Here you can have a look at some of the project-based work I've been doing. I am coming to the final part of my first year at NUCA and, as such, allow myself the freedom to pick an area that interests me and run with it. I'll begin by explaining a few of my influences and show some of the things that make me tick, along with information on the research that goes into what I produce.

This page is currently under construction and appologies for there not being much here. I update my site on a weekly basis, so please come back and see whats new!

Here is the rest of the project work which doesn't really warrant a separate page. This is

The first "project" at University is a fun, little one. We have to send a postcard to the course leader (Chris Locke) once per week for the eleven weeks between now and starting on the course. I'll add the postcards as I do them, here are the first couple for now:

Colour Studies

"Collection"

This project had me looking at a collection, drawing it then creatively enveloping it. That was the simplified run-down of what I was asked to do by the brief. Thankfully, the brief was open in terms of what the collection was and how it was to enveloped. At the time I had this near fanatical fixation on colour - inspired by legends such as Mark Rothko, Norman Mclaren and Howard Hodgkins. I decided, then, to collect "colours". This gave me the creative freedom I needed and also the critical backdrop to the practicality of a realistic selection method. The initial research consisted of looking at just what "colour" is, how it is used (both by myself and other artists) and how it can be manipulated and, essentially, "collectified".

To start with, I created numerous colour studies - excercises into a spontaneous output of coloured forms. Similarly, mixed media was used, from pastel to paint and from pen to pencil.

After looking at some colour studies I experimented a little with "creative envelopments", studying the works of Christo and some smaller scale installation art. I was particularly interested in whether or not a colour can be destroyed, self-decontructed perhaps. The best way to describe it would be a Schrödinger's cat of colour; I was, in essence, trying to create an [artistic] visual representation of the Uncertainty Principle, shown (simplified) here:

I found a thought-model of one of Einstein's theorems for a similar area of quantum mechanics which read:

"Consider a box filled with light.The box has a shutter, which opens and quickly closes by a clock at a precise time, and some of the light escapes. We can set the clock so that the time that the energy escapes is known. To measure the amount of energy that leaves, Einstein proposed weighing the box just after the emission. The missing energy will lessen the weight of the box. If the box is mounted on a scale, it is naively possible to adjust the parameters so that the uncertainty principle is violated." - Einstein

Quite nifty, I thought - it was the first line that grabbed me; "a box filled with light". So, I decided to make one. I took a small box I had used to store some little wire insects I made and placed a small, self-powered LED inside it. Now, what I am getting at here is: is it still light (colour) if it cannot be seen? Does light need to enter our eyes and our brain process the electrical signals in order for us to "see" it before it becomes real? (Can you tell I'm a Matrix fan, yet?)

Moving on from this I decided to "wrap" something. The "something" does not matter, I am not objectifying anything nor taking away from any object - it is a mere thought experiment expressed visually. I had some blue acetate lying around on my desk and wrapped it up tightly in black tissue paper, which I also had lying around on my desk. The result was quite interesting and here is a photo:

Here is another idea for an envelopment (click to enlarge):

It was time to look more at some colours and I found that I really had too much choice - there were colours everywhere and I wanted to include everything in my collection. This wasn't feasible so instead I took a different approach; using colour as a thought (a meme, even) and using a self-contained deconstruction as the creative envelopment. This lead on nicely from the Uncertainty Principle I was looking at earlier and, having been told by my tutor I must get off my "fixation on colours", I decided to take away colour instead. Before I could do this I had to find something associated heavily with colour and it wasn't until I was sat eating a banana that I thought about using fruit. Fruit is an interesting subject to consider and comes in many different (but fairly simple) sizes, shapes and colours. Children often learn about colours through fruit and I thought it was a wholesome and universal objectification of "colour" in a rudimentary form. Now, what was interesting was when I thought about how to take the colour away. The first idea was to photograph it in black and white, but this seemed a little simple. Instead, I took an apple and painted it with white acrylic as a quick test.

Look at all the wonderful colours here, I really must visit Asia and take some photographs of my own...

And here's the painted apple test:

The image didn't look half as bad as I imagined it would, but instead had quite an unusual look to it. You can almost forget that it is an apple, let alone a juicy, green one. To develop this a little further I took some more fruit and painted them either black or white. I then arranged them on a white background and photographed them in black and white (using a Canon EOS 400D) and printed the shot out at A3 using a fancy Epson printer. Here is the final shot:

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