Semester 2 week 7 ‘Move for Ukraine’

8th Mar 202223rd Mar 2022 | harussell1

Group PRoject

‘Movement’

This week I started the group project,it was something I had been dreading as I don’t often work well in groups and I usually end up clashing with another member or I feel like my ideas aren’t being listened to.But this group project as deffinately changed my outlook on group work/collaberations and instead has shown me the power of working in group projects and how a small group of people with determination and their heads in the right places can work as a total and utter powerhouse that can achieve anything.Next is a day by day account of our actions.

Day 1

Today we met for the first time,I was really anxious and not looking forward to it much.Myself and Katrina were the only people that had Idea’s.I spoke about prehaps doing a performance piece based on something I had done in a performance based workshop in the past where each person is frozen to the spot and there hands/legs etc are moved by another person.Kristina came forward with pretty much a fully written out proposal suggesting that we do a charity walk to raise money for Ukraine walking from Dundee to edinburgh.She had calculated the distances between towns and where we would stop over.Due to having really bad bunions I soemtimes struggle to even walk to college so I said i wouldn’t be able to do the walk as such but could work hard behing the scenes with fundraising/media etc.Kristina had friends who were still over in Ukraine so felt like the war there had really effected her.Alyssia had suggested that as part of the walk she could ask the scrapyard near her if she could paint the ukrainian flag on one of there crushed cars.I was really bemused by this suggestion and had to advise her that this would be highly insensitive and that you need to really think about the art and actions that you do when it comes to such a sensitive subject.I also advised the group that we need to think carefully about who we give money to,as having worked paid for the Red Cross for a few years I am understanding of the fact that they do good work but often the money can be spent in the wrong places because they are such a big corporation who’s CEO’s are making an incredible amount of money for pen pushing whilst there front line workers are often facing a humanitarean crisis themselves by being paid pennies.Kristina said she had been told by friends of the best charity to contact.

Day 2

Decided to allocate myself the position of external communicator.Contacted DUSA in regards to getting a stand for ribbons etc.

Day 3

Emailed Newspapers about the fundraiser.I also asked DUSA if they could advertise via social media and emails what we were doing (no reply which is the typical standard from DUSA).Emailed Victoria Edwards who sent an email out to all the students about the walk and the fundraising stall.Looked at the prices of ribbons on Amazon etc and decided that they would take too long to arrive for the stall as DUSA had agreed we could have the stall for Friday 11-1.I had decided upon these times as we would hopefully be able to catch the most people whilst they went to grab their lunch.Victoria Edwards also posted our email out to all students.

Day 4

Decided I would present them on the inside of my broken sewing box lid and that way if it was windy they wouldn’t blow away!

Benchmark as we had raised £320 before the walk had even taken place and the Dundee Courier had emailed me back in regards to media coverage.I told him Kristina has connections in Ukraine so I arranged a phonecall for 4pm between Kristina and the reporter then arranged for a photographer to come to the uni for 11 for photos.Went to Hobbycraft,collected ribbon and made only 18 ribbons from 3 metres of ribbon!The shop assistance mentioned that alot of people had been in buying ribbon to do the same.

Day 5

Today was the day of the stall in the foyer.Myself and Alyssia turn up early to paint our faces etc.Became a little worried as we hadn’t heard from Kristina and Taylor.Kristina showed up just before 11 but Taylor didn’t.I went down to reception to collect the photographer and the receptionist made a fuss saying i would need ‘a press release’ in order for the photographer to take photo’s of us inside the university and that he wouldn’t be allowed here anyway as no visitors are allowed currently due to lockdown restrictions.I advised her several times that the photo’s were going to be taken outside in the foyer area.Went away to ask Anita Taylor’s permission but she was about to go into a meeting then asking another pen pusher who said we would only be allowed to get photo’s taken outside the building.(Which is what i had told them we would be doing in the first place)The receptionist even commented that she ‘hadn’t seen anyone doing fundraising in a while’ well no wonder when everything is made so difficult!!

Photoshoot took place on the grounds with us posing beside and walking beside Katrina.Holding the poster and ribbons up.

No sooner had I spoken to the receptionist the Vice principal (or someone of some kind of importance) decided to send out a really feeble emailing saying that the uni ‘stood in solidarity with Ukraine’ and that in order to show this the chaplaincy were organising for people to meet up on the ground to show this.Absoloutely no mention of our walk which was actually going to make a difference unlike the universities pathetic all talk no action as per usual.

DAY 5

Today our story made it into the paper and on the online paper also.

Reporter had made up that myself and Alyssia had said things which we hadn’t.(He hadn’t even spoken to Alyssia) Had written that we were all doing the walk (which we weren’t).The online article had more photo’s etc but the link wasn’t very clear at all so it made no difference to our donations because people clearly didn’t know where to click.So we ended up making more money through our stall.I think what I hated about this the most is that we couldn’t be in control of the outcome of how it would be written or look in the paper and that we just had to trust that the reporter would do his best to raise awareness but upon reading the article Kristina stated that she could of written it better herself and English isn’t even her first language!They also mentioned the university in the post alot which I thought the university would make a fuss about but so far so good.

In other news…

I finally finished off the headcage for the red lady.The technician finally agreed to let me tack myself (as i had never done this type of welding before) I actually found it alot easier but my tacks were visable compared to the parts he had done as it was too fidderly to get the hidden the way he managed and as he said ‘it doesn’t matter aslong as you have managed to join the metal’

You can visably see the top two tacks compared to where the tecnhician has neatly hidden his on the bars below.

Very pleased with the outcome altho the cage it’s self weighs a ton and falls alot lower on my body due to the sheer weight of it.

Artifact no6

I had brought in the rusty bolt I had found at my front door in the hope it could be used for this piece but the technician advised that it would need to have a pretty big hole made for it and it would be better just to blow torch a new bolt to make it look old.

Hammering a hole into the Artifact caused the debris from the bottom to come away but I soon sorted this by glueing it back on.The bigger issue became that the top once attached was too heavy for the metal strip and would bend it if you didn’t support the top when picking it up.I think I may consider re-inforcing the rod with a strip of metal somehow attached underneath it altho this may ruin the asthetics.

Zoe Leonard (Artist Research)

4th Dec 20196th Dec 2019 | harussell1

Born 1961 in Liberty New york.Age 16 she dropped out of school and started taking photographs.Living in New york provided the subject matter for many of her works (apartment buildings,store fronts,sidewalks,chain link fencing,graffiti ad boarded up windows.She works primarily with photography and sculpture. She has exhibited widely since the late 1980s and her work has been included in a number of seminal exhibitions including Documenta IX and Docunenta XII and the 1993, 1997 and 2014 Whitney biennials.

Alot of Leonard’s work reflects on the framing, classifying, and ordering of vision. She explained in a recent interview: “Rather than any one subject or genre (landscape, portrait, still life, etc), I was, and remain, interested in engaging a simultaneous questioning of both subject and vantage point, the relation between viewer and world.Basically, subjectivity and how it informs our experience of the world.”

Leonard was active in AIDS advocacy and queer politics in New York in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992 she wrote “I want a president”, a poem inspired by Eileen Myles’s run for president.

In 1995 she staged an exhibition at her studio on the Lower East Side of Manhattan which featured the work Strange Fruit, an installation of various fruit skins (oranges, bananas, grapefruits, lemons) that Leonard saved and then sewed together by hand with wire and thread. Strange Fruit grew out of a deeply personal response to the losses of the AIDS epidemic and as a meditation on mourning, it became a seminal work of the 1990s. Strange Fruit was exhibited in 1998 at the Philadephia Museum of Art , where it currently resides

Rebecca Horne (Artist Reserch)

4th Dec 20194th Dec 2019 | harussell1

Rebecca Horne

Rebecca Horne is a German visual artist (born 24^th March 1944, Michelstadt, Hesse) (currently lives and works in Paris and Berlin)

Horne is from a generation of German artists who came to international prominence in the 1980’s. She practices Body art, performance art, installation art, sculpture and film. She also writes poetry which is influenced by her work. And sometimes creates work which is influenced by the poetry.

As well as this Horne creates bodily extensions or modifications. with padded body extensions and prosthetic bandages. In the late sixties she began creating performance art and continued to use bodily extensions

One of her well-known body modifications known as Einhorn (unicorn) the theme for this being the person’s contact between themselves and his/her environment.

Horne spent most of her late childhood in boarding schools and at nineteen rebelled against her parents’ plan of studying economics and decided to instead study art. In 1963 she attended the Hochschule fur bildende Kunste Hamburg (Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts). A year later she had to pull out of art school due to working with glass fibre without a mask. She contracted lung poisoning and remained for a year in a sanatorium after her parents had died also.

This experience gave her a heightened sensory awareness which was projected into her early performances such as ‘Due to her illness having such a hold over her she could only work with softer materials such as coloured pencils which are still her favourite drawing tool.

As she slowly broke out of her isolation she started to create sculpture and strange extensions with balsa wood and cloth whilst lying in in bed. Her goal being to rid herself of her loneliness by communicating through bodily forms.

Many of her works explain the double meaning in the idea of lenses One would think that a large tinted lens exists for protection and cover, but it also has the effect of drawing attention to the person or figure behind it. The paradox of looking out and looking back is explored in her installation piece for Taipei 101, Dialogue between Yin and Yang (2002). The work sets up interactions between viewers, environment and sculpture as it uses binoculars and mirrors to suggest the passive and active energies.

Image result for rebecca horn Einhorn — ‘Finger Gloves’ 1972

Heather’s blog

#sculptureartist