Week 19: Tutorials 27 June 2024
This week I am supposed to be meeting with Michele for a tutorial meeting. I will unfortunately have to miss this meeting due to being on holiday in a remote place and not having access to a good wifi connection most of the time. After my holiday I was able to have a the tutorial […]
Week 17: Exhibition review task
Over the past two weeks I was able to visit two exhibitions in a gallery space and one more exhibition that was disseminated in both a physical museum environment and as a public outdoor sculptural/photo exhibition. 1) MIES Gallery exhibition in Ryneveld street, Stellenbosch. This gallery space, owned and run by artist Mies is a […]
Week 15: One to One Tutorials – my initial ideas for exhibition and display of artwork:
I took some time today to plan a realistic timeline along with artwork-ideas in order to create some structure for the next 9 weeks: Some rough ideas scribbled in my sketchbook: The photo above shows ideas for displaying my pigments, pastels, and clay. I have found this vintage steel cabinet for sale that might be […]
Week 14: Draft Exhibition proposal. Expanding on draft proposal and reflecting on inspiration for curation.
Care, Curate and curiosity: It is interesting to me that these three words, very central to my practice all come from the same latin root: Curare (Latin) meaning to attend to, to take care of, to provide for. To care. Exhibition proposal – draft: For my exhibition I will be curating my work with a combination of the following concepts […]
Week 13: Silent Crit
As the silent crit approached I was extremely stressed. I guess it was because I didn’t feel I had anything complete to show. Or anything I was proud of. I was in the middle of a few experiments. I took the opportunity to run with once of the things I have been wanting to experiment […]
Week 12: Exhibition review (still incomplete)
Week 13: Where is the work? Where is the artist? Where is the audience?
Exercise 1: Mark Dion is an artist who was recently brought to my attention. Below you will find a video of Mark’s approach and closely looks at a unique art installation as part of a collection called ‘Neukom Vivarium’: In this video the viewer follow Dion on a journey during which he brings a ‘nurse […]
Week 12: Pre-session reading, thinking and task (CCA Goldsmiths exhibition)
Do we have an advantage to this distanced online was of interpretation and looking and thinking with practice? I’m not sure. I have always thought that experiencing an artwork in real life gives the full impact of the art and that it can’t be achieved through viewing a photo or video of the same art. […]
Week 12: Independent work towards exhibition
As I look at the content of my previous posts, I can see that I had the need to get all the loose ends and relevant theory relating to my practice, out of my head, and into my blog posts. Too many ‘open boxes’ as Michele said that needed to be captured and stored. Stored […]
Week 11: Artist as Curator
It was insightful to look at large and smaller scale curated shows and the role of the artist-curator within those spheres. Fred Wilson’s working with the museum as his palette was very interesting. I really like the idea of smaller establishments that sit outside of the institution as sites for knowledge exchange. In particular, I […]
Week 12: The Art Process as catalyst for Transformation and meaning-making – an exploration into the therapeutic value of: Pigment processing, Clay-work, Mindful Drawing, Encaustic methods, Collagraph printing and Paper-making (POST STILL IN PROGRESS)
“The body is the shore on the ocean of being.” Sufi saying “Trauma is not just what happens to us but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” Peter A. Levine Ph.D I felt the need to make a post about this topic in order to take the research I have […]
Week 11: Making some more pigments (incomplete, will add to this post)
From our recent trip to the Cederberg, I took some of the deep red rock I picked up and made some pigment and oil pastels. This is definitely the most potent/rich pigment I have discovered to date. I am certain that the San tribes used this exact rock to make their rock paintings. Below are […]
WEEK 11: Testing clay and slip in the kiln
In preparation for clay-work that will involve wheel thrown pots as well as figurative sculptures, I wanted to test my natural earth pigments as part of a slip for surface decoration. I knew that the oxides and other minerals would have an effect on the colours and I had no control over it. I was […]
Week 10: LIVE JOURNAL ENTRY: THE INVISIBLE SOIL CRISIS (incomplete, work in progress)
As my practice seeks to repair and maintain lost connection that we have neglected over the past 400 years as a society, one of the lost connection I advocate for is CORE VALUES. I value my environment and seeing that ‘care’ includes repairing and maintaining our world. As Joan Tronto states: ‘That world includes our […]
WEEK 9: Provocation presentations
Refleting on the presentation: As I reflect on the provocation presentations that happend last week, I am filled with mixed feelings. It was one of the most challenging things I have had to do so far. Firstly, we decided to choose a topic that we felt was relevant and interesting yet I had very little […]
Depression & Anxiety: an current statistical overview and and the role of phenomonology in mental health diagnosis
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Juddi Krishnamurti Depression and anxiety and its link to various lost connections: From my contextual study: The 21st century has witnessed a significant rise in mental health issues worldwide.According to the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2017) depression ranks as thesingle […]
WEEK 8: Making day and the Col Self presentation reflection (bottom)
Saturday’s making day was fun and productive. I managed to carry on working for the rest of the day. It was nice to have company, hearing conversations, catching up and seeing what my peer’s are busy with. It was very interesting to see Michele’s process of drawing in her sketchbook and how she uses it […]
Week 7: From research to exhibition and case study (Sutapa Biswas) (this entry is still in progress…)
I will respond to the case study in this section once I have finished looking at the material and further research this week. Reflections: Some questions that I would like to reflect on are: What things has this case study highlighted that you may not have considered before in relation to my own identity, making […]
Week 7: ENCAUSTIC MEDIUM & Week 13: Where is the art, where is the audience (lower down)
The word Encaustic, dates from the late 16th century: via Latin from Greek enkaustikos, from enkaiein ‘burn in’, from en- ‘in’ + kaiein ‘to burn’. Encaustic painting was practiced by Greek painters as far back as the 5th-century. Most of our knowledge about the origin of the hot wax painting comes from the writings by the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, who in […]
WEEK 6: LIVE JOURNAL ENTRY – THE SAN: Indiginous tribes of South Africa
A 100 000 year old ‘paint workshop’ found in Blombos cave, Stilbay, South Africa in 2008 Indigenous San tribes of South Africa: The amplification of indigenous voices in history is crucial to rectifying the destructive past and to learn from a more ancient wisdom with which they lived with and from the land. During the […]
WEEK 6: LIVE JOURNAL ENTRY – ALCHEMY
The purpose of the following live journal entry is to express my interest in the subject of how alchemical transformation was related to the transformation of the human psyche according to Jung and to make notes about new isights – things I agree with or don’t agree with. I became interested in the term Alchemy […]
WEEK 5: LIVE JOURNAL ENTRY – POLYVAGAL THEORY, NEUROCEPTION and INTEROCEPTION.
The first time I heard of the vagus nerve was when I came across an image of it. It caught my eye because it looked like a root system and at first that is what I thought it was only to discover that it was an anatomical illustration of the vagus nerve. On another occasion […]
Week 5: Live journal entry – JONKERSHOEK PEAKS & VALLEYS
In preparation for a body of work for this unit, I plan to summit each peak and decent down every valley in the Jonkershoek mountain range situated near my home. I managed to get topographic and ortho maps of these mountains which will help me to plan and serve as inspiration as I plan each […]
Week 5: Live journal entry – FOR THE ‘LOVE’ OF MOTHS
I use to be afraid of moths. Especially as a child. Their hairy bodies, the fact that they can fly into you unpredictably and tend to appear at night when as a child I was also afraid of the dark. They also tend to stick to you or sit when they’ve flown into you. I […]
Week 5: Live journal entry – ANCHORED: RHIZOME AND THE MIND
The concept of the rhizome as a metaphor for the mind refers to the interconnected and non-hierarchical nature of thought processes. Just as a rhizome plant grows horizontally underground, sending out roots and shoots in multiple directions without a central point of control, the mind is seen as a network of interconnected ideas and thoughts […]
Week 5: Live journal entry – CENTERING
Centering clay on a potters wheel as a metaphor for the soul: The words freedom, peace, single focussed and serenity come to mind when I look at centering metaphorically. Freedom to play: safety in the absence of fear, and free from our own internal limitations and external tyrannies. In order to play, we must be […]
Week 4: Independent work – development of ideas
I wanted to create a post that contains the many ideas I have for practical work I want to try to do in Unit 1.3. I will discuss these during my tutorial with Caroline today: JONEKERSHOEK NATURE RESERVE AND MOUNTIANS AS INSPIRATION: Over the next two months I aim to explore (running and hiking) the […]
Week 3 – Tutorials (discussing progress and ideas for practical work)
I will be meeting Caroline on Wednesday the 13th of March for a tutorial discussion. The following are some creative experiments and ideas that I would like to discuss: when we meet. During our break: 1) Improving my studio setup Besides resting and rebalancing my life during the break between unit 1.2 and 1.3, I […]
Unit 1.3 – Resolution (Weeks 1-3)
After a good and necessary break between units, it feels good to be back! There is certainly a lot to be resolved after unit 1.2 which I am looking forward to. The journey through Unit 1.2 was not easy and left a lot of questions in my unanswered. The opportunity to further explore these questions […]