Grayson Perry-is aesthetics important?

https://vimeo.com/21982696

Maggie Taylor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNBnvVfMBIY

I liked Maggie Taylor's organic and playful method of building and then paring away till you get the image right. Her images are beautiful and surreal sometimes with a hint of darkness.

Folk Tales from UAE and Oman

https://www.thenational.ae/uae/childhood-stories-tracked-down-and-remembered-1.522185

http://www.omanobserver.om/what-omani-folktales-tell-us/

Once Upon a Time

What is fairy tale? Where do the stories come from?What do they mean? What do they try and communicate to us about morality, sexuality and society?

The range of fairy tales stretches across great distances and time, their history is entangled with folklore and myth, and their inspiration draws on ideas about nature and the supernatural, imagination and fantasy, psychoanalysis and feminism.

"It is interesting how impossible it is to remember a time when my head was not full of these unreal people, things and events. The tales are older, simpler and deeper than individual imagination. It is odd when you come to think of it that human beings in all sorts of societies, ancient and modern, have needed these untrue stories.These flat stories appear to be there because stories are all pervasive and perpetual characteristic like language, like play.

There is no psychology in a fairy tale. The characters have little interior life;their motives are clear and obvious. If people are good, they are good and if bad, they are bad.The tremors and mysteries of human awareness, the whispers of memory , the promptings of half understood regret or doubt or desire that are so much part of the subject matter of the modern novel are entirely absent." A.S.Byatt

Fairytale narratives are dream-like; they are disjointed, brilliantly coloured, the overlook rational cause and effect, they stage outlandish scences of sex and violence, they make abrupt transitions without rhyme of reason.They also contain significant repetitions and recurrent symbols.

Behind the shiny gorgeous surfaces of fairy tales you can glimpse an entire history of childhood and family: the oppression of land owners and rulers, foundlings, drowned or abandoned children, the ragamuffin orphan surviving by his wits , the likeable lad who has his eye on a girl who is from a better class than himself or the dependence of old people.Unlike myths, which are about gods and super heroes, fairy tale protagonists are recognizably ordinary, working class people toiling at ordinary occupations over a long period in history before industrialization and mass literacy.

When the eldest son inherits everything the younger brother would set out on his adventures penniless, to return fabulously endowed .The genre's themes are real life themes and the passions real life passions:getting by and getting what you want, knowing the odds are stacked and that all might be lost.Luck is powerful but resourcefulness is praiseworthy. Unspeakable, unbelievable acts are also taking place.Terrible family violence:a father cuts off his daughter's hands because the Devil wants to carry her off; another daughter disguises herself in a coat of animal hides after her father wants to marry her.Small children are damaged:Hansel and Gretel are abandoned by their parents to die in the woods and so on.These acts contradict all ideas of natural feeling.But these  situations however horrible are echoed even now in the news.Starvation and infanticide are recurrent dangers and their victims devise ways of opposing them, avenging themselves on their perpetrators and of turning the status quo upside down.These plots convey messages of resistance-a hope of escape.

source- "Once Upon a Time" by Marina Warner

Stream of Consciousness in Visual Narratives

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts to depict the multitudinous thoughts, inner monologues and feelings which pass through the mind. The‘stream of consciousness’ as a literary technique was first used by William James and become widely adopted as a term of art in literary criticism during the twentieth century, especially of the novels of Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, or James Joyce, among others.
William James in his work, The Principles of Psychology, describes the nature of mental life, seeing things from within one’s mind. James thought of mind as an always changing continuous flow, which cannot be divided up by bits; he supported the idea that temporal separation can only distort the flow of mind.

In his study, William James explains consciousness by its major characteristics; he describes mind as an always private and individual affair, that thoughts belong to a person and are always in a flux, always changing. He claims that only objects can reoccur, but no thought or idea can be exactly the same twice. Therefore he sees consciousness as a constantly flowing stream, which is always liable to change.

By practicing this narrative method, Virginia Woolf not only creates continuity between different time zones and places, but also between the minds of her characters. She illustrates the relationship between reality and un-reality; between the exterior world and an inner world.

In her narration, Woolf constructs a dualistic existence by affirming both spiritual reality and physical reality. To experience the value of life Woolf weaves a tight connection between the dualistic impulses through which her protagonists can understand true existence.

Artists taking advantage of the stream of consciousness do not intend to introduce and follow a narrative; rather, they find a different kind of freedom in representation of the levels of their own unconscious and semiconscious minds and  create different works of art through visualizing their feelings and emotions , without already thinking about the end result or  the final design of the work.  The public relate to the work at various levels and formulate their own interpretations as this mode allows the addressees to have various perceptions and subjective mentalities which can be deemed popular and also unique at the same time. 

Sources:
James, William. The Principles of Psychology, Cosimo Classics, Inc., 2007.Woolf, Virginia. “Modern Fiction” In: McNeille, Andrew, Ed. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Volume 4: 1925 to 1928. London: The Hogarth Press, 1984.

Creases, Pleats, Folds

Folding by hand is as low tech as any making activity can be. You are making something directly with your body without the intervention of third party tools such as pencil, mouse, camera lenses or needles. It is an almost unique making experience and perhaps unfamiliarly primal. This very basic, hands on activity especially in today's high tech studio environments can be very powerful and rewarding experience and cannot be considered unsophisticated or inadequate.

I have been slowly teaching myself the art of folding paper . I am addicted to the process and am amazed at the flexibility of paper which allows the transformation and the fluid movement of forms. I am curious to see how drawings on paper folded thereafter could lead to the fracture images or interesting distortions. At the moment I am enjoying taming the paper without thinking too much about the final outcome or the use of this technique.

Childhood Memories

I had a chance to visit the Museum of Childhood in London ,home to one of the world’s finest collections of children’s toys, doll’s houses, games and costumes. . Part of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the museum has been amassing childhood-related objects since 1872. 

What really interested me in the Museum was the moving toys section which had handmade toys like antique sand shadow boxes, Victorian zoetropes, praxinoscopes and shadow puppets from Indonesia . I was fascinated with a moving toy like a rotating exquisite corpses with  drawings victorian costumes on wood.Many of the ideas in the museum could be adopted to create interactive installations.

Musings (Critical Practice Programme)

I was offered a participation in the Critical Practice Programme by a Dubai Gallery I have had a close association with- Tashkeel. With continual support from Tashkeel, each participant is provided with studio access, mentorship, critiques and support for artwork production, culminating in an exhibition.Each programme is carefully constructed and built around the individual candidates’ practices and/or area of research. Tashkeel works with the artist or curator to identify a key collaborator/mentor to build, challenge and work with them through the programme. This collaborator can be an artist, curator, critic or arts professional with whom the artist feels both comfortable working but also whose own area of research and/or practice ties in with the proposed programme and intended areas of focus.The aim of the programme is to provide the artist with sustained and empowering support to develop their work in an environment that encourages progressive experimentation, cross-discipline exchange and cross-cultural dialogue. The curation of the courses remain responsive to the social, cultural and political contexts inherent in Dubai and the wider Middle East. 


I spent some time reflecting upon my existing work and the motivations of making work. My work is playful,imaginative, figurative ,contains an element of dark humour, has a narrative ,children's stories for adults, might be inspired by text/literature/ myths and legends or events around me, full of surprises, delicate, layered, detailed or intricate dreamlike/ nightmarish, hybrids, disguises/masks/veiled figures ,something is hidden in the works that the viewer has to discover, unscramble, does not make complete sense, ambiguous, surreal,abastract, handmade, labour intensive , deals with change/transformation , a degree of audience engagement is desired.My mediums are primarily  drawings.Drawings propel my work into drawing with a knife (papercut) or those drawings can turn 3 dimensional and take sculptural forms.

3 months into the Critical Practice Programme.

I am slowly getting more clarity as to what I wish to achieve.I am exploring animation, movement and shadows to tell stories.I like the support and extended by mentors so I am not completely at sea and at the same time I love the challenge of pushing my limits.

There have been hiccups. The start has been slow. I was having doubts about whether a long distance Critical Practice Programme was even feasible since I am the first participant who does not reside in Dubai.There are problems with online calls like Skype or Google Hangouts. However, I have recently successfully completed my MA online over a period of 3 years so of course it is possible but requires patience , drive and perseverance.First there was a problem of identifying and convincing mentors.We identified Hassan Meer a reputed contemporary artist in Oman, Gallery Director(Stal Gallery) and curator. And Les Bicknell, a professor of art in various Universities in UK and inspiring artist who created the concept of "bookness".We were relieved when Les came on board in end November .There was a period of uncertainty as to whether he would be able to collaborate in this programme due to his previous work commitments, but he did. 

Mentor Hassan Meer had assigned an interesting task. To gather cheap, battery operated/mechanical moving toys, paint them white with gesso and  transform them. Gathering toys took a long while as did layering them with several coats of gesso to remove traces of colour. I had several ideas about transforming the toys to use colour pencils or pen and ink drawings on them or to attach everyday discarded objects on them but I settled on using papercut attachments and that seemed to be working well. But now there is a problem.The mechanical toys are not moving because the gesso jammed the moving parts. Failure is essential to success.We as artists need to constantly remind ourselves that "To work without knowing where one is going or might end up is a necessary condition of creation of generation of difference rather than the reproduction of the same" -Nietzsche.  Will try with another paint medium.

I chanced upon Ed Pien's shadow installation and want to try to create shadows using papercuts  and construct Paul Spooner like moving mechanical toys and shadow boxes with papercuts like Andrea Dezso's.I am also interested in animating my illustrations.These are the five parallel projects I would be working on- transformation of readymade toys, shadow puppet installation, shadow boxes, mechanical toys, hand drawn/ stop motion animation using drawings.Maybe I have too much on my plate? But I am a fulltime artist and I have 8 months so shall give it a chance.

Experimenting with toys

I also tried attaching masks using various found objects to the toys .

Andrea Deszo tunnel book

Paul Spooner mechanical Toy

Ed Pien Shadow Play

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcMLkce_BLg

Sarah Saidan animation 4 minutes 44 seconds

Tunnel Books examples 

Ed Pien

I am going back to look at Ed Pien's fanciful,disturbing yet beautiful world.I am particularly interested in his shadow play installations using papercuts.



http://bordercrossingsmag.com/article/the-art-of-being-what-it-doesnt-have-to-be-an-interview-with-ed-pien