Degree Show is over as of last Thursday!
My plan for the show was to have a few pieces of work (two painting/installations and 8 photographs) available and to play with them in the space until they settled and began to look like a show. In the end I showed both painting/installations and one of the images.
Canvas Unpicked and Dipped III is shown above, I saw this as my main work. The other two pieces, pictured below, were Canvas Unpicked and Dipped IV and a digital photograph entitled Medium Behaviour (2).
All the works shown explore the materials of painting, and in particular canvas, through a process of unpicking and soaking canvas threads in oil medium. There is also a play with the relationship between the canvas and the frame. Both painting/installation works began with the canvas stretched over the frame, as if I was going to paint on it. The canvas has then been pulled off, unpicked and the threads soaked before being laid back over the frame. The canvas was then pulled off the stretcher for a second time and, in the case of Canvas Unpicked and Dipped III, is shown hugging the frame again.
Apart from a fairly continuous level of panic the whole way through I enjoyed installing the works in the show. It wasn't dissimilar to making the works, in that it involved a level of playing and testing until the pieces seemed to make themselves. Canvas Unpicked and Dipped III in particular suddenly settled into position. Canvas Unpicked and Dipped IV was exciting to install as it seemed personified. The canvas lattice ended up on its back, showing its soft underbelly and as such was quite vulnerable.
The works will be installed in Seventy Feet, as part of the Free Range Graduate Art Show from the 7th to the 11th July. F block T3, Free Range Graduate Art Show, Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London E1 6QL
