Saturday 15 February 10am – 4pm Zurich (Dubai 1pm-8pm)
This Zoom workshop was organised though OCA and Bryan Eccleshall was the tutor leading the group of students, of whom I was a participant. A dedicated Padlet was created for the day and all registered to oca.padlet.org to have a safe and sharing environment.
Objectives of the day was to
gain a personal perspective on the range of exploration; and experimentation\reflext on the experience; and to think about your own potential
network with other OCA students
Brian started us off with encouraging students to have the conversation about borrowing from each other – to become ‘infected’ and built on each others work. He challenged our own default settings to improvise and generate methods to work and thus to make work not finished art. I like the exciting idea of having loose ends to go back to during a working process and not be fixed on an expected/given outcome. According to our practices we divided into groups for at least 40 minutes. Being with students across other practices such as textiles made for an interesting interaction. Our main interest were transparency, absence/presence, water and we found ourselves in states of transitions, liminal space and an idea to wonder at something. Creative ideas to work with transparency – almost making the work with the thing itself caught my mind and motivated my search to push ideas on nature and our encounters and how my work can research this. Kym works with river water and mud – it reminded me of the desert around me and my concerns with anthropogenic effects. Her experiments during our session was motivating. I have found objects I gathered at the beach which holds this tension and contrast – between the natural and the unnatural – seagrass that were washed ashore, its role in the marine ecosystem and the plastics and other manmade objects which were washed ashore and we as humans are the main culprits. Brain said something in the line of, …. putting them together, they become together? Sonja is already working on this in her Painting Level 3 major project and the way she is layering textures of the ocean in her work is exciting for me, her concern for our human interaction is touching. Inger has a sensitive eye to mix materials and experiment with how we see through things. I have this idea about the hidden and truth and shadows which also creeps into the space we are exploring. I love the investigate and want to bring this into my practice on a representational way.
Coming back to the bigger group- there were 11 of us, it was exciting to see what happened with people looking at text/fonts on photography, sculptures, memory collage of paintworks and fleeting moments with yarn and stone and invisibility. The
Bryan kept giving the most amazing links to artists and work to investigate further, which I really appreciated. I am excited about the work of Albrecht Durer, Great piece of turf, to which Brian directed me. Interesting that many botanical artist paint on Vellum. I found the name of the seagrass of my interest and could hardly sleep the night – so much to do and learn!
I found ideas for developing ways of applying paint for my final project of POP1.
I thank OCA, Brian Eccleshall and the Europe group for a great and productive day. I expect a lot to sink in over the next few day…. and hit me whilst working.
My own work during the day:
