This term, for the first time, there has been no brief. We have been free to follow our own interests. Again, I've referenced the Minimalists. Their work attracts me. Their use of geometric abstraction and hard edges challenges me to simplify my work. I want to keep taking away, until I feel nothing more can be removed, yet still have the work make sense. I also like a quote by the American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who said, "to use no ornament that did not come out of the nature of the materials". For most of my work this year this has been a guiding principle.

I'm an early riser and love watching the sun come up. Over the years I've made many photographs of weather patterns, clouds, sunrises and sunsets. For this project I wanted to abstract the view of the sunrise from our home. How to do this, while referencing the Minimalists and heeding Frank Lloyd Wright? I settled on Perspex, an industrial material often used in signage, (and, among many other things,  intraocular lenses, used in cataract surgery which I thought was interesting because I have two of them) and found some amazing  pink fluorescent Perspex with highlighter orange glowing edges which would work and also a dark blue. I hoped the pink would throw a magenta cast on the walls, but testing it with a 100 x 70mm sample wasn't simple. I looked at the perspex work of Rana Begum, (you can see her work on Instagram at @ranabegumstudio) and Regine Schurmann, which was really helpful. Olafur Eliasson makes incredible, large, fit in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall sized installations about environment and weather. His The Weather Project was a huge, immersive experience. 

I used the cube form as a starting point to make a work 1200 x 400 x 200 mm with  stacked multiples of a
100mm cube. The Perspex provided the colour and the light source is LED lights. The magenta/pink Perspex of the top and bottom layers throws the colour onto the wall behind, and with the blue front facing Perspex I hope a viewer can feel the beauty I feel each time I see a sunrise. 

This semester our class has had two projects. The first was a collaborative project, which was fun and interesting. The brief was to respond to the Ilam School of Fine Arts, in any way we liked and it was to culminate in a collaborative class exhibition. The second was our first crack at a self directed project and as a starting point we had to write a TLA. No, a TLA is not a not a Three Letter Acronym this time, it is a Teaching and Learning Agreement. I had no idea about that, which could be because of my age, and the number of years since I left school. I got there in the end. 

I really like the Minimalist art from the 1960s. (The 1960s were a long time ago, but I can recall a few great Beatles songs and the Cordon Bleu cookbook series!) Think Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Dan Flavin. And here is a link to the Chinati Foundation, in Marfa, Texas, where the work of all three is held. One day. I wish I'd known about this place when I was in Texas a few years ago. Simple, hard edged, clean work, using industrial materials, often huge, geometric, often based on cubes, unadorned, no fluff. I enjoyed researching these guys and also the French artist Daniel Buren who makes site specific installations using 8.7cm wide stripes as his signature visual element. Buren has striped his way around the world, making amazing installations in some incredible places. He gave up his studio in 1968 to make his site specific art, maintaining that the place art is made is the only place in which it can be truly understood, and he's still going.  

The first work, which I named Flow, responded to the stairs leading from the foyer to the first floor in Block 2 and the space in front of the stairs. My first choice of site had an annoying sprinkler head, high up in a nice architectural feature, a sky light. No go there. H&S would not have been happy. But the stairs proved to be a better site anyway. Made of 48mm coloured duct tape, the work engaged viewers, who became participants in the art as they used the stairs. (Thank you Nikita and Sarah, for walking by at the perfect moment.) It seemed to be well received. I installed over a weekend when the building was quiet, and even with the help of two special, long suffering people, Ron and Laura, it still took 39 hours, and a couple of early nights to recover. Removing it was fast, about 13 minutes. Part of the course requirement is to document all our work, including process. My friend, Ian, made a great time lapse and I took photos, so pulling the work up after only a few days didn't feel too bad. With this sort of work the documentation is really important because it is the only record. 

Installing the work was made simpler by a surprise encounter with a nice man, Alan, who was installing new signage at the university that weekend. He asked what we were doing - good question! He suggested that we could use corflute to attach the tape to then attach the corflute to the stair risers. Great idea, and he offered us some offcuts of corflute. It simplified the installation hugely. Alan came back a couple of times to check progress. I felt the universe was watching out for a tired student that day. I invited him to the exhibition opening, and he came.   



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Anne Lindberg
Anni Albers
Vera Molnar
Francois Morellet
Kazimir Malevich
Gordon Walters

More info to come...