Critique and action / Plastic pastoral / Tao
This is a rePost from my Patreon Experimental Print Club blog. Print Club membership is by monthly subscription, you can find out more and / or subscribe here https://chuckelliottstudio.com/experimental-print-club-list-01
I was out with a couple of good friends who teach at a local art school recently, and as ever was interested to hear their views. They seem to have the ability to critique work in some seriously interesting ways.
Coming away from the evening, and over the following few days, I’ve been ruminating on how the idea of the critique fits with practice in the studio. The realisation of course is that it’s hard to create, critique, reflect and adjust on works that may be close to your heart, whilst they’re still wet.
There’s also a tension between making in the moment, later reflection, and some desire to trust the subconscious action of making, as a counterbalance to the more sober act of consideration and adjustment. There’s a conflict there, that perhaps sets up the tension required to actually make anything at all.
Much of my recent thinking has been around the idea of how to square the idea of making contemporary work with material, whilst simultaneously being concerned about the climate crisis. This thinking I suspect will continue to dominate my day to day thoughts, perhaps for the rest of my life. It’s certainly rewired the way I think about resource, and where value may lie in the use of that resource.
As ever I find it most useful to think in the 3rd person. Would I want other contemporary practitioners to stop making their work? No.
Do I believe that we can slow down significantly, and wait for scientists to resolve some of the issues that are coming to light? Yes.
Is there a need for us to continue to evolve our thinking, story telling and creativity? Definitely.
Stasis is an impossible state. So the answer must be to keep working, but with a mindful eye on production, consumption, and process.
The big questions are - is it possible to completely dematerialise the work? And what is the purpose of the work? The point of course is that the artist is asked to reflect, critique, and act on their production, in a way that is almost unique in modern society. The artist is not meant to simply chop out product!
The work must include a more cerebral contemplation, and it is this I think that is creating particular problems in the contemporary moment. There is a suggestion that if you analyse the current moment acutely, one clear course of action may well be to reduce your material production, and endeavour to work more locally, and certainly for my own part, I am considering switching substantially to works on paper, which are by their nature more sustainable.
As my time in the studio becomes ever more monastic, I feel that perhaps the ultimate outcome of the process is simply to revert to the most simple existence available within the framework of our current time, which may involve substantially withdrawing from consumption beyond core requirements, which of course begs the question what is core?
To simultaneously hold the dichotomous view of valuing production whilst eschewing consumption, entails the high wire act of believing that the production holds a benefit at least equal to the cost of the material it consumes.
In that sense more substantive consumption of material may require larger societal benefits. And that leads you quickly on to wonder who is to judge!
There’s clearly some need for more thinking here!
These two latest prints are entitled Tao. One is earth, one is sand.
Back in the eighties when my main concern would’ve simply been about how to create and sustain a creative studio practice, I was hugely influenced and impressed by the work of April Greiman. I’m not sure if her works have stood the test of time, but in many ways that is not the point, I love the idea that a work in some way defines or represents the moment that it is made in. In any case, at a time when I was still being taught at college to use traditional media, she seemed to be blazing a trail with revolutionary digital tools, and integrating them into her work to create images and typography that were absolutely brand new, razor sharp, and had that sassy American LA cool about them that seemed deeply alluring to me at that time.
Since then of course I’ve come to realise that I’m far more interested in the pastoral than the urban, albeit a plastic pastoral generated through the lens of an urban worldview.
So a few weeks back I decided to make a new image that would speak to the Greiman fan of my youth, at least in so far as that it would be wholly machine generated, and overtly embrace the pixel, the element that of course makes all the images sing, but that is generally lost in the mix to such a degree that it may not even be apparent that it exists at all.
In a sense then the pixel can be seen as an atomic level component of the images.
Without any particular brief, the images seem to have formed themselves into a pair of abstractions, both of which seem to me to speak of the idea of a conurbation, one more rural, one more costal, and in both cases packed with the urban.
I don’t know where these images come from really. I simply pick up the base material and fashion it like putty until something comes up that catches my eye. In that sense these two pieces are genuinely experimental. Whether they are also successful I’m not sure. But I feel it’s in the nature of this club that they should at least be allowed out for others to judge. It’s not my job to be executioner as well as draughtsman.
I hope you like them. I’ve cut them to colour, which is something I’ve been meaning to try for quite a while. It makes them harder to handle, you may need some cotton gloves, but also removes the white paper border, that can act as a kind of framing device, which in this case I really didn’t want to employ.
If they were mine, I’d float mount them in a mid grey frame. But I hope they may work equally well leant up simply, somewhere in your home.
Having said it many times now, I really am going to make the next edition on fabric. Again there is a concern over the use of material, but I think that dichotomy will have to exist alongside the desire to produce for a while longer at least.
If you’re in Taunton on Friday March 6th, it would be lovely to catch up with you at the Brewhouse Gallery where I have a solo show opening, Modular Locus. It looks set to be a good evening as the Akram Kahn Dance Company will be performing Chotto Xenos there too, which looks fantastic…
Best - Chuck
