Jessica Stockholder

The vibrancy of colours in Jessica Stockholder's work is what initally drew me in. I also like the idea of collecting together objects, perhaps random, and juxtaposing them in a specific way. I am interesting in gathering together lots of colourful objects and placing them in a slightly dull environment or perhaps a very natural area to create a dramatic contrast. From this I could then take photographs and develop my project from them using various medias.

I found these images by simply searching google for colourful street art interventions. The top image is interesting as the bottom of the staircase is ordinary, but as it spirals upwards the staircase becomes more distorted eventually transforming into a sculptural piece. The second image shows a study made from the surroundings. The artist has created the effect that there is a giant plug in the centre of the road, with the central road lines as wires. I like the concept of creating public art imagery from the surroundings. However, something like this maybe difficult to carry out as it would be socially unaccepted.

Considering the current project interventions in Amsterdam.

Aswell as a general visual understanding of the culture within the city, I also thought about our current project of interventions and how I could relate things I saw to my work.

Descrete interventions. Small orange labels stuck onto the same side of scaffolding poles consistently along the pathway. I could relate imagery like this to my work as they are vibrant coloured labels intervening with a place people walk past everyday. Many people may not even acknowledge their existence.

Intervening with the pathway. Found this humourous as there was a random digger situated in a fairly busy street path, which pedestrians had to avoid.

As you will be able to see in my current sketchbook work, I have an interest in scaffolding and the intervention it causes upon an area. I find the idea of scaffolding visually interesting as it usually hides the identity of a building but gives it a new visual appearance. People may argue this is a hideous look, but I find the structure of scaffolding very interesting. I also particularly like the idea of enhancing colour on something we associate as being somewhat bleak - like scaffolding. In this image there is bright pink netting amongst the scaffolding construction.

These balloons sure make this old fashioned building more exciting.

Cranes are another, literally, huge intervention in our society.

I found these fence/board panel paintings very fascinating. I like the way the builders and the construction work that is taking place behind the paintings has been reflected within the artwork. This street art portrays the creative vibe throughout the city.

AMSTERDAM JAN '11

This week, from Tuesday 18th - Saturday 22nd I visited Amsterdam. I had previously been before on two occasions, once with family when I was a lot younger and once last year with a group of friends for someones 18th birthday. The culture still strikes me as amazing even though I have visited on a number of occasions. The vibrancy and creativity of the city is just extraordinary. It seemed that everywhere you looked, there was something visually interesting. Publicly there was so much artistic culture around including snowman installations (well past the christmas season) huge sculptures, incredibly skillful graffitti and endless amounts of posters, flyers and leaflets for art displays, events and gigs within the city. The city was full of colour! They even had street lamps that had been customized with illustrations and posters. The city has a real authentic European vibe. I loved the cobbled streets, quirky canals, the unique bridges, the large framed windows and, although they became very annoying at times due to their sheer dominance within Amsterdam, the bicycles are a massive part of the Dutch culture.

Although this was actually a college organised trip, I was too late to book a place on the coaches they were travelling with. I was gutted at first, but after some research I decided it may actually be cheaper to travel myself and perhaps meet during the days to visit some galleries and museums. I managed to gather together a group of 8 friends to travel there and stay in a hotel for 4 nights at a really cheap price! 3 of the group were from my course so it gave me an opportunity to collect some interesting imagery from the city and visit some exhibitions.
The first night we arrived, we perhaps got a bit too excited to be away and did not feel too great the following morning. We therefore decided it would best to visit some galleries in our own time. I found that this way was actually very successful as we would only visit the galleries that were of interest to us. I have heard alot of students from the college group mention how it may have been a more educational experience if they had visited more private galleries that they could perhaps relate to better, which is exactly what I did.

Concert Hall - Our hotel was just to behind this, on a road to the side.

Rijksmuseum.

Our hotel was behind a massive concert hall on the very edge of the 'Museumplein', which converted to English is museum square. Within this square you had the Van Gogh Museum (which was too expensive considering I am not particularly interested in his work), the Modern Art Museum (which was actually closed for refurbishment) and the Rijksmuseum (the equivalent to a national gallery). All of these buildings were architecturally very fascinating from the exterior, but I wasn't too intrigued by going into these are they are very large scale tourist attractions. My interests lay more within discovering works of a smaller scale popularity from new and upcoming, exciting artists.



I visited the FOAM Photography Museum whilst in Amsterdam, which included exhibitions from W.Eugene Smith's 'More real than reality' and Joan Fontcuberta's 'Landscapes without memory'. W.Eugene Smith has been hailed as the founder of the photographic essay through his extensive pictorial narratives accompanied by small captions and comments. I found this exhibition rather dull to be honest as it is not the kind of art that intrigues me. However, some of the content within the photography was interesting in terms of meaning and I was very appreciative of the work. I was beginning to feel slightly ripped off of 6 euors whilst I was walking around John Fontcuberta's exhibition. It was initially very confusing. The photography seemed to be lacking in authenticity, but I couldn't figure out why. Also the large photographs (datascapes - distorted landscape images) were being paired with a small caption image of various paintings and classic photographs. I decided it may be a good idea to walk around the exhibition again, as I must have been missing something, everyone else in the gallery seemed really indulged into the work! Second time I noticed a large board on the wall with text which could only be read by wearing 3D glasses provided in a small box. This board gave information of the relevance of the small images to the photographs and also how Fontcuberta had created this work and the process. The artist co-opted a piece of computer software - scene-renderer orginally concieved for military and scientific purposes. The idea was to build convincing photo-realistic places out of cartographic data. The computer would be fed with reproductions of masterpieces from history of landscape art, both in painting and photography through artists such as Van Gogh, Dali and Edward Weston. It then became apparent to me that this was what the small images to the side of Fontcuberta's photographs were. Each photograph I looked at I could now see traits, through the colours and some aspects of juxtaposition, related to the commonly famous images next to them.



I found the concept behind Fontcuberta's work very interesting. I therefore decided to research the artist in more depth to see what other works they had produced. In a book named 'Twilight Zones' I found a series of work known as 'Haemograms'. I found this series extremely interesting. These simple, but detailed, marks created reminded me of some sort of forensics. I found it very interesting to discover Fontcuberta had created a series of identity images based on individuals' blood. Therefore creating identity, not only through their DNA, but the visual image of their actual blood.



I also visited some private galleries whilst I was in Amsterdam that I believed looked interesting. One gallery I visited was the 'Gallery Delaive' which I just so happened to past whilst walking to the City centre. The expressive, vibrant flashes of paint displayed in the window drew me in.





The work within the exhibition, by Sam Francis, really reflected the Cities vibrancy accurately for me. Before I visited Amsterdam I could see my project going in a direction of 'colour' based. Now i can see the potential even further. I really like the idea of invading public space with bright colours. I now intend to do some more research into artists that have worked with colour in public spaces before to try and gain some ideas for my own practice.

http://blog.shoplet.com/office-supplies/post-it-notes-art/

We're not the only ones....

Really enjoyable session. As a group we decided to invade my car in post-it notes!

At first we gathered a stack of brightly coloured A3 paper, which we placed on all the inside windows to alter the lighting inside of the car. This gave me an awful headache as the ambience had been completely distorted, but it was also visually extremely interesting. After playing around with sticky post-it notes on one window, it become apparent to cover all of the windows in fluorescent post-its. This created an ever more interesting view from the inside of the car, but also on the exterior. It made me consider the possibilities of post-it art and some things that could be completely transformed by post-its and potentially taking the objects identity away. I am beginning to notice my possible pathway within this project. I am excited by the idea of fluorescent or vibrant colours intervening with the everyday and possibly trying to take control of my life? We shall see....

Images from my blackberry phone. Clearly not the best quality!

The idea of intervening with an everyday vehicle, that gets me to college everyday.

Signs intervening with the everyday.

I found this session very helpful in understanding the idea of creating

 an intervention within a public, non gallery, space. Stepping away from

creating work that is not intended for a gallery is incredibly exciting. Being viewed by

 the public will change the whole perception of the piece due to the location of

a piece. On this day we gathered together a selection of signs that we had seen around

the college and brought them back to share with a group.

From this collection of signs we picked out random ones without looking to

create a new possible phrase for a sign. Although this was quite a humorous exercise, it

 made me realise the importance of placing the right piece (in this case signs) in a suitable

environment.

The top image was a phrase that had been creating from the signs we had gathered together.

We decided to place this on a toilet door to essentially 'puzzle' people as they would not

 expect to have to knock to use the toilet. I created the 'no diving' sign based on my own interests. I wanted to create a sign that would confuse people and generate some

humour around the college on this dull, grey day.

Scaffolding Study

I am interested in the idea of creating an intervention in a public space

that may be associated as being bleak or perhaps mundane. The idea of creating a disturbance

through the use of vibrant colour excites me as it creates a dramatic contrast

between the everyday lives we lead and imagination. I am also intrigued by

the concept of creating something that somewhat invades the public space, such as

creating a fluorescent liquid leaking through the street like I have done here.

Experimenting with photomontage/collage.

I photocopied a selection of the images that I had gathered from the visit to

Colchester town and also from local history books to increase the size of the images.

I then worked with juxtaposition of the images in mind to try and recreate images, perhaps superimposing on areas that interest me.

I like the contrast I have created between old and new in this image. The rich red coloured door emphasises this contrast, against the black and white of the 18th Century image.

The open door could perhaps suggests a doorway to another world? The future? The present even?

Experimenting with fluorescent material.

Gabriel Orozco

I am fascinated by the simple idea of recreating a visual image by using materials found in the environment. I could possibly use this idea within Colchester, by recreating an area from a common material found within the town centre?

http://youhavebeenheresometime.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html

Olafur Eliasson

'Green River'

I love the way the artist has transformed reality.

It is very rare to come across a green river! Perhaps a swamp maybe?

Eliasson has got government permission to change the colour of this river in an

 environmentally friendly way.

The idea of using colour to intervene with reality in my work intrigues me and I could possibly

develop with this concept.

Slinkachu

Working with scale.

These images are very interesting to view. They change your perception of reality.

Reminds me of 'Honey I shrunk the Kids' film!

I could experiment with scale in my work similarly to my last project, where

 I increased the scale of my constructivist sculpture piece through photomontage.

NEW PROJECT

The term 'intervention' refers to art that disrupts, re-directs, akters, interrupts

or interferes with the everyday. An artistic intervention usually takes place outside of the realm of museums, galleries and studios. As such it is a form of public art and has strong connections with site-specific work.

Visit to Colchester to try and connect with the designated space for the project.

We are required to create an intervention of some kind within the central area of Colchester.

This will hopefully enable me to become more familiar with public art.

Walking around the town centre I managed to gather photographs of areas that I found particularly interesting. I looked out for contrasts within the town that already portray interventions, but also areas which I feel had the potential to develop an intervening idea.