On making an entrance – a film based on the poem by Chris Emery

The films Damaged Enamel and On Making an Entrance are 2 films that form a trilogy responding to the poems of Chris Emery. Damaged Enamel also draws on sculptural work I have made based on bathroom furniture (baths, sinks, hand basins, dryers) and so overlaps with other contextual discourses that underpin those works.

The thinking behind the exposition of both these films relates to the ones for reading poems I describe in my reflection about the treatment for the poem George’s Song. For all three I have used computer-generated voices rather than real ones. The visual elements of this film is far simpler than for George’s Song.

On Making an Entrance film still from the poem by Chris Emery. image: Gregory Hayman

For On making an entrance was much more straightforward, I wanted to see whether I could use a titles effect to deliver the words of the poem. But I have played with the usual placing of this Star Wars type title. It is more of an end title sequence and I have turned that around to suggest beginning (Making an Entrance). This was because the poem had a filmic or cinematic quality to it and I wanted to reflect that in the filmed element of my work. The voice has a West Coast American accent and I thought that worked well with the cinematic elements too.

In terms of showing the work, I feel the Making an Entrance deserves a cinematic screen to give full effect to the 3D animation of the titles for words. Damaged Enamel is far more of an interior piece and could be shown on a small monitor or projected into a bathroom space or even onto an area of porcelain.

George’s Song – a video artwork

George’s Song – this artwork is the first of my responses to a collaboration with the poet Chris Emery. The poem is a non-narrative, textural poem. I did not want to film elements as they appear in the poem, even though this might have been one option, rather, I preferred to cogitate on the poem and over a series of readings began to develop a feeling for it, within the language of film and using elements I had experimented with previously in film works of art.

There were lines that suggested the act of looking or observing, and I thought about sensory organs–the eyes–that enable this to happen. I also wanted to avoid the poems being read either by the poet or actors or indeed anyone who might distract from the words by imbibing them with emotion or a poetic resonance. I have very strong feelings about the reading of poetry and particularly hate the declamatory or singsongy style with which some poems are read out loud. Witness the current debate that was sparked by the poet Carol Ann Duffy reading one of her own poems on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4. (I think people agree that she is a very fine poet, but that her reading of her own poems does not always do them justice). The computer-generated voice I used avoided any meaning or emotion being placed on the words or the poems; the words are merely sounded as words together and for me begin to let the poem and indeed the poet speak for them.

The decision to film a part of the body, the lips, and use the mouth for eyes in a stitch together film, was made because I wanted to link the act of observing with the act of speaking the poem. The use of the sprout (the green object acting as eyeball) was a response to the phrase in the poem about the ‘measled grapes’; I didn’t want a measled grape – even if I had one.

I think the film works well with or without sound (but I do need to think about how audio reverberates in some locations and that headphones might be a solution in some locations). The film produced a variety of reactions from disgust, to laughter, and curiosity, and as such, worked well. It prompted discussion and discourse and its exposition largely met most of what I had hoped it would achieve.

Forgetting and Artwork – Thoughts on a Sculpture

Gregory Hayman, 2014

This new piece of sculpture has been made from a found object (a hand dryer) and the stems of an artichoke cast in bronze.   Thus it is an assemblage of found and made objects. It is untitled and designed to be displayed as shown here, on a black base with a three black low-sided flats.

It is one in a number of works that record my interest in reflective surfaces and bathroom furniture and stems from a number of sources. I will begin with the reflective materials interest first. I remember reading that people become less violent and aggressive if they see themselves reflected. The research was looking into how hostility could be reduced in users of public services and concluded that people would behave better if they could see themselves. I don’t remember where I saw this; it was some years ago and possibly when I was working in a customer-facing role, shortly after a violent customer held me hostage.   I don’t know whether this research has been followed up or acted upon either as I see little evidence of it in places I’ve visited. Anyway, I wonder whether people would have acted differently had they seen themselves reflected as a whole and whether violent nations or groups could similarly have a large or virtual mirror held up for them to see themselves. I made a piece on Nazism using this thought a few years ago and have been drawn to reflective surfaces from time to time, like the two pieces I have made recently; one with a pedestal; and the one illustrated here with a hand dryer.

I am not just content to exhibit the found object but want to use it in combination with something else. Here, I have used bronze stalks from artichokes that are rising vertically from one of the surfaces of the dryer. The dryer is displayed on its back; it is not mounted, as it would be in a bathroom. It is washed up and lying prostrate so that all of its outer surfaces can be seen, only its innards are not visible and the workings which drive the dryer have been removed so it is without the ability to perform its intended function. In this respect, it is just a casing, a husk, a shell, the housing for an object that can no longer work as intended; it is breathless and mute, its chrome proboscis looking silently outward.

As a dryer, it also had a public or corporate function. Dryers are not installed in homes, but public lavatories or business ones, so it gestures to a life outside of the home and one which served two types of users, an internal one, or a passing one. I know nothing about the origin of it before I found it in a skip, and can only speculate on its provenance or past life. The viewer must make their own mind up. Suffice to say, it is now joined with two vertical damaged uprights with filigree lesions that hint at decay, disease, absence. For me these have some sense of the exterior of the Twin Towers, which I saw fall in front of me. I did not intend to echo that, there was no deliberate design, just happenstance. There are echoes too of an object given to bluster and things reduced, cut down.

The uprights are reflected in the nozzle as is the surrounding and possibly, the viewer too. All caught up in an elliptical world and offered back for inspection and reflection. The piece has no didactic intention, it is presented without a title and with little guide as to what the viewer should take from it, rather it is intended that the viewer take what they invest. In the looking and consideration.

My other interest in bathrooms is more personal and darker still, if that can be possible. It refers to one of my relatives who was victim of a mass murder and was tied up and burned to death in a bathroom, his wooden leg (after a war injury) providing further grist to the flames. The bathroom becoming a place of horror rather than a place of cleansing is a difficult one. The fact too, that a bathroom would have had mirrors that failed to limit the anger or actions of the perpetrators is an ironic twist on the aforementioned violence lessening possibilities of mirrors, one that is not lost on me as I reflect on the piece.

But the artwork is in two parts, one offering support to the other, or anchoring it and reflecting it to a world that encompasses the viewer. It offers some key as to why I think it works as an artwork. Does it fulfil a role in the attempt to make a forgettable artwork too? I think that the previous roles of the two elements are implied and forgotten by the combination. The voice and function of the dryer is lost or forgotten, although by forcible removal. Sadly, the piece is memorable in its abjectness and therefore fails as a forgettable work.

Gregory Hayman, 2014

For me personally it offers many recollections. But, in the act of making and assemblage, it goes beyond these histories and transcends them. Thus it may render them forgotten or erased, providing an object for contemplation in its own right. Maybe, that is where the forgetting happens – in the slippage between the possible pasts and possible more positive futures.

Modern British Sculpture – Royal Academy, London, A Review

This was a mixed bag of a show, which has mostly been derided by the critics.  As such, it was easy to get a ticket and has not been the must see show that you might expect given the billing. 

The headings for the way the exhibition was divided up were not particularly illuminating and  seemed pretentious and random and did nothing to draw out important themes – witness ‘Monumentalising Life and Death’, or ‘Theft by Finding’.  It was not a very scholarly approach.  Neither was it predominantly an artistic one.

Nonetheless, the major players were all there from Gill to Hirst via Moore, Hepworth and Caro.  It was good to see so many seminal pieces in one place, but one had the feeling that some pieces stood the test of time better than others.  I made copious notes and the odd sketch for future reference.  And the Value systems part of the programme had thoughts on the private and public types of art.  However, this was only helpful in a negative way as it provided a very reductive reading of the scope or interpretation of these spheres.

All in all it was worth seeing but failed to live up to the potential and as such was a wasted opportunity to display and show-case the wealth of talent that is British Sculpture.   

 

Thoughts on print making techniques

I learnt a lot from the possibilities of print making, and have taken every opportunity to experiment and to try some other techniques.

Etching and Aquatint –

I really enjoyed some of my experiments especially ‘sugar lift’ with the first type I worked with using caster sugar. The ‘3 figures in a room’ piece produced some great results in the way that the sugar solution produced marks and a textural quality.  Using raspberry jelly for the ‘sugar lift’ gave a different effect but I was a little timid with its use because I had to use the solution quickly while it was warm – the caster solution could be used in its cold state and I could therefore take more time over the painting with it on the copper plate.

Screen Prints:

I went back and wanted to make some more precisely registered prints.  I decided to use one of the photographs I had made of the hoodie.  The results were quite good, but Carl Rowe commented that he liked the one that had more printing errors and a more random approach. So I decided to revisit this image and use it more experimentally – like using the central image to make a pattern and varying the backgrounds and trying to break out of the rectangular format of the paper and the printable screen area.

Sonya suggested I might print the same colour over itself but reduce the printable area – the effect was really interesting and not what I would have expected – the tone (I think) changed on the over print and produced a different shade (?) of the same colour… I was trying on this print to produce something abstract and akin to a Rothko. I.e. an abstract image which seems to hang in space… the edges vaguely defined and the colours fading and blending into a haze or dream like quality..something Carl mentioned I might try to aspire to – the dream bit not the Rothko..heaven forbid…!

These prints worked well… but I left only one or two of them in different stages.. but I used the resulting abstracts as a base to over print with the hoodie image…. Again the results were quite loose and interesting….

I am keen after these experiments to do some more print making … I visited the ‘Fitzwilliam Museum’ in Cambridge and saw a wonderful large 3-piece etching by Hughie O’Donoghue in B&W that was both abstract and loosely figurative if that’s possible..?  It was of the crucifixion and this appealed to my use of Christian imagery but it was the quality of the mark making with the print and its scale that really excited me…. I’ve been looking at more of his work online and in books in the library and have made some copies of images that I especially like..  again his work that I like most had the quality which Carl talked about to me about having a dream like quality, or inhabiting that moment between waking from sleep… a hazy images that leave something to the imagination… something that is both there but eludes capture… I wonder how I can achieve that and I need to both experiment more and to look at other artists whose work might achieve a similar effect….