Annotated Visual Proposal for Semester 3

Main themes:  

Organic forms both for their beauty and horror, lend themselves to dystopian futures…rhizomatic and bacterial growth, cell structure, growth and decay.  In art, when an organic material is rendered into an amorphous ‘unnatural’ form or when manmade materials are made into ‘organic’ forms it holds my fascination.  

The baroque period: the swirl and the fold.  It was a time of great change: a new world had been discovered and the invention of the printing press meant that there was an information overload never experienced before.  This is directly relatable to the acceleration of our relatively new digital age.  Signs and meanings multiply and become diluted and overwhelming, and previously known structures become fragmented.  Social and political discourse is obscured and polarised by the volume of information and narratives and this is reflected in the contemporary art world.  The pleasure garden is a manifestation of the baroque era, with its overflowing water, grottoes, automatons and meld of nature and artifice.

Water in its many manifestations. As a resource and source of wonder it is life giving, but is now viewed as a money making commodity. With modern demands of intense farming and private water companies abusing our waterways, clean water is becoming recognised as a future scarcity, is polluted, and, in the western world is very much taken for granted. Apart from the localized trauma of sewage in our rivers, tributaries, streams and brooks, on a larger scale the damming, hydroelectric plants installation and the plumbing of aquifers mean that particularly in countries downstream water is becoming scarce.  Waterfalls are often used as a sign/symbol in art by prolific artists such as Olafur Eliasson and the late Pat Steir.   I also would like to use other symbols of water such as the hydrangea’ even though doesn’t require as much water as was once thought, its name and association, colour and form lends itself to this association. 

Range of Media/materials:

paper out of plant pulp;

ivy and hydrangea

wild clay

bioplastic (agar, glycerin and plant additions);

dried seedpods, and leftover paraphernalia

(wallpaper swatches, foil, bubble wrap – scraps essentially that are normally thrown away.;  plastic from milk bottles;

glass wax;

epoxy resin;

leftover plywood;

motor and spring mechanics.

Space requirements:

Large space with hanging room!

Workshop access and technician support:

3D workshop –  Baz – moulding and slipcasting

3D workshop – Tom – assistance with automaton

Video assistance – assistance required with making of video and with projection material recommendations.

Timings:

These 4 aspects have all been begun and will run simultaneously, but may not be ultimately incorporated…

Hanging baroque backdrop /waterfall – 4 weeks – bioplastics and paper making in progress but may use some glass wax too??

Hydra cemetery – 4 weeks

Projection – (choice of words to be decided ) 6 weeks can I get words to ‘fall’

Automaton – most complicated….2 months

Planned absences:

w/c 13^th July for 1 week

20th July – my daughter’s birthday

30^th July – 4^th August

16th August – my son’s birthday