Brad Dawson - Karen Halewood - Vinnie Quirk -Mary Hennessy Jones - Joshua Cook

Brad Dawson

This week we had five visiting MA artists all talking about their practises. The first to talk was Brad Dawson. He basically said that his practise was in three stages to do with tragic disposition. The first stage was conceptual, to do with reasoning and order, and also impulse. Throughout his talk he played one of his video installations, which was quite an intense theatrical piece, with a masked naked guy (Brad) doing small gestures, for example holding his head in anguish, in a sort of red mini theatre, quite Demonic. It gave off quite an unsettling vibe. He described his work as an "expression of my own personal trauma" shown through the expression of art. He also mentioned the German philosopher Nietzsche, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He enjoyed looking into the dark side of life, studying tragedy, loss, pain, mortality and all aspects of the dark side of the mind.

His second stage was more surrealist. He mentioned the subconscious and improvisation. He wanted to try and express something from him, his fears and desires. He wanted to show the harsh realities of life.

The third stage was his current research where he wants to use virtual reality and create surreal ideas in an immersive experience, still conveying his own trauma. Possible like a Greek tragedy. Overall I found as though he spoke really well about his work, he seemed passionate, and he did open up about his own personal trauma and how he tried to convey that in his practise. It seems as though art is a good way for him to understand and cope with what's going on his head. I did appreciate his honesty, and it definitely came across how he wanted to in this theatrical piece. The masked naked figure really did show a lot of emotions and vulnerability.

Karen Halewood

Karen first started talking about how she experimented with electronic music and performance in the 1980s. With ideas that include embodiment, sexuality and feminism. IN 1994 she showed some pictures of a live performance in Germany where she got herself into a trance like state, and was trying to communicate ideas of what is going on in life. In 2011 she was also talking photographs to capture movement, to show the energy flowing through her body when she was in this trance like state, to convey the essence of what was going on inside. For her MA she moved into photo collage using digital techniques, one was called 'Angels, Angles, Anarchy'. She created a sculpture in her hallway using cut pieces of mirror, it was sort of spiritual, and she was trying to show the different altered states in possible different realms. She wanted the viewer to catch glimpses of kinetic motion and energy, not just her experiences, but wants them to get the idea of a mediative state for themselves, which I think is a lovely idea. I've had an interest in spirituality for quite a few years now, but I've never thought about incorporating this into my artwork. It has motivated me to want to create some abstract spiritual pieces.

Vinnie Quirk

The next artist was Vinnie Quirk, who's work was a little bit similar to Brad Dawson, in the sense that he makes quite dark video installations based of his life traumas. The first thing he said about himself was that he's an artist that creates work, and has bad problems saying where it comes from and how to explain it. This resonates to some extent with me as I find it quite tricky to explain my ideas and why I've done a particular piece of art. There's often not such a deep meaning to some of the things I create, I just get inspired and paint quite quickly without a lot of time planning what I'm going to do, it just sort of happens.

He mentioned a psychologist called Stanislav Grof who looks at different states of consciousness and about gaining access to a greater knowledge which helps him with his own trauma. Vinnie also mentioned the work of the famous Swiss painter H R Giger who famously designed the alien in Ridley Scott's film Alien.

He said it was hard to share his own trauma with people and show what was going on his head, so he thought the best way was just to show his 6 minute film. It started with a big close up of an eye, a dead rat (in colour) then some quite macabre and disturbing images of things like nails being hammered into flesh or some internal body part. There were also ribbed tubes with things running out of them which looked like the biomechanics that Giger used. It was slightly confusing, but what I took from it is that his trauma could have been to do with his sexuality, but that's just my own interpretation. It was all a bit too dark and gory for me, he suggested to watch it on repeat for an hour, but I don't know if that would sit well with me, and would probably give me nightmares! I do appreciate his openness and his ability to convey what is potentially going on in his head.

Mary Hennessy Jones

The next artist to speak was Mary. She first started talking about collages, using only paper, scissors and glue. She wanted a simplistic approach and explore "how much you can say with so little". Similarly to Brad and Vinnie, she wanted to look at using different mediums like animation and puppets, to say things which we find hard to say. One of the ways she experimented was with animation in a short two minute film called "And not singing but screaming". There appeared to be different puppet faces, shown from different angles, some where the face was made of newspaper with drawn eyes and lips on them. The puppet also had various facial expressions. There was also a sound landscape underneath the images almost like a low level noise with a subtle heartbeat and some occasional notes which crescendoed. She described it as what could possibly happen behind closed doors and curtains. Some of the images were out of focus and blurry, and some were behind different materials such as wire mesh I think. I thought it was quite effective, and even though it had a deeper meaning, it was shown in a light airy way, which I found quite cathartic and peaceful.

Mary then went on to describe some of her latest work involving a tobacco warehouse. She was interested in the 120 year old bricks, and how you could possibly extract stories from them. There is an old saying "if walls could talk"... which implies theres stories behind every building. This is something I've not thought about before, and I quite like the idea of exploring what goes on behind closed doors. Mary then went on to say could there be possible trauma from extracting the clay from the earth to make the bricks, does it have an impact on the earth? Does it have an impact on us? There was a state of confusion at on point, and she didn't know what she was doing. She used wet heavy paper to wrap the bricks, and when you look at them, are the bricks still inside the white rectangles? She then also wanted to incorporate smell, which is another thing I haven't thought about including in my art, but its definitely something to consider. Smell is very evocative and can trigger memories of places, people, and can overall enhance your visual experience. Mary tried to capture the smell of the earth after rain and ended up with something that smelt of beetroot. This lead her to make a film called "The revenge of the bricks on the beetroot". It was a bit strange seeing a pair of feet strapped to two bricks with black tape, slowly walk over a line of beetroots, squashing them. Didn't quiet get that but it was fun I guess! She was also going to explore more about the warehouse and look into tobacco. I enjoyed her talk a lot, and she's got me thinking of how I can possibly incorporate smell into my art practise.

Joshua Cook

Out of all five visiting artists this week, my favourite artist I resonated with the most was Joshua Cook. He firstly showed us a collection of polaroids he'd taken which are pretty cool. He uses them to generate ideas to inspire him. He also finds as though he has ups and downs when it comes to motivation, so having these polaroids is a “quick stimulus for motivation” and it was a quick fix for him to get in a creative mindset. This sort of resonates with me as I have a small obsession of taking photographs, whether that be on my phone or disposables cameras. This is often a starting point for me as I play around with them digitally, find my favourite, and then go on to paint it, usually large scale. He plays around with posters, some based on photos from IKEA catalogues. He would manipulate the image and add hidden words and other images onto them with the hope that people would use their own curiosity to find the meanings portrayed in the work.

Another aspect of his work is to use light refraction for example ‘Pepper’s ghost’ (which was often used in theatres as an illusion technique) to sort of merge images together for example in his case faces. I do in fact experiment with projection and overlaying images, so his talk has inspired me to further that idea and see what cool outcomes I can come up with. Cook also worked with sound. He used music beds which were repetitive and used ambiance sound. He was trying to look at the boundaries between commercial music and art. On of the examples was a woman's voice continuously talking without pausing for breath, over one of these ambient background beds. It was actually quite difficult to grasp all the words and sentences she was saying. I would catch a few words here and there, but overall it was quite tricky to understand what was going on, and therefore I wasn't too sure on the message he was trying to convey. The last sound piece he played was just of a woman's voice speaking quite slowly, distorted and echoey, after she had finished speaking in this slow state I think the same words appeared again but with her speaking quickly. He mentions how this was a response to a friends poem, and also went onto say, he enjoys collaborating as its also stimulates his motivation and practise. I’m currently in the sound and image project, and this has been useful and has made me think about how I can try to edit my own sounds together and create interesting pieces.