Detail in the chaos
Sometimes the detail is in the destruction and chaos. This image came out with much more a planet in collapse kinda vibe. The main impact was on target to create the black hole but the additional impact points give it far more movement and an explosive look. The details, shadow and movement are great though.
Work, concepts and practice in motion pt1
Is what I am doing original? Is it new or fresh, or am I mastering that which has been mastered a thousand times before? If it has already been done should I bother? Is it worth it to see the same thing done just by me or with my “spin” on it?
As you can see this is a thought process that spirals quickly. However I try to avoid the doom part of this spiral as it will do little for my mental health or creative practice. But it is important to me that my work is original, both in the techniques I’m using and the concept and aesthetics of the outcome.
When I started Uncontrolled Abstraction, I was thinking a lot about my practice. Am I working in a new way, has anyone done this before? Artists have been using explosives to create for a while now. I was inspired by Cai Guo-Qiang a Chinese artist who uses gunpowder to create his paintings. This was years before I started my current practice and I was looking for different ways to approach photography. Unfortunately (or probably yes fortunately) gunpowder is not readily available to random crazy artists in the UK, but it was always in the back of my head. It took a while but one day I was going over some things and I came across a few ideas and it just clicked that, hey that might work, I can blow up my negatives that way. In my head I envisioned swirling impact points with materials and shadows jetting out. And that is exactly what I got, maybe not entirely as I envisioned but the action created movement, shadows, textures and effects that were detailed and focused.
So now probably eight or more years after the original thought of using explosions, I came up with an actual way to make it work, in a way that is entirely my own. And it’s legal just to make that clear!
Stay on target …. almost there ….
And then there was light or in my case dark …….. So the thing about “Black Holes” is that we haven’t captured/can’t capture an image of a black hole. They are so dense that not even light can escape them so they are technically invisible. However what we can see is the Event Horizon which is matter super heating and emitting radiation as it circles the black hole.
This is the first image to start to come out the way I wanted and was imagining, a dark hole with a silhouette and matter circling around it.
Not quite there but ….. almost there.
4x5” Negative exposed to Earth and Fire (micro explosions)
Black holes and ……an eclipse?
So as I progressed with trying out new ideas for creating my vision of a black hole I started using small circle cut outs to black out a section. However the use of the small explosions was still too random and problematic. I was getting a black hole but the actual exposure points were all over the pace, due to the uncontrolled aspect of the flashes. So in this instance it came out as more of an eclipse.
On the bright side ….
I spend a lot of time researching and writing about my work and my practice, especially at the beginning of the year when I am applying for grants, shows and publications. It can be a daunting task as you are pitching your work, ideas and worth as an artist, and what makes that even harder is that you are so close to your work. It is impossible not to be - it is what you eat, drink and breathe, it can drop you to your knees and pick you up. So I’m sure you can imagine that it’s easy to over think everything and underestimate everything at once, and in most cases you are given only an A4 sheet or 500 words to explain what you may be able to write 500 pages about. That is often the tricky part, it’s not like a school paper when you would be relieved if it only had to be a page long essay for an exam. It actually becomes a real trial because you want to explain how great you are, why you deserve a show, an article or few pounds. However then you have to be more critical and objective about what goes in, what goes out and what you emphasise. Then of course once you finish everything you get to worry about “but what if it doesn’t make sense” or “what if I should have included that bit but not the other bit” and of course “what did I forget?”
Something I learned a long time ago is it is ok to ask for help, ask people to read it and ask for brutal honesty, because remember you are always too close to your work. What makes complete and total sense in your mind could sound like absolute art speak insanity to someone else, and honestly it probably is art speak, but it’s best to keep the insanity to a minimum! In my case I am very lucky to have two people who I trust without (well, mostly without) question. My wife Carole who I call my editor in chief who has the amazing ability for proper grammar, sentence structure and technical writing, and my friend John McDougall who is an excellent art critic, writer and is great for sound boarding ideas and concepts.
And at the end of all that, sometimes it pays off, and you know you’ve got your point across. So the main reason for tonight’s rant is I want to give a huge thank you to The Richard and Siobhan Coward Foundation and their trustees for accepting my application for funding this year. It means a lot more film, paper and chemistry to make my ideas a reality. And, ultimately, to share them with all of you.
https://www.cowardphotography.org/
White Holes, Black Holes …..
Well while working on creating a vision of "black Holes" I started to create far more white ones. This started the thinking that I was going to have to start adding more aspects that I could control than my previous project. However these odd out of focus attempts started to remind me of the Hubble telescopes original images before the lenses were corrected.
Black Holes
So in the later months of 2019 I was already starting to work on the follow up/part two of the "Uncontrolled Abstraction" project. So without going into too much detail right now I will just say knew I wanted to work in a similar way and its core to be around time and space. In particular at the time I was thinking about black holes. So here is one of the first attempts (one of MANY)
4x5" film exposed to earth, carbon and fire (micro explosions)
Days are hard…
So while I am a practicing artist a lot of people don’t know that since my daughter was born five years ago I have been a stay home parent. While I used to get 2.5 days a week to dedicate to my practice, applications, grants and research while she was in nursery, this has been no more for the past what 80 …. ( 90+ days ?) I have lost track now thanks to covid, and my wife still works the 9-5 grind from home. This child’s energy, imagination, ideas, questions and thirst for knowledge NEVER STOP, she wakes up like a shot every morning and is out cold at bed time. I am not complaining and my hat is off to all you single parents cause if I didn’t have my wife I would have sold the wee one ages ago for parts. But it is exhausting, and for me, while in five year old make believe land the back of my mind is still spinning with project ideas, new techniques and concepts. At the end of most days I am shattered and just wan’t to watch tv or play ps4. But I still always try to do a bit more writing, social media interaction and other odds and ends to promote my work. If I don’t I feel like I am falling behind and failing, I often still feel that way because I haven’t tried that mad idea that popped in my head last Tuesday night at 3am. I have to always tell myself it’s ok, everything is on hold for many people right now, especially in the arts. I have time, and I need still need to digitise and document the previous 30+ mad ideas from the last six months…….……..
Some ideas don’t work, but a small part does
So over a year ago I was trying different film formats for "Uncontrolled Abstraction" So I started using full rolls of 120 at once. The thought was to create a panorama, but they never looked right to me. However some individual sections on the film such as this one worked.
120mm film exposed to Earth, Carbon and Fire (micro explosions)
New Website!
Hello everyone and welcome to the NEW website! I find this new layout to be much more sleek and streamlined don’t you think? Also I have put in a new gallery for Uncontrolled Abstraction: The Elements which is my most recent project. I have only posted the four main photos for the gallery as the debut show for this body of work has been postponed due to covid-19. Information of re scheduling will be announced soon … ish.