During the 1980s the work he created gave a glance into the lives of  British working class people under Thatchers rule. 

She grew up surrounded by other artists and her mother’s art. 

Her first favourite artist as a child was Picasso.

pierre de francesca was a big influence on the composition of her art like the room. He is her favourite historical artist.

She takes casts of many different things

Ghost was her breakthrough peice and in this peice she actually took a cast of the inside of a room.

She then took a cast of a whole house in her work “house”. It is regarded as one of the great sculpture works of the 20th century. So she came very well respected in the art world she won awards and exhibited and commissioned work globally.

After all these huge works she moved back to more intimate works through the 2000s things like doors and windows.

Poetry inspires her and her work also inspires poets. Similar to poetry her work tells a story in only few words.

She is of the opinion that art should be well thought out and intellectually stimulating and she finds “lazy” art uninteresting.

George Orwell was another writer she felt inspired by and after reading 1984 she decided to make a sculpture from the room that he worked in to tell a story about his work and life. She ripped out the inside of the room before taking a cast of it as she wanted it to have a sort of war torn feel to it relating to his life and memories.

She believes because the titling of artwork alludes to what it is or means that this was something she tried to choose carefully and simply and if she didn’t want the name to affect perception of the artwork she would simply leave the works as untitled. 

She now has two kids and works differently than what she used to- taking breaks from her workspace and a much smaller team because most of her sculptures are on a more intimate small scheme than what they used to (with a couple of exceptions).

Born in 1963, Tracy Emin is an English Artist Who is well known for her controversial self exposing work. She was born in Surrey and grew up in Kent and raised by her mother and father who ran a hotel. Her father abandoned them leaving her mother in bankrupcy. She was then forced to live in poverty with her family.

When she moved away to study study fashion at the Medway College of Design she met Billy Childish. Her relationship with him and studying printing  at Maidstone art college are experiences that shaped her as a young artist.

After studying for and recieving an MA in art at the Royal College, She went on to destroy the work she made there after she left and suffered a traumatic experience.

She has had a turbulent life and has suffered from mental illness, addiction and her experience with this and gender issues are mostly what her art focuses on. 

In 1997 her work Everyone I have ever slept with she created a tent with all the names of the people shed slept with in her life and the biggest most central name was billy childish, showing the lasting impact he had on her life. This work was completely self exposing and the art came from one of her most private parts of her life made into art for public consumption.

Her next breakthrough work was highly controversial it was called My Bed. Similar to marcel duchamps urinal sculpture this art work was readymade. It simply consisted of the artists dirty bed, used condoms bloody pants etc. This artwork again was extremely exposing of a dark side and heavy side of her life filled with emotional turmoil. In many cultures the darker unsanitary parts of life like messy rooms should remain private and this is why tis artwork caused so many uncomfortable reactions.

Born in 1927 in rochester Indiana, John Chamberlain grew up in Chicago and served in the navy as a young man. He later attended the black mountain college  to study sculpture.

He is known for his industrial looking scrap metal sculptures that are crumpled and folded into abstract shapes often with bright pops of colour.

His work often used steel from autobodies and while studying at the art institute in Chicago he became heavily inspired by the work of David smith. He described Smith’s work as “very strange looking” and explained that he had never seen anything like it. Like many sculpture artists of the 1960s John chamberlain eliminated to pedastal element of his sculptural work, instead having his work free-standing on the floor.

His work had a tortured feel to it and damaged twisted metal that looked like it had suffered crash damage which could have been influenced by the fact that he served in the navy as a young man. He was criticised for using scrap metal from discarded autocrats as this metal could have came from tragic car accidents but this could have been part of something he was trying to communicate in his tormented maltallic works.

His works are abstract and often have folds in them similar to draped fabric.

His work Dolores James (1962) like many others was first assembled purely by balancing and later welding. He often talked about the importance of weight and the parts of metal marrying together naturally with the state they were found in rather than trying to force them together or deliberately fit them together. For me - I learned while making my skin sculpture in class that letting gravity do the work rather than trying to force the object to the shape I  wanted it was important as it held together and as he said “married” together better. The bold colour and abstract shape of Dolores James was very much reminiscent of the abstract expressionist painters from the time; almost as if one of their paintings was in a sculptural form.

Born on December 11th 1911, Louise Bourgeois was a Fresh American sculptor, painter and printmaker. She mainly used drypoint technique in her printmaking. She started creating drypoint prints in the 40s and then picked up printing again in the 1980s. The themes of her work included life and death, sexuality and home life. Much of her work reflected upon the trauma she had endured as a child and her relationship with her parents. Living through the First World War as a child also had an influence on her work.

Her work “the young girl” 2016 uses drypoint and hand colouring which is something that I would like to experiment with in my own figurative wok as it works well. This work explores the identity of a young female and her body is shown separately on either side which to my understanding illustrates the disection and criticism that a young woman faces for her body from such a young age. Her hair is shown to be growing out of her head like branches and its a nice way of representing growth, puberty and a young woman forming her own opinion. It has a rebellious feel as these branches grow out of the circle that the young woman is held within.

Her work “empty Nest 1994” is much more minimal in its mark making and very much a linear minimal drypoint print. She suffered from a fear of abandonment and loneliness in her life and this simple print beautifully depicts a woman who has lost her child as they have grown older and fled the nest. The woman hands are up at her face and her knees are bent high up like she’s curled up in a vulnerable fetes position which we often curl u in during our most sad and empty times. Her work is mostly based on memory so everything has her own charming style to it and is far from photorealistic making it interesting and very personal. The lack of surface tone and keeping the minimal amount of lines to create this print brings the sense of emptiness that is being felt by the woman herself and the artist in times of loneliness.

Born in 1955 is a South African Artist. He is a white artist who was around for the time of apartheid in africa however his father was one of the leading anti apartheid lawyers in South Africa and his knowledge of the injustice and atrocities that went on during this time was also something William felt strongly about. His work explores oppression, colonialism and conflict- all of which relevant to his South African upbringing.

In his work “domestic scenes” 1980 he focused on shining a light on the black maids, nanny’s, and cooks and his relationship with them and their relationship with elite South Africans. Serving things to them and almost being invisible to them. These works are etchings using black ink and they have a nice movement to them.

His two drypoint series were called Thinking aloud 9 small thoughts (2004) and Copper notes, states 0-11 (2005). These etchings are playful, loose and full of movement. While he explores different ideas he conveys this by using exploratory techniques that are lose and rough in their application. 8-11 look as though when you put the three together they are animated. The face subject appears in 8 as light with a light background and then fades into a haze of black etched scratchings as it reaches eleven. These are interesting studies to look at and useful to me looking at suggesting tone in a playful way in my own drypoint prints.

a material thing that can be seen and touched.

How do you define what an object is?

To me it is a thing that could be hidden or in the open that is visible to the eye or to touch regardless of wether is is hidden it may be accessible to anyone or any thing that is in its area. Even if you are blind you can touch an object and if you are deaf you can still touch the object this is unless it is an object hidden, not yet discovered or rediscovered or off limits to certain groups of people. 

Is there really any objects?

As living beings we can only perceive objects with the senses that we inherit. But if you were a being with no senses maybe objects wouldn’t exist, and who is to say that our senses are correct? I think there are objects to me as a human being as my brain has decided to process that there is, but I cannot say the same for if my brain were to have a different perception of what phycically exists.

To our current understanding on a scientific level objects like everything else are made up of lots of atoms vibrating to create something almost like a hologram that shows us that the object is there.

Can there be objects in art?

Yes there can be. If art is supposed to be interpreted, an an object is something you can feel with your senses and interoperate 

On a personal level or on the level that the artist found or created this object with.

Why do we care about objects?

Certain objects have personal or sentimental value and hold memories like for example the bear my nan gave to me as a child that I’ve slept with ever since, this object brings me comfort. Equally they can carry traumatic memories depending on the specific object. I think that humans fear lonliness/ isolation and tend to attach themselves unconsciously to objects that hold the value of memories. Objects can have interesting histories and humans find it an important thing to keep our history documented in order to try and understand what we are and objects are another way of doing this.

Do objects matter?

This again is personal. The teddy bear I have does not matter to a stranger as it matters to me. And equally a historical artifact that may matter to many humans does not matter to other animals. Equally a banana in the jungle that is not inhabited by humans but only animals, this banana is a food source to an animal like the monkey so this banana is more important to that monkey than it is to us humans. Most man made objects matter on a more superficial level than a life and as humans I think that made objects may matter more to us than to most animals as we are complicated beings and value things out with our own lives and survival. However having said this some man made objects if you class machines as objects do help with survival and these objects matter to any human who wants to keep living!

Is an object something that you make?

I think an object to me is something made by someone or something that grows in nature. And I’m my opinion the true owner of nature’s objects are earth itself and even though they can be capitalised on Or claimed the person who owns or inherits land will die and eventually their family will not own it and the fruit being sold at the market can be stolen so nature’s objects to me aren’t owned by one person. When it comes to man made objects the owner of the object includes the person who came up with the idea and the people who made it. So objects can be something you either make or find.

Is an object readymade/ found?

Yes we can only perceive an object if it is made or found. The process of it becoming an object means that it is not an object until it has actually been created or found.

Who is the owner or author of the work if the artist didn’t make it?

This is something I have thought about before but I believe the author is everyone who went into making it and not just the artist themselves. They made the idea, that doesn’t mean they made the object as an idea is not something that can be defined as an object. However without the idea the object wouldn’t have came to be so they should be the first listed owner but the makers should definitely be credited in my opinion.

Is an idea more important than the thing/ object?

Without the idea the object couldn’t come to be. And you can have an idea without an object but not an object without an idea. But the person attached to the idea and who came up with it is no more important than the people who help to create it.

The kilogram is measured by a historical artifact that was created in france in 1889 but because this was a man made object it slowly degraded getting lighter and lighter and this has an impact on all kilograms across the world as they are all based on the weight of this artifact called Le Grand K.

This means that the current kilogram is not truly accessible as the true kilogram is locked in a vault in France and all the other kilograms on earth are based on this weight.

So scientists from all over the work set out to redifine the kilogram into a new and truly accessible way to define the kilogram. By doing this they wanted to use a constant of nature rather than an artifact as this is something accessible to everyone on earth. 

The universal constant that the scienctists chose that they wanted to measure the kilogram by was planks constant. It relates mass to frequency as everything in nature is made up by atoms and it relates the speed these atoms vibrate at to to the weight of the object they make up. In the end all the scientists from all the different countries got together and a final decision was made at a conference that planks constant would be the new way to measure the kilogram!

Watching this documentary helped me to understand the measurement of objects. I have never really though about the making of a kilogram and was shocked when I found out it came from a historical artifact. 

We would like you to reflect on your final prints and evaluate your creative process which led to your final artwork by answering the following questions: 

1. How well did you respond to the brief of “Environment” – did ideas form easily? Was it quite challenging? 

I know that instantly for me I am totally drawn to people in my environment so I found it easy to think of what I was interested in to make work from. I am also drawn to the traces that people leave behind them and the story these traces tell. It can be a cultural thing like the buckfast bottle or a childlike thing like the toy or even a coping mechanism like the discarded cigarette and it tells a nice narrative and evidence of the person who left it. However if I could go back I’d either pick just the still lives of the discarded objects or the people with their items to save confusion. Regardless of all this I made a few peices of nice work in amongst everything I done during this project that I am proud of.

2. What has your process been like?

For me it’s been my first time working with print making and I have really enjoyed just trying to be playful and learn the different techniques and processes. I would say my process has been very experimental because of this. Trying out more playful styles to see what would fit best with my theme and trying not to just be too precious and keep everything tight and ridged. This included painterly stippling brushwork in my additive print and scratchy messy lines in my drypoint print. I had to solve the problem of what methods would work best for the particular subject matter.

3. What do you think of your ideas and how did you develop them?

I think my ideas were thought out in that they did include many different types of traces that people left but I also think I could of pushed them further had I had more images, not only for print making but the project as a whole. However I did develop different styles with these ideas and try and fit particular styles to particular ideas. For exapmle my more figurative work of the girl on the bench who left her bag was taken from my drypoint artist research as this was a successful method for an artist to record more figurative work. And my additive print of the bunny had a softness to it in order to try and capture the essence of the young child who had left it there, the softness of its fur and also the solemn, lonely atmosphere that it radiates. If I were to redo this project I would’ve been more experimental and tried printing onto different materials etc and just pushed a bit further.

4. What worked and what didn’t?

I think that the example of the bunny I just have worked however the first version of it actually failed. I also think that the first trace monoprint I created of the bottle that I created wasn’t the best. I found that the line drawing method had so much more charm and was much more visually pleasing and interesting which is why I chose it for my final eventually. I found that printing with objects didn’t work out as well in terms of fitting in with my theme as it was quite abstract and if I could go back i would have played more and pushed it a little further to make it work in response to my brief. The failed prints made for a good base to draw on top of for my drawing class so they weren’t just cast away and that recycled nature gave a nice depth to my work. Also the first attempt at my final trace monoprints didn’t work very well and failed quite badly but this was because I missed things from my process.

5. How well does your final meet the requirements of the brief?

For my final I selected the best trace monoprints from the ones that I had done. In response to the word environment I chose the traces the people leave in the environment and the Image of the Buckfast bottle does illustrate a cultural trace of a Scottish individual. The final print in black and red is at least in multicolour like the brief required and the other is in black and white. So in terms of colour I think that the brief requirements were met but all in all this is definitely not my best work and I would be more likely to use my developmental work in my actual portfolio itself.

3. Are you happy with your finals? If not how could you have improved?

Im definitely frustrated and not very pleased with my finals. I think I made nicer work throughout my developments. I think that this is definitely down to time management. If I had taken longer to prepare my finals correctly I know that I would be much happier with them. Next time I could improve by allowing myself sufficient time to make sure I have the correct materials at hand and utilise them properly. I could study the chosen printing process by looking over the tutorial videos and making sure I have plenty of practise attempts before utilising my last precious studio hours wisely. My finals not going to plan has definitely taught me a lesson about time management and I will take this forward into my next project.

Remember to analyse your work, not describe the process. We don’t need a full run down of the print processes but rather a reflection on your process and the work you have produced. 

(100 work minimum for each question)

An object I have a special relationship with is my hippo teddy that I named bear.

 I got it from my nan on my first Christmas and it is an object with so many good and bad memories attatched to it as it has been my comfort object for my whole life.

 

My theme of environment was the traces that people leave in there environment. I think that bear is always a mark or indication that I am near by as I take her everywhere with me and she has even traveled with me.

This bear is definitely known to my family and friends as something connected to me and therefore they all would recognise it as a trace of me or an indication of my presence in the environment.

Since the project is not only about if you could remove the person what is left of them what objects etc are left of them but its also about what story the objects tell of the person- I think this object is full of different stories of memories for me personally but I’m the only person who knows these stories and can tell them. So the person and the object are attached and the significance of the object is personal.