Text and Image/Random Narratives

This was a three week project where we worked both collaboratively and individually. I looked at the relationship between text and image, between what is seen and what is read in a contemporary art context. I liked this project as it introduced some of the key ideas to how we think about the relationship between text and image. I was encouraged to experiment and explore the ways in which things and artefacts I produce are read or interpreted – both explicitly and implicitly. I was forced to think about how this may be applied and used within contemporary art.

Throughout the first week we shared images in small groups (which we collected during freshers week) and began to discuss the narrative possibilities of random and disparate materials when they are placed together. We began to explore new contexts - a wide range of possibilities were explored, debated and developed. I considered the ways in which narratives, material and processes impact upon meaning and communication as we worked towards a more individual approach. 

During this project I attended a workshop. I particularly liked the warm up exercise in groups of 3. On A3 paper we had to do 2 x 7 minute drawings of the other two people in our group.  These were line drawings and I used pencil, graphite and charcoal. We then spoke about how each of us felt about the drawings and how we felt about being drawn. We then worked together to produce another, more experimental life sized representation of each person. I tried to interpret the word ‘representation’ loosely  and expanded on the idea of a caption by incorporating a wide range of text into the work – words I had seen, spoken, heard and read.

Throughout the three weeks I researched artists including Judy Wize, Edward Ruscha, Teesha Moor, Bruce Nauman, Matt Dinniman, Cheryl Sorg, Mira Shcendel, Greg Sand and Sean Williams. 

Here his one of the development pieces I produced using Greg Sand as inspiration. I took Photographs in Grave yards, before cutting out silhouettes.

Teesha Moore is another artist who inspires me. She lives in Washington and believes in following dreams and passions. She is a very successful artist and is well known for her quirky scrapbook pages. I really like her work as it’s mostly collage – I really like the idea of ripping up images, sticking them back together and adding bits to them to give them a whole new meaning.

Her inspiration was graphic design and music. She collected childrens books, design books, art books, cook books and quote books. I like that because she would mix all these up, jumble them together in her brain and they would come out the other end as art.

Matt Dinniman is an artist from the UK who is most famous for his collage work. He tends to cut up and collage animals with hats and sunglasses etc. I thought this artist would be a good influence for me and this project as he uses dictionary pages. From what I can see, I don’t think the background writing is relevant to the image.

From hipster dogs to chimps in space and rhinos looking for a first date, every creation is the direct result of little sleep and too much caffeine which is why I think using coffee to stain the pages would be a good idea – it could represent too much caffine at the same time as giving the background an old look. I like how Matt Dinniman combines traditional art, photography and illustration.

There are many animals I could look into. I thought I would research this artist because all of the others seem to focus on people. I have collected visual research from animal magazines and also leaflets from various farms. I’ve taken lots of photographs and drew from them, before adding accessories. Here are a some examples of some quick sketches I produced, using ink and twigs/sticks. I made some natural drawing tools using things from the environment, I got this idea from a trip we went on, where we had to produce landscape pictures using soil, grass and sticks.