I have successfully submitted a range of mixed media images and related video pieces to the above open call. The confirmation screenshot is below.
Zealous Stories: Mixed Media Submission
Submission for Al-Tiba9 Platform for Artists
I have created a portfolio of recent work and submitted it for Al-Tiba9 Platform for Artists PERMANENT INTERVIEW.
Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision, project ideas and engage them with a diverse readership through a published art dialogue.
Selected artists are interviewed by the founder & curator Mohamed Benhadj to highlight their artistic career and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across a wide network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.
Confirmation of my submission is below.
Zealous Portfolio Challenge
I have spent the whole day preparing my submission to this fantastic opportunity created by Zealous. Their aim is to motivate artists to review their practice in the time of crisis. As a reward, selected three winners will receive a portfolio review from industry professional, David Ferry, who is the President of the The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers.
Additionally, unsuccessful entries will receive another chance to reflect on their work. Zealous offer to arrange a comprehensive system of Peer-to-Peer Reviews.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of organising my portfolio online using their platform. Currently, I am nervously awaiting to hear back from the organiosors.
My confirmation email is below:
Dubai Ideathon- Day 2
Day 2 was also extended to most of day 3. My team – 11B got very passionate about crating a holistic and xcohesive platform. Our concept was to bring people together in a time of crisis, social distancing and isolation.
We produced a very comprehernsive proposal for a range of ideas and supporting online platforms. I was selected by the team to present our proposal to the forum of 174 observes via Zoom videoconference. Our proposal was very well received and the team and I are awaiting further news on a range of possible developments.
Dubai Ideathon – Day 1
The first day of this event was dedicated to getting to know the problem. I was allocated to team 11. It consisted of 6 people from Bahrain, Dubai, Ireland, The Phillipines, India and the UK. Their positions varied and included artists, senior managers, consultans and a student.
Our allocated problem for investigation was to look at the creative industries and identify key challenges in terms of reducing fixed costs of operation. Our task was to go beyond the obvious austerity measures and simply cutting down expenditure.
We used Zoom for videoconferencing and Slack for textual communication. Our team managed to work through a long list of challenges and activities in order to isolate a specific research question and refine it.
This is were our group split into teams A & B.
Team A focused on legislation.
Team B (my group) started to explore ideas for the creation of a creative community and a supporting network. The plan was to start with by preparing for a prestigious event to axchieve clout ans broader recognition. Suceess is addictive.
Ravens and Crows Will Peck Us to Pieces – Painting Progress
I have gone through a long journey Exploration, trial and error with this piece. Initial observational and crude sketches of crows in hard pencil, were gradually transformed into dynamic and terrifying black silhouettes of individual birds in a herd. There is definitely something raw about this piece, which portrays a bizarre world with no source of light nor gravity. The mood is overpowering and depressing, perhaps overwhelmed by dirty browns and broken yellows. My painting echoes achievements of strange yet famous Munich grave painters, who limited their palette to the use of dirty colours and broken chroma. This was the main discovery of and I have decided to refer to their learning on the composition on my experimental composition.
Initially, I collaged a self portrait into the painterly space. I have carefully chosen this photo to make sure that it was personal Ly significant. Subsequently, I immersed myself in the creation of an arrangement, which contained energy and drama. Through scraping, glazing and overlaying, I managed to increase the element of a secret atmosphere, mood and, therefore, forced a reflection on a viewer.
The sipping light through the colour layers will later become subdued. I will use an overall glaze of a mixture of crimson Alizarin and Prussian blue. I will also consider using an oil based coat in order to ensure that there is an appropriate translucency and depth of the overlaying colour.
The final stage will be concerned with scrapping of the glaze and, perhaps, imprinting further textures into the existing layers to reveal a mysterious illusions of secrets underneath.
Ravens and Crows Will Peck Us to Pieces – Video Progress
As a part of the process of development of my painting, I have decided to sidetrack it and experiment with digital possibilities and ideas. Yesterday, I devoted my time to drawing crows from observation using a pencil and paper. Subsequently, I moved on and transferred my source sketches onto the canvas using rough black marker pens. The next step was to consider a balanced and rhythmic composition. My creative intention was to achieve a sense of being overwhelmed and taken over by a herd of terrifying black birds. I started to increase the density of drawings, initially with small repetitive silhouettes and gradually increasing their sizes and numbers. My animation begins with a scan of a photograph of me. I have chosen this image carefully. It represents a personally significant moment of my life. In steps, it is replaced by some of my sketches, and than, moderately transforms itself into a black screen. This has some resemblance to the current crisis. It all started with just one mutation, which in turn has expanded enormously to create a global pandemic.
Crows and the use of black are of a metaphorical importance here. They symbolise emptiness, vacuum and nothing, but destruction and death.
I purposefully repeated this sequence and reversed its speed and direction. It grows and withers, reducing itself to a dead screen. This process is looped in order to create a feeling of entrapment and bizarre predictability. We all know, what is going to happen . The cycle has now been thoroughly researched and explored. The meaning of the world is created by a clash of the opposites and juxtaposition of contradictions. Life cannot be just one-sided. Life and death, growth and decline, light and darkness.
At this stage, the overall tonation of my painting is kept in ochre and dirty yellowish greens. In consequence to my digital experimentation, I plan to increase the amount of bright yellowish stains and bleeding patches, in order to over-glaze the entire surface with a deep wash of Alizarin and Prussian Blue. The aim is to enrich the depth of colour to enhance its impact on a viewer. Perhaps, removing parts of the over-layer will allow me to reveal some key elements of the space underneath.
Feedback from Leo and Fleur
I have asked two of my Foundation students to provide me with further feedback. Their key comments are summarised below.
- There is an interesting dynamic of placing myself as a lens of a camera inside of a machine, which represents cycle
- Focus on a relationship between ‘me’ and the nature of my work – interaction with references to monotony
- It is very relevant to the key events of the Corona virus crisis – combination and juxtaposition of chaos and moments of stillness
- It is necessary to keep the entire cycle in the video to express my creative intention of waiting
- Consider using a real washing machine as a working object and experimenting with different cycles and programmes.
- There is a good level of demanding the patience and feeling of entrapment.
- Leo really enjoyed watching the entire experience, from start to finish, despite understanding how a washing machine works.
- It is not just about painting – the focus is on the whole experience.
- Watching the machine work from the inside has shifted the perspective totally and created the division between the inside and the outside.
- There is a great relevance on the context of the pandemic through the purpose on the metaphorical meaning of cleaning.
- It is about putting your own meaningful artwork through this process and getting it transformed into something new without having any control over how it will develop.
- Both, the video and the audio provide appropriate contextualisation.
Ravens and Crows Will Peck Us to Pieces
During my exercise yesterday, I managed to take this disturbing photograph. On the one hand, it reminded me of my primary source for Three Burmese Monks piece. On the other, the black crows drew references to a novel by a Polish writer Stefan Zeromski.
Ravens and Crows Will Peck Us to Pieces – is a relatively short book by a literature Nobel Price winner . It consists of three parts and has references to the atrocities of the partitions of Poland between Germany, Russia and Austria. These birds have also other common connotations. It is usually believed that that the crow is a symbol of bad luck and death. I am not superstitious, but this seen has terrified me.
Subsequently, I have developed an idea of using the crows as an overprinted pattern on my next piece. The idea is to compose a twin image to Three Burmese Monks and use our current pandemic predicament to create a painting about myself, while responding to the broader contexts of the crisis. I am waiting while working in isolation in front of my window.
Optimistically attempting to contradict Zeromski while waiting in a hope that ravens and crows will not peck us to pieces!
DUBAI IDEATHON 2020: COVID-19 CRISIS.
I have submitted the following proposal to the DUBAI IDEATHON 2020: COVID-19 CRISIS. Tee idea is to make a contribution by responding to one of six themes. My chosen topic was as follows:
How can the creative community self-organise? And what kind of public-private collaborations can we explore to help support the cultural industries?
From the creation of talent pools, expertise directories and databases to skill-based collectives and collaborative businesses.
Isolation format does not support the creative community. People with imagination and exciting ideas strive in the environment of collaboration and bouncing ideas of each other. They need to be bombarded with stimulus to allow them to formulate a response. Therefore, the key to success is in bringing people together through online plenaries and lectures; TED talks and exhibitions. Therefore, there is a need to design a platform, which can be roughly based on the concept of Microsoft Teams. However, the format and its key features must be directed at presentation and exchange of visual material, including sound, moving image and video.
Current online galleries try to emulate the physical experience of walking through a building with art in it. An imitation of a holistic effect of simultaneous physical movement, observation, analysis and reflection is totally impossible to be achieved. Kinaesthetic learning cannot take place in front of a screen. Sitting down and looking at pictures is simply boring. Visitors tend to look at the first few pieces before switching off and leaving. Through brainstorming and a dynamic dialogue, there is a potential to develop tools and layouts to avoid this, or at least minimise its negative impact.
One of the most powerful public/ private collaborations is light projection. There are many artists using enlarged displays of text to promote their ideas, such as Jenny Holzer. Video mapping for advertising and the promotion of current issues is in its infancy. These techniques could be used as powerful tools to advertise art, performance and also increase public awareness. I am confident that government bodies would also like to elevate the significance of their messages and public appeals through this medium.
I hope that my propositions go far beyond 3D printing of protection equipment for hospitals and switching the profile of the fashion industry to sewing face masks.
HOW IT WORKS
Dubai IDEATHON is a three-phased project:
PHASE 1: OPEN CALL
Open call to receive proposals that respond to one (or many) of the listed challenges.
PHASE 2: IDEATHON
Six ideation sessions with the participants of the open call will be organised based on the common challenges, and facilitated by specialised design-thinking experts, concluding in well-defined proposals.
PHASE 3: IMPLEMENTATION
Proposed solutions will be put to industry experts to help devise implementation strategies.
TIMELINE
THURSDAY APRIL 2
8am: Dubai IDEATHON submissions open for receiving ideas
SATURDAY APRIL 4
12am: Submissions close at midnight
SUNDAY APRIL 5
10am – 2pm: Groups are assigned and participants are sent workshop links
TUESDAY APRIL 7
10am – 4pm: First set of ideation sessions
WEDNESDAY APRIL 8
10am – 4pm: Second set of ideation sessions
THURSDAY APRIL 9
Collating ideas and proposals into a final list
New Submissions To Online Platforms
I have submitted my project titled Hypnotic Repetition to the following online platforms:
When Will I See You Again?
This is the last photograph of my current piece. I had no option, but to leave it to dry. The new layers of paint and ink need time to settle down and cure.
I am feeling a sense of loss and sadness. The most annoying paradox is that now, in social isolation, I have an ocean of time to paint and produce exciting work. However, it is very difficult to transport my work between my studio and home.
There is a great similarity between the Thai Masseur and I, a sense of parity of our situation. Perhaps, the title of this piece describes it best:
Not Working, Only Waiting…
When will I see you again?
HYPNOTIC REPETITION 