Day 6 - Kurt Schwitters Merz Barn Residency

After finishing my book yesterday, I was left with lots of different ideas for how to start testing and playing. I wanted to carry on with the mini-projects I had begun to set myself (I like good project), they were proving both useful and practical. 

I was beginning to find my voice again, after initially going on this residency with the aim to strengthen my ideas and challenge concepts within my practice, I was gradually learning bit by bit more about myself. Re-discovering why it is that I am so immensely fascinated with colour and light combined. 

Luminosity was the word that encapsulated both interests in a way that made sense to me. The notion of luminous colour seeping, spilling, bleeding and staining the surfaces around us has been present in my practice for years, now I had a word for it. 

In the essay 'The Luminous and the Grey' Batchlor writes;

Luminous colours, however old they are, appear to have a particular relationship with the world around them and with their beholders that is unlike that of other colours. First, these are colours that escape their containers and bleed into the street; they deliver what colour always promises bus doesn't always achieve: a release from the surfaces and materials that support it, a release that leads to the fleeting magic of the 'fiery pool reflecting in the asphalt'. p.49

My has always been my challenge and interest to capture this notion within my practice. This concern, I feel, now has to be researched, pulled apart and made into being work, as my understanding of the medium deepens.

Reading whilst on this residency has been initially challenging for me, but has given my so much back in return. When I return home, I shall keep it up, keep learning and keep feeding this knowledge back into the work I develop.

Today I started to think about luminous colour within nature (as it was on my doorstep). Making a series of 'colour slides' which became little jewels when held up to a light source. I was thinking small-scale in order to trial the idea, the photographs below demonstrate how flat surface colour become luminescent.

Remember what I wrote on Day 3? - "What interests me about colour in the natural/rural landscape is the vividness created when the intensity of the sun shines onto/though it. More on that later…" In this experiment I was testing this thought out, instead of using the sunshine (of which there was very little on this cold autumnal day) I used a bulb.

Day 5 - Kurt Schwitters Merz Barn Residency

As my residency continued into day 5 at the famous Merz Barn, I became increasing aware that I had slowed my pace of life down. Reading had pretty much taken over as my daily task, then amusing myself by making relatively quick responses to the chapters in the form of mini-projects.

So far these mini-projects were helping me understand the meaning and concept of each chapter, allowing for a deeper knowledge of colour concerns, perceptions and discussion.

Today I had reached the last chapter. It was all about grey. I am not fond of grey, admittedly. The rest of of book had highlighted the use of luminous colour around us; in the media, in our cities, in our general everyday lives and why is is so brilliant and optimistic. I was not looking forward to the chapter on grey. I thought to myself - "no one is ever going to manage to convince me that grey is a worthy colour, is it even a colour? - more like a tone..."

I read on regardless, trusting the voice of the author wholeheartedly. His writing so far had been accurate, believable and educating.

David Batchelor's first line of the chapter is; "Grey is the colour of dying" - great! The last sentence of the chapter finishes describing the closing sequence of Andrei Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev (1966), it reads:

"The last, silent shot returns to the living world and to a panorama of grey, but a quieter, more humane and perhaps more luminous grey."

LUMINOUS F*****G GREY! The longest and most convincing chapter by far, but all that was written in between these two quotes was the most useful of all. I have been looking at grey as the neutral, bland, pessimistic, nothing colour for years.

I went outside of the gallery and pondered, looked around me; I noticed blues, reds, greens, oranges and all different colours within the greys around me. I realise that this is not a breakthrough for mankind, but I had been so dismissive about grey that I had not looked past the end of my own nose (and I have a sizable nose!) and so this was a small revelation for me personally.

"It is close to impossible in practice to find a grey that is not inflected by some other colour, although the not-grey of grey often only becomes visible as two or more different greys are placed next to each other. It is as if when a patch of grey is first seen it is more assumed than observed." p.78

Having completed this chapter and finished the book, I went off in the beautiful landscape and woodland of the Cylinders Estate where the Merz Barn is located with my camera and came back with the following set of images - as confirmation that blue -grey, red-grey, green-grey, really do exist and are BEAUTIFUL! 

The last image is more of a luminous grey than all the others - the sky!

Now I had finished my book and nearly finished my residency - what was I going to do?

 

Day 3 - Kurt Schwitters Merz Barn Residency

Firstly focusing on the preface of Batchelors The Luminous and the Grey I found the initializing of the argument to be about how and why colour exists in the world around us.

"It is not the presence of colour in a work that matters but the use of that colour; it isn't whether the colour is there that is at stake but what that colour does" - p.17

This got me thinking about where colour resides in the natural environment and asking myself: does it interest me?

What interests me about colour in the natural/rural landscape is the vividness created when the intensity of the sun shines onto/though it. More on that later...

For today, though I thought I would focus on surface colour, as that is highlighted in the preface. Instinctively it is the colours of chemical manufacture that interest me most; those vivid in hue and with strong saturation. Whilst residing in a rural landscape I wondered what the juxtaposition between natural colour and artificial colour would look like.

I also wanted to make a start by playing and involving my hands (baring in mind it was now Wednesday and the week seemed to be flying by) . I systematically wrapped from top to bottom green cotton thread around a dying plant. At first I just wrapped one, but then decided that in order to make an impact and become noticeable I would do several; this took me all day. 

  

By the end of the day I was satisfied with what I had done, but also felt that I wanted to learn more and so read on.

Today's work was futile in its longevity but useful in its concept. It did what I wanted and thought it might do, It got me going. However small, however insignificant in the grand scheme of things, it was a beginning, and everything has to start somewhere.