THINGS YOU CAN DO THAT AREN'T YOUR DISSERTATION

Just in case you were struggling for ideas on how to become a mighty procrastinator like yours truly.

As part of third year, we must all face the most heinous, and truly awful beast known as....

THE DISSERTATION.

now it's really not like me absolutely normal for me to bury my head in the sand when things like this come around but even I have been shocked at the amount of things I have found to do instead of making a start on this essay. Fellow fine artists, I'm sure you can sympathise. Unless you're one of those with some form of common sense; in which case you've probably already finished your one, and are wondering how I'm still alive.

Anyways. These are but a few of the things I have found to distract myself from this very important essay.

THE LIST:

1. Room tidying - and I'm not just talking about my standard "push-all-the-scattered-crap-to-the-edges-of-the-room-to-maximise-floorspace" approach here.

2. Cleaning the kitchen. Like, properly.

3. Rearranging all my books into alphabetical order.

4. Eating. (my personal favourite)

5. Pretending I'm an infamous, clown-masked bank robber

6. Building a new computer.

7. Drinking various alcoholic beverages (another favourite)

8. Buying lots of things on the internet.

9. Waiting for the things you bought to arrive in the post.

10. Working my evening job as a senior popcorn scooper at the local cinema.

11. Arguing with the British Gas customer service department.

12. Making pinhole cameras out of random boxes and film canisters lying around in your room

13. Defacing children's colouring books.

14. Staying up until stupid o'clock in the morning making a list of things that have nothing to do with writing a dissertation.

and last, but by no means least:

15. Staring at a blank Microsoft Word document trying not to think about how fucked you are if you don't pull your thumb out your arse and figure out what the fuck to write.

Still, I have a pinhole camera or two set up in the studio, so that'll be something exciting to look forward to tomorrow. I hope that they're not horrendously over-exposed - that will just ruin my day. I've never had too much luck with pinhole techniques, but let's hope that this time round everything will be awesome, and I'll have a badass photograph created over a period of 24 hours.

Will update tomorrow if I'm able. Until then, it's time for bed.

Night y'all.
-Padfoot

NEW YEAR, NEW START

'Sup, internet?

Well I'm pretty much bedridden today, as I maybe drank a bit too much cider last night. Maybe. So I figured I'd update this thing.

So... where to start? 

I'm back at uni, for my final year - But I guess that's fairly obvious. I'm also living with much nicer people this year - feels great to be able to be in a house where I'm not losing weight from stress and feel like I'm about to go insane all the time. Sadly those assholes I was living with are still trying to cause trouble. But let's not go into that. 

I've been bashing out a surprising amount of work; I'm actually fairly confident about where my studio practice is going. Started out by experimenting with acetates, trying to transfer digital images into analogue ones printed in the darkroom. I can't even begin to tell you how good it felt to get back in there - it's strange. I find a kind of inner peace in that dim red light, mixing all those chemicals together. Maybe it's my inner 4-year-old fondly reminiscing about the time when I combined a buttload of different shampoos into the sink. I think it was shortly after someone had read Roald Dahl's old classic "George's Marvellous Medicine" to me. I remember basking in the glory of my creation. Sadly my mother didn't see it that way. 

But I digress.

I also made some pretty awesome polaroid images by accident. 

Basically the film I was using had expired around 2 years back, and so the chemical paste wasn't spreading properly up the image. "fuck this" I said, and proceeded to manually squeeze the chemical over the image with implements ranging from the edge of a table to an old gluestick. And I got some really interesting results. I love happy accidents.

I'm thinking of getting some more film, potentially expired, and trying to make some more images like this - or if not, just making them as weird as possible. Sadly however this stuff is hella expensive so I'm waiting until I get paid before I buy any more. Besides, I should really get started on my dissertation.

urgh. if there's one thing I'm almost definitely shitting a brick about, it's that.

I should probably go get on with that.

Or at least, I say I will, and then end up playing Dead Space 3 again. Even though it is fucking terrible.

ah well. Until next time.

-Padfoot

AN UPDATE TO END ALL UPDATES

I've probably got you expecting some kind of world-shattering revelation now. Sadly, I'm still working on that, so you'll just have to be patient.

Good news however; I have had TWO works shortlisted for the Cork Street summer show! My happiness knows no bounds, and dances of joy shall be performed.

these are the two works that got shortlisted: 

 Making Faces - triptych of long exposure portraits

I took these in college, many moons ago.

Holes - Remember those awesome hole pictures? 

Yup. Here they are, winning awards and shit. Incredible.

While this is all very exciting, now I have to frame the damn things. Still, if they sell (which I hope they will) I stand to make a tidy bit of money out of this venture. Not sure about Making Faces but I think Holes will be more appealing for someone to have on their wall.

I've also entered a photographic portraiture competition at the National Portrait Gallery; only cost me £25 to enter so figured it would be worth it. Only problem so far is that they require a model release form - since most of my work is done on the fly, I rarely get a chance to get people to sign these. I was gonna submit one of my photos of the Ace Cafe bikers; however I didn't even get her name, so unless I do something potentially very silly like forging the form, I don't think I'll be able to submit it. I've entered the work with the very ambiguous name of "The Biker"; so in theory I'll be able to get down to the Ace Cafe again, shoot another portrait and get a release form signed. Of course, this requires a titanic effort on my part, and great expenditure on train travel; so maybe I'll just do that silly thing instead that no one ever does, ever.

One more thing: Finally managed to develop a roll of 120mm film I exposed around 6 months ago, at a photo shop round Milton Keynes. Sadly however, they've all come out a bit... blue.

But, thanks to the magic of Photoshop and many hours of careful adjustments and spectacular swearing in equal measure, I've managed to fix them.

At first I was unsure, but now, looking back on these photos with fresh eyes (after the aforementioned marathon of colour correction) I really love the warmth of these photos. That's the odd thing about using analog techniques; sometimes I hate using it, and I don't know why I keep doing so - it frequently goes wrong, its expensive, and its bloody hard to get right - but when you do get it right, it's so god damn satisfying. Totally worth it. Also, as someone who uses both analog and digital editing methods, it's interesting for me to be able to bring together these two technologies and have them complement each other. It's almost poetic. Something old and something new coming together to form something that's not quite as good as either.

And on that terribly executed Mighty Boosh quote, I bid you all good morrow.

- Padfoot

HOLES IN THINGS

Greetings, my loving fans.
Again, it's been a fair while between blogs, I know. I need to be more on the ball with this thing.

Well, let's bring y'all up to speed. I'm now back living in good ol' Milton Keynes after the end of my second year, which I aced with a pretty solid 2:1 overall despite my hardships due to my living situation. Many celebrations were enjoyed. I've definitely made a transition though this year; while in my first year I was more interested in generally fucking shit up, intervening, leaving my mark on the world and recording it, this year I've found I was more of an observer; I simply took photos of what was already there, and it was only rarely that I actually interfered (for example, the "impossible" photos where I flipped a few things upside down).

See that? It's a text link. Isn't that cool? Something I learned how to do recently... That's the magic of HTML people. We're living in the future, for reals.

Anyway...For my final show, I was definitely feeling the pressure. I felt like I couldn't produce anything original; so struggling for ideas I went and sat in my garden. It was here I noticed a few holes in my fence, so I started photographing them as close up as I could - the results were a lot more interesting than I had ever anticipated.

From here, I started looking for other things that had holes in them - and from there, I managed to build a strong set of photos for my final show. I photographed holes in floors and walls, finding small, unremarkable voids in the world and bringing attention to them. 

Judging from the pretty positive reaction from my tutors, I'd somehow managed to completely blow everything else I had done this year out of the water. Though I am glad of this, part of me is a little anxious about where I could go next. Despite the fact that, according to my tutors, my portraits are not as exciting as my other photos, I think an interesting continuation could be a project examining holes in people, but I'm unsure of how to actually create that at the moment. Either way I do enjoy photographing people, capturing moments, and so I'd like to improve and show the tutors that I can work in that way as well. 

Speaking of my work, I admit I haven't taken an awful lot of photos since I've been back, I've been mostly busy with re-integrating back into life here in MK, and entering competitions with my existing work. So far I have entered some of my works into open calls from Cork Street, the National Portrait Gallery, and a few online organisations; I've yet to hear back from them but I'll be sure to update this when I do.

I do have some rather nice events lined up this weekend in London however; those will be posted on my Facebook page, PATOGRAPHY. (holy shit, another text link. Fuck yes, these things are awesome.) Check it out if you fancy seeing multiple photos of some seriously bad-ass metal bands and drunk people being very silly.

So here we are again. Another year done. If there's one thing I've learned for sure over the past 12 months its that no matter what happens, all you can do is just trudge forward. No matter how big and how much of a nasty fucker that cloud looks, it will always have a silver lining - the trick is you've just got to find it. 

Alright, that's enough inspirational bullshit for one evening I think. 

Until next time.

- Padfoot

OPPORTUNITY WILL ONLY KNOCK ONCE

Evening all. Between working my day job and trying not to go insane in the studio I haven't had much spare time of late; so I'm making use of this "day off" (sort of) and making one or two last blogs before the summer holidays.

First of all, I did carry forward the theme of doors - went round a few streets and photographed as many as I could, then cropped them all on photoshop so they were more or less the same size.

and here they all are, sitting beautifully in a row. I made a couple of interesting composites out of them by editing all the doors into one image:

not really sure what possessed me to make these images but I must say I'm quite happy at the result; there's an ethereal kind of feel to them which I wasn't expecting. Raises questions too - what's behind the doors? is it there to keep us out? or to keep something in?

This train of thought is fairly relevant; for a long while I had just a tiny print of that white door from the installation room on my wall (see my earlier posts) - reflected pretty accurately how I felt; everywhere I looked there were doors closing on me, opportunities missed, inspiration that wouldn't come, trapped behind doors in the mind, locked by a lack of self-confidence. In this respect the door became something more sinister - it ultimately represented how trapped I felt. I would sit in my studio space or at home, deep in thought, staring at that door for hours. For a long time I didn't even pick up my camera, or work on anything arty. I had photographed and edited a whole series of doors, but my shitty state of mind wouldn't let me print them - and so I ended up wallowing in apathy, unsure of everything.

However, after the Easter holidays I finally managed to get my shit together long enough to actually print these images and stick them on my wall, and my tutors really loved them. This gave me the confidence to get my work moving again. Some advice from Michael, one of my tutors - "Just be aware of everything. The way the sun plays on the surface of a puddle, the shadow from a passing car, that person's surprisingly colourful shoes - let the world wash over you. Don't let a day go by when you haven't taken at least a hundred photographs of everything around you."

That's all the inspirational shite I have time for today unfortunately everyone; I am working on a new set of images based around the theme of "holes in things" - a start that is sort of related to my practice of observing things, but I plan to make it the first series of many that will basically document my experience as a human being, alive in the 21st century.

Keep it real people.

- Padfoot

A LEAP INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE

In my last post I was looking at some film artists, Pippilotti Rist and Jonas Mekas, who are just bloody brilliant to be quite honest. So I started trying to throw a bit of absurdity into my work. The solution came without any real preamble - essentially I was feeling a bit frustrated one day and decided to turn everything in my space upside down, including my desk and some of the prints on the wall. Some of these pictures looked much better upside down for some reason... so I photographed all the upside down-ness from my space.

When I got the prints back, I showed them deliberately flipped upside down:

I was surprised by how something as simple as turning an image upside down could cause it to be read completely differently; the inversion of the floor and ceiling causes confusion and the brain struggles to process the scene - which way is up?
Ideally I'd like to experiment with this a little further in the installation room with other furniture, and possibly get some people involved too.

Also to follow on from those photos of the bitches, I had a bash at getting some candid photos of people I met, or have a connection with somehow. I'm reasonably happy with them, but some of them lack a bit of oomph; they feel more like bog-standard snapshots than the kick-ass, chunky images laden with pathos that I was expecting. However, I guess that's up to the viewer's interpretation. The harshest critics we face in this life are ourselves after all.

Taking my feedback from my mid-term review into account, I'm gonna carry on with the spaces ideas. However I'm gonna try and broaden it; include film as well as photographs, and try not to force a concept onto it like I have been doing by turning them upside down. Observe everything, then edit backwards from there, picking out the "good bits". So I may end up with hundreds of photos or hours of video of nothing in particular, but be able to pick out or splice together lots of little moments, similar to "As I was Moving Forward...." by Jonas Mekas.
Also, I want to expand on the people shots - I've always thought I have an eye for portraits, but perhaps I need to work on it. I've been suggested to get right up in the face of my subject, maybe make them uncomfortable with the proximity of the camera... I'm not sure if I'll make any friends doing this, but it's definitely something I want to try.

Also... this door.

I keep seeing it and wondering if there's anything I can do to expand on it. Maybe photograph lots of doors? Would tie in nicely to the whole "observe everything" malarkey that I'm working on.

Well - that's me more or less set up for a few weeks I'd say. Let's rock n' roll.

- Padfoot

EYEBALL MASSAGE

Part of the whole of this second year thing on my course is all about trying to identify what my practice actually is. Not necessarily what it does, but what is the context of it? Well, I think I'm on the way to finding myself in that respect. I've found that I have a talent for observation; my work is a phenomological exploration, recording the world around me, and sometimes putting my own twist on it. I've also found that I'm drawn to humourous works, the strange and psychedelic, imaginative or unique processes (such as Dave McKean's photocopied collage comic strips) and pure absurdity. These qualities tend to stand out to me when I view an artist or their work.

With these in mind, these are some of the people I've been looking at recently.

PIPPILOTTI RIST - EYEBALL MASSAGE

With a name as strange as her work, Rist mainly works with video, presenting many visual wonders in her latest show at the Hayward Gallery, "Eyeball Massage". Often her work involves various manipulations of video, mainly playing with speed of playback, or crossfading two or more separate videos together to make a film-based collage of video and sound. 

This video shows a few excerpts from the works that were on show at the Hayward.

If there was ever an artist who represented the absurd, Rist is most definitely one of them. The sometimes insane subject matter of her work (smashing car windows with a flower, for example) and over-saturated, sickly sweet colours gives the impression of Rist living in a dream world, or perhaps documenting a dream, representing or acting out juxtapositions and the fantasies that the human condition throws up in the face of authority - ie, the destruction/vandalism of the cars, but using a flower, something that is inherently delicate.

JONAS MEKAS - AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD, OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY

Mekas is hailed by some as being a key influence in their film making career, and the "godfather of American avant-garde cinema". The works I have looked at are purely observational; Mekas was recording moments of his life since 1949, a few weeks after he emigrated to America. In the piece "Brief Glimpses" (video below) some of these moments are seen; holidays, family gatherings, people in the street, walks through countryside - all randomly spliced together, varying speeds and durations.

Watching this I feel as if I am being granted an exclusive glimpse into the memories of Mekas; the random splicing and sometimes chaotic nature of the editing make the clips similar the way recalling memories or dreams can be disjointed and sometimes fuzzy. This makes the work deeply personal, you almost feel as if you are invading his privacy by watching. As Mekas himself explains in the video, he initially intended to put the clips together chronologically, but eventually "gave up", giving way to randomness and chaos, saying that he "does not truly know where any part of [his] life truly belongs" - this further emphasises the video representing the act of remembering; Mekas is now an old man and has had many experiences, so it is likely he has trouble recalling exactly what happened where, despite these recordings. Saying this, who can truly pick out every single significant event of their lives from memory and describe it in vivid detail? Of course, some stand out more than others; human long-term memory is a powerful phenomenon. But not everything can be stored.

Think I might have to try some of these things; I haven't really done an awful lot of work with film. Might be time to try something a little different.

- Padfoot

THOSE BITCHES

As mentioned before, I've been working on getting together some random candid shots of people I have a connection with, and playing with the narratives/stories they suggest.

The most obvious example is the people I live with - a minor disagreement that has blown up into us basically not talking to each other, and the emotions and passions that have been expressed as a result, led me to try and photograph them; I figured that this might produce some interesting results. However, because of the current situation this has been remarkably difficult... near on impossible, in fact. 

I did manage to get some pictures of them, whilst they were fairly drunk at a club night and temporarily forgot that we were mortal enemies. Having said that, chances are they didn't even know it was me taking the photos.

Despite this, I confess that I feel no pleasure having taken these. I thought that doing this might help channel my negative feelings for these two girls into something creative; I was hoping to make a contrast between how I feel about them and how they look in the photograph, eg: the title may be something along the lines of "that bitch I have to live with", but in the photograph she might look serene and beautiful. But there is most certainly no contrast here. And frankly, I feel like I have sunk to their level by engaging in an activity as openly spiteful as this.

Time for a change of plan I think.

- Padfoot

GAIETY IS THE MOST OUTSTANDING FEATURE OF THE SOVIET UNION

...Or so we would be led to believe at any rate, according to our good friend Josef Stalin and the title of the Saatchi's latest exhibition, combining the work of some post-USSR Russian artists together into one show. I visited this show on Thursday 7th February; and I'm pretty sure that the show runs until the beginning of May... so if you haven't seen it yet, it's definitely worth a look.
The photography of Boris Mikhailov and Sergei Vasiliev stood out for me personally; of course, I may be slightly biased, there were some other pretty kickass sculptures / installations but I think these guys are the most relevant to my stuff.

The intimacy of these shots, the unparalleled control that each photographer holds over his subjects lends great power to the images. Mikhailov's section was dominated by "Case History" (1997-98), a selection from a series of over 400 shots, a photojournalistic documentation of the abandoned working class in the city of Kharkov after the dismantling of the Soviet Union 10 years previous. Mikhailov traded hot meals for utter control over his subject, often showing nudity or unusual poses - some of these point out in gruesome detail the physical suffering of these people; often the subjects are undernourished, have severely damaged teeth or various sores on their skin.

Sergei Vasiliev's subjects were rather different however - his photographs document a secret language of tattoos used by Russian Soviet prisoners, a set produced between 1989-93. The interesting thing about these images is that they appear to be isolated shots pulled from a bog-standard tattoo magazine. However as the narrative behind their creation is revealed, the work changes, evolves into a gritty documentation of resistance within the prison system's culture of repression.

This raw, intimate style ties in quite nicely with some of my own work I have been producing recently - I've been trying to unconsciously photograph people I meet or have a connection with. It has been a little difficult working out how best to get candid photos of people without them noticing, although I have found using my phone on silent and without flash can produce some good results. Of course, the fact that I can't use my camera is absolutely killing me, but since the autofocus is buggered, it's just not quick enough to be able to capture those little moments that can be lost to hesitation. I'll put them up on a separate post when I've got some good ones together.

Until then however, I must bid you adieu. Night all.

- Padfoot