Here are some screen grabs from some very interesting articles on Brain Pickings around the topic of impermanence. I would like to learn more about All of this!!
Impermanence – research
Tag: impermanence
Impermanence: my work & research
Since the lecture on approaches to drawing, I’ve been interested in thinking about impermanence in art and materials disintegrating.
I think this is different to auto-destructive / destruction art. Where the whole piece might be destroyed in the process, e.g. Gustav Metzger’s acid paintings, or Banksy’s Love is in the Bin. Instead it is the juxtaposition of something ceasing to be, while something else endures. For me, this is akin to memento mori. We are reminded of our own mortality, while at the same time viewing something that will endure beyond the life of the subject.
I looked to other water soluble materials to experiment with this idea. In both tests I took the paper and ran it under the tap directly – this alone let the pen run, but I had to stroke the sketch itself in order to distort it directly. In both cases I chose to use imagery/text that directly act as memento mori.
I think this was an interesting experiment, but I wonder if it is a little too obvious? I may try to incorporate this into a more subtle approach.
Another thought I had was to make use of fleeting phenomenon to explore impermanence. In particular, shadow. In the process of making one of the objects for my survival kit, I happened upon an interesting shadow form as I was exploring it in suspension
I would be interested in exploring this theme further also. I am aware of artists creating sculptures in order to cast figurative shadows, but am not yet aware of more abstract shadow pieces, which I am interested to look into.
Play: Chance & Sequence – my work
In this workshop, we were introduced to 3 different approaches to drawing, and performed exercises that incorporated an element of chance within them: stochastic, system, and collaborative. We were then invited to expand on these exercises further.
The above image is what I produced for the stochastic (organic) drawing exercise. One by one I dropped pieces of string onto my paper and drew where they had fallen. I was keen to capture the difference in texture and shape demonstrated by each string type and varied my marks and weight with the charcoal to do so. I think this has been quite effective. In doing this exercise, the longer I went on (say after the first 6 drops) the more editorial I became with how the string fell – I still dropped it from a height and observed how it had landed, but if the composition was not quite to my liking I tried again without documenting this shape. It was interesting that I gained confidence/a sense of agency once I had a feel for the task at hand – that there was a sort of dance in a way of the relinquishing and regaining of control with chance.
The second exercise we performed was the system drawing. Here we were told to draw a grid and then populate 6 squares to the side with 6 colours. Then we were told we would be rolling a dice and painting 6 consecutive shapes within the grid with the colour for square 6 if we rolled a 6, or 2 consecutive shapes with colour 2 if we rolled a 2, etc.
The third approach was collaborative drawing. Here we would receive an instruction from Myfanwy and add an element to the paper in front of us (e.g. draw a line). We would then pass the paper on as instructed (e.g. pass it twice to your left, and rotate it through 90 degrees). We continued like this for some time, adding what we had for breakfast, a drawing of something in the room, a pattern, etc. Finally, we were instructed to retrieve the paper that we had started with and made our first mark on (the line). We could then add to or remove elements in order to make it uniquely our own.
I enjoyed this exercise, though I find the artefact itself I am left with does not fully capture the process I myself went on. Since I had created equivalent elements for each of those seen in my finished work, but they are not here seen, I feel there is something lost along the way. I also dislike that the orientation of the piece is difficult to really nail down, with the elements often being drawn at contrasting ones. But it was an interesting exercise.
For my self-guided piece, I was keen to do another piece that captured the element of dropping. In the session we had been introduced to the below work by Jean Arp (that does appear to have been choreographed somewhat) and I was keen to try this method out for myself.
Then above an A1 piece of paper that I had placed on the floor, one by one I (without aiming/looking blankly into the distance) dropped the pieces approximately above the page. I varied the position of my arms in relation to the paper, but maintained roughly a height of 1.5m.
For my second attempt, I decided to introduce an element of system/rule to the dropping, and not drop all the pieces of paper in one sequence. Here I chose to drop the coloured pieces one by one first, and then reappraise prior to dropping only a selection of the black pieces. This was interesting, but I still found that the pieces formed a pile/clump.
I decided to restrict the number of pieces of paper I dropped even further. Here I chose to remove from the collection pieces that did not fully have torn edges (i.e. exclude the pieces that had a straight edge)
I was very interested by the fact that in restricting the number of pieces I used, the composition appeared to coalesce to a form of sorts – here a diagonal stripe. Below the piece following sticking down with Pritt stick.
I chose to repeat this with the remaining pieces that I had excluded onto another piece of paper.
Sophie Green Art & Design 