exposingunderneath

Week 3 on the synthetic anatomy module at Kings was fantastic – the bag anatomy session was a treat as proto scientists gave meaning to inanimate objects, just as I said artist's have titled their work, the titles giving entry points and meaning. The module goes from strength to strength It’s great to value each years’ experience, with our learning building on and with each years knowledge rather than a wholesale rewriting of the course every year. What is it to communicate without being able to talk? I like the idea of rules, systems, choice and how intuition is navigated within the workshop.The afternoon was spent drawing in the dissecting room. Alone in a room with dead people and fridges of many random parts of dead people was 'interesting', a strange privilage. I spent a lot of time looking, and marvelling at what I had on the table in front of me. It was only after that I realized that I had focused on hands and feet, the places I had just tattooed. Exploring the bones and tendons under the skin explains the intense pain the week before! Juxtaposing the images of my tattoos with my drawings seems to make sense as resolved outcomes. It was a real privilege. Onto screens – Ferrari – a strangely predictable story but set in beautiful countryside. Welcome II the Terrordome – more odd dystopian future. The Beekeeper – the Stath doing Stath things (killing people creatively) American Star – yes I am a killer, but with a heart! Started Mr and Mrs Smith – nonsense but great fun!

invisiblethinkingmadevisible

I’ve hung a display of some starting points, samples, and paths of investigation within my recent material development research in the foyer at NUA. Its inception derives from ‘we work everywhere’, part of a new iteration of initiatives. The plan is to demonstrate that tutors have a practice that informs the teaching we engage in with the students, one could argue that without a public facing personal practice that includes research and reflection we do our students a disservice, that what we do outside of the institutions we work in enables us to work within them. Onto screens – the wonderful yet totally stupid nonsense that is Moonfall, the slow yet focused Coda. Just started the painful and disturbing series Anatomy of a scandal.

thedisplayissue

At a recent trip to the British Museum I spent some time looking at the objects that held the objects in the exhibition cases. The break has given time to explore ideas of display as work and work as display. How books and bookart is presented is an ongoing concern, it becomes a focus on the MA Book Art Course at Camberwell so I'm channelling some of those ideas.

some films...The Disaster Artist - unsure if its knowingness is a good or bad thing - when it's not clear if one is laughing with or at its always challenging. Mudbound is just relentlessly oppressive and it happens in lots of mud. Last Flag Flying is a mismatch of a film with, tonally all over the place. The second series of Lady Dynamite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gSxKR0Cirs takes a number of turns that makes you realise mental health is at the core of the writing as the structure develops more layers with flights of fancy and symbolism standing in for linear narrative - truly challenging such that the talking dogs becomes the most 'regular' activity in the whole series!