30 May 2018

INCONTRO Project Post 2: Preparation and System



Preparation of the 160 tiles included white primer for each of the small squares. The quantity is significant and as with all priming there is a neutralising of the support, whilst thinking about the application of colour. The structure of permutation is the repeated square. The repetition will only be in the format as each element, although related, will be independent and moreover, each tile of the element will be unique as its own painting.




Each element would be defined by its prime base colour. This colour would be its key signature, title and identity. These colours would be fully saturated colour with the addition of white to some colours to boost opacity and luminosity, but essentially the colours would be controlling and dominant.


The tiles were painted three times with the base colour. As a potentially floor based work, potency of hue would be fairly essential. The matt colour of acrylic paint would be ideal as there will be minimal reflection of gallery lighting from the surface, when placed horizontal as designed. The full force of the base colour would comprise and seize the surface in a positive way. As each tile will be 50 to 60 cm away from the next, the strong colour would also connect in a diagrammatic way across intervals of the grid like structure of the element.







The base colours include Violet; Cobalt Blue; Cerulean Blue; Cadmium Orange; Cadmium Red; Cadmium Yellow Deep ; Cadmium Yellow; Fluorescent Yellow; Fluorescent Orange; Fluorescent Vermillion (System 3 Daler Rowney and Windsor and Newton Galeria Acrylic Paint). In painting each of the elements with their base colours, they stuck to floor sheet and I decided to keep them as a tile sheet for the duration of the process. Therefore the tiles remain together and can be moved around  180 degrees; each element having its own unity in the making.


















So, there is a definite structure here. Each of the ten elements having 16 paintings. Perhaps a system would evolve. I am drawn to reflect on a statement by Thomas Alloway on Systemic Painting: "I took the point of view that a system could be quite human, in a sense that it could involve a very idiosyncratic choice of variables. My rationale had to do with a strong organisational principle I saw developing. I felt a similar sense of order was happening with some of the gestural painters, I think of Pollock now, in the sense of the drip or gesture being repeated and choreographed in an essentially orderly field. Orderly is of course relative, but orderly in a sense of a series of repeated marks. In the 'Systemic' show the artist's mark had condensed in a more geometric way. It wasn't that one was more personal than the other. In retrospect I suppose a distinguishing element would be that in the gesture, painter's color seemed to be the more unorganised element. With the Systemic painters, color was more organised and it was more difficult to distinguish between color and line". (1)






(1) Thomas Alloway conversation quoted in essay. Michael Auping; Fields, Planes, Systems,: Geometric Abstract painting in America Since 1945. p. 73. Abstraction Geometry Painting. Albright Knox Art Gallery Catalogue. Abrams, New York 1989


24 May 2018

INCONTRO Project Post 1: Ideas and Proposition

INCONTRO project features a specific brief to create ten artworks that will fit into ten capsules, each capsule measuring 20 x 15cm. The capsules can then travel together or singularly to different locations for presentation. The project follows an interrecce meeting in Trieste earlier in 2018 where the idea was developed and the discussion led to the brief for each artist to make ten objects to fit ten capsules. The inter-recce meeting was with Patrizia Bigarella, Franco Vecchiet, John Brown and myself.


In March this year I visited Palermo, Sicily just a week after the inter-recce meeting at Trieste. Here I was struck by the dynamic design of the marble floors in both the Cathedral of Monreale, just outside Palermo, and the Capella Palatina. The contrasting light and dark geometry takes the eye across the floor and in varying directions creating a strong interconnecting trace. As the marble design is floor based the eye unavoidably connects with the intricacies of the lines moving across and around the floor, a shifting geometry as we move through the space.

In reflecting on this experience I thought about a floor based, tile-like configuration. In making some quick ink drawings in black and white on small rectangles of paper the potential for moving and arranging at will became apparent. This represented a non fixed condition for the artwork. An intriguing proposition, a diagrammatic structure with multiple reconfiguration.






Therefore, as a start point I have decided to develop a floor based series of ten works each with 16 tiles each measuring 13cm square (to fit the capsule) that will have independence from each other in thematic colour but that would interconnect in series. The ten objects, to be called elements, will be painted and therefore unavoidably become paintings. Issues became apparent. The paintings would not be wall based. They would be floor based in presentation questioning the paradigm of the terminology of painting and locating this work in other contexts. However, the hand brush pigment application will draw on my existing practice as a painter and therefore, also unavoidably raising the issues of painting language to be employed for each tile.

Additionally, chance or involuntary action might be present, as to what order each tile would be configured within the grid structure. This presents a possible detachment from authorship, especially if the arrangement is by a third party. In any case, each element comprising sixteen tiles has multiple possibilities for arrangement, a structure of permutation (1).




The basic tile form for each of the elements (each capsule object) was cut out from 3mm medium density fibre board making 160 tiles in total. The tiles to form each element will be arranged  in a square, @60cm apart from the centre, each making a diagrammatic grid of @240 metre square.

(1). The term is Benjamin H. D. Buchloh's in his essay 'The Diagram and the Colour Chip' Gerhard Richter's 4900 Colours'. (p.67, Gerhard Richter's 4900 Colours, Serpentine Gallery 2008).