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-Is it important for people to understand my work?

-Do I or don’t I want people to think my work is pretty?

-Taking things at face value

-Is the information and experience of the piece balanced

-Communicating facts?

-Wanting people to experience my work and when they walk away for it to still have a positive impact upon them

-My work having an aura around it

-A way to clear your mind

-Lost trust in colour, due to colour in marketing.

-An escape from capitalism

-A haven, retreat

-ephemeral materials

Artists

-Anika yinscent

-pipalotti rist

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When the new age is at leisure to pronounce,
all will be set right
William Blake, Milton, 1804-10

We have entered a new new age. Executive philanthropists and corporate shamans are Airstreaming Burning Man and embracing psychedelic therapies; chill-out rooms and floatation tanks are being swabbed out and dusted down in London's clubland; witchcraft and occultism are trending on social media and once-marginal esoteric and spiritualist artists are entering major galleries and collections. The roster of recently exhibited artists with vibrant new-age auras spans 150 years and would include: Marjorie Cameron, Bonnie Camplin, Georgiana Houghton, the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, Hilma af Klint, Paul Laffoley and Austin Osman Spare. 'As Above, So Below', a celebration of spiritual art, runs between April and August at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, while, in the same month, 'The Transported Man', an exhibition on magic and belief, will open at The Edith and Eli Broad Museum, Michigan, and 'Mystical Symbolism', a show inspired by Joséphin Péladan's 1892 Rosicrucian Salon, will go on display at the Guggenheim, New York, in June. You might get the impression that the art world is searching for something it has lost.

What we tend to think of as the 'new age' was a predominantly US phenomenon of the 1970s and '80s: a time of unprecedented scientific and spiritual experimentation. Astronauts were conducting telepathy tests, UFO sightings became a presidential prerequisite (both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan reported seeing them), the CIA hired spoon-benders and psychics, astrologers advised the White House and the postmodernist disavowal of absolute truths took hold in centres of learning. The systemic deceptions of Watergate and the Vietnam war had revealed that, since nothing was true any more, any idea, no matter how far out, could now be accepted; or, to paraphrase Vladimir Bartol via William Burroughs: if nothing was true, then everything was permitted.

Mind, body and spirit gurus built great empires upon the ashes of the 1960s dream, opening the gates of the spiritual supermarket to a new caste of self-improving om-nivores, who were encouraged to create their own realities, viewing outward wealth as a reflection of inner purity and poverty as a matter of choice - if not in this lifetime, then in a previous one.

But, really, this was no new age. It was just one strand of a golden thread of idealism and optimism that runs throughout human history: a dream of a shining past and a twinkling future, tarnished only by a perpetually disappointing present. In the West, we see these themes illuminating Plato's Atlantis, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, the works of William Blake, Emanuel Swedenborg and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Helena Blavatsky's theosophical corpus, the musical Hair (1967) and a multitude of psytrance flyers.

The new age is eternal, like the quantum foam at the heart of the universe, but if we were to insist on a convenient starting point for understanding contemporary new-age ideas, we might consider London's The New Age journal - edited from 1907 to 1924 by the ardent socialist, Yorkshireman and Nietzschean, Alfred Orage. The New Age carried reviews, commentary and fiction from the day's leading progressive cultural figures, including D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and HG Wells, but a significant proportion of each issue was also devoted to the philosophical and metaphysical questions that fascinated Orage. In the spirit - if not the name - of theosophy, The New Age merged Western enlightenment science with exotic, ancient wisdoms to explore newly modern worlds of relativity, metaphysics, telepathy, life-after death, runes, dervish dancing and ancient spiritual art and literature.

Orage's fascination for Friedrich Nietzsche never left him. After World War I, he folded The New Age and fell under the spell of the guru's guru, George Gurdjieff, whose focus on will and personal development (when not unburdening his followers of their money and their lovers), focused on the self: a newly modern idea that would form the core of the later 20th century's new-age paradigm.

Today, fulfilling the doctrine of eternal recurrence espoused by both Nietzsche and Blavatsky, the new age has re-emerged into a bold new world. This world is essentially telepathic: ideas are transmitted instantaneously worldwide and our terraformed social-media landscape makes creating our own realities an opt-out, rather than an opt-in proposition. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that large chunks of our 21st-century world feel like they've been ripped out of the US countercultural magazine Whole Earth Catalog (1968-72) - the young trippers and dreamers of 1970s California engineered it that way. This is, and should be, a time of wonders for those who can afford to enjoy it, but we're only just beginning to understand how things might go wrong.

The barrage of information swarming over the wires is throttling us and calls to disentangle from the international complexities of our contemporary networked existence are understandable. But when feelings override facts and unrealistic, unrealized hopes are replaced by a rejection of the modern world, the clamour for simpler, more spiritual times can lead us down dark paths. Orage sought to reconcile his socialist and Nietzschean tendencies under the new age banner. Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump et al. represent the populist face of a neo-traditionalist movement whose intellectual figureheads, like 'Putin's Rasputin', Aleksandr Dugin, explicitly channel mid-century spiritual elitists, such as René Guénon and Julius Evola, who longed to return the world to a feudal, Manichean dark age. It's hard to imagine a vision more at odds with Blake's 'New Age' or Hair's 'Age of Aquarius', but they share spiritual roots and a common cause, if not the same desired outcome.

Back in the 1970s, the underground philosopher Robert Anton Wilson warned of the dangers of becoming lost in your own 'reality tunnel,' within which, having successfully created our own realities, we see only the beliefs and cultural attitudes that we want to see, and everything else becomes maya: illusion. Today, those reality tunnels have expanded to become the mirrored media domes inside which millions of us spend our lives, our beliefs and habits perpetually reinforced by algorithms and exploited by cynical technocrats. The ultimate new-age symbol, the pyramid, represents a golden age of spiritual knowledge and scientific advancement, yet it's also a stark totem of vertical, hierarchical, totalitarian power.

What happens if you turn a pyramid upside down?
Main image: Paul Laffoley, The Thanaton III, 1989, oil, acrylic, ink, and vinyl lettering on canvas; painted wooden frame, 1.9 x 1.9 m. Courtesy: the Estate and Kent Fine Art, New York

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When the new age is at leisure to pronounce,all will be set right William Blake, Milton, 1804-10 We have entered a new new age. Executive philanthropists and corporate shamans are Airstreaming Burning Man and embracing psychedelic therapies; chill-out rooms and floatation tanks are being swabbed out and dusted down in London's clubland; witchcraft and occultism are trending on social media and once-marginal esoteric and spiritualist artists are entering major galleries and collections.

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Pipilotti Rist has been mentioned in more than 2 of my tutorials now so I decided to look into her work and concepts in detail. I have never been to one of her exhibitions so I don't know what it would be like to experience her work, however on youtube I found a video of a few of her works and seeing the environment she creates for the viewer is really interesting as its combining moving image and instillation. I'm really interested in moving image and love making films so I should deffinetly explore how I could communicate my current ideas using video.
"Arts task is to contribute to evolution, to encourage the mind, to guarantee a detached view of social changes, to conjure up positive energies, to create sensuousness, to reconcile reason and instinct, to research possibilities and to destroy clichés and prejudices."

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Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest. Solo Exhibition at New Museum, New York City

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Beauty and the Beast US Official Trailer

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Disney's adaptation of beauty and the beast 2017

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Disney's adaptation of beauty and the beast 2017

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So incredibly beautiful. I love any romantic drama and because it feels so removed from current day I find myself getting truely transported. My work on many occasions has been described as whimsical, fairytale inspired and some have said like you'd find in a Disney film, so I feel its worth mentioning the films I'm watching as context as they do inspire me and inform my work.

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Jainism

The food choices of Jains are based on the value of Ahimsa (non-violence), and this makes the Jains to prefer food that inflict the least amount of violence. Vegetarianism in Jainism is based on the principle of nonviolence (ahimsa, literally "non-injuring"). Vegetarianism is considered mandatory for everyone. Jains are either lacto-vegatarians or vegans. No use or consumption of products obtained from dead animals is allowed. Moreover, Jains try to avoid unnecessary injury to plants and suksma jiva (Sanskrit for subtle life forms; minuscule organisms). The goal is to cause as little violence to living things as possible. Every act by which a person directly or indirectly supports killing or injury is seen as violence (hinsa), which creates harmful karma. Jains do not practice animal sacrifice as they consider all sentient beings to be equal.
Hinduism

Vegetarianism is an integral part of most schools of Hinduism. The principle of nonviolence (Ahimsa) applied to animals is connected with the intention to avoid negative karmic influences which result from violence. The suffering of all beings is believed to arise from craving and desire, conditioned by the karmic effects of both animal and human action. The violence of slaughtering animals for food, and its source in craving, reveal flesh eating as one mode in which humans enslave themselves to suffering. Hinduism holds that such influences affect the person who permits the slaughter of an animal, the person who kills it, the person who cuts it up, the person who buys or sells meat, the person who cooks it, the person who serves it up, and the person who eats it. They must all be considered the slayers of the animal.
Buddhism

The First Precept prohibits Buddhists from killing people or animals. The first Buddhist monks and nuns were forbidden from growing, storing, or cooking their own food. They relied entirely on the generosity of alms to feed themselves, and were not allowed to accept money to buy their own food.They could not make special dietary requests, and had to accept whatever food alms givers had available, including meat. These strictures were relaxed in China, Korea, Japan, and other countries that follow Mahayana Buddhism, where monasteries were in remote mountain areas and the distance to the nearest towns made daily alms rounds impractical. There, Buddhist monks and nuns could cultivate their own crops, store their own harvests, cook their own meals, and accept money to buy anything else they needed in terms of food in the market. According to the Vinaya Pitaka, when Devadatta urged him to make complete abstinence from meat compulsory, the Buddha refused, maintaining that "monks would have to accept whatever they found in their begging bowls, including meat, provided that they had not seen, had not heard, and had no reason to suspect that the animal had been killed so that the meat could be given to them". There were prohibitions on specific kinds of meat: meat from humans, meat from royal animals such as elephants or horses, meat from dogs, and meat from dangerous animals like snakes, lions, tigers, panthers, bears and hyenas. In the modern Buddhist world, attitudes toward vegetarianism vary by location. In China and Vietnam, monks typically eat no meat, with other restrictions as well. All Buddhists however, including monks, are allowed to practice vegetarianism if they wish to do so. There are no accurate statistics, but I would guess—and it is only a guess—that worldwide about half of all Buddhists are vegetarian.
Sikhism

Followers of Sikhism do not have a preference for meat or vegetarian consumption. There are two views on initiated or "Amritdhari Sikhs" and meat consumption. "Amritdhari" Sikhs (i.e. those that follow the Sikh Rehat Maryada - the Official Sikh Code of Conduct) can eat meat (provided it is not Kutha meat)."Amritdharis" that belong to some Sikh sects (e.g. Akhand Kirtani Jatha, Damdami Taksal, Namdhari, Rarionwalay, etc.) are vehemently against the consumption of meat and eggs. Passages from the Guru Granth Sahib (the holy book of Sikhs). Guru Nanak said that overconsumption of food (Lobh, Greed) involves a drain on the Earth's resources and thus on life. The tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh, prohibited the Sikhs from the consumption of halal or Kutha (any ritually slaughtered meat) meat because of the Sikh belief that sacrificing an animal in the name of God is mere ritualism (something to be avoided).

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The Sixth Day: Creatures on Land
…27God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." 29Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;…"

Linking to the snow white huntsman mirror how the mirror forms from a circle into resembling a man, I believe links to this idea of being formed in gods image. And the way she holds the opinion of the mirror higher is also godly as christians live there lives trying to avoid being sinners to achieve a place in heaven, and she is not trying to attain a place in heaven but a power by beauty.

I don't really agree with christianity and the bible I don't think humans should be superior to that of the animal kingdom, we may have a higher IQ and have opposable thumbs but that doesn't mean our lives are any more precious than that of an animals. We certainly shouldn't be using them for our own gain such as testing for cosmetic products, playing round with there DNA and poaching. I also believe god is an energy that runs through all living things connecting us all together to the earth, animals, each other we become one, which I believe is a buddhist view. We do have to eat to stay alive, thats for sure but I don't feel its right personally to eat the corpse of another creature, The DNA of a pig is very similar to that of a humans so there isn't much of a difference between consuming a pigs meat and a humans, therefore eating pig i see as a form of cannabilism.

I don't wish to have authority over someones life and tell them what they can and can't do but what we consume is incredibly important for not only our individual wellbeing but on a larger scale it affects so much more, like eco systems. Humans who also feed animals growth hormones for mass production is not right and if you eat this adapted meat you are consuming those chemicals and hormones too. It's all linked. I do want to bring awareness to these issues, as i too was once in the dark about it, but now its changed my life for good.

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The first exhibition of Kevin Francis Gray's work at Pace London. The new sculptures aim to transcend the natural and the material in both form and subject matter seeking to render a physical perfection that is not reached in the temporal world.

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Born in Northern Ireland Kevin Francis Grey is now working in London. The first thing I saw when I clicked on his bio was this quote which links to the circle of life I've previously been looking at, but instead of it being literal he's using materials as metaphors for the stages, reminds me of wedding anniversary's having different names.

He works primarily with bronze and marble to create idealized figures draped with fabric in the style of Neoclassical or Baroque figurative sculptures. Though, unlike gods or royalty that one might expect to see rendered in such incredible detail, Gray instead creates anonymous depictions of regular individuals he encounters near his studio in London, often people struggling with addiction or other difficult, real-world issues. From an essay about Gray’s work by Rachel Wilf:

The resulting works portray these subjects—often with personal histories marred by contemporary demons such as addiction—with dignity and importance, yet they also express a somber, contemplative quality emphasized by the artist’s consistent shrouding of his subject’s faces.

While some artists now rely on laser cutting or other machines to cut from marble, Gray instead works by hand, from start to finish, chiseling away just like Gian Lorenzo Bernini or Giuseppe Sanmartino might have done in the 17th or 18th century.

I love how he's using traditional methods of sculpture to convey contemporary narratives and relationships. REALLY LOVE THIS GUYS WORK!!!!

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Snow White and the Huntsman (2/10) Movie CLIP - Mirror, Mirror On the Wall (2012) HD

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Snow White and the Huntsman movie clips: http://j.mp/1QfKFCx BUY THE MOVIE: http://j.mp/1KsO2t1 Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: After taking over the kingdom, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) brings in her magic mirror.

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I love this idea of a mirror being like a new perspective on the world like a portal, like 'magic mirror on the wall' off snow white. The act of seeing and is something really real if you don't see it, trusting someones discription using words and speech instead of seeing the actual thing for yourself. In snow whites the huntsman the mirror is not an actual mirror like you see in the disney or shrek but instead a human figure draped under a golden metallic sheet, where his speech is the insight. This could be a really interesting work of art to create and I will definitely think about how I can tie it into the buddhism and other contextual ideas I've been looking at. Like Rachel Bradley was talking about complex being about woven components of ideas and the physical.

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He "encouraged fantastical thinking about what is possible, on this planet and beyond". Many of the futuristic inventions and scenarios Wells dreamed up in his novels have indeed come true, while others remain the stuff of science fiction.

1) Nuclear weapons
Book: The World Set Free (1914)
Wells envisioned "atomic bombs" that could explode continuously using the power of radioactivity. He also foresaw the problem of proliferation, warning that a global government was the only way of preventing nation states from destroying themselves with nuclear weapons. Wells also predicted biological conflict in The War of the Worlds.

2) Moon landing
Book: The First Men in the Moon (1901)
The Earth's only satellite may not be populated by a subterranean civilisation of Selenites, but the imagined lunar adventure of Mr Bedford and Dr Cavor anticipated the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing. As was typical with Wells, the novel's protagonists were English amateurs, not the American academics of modern science fiction.
3) Genetic engineering
Book: The Island Of Dr Moreau (1896)
Dr Moreau's monstrous experiments with vivisection, creating human-animal hybrids, can read like a dystopian critique of some strands of modern genetic science. Hybrid interspecies embryos known as "chimeras" are now routinely conceived for medical research, although they are created in laboratories rather than operating tables.

4) Lasers
Book: The War of the Worlds (1898)
When the Martian hordes landed in Surrey, they brought with them an arsenal of futuristic weapons. Among the most devastating was the Heat-Ray, which fired streams of energy powerful enough to set fire to flesh and incinerate buildings. Laser weaponry is now a reality, and was a central element of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" plan to shoot down nuclear missiles in space.

5) Second World War
Book: The Shape of Things to Come (1933)
Wells correctly predicted that a global conflict would break out within a decade, erupting in Eastern Europe before sucking in all the world powers. He was not alone in forecasting conflict during the volatile 1930s, but his descriptions of carpet bombing raids and fear of gas attacks proved prescient. The book was adapted for a 1936 film Things to Come.

I find all this so interesting, as it makes me think were these actually predictions and how did these ideas come to him. Did modern scientists see his predictions as new projects to see if they could be possible. It's like when your in that dream state where you believe anything is possible and you can do whatever you like because its just a dream its not real...but what if it is real but its happening in a parallel universe. Where do you go when you dream? These are some ideas I'd like to look at further.

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Lebbeus woods was mentioned in the context lecture on Utopian landscape by Emily Strange. I've always had an interest in architecture and done projects touching on ones relationship with physical space. So i thought id look further into Lebbeus Woods to see if he's answering any of the questions I had around the subject of belonging, space and utopia.

"What is the place of one person - any individual - in the complex, ever-changing landscape of the world? lt is a question without a fixed or universal answer. Still it must be asked. Answers, however provisional, must be attempted. This is particularty urgent for the apportioning and use of space, which every person needs, and which the work of architecture explicitly provides. The installations I have designed and made in collaboration with others explore the phenomena of change in material and spatial terms."

"A center for contemporary art worthy of the name cannot simply be a place that exhibits nomadic art commodities, but must be a place where art happens, where the people who make art come together to create something new. It is in the nature of contemporary art practices, which deal with rapid changes in every spect of life, that exhibitions not only show what has been done, but also what is possible."

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The pictures above are photographs I took on a recent trip to Snowdonia. The weather when i went was very foggy so there was always this veil of fog to encounter. However it added more a sense of discovery and obscurity. I'm not entirely sure what to do with these images just yet, or whether i should use them at all.

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Rachel Bradley
complex woven- ideas, physical
co-ordinates on a map- the isolation and grouping of naming
fake news- drama emphasised
evil is baniol- following orders without questioning, documentary on albinism.
Vitilogo

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Falling forward- Ideas on stumbling forward through life with new technological advances approaching rapidly and therefor taking for granted all the beautiful things we naturally encounter.

would be interesting to make a piece or series of a robotic organism , to show an opposing nature technological advance.

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Emily Strange
H.G.Wells- prediction.........Lebbeus woods- "The most radical thing is space we dont know how to inhabit."..........Critical mirror of viewing the world
Geoff Litherland
Fluorodated water........Being fed the idea that we are disconnected from nature.......Genesis 128- made in gods image, superiority..........john muir........exploring an eden like garden, i was born in eden
..........Albert einstein.......the wall- book/film.......as we understand our world we understand ourselves better.........terence mckenna - dream the impossible dream......martin profero

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How to further the work/context and concept links:

Make the birds out of metal, casting, so they become unfoldable......Disney movies, charming and colourful

Eightfold, Buddhist rule, folding the swans there being 8 swans

There was lots of conversation about the aesthetic visual qualities of the piece, and no one really made the connection with the title of the piece ‘eightfold’ right till the very end so the discussion I was hoping to get was very short and rushed. I quite liked the idea of casting origami however so might further this. There also wasn’t a lot of mentioning of artists that the work reminds them of, which was good in a way as meant what I’m creating hasn’t really been seen before, originality.

I really enjoyed setting up my work as if I would be exhibiting it in a gallery, so I think I will continue every other week to book out a room and set up my work, and get some professional photos of it, just as a date to work towards. I enjoyed getting back into instillation pieces too so I will continue making instillations for a bit, I would alos like to dip back into moving image.

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How to Make an Origami Crane - The Art of Paper Folding

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Learn how to make an origami crane. Follow our step by step instructions in the art of paper folding to make a origami crane. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUgC1xe7jZE

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Q: How do I think my practice operates in relation to this provocation?
The work often sets out to jolt the audience into re-examining aspects of their own culturally or experientially founded preconceptions which result from: modes of habitual thinking, responding or evaluating/personal conventions/ default ways of understanding. The work has done this by playing with socially and/or historically grounded concerns that stem from such things as taste, value, redundancy, replication, etc.

The work pursues interests arising from the relationship of opposites (made/found - inside/outside - finished/unfinished - back/front - model/reality - etc) thereby playing with polarities or extremes to facilitate the backwards glance of reconsideration, the doubletake, the momentary reflection that is required in order to instigate a re-examination.

I'm interpreting the word 'surface' in relation to immediate audience understanding or reading: how things are initially understood.

- I feel like there are areas within the conceptual and contextual ideas of ... work. For example looking into sociology, opposing interests, reflection and the way we initially understand things at face value.

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Artists to look at:

-Olafur Eliasson- Tate turbine hall

-Suki Chan- video, eye

-Rikrit Trivanija

-Tino Seajal- Tate turbine hall

-Simon Faithfull- following a rule

-Tascieta Dean- painting chalk drawings

-Michael du certao- key study of everyday life

Books and films:

-Henry David Thurogh- The philosophy of walking

-Wild

Common links between context and concept:

-Religious experiences on mass

-Apparition

-Psychogeography

-Group safety and isolation

-Environmental installation

There were some really useful contextual ideas mentioned for me to explore further. I don’t read enough books so it was really interesting to get a book reference that possibly links to my practice. Some links between contexts that people associate with my work was really interesting to hear too as I’ve never heard of psychogeography so I’m excited to research what that is and how it could possibly tie in to creating new work as I tend to use environmental aspects anyway. There wasn’t any comment on my actual presentation except that the handout of contextual references I made was very good to refer too whilst I was talking and looked like a lot of thought had gone into the putting together of the presentation.

Moving on from this feedback on contextual presentation I will definitely look further into references the group gave me as well as furthering research into that of my current contextual interests. I record all my contextual research and development on my blog so I will make sure to update my blog with these new references.

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More relationship with self and body. Think about putting more kinetic energy into work. Get outside. Take work into a new environment. Create more context around work. Include more personal narrative. Different stages in the egg. Nest, bed different material such as straw. Photograph in maitreyas garden. Very natural and earthy work. Include multiples. Manmade into natural. Sublime, circle of life. Andrew Brown. ASMR. Direct relationship to the body. Clear space in studio

It was really interesting and useful to get new feedback on my work so far by some fresh eyes. Lots of ideas for context I could build on. A lot of comments on getting out of the studio and working bigger. Not to work with nature but to imitate it.

Research a lot of artists mentioned to see if there are any similarities or differences between works to build context. Go and read some more books in the library. Create more bigscale work that has more contact with me. Incorporate the narratives into my work, whether that be writing or illustrative

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Buddha talks a lot about the cause of suffering being attachment and or craving. and that if you let go of that attachment, cut the cord on it you will be free and a way to practice letting go can be through meditation disconnecting yourself from yesterday and tomorrow and instead live in the here and now and be present and you will be free minded and happy.

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A apanese school of Mahayana Buddhism emphasizing the value of meditation and intuition rather than ritual worship or study of scriptures.Zen Buddhism is not interested in metaphysical theories and rituals and focuses entirely on the mindful practice of Zazen. Zen is very simple. It is so simple, in fact, that it's very difficult to grasp. In the silence of the dojo temple, quietly sit down, stop moving, and let go your thoughts. Focus just on your Zazen posture and your breathing. Keep your back straight. Let your ego and your unconscious mind melt away, merge with the universe.

This is Zen.

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1. TIME PASSES, life will always have the element of unfulfillment as anything you want in time is going to pass away. Thats the trap of time, its short lived fulfilment, you'll forever be chasing goals and counting your life away and never live in the now.
2. THE CAUSE OF SUFFERING IS DESIRE (OR CRAVING), you can honour life but if you try to hold on to it you will be unfulfilled.
3. GIVE UP ATTACHMENT, GIVE UP DESIRE, if you're not attached to this particular time-space locus then you can be free.
4. THE EIGHTFOLD PATH (FOR GETTING RID OF DESIRE), get your life straight. Do everything you've got to do! in the now.

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Is the bird nest the best way to communicate my ideas?

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Is the bird nest the best way to communicate my ideas?

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When researching Agnes Martin and the way she talks about her mind becoming a void before she creates her work, I've never related more. I have been an over thinker for as long as i can remember forever analysing every single aspect of my life, but when it comes to creating I feel like I'm walking into a white walled room hoping that from somewhere in my mind I can pull out an idea to work with. That doesn't mean I'm not an artist because I am.  I love minimalism because its not trying to shout at you and ram your mind with loads of information its instead letting you clear your mind. That peaceful state is how i like to live my life and create my art. But when it comes to context i have no idea where my work stands. I'm timid and so is my work I hardly do large scale and never use bold colours to the point they become artificial, I think if i was creating work like that I would be pushed completely out of my comfort zone. Im not scared of colour, I LOVE IT and i would always describe my childhood as a colourful one. But with so much research into colour being used in advertising and marketing and how it is used to manipulate us, i've lost my trust in it. The last thing I would ever want my artwork to do is manipulate or shout at the viewer as I myself would never want to do that to anyone, its not in my character and therefore shouldn't be involved in my artwork.

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What are your interests outside of your creative practice?
- Watching new films
- Visiting new exhibitions
- Going for walks with my family and dog
- Making cross stitch pieces
- Going for tea or hot chocolate
- Relaxing in bed listening to chilled music
- Online shopping but not buying things
- Finding new interests on pinterest
- Going out with friends
- Spending time with animals
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Theoretical backbone

Whimsy

-think of a frame as a nest?

Busts and mirrors, work looking back at itself trying to get to the bottom of what they are and mean

Reverent meaning

"You have your own values to guide you"

Space and detail

Minimalist detailing

Two sided painting

William Morris greenery tapestry

Some search of home, am I just decorating?

Wanderlust, Joseph Cornell

Animal stories and write my own stories

Similar shapes to moms

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John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher, and artist. Neither a painter or a sculptor, Cage is best known for revolutionizing modern music through his incorporation of unconventional instrumentation and the idea of environmental music dictated by chance. His approach to composition was deeply influenced by Asian philosophies, focusing on the harmony that exists in nature, as well as elements of chance. Cage’s early compositions were written in the 12-tone method of his teacher Schoenberg, but by 1939 he had begun to experiment with increasingly unorthodox instruments such as the “prepared piano” (a piano modified by objects placed between its strings in order to produce percussive and otherworldly sound effects). He wanted to break the bounds of conventional western music and its concepts of meaningful sound. In the following years, Cage turned to zen buddhism and other Eastern philosophies and concluded that all the activities that make up music must be seen as part of a single natural process. He came to regard all kinds of sounds as potentially musical.
" Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?"
-John cage

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Agnes Martin is perhaps most recognised for her evocative paintings marked out in subtle pencil lines and pale colour washes. Although restrained, her style was underpinned by her deep conviction in the emotive and expressive power of art. Martin believed that spiritual inspiration and not intellect created great work. ‘Without awareness of beauty, innocence and happiness’ Martin wrote ‘one cannot make works of art’. Agnes would sit rocking in a chair clearing her mind and letting her image form line by line on miniature postage stamp size, this in a way is a meditative state where her artwork is created. she once showed a young girl a rose and asked "is the rose beautiful?" the young girl replied yes, Agnes then hid the rose behind her back and asked the girl "is the rose still beautiful?" the young girl replied yes and Agnes said "Its because the beauty is not in the rose itself its in you're mind". Her work is empty of abrupt meaning it doesn't shout it softly whispers.

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“My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing. I’m also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity — that physical feeling and power that space can give.” James Turrell has worked directly with light and space to create artworks that engage viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception. Turrell, an avid pilot who has logged over twelve thousand hours flying, considers the sky as his studio, material and canvas.Turrell often cites the Parable of Plato’s Cave to introduce the notion that we are living in a reality of our own creation, subject to our human sensory limitations as well as contextual and cultural norms. “My work has no object, no image and no focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking. What is important to me is to create an experience of wordless thought.”

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A contemporary gallery set up as a homage to Barbara Hepworth who was born in Wakefield. Yorkshire landscape was hugely important in Barbara Hepworth’s creative life and they influenced her sculpture so the garden is another salute to her work

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Tutors comments:

Comments on your Practice: (Workshops, independent and practical pages)

- It’s been really exciting seeing your work develop, you have a very clear sense and idea of what you want your work to do and evoke. You’ve used different materials and workshops to explore different possibilities in presenting these ideas. I thought your recent work was very evocative and delicate, yet retained a simplicity and pure relationship with its materials. The practical pages were very informative and engaging if a bit text heavy. Context wise its now time to really understand and push the ideas around your work, I would look further into Japanese craft and ideas around Wabi Sabi, also artists like James Turrell, Agnes Martin and John Cage have been heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism, do some research!!

Comments on your Writing: (Tutorial Reports - you have already received feedback on your Exhibition Text 1)

-Good and thorough TRFs, excellent and thorough reflection about what was said, especially in the most recent ones, this is a really important aspect of TRFs and carry on using them to understand and develop your ideas.

Comments on your Engagement with, and Attendance on, the course:

Studio sessions 92%      Live 100%     Context 100%     Year Meetings 91%

Great attendance and engagement with the course, it seems like you’re really enjoying and challenging yourself!

Your engagement is great in the group tutorials and you always have some attentive and supportive feedback to give to others!!

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YSP provides a centre of international importance for the production, exhibition and appreciation of modern and contemporary sculpture. Many inspirational elements combined here create unique and exceptional balances of art, heritage, space. The nature of the Park’s setting encourages exploration of the relationship between art and nature, stimulating engagement and adventure in the surroundings.

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The stages of casting a chicken egg in resin

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The stages of casting a chicken egg in resin

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1. Firstly I hard boiled a chicken egg. I made a small plinth for the egg from glue stick so that it hovered in the centre of the coffee cup.
2. I then mixed up 500g? of silicone and and added 28g of catalyst. I mixed with a wooden stick till it was all combined and then poured in thin ribbons into the cup filling up the sides first.
3. I left the silicone to set for 72 hours and when I came back it had all set and was ready to cut the mould open.
4. I made an incition in the coffee cup and pulled it off the set silicone mould. I then made a squiggly incursion into the silicone mould so that it would slot together easily after i cast the chicken egg.
5. Into the silicone mould i poured 90g of resin mixed with gold leaf and tiny violet flowers.
6. I left the resin to set for 72 hours and then put it in the oven to cure it of its stickiness.
7. I then sanded and polished until the egg was smooth and glistening

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... Let me rest in a nest of peace... Let me rest from the all day stress... Let me be reborned tomorrow... And let my messy mind just be ... In a silent nest of peace...

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Ulrike Bolenz is a photographic artist who now lives in Brussels. Bolenz examines transparency by encasing photographed silhouettes in plexiglas. By offering them a second skin tattooed with acrylic, she reinforces the expression of the bodies and faces which burst forth from the medium to confront the viewer. Her choice to hang them, suspended, accentuates the unreal effect of her work. We are faced head-on with these imprisoned ghosts in their immaterial lives. Tangible links to reality are gone. We sense the temptation to reach an inaccessible goal, towards which all energy is directed. This poetic universe affects us, because during our lives we too pass from shadow to light and from light to shadow.

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An egg is an entire reproductive body comprising of a protective enclosure for the stored nutrients and developing embryo contained within it. The eggs of terrestrial animals, such as birds, cannot mature in aquatic environments and are protected from drying out inside by a waterproof outer membrane or shell, which can also be effective protection against predators.

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Night in The Museum Exhibition curated by Ryan Gander

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Night in The Museum Exhibition curated by Ryan Gander

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Taking place at Birminghams museum and Art gallery, leading British artist, Ryan Gander, has selected works from this world class national collection of modern and contemporary British art, as part of the celebrations for the Arts Council Collection’s 70th anniversary.

For the exhibition Gander has selected artworks which appear to be involved in the act of looking. He has presented these works so that they appear to gaze at works featuring the colour blue; a colour which is important in Gander’s work, and which for him represents the abstract ideas often found in modern and contemporary art.

Gander’s approach has provided an entirely fresh view of the Arts council's collection of modern and contemporary British art. His show is challenging traditional methods of selection, prompting us to rethink the role of the curator, the art object and the spectator.

The exhibition represents the work of over thirty artists, including Reg Butler, Patrick Caulfield, Jacob Epstein, Roger Hiorns, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Kerry Stewart, Wolfgang Tillmans and Rebecca Warren. Also included are major loans of work by artists including Angela Bulloch, Matthew Darbyshire, Don Brown, Mario García Torres and Thomas Houseago. One of the commissions, As old as time itself, slept alone, by Ryan Gander will be presented as part of this exhibition.

Visiting this exhibition has given me more food for thought when it comes to curating an exhibition. I have never seen such varying artworks work so well in situe with one another. Thinking about the relationship between artworks displayed in exhibition has always fascinated me and visiting the 'Night in the Museum' exhibition made you feel as if when you had your back turned the artworks were in conversation with one another, just a really interesting curatorial exhibition

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Ephemerality  literally means "lasting only one day" is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Typically the term ephermal is used to describe objects found in nature, although it can describe a wide range of things, including human artifacts intentionally made to last for only a temporary period, in order to increase their perceived aesthetic value. This could be another interesting aspect to bring to a project by incorporating the natural destructive power of nature.

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Celia developed a passion for the natural environment and birds in particular from a very young age. A lot of her time is spent drawing and studying domestic and native British birds from life, capturing their movement and character is her primary concern. Celia draws with wire, as others draw with pencil, for her creating sculptures out of wire is like drawing in three dimensions. She finds that wire has a spontaneity that can give her sculptures a feeling of life and energy. Her materials are mainly sourced from scrap yards, each visit brings new colours and textures which helps to inspire the next creation. The wires may have previously been used for telephone and electrical wiring, or perhaps some rusty fencing found abandoned in a field.

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I'm finally happy with the way this project is going. In my last tutorial I got a lot of feedback on the two larger stitched circles hung in a way I'd like them to be presented in a gallery. The feedback was very positive and said that the presentation was very considered and organic.
Comments on concept were that is was representing; circle of life, unity and community. All these comments got me thinking about how I could further this project especially into more of a 3D form. So as a way forward I'm  going to look at making multiples to further the idea of community. I think its important to move on continuing my interest in what circles in nature can represent. A thought thats linking these two ideas is looking into birds nests.

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Damanhur is a Federation of spiritual communities located in the north Piedmont region of Italy, between Turin and Aosta. Founded in 1975 by Oberto Airaudi, his vision of a community based on solidarity, love, spirituality and respect for the environment. In 40 years, Damanhurians have created initiatives in the fields of labor,  politics, culture, education, art and research the subtle energies that guide the universe. The spiritual pathway, called the School of Meditation, guides every Damanhurian in self-exploration and seeking the meaning of existence, including through the study of ancient magical traditions and celebrations of the rhythms of nature. Respect for the environment is one of the foundations of the Damanhurian way of thinking. Damanhurians cultivate the earth and raise animals organically, renovate and construct buildings according to eco-building criteria, and they have developed companies that plan and install renewable energy systems. They also favour natural methods of healing and a holistic vision of medicine. This ideal of community really interests me, a stripping back of technological advances and respect for our earth.

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A bird nest is the spot in which a bird lays and incubates its eggs and raises its young. Although the term refers to a specific structure made by the bird itself, for some species, a nest is simply a shallow depression made in sand as for others, it is the knot-hole left by a broken branch, a burrow dug into the ground, a chamber drilled into a tree, an enormous rotting pile of vegetation and earth, a shelf made of dried saliva or a mud dome with an entrance tunnel. In most species, the female does most or all of the nest construction, though the male often helps. Presumably because of the vulnerability of their unprotected eggs, parent birds rarely leave them unattended. The idea of protection and vulnerability being so intertwined has always been an interesting subject to me. I explored it briefly in my first week at NTU but I would like to explore it deeper.

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-Der Blaue Reiter began in Munich. While both confronted feelings of alienation within an increasingly modernizing world, Der Blaue Reiter sought to transcend the mundane by pursuing the spiritual value of art.
-The name "Der Blaue Reiter" referred to Kandinsky and Marc's belief that blue was the most spiritual color and symbolized the ability to move beyond.
-The Blue Period of Picasso is the period between 1900 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. These somber works seemed to reflect his experience of relative poverty and instability, depicting beggars, street urchines, the old and frail and the blind.