Visual Narratives - 'Space' - Artist research

I have narrowed down the theme of my project to the abstraction of elements in a space. Specifically, the way in which a certain view (e.g. close up, upside down etc.) or perspective can create an abstract image through the removal of contextual information, and how framing a view (e.g. looking through a window, a doorway or any hole or gap) can transform a three dimensional space into a two dimensional composition. 

Below are some examples of drawings I've done which express this notion, or variations of it, throughout various stages of my thought process, beginning with some from my trip to the 'Yorkshire Sculpture Park' where I first began to think in this way, leading up to a small zine I made once my ideas had solidified somewhat.

Looking through a gap in bridge, still
containing quite a bit of detail and three
dimensional depth (YSP). 

Looking through a Henry Moore,
becoming more abstract but still
contains identifiable objects such as
trees. 

Looking through a Henry Moore hole,
again still identifiable shapes such as
a gate.    

Looking through a Henry Moore hole,
the most abstracted drawing so far, the
shapes are about as simple as I could
have made them.

View of the kitchen through a hole in a chair. This is
becoming more of the kind of image I want to be
making, the simplification of the view and the unusual
framing working together to create a very obscure
composition. 

View from my bedroom window. Again,
this extremely abstracted depiction of the
street outside (including parked cars and
buildings/ skyline) is more sort of the
direction I want to go in, although the
framing isn't as interesting in this drawing,
the abstraction itself feels more forced
rather than simply occurring naturally as a
result of a restricted view.

I have since been investigating some artists who might have taken similar approaches, or created similar aesthetics within their own work. Firstly, I have been looking at the work of 'Atelier Bingo' (the combined effort of Maxime Prou and Adele Favreau).

 

 

   

Their work is comprised of very bold simple shapes formed from what often appears to be cut paper compositions. I am not sure exactly where they garner inspiration from, I think their approach is in fact highly experimental and does not often necessarily have a specific theme which inspired it. In any case, they definitely seem to be more process driven than conceptually driven. 

At the moment I am working predominantly with line drawings but I think it would be extremely beneficial to start working with shapes made from cut paper and starting to consider colour, even if I still just draw to start with. I can see this approach working very effectively in my project as it seems to be becoming more and more shape driven. I will start experimenting with this approach, maybe replicating the same 'view' numerous times using different drawn and collage techniques to identify strengths and weaknesses of each.  

Another artist I have looked is Mishka Henner, in particular his book 'Less Americains, inn which he took a classic book of photographs named 'The Americans' by Robert Frank, and erased parts of each photograph to create new, strange and incongruous compositions. 

This work is no doubt controversial, Frank's book is one of the most revered photography books of the 20th century and Henner's use of appropriation and erasure has been viewed as insulting and "transparently absurd." I, myself could not be offended by it due to the fact that I did not know about the original book before coming across Henna's appropriation. Rather, I became interested in it because he deals with one of the themes I've have been considering myself - removing contextual information to create these strange abstract compositions. It's interesting how seemingly nonsensical these images become once the information which describes aspects such as depth or size is removed. The relationship between the shapes in the images is altered drastically in such a way as to pose a great challenge to the viewer's brain in trying to connect the seemingly disparate parts, and as a result forming new interpretations of the space.

I would like to experiment with a similar process, using my own photographs, and see if it leads me anywhere interesting.

Experimenting with Collage

I do to some extent enjoy working with collage or photomontage, and like a fair bit of other artists' work which is created in this way (e.g. Hannah Hoch and Anthony Zinonos) however, I have found it quite difficult, especially the idea of creating a specific amount to go in a book. My main issue is that I become sort of paralysed by the amount of scope one has when working in this way; resizing images, repeating images, cutting up images, which images to fit together, not throwing away any scraps because they might become useful etc. On the whole, I need to think less and just wack stuff down to see what happens, which would be ok, apart from the fact that in this instance I had a specific amount I had to complete, resulting in my finding it difficult to narrow down my ideas. As a result, I was not particularly happy with the results, but did find that the simpler ideas worked the best. Below are my three favourite outcomes.

         

Visual Narratives Research Trip - Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Since deciding I didn't want to pursue the theme of swarms, I again was faced with the issue of having a very open subject to tackle ('space'). I decided eventually that the Yorkshire Sculpture Park might be a good place to visit in relation to space, purely because it has outside, inside, enclosed and open spaces, and, of course, sculpture, which often interacts with space in significant ways. This might be simply the fact that a sculpture is filling a space, or that the sculpture includes interesting spaces or use of spaces in it's construction or placement.

Seeing as I hadn't yet narrowed my theme down a great deal I had no real starting point once I arrived, other than to wander around and do some observational drawing to see what happened, if anything. There was an exhibition on of work by the Swiss artist - 'Not Vital' which was comprised of mainly sculptural/ 3D works, and I began drawing them. This is where I began to narrow my theme down to some more concrete ideas. 
Firstly, whilst I was completing drawings from his work and it's placement in the exhibition space, I began to feel uncomfortable basing my own image making and ideas on another artists work. I therefore started trying to obscure the fact that these were drawings of sculptures by drawing from perspectives which might abstract the view, resulting in the creation of drawings which were contextually elusive and shape based. 
This approach lead me to to explore further the notion of perspective within space, and what the image maker's view or perspective of a space can do for the composition of an image. 
I started to do observational drawings looking through holes (in objects such as Henry Moore sculptures) and windows or other general structural gaps, which created very unusual depictions of whatever view I might be studying, again often simplifying the shapes down to further interrogate the compositional elements of that view and increase the ability of a drawing to retain interest and exist in it's own right, without contextual information required to evaluate it's effectiveness.
I did explore other methods of drawing/ recording information such as sound mapping and collecting ephemera but found they became fairly redundant once I had latched onto this train of thought. 

I have been left with several roads I might want to take with regards to my picture book, all under this overarching theme of perspective/ view and how it changes the appearance of a space, or how it can be used to abstract a space to create interesting compositions and imagery:

Looking through holes (e.g. windows, doors, structural gaps etc) and how that creates or alters a certain view. Also, since the trip, I have been thinking about how framing a view (e.g. through a window) flattens perspective, converting a 3D environment into a 2D composition which could be expressed through simplistic shape driven imagery.

What are the compositional elements which constitute a 'nice view'? Can they be found in unlikely places (e.g. inside, in the corner of a room).

In general, removing context and detail to create abstract compositions.                           

Visual Narratives - 'Space' - brief - initial thoughts

I've picked the word 'space' as a starting point for this visual narratives brief. One of the main reasons I decided on that word is because it's so open, although I have decided that I want to consider it in terms of three dimensional space not outer space. I have actually found that it's openness makes it quite challenging to tackle as a subject. It also makes conversations about it difficult as well; it being quite an abstract concept in many ways means that people either seem to struggle to keep up conversation about it, or they pigeon hole it into something very literal (which is not necessarily a bad thing). 

Nevertheless, over the first day or two I did start to generate some ideas, or come across notions that i think could be explored further. There were a couple of things that came out of the first few conversations I had with people that I thought could be interesting. 

Firstly I was discussing with someone how very busy spaces such as supermarkets or department stores can, due to the disassociation created between oneself and the mass of other people filling that space, become dehumanising to some extent. Sound in busy spaces can become a sort of white noise, and similarly, visually, one stops considering the people around oneself as they create a sort of mass of shapes and obstacles one might have to navigate.

Someone else said in conversation - "do you ever worry that there won't be enough space?" This question wasn't elaborated upon and no specific location or event was given and I found that as a result it was quite funny in its incongruity. I felt like it had potential to form the basis of a picture book but couldn't quite put my finger on why.

Another notion arising from that same conversation was how people and animals sometimes put themselves in situations/ spaces which are actually very uncomfortable or difficult or even dangerous. This was sparked by discussion of an episode of 'Planet Earth II', a portion of which was dedicated to the world's largest penguin colony on Zavadovski island. The penguins had to risk their lives every time they ventured out to get food due to their only route off the island into the sea was to sort of jump/dive out over jagged rocks into very choppy water, even during storms. 

I happened to watch another episode of 'Planet Earth II' which had a bit about a massive locust swarm and how it devours everything in a certain area/s. This lead me to think about how a space is changed or altered by whatever inhabits it, and thought that locusts, how different a space appears after a locust swarm has passed through it and eaten everything and the notion of a swarm in general could make for an interesting topic for a picture book. I had an idea of how a series of aesthetically pleasing images could be created based on the notion of a swarm using very simplistic imagery; employing the use of uniform dots for the swarm, positioned differently over a square (representing a patch of land), and scribbled up some examples in a notebook.

 

I realised that having an idea this fully formed was jumping the gun massively so left it and thought I might just start researching swarms, or locusts in general.

I have discovered since that the places I might be able to visit which would be relevant to this focus (Sheffield butterfly house, Tropical world) all seem a bit naff or designed predominantly for children and would probably not be that actually be that great for research. I have since abandoned this idea and will start fresh again with new lines of inquiry.