Following on from my presentation a couple of weeks ago, and my theme considering Food banks, Brexit and Macdonaldisation, I have been trying this week to make sense of it all...
A Studio Practice vortex of fog.
A recap, prior to the presentation of a wall of ideas, seen above, the starting point had been newspaper, the versatility of news print, and the loss of the printed news, following a trip to St Brides and recent cuts to resources at the college.
I was then looking at people on the fringes of society given that some adult students are having to visit food banks due to delays in Universal Credit, this then led to thinking about food banks and asking what happens to these people in the event of a No Deal Brexit? Remembering that lots of our non perishable goods come from the EU and that people are starting to stock pile.
https://www.itv.com/news/2019-02-21/1-in-5-brits-considering-stockpiling-food-in-case-of-no-deal-brexit/
In terms of theory Id been looking at Macdonaldisation, by George Ritzer from the late 90’s. The idea that society becomes manifested when a society adopts the characteristics of a fast-food restaurant.
Id also watched I Daniel Blake on the Saturday night. The idea of Ritzer's theory of Macdonaldisation plays out in this film. See https://www.victoriaburch.co.uk/post/sp3-term-2-macdonaldization
I experimented with newsprint; laser cutting, collaging with it, painting onto it and a couple of ideas for installations, I'd also looked at artists that had worked with newsprint such as; Rauschenberg, De Kooning and also the american artist Will Kanz, who produces life size paper mache people out of newsprint – called People on the Fringes of Society. All these roads led to painting the bean can on newsprint.
The painting seen above, a test piece for an idea based of on Andy Warhol’s celebration of consumerism and mass production, but in this version as an opposite – reflecting on how in today’s world a tin of cheap beans from Southern Ireland (bought at Lidl) could become an expensive commodity, following March 29th.
Further research on artists working with food banks, led to Paul Mckee, who swopped artwork for tinned food, at his local food bank in Sheffield to get more people to donate to food banks. His work is largely based in the community, and I can not see how I could relate this to the end of year show – another dead end.
Prior to the Christmas break and the Cheesey Menopausal films - performance work focusing on older women and the menopause, Id also give consideration to making work connected to my egg box idea. See https://www.victoriaburch.co.uk/post/the-place-where-the-eggs-are-kept
Analysing all of the recent subject matter, and in trying to converge all of the different ideas; the common thread appears to be ‘vessels’. Somewhere in all of the recent work, a vessel of sorts is apparent albeit subconsciously;
Humans are vessels – I’ve been working a lot with the figure with Access. See https://www.victoriaburch.co.uk/disfigure
Last years work on the issues of plastic, plastic is empty vessel waste. See https://www.victoriaburch.co.uk/amiraculoussubstance
Tin cans of beans are vessels etc, etc.
To start a new ball rolling and to develop this idea of vessels further, I have been painting vessels, using the techniques learned in last weeks’ Studio Thursday workshop.
We have been working mainly with black and white, using a grey/black wash know as a grisaille/imprimatur and layering up with white, starting with the brightest whites. I initially started with an alla prima version in colour (wet in wet) painted from eye (direct painting) - at Paul’s painting class on Wednesday morning.
To prepare for this weeks Studio Thursday class, I decided to work with three different vessel objects; the egg box again, the tin can and a picture of a boat taken on the estuary yesterday morning. Here are the results…
Following on from this I have yet to investigate Pryle and Liz’s suggestion of HyperNormalisation, by Adam Curtis linked to my research on the whole Brexit issue.
Obvious other artists might include Giorgio Morandi on the subject of vessels as objects – maybe there is a painting of modern day vessels such a milk cartons, bean cans and egg boxes etc. This could potentially be a test piece for the glazing session planned for next weeks Studio Thursday.
I’m still not clear as to where this will lead but it does seem there is finally a light in the Studio Practice vortex of fog.
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