The Art Of Research , Helsinki

Patina exhibited at Taik, Helsinki.

More fake-rays

Embodying x-rays

Fabric moulds of exterior body and garment forms. Using light to reveal the interior.

More interiors: in progress

Hidden Interiors#2

Studio wall 30.10.09

Exploring the interior

Extending the concern with viewing and visualising the interior ( i.e. as with a medical agenda). I had been interested in the use of xrays in textiles conservation - prodcting images that appear to be of ghostly shells of garments, their interior revealed. Could I make such an object through paper casting? Presuming the external has an internal, I made thin paper casts of hands - the intention had been to make drawings inside thse casts which would then be suspeneded and backlit, revealing the content.

Instead the form itself had some interest - its wrinkled texture, orificed appearing to reference the body directly ( more so than a garment might) - a gullet, vagina or venal structure perhaps?

I photographed the interiors of the casts, resulting in images that seem to share similarities with endoscopic images.

From these photos I have strated to make drawings in silver ink which glimmer and come in and out of focus with the lighting conditions and position of viewer- a shimmering not unlike the ultrasound technologies I have been working with produce. Interesting too tat it should be a metallic element : I have learnt preparations of samples for electron microscopy require a fine coating of a metallic element to reflect the electrons and amke the image.

Nets: what is caught, what is lost

Wire form shaped around body, peeled off and resultant shapes projected and traced in white pen on dyed nepalese paper. Paper has a leather-like quality. Once traced, drawings are coated in wax - to preserve and 'fix' the ephemeral image - the ink appears to merge into the page - it is in it , not on it. Work is concerned is with finding ways of viewing the other, interior side of the skin.

"Findings"

“Findings ” form part of a larger body of projected drawings each composed of layered sheets of etched glass brought into visible existence though OHP. Developed from studies of microscopy and light-dependent medical imaging processes , this series of work deconstructs these forms of scientific imaging technology ,and repositions them to develop a means of drawing to articulate the otherwise hidden or overlooked.
The work engages with technologies on various levels: being both derived from the deconstruction of technological processes and then relying on other appropriated technologies for its visibility. This positions the work in a complex and critical position vis-a-vis this imaging technology, as tensions between concealment and revelation begin to surface: in the process of revealing the image, the projector simultaneously obscures the original infinitesimal etched marks. Imagery is derived from traces of human presence. The “Findings” series depicts personal items found abandoned in the city. Layered up, marks cohere into a single image, but fragmented, tenuous, occupying an ambiguous space, physically and conceptually echoing the social limbo in which these objects exist.
This series of projections was made specifically for the A Thing About Machines Festival, exhibited in the Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry.

Fax-similes:Lost in Transcription

Facsimiles are a series of drawings of found objects worked on discarded fax paper which explore the liminal space that we call ‘lost’: a place between loser and finder, a territory charted only by the object establishing a distant connection between two unknown individuals.
This idea is approached through an appropriation of the technology of the fax: a long distance communication lacking direct contact between its users. This sense of the unseen informs the drawing process: worked in white ink on the white heat-sensitive fax paper, the drawing is invisible in the making, revealed only though a final exposure to heat; a blindness which resonates with the faxing process: the sender cannot see the output.
The images themselves appear as ghostly scans, built up through an intensive scrutiny which results in an obsessive scrawling mark like an indecipherable handwriting, suggesting a sense of intimacy through this somewhat futile attempt to uncover hidden narratives. The drawings begin to appear more like treasured letters, rather than the impersonal output of the fax as the intensity of the working process leaves the careworn traces of human handling.
In this way, the ‘drawn’ mark does not replicate that of the machine, but more situates itself inside the framework of technology and appropriates its means for its own ends.

Secret Shadows - murmurs?

Beyond Vision

Experiment: invisible drawing revealed by ultraviolet light.

In the small hours

More thoughts around the capacity for light to reveal otherwise hidden or unknown information, follwing inesigation into ultrasound and x-ray technologies. Forms evolved from cast shadows of familiar objects illuminted by torchlight, emerging as unfathomable forms strangley reminiscent of deep sea life- in itself - hidden, and barely within the grasp of human knowledge.

Watching ink dry

I have begun exploring a new strand of though developped as a tangent from investigations into light and revelation. I started to think more inensly about the power of light to reveal, and its concerse : darkness. As a result, a new seed of ideas has begun to emerge around ideas of nightime: a private time, the absence of light, shadows, the uncertainty of darkeness. The inability to make sense of or grasp fleeting impressions has been foregrounded here. Like these impressions, the drawing change as the ink dries, never fixed, the desired effects slipping away ( captured only in reproduction) fading to a feint blur, like a disappointing awakening from sleep.

Time Flies

I recently came accoss a set of victorian microscope slides at a flea market and was instantly hooked. I was partiularly fascinated by their sense of preservation within a visibly ageing form ( the glue used to fix the slide covered had yellowed and cracked. Presumably collected by an amateaur naturalist, the slides have sample ranging from rock fragments to the head of a blowfly ( pictured above).
Viewed through the microscope not only is the intended speciment revealed, but also the aging and flaws of the preparation.
The samples pictured appear to have a paper like consistency, reminiscent of old envelopes of pressed flowers - the stuff of memoried preserved for a later date the forgotten.

Showing Patina High and Dry

Another drawing in the Patina ( light) series ( above)

High and dry ( below).

Developped from the stand of ideas focused on the notion of Patina, are pieces which responded to the stuggles between chance and control in archival conservation of garments. These drawings build upon the idea of the greasy deposits left by touching but here these greasy residues are absorbed by either charcoal - a substance used in conservation to absorb dangerous elements in the atmosphere -and talc -a dessicant which absorbs moisture. So in effect , the surface of the drawing becomes the site where the chemicals of damage and the chemicals of control are met , resulting in a ghostly image of the shadow of the garments orginally worked with.

Some thoughts on transparency

One of a recent series of experiments which investigated the dematerialisation of the paper support though using wax to render it transparent.

Murmuring after Hooke...

This new direction of the work stemmed from a desire to interrogate scale - it is scale that made the Patina works so particularly effective - and intricacy.

Returning to notes gathered in the medical case study visits, I began to reflect more closely on the processes of magnification, of microscopy to make the invisible visble.

This image draws on several sources :

• Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665) , scrutinising his images- how has he depicted the invisible/ minute?

ultrasound technology - images that depict depth in single layered slices, images resulting from hazy horzontal lines

archaeological scrunity - sytematic recording of detail

Impressed by Hooke's detail , and rendering of the minute, enlarging it via drawing to a visible level, I wante to take this further, to enlarge it behond the just visible, to a much more dominat scale. The image is worked in pencil - the tool of scietific note taking in the days before computers and still used in archaeological records. However, unlike the records of Hooke, my intention was not to render an visually 'realistic'record of the object; rather I wanted the image to unpick and explore the processes of image making in relation to a historical tradition of drawing and micrography. The idea was to build up an images as if it is in slices, acknowledgeing different depths and densities of layers - a depiction of multiple layers at one -like scanning electron micrograph technology, multple parts are built up to cohere to a 3d whole. The marks used are a uniform dash - akin to Hooke's marks and also the bads of ultrasound. However, unlike ultra sound images , the lines are not only horizontal - different directions denote different depths therefore the image is able to represent multiple'depths' in a single image ( unlike ultrasound). The drawing was made over a period of 4 days, sytematically marking out parts - laboured process which reflects a similar time needed to prepare certain material for viewing under a scanning electron microscope. The intended effect was to mimic the viewing process of microscopic viewing - from a distance it coheres into a believeable whole but as one gets closer it breaks down into its constiuent parts - much in the same way material presented on prepared slides does under increasing magnification of the microscope.

I found it interesting to observe that towards the end of the making process, when the projection was less needed, this multilayered focusing became a crucial part of making the drawing- would need to beable to view both the part and whole at once so found myself repeatedly shifting between two levels of focus. The process was also a physical one - as I repeatedly moved back and forward, my body and retina effectively became mimetic of the microscope.



In some ways I think there is an interesting dialogie here withthe arguments put forward by Hockney in his Secret Knowledge (2001) . In this thesis Hockney explores the use of drawing devices and optics by old masters. For him the camera lucida and optical devices were not about deskilling, they were a tool to enable greater acuracy at greater speeds. My use of optics, however, does nethier! The work strives neither for an 'accurate' or 'realistic' visual representation, or speed - it is necessarily laborously time consuming.

On reflection , then, it would seem that there is indeed potential here to explore and unravel processes of medical imaging in realtion to drawing practice and a historical tradition of drawing practice.

Where now? two thoughts - firstly - what happens when enlargement processes are reversed - made so somall that we really have to look and scrutinise with the naked eye - pushing the limits of visiblity ? can projections be made backwards? secondly - silverpoint . A drawing material associated with delicacy and particularly fine lines, intricate scale - what would happen if it was useon this large scale? I am especially drawn to this ideas given the uses of silver in both scanning micrography and imaging, and also early microphotographs. Moverover, it will fade and tarnish over time - a fleeting and ephemeral image.

Making Visible Invisible Making

Making visible invisible making

Creativity and Change Conference, Lancaster, 25th June, 2009

These images and excerpt are part of a presentation given at this potsgraduate conference.

Because approaches of studio enquiry often contradict what is accepted as research and are not sufficiently fore-grounded or elaborated by artistic researcher themselves, the impact of practice as research is still not to be fully understood and realised.” (Barrett 2007)

“Rather than advocating an integration of theory and practice... by privileging text in relation to research actually reinforces the distinction between them...its overall effect is to reinforce the illegitimacy of art practice as research.” (Candlin 2000)

This exhibition seeks to address these problems by valuing the visual material generated in studio research as an important form of embodied knowledge (Bolt 2007)and also as a significant communicative strategy. This creative format tests an approach to maintaining the integrity of visual research when it enters interdisciplinary dialogue.
Studio making is typically a hidden and private affair between artist and materials and perhaps nowhere is this given more credence than in the act of drawing. As a researcher whose practice is predominantly drawing-oriented, such accounts are problematic within the context of debates surrounding the legitimacy of art practice as research. If creative methodologies are to be valued and contribute to interdisciplinary knowledge, how knowledge is made in the studio requires wider understanding (Barrett 2007, Bolt 2007, Sullivan 2005, Defreitas 2001). The development , and use, and dissemination of this necessary studio documentation aims to make visible a studio methodology in order for it to be opened to critical debate at forums such as this.

reflections on the event
A useful opportunity to share my research and its methods in an interdisciplinary forum, receiving feedback from diverse fileds of expertise. While all was extermely positive, the presenation generated considerable interest and debate, I realised that in terms of making visble my proceses, text was still of primary importance for communication. How might my method of documentation be adapted so that they were more readily avalaible for public viewing, a clearer visual explanation rather than the donminant textual form? Ideas: folded notebooks rather than individual pages - this way multiple pages can be viewed at once; scan in documentation and provide acomputer terminal for images to be browsed, cross referenced with written notes? Perhaps such forms will provide a more effective was of prioritising and maintaining the primacy of the visual in my research?

Making Patina

Images indicating the process of making the Patina drawings. Using a syringe to deposit carefully moderated amouts of grease onto the surface, mapping out he image of he shadow - a fleeting image wihich will be preserved through the grease. Here the traces of the contact are preserved and replace the image and object to which they refer - aprocess similar to the rigorous documentation that comprises the 'preservation by record' methodology in archaeology. It is a system of careful and controlled recorded, documenting yet in the case of Patina this is perhaps perverse - the intention is to inflict damege, a mark but through the careful moderation of dangerous elements, their impact is controlled to result in an image.

Patina: Light (2009)

Drawing made using processes of magnification using grease on light sensitive paper.

This work is the culmination of a series of experiments which explore the conventions around preservation in costumes archives. Ultimately conservators seek to prevent damage to the garments through marking. In this series I explore the idea that drawing is essentially a process of marking: processes of protection are inverted and actively used as a drawing tool. Here small deposits of grease are meaured out , tracking the outline of a garment. Using processes of maginfication by light ( borrowed from medical methods) , the image has been enlarged.

Patina: Dust ( 2009)

Studio cross-referencing