Art That You Really Really Will Not Have Seen Anywhere Else!

Yet another, but perhaps more self-publicising reason to visit our exhibition at The Old Brick Workshop this Art Weeks is to see twelve entirely new works I've created over the course of this year. After having a fairly substantial break from exhibiting anywhere, it is very exciting, enjoyably nerve-wracking  and important to me to have the opportunity to receive feed back and show new work again. They include some familiar themes of mine, namely tools as well as a few new surprises! [See: http://spannerintheworkz.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/art-weeks-2015-sneak-preview.html]

 

Apart from being a shameless plug for the exhibition this is the first in a series of posts I’ll be writing about that recent work in an attempt to understand it better and share a few thoughts on the making or thinking behind some of the work.



Natalie Parsley 'We Two Tools Together Clinging' 2015 Mono print and ink on paper. 24 x 32cm.



The more familiar tool related thread to my practice includes the work, ‘We Two Tools Together Clinging’ (pictured) inspired from Lee Lozano’s drawings of tools, depicted anthropomorphised locked in embrace or mortal combat [See: http://spannerintheworkz.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/post-lozano.html ]. The colour scheme unintentionally mirrors that of an early David Hockney painting, ‘We Two Boys Together Clinging’ whose title I have deliberately manipulated to fit my own. That is pretty much where the similarities end and recommend you visit the real thing as Hockney’s is an amazing painting!  Hockney’s references a headline from a climbing accident, "Two Boys Cling to Cliff All Night" which he propagandised into being about his own homosexuality at a time when it was taboo to shout about it publically/openly. I haven’t really assigned sexuality to the tools in my work, it could really be interpreted either way as I’m more interested in it being about a relationship of sorts rather than comment on gender specifically. The ‘clinging’ in the title of my work alludes to the human sense of ‘embrace’ as well as the function of clamps as a tool, to cling, hold or grip something. If assigning human attributes to inanimate objects in this work, the word-play of ‘tools’ could be read both literally about tools but also the derisive  slang of ‘being a stupid or socially inept person’. Rather than mockingly it can sometimes be empowering when such negative labelling is adopted by those it is originally intended to make fun of and there is a sort of strength in unity that these two ‘tools’ of any gender or social commentary have come together in a form of embrace. One could read it that way or of course, it could simply just be two clamps locked together! I enjoy discussion about the double or multiple meanings of art, how it is interpreted. At the very least that is what I attempt to do when I view or write about work I've seen. What is significant and important to me about this piece of my work however is that it is one of the first times I’ve used a title to manipulate the reading of a drawing I’ve created. That’s quite significant and interesting to me and will be something I think I will revisit again for future work.

 

David Hockney 'We Two Boys Together Clinging' 1961 Oil on Board. 48 x 60"

You can see my work as part of the exhibition at The Old Brick Workshop, Wellington. Open daily 11-6 now until Sunday October 18th

http://somersetartworks.org.uk/venues/the-old-brick-workshop/
http://www.theoldbrickworkshop.com/

Stop the presses!

Tales from the print room....

 

After two weeks of quite political posts this weeks’ takes on a more reflective tone, looking at my brief stint of ‘running’ the print room at Somerset College. (Those of a nervous disposition read no further!) I exaggerate, there isn’t really much to tell nor indeed was it particularly eventful, but the very fact that I was left responsible to look-after it for two weeks is in itself pretty news worthy. It’s not in my nature to take things lightly, perhaps once, when Starbursts were called Opal Fruits, ‘Fun House’ was still on TV and when ‘walking the dog’ meant doing a trick with a yoyo; I was a bit more carefree and a lot less ‘serious’ than I am now then the prospect of being left alone in a print room would be pretty damn cool.  It still is, but then, you probably wouldn’t have wanted the younger-me to run such a place, it could only have ended in a messy, squashed-fingered and chaotic sort of way. So, there I was, the ‘serious’ adult me, the prestigious print room key in my possession. How exactly did I succumb to this opportunity you ask? I’ve been teaching upstairs in Fine Art, only for a few days, and due to a staff sickness in the print room I was asked to cover it. I’d studied at SCAT so I was familiar with the print room and specialised in mono printing for my own practice so I was fairly confident I could keep it running safely and tidily, covering the most basic of print techniques. My own experiences of printmaking had been based from taking lessons from a now retired (I think it’s safe to say) eccentric (and I use the term widely), wild bearded but incredibly knowledgeable technician who was pretty protective of his print room. Whilst I felt I learnt how to actually make prints, I never really got to learn the practical things like mixing ink with extender (perhaps obvious, but who knew if it was always done for us). So there’s a few holes in my knowledge, nothing that I couldn’t handle and wasn’t willing to learn quickly.

 

As I was saying, so I had the key (pardon the megalomania) and dozens of new opportunities at my fingertips from drypoint, etching, lino, wood, lithography, collagraph, monotype, aquatint, silk screen and more...It was also half term, so it was relatively quiet in terms of students so between bouts of cleaning/organising and finding where everything was stored I took the opportunity to try a quick drypoint and mono type, examples of which can be seen here. Although, I can appreciate the quality of printmaking and take great pleasure in seeing other people’s prints, one of my favourite artists of all time, Jim Dine is a printmaker, not to mention that as an avid bookworm I am indebted to printmaking, for if it not for print then there’d be no books. Books aside, whilst I have always felt drawn to prints by artists like Dine and others, I’ve tried emulating certain qualities from their work (be it formal or subject matter) in other ways than print taking more delight in trying to replicate their processes/surfaces/affects in drawing or paint. I take more joy in the amateur techniques, the amateur, the ’do it yourself’ kind-of mentality that makes for a more immediate spontaneity, whilst you can still achieve this in printmaking, I still think it’s more controlled.

 

I was hoping to maybe ignite my love of print, but soon after soaking the paper ready for drypoint I already found myself remembering why I disliked the process-led nature of print making, its preparation time frustrates me and as an impatient artist I prefer immediacy of drawing, painting and mono type. Although, even those processes in each of their own way has elements of preparation to them (be in stretching a canvas, or organising drawing materials, rolling out ink) so maybe it is the formal-ness of the print room that I dislike, preferring the privacy and freedom of the studio. It does, however also highlight something interesting about creativity and how it works. For example, it feels a bit silly that we create rooms like print rooms, studios etc that we make ourselves be ‘creative’ in but these sorts of spaces facilitate and nurture creativity rather than instigate it in the first instance (?).  Personally, I feel less creative when there is an expectation to be creative because I’m in the studio or print room. Hence, one of the good things of using my room as a ‘studio’ as it is multi-functional which some people could see as a distraction, but for me become more of a stimulus and inspiration to make work. However, most of my own creative thinking probably happens when I’m not ‘trying’ to be creative at all, often I get most ideas when out walking or walking home to/from work, having a shower, cleaning, reading, watching a film, in conversation over a drink, travelling on the train, food shopping etc etc. Does anyone ever really have all their creative ideas in a studio?

 

So, I’ve ascertained that printmaking (except for mono printing) might not be for me and that if anything I’m probably more interested in the room and its contents. The presses, inks, letter blocks, cutting tools and print paraphernalia. Like when Alain de Botton was ‘writer in residence’ at Heathrow Airport and made a book of observations, ‘A Week at the Airport’; I could easily find myself enthused over describing the splatters of ink in the sink, stained psychedelic rags used for cleaning, coppers, glass, Perspex, wood, the sounds of the press as it rolls and squeezes, the crisp/sticky sound of ink being rolled out, the creaking of the ‘used’ rags basket as it slowly rots and splits open and clang and clashing of the drying wrack....The smells alone could be a whole separate post, turps, oil paint, floor stripper and swarfega as could a description into the state of the skin on my hands after only spending 7 days in there! It made me realise how difficult and complex a place it is to run.

 

 

It’s easy to romanticise looking back on these experiences and when you don’t work in there every day. One could probably paint quite a romantic picture in words about working in a bookshop (as I do), until you’re faced with the reality of what it’s really like to work in these kinds of places, when you seldom have the time or luxury to reflect, appreciate or notice it. Hence my decision to reflect on it here, albeit brief, certainly given me a lot more respect for print as a process and those who choose to use it whilst my time in the print room was short-lived it certainly made an impression.

Currently showing...

I've recently hung a selection of my work at Somerset College in the White Space of the Arts and Design building:

The work presented is a selection of mono prints and drawings made during the course of my MA in Fine Art with Plymouth University from 2010 -2012. Whilst the theme of the work [tools] remains the same throughout, the exhibition also highlights the evolution in my thinking and ideas from the more representational depiction of tools to (what also became my final body of work for my MA) using the tools themselves to draw with and make marks.

Featuring mono prints from the tool collections at Somerset Heritage Centre.