‘As Within, So Without’
My interest with the Sublime and oneness with nature initially derived from the phrase, ‘As above, so below”. From this point I spent a lot of time researching hermeticism, alchemy and the mythological documents surrounding it. To put it simply, hermeticism states that in all levels of our reality, including physical, mental-emotional and spiritual; what happens on the sub-atomic structure, happens on every other level. In an attempt to understand ourselves, we must in turn start to understand the universe around us. Although after meticulous research, I realised I did not want to focus on the hermetic principles directly, but on an ideal much more simpler, I wanted to explore the feeling of oneness and the wonder of the human experience through nature. This is something that I touched on in my unit 6 assessment, but I feel that it has since become more realised and refined.
I strived to create something that serves as a metaphor for the connection of all living organisms and the cyclical nature of life. These emotions felt through sensory triggers, to me are not able to be recreated by man. And in turn I feel that the rise of technology has diminished our relationship with nature, in addition to our relationship with each other, and the way we communicate. I am interested in reconnecting with the earth and the sublime experiences it provides. My final installation I am presenting are entitled, ‘As Within, So Without.’
After speaking with Anna on several occasions we realised we were exploring very similar concepts, although we were looking at them from a different perspective. We decided we would like to work collaboratively, so we worked together on a sound piece, made up of our voices, nature sounds and drones to create an ethereal piece.
Daniel Ramos Obregón ‘Outrosecption, The Body and Mind’.
This project has taken as a starting point the concept of “Outrospection” initially introduced by philosopher Roman Krznaric, where he proposes that in order to know oneself one must live towards the outside, it is by experiencing life that one discovers and shapes oneself. I have appropriated his concept while relating it to out-of-body experiences more commonly known as astral projections, by seeking to represent -in a metaphorical way- the mind being projected inside out of the body as a way of self-expresion and representation.
Richard Shilling
“Be inspired by nature and live among her splendour all that you can. There’s no more to it than that.”
Cornelia Conrads
German artist Cornelia Konrads creates mind-bending site-specific installations in public spaces, sculpture parks and private gardens around the world. Her work is frequently punctuated by the illusion of weightlessness, where stacked objects like logs, fences, and doorways appear to be suspended in mid-air, reinforcing their temporary nature as if the installation is beginning to dissolve before your very eyes. One of her more recent sculptures, Schleudersitz is an enormous slingshot made from a common park bench, and you can get a great idea of what it might be like to sit inside it with this interactive 360 degree view.
Gallery Visit – 20/05/16 – Thomson & Craighead: Party Booby Trap – Caroll/fletcher Gallery
Across three small rooms, they’ve somehow managed to sum up an entire galaxy of worries, fears and general millennial malaise.
The first room hammers the viewer with posters predicting the end of the world, balloons stamped with the names of military operations and a video of a house burning while self help slogans stutter across the screen.
The duo has also created a perfume inspired by the descriptions of the apocalypse in the Bible. It doesn’t smell as unpleasant as you’d imagine, but it leaves a lingering, acrid scent in the nostrils.
In the rear gallery, a series of videos delve into the mapping of the human genome, self-help tapes and the time remaining until sites contaminated by radioactive waste become safe for humans again. It’s all totally heady and overwhelming. But one piece leaves a nastier feeling than anything else.
‘Six Years of Mondays’ is compiled of videos taken by a man in Fife of the weather outside his bedroom every day. Each segment of the video combines a whole year of Mondays. Endless, tedious, grey, damp Mondays. It makes you feel like time’s passing is unending, unstoppable, and unbearably tedious. It’s a hard watch.
There’s a chance you’ll feel like Thomson & Craighead have a direct line into your neuroses, or at the least have been monitoring your emails or something, because it all taps so perfectly into contemporary anxiety. It’s almost too real. This is aggressive, angsty art that really sticks in your throat.
Gallery visit – 15/05/16 -Frank Ammerlaan: Moonless – Bosse & Baum
“Frank Ammerlaan’s work is characterised by a rich, multi-layered visual style that is as poetic as it is political, and which frequently fuses contemporary issues with history, religion and philosophy. Through his floor-based installation and wall-based steel collages, Ammerlaan investigates temporality and perception, and continues his longstanding interest in materials and processes. Addressing the spaces between the visible, the tactile and the immaterial, his sculptures vibrate with fascinating chromatic encounters. Pulsating with natural light, the pieces hover at the edges of the human psyche, as the artist explores the infinite manifestations of geometry and light.
Mirroring the appearance of the roof in the gallery, the body-sized sheets on the floor anchor the installation in the gallery, offering a peripheral path through it. As the viewer stands at the threshold of the memorial, his desire to succumb to the holographic colours, is halted by the realisation of what appears to be reminiscent of an abandoned site. The metal wall-based sculptures ‘Untitled,’ displayed in a separate space of the gallery, are assembled in a patchwork, merged by a rhythmic pattern of rivets to create an impenetrable surface. This surface is interrupted by contrasting elements like air vents and loudspeaker holes suggesting alternative existences.
The project is a continuation of the artist’s investigation into modern day alchemy. The hand-sculpted corrugated steel sheets, damaged and vandalised in their appearance, have been treated by an industrial electroplating process. Each reflective sheet of conductive material has been immersed into twenty different baths. This process prevents metal from corrosion and creates an unpredictable and multi-coloured patina transmuting the base material into a regenerated object. The body of metal has been resurrected with a new skin and its mortality has been changed with the technological process.”
According to the philosopher Boris Groys, it was after the material and technological shift, an “evolution able to overcome all possible disasters controlling the status of the human body,” at the end of the nineteenth century, that the attitude towards the body changed. It became a “medium due to which the human being could be better connected to nature, the animal world and the cosmos space.”
Gallery Visit – 25/04/16 – States of Mind: Tracing the edges of consciousness @ The Wellcome Collection
“This exhibition follows on from the first instalment of States of Mind which saw artist Ann Veronica Janssens fill a room with beautiful multicoloured mist which visitors queued for hours to get enveloped in. Enlisting the help of artists, philosophers, neuroscientists and psychologists, the second part of the programme, Tracing the Edges of Consciousness unpicks the awareness of one’s existence through a series of changing installations exploring synaesthesia, disorders of memory, somnambulism and what happens when conscious experience is interrupted.”
I found this exhibition eye opening and haunting at the same time. It was very immersive and evoked emotions through sensory triggers, which is something that I aspire to find in art.
Expressions.
A series of photographs expressing the human experience in relation to nature.
Final Castings
After much trial and error, these are my final 3 castings that I am going to use in my unit 7 assessment exhibition. I had quite a lot of trouble from the fingers breaking to technical issues with the moulds. I think the poses of final sculptures are very expressive and relay my concepts well. I have since installed a metal rod into the bottom of the hands so I can install them onto the wall for the assessment date.
Research Journal 