In my work I tend to dissect, then reconstruct an image or the material I am using into something new. I think that this is the pattern this blog will follow as well. Certainly, I am in full deconstruction mode at the moment. And I can only hope that after some time thinking about the elements of what I do - part of what my year out is all about - I will be in a position to (re)create with gusto!
The first thing that I have started to consider in my work is the materials I use. My work is pared down, abstract; and therefore the materials I use are very important as they are a large part of the subject of the work; very much visible.
First, an aside. I have navigated Berlin, where I have been for just over a week now in an ambiguous place between tourist and resident - one district at a time, soaking up textures, distracted by the play of materiality. From now pristine 19th Century stucco buildings, to layers of flyers unceremoniously pasted on walls, to building sites pretty much everywhere. Contrasts of cobbled streets and matt tarmac shining with beer bottles worn into its surface. Public buildings have offered the chance for architects to experiment while public art is sometimes valued as a surface rather than respected for its substance.
The first thing that I have started to consider in my work is the materials I use. My work is pared down, abstract; and therefore the materials I use are very important as they are a large part of the subject of the work; very much visible.
First, an aside. I have navigated Berlin, where I have been for just over a week now in an ambiguous place between tourist and resident - one district at a time, soaking up textures, distracted by the play of materiality. From now pristine 19th Century stucco buildings, to layers of flyers unceremoniously pasted on walls, to building sites pretty much everywhere. Contrasts of cobbled streets and matt tarmac shining with beer bottles worn into its surface. Public buildings have offered the chance for architects to experiment while public art is sometimes valued as a surface rather than respected for its substance.
Some of the things which have caught my eye in Berlin, from top left: neutral shades of refurbished buildings, roadworks, bottle tops pressed into tarmac, layers of posters, Daniel Libeskind's titanium zinc building for the Jewish Museum, graffitied sculptures. Photographs: Bridget H Jackson
Quality materials offer the chance for people to demonstrate wealth and taste inconspicuously, which I feel is quite a Germanic (and I write this as someone who is half-German) trait. Materials can subtly signify status. Our choice of the materials we use to build and furnish our homes and cities, and clothe us, are statements about more than our personal taste. In many cases, I think, we look to earn the respect of others in our choices, so helping to fulfill, according to Maslow, the penultimate rung in our hierarchy of needs. Getting the choice of materials ‘right’ is hard; in their simplicity there are few hiding places. When thinking about materials I always defer to what is deemed to be quality: marble over mud, linen rather than nylon. This may be an issue.
In my work - like the piece below, still in progress, fusing cotton duck with saffron-dyed linen - I consciously use materials that convey a ‘fine art’ status. The canvas is a signifier that I see myself working in the tradition of painting rather than craft or sculpture, both of which are more often associated with the study of the physicality of materials. It offers people a suggestion, therefore, to read my work as exploring the role of painting as a window on the world versus an object. There is the essence of fabric – its weft and its warp – which I present through unpicking and re-sewing, reducing material density, producing a means to see through the fabric, drawing an awareness to the reverse side. Dying the canvas means colour is part of the material, not added to it. I engage intimately, one thread at a time, but the overall repetition of resewing creates difference, distorting the regularity of the machine-made weave. Finally, there is an authenticity that materials imbue, through their physicality, which is important to me. And, as Walter Benjamin wrote, distinguishes the original from copies, giving art its indestructible aura.
In my work - like the piece below, still in progress, fusing cotton duck with saffron-dyed linen - I consciously use materials that convey a ‘fine art’ status. The canvas is a signifier that I see myself working in the tradition of painting rather than craft or sculpture, both of which are more often associated with the study of the physicality of materials. It offers people a suggestion, therefore, to read my work as exploring the role of painting as a window on the world versus an object. There is the essence of fabric – its weft and its warp – which I present through unpicking and re-sewing, reducing material density, producing a means to see through the fabric, drawing an awareness to the reverse side. Dying the canvas means colour is part of the material, not added to it. I engage intimately, one thread at a time, but the overall repetition of resewing creates difference, distorting the regularity of the machine-made weave. Finally, there is an authenticity that materials imbue, through their physicality, which is important to me. And, as Walter Benjamin wrote, distinguishes the original from copies, giving art its indestructible aura.
Detail of work in progress, saffron-dyed linen threads being sewn into cotton duck. Photograph: Bridget H Jackson
Work in progress, reverse side, cotton threads sewn into linen. Photograph: Bridget H Jackson
One of the things that I am going to explore over the next few months is the effect of using found, recycled or second-hand materials. In moving away from materials I classify as belonging to a painter, I will see how the value of my work, and its meaning changes. Using materials which are not overtly in the tradition fine art may be a better fit with my intention to re-present and give new form to materials. They may assert the object nature of the work more clearly. So, at an art shop a few days ago I stared longingly at the beautiful sheets of pristine white paper available but opted for recycled newsprint. Paper seems like a good place to play. Somewhere I won’t be too precious (because I see it as a lower quality material, with newsprint on the very bottom rung). I have started collecting materials with which to make colours: golden rod flowering by the canal, green acorns from Tiergarten park and a fragment of a brick. Alongside these experiments I will carry on weaving linen and cotton threads together, creating new material from the two, and I will think about whether I need the significance of canvas as a material and, if not, what I might use in its place.
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