*The current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.
I was selected for the exhibition from a proposal I had put together which included drawings of what I was thinking about, but I hadn't at the time of putting in the proposal made any of the work.
These are some drawings I did for the proposal.
Recently almost everything made by human beings begins to feel as if it is in some way a dark, forbidding blight on the planet. What were until recently simple ‘man made’ objects, are suddenly not just manufactured things slowly becoming aware of their status as commodity fetishes, they are now ecological monsters of the anthropocene, lurking on the edges of our unconscious, reminding us of failed attempts of being kind to others, especially plants and minerals and those animals that are not human.
Out of the corner of your eye, what was a simple domestic object may well be a growing Lovecraftian spore, something from chthonic depths that may or may not be living to two spaces at once. What was once right and wholesome is now upside down and manic, what was once a comfortable part of our home, now dark with desires that if not held in check will ruin us all, if it hasn’t done so already.
These small creatures made from the detritus of domesticity, from cardboard, newspapers, left over rolls of tape, old toothbrushes, dead mobile phones and no longer used mugs, can clutter up the house like deformed gremlins.
This series of objects includes ceramic elements embedded hermit crab like into domestic containers that are now more like creatures than objects, a hybrid series of forms that at times seek to be like humans but constantly fail to be so, they can shuffle into corners and lurk behind other objects, or organise themselves into a pack and when they do so, in large numbers they finally reveal themselves to be waste harbingers of doom.
On acceptance I now I had to make the objects.
The first ones I made were very like the drawings I had submitted, but quite quickly the making process began to take on its own momentum. I had piled into the studio as many old bits of rubbish, ends of tapes, lengths of wire, etc etc and gradually a language of objects began to take over from a language of drawing.
I made several head type forms out of cardboard stuffed with newspapers and covered them in parcel tape. As extensions to these 'heads' began to be added, the concept became about materials trying to become human. For instance these objects needed legs to stand on and they had to find a point of balance to stop them falling over. This idea was reflected in the title for my work in the exhibition, 'Failed attempts at being human'. The work was eventually spread throughout the gallery, a series of objects placed amongst other people's work, positions chosen by the two curators, who were themselves considering how images of domesticity were being interrogated by the idea of (im)Material Disarray. In the exhibition two different conversations were woven together. The overall theme for the exhibition was a Feminist narrative centred on refusing the traditional roles of the domestic, my own contribution being more to do with waste and how it begins to have chthonic undertones and possibilities for new lifeforms to emerge. That's the interesting thing with curated exhibitions, work doesn't necessarily fit the theme exactly but in the deviation lies the fascination of other ideas seeping through and around the edges of the initial concept. Like all conversations, there is an element of unpredictability and that is partly why you engage with situations of this sort.
A few images from the exhibition
Map of SNAPARTS gallery: each artist was given a number, I was 6
I was also working in ceramics, so the processes of drawing, building ceramics and making objects with rubbish became intertwined. One method would sometimes really challenge another and in the friction between the two I sometimes found a 'voice' for the materials. For instance the 'face hugger' image above with three legs, was a result of using an old blue plastic bag filled with stuff I was going to throw away and noticing that a 'not working' ceramic left next to it suddenly seemed to become 'alive' in some way. The head eventually got in-between the bag and the ceramic but that just came through trial and error.
Sometimes I would go back to drawing trying to work out an almost realised idea that was shaping itself through working with the materials I had found but was yet to quite 'get there'. The headscarf idea eventually made it as part of a very different object, (see 3rd image below) and the drawing immediately below was made when the object was not far from completion, and it was used to help me think about a few final issues which included a black slash of tape and the elimination of a stick 'antenna' from out of the top of the head.
All sorts of objects began emerging, at one point to felt as if they had a life of their own and I didn't have to think about them anymore.
Thinking about leaning forms
Exhibition photographs
It was at this point that I began to think about needing to deal with another aspect of what I was trying to do. These 'creatures' had emerged out of a need to find responses to conversations I had been having about how wasteful our society was and how we were despoiling the planet by using up resources and being unthoughtful. Although I thought the work in the exhibition would be interesting, I wasn't sure about how it was going to carry on the conversation, therefore when I had my proposal accepted I also agreed that I would put on something more performative on the first Sunday after the exhibition's opening. For this I had decided to tell a story.
The story was developed around something I saw on one of my trips to Wakefield to get an idea of the layout of the gallery. I had spent time watching swans building a nest out of rubbish alongside the river Calder as it flowed past the Hepworth Gallery. The story became more and more elaborate as the time for the performance got closer and when I delivered it it had become a thing in its own right, something that was taking its own shape as a narrative. The performance went well and people seemed to be gripped by the story, but I realised it needed reshaping and writing again.
What is interesting about the process of developing an idea is how different aspects keep coming forward and then retreating into the background. This all started with conversations and reading, the process then became about making drawings, then ideas about inanimate materials having some form of agency were opened out through writing, then drawings again, then making and letting materials speak for themselves, back into drawing and then into a spoken narrative and now it was becoming a written out story. All these things were aspects of one idea. No one element being more important than the other, it was about a series of inter connected events rather than the making of a number of art objects.
As the story developed I started to visualise certain moments within it and so I found myself going back to drawing; drawing I suppose always being my default way of thinking. Below are some of the drawings now emerging which are directly related to the idea of a swan's nest made from rubbish mixed up with other flotsam and jetsam. The nest becomes sentient and travels from the rivers of England out into the sea, reaches the great North Atlantic gyre of plastic and eventually after meeting monsters decides to leave earth and go to the moon. It has now become a fable for children and I am working with someone else, this time someone who has worked as a writer and editor and I have decided to let the story go more and more into his mind and as I step back, I can see that it is metamorphosing into something new. This letting go is I think very important, we are a species that works collectively and the best ideas flow and shape themselves between us, at times we hold onto the baton but at other times people with different skills and ways of working need to push on and take ideas into directions you would never have thought about.
These are some of the drawings done to help visualise scenes from the story as it develops.
These are some of the drawings done to help visualise scenes from the story as it develops.
I don't use my own work very often to develop posts in this blog because it is about the wider issues of drawing. But on the other hand I have also begun to realise that it is therefore hard for any of you following these posts to get a practical idea of how drawing might work as a driver for my own ideas. This exhibition is now finished, the fable is still developing and the writer I have handed it over to is working on the final chapter, so that is coming to some sort of conclusion, it will then be decided whether or not I continue working on the images as illustrations for the book.
In the meantime a very different exhibition opens this evening which I have been working on in print and ceramic, reflecting on conversations I have been having about the divisive nature of current politics and in the studio I am making large drawings in preparation for an exhibition opening at the end of October, again about a very different set of themes. Drawing though underpins them all and for me that is why it is so important and why I keep putting up posts encouraging the embracing of drawing in all its aspects.
The end
As to the de-install, I separated all the objects into their various components, which were then bagged up and sent off to the recycling bin.
Garry Barker exhibition Workshop Press Gallery Ceramics and drawings
When the past overhauls the present Includes link to 360 degree view of exhibition
Drawing it all together
3D thinking Trying to use a 3D printer
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