Jill Townsley

"This exhibition by Jill Townsley, is a culmination of work carried out as part of her research into the role of repetition in the process of art production. Each of the artworks explore ideas of repetitive labour and its significance to the art object. The exhibition consists of sculpture, video, film drawing and installation.

All the works are an accumulation of hundreds of hours of repeated actions. Mind bogglingly tedious and insignificant actions repeated thousand of times. Actions such as: looping wire, scribbling, gluing polystyrene beads or tying 3 spoons together with a rubber band 3,091 times.

Some work exists only in the moment, temporally changing, a culmination of moments, repeating over time. Some works are a result of thousands of unstable repeated units, each precariously balanced on one another to make a whole sculpture. Other works are only offered as a record of process, exploring time in a virtual or parallel timeframe.

The body of work describes the logical application of repetitive process, illogically extended beyond the usual limits, producing work that sometimes in the end destroys itself, while still being generative of new and often surprisingly beautiful moments"

http://www.londonsartistquarter.org/events/jill-townsley-moments-repetition

Damien Hirst

Zirconyl Chloride, 2008
Household gloss on canvas
84 inches diameter  (213.4 cm)

Damien Hirst has painted less than 10 of his famous spot paintings, leaving the work up to trusted assistants. When people criticise this, he simply refers to great architects not building houses.

Gagosian Gallery (2011) [online] Available at: <http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/damien-hirst/exhibition-images> [Accessed 8 February 2012]

Patrick Morrissey

Fragmentation

Patrick Morrissey is a London based Constructive/Reductive Artist. His work uses systems that create a form of meandering geometry.

Morrissey, P. (2010) [online] Available: <http://www.patrickmorrisseyhanz.co.uk/index_files/PatrickMorrissey.htm> [Accessed 8 February 2012]

Ian Davenport

Prismatic Diptych, 2011. Colour etching diptych on Hahnemühle Bright. White 300 gsm papers. Paper 199.5 x 193.0 cm / Image 181.5 x 177.0 cm (overall) Edition of 15

Ian Davenport uses a syringe to pour gloss paint down smooth surfaces like aluminium, rather than canvas. Gravity and chance dictate the direction of the paint.

Art and Coin TV (2011) [online] "New Etchings by British Artist Ian Davenport at Alan Cristea Gallery" Available at: <http://www.artandcointv.com/blog/2011/10/new-etchings-by-ian-davenport-at-alan-cristea-gallery/> [Accessed 8 February 2012]

Charlotte Trimm

Artist's Statement

Chromatics

 Chromatics (detail)

"Charlotte Trimm is a systems artist whose practice deals with aspects of repetition and process with a methodological approach to the creation of work. Often describing herself as suffering from art induced obsessive compulsive disorder her approach to work often manifests itself in a neurotic style, which results in works with recurring forms with lines and linear structures becoming an almost necessary feature. A fascination with colour has lead to works which explore the processes by which colour can be manipulated"

Trimm, C. (2012) [online] Available at: <http://www.charlottetrimm.daportfolio.com/about/> [Accessed February 2012]

Questioning my practice

I've been struggling recently to make anything, due to the fact I've been questioning my practice so deeply.

Some of the questions I've been asking are:

• Do I need a concept or context behind my systems?
• How valid is my system? 
• How should I select yarns? Is this important at this early stage?
• How should I select colours?
• What are the reasons behind my choices? Are they aesthetic, personal, based on emotions of colour? 
• Do I want to map a journey? Would that give context to my grid system? 

For now, I think sampling is the only way to move forward. Sampling in non-specific materials and colours will lead to decisions in the near future about how far to take my system based approach.

Another point I found was that all of my early samples, despite being systems based, looked too much like the coral reef projects. Despite their very aesthetic value, the connotations of the shapes to anyone with a small crochet knowledge renders them somewhat disruptive. Solved this by working in a deeper system.

Erin Curry

Traces of Spun #3
graphite on paper
30" x 22"

Traces of Spun #2
graphite on paper
30" x 22"

"Created with a specialised handspindle, this drawing records the making of a fine wool thread. The process mirrors itself as the fuzz of wool draws out into a woolen line while the line of graphite draws fuzz" (Curry, E.)

Curry, E. (2012) [online] Available at: <http://www.erincurry.com/TracesofSpun_02.html> [Accessed 7 Febuary 2012]

Jill Sylvia

Jill Sylvia takes old ledger books and meticulously eviscerates them square by square, page by page, until she’s left with a delicate ledger skeleton. Papercraft meets process art.

Sylvia, J. (2012) [online] Available at: <http://www.jillsylvia.com/BalanceSheetspage.html> [Accessed 7 Febuary 2012]

Joe Winter - Printershake

parallel lines (CMYK). 8.5 x 11 inches.

shaking the printer

"Images are printed with a standard desktop inkjet printer which is violently shaken during the process of printing. The initial images are simple, geometric control structures generated by computer: grids, parallel lines, concentric circles, etc. The resulting colour misalignments, interference patterns, and distortions alternately read as scientific data (EKG, seismography, spectrometry) and abstract drawings.The prints are created in groups of six: four prints are made of the same control structure, one for each of the four subtractive colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, black); the fifth print passes through the printer--and is shaken--four times, once for each color; the sixth image is a photograph documenting the process of shaking the printer." (Winter, J.)

Winter, J. (n.d.) [online] Available at: <http://www.severalprojects.com/projects.html> [Accessed 7 Febuary 2012]

Leah Rosenberg

double bind 2007-08
acrylic paint
9” x 9” x 7”

double bind (detail) 2007-08
acrylic paint
9” x 9” x 7”

"My paintings are time and process-based works that combine elements of layering, systems of accrual, and color. I allow and encourage the build-up of paint to act in a three dimensional manner, at times to the point of doing away with the support altogether. These layers of paint function as a way to mark the passage of time, but also reveal the paints’ inherent materiality as it begins to take on its own shape.  I select the colors based on personal systems, sometimes based on the text from a book that I am reading or lyrics of a song, other times reflecting a telephone call home to Saskatchewan, or the colors of the clothing worn by people who visit my studio throughout that day. Each work is the result of a ritualized routine that raises a question, which in turn leads to the next work. 

These paintings, like all painting, contain the time of their making. Each piece is a concentration of the many “paintings.” I am not refering here to the paintings in terms of finished art works, but rather “paintings” as a gerund, a series of consecutively painted actions. A painting, on a painting, on a painting — they end up concealing as much as they reveal" (Rosenberg, R.)

 Rosenberg, L. (n.d.) [online] Available at: <http://www.leahrosenberg.org/works.html> [Accessed 7 Febuary 2012]

Katie Lewis

201 Days. pins, pencil, thread; 84" x 48" x 1.5"

201 Days. pins, pencil, thread; 84" x 48" x 1.5"

201 Days. pins, pencil, thread; 84" x 48" x 1.5"

201 Days. pins, pencil, thread; 84" x 48" x 1.5"

201 Days. pins, pencil, thread; 84" x 48" x 1.5"

"My current work traces experiences of the body through methodical systems of documentation, investigating chaos, control, accumulation and deterioration. The artificially rigid organization of my materials alludes to control-- of the individual body as an institutional domain, and of irrational experience as a manageable, concrete set of events. My choice to use the body as a starting point aims to give visual form to physical sensations that are invisible to the eye and medical imaging, and only exist in the subjecetive realm. I collect data through daily documentation processes, and then generate numerous systems to allow the information to exist in a material form. I abstract and quantify the data in order to give authority and agency to subjective experiences.

The work alludes to the body in certain pieces, through the text or a particular material, but the reference remains abstracted. By abstracting and codifying the work, I want to evoke a sense of the passing of time, accumulation of information, presence and absence, chaos and order, control and loss of control and the possibility of the system collapsing upon itself or reaching a breaking point. Once I devise a system for a particular piece, I follow it all the way through the work allowing the visual results to exist outside of subjective expressive decisions. By strictly following and never veering from a given system, the work is tightly controlled and asserts itself as accurate and authoritative (however false and unscientific), questioning the gap between a subjective experience and medicine's conventions for understanding the body. The work is often organized into grid-like charts and diagrams mimicking science and medicine's representations of the body as a specimen, visualy displayed for the purpose of gaining knowledge. In this way I create distance from the information and objectify the experience, giving a false sense that the body is accessible and easily understood" (Lewis, K.)

Lewis, K. (n.d.) [online] Available at: <http://katiehollandlewis.com/index.html> [Accessed 7 Febuary 2012]