white tights and large polystyrene balls as I thought the balls inside the tights would look similar to the images with the trail of colour they left behind. I never actually got round to doing it until this weekend but here's the photos anyway.

I got my boyfriend to hold them for me and bounce them around slightly to give a more blurred falling effect. My plan was to let dye soak up them but just left it too late, never mind though.

 Before steaming my samples I wanted to photograph them as they were. There is something about the way the edges curl up that a feel relates to my ideas. I purposely left all loose yarn hanging down and photographed them in groups. I positioned them in such a way as if to bleed and run into one another. I wanted them to appear to be falling through water as the colouring from the 100s&1000s had done. 

Further Experimentation

I wanted to link some of my sampling with some of the processes I had experimented with during my development. I made a few plain cream cotton samples which I then worked over. One I sprayed with water so it was slightly damp and then covered with 100s&1000s like I had done with the receipts. The others I let sit in a small amount of water with red food colouring mixed in. I imagined the colour would soak up the sample. I also made some plain grey samples with dropped stitches that I wanted to fill with glue.

The sample on the left is the result of leaving 100s&1000s on it overnight, after being lightly sprayed with water. I love the subtlety of the colours left behind. On the right you can see where I painted watercolours over the dried glue that filled the holes to create a stained glass effect. I don't feel this is as successful as the colours are too bright but it was good to try anyway.

I am really pleased with the results of the food colouring test. For some reason, the areas where the sample was in contact with the colouring the longest turned a bright yellow colour but it looks really effective bleeding into the pink. I found cotton really difficult to knit with and in places there are little snags which I wasn't happy about. But now they've been dyed I think it looks quite good and looks a bit like the 100s&1000s.

Knit Workshop Week 3

During week 3 I focused making my samples feel very fluid as though the colours were bleeding into one another, like the colouring from the 100s and 1000s in my experiments. I felt E-wrapping was the best technique to translate these ideas as it allows you to be very free with the yarn. 

                                                       

I am really pleased with my body of work and feel I have translated my ideas well into my samples. I will definitely return to knit.  

Favourite Samples from week 2

Here are my most successful samples from week 2. I have started to incorporate yarns using the E-Wrapping technique. I found this allowed to to be quite fluid and free with the yarns and able to translate the qualities from my 100s&1000s experiments. 

Because of the way I have used the technique, the "backs" of most of these samples are the point of focus. However the sample above on the far right is shown form the front as I used the technique to manipulate the yarns through to the front to look like 100s and 1000s poking through.

I am really pleased with the samples so far and plan to continue exploring the these techniques. I think my main focus for next week is to create samples that feel very fluid, with colours flowing and bleeding into one another.

Knit Workshop Week 2

Now I have changed my colour palette I have been able to work with yarns that I am a lot happier with and am now producing samples I feel relate to my project better. This week we learned the following techniques:

E-Wrapping

Hooking Up

Partial Knit

                                      

Punch card-Lace

Punch card- Fair Isle

Punch card- Tuck

I feel much more inspired with my knitting now I have my colours sorted and have learnt some new techniques to experiment with.

Colour Palette Dilema

I am really not happy with my colour palette. I feel that it no longer relates to my current work with the 100s&1000s. My original colours were inspired by my sunset moodboard, but I havn't explored that idea any further. Working with these colours in knit has made me realise they are no longer relevant and I don't feel inspired by them.

So I have made a new mood board, made up of scans of my development work from my sketch book and photos from my 100s&1000s experiments.

From this I painted out sections on a larger scale and then extracted 8 colours to make up my new palette. I then did some proportion yarn wrapping.

I'm not going to be too strict about keeping exactly to these colours, but I am definately alot happier with the over all feel and think this palette is alot more relevent to the direction of my project. This has also been a good example of problem solving and risk taking.

Knit Workshop Week 1

During my first week of knit we were introduced to the domestic machines and taught a few of the basics.

Changing tension

Transferring stitches- Lace Holes

Changing Colour

Transferring Stitches- Laddering

I found this week abit frustrating as it took a while to get used to the machine and I kept going wrong. But I know it will get better the more I practise.

Weave Workshop Week 3

My 3rd week weaving I felt has been really successful. I finished the whole 4 yards of warp and completed 16 samples. I worked through all of the patterns we were provided and had a go at creating my own. I enjoyed experimenting with colour texture and materials and feel like I really made the most of my time.

Here are a few of my favourite samples:

For this sample I used a range of cottons and wools in my selected colour palette and also incorporated strips of dried PVA glue mixed with 100s&1000s.

I used my sunset images as inspiration for this sample as I tried to give the effect of one colour blending into another.

Here I experimented with tecture and colour. I used stips of ironed receipts and grey angora wool which really contrasted with each other texturally and I added bright yellow cotton to contrast in colour.

In this sample I used nylon monofillament to give the clear qualities of my glue experiments. I found a silk nepp yarn that had little beads of colour spun into it which looked alot like 100s&1000s so used that in a few of my samples. There are also stips of ironed receipts.

I really enjoyed weave and will definately return to it in future units.