As a Fine art student at DMU, I am working with my peer Pip Tomlins (cc'ed) to put on an art exhibition, and we are interested in using the space downstairs in the Leicester Adult Education Centre. I've seen the space used as an exhibition space before and I believe the space is perfect for our vision. We plan to show the exhibition in October 2023. We would love to show the work for between 1-6 weeks, but these details are open for change- I want our collaboration to be comfortable and aligned with your regulations and expectations.

Please contact me to let me know what requirements are needed of us to be able to use the space. I will be hosting a Creative writing workshop in my university and I'd love to bring this to the Centre to help give to the community in a more fun and engaging way.

The theme of the exhibition is "Pushing Boundaries". I wish to create a space that is safe for artists to exhibit (to have a voice at a time where media censorship) and we have commissioned up to 5 artists who will show. I understand that the public has full access to the space and so we must take into consideration how to manage the space accordingly. Some of the art shown will handle sensitive topics and so Pip and I visited the space last week to discuss how we could manage and curate the space accordingly. Any art considered by us, and you, to be sensitive will not be able to be seen from the stairs, and we plan to use the wall facing the stairs to hold warning signs for each topic to discuss. We want the space to be safe. We also understand that language may be a barrier, and so I think it would be beneficial to discuss the languages that are spoken by visitors in order to cater for them- the last thing we want is for somebody to witness something they wouldn't have bothered with because we made the mistake of assuming every visitor spoke 'enough' English.

The exhibition proposal is attached. Do let me know if there is anything else that may be needed in order to further discuss details and make any confirmations.

Thank you for your time,

Lillian Ozelci
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Sent to Pip for additions

 

As a Fine art student at DMU, I am working with my peer Pip Tomlins (cc'ed) to put on an art exhibition, and we are interested in using the space downstairs in the Leicester Adult Education Centre. I've seen the space used as an exhibition space before and I believe the space is perfect for our vision. We plan to show the exhibition in October 2023. We would love to show the work for between 1-6 weeks, but these details are open for change- I want our collaboration to be comfortable and aligned with your regulations and expectations.

 

Please contact me to let me know what requirements are needed of us to be able to use the space. I will be hosting a Creative writing workshop in my university and I'd love to bring this to the Centre to help give to the community in a more fun and engaging way.

 

We both would love to have a conversation about our vision for the exhibition. Contact me if you need any further information and please let me know when we can come in and speak about it all

 

Thank you for your time,

Lillian Ozelci

I was wondering if I could speak to a person/the people who organise the weekly sessions about hosting a workshop for the society. It can be a hosted event where posters can be put up, or it can be for whoever shows up on the Thursday, but I would like to be able to sit and discuss the whats, whys and hows.

In my course, I have a duty to begin developing my career as an artist and I will be curating exhibitions with a peer, (cc'ed) Pip, and I want creative writing to be part of the exhibition. Words can be taken, changed, manipulated and truthful, thus, inevitably, language is medium of art that the art world must begin to credit.

The theme of the exhibition is pushing boundaries.

I look forward to discussing this further. I am available the week of 

Please contact me on lillian.ozelci@gmail.com, my university email gets spammed.

Thank you,

Lillian "

The poeple that organise the sessions are just me and the committee, we have weekly meetings on Wednesday afternoons. You'd be welcome to join us planning and run a portion of a session sometime soon.

I will bring it up to the committee this Wednesday, please let me know if you have a timeframe you need to do this within.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Bee

Secretary, Creative Writing "

I then spoke to Bee in the next creative writing session about the details. I have been invited to the next group meeting which takes place on Wednesdays.

Inspired by Black Panther movements, spiritual leaders, and even using social media platforms as a form of communicating the need for change, they say:

“I have to bring into the world what I wanna see- I have to find a way to curate that inner space”. They spent over6 months preparing it. Kincaid was asked to be part of a residency called Disturbance in Ugly Duck (london); a trans-led space, and once seeing some of the natural disasters (e.g.floods in Pakistan), Kincaid felt that these disasters were Mother Nature’s (i.e.the black non-binary parent Earth’s) boundary. The human race has been taking from Earth, and so the performance became a space for spiritually channeling this being (who was well-versed in divine feminine self-sacrifice) to create accountability within the audience. Colonising land is one of the top causes of harming the Earth- abusing resources, taking, hurting…

As a queer POC, Kincaid inevitably understands the foundation of Earth, Mother Earth, is above confines of gender, black because humans began in Africa, and people are “running away from blackness because we can’t face ourselves”- describing blackness as a concept, not necessarily singularly describing skin (that being black is an experience including, but also above physicality).

“What is the purpose for art? Does your identity play a part of yours?”

Paraphrased, Kincaid used an example: there’s a reason why trans artists make art about transness, not just ‘pretty clouds’. People create art inspired by their experience, because art’s foundation is in being seen- trans people, POC are not seen, not heard, if art can hold space to have a concept, a belief truly seen, then art, to Kincaid, is inevitably political, inevitably anti-facist. Their identity is therefore, at least for now, involved in much/all of Kincaid’s art.

“I want to discuss the audience/artist dynamic in performance. Who is The Earth’s Monologue for? The audience on the final night was quite receptive, what if the audience isn’t?”

Kincaid begins by explaining that performance art made for the performer is not inherently “wrong/bad”, but artists must be aware of their positionality because being an artist is being seen. To Kincaid, performance, the “gift of live moment” is a privilege; Kincaid believes it would be unethical to not speak about current affairs, especially with the rise of neo-fascism:

“It’s a fucked up time”.

Curating a space for people to feel comfortable enough to interact (something I’ve been exploring in my performances) is difficult, the industry-based audience on the first night were not as interactive as the performance I witnessed.

Just being abit punk, “find the middle ground” between performer/audience, and remember: avoid depersonalisation/desensitisation, stay connected.

Chicago taught women the necessity of speaking loudly, even shaking hands: mainly teaching the “Fresno girls” how to take up space in a male-dominant field such as art.

Woman House is how Chicago and Shapiro pioneered a new pedagogy: collaborative, nonhierarchical, feminist.

The building became a space for over 20 installations/performances. From November- January, the women had a strict schedule that involved consciousness-raising sessions (every person had the space to discuss their experiences of domesticity, which was then further discussed as to how it could be used as subject matter for art). There were over 10,000 visitors.

There was many different mediums used in the installations: the menstrual room was filled with sanitary products (used and packaged), the Womb room was filled with crocheted web-like features, domestic related items such as lipsticks, shoes, pillows and performances that involve domestic labour as well as caricatures of types of women in Three Women.

The performance involved audience members sitting on a chair across from the artist for a couple minutes at a time before being ushered away for the next person. It was only one person at a time and eye contact was Abramovic’s main medium in the performance. There was nothing between the members of the public and the artist. The space was open: people were free to witness the performance occurring from higher levels, looking down. Quite a few of the people who took part were brought to tears and Abramovic herself addressed these responses:

“It was [a] complete surprise… this enormous need of humans to have contact”.

There was even an audience member who chose to spend the whole day with her, “exchanging energy”.

The work was inspired by her belief that making the length of her performance so long, that she could shift the perception of time, but the outcome of the performance, and media coverage of it, is more oriented to the emotional responses. She explains that her past performances, and her meditative lifestyle, allowed for her to develop endurance. She says she couldn’t have stayed on the chair for 7-8 hours at a time otherwise.

Mehretu explores landscape paintings from people such as Edwin Church and Thomas Cole. The artist used photoshop to combine Church’s and Bierstadt’s landscape paintings with blurred images of race riots which emerged after media coverage of the murder of people of colour in America. The sirens and flames from the riots add colour to the huge scale paintings (27ft x 32 ft). Mehretu says that this “embeds the paintings with DNA so I can respond from a deeper space”. Some of the brushes had been modified by her to achieve her goal, as well as manually operating the forklift she used to access the huge painting to create her desired brush strokes. Her medium was ink. She also used screen prints which created a ‘digital’ layer on top of the layered landscape.

Jazz musician Jason Moran was invited to the Harlem church that Mehretu used as a studio for this project- the artist wanted a jazz musician because historically, jazz was commonplace for politics and she felt it fit her theme and her expression. He found A flat to be the tone that resonated with the space of the church and ended up creating a composition that was played when viewing the paintings: the piece became a musical and visual collaboration with the intention of bringing light to upsetting political climate, turned-violent riots and innocent murders.

“actually hearing your drawing somehow, the mixture of the hand, eye and ear at the same time.”

It depicts a white woman’s face that has been split: left side in black and white, and the right side is a monochromatic inversion: positive and negative exposures. Three lines of text, the title split into three (lining the top, centre and bottom) of the poster produces a tabloid-like, authoritative and direct effect to the viewer. The lexis itself adds to this confrontational theme, and even though it was made for a specific cause from the past, the reproductive rights of women are, unfortunately, in constant danger and thus, the poster becomes timeless. Direct address is a theme of Kruger’s other posters, and is reminiscent of the Guerilla Girls’ posters: ‘in your face’ and factual. Kruger says:

“I like [directness]because it cuts through the grease”.

Kruger’s art encourages the viewer to consider identity as something forged by culture and as something that can be represented through language as well as image: herself, combining the two.

"Sometimes when I see someone it goes through my head endlessly."- Gillian

For Dancing in Peckham, Gillian Wearing records herself dancing in the middle of a busy mall with no music. The film was made in 1994, the film of the performance lasting 25 minutes and passers by were either indifferent/confused. She lets herself dance freely, moving every part of her body as she pleased to music in her head.

Before the performance, Wearing practised hearing her favourite music internally and dancing in her own private space- before taking it to the public: Nirvana, Queen, Gloria Gaynor to name a couple she was internally vibing to. Some describe it as ridiculous and it’s often perceived as a social experiment too. The difficult thing about performances like this: I think I am missing a perspective so to thoroughly analyse performances I’ve researched because I didn’t experience them in real time.

Considering Wearing’s goal and from watching the film, I believe the performance was successful in creating a temporary liminal space: Gillian’s body and the performance created a ‘societal glitch’: the result of placing something that is unseen, into the seen. Also, it should be noted that even though it was in public (and that itself is enough for Wearing’s message), many passed by choosing to ignore/avoid. The lack of interaction, to a certain extent, is a societal way of making her moment dancing as private as possible: to not look even though the person evidently doesn’t mind being seen. Wearing wanted to be seen, yet these mysterious, disinterested people wanted to not see/pretend she wsn’t there, dancing, to silence, in a mall.

Even in the past, using masks (obscuring the face is a concept I found interesting for my first performance), working with identity is common in Wearing’s art. 

She characterises her art as “a kind of portraiture”, questioning the nature and construction of identity- splitting and merging it.

"You don't expect to see something like that in Peckham".

Describing textiles as a “universal language”, Hicks travelled across the world, learning about how different cultures interact with mediums. For example, Prayer Rug (1965) uses the common imagery of archs found in Islamic art from her travels in North Africa. She combines traditional weaving with her creativity and extensive understanding and interest in colour, as well as the cultures she had been exposed to. 

Minime (Four tunnels of exploration) was made in 2015 and is 206 x 302mm. She uses wool, linen and cotton in the foundation of the weave: mixing weaving notations and weft yarn across the warp to create an inconsistent, non-repetitive base. Within the weave, Hicks involves razor clam shells within the weave itself: the shells interrupt the view of the weave notations by existing horizontally across them. They’re also woven into the weave making the piece three-dimensional. This piece blurs the lines between 2D and 3D, between sculpture, textilesnd painting, even mimicking a canvas (considering canvas fabric is a woven material).

Similar to my draping, fabric screenprints in draw & be: words & sharpies performance, Hicks used waste linens from the fashion industry when in France (I took my own fabrics from the waste box in the dye room). Hicks says “you can play with it [waste linen] freely” because there isn’t a pre-existing plan for all the materials she had. I had a similar experience, but I also felt at a loss because fabrics that I favoured were limited to what I could find- making them more valuable and therefore scarier to use in case the experiments are unsuccessful. This was another process in which I learned how to release expectations; accept any conclusion.

These two pieces explore the two main ways of creative communication: language/lexis, and image. Their tools are humour and bluntness.

Anonymity is another:

“In one way, you don’t know who we are, but it attracts attention to our cause”.

Believing that art should be about all people, not just those who have the power and facilities to afford it.

In 2016, they began operating a complaints department in the Tate Exchange space: using a wall for people to add their complaints and add it beside the others. They’ve been described as “the conscience of the art world”  (outraged by the total rejection of women’s art)

“If you can make people who disagree with you laugh, [you can] change their minds”.

The complaints board in Tate Exchange really spoke to me when it came to improving my performance: allowing other people to take up space, and as an artist, being the one holding that space.

This is Jenny Holzer: an artist who appeases the writer &artist in me. Using language in my art became very important to me (including every single point Holzer made in the quotation) and was central to my final piece.

The Inflammatory Essays are a collection of provocative writing; exactly 100 words each, and 20 lines long. Found in Tate Modern, where I witnessed it covering an entire wall- repeating the 10 Untitled lithographs (on paper) from ceiling to the handrail (431 × 431mm each). Tate added it to their collection in 1983. Holzer used this rigid format to explore her ability to use language successfully, creatively and ecstatically: her interest is in “rapturous writing”.

Originally, these essays (made between 1979-1982) were used as flyers: in fact other work by Holzer was purposefully removed from the context of a museum/gallery in an attempt to access the public in a less bottlenecked way. Holzer was inspired by religious fanatics (e.g. “NOR SHAKE CLENCHED FISTS AT THE GOD WHOSE PLAN IS TERRIBLE BUT PERFECT”), political theorists (e.g. theme of domination, “GUNS MAKE WRONG RIGHT FAST”) and even folk literature. She uses these essays to address her ongoing concerns around social control, consumption, sex and power

From my research, it seems colour is imperative to the essays, but the colour changes: in Tate, “DON’T TALK DOWN TO ME”, the print is pink, but elsewhere, I have seen it printed in robin egg blue. It seems, to Holzer, the art is in the language, and its curation (choosing colour of paper, the context it’s presented in) becomes a way to evolve the art- it’s context and colour become fluid, the language becomes the unmoving foundation/message.

It was seeing the repetitive presentation in TateM that inspired me to utilise repetition: seeing so many words but knowing many of them are the same, made the piece overwhelming yet chewable. The necessity in looking up gave the words a hierarchy I was drawn to (thus me hanging my screenprints from the ceiling). I was interested in using colour, like Holzer, but wanting to keep the words the foundation of the performance, I stuck to white, black, pink (to question its gender relation) and blue (my interest in the night/dark side of the mind).

Holzer has also used lights and installation as mediums and I believe she will begin the process of evolving my most recent performance- love her stuff. 

Abramovic claims that the lengths of her performances are to shift the perception of time, and in an interview, 

Abramovic believes “performance is about the relationship with the audience- this is our electricity” and I find this a necessary part of my own practice since beginning my journey as a performer. Eye contact became a vital part of my own performances and a fear I’m using performance, to help me overcome.

“do women want to be accepted on the same terms as men – terms set by men themselves – or do they want to… create a new game?”

This is a concept I’ve been playing with in my performances: how to create a universal safe space. After the failed dancing performance, like Chicago, I used people’s creativity to form a space of permission and safety.

The piece was then taken by a filmmaker, Johana Demetrakas, and made into a documentary (giving Woman House a global audience), which led me to make a mini film as well. In my second performance, I decided to not record the performance itself (in a way to make the audience feel more comfortable), and instead recorded the making of the space and made the footage into a video overlapped by the audio I made which represented the state of my mind when I’m faced with something that causes me fear.

I also began working with sound: instead of jazz, I’m inspired by the story telling and poetry of rap and wrote my own piece. I layered drums  and other sounds with my voice to experiment with expressing emotional significance with sound, alongside my performance.

Mehretu was also my inspiration to utilising a canvas fabric larger than myself- her paintings, even though thoroughly layered, used simple mark making. Using circles, simplistic but careful ink brushstrokes, these canvases were my inspiration to create my big pink ‘Revolution’ canvas (used in all my performances).

If women’s bodies are the battleground, and the piece was made to catalyse change, should we not be appealing to a political, majority male audience?

Language can never be universal in my opinion, but I don’t believe it makes this poster less effective, maybe less successful.

This piece was gifted to MOMA in honour of Roy Davis. 

Hicks’ Predestined Colour Wave I & II(2015) is also inspirational to me.