clairemaloney

This was the fun part! I decided I wanted to use as many materials to make the sea slugs as possible, however I also realised that I have a limited timeframe to make them. As such I decided to focus on clay and fibre – my go-to materials. Ideally I would have liked to sew a fabric one, cast a pewter one, carve a wooden one etc… so all 9 would be different materials.

I started off with the clay ones as I knew that they would take the longest to make – they would need to be sculpted, dry for a few days, spend a couple of days in the kiln bisque firing, then they would need glazing, drying and firing again!

When I took them out of the kiln, however, I found I didn’t want to glaze them. They were such beautiful forms that I intuitively felt that colour would have been too much.

Taking into consideration what I had discussed with Owen in the tutorial regarding links to ocean plastics and gender discussions, I realised that leaving them the colour of the natural material, unglazed, undyed, unpainted would allow me to take ownership of those potential interpretations.

Whilst they are crazy colours in nature, keeping them un-coloured leaves them looking ghostly – representing the potential for us to lose these amazing creatures with plastic, polution and bleaching of coral reefs. By stripping them of superficial coatings I could also link into gender discussions by representing that old adage “it’s what’s inside that counts”.

Most importantly I could show the raw materials. Whilst colour is a very important factor to me in making, as a Maker the materials are fundamental to my work. In ceramics, the type of clay is chosen first – this dictates wht the finished piece can be used for, how it can be sculpted and what glazes may be applied. In knitting and crochet, again the fibres are chosen for a specific purpose – wools, acrylics and cottons all have different properties which make one more suitable than another depending on the desired outcome.

Having decided how my finished piece would look, I needed to decide what I was going to put in my acrylic boxes. I didn’t want to do butterflies or beetles, as they are somewhat of a cliche. I considered bees as my husband is a beekeeper but I was fascinated by the sea slug exhibit – such bright, crazy colours!

As a Maker, my hands instantly wanted to make the frilly parts in clay and fibre – I could see them knitted and crocheted and felted, pewter and all sorts of materials. The colours first attracted me, but when I did further research online, the shapes were just a weird and varied as the colours!

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/group/nudibranchs/

Owen asked me why Sea Slugs and honestly I didn’t think it really mattered – the piece is about how curation affects our response to what’s on display – as the subject wasn’t really the intended point of the piece, I just chose something I felt I wanted to make!

Having given this some consideration, I do appreciate that whether I have chosen a subject to portray a message or not, viewers will often impart their own messages, especially in an art rather than a natural history context – hidden meanings and political messages are pretty much expected in art these days.

I can see that as sea creatures, people may assume that there is a message in there about ocean plastics or as simultaneous hermaphrodites, meaning that they are both male and female and can mate with any other mature member of their species they encounter, they do have links with current conversations regarding gender.

Going through the photo’s I took around the museum and my own personal collections of things around the house, an idea started forming. I was taken by the difference in how the natural history exhibits are displayed and the art:

Natural History:

• Downstairs – immediately accessible by all ages and groups.
• Exhibits were often telling stories, leading from one to another chronologically.
• The artefacts were a mixture of genuine fossils and antiquities together with cheap and tacky looking plastic models.
• Artefacts were often placed in dioramas with painted backgrounds, decorations and theatrical lighting in an attempt to transport you to a specific place or time, or show what creatures are nocturnal and diurnal.
• You are often invited to pick up or touch models or artefacts in protective cases to feel textures or look more closely – magnifying lenses are often provided.
• There is often a lot of text accompanying the exhibits, providing a large amount of information that can be clearly understood by a range of ages including children.
• There are often experiential additions, encouraging participation and imagination from children.

Art:

• Upstairs but still easily accessible by stairs or lifts.
• Exhibits are still often grouped together in date ranges, however apart from a couple of galleries, exhibits are often on plain white walls, The exceptions being in the historical art galleries where wall coverings were made to match the period of the artwork. This was the only ‘scene setting’ apart from a sofa in the Italian/English gallery.
• The artwork is all genuine – there are no posters or copies representing original works.
• The lighting is aimed purely at allowing the viewer to see the work as clearly as possible without damaging it, taking into consideration the conservation of the artwork. The exception being in the contemporary, temporary exhibitions where light may be part of the artwork.
• It is rare to be able to touch anything in the art galleries. On the contrary, there are small installations showing the damage that can be done to various materials – paint, bronze, fabric etc…by repeated touching, warning visitors not to touch, unless invited.
• Text is usually very basic – name of artist, name of artwork & date it was created. If you want any more information you have to research it yourself.
• Little in the way of encouraging interest for children.

My idea is to focus on these differences and create an artwork based on a natural history exhibit, displayed in the way artwork would be displayed but with a nod to way natural history exhibits are displayed, making the viewer question whether it is art or natural history. 

In the Clode space, we were shown bugs in boxes with magnifying lenses attached that you could pick up and look at the bugs more closely. There were also lenses positioned over bees on a wall hanging exhibit:

I have a collection of lenses of various prescriptions and shades in my craft supplies, so I thought I could make a collection of maybe 9 sculptural artefacts, make clear acrylic boxes for them and display them like bugs and butterflies – pinned to a layer of foam. Although they are art, the viewer would be able to pick them up and look at them more closely through the lenses, thus creating an artwork that would usually be precious and untouchable more accessible.

Today we were back at the museum, in the morning we looked at last year’s students outcomes, including a collaborative animation and individual outcomes. We then went off to make animated films using the Animate It app. Our objective was to make the film along a theme – hands, faces, shapes…I decided to make mine run through the rainbow from red to purple:

I am a little disappointed with it as some of the stills don’t contain enough of the colour I was focusing on – the camera in the Animate It app won’t allow zooming in and I struggled with some of the colours – there is very little purple in the museum!

Today was the first day of the module. We started by going through the brief, watching a couple of the videos that were on Moodle, discussing what a museum is and what form our outcomes could potentially take, culminating in us curating an exhibition of our collective individual or group works at CSAD.

I particularly enjoyed the pattern and rhythm of the Paul Bush videos, though as an Artist Designer Maker student, my interests lie in making an artefact/artefacts in response to a collection rather than animation.

I have been inspired by many things today – not just collections, but concepts like the designed experience of the museum. How the steps leading up slow your pace, the echoey chamber of an entrance hall makes you feel you should whisper, the size making you feel like a child ready to learn. The curation of exhibits dictates how you view them. Sometimes this is achieved by the order in which items are displayed to take you on a journey, sometimes the method of display affects how you view items – either formally on plinths or in grandiose frames to invoke reverence, or informally as with the Martin Parr photographic collection where the prints were hung without glass or frames but with magnets – manipulating how we experience them – the informality, jovial nature and bold colour of the work is enhanced by the curation. To what degree are our experiences of the exhibitions in the museum objective or subjective?It was also mentioned that many people tend to treat their homes as museums. My house is absolutely this way – generations of family treasures such as paintings by my husbands grandmother and lace hand tatted by my great aunt, interesting natural artefacts that we have collected such as lava rocks from Lanzarote, a vial of glacial water from the Athabascar Glacier where my husband proposed and shells, pebbles and driftwood. I also have a collection of local artists work in the loft room and our bedroom is full of wedding day mementos. My craft room is full of things personal to me – a painting of my first house by a friend, my collection of Irregular Choice shoes stacked in boxes as well as all of my art and craft tools. I have unknowingly curated my home in a typological way – items in the hallway show who we are – my love of art, plants and gardening; my husband’s love of walking, history and bees. In the lounge we have on display family heirlooms and treasures we have collected on our travels. The bedroom has a display of personal things relating to our relationship – mementos from our wedding, a screen print of llangorse lake where we married etc… It sparked an idea for a potential outcome comparing my home and the designed experience of the museum.

I also learned something new to me – Phenomenology – where your experience of anything is always unique as it is always affected by personal experiences and memories. For example if I see woodworking tools I smell pipe smoke and feel warm as they remind me of my grampy. No-one else can share that.

We then had an afternoon tour of the Natural history museum and the upstairs art galleries. To be honest at this point I had reached saturation point and as I have visited the museum many times before, I didn’t take much in.

I did observe how the display cases and ‘settings’ around the “big bang” area reminded me of walking around the TARDIS in the Dr Who experience with the metal floors and stylised display cases – a deliberate thing I am sure, to hold the interest of children. Steph did mention that it is mostly families with young children who go around the natural history display on the ground floor – few of them make it up to the first floor for the art galleries.I was also inspired by the display of ceramic dining sets displayed in a glass case that were inspired by/ reminiscent of the shapes of the architectural structures in the photography of the Bechers in the adjacent gallery. This and the display case of art glass interpretations of planktonic organisms by Leopold Blaschka represent my initial plans for an outcome – creating a body of work in relation to a collection in the museum. Possible mediums would be textile, ceramic, glass, small metals etc…I need to have a more in depth walk around the exhibits alone to see what inspires me, but whilst I have had ideas for alternative interpretations of the brief, as an Artist Designer Maker student I definitely want to focus on making a collection of artefacts in response to an exhibit rather than following these alternatives, which I feel would be more of a fine art response.