Wired + Tested

What I have discovered is in the UK people don't understand fully what Flywire or Insect mesh is for. No house in Australia would be without it as the flies are a constant and one of the ways of keeping them out is with this wire at all windows and doors. It is never fully successful  - I remember vividly my Mother still having to shovel up sills which were deep in flies ! Wire of all sorts is used on farms universally and growing up amongst it as a material when you are a child can be fun. We played with it sculpturally - it as always laying around. Fencing wire,barbed wire,chicken wire,copper wire,rusty wire,wire ropes and of course FLYWIRE.


Since my last blog I have sourced, tried and tested samples of wire as a matrix for screen printing. Several problems arose, however they were resolved with yet more testing !  Working with this wire is very difficult as it moves easily and mark easily. It has a very easy and strong 'memory' so can looked quite damaged. I am going to go with this and incorporate it into the finished work somehow. I figure these ideas will evolve as I go forward with printing.

I grew up with Flywire or mesh on a farm in Australia

white as a ink was very successful and this opened up the
thought process and approach to the printing - all
will be revealed ! 

serendipity is a wonderful gift - I like the ghost qualities
it reflects the subject matter perfectly

 The ink formed globules within the mesh and this is not what I ultimately wanted so after many trials
and frustration I worked it through and managed a perfect print- out.


After two years of not enjoying working with Aqua colour inks I have finally been seduced as they are perfect for this work. It needed to be plasticised and flexible enough to withstand any movement in the structure of the wire.


So far so good - I have a long way to go now and there is the issue of where to do this ?? There is not enough room at College so I am currently negotiating more space locally to enable me to work long days.


There is nothing quite like a challenge to get the creative ideas flowing !

South Korean Sculptor - Seung - Mo - Park

Seung Mo Park is a sculptor who works with wire screen. The technique is as intriguing as it is meticulous. Images are projected onto the wire which is layered several inches thick. He then snips away
painstakingly to 'draw' the image into the 'canvas'.


http://www.blankspaceart.com/psm_selected.htm

the wire is carefully snipped away to create the negative and positive

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7m19g5s4B8&t=0m30s


The result is three dimensional imagery which engages the viewer with its ethereal, ghostly qualities.


This has resolved one of my own issues within my printmaking. I have been searching for an interesting matrix to print on and I am going to test out whether this is possible. There will be many variables so it may not work, however I figure if we all gave up at this point nothing new would be tried and tested !

Ten Thousand Items Collected

wu jin qi yong - 'Waste Not'   is a work recently shown at The Barbican Curve Gallery.   Song Dong, the Chinese artist offers up a poignant meditation on family life and the artists childhood during the Cultural Revolution.

Song Dongs mother, Zhao Xiangyuan, collected obsessively for over five decades.

This work talks of the coming together of the family and its unique bonds as they all repeatedly reconstruct the exhibition every time it is shown. Memories are rekindled and reflections are bought to the fore as they recognise an object. There is another side to this story, a darker side - the collecting became so manic that it caused arguments and rifts within the family about where it was stored etc.

I found this exhibition very moving and emotional. I could relate to this as I saw this within my family recently when the house was packed up and sold. Trauma of war and 'the lack of' tend to make humans respond with basic animal needs to hold onto objects for one reason or another. It is often suggested that collecting is a comfort to people, however if you thought that one day there may not be anything manufactured it could be out of pure necessity - hard to imagine in our world of over consumption.

                          'A life told in stuff.Most of it unlovely, and yet strangely affecting' The Inependent