The Effects of Various Viewpoints on the Human Psyche

Last Friday a few of us took a trip up to Sheffield to see the current group exhibition, Hybrid , in which each artist has explored in their work a relation between art practice and science.

The exhibition was segregated in a number of different locations around the city centre, some which had seemed to have ended or non existent at all! However, among the spaces we visited we did manage to locate some artwork.

Located in Sheffield institute of arts gallery we discovered a few people gathered around watching a performance piece taking place in the corner of the open-plan exhibition space, Princess Clock Timing by artist Sarah Spanton. However, as I stood watching the performance my eye couldn't help drifting over to another character sitting solemnly in the middle of the space, his head burrowed in the palms of his hands.

The character situated in the middle of the project space was Paul Digby's Styrofoam sculpture, Man.The fact that I was instantly intrigued by the Styrofoam man despite its momentary conflict with Spanton's performance installation here is something very successful about the way Digby manages to lure the audience in with such a simplistic sculptural form. Digby explores the context of nostalgia combined with an atmosphere of unreality, or dream-like imagery in his use of comic-like imagery to investigate the relation between visual communication and psychology.

This particular rendering of the human form in his sculpture piece is further investigated in a series of four works in gouache on paper. In contrast to the use of the spatial in Digby's sculptural piece, where the sculpture sits in isolation, only accompanied by the chair he is installed upon, These works on paper communicate upon the relation between our mentalities and our surroundings.
Digby keeps to a very specific graphic form allowing him to focus on the effect of various viewpoints and different forms of perspective in his 2 dimensional works and the relations to human emotion. The communication of angst and despair is immediately realized when surrounding objects and buildings protrude within the geometrical space, almost as if reaching out of the paper and confronting the audience, whilst the solitary man (whom finds himself present in each of the four situations) sits in the foetal position, overwhelmed by the spatial he finds himself in.

What Digby also ensures to apply to in his studies are surroundings typical mundane, everyday life. The effect on emotion therefore entirely relies on the artist's play with perspective and viewpoints. This is clearly defined in the works that the artists had chosen to display out of his broad collection, and too, the order in which he has chosen to display the paintings. As you pass the first two works Waiting Room and Buildings you are confronted with the protruding perspectives and a sense of angst and despair. However, when moving on to view the third work of the series you are confronted with a viewpoint that plays on the contrary.


In the third painting Hard shoulder we become confronted by our Man having been taken out of everyday surroundings and placed on a hard shoulder in front of greenery. The location itself bares relation to a sense of hope and optimism contrasting with the other entirely industrial settings. This sense of elevation from the subject's despair is in fact communicated in a number of ways. The relation between the figure's clothing and surroundings also convey the intended mood. Whereas, in the other three works the figure is dressed in a brown-grey suit, in Hard shoulder the figure is conveyed in a green smock that corresponds with the greenery in the background. Moreover, the sitter seems to have managed to uplift himself to some degree out of his favoured foetal position and straighten his back, relieving the sense of restraint displayed in the other figurative poses.

Yet, what really strikes me is Digby's clever use of viewpoint. Whilst before, we were discomforted by the protruding perspective, Digby now employs the flat-painterly aspect in full proportion. As the pictorial space works flat, over a horizontal plane, we are given relief and allowed time to contemplate the imagery.Paul Digby's work is highly resolved in our relation to our everyday lives and our sense of psych. Visiting his work has brought a powerful sense of confrontation between our sense of selves and how we overlook the constant working of our mentalities within even the most routinely aspects of our daily lives. A must see!

If Only it Wern't for the Frames

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham,
Lava Forms Lanzarote 2

Momentarily, the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery in the Leeds University Parkinson building are holding an exhibition containing drawings by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.
I firstly visited the exhibition briefly last week and remember not feeling too intrigued by the work. So anyway, I went back this morning to try and figure out why it seemed so...dull.

I've concluded that its not quite a fault in the work itself. The mixed media sketches portrayed a kind of objective perception towards the subject of landscapes and townscapes, with a linear expression created mainly in pencil, enhanced by a tonal oil wash. In fact,defined only by primary linear markings, the drawings seemed to almost provide the essence of a blue-print.

This seemed to be the overall theme of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham's work; to undermine the idea of an overwhelming enigmatic quality that landscape has been credited for in the subject of painting throughout art history. And she's done it well.

Whilst walking through the small exhibition space that holds her work, the curator has categorised the drawings in such a way that we travel through the artist's experimentation with the subject of minimisation, starting for quite brightly coloured oil paintings to a collection a small pen drawings consisting only of a few lines to represent the movement of a wave.

However, I think the problem major problem with the exhibition was the way in which these drawings were each displayed in frames. Although the frames were simplistic, some with natural wood borders, others even more simplistically painted white, its the way that behind a glass frame the drawings seem too polished. There's a feeling that you're walking around a history museum rather than an art exhibition. The essence of the artist's trace is lost!

What makes a good icon?

I've recently been thinking along the lines of the whole photography/painting debate for my Practice and Materiality Module. The latest debate I've been having with myself I which medium bares greater potential for creating iconic imagery.

This debate came into mind when I was reading an essay on the work of Gerhard Richter, "I want to make a photograph":Photography, Landscape and Nature in the Work of Gerhard Richter, written by Jean-Philippe Antoine, where its stated that an icon,

"may represent its object mainly by its similarity, no matter what its mode of being."

A photograph and a painting bare definite iconic natures through their indicial qualities. Where a photograph is affected by its mechanical process of obtaining objective imagery through capturing the action of light, a painting is affected by the artist's subjective gesture.

I've decided that perhaps it could be that a painting contains more iconic potential when we consider the actual process the painter experiences. When painting, I believe that the painter will sub-consciously focus on a specific subjective interpretation of the image. For example, at the minute I have been painting from a found photograph that contains a town scape with two figures centred in the middle. It seems inevitable to me that either the figures or the town scape will become more prominent.

What I think I'm trying to say that, even with a photograph's nature of an objective trace, a painting will be more direct. In fact it may not even be the figures or town scape that ends up dominating my painted image, but part of a figure or part of the landscape. Even when using painting techniques that bring the image more into abstraction, its for a specific expression. The painted imagery will become a direct reference to whatever context the artist wishes to adhere to.

Therefore, does this mean a painting more iconic?