Stallion Red 2, Javan Dawn 2, Buttercup Fool 2 (2009)

 

Artists Statement:

Hayley Marie Clack

 

Red Stallion 2: 2009

Buttercup Fool 2: 2009

Javan Dawn 2: 2009

 

This work relates to my desire to address aesthetic judgements and how this relates to colour and internal spaces. This series of work is made up of 3 large walls that have the ability to be moved around. They are painted with Dulux colours from the commercial paint industry. The main point of interest is the binaries taking place such as the static object that can actually be moved, the flatness and density of the colour upon a hollow plywood wall and of sculptural authority with decorative transience. This disruption I hope begins to question notions about form and colour, to represent colour as structure, but also to situate this in the realm of the decorative to create a tension between psychological spaces. The colours I have used here deal with these ideas. By using primary colours I am supposedly accepting traditional theory of colour as an authority however it is clear to the viewer that they are painted with commercial household paint, and the hue, tone and intensity is not what you would necessarily define as primary colours, the red is dense whilst the blue veers towards a turquoise and the yellow recalls pastel shades.

 

If one says “Red” (the name of a colour)

And there are 50 people listening,

It can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds.

And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.’

Josef Albers ‘Interaction of Colour’

 

Although this suggests the infinity of colour it also demonstrates the limitations of language, and colour becomes a tool for the representation of the intangible and in the process is subordinated. Colour charts standardise. Colour and its relationship to language is complex and the categorization of colour into colours may change our expectations of chromatic experience. The acceptance of colour as representative of memory and emotion can be seen in the evocative language used to describe the colours available for brands such as Dulux. Red Stallion, Buttercup Fool, Javan Dawn.

 

‘But colour can also seem bottomlessly resistant to nomination, attaching itself absolutely to it’s own specificity and the surfaces on which it has or finds its visibility, even as it also appears subject to endless alteration arising through its juxtaposition with other colours. Subjective and objective, physically fixed and culturally constructed, absolutely proper and endlessly displaced, colour can appear as an unthinkable scandal. The story of colour and it’s theory within the history of art is a history of oscillations between its reduction to charm or ornament and its valorization as the radical truth of painting.’

Stephen Melville, extract from ‘Colour has not yet been named: Objectivity in deconstruction’

Two Exhibitions about Colour.

Significant Colour @ the Aram Gallery:

‘Significant Colour is an exhibition that shows work that is not merely about being colourful but engages the viewer to think more deeply about why objects and artworks employ the the colours they do and the implications behind their nuances of tone, shade, material colour, surface application.’

 

This exhibition which includes art, design, architecture and textiles seems to associate colour with memory and personal experience. In the press release Ptolemy Mann also talks about the subordination of colour and a new found interest in its representation. However the above quote from Mann which describes the works chosen as not ‘merely about being colourful’ is questionable over all, as the exhibition does unforftunately look like the underlying theme is that they are aesthetically colourful without further curatorial enquiry.

 

Sophie Smallhorn 'Circle 1' 2008

 

dRMM ‘Clapham Manor Primary School’ 2005

Individual pieces however do succeed. Sophie Smallhorn’s wooden colour circles engage with the endless possibilities of colour by disrupting the traditional colour wheel harmonies and  creating compositions that address the many ways chroma can be represented. Architects dRMM provide innovative solutions to the urban landscape both internally and externally resulting in a narrative approach to design and a deeper consideration of the people who experience the building. 

 

Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Toaday @ Tate Liverpool

An exhibition previously shown at the Museum of Modern Art New York that explores the reinvention of colour as a ready made and the move away from artist grade colour mixing to commercial mass produced  colour.  Rejecting the spiritual or emotional by using a standardized colour chart and rebelling against the popular Abstract Expressionism of the 50′s which used colour emotively and gesturally. Frank Stella said of the colour he uses ‘straight outta the can, it couldn’t get any better’  

Some of the highlights include:

Donald Judd 'Untitled (DJ-85-51)' 1985

Judd had these sculptures made in factories with industrial materials, he wanted to rid the sculptures of any presence from the artist. David Batchelor talks about Judd’s work and how the artist said ‘for colour to exist it has to occur in space’. Batchelor explains how colour should be experienced as an object and not on the surface but as a physical material not as a secondary process and experience. Colour is form. He also talks about how the colours in Judd’s work all appear at once, I like this and the idea that no colour is privlidged 0ver another and that there is no hierarchy.

 

Frank Stella 'Hampton Roads, New Madrid, Delaware Crossing, Sabine Pass, Palmito Ranch and Island No. 10' 1962

‘Stella used Benjamin Moore paint for an extensive series of paintings whose designs were as defiantly ordinary as their palette. Stella explained his approach in a 1964 radio interview: ‘I knew a wise guy who used to make fun of my painting, but he didn’t like the Abstract Expressionists either. He said they would be good painters if they could only keep the paint as good as it is in the can. And that’s what I tried to do. I tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.’ Andy Warhol was an early Stella fan and it was he who commissioned this set.’

 

David Batchelor 'I Love King's Cross and King's Cross Loves Me' 2008

David Batchelor  is an artist who is interested in colour that we experience in the urban landscape. He often works with readymade objects and flat colour plaines that represent the industrial and the artificial. His works are playful and have a sense of the absurd about them that relates to how the artist feels about colour being relegated to the decorative or frivolous in comparison to the seriousness of form and whiteness.

 

John Baldessari 'Six Colorful Inside Jobs' 1977

 I love this piece, it very nearly reflects my enquiry about colour over the last 3 years. A student of Baldessari’s Paints a room a different colour each day monday to saturday the primary and secondary colours. Baldessari questions the distinction between decorator and artist. Shows the process of painting as laborious and repetitive.

 

What a fantastic building!

 

Billy Fury!

 

I had a lovely time in Liverpool. It was a gloomy day but the docks looked creepy and amazing! It was nice to end a hectic week and to get out of London for the day. The exhibition was great, curation could have been a little more exciting considering the nature of the work and yes there was no need for an extra gift shop taking up valuable space when an empty room with Lambie’s Zobop would have been a great end to his pulsating rhythmic floor. I spent 3 hours in the Colour Chart Exhibition alone, pouring over all the cases containing old colour theory manuals and samples, particularly the ‘British Colour Council Dictionary of Colour standards’  (1934) Which was the authority for standardized colour and was used by most public institutions such as the army, architects and the Royal Mail. The Dictionary used names that came from plants and animals and is interesting that it later came to be replaced by pantone which used technology to provide colour solutions that used codes to identify colour.  Maybe this transition reflects the change in attitude to colour.

Fill, Sand, Fill, Sand, Fill, Sand!

So Set up has been very challenging. There has been a lack of presence from 1st and 2nd year helpers however Ben from 2nd year has been amazing and my right hand man! Filling any cracks or holes has been really difficult using a 2 part wood filler which is a really horrible texture to work with and sets very quickly. Had problems toward the end because it wasn’t setting or sanding down very well. The walls were moved outside studios to make sanding easier, the process was hard to watch, I was like an over protective mother while the guys all pitched in to get them out, Jamie Wag even took out a piece of the studios doorframe in order to achieve smooth transition. Other problems encountered include not being able to find a suitable grey undercoat, Getting paint in my eye and getting the right blue paint in Dulux Flat Matt. The Flat Matt was the finish I choose to add a density to the walls, I has an almost chalky texture which is lovely but shows up imperfections in the wood. This though has made me appreciate the reference to the materials used. The set up process has been intense but really enjoyed the commitment to the work I have produced. All the colour is on so expect pictures very soon!

 

Prime Time!

 

Here we go!

Preview…

stallion red

Franchi’s is my friend

Indeed, this glorious gem of a hardware store is one of a kind. It is unfortunate however because I now have power tool envy, these guys make my black and decker look about as useful as a toothpick….

Ah Hmm, moving swiftly on.

So It appears near impossible to find anywhere thats stocks 6″ bolts that fit a 7mm hole, never fear, Franchi’s provided me with meter lengths of threaded rod. Luckily ben is a wizz with the angle grinder and we soon got those castors on in no time (His health and safety skills however are questionable! Big pink sunglasses and gardening gloves, oh dear!)  The initial realization that the walls would in fact  need bolting couldn’t have come at a worse time as I had just glued down the front of the 3rd wall with the strongest wood glue known to mankind… After some loving words I eventually managed to remove the top 2×2 and slide into the wall to screw the nut on the inside, was an intense experience but worth it as I now have 3 lovely walls that are on wheels and standing tall. Next job is sanding and filling.

3 Drill Hay and cut hand

Cladding

Grinding the bolts for wheels

lovely

Inside the walls!

Ben dropping the sand bags inside to add weight

Proud Ben

Very happy me!

Liver Birds

http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/colourchart/

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rca.ac.uk/UploadedImages/CRL_4.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx%3FContentID%3D505389%26GroupID%3D505440%26CategoryID%3D36538&usg=__O8AV5bV0aldIG8mkWEBw5415Ru8=&h=309&w=600&sz=28&hl=en&start=36&um=1&tbnid=jjfl01hxQ85xWM:&tbnh=70&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcolour%2Bchart:%2Breinventing%2Bcolour,%2B1950%2Bto%2Btoday%2BTate%2BLiverpool%26ndsp%3D21%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den-us%26sa%3DN%26start%3D21%26um%3D1

I am extremey happy because I have just got my train ticket to Liverpool to see this oh so on trend (well its totally what’s inspiring me at the moment!) exhibition at the Tate Liverpool: ‘Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today’

But is it comfortable?

 

Donald Judd Chair Painted Aluminium 1984

‘Of course if a person is at once making art and building furniture and architecture there will be similarities. The various interests in form will be consistant. If you like simple forms in art you will not make complicated ones in architecture. Complicated incidentally, is the opposite to simple, not complex, which both may be. But the difference between art and architecture is fundamental. Furniture and architecture can only be approached as such. Art cannot be imposed upon them. If their nature is seriously considered the art will occur, even art close to art itself.’

Donald Judd (Furniture Retrospective p.7) 

I have been considering if my art could be considered furniture and I think what Judd says here can be applied. I hope for my work to operate within both disciplines and create a fluid transition between ideas of functionality, aesthetic pleasure and subjectivity. 

Furniture obeys the rules of categorization like the defining of colour into colours. Furniture like colours relate to space and therefore does not operate as lone elements.

Don’t Cut Your Hand the Day Before Set Up! No No No…

Yes it’s true. In the mean time I have had a very  interesting tutorial with Professor Douglas Allsop and these are some suggested findings and researches…..

Six prisons in color, Acrylic, day-glo, pearlescent, metallic acrylic, roll-a-tex on canvas, 190.5 x 190.5 cm

Peter Halley and Neo-Geo who likes to do things that deal with social, economic and other kinds of systems. In an article in the New York Times online archive from 1987 he says:

‘Simulation, the fact of technical mediation replacing the natural thing, is such a big experience in our society. Air conditioning is a simulation of air; movies are a simulation of life; life is simulated by bio-mechanical manipulations’

I like to think of Dulux like that, my work is very much concerned with what is considered real or artificial and the hierarchy within aesthetics and specifically the way colour and form relates to the spaces it may occupy. 

 

 

Ittens colour wheel

I have also been searching for a book called The Art of Colour by Johannes Itten which looks like some kind of colour theory bible, luckily they finally have at Southampton Row Library! Johannes Itten taught the preliminary course at the Bauhaus between 1919 and 1922. Itten extended Adolf Hozels  colour wheel and related colour to emotional values that are now part of our unconcious when describing colour. because of this Ittens teachings are associated with cosmetic colour.   

Other colour charts to consider are Ral which is where Dulux originates from but more on that later….

As a final thought here are a few gems which will lead to my next post which will be about functionality: furniture & art.  

 

Installation: Allan Ruppersberg (furniture) & John Armleder (wallpaper)

Tobias Rehberger

 

 

John Armleder wall paper

Rusty screws? I don’t think so!

Wall number 2 goes up today, not much to say on the construction front, apart from the annoying bowing of my sheets of ply….

 

first wall in all its ply glory

 

 

 

work begins on number 2

 

An Exercise in colour as form:

 

Dulux Colour Series 1

Dulux Colour Series 2

Dulux Colour Series

And an early model of my walls:

Dulux and Me

Today was mostly thinking about paint and its application in the home vs oil paints of the studios. Colour and its relationship to language is complex and the categorization of colour into colours may change our expectations of chromatic experience.

‘But colour can also seem bottomlessly resistant to nomination, attaching itself absolutely to it’s own specificity and the surfaces on which it has or finds its visibility, even as it also appears subject to endless alteration arising through its juxtaposition with other colours. Subjective and objective, physically fixed and culturally constructed, absolutely proper and endlessly displaced, colour can appear as an unthinkable scandal. The story of colour and it’s theory within the history of art is a history of oscillations between its reduction to charm or ornament and its valorisation as the radical truth of painting.’

Stephen Melville, extract from ‘Colour Has Not Yet been Named: Objectivity in Deconstruction’ in Deconstruction of the Visual Arts’ ed. P. Brunette and D. Wills (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993)

 

….. hmm, also finishing the main body of wall number  one.