Southampton - What is it?

Monday, 15th February.

I had an interview today at Winchester School of Art within the University of Southampton. As well as the interview, a couple more events were presented; one being a programme talk/programme activity. 

It was felt that there was not much that could be said for a Fine Art course - it is rather self-explanatory - and so we focused on the activity. 

This activity entailed two small groups of interviewees say around two tables in the middle of the campus library, amongst the working students. We were told that we should go to the books on a particular shelf and between us, find all green (my group) and all brown (the second group) pages and position them all together on the tables. This process of searching for the pages went on for about 20 minutes, all while a camera set up in the corner documented with sporadic snapshots (no one could get it to photograph automatically on a logical timing). 

Once the tables were filled we sat back down and evaluated what we had created between us.

Research? A collage? A painting? Eventually it was decided that what we had produced was all these things and more. Naturally the haphazard books sprawled out across tables did look like manic research and the inclusion of numerous different photographs and paintings collated together gave the sense of a collage. Even classing the outcome as a painting was true to an extent, if you were to see the amalgamation of paintings that were sorted together. What was interesting was that the piece had also become a performance piece because of the sporadic camera: there was evidence of the process and because of the constant shots, the 20 minutes could be complied together into a film, showing the decisions made by the bookshelves as well as the decisions made on how the books would be positioned among the rest. 

As a final touch, plastic toy animals were situated across the spread of the two tables, concluding in one of many, endless ways, where the activity could lead. This addition made for a landscape.

The idea that this simple idea could become so many different things was very intriguing. This did not even need to be the final outcome, a photograph from a distance could become a final piece, as could a painting of the setting. So many possibilities arose from this. 

Unfortunately I did not think to photograph the final outcome but I would assume it would be fairly easy to visualise. In a way, the idea reminded me of Tony Cragg, an artist who works a lot with colour and decision making. I was particularly reminded of the colour coordinated pieces. 

He looks a lot at the same colours when working, be it in an installation or in a sculpture. 

Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg

I did try to recreate the idea, using photos from art magazines, but they all seemed to be similar types of painting so there was not much variation, unlike that which was created with the variety of books (photographs, realist, abstract, sculpture, etc), not enough full-bleed images and too much text. 

An idea of how the process worked. 

Evidently, there is too much text here. 

While it is not brilliant, this close up photo of a quick recreation
does give a better idea of the sort of thing produced.

I did find this activity very interesting and it is definitely something I would like to consider again. I also felt it was very relevant to my current idea of Arte Povera in creating art out of the mundane.