Tutor Report MM Pt5

Tutor report

 

Student name	Sylvia Philpot	Student number	503311
Course/Module	Painting 2: Mixed Media	Assignment number	5

 

 

Dear Sylvia

 

Thank you for your fifth Assignment

 

Overall Comments

The work you have submitted for this assignment appears to be of a similar standard to your previous assignment, which demonstrated an effective grasp of ideas and also showed creativity, experimentation and that you are articulate and self- aware in terms of theoretical understanding.

 

The assignment however does not give enough visual evidence in terms of the impact on the viewer and it is difficult to determine scale in relation to the environment and the viewer. There are also lots of implicit references, which are good, but also some very obvious references to the work of other artists, which borders on the predictable.

 

Feedback on assignment

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

I emphasized ‘appears’ in my overall comments because your blog is a little inadequate as far as evidence of your practice is concerned. I was refused access to your Witches Wood blogspot so I cannot comment on the work here. I also thought the images for your final project were not clear enough and did not show enough of the spatial environment (room space) and how the work impacted on this environment.

                                                                                                                                          

Your blog demonstrated your reasoning and self reflection very well especially in terms of conceptual understanding. Therefore I have had to go by your blog for this assignment because of the nature of what you refer to as your  “ object” work and evaluating this has been difficult because the reproductions on your blog are not that clear enough. I think you should have sent me some photographs for this assignment and I would advise that you do this as evidence of Assignment 5, for assessment.

 

Your combining objects and images work has worked quite well and the influences in the work are clear. You also describe your intentions fairly clearly in your blog. I would have liked to see more of the environment in your photographs to get an idea of scale and impact on space.

 

Your Diorama/ tableaux work has a clear Dadaist/conceptual focus and the gender references (rather than the feminist references) are quite effective. You have also sited the influences from Duchamp, Martha Rosier, Cindy Sherman and Jeff Koons. However I think that your work has more in common with multi references that are in the dioramas of Joseph Bueys or Marcel Dzama.

 

The same can be said of your final project work, which takes its influences clearly from Cornelia Parker, Kiefer and Stockholder.

There is some interesting use of metal, micro line and graffiti. This also emphasizes the different use of space in relation to planes of the metal objects, objects in space and wall mark making. However the importance of scale and dynamics of space is not clear from the images in the blog.

 

I think there are still too much emphasis on concept, making and theory and not enough importance given to the context of space and design.

 

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays

Context

                        Your critical review is well thought out and demonstrates a good range of research and your argument, which is both articulate and self-aware. I would have liked to see more references to outside influences such as changes in society, multicultural influences and how perception is changing because of access to technology. The bombardment of all our senses by such a variety of influences means that the divisions in discipline are no longer valid. Artists are responding to this in artworks that include sound, smell, physical experience etc. There is also no mention of the digital revolution and how artists are synthesizing digital technology into all aspects of drawing, painting, installation and performance.

                 

 

                   

 

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Richard Liley

 

Tutor name:	Richard Liley
Date	6/03/2015
Next assignment due	N/A

Tutor Report MM Pt4

Tutor report

 

Student name	Sylvia Philpot	Student number	503311
Course/Module	Painting 2: Mixed Media	Assignment number	4

 

 

Dear Sylvia

 

Thank you for your fourth Assignment

 

Overall Comments                                                                                                   

The work you have produced for this Assignment continues to show the progress that I commented on in the last Assignment.

However your references to context can be a little superficial and as an example, I reference your comments on Daniel Buren’s work, which shows that you need to do more in-depth research.

 

“Buren uses stripes as a neutral symbol in his sculpture, installing his art in and around Paris during the 60s.  He was commissioned to use striped columns at the 2012 Monumenta festival in Paris.  The latest installation at the Grand Palais has disks of plastic colours that fill the space and are mirrored from below.  I personally don’t find his work rewarding because I don’t get any message, and like others think it is repetitive, but he is regarded as France’s most important living artist.”

 

You need to understand that Buren’s work originates from Institutional Critique paralleling the urban guerrilla tactics of the Situationists.  The work challenges the power of the gallery and the museum making the observer aware that his trademark stripes can be taken out of the gallery and on to the street. - so they can appear on a passing bus or on a bus seat or even on boat sails on Lake Grasmere in the Lake District (Voile/Toile 2012). Please do some research into the Situationists and Institutional Critique and increase your understanding.

 

 

 

Assessment Potential

 I am not going to use the standard statement here because you have the potential to pass at Assessment. However you may lose marks on application of knowledge and discernment and critical thinking in some areas that I am pinpointing in this report.

Feedback on assignment

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

 

The weakest areas of your work mainly relate to quality of outcome and context, which are variable at this level of study. Your demonstration of creativity and of technical and visual skills is of a competent to very competent standard.

 

Your application of knowledge, coherence and discernment needs more thought and development and quality of outcome needs to marry up to reflection, research and contextual relevance.

 

 This marrying up of context needs to underpin the sense of purpose in your work. The work you have submitted for this assignment and earlier work comes across as imaginative and experimental which is a good thing. However the work often lacks substance because in some instances you are not necessarily understanding or fulfilling the brief. I will explain this in reference to your specific assignment projects as follows:

 

The shaped painting from everyday life:

The painted element is tenuous here and although the content of the images works well as far as design, composition and invention are concerned you have missed the point of the exercise. You are still working within the format of the rectangular frame and have not grasped the point of the project to work within a shaped format. You must link the research to this –e.g. the purpose behind Stella or Kelly’s work to make paintings into objects that relate to room space and the proportional response of the viewer to the object within the space.

 

Fracturing the picture plane – Weaving:

 

This is a much more relevant response to the exercise and the political references are good. I wondered though if you had thought about aspects of the interruption of the picture plane and low relief?

 

Recycle a Frame

You have used the frame well as a way of dividing content and meaning here and I think you have successfully combined symbolic meaning with function.

 

Boxes:

 

There are lots of good things here with references to Cornell and symbolic meaning. However the functional process of framing within a box environment is not discussed – why are you creating this environment and are you considering composition and the relationship of object to enclosed space?

 

Preconceived ideas and notions, which are very imaginative, often lead your work but you are not responding to considerations related to restatement, chance or even changes in direction relating to construction and composition

 

An Object Painting:

 

This is another instance where your idea dominates the proceedings and you do not take into account why you found it difficult to translate the Malevich sketches into 3D. You do not consider the Suprematists references to the ground as infinity, the symbolism of the icon or the dynamics of composition. The three dimensional realization therefore gets side tracked by considerations of the making and the application of media or colour.

 

Sketchbooks

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

                   This area of your work is good in most respects.

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays

Context

                        I have already pinpointed the weakness here but in other respects your research is thorough and relevant.

 

                  I also found your blog a little complicated and difficult to follow.

 

                  Suggested reading/viewing

Context

Try to get hold of a book from the library called Art Since 1980: Charting the Contemporary by Peter R Kalb

 

Pointers for the next assignment

·        Try to apply considerations of change into your work. Do not let the idea dominate the process of making and aspects of restatement, coherence and contextual relevance.

 

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Richard Liley

 

Tutor name:	Richard Liley
Date	20/12/2014
Next assignment due	28/2/2015

Tutor Report MM Pt3

 

 

 

 

 

Tutor report

 

Student name	Sylvia Philpot	Student number	503311
Course/Module	Painting 2: Mixed Media	Assignment number	3

 

 

Dear Sylvia

 

Thank you for your third Assignment

 

Overall Comments                                                                                                   

This is an improved assignment and you have taken my advice about making your journey more coherent and your self-reflection more explicit. I think you also need to stand back and look at the continuum and origins of appropriated and displaced images. You are correct in exploring the message related to political and social conditions but you should also recognize that Post Modernism is still harping back to the disruption in society through the ravages of two World Wars and the origins of appropriation and displacement from Dada, Cubism and Surrealism continue to underpin contemporary practice. I would suggest that your references to photography should also be strengthened and there is no harm in looking back to the work of John Heartfield or the emphasis on structure and spirituality that pervades David Bomberg’s work as well as more contemporary artists and photographers such as Tacita Dean.

 

Feedback on assignment

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

The work you have submitted for this assignment demonstrates competent technical and visual skills and there is a competent realization of ideas, presented well and showing judgement. On the whole the work is creative and there is evidence of risk taking.

 

If we start with your black and white studies that are really just preliminary studies for the first large painting but

Still show your thoughts and your workings.

 

I still find that there is rather too much visual information, which drowns the instinctive need of your viewer to find structure and coherence. Composition in the second study in particular is clumsy and rather obvious. However preliminary studies should be searching and should show that you are working out ideas.

 

The first large painting by contrast is probably the best image in this assignment and is more ordered in structure with a broad grid-like control of imagery. The frames are also not too rigid so that the eye explores and scans the surface and finds the traces of the journey narrative that your are describing. The overall impression is of more control and less cluttered in imagery. I think the idea of journey is working well and the limited colour sections are effective. I think that there are also contradictions here between the physical surface and illusion. The black tends to flatten the image so that we scan it horizontally from left to right yet we are supposed to be led out into space at the top right edge of the painting. I suspect that you had not taken this factor on board and that this is largely an intuitive accident.

 

The second painting about hanged teenagers in Pakistan does not have the impact or the contrasts of your first painting. We are again confronted by a certain amount of ‘visual fuss’, which interferes with what could have been an interesting structural image. The mixed images that you are pleased with actually interfere with the overall impact (or possible impact of this image). The image is dominated by the vertical strips of shredded paper that play across the surface of the support – and are in themselves, a good idea. However the horizontal broken counter lines are not strong enough to counter this and the eye is pulled down and out of the image. Nor is the colour contrast, which could have helped to define and contrast areas of importance on the image on the image. Background, middle ground and subject therefore collide and send out a confused message for your viewer. You need to stand back and look hard, re-emphasize areas in the structure, colour and imagery in order to make this an effective image.

 

The final blue painting works better in reproduction than in reality.

The blues are not the blues of water, which would have been more tonal and grey – so the viewer does not read the colours as that of water. The most interesting and dominating part of the painting is the ripples, which could also be vapor trails in the sky rather than water (and would make sense of the butterfly). Again, the opportunity to enhance structure has been lost by application and overworking detail. The structure could have been more of a vortex, which would have made sense of the figures being sucked into it. The shapes of the dresses on the figures are too strong and the shapes read as hands (the heads of the figures are not strong enough) to me, the viewer.

 

Sketchbooks

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

                  Your sketchbook is good and shows your thinking and experiments. They demonstrate competent technical and visual skills and a reasonably effective grasp of ideas.

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays

Context

                        Your learning log is thorough and comprehensive but I made a point in my overview about continuum and context. Do look at other influences from photography –also do not discount earlier influences – look at how Malevich  (for example) drew inspiration from the poses of renaissance artists in his final portraits – also how Bomberg drew inspiration for his Toledo landscapes from El Greco –relate the contemporary to wider aspects of current affairs and the continuum of experience.

 

                  Suggested reading/viewing

Context

 

I have suggested that you look at John Hartfield, David Bomberg (for structure, emotion, dynamics and spirituality) and Tacita Dean. Also take time out to listen to Neil Macgregor’s radio broadcasts on Germany and go to the Sigmar Polke and Anselm Kiefer exhibitions

 

Pointers for the next assignment

·        Continue to simplify content

·        Enhance and strengthen structure and shape

·        Concentrate more on visual impact and contrast

·        Fracturing images requires an awareness of intent and design

Please can you keep to the timescale I am giving you for your next assignment? I notice that we are falling behind a little.

 

An assignment that shows you are improving and developing a voice.

 

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Richard Liley

 

Tutor name:	Richard Liley
Date	1/10/2014
Next assignment due	1/12/2014