DECAY - ARTISTS' BLOG
Kevin Dagg's Blog - Preparation for Decay exhibition
When I first returned to the process of woodcarving after a break of about 10 years the first piece I undertook was a large wooden Doll’s arm presently being exhibited at Land en Beeld. I was not planning to carve the whole figure, instead I had the idea to carve the arm and leave the viewer image the scale of the body from which it has become detached. I was pleased with this work when it was finished and included it in several arrangements and installations.
In 2006 my wife gave birth to our daughter Iris and once again I became fascinated with the beautiful and voluptuous forms of the human baby. The idea came to me to carve my daughter as a wooden doll.
Work soon began on the body although a lot of time was spent trying to get the right finish and resolution for the overall work. I couldn’t decide if it was to be an archetypal doll or a realistic portrait of my daughter. The pendulum swung backwards and forwards until I finally realised that perhaps the answer was to be neither one, nor the other. This solution allowed me to select the elements I liked from each style and released me to get on with the job of carving.
Time waits for no man and my daughter was changing every day, so when the opportunity to exhibit during the Edinburgh Art Festival came up I decided it was a good chance to finish the carving. It was always going to be a tight schedule though as carving is a rather time consuming activity I am not the fastest carver in the west. The body was more or less finished and there were four months before the exhibition. With a title of Decay I quickly realised I could have a limb missing so that left one month each to carve three limbs and a head.
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The problem was that I would have to juggle other work and the week was divided more or less evenly between carving and other commitments. A quick calculation informed me I would have roughly twelve days to carve each element. The clock was ticking but I love a challenge and there’s nothing like a deadline for focusing the mind.
For the doll to work as intended I would have to hollow out the inside of the body. I had been dreading this process from the start and had no idea how long it was going to take. At first I tried a large auger bit but drilling into the end grain of oak is no easy feat and my drill has never been the same since my attempt. There was nothing else for it I was going to have to try to rough it out with a chainsaw. A plunge cut is when you drive the tip of the cutting bar directly into the wood and is not a manoeuvre I would not recommend for you to try at home. This is the most dangerous cut to make because it has a tendency to kickback when used on the tip of the bar. Luckily the process went more or less smoothly and when my heart rate had returned to normal I was able to hollow out the rest by hand. This involved a rudimentary extension to my chisel handle and some scuffed knuckles.
The right arm was the next piece to tackle. Unlike the body I now had the opportunity to take a cast of my daughters hand and then carve directly from this. This would allow me access to far greater detail and a more realistic feel. The cast was taken using alginate which is non toxic casting material made from seaweed and is used by dentists to take moulds of patients mouths. The quality of the cast was very good and I soon realised that I was much quicker at carving when I had a maquette to copy and a deadline looming.
The leg was the next element although I only had one piece of wood suitable for a leg and it was only suitable for a right leg. Although I had two very good casts of the left foot, every attempt at the right foot ended in a blurry form. I therefore had to use the left foot and try to invert the foot in my mind before attempting to copy it. This was a rather tricky business which I could do quite well sometimes and struggled miserably with others. The blurry foot helped with the overall shape and eventually I managed to realise the form and produce a decent foot- almost on schedule.
The head was always going to be the tricky part but I decided to make a maquette first. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to take a cast of my daughter’s head so I would have to model her in clay. Once this was done I was able to use a chainsaw to remove any excess wood and get down to the basic proportions of the head. The piece was still carved by hand but a lot of the initial grunt work was eliminated. With the aid of the maquette and referring back to my daughter, I soon made good progress and the head was starting to take shape. It is not always necessary to get symmetry when carving or modelling a head but it is the key to a beautiful face and was my objective on this occasion. The eyes are always the most difficult feature to carve and my daughter has particularly large and beautiful eyes. It is sometimes easy to carve one good eye but the trick is in getting two eyes that look like they belong on the same head. If you can manage that then it is often a good idea to try and get them looking in the same direction and once you’ve managed all this you are free to concentrate on the expression.
The next obstacle was to carve the joints and sockets for the doll. This was a process of carving the positive and negative forms and then sanding them down with machines then finally by hand and until they corresponded.
Work is still ongoing with the final limb and I have begun to install an environment for the doll in the gallery. Is that a clock I hear ticking?
Natalie Taylor's blog - Preparation for Decay at Patriothall Gallery
For my part in Decay, I will be producing an installation built using composted green waste from Edinburgh households. Three tonnes of soil delivered by truck from Forth Resource Management will be compacted into a huge mould under a greenhouse structure. Set within this will be a body cast of a woman in the late stages of pregnancy, also made from compacted soil. However, since she will be planted with seeds and start sprouting as the exhibition unfolds, the returning viewer will see her transform from compacted tilled soil into a flourishing vegetable plot.
Here are a few pictures of the casting process. I have also produced a short time-lapse film of this cast, to be shown alongside the installation.
Revealing the soil head from its plaster mould
Removing the Modrock with a Dremel cutting disk
The finished body cast three days later, showing sprouting soya seedlings
Day Six
There will also be a series of accompanying acrylic casts titled Green Fingers, Green Potatoes. These are life size casts of digits spliced with potato casts to look as if they are being chitted. Since they are painted in oil paint they strongly resemble both body parts and growing potatoes.
July 2010
Natalie Taylor, Edinburgh
Mariëlle van der Bergh's blog - Preparing for the show ‘Decay’/ Working in the Audax Textile Museum, Tilburg, Holland
(This blog is repeated in Dutch below)
Preparations for Weaving, image Mariëlle van der Bergh
For the show ‘Decay’, which will be on view at the Patriothall Gallery in Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, I made work which was developed and executed at the Audax Textile Museum in Tilburg, Holland. In this blog I will try to explain the way things are done at the Textile Museum.
As an artist, or as a student, it is possible to commission the Audax Textile Museum’s Lab to carry out your designs. The lab has several specialised departments, employing a number of experts who act as supervisors of your working process, who translate your ideas into concepts the machines can work with, do the test runs and finally help to carry out your design in the way you want it. The lab has a Weaving Department with Jacquard looms and a Knitting Department, there are possibilities for tufting, embroidery and printing, and there is a yarn bank at the museum. Apart from that, you can also dye textiles or cut them with a laser cutting machine. The laboratory is the heart of the museum, literally as well as in a figurative sense. Many designers and artists developed new work here and had it executed, many students graduated at the museum, others were trained here. The museum also employs expert technicians who know everything about the machines. They know how to apply the right tension to the hem of a piece of cloth, they can locate the 47th broken warp thread, track down lost weft threads and much more. These experts are from Tilburg’s old textile industry, which has all but disappeared. Tilburg used to be an industrial textile centre with many wool-weaving mills, spinning mills, wool traders and wool-washing mills. It’s not without reason that during carnival Tilburg’s inhabitants are called ‘kruikenzeikers’ (jar-pissers), as they used their own urine as a mordant, for opening up the little barbs on the wool fibres to make the dye take to the wool.
Four times a year the Audax Textile Museum organizes a large exhibition on a modern artist, a historically interesting designer, an item from the collection or a particular technique. Recently there was the breathtakingly beautiful show by the Japanese designer Akira Minagawa, and his label Minä Perhonen. He designed textiles, embroidery, fabrics and prints which explore the borders of the existing technology. This exhibition was followed on by ‘Kraakhelder, 100 jaar huishoudtextiel’ (Spic and Span, 100 years of household textiles), a show which, for instance, included exquisitely monogrammed table cloths and napkins which had belonged to cruise ships from a past era. They often show designs, technical drawings and test samples, to provide insight into the production process. This week the ‘Yearbook 2009 – Highlights from the TextielLab’ will be presented, describing the most prominent projects from 2009, which were developed by artists and studios like the Jongeriuslab, Studio Job, Wieki Somers and Kiki van Eijk.
At the ‘Decay’ exhibition in Edinburgh I will show some tapestries with themes like decay, overgrowth and the end of a life cycle. The starting point for the tapestries were the lichens and mushrooms I saw and photographed in Tasmania, during a residency in 2006. I digitally processed these pictures into new images. Brechje Trompert, the expert at the Weaving Department, converted and adapted these using a very sophisticated computer programme. My design for ‘Korstmossen’ (Lichen) had 164 hues. However, a loom pattern is based on 8 colours only.
Brechje is able to mix these main colours, but to try for more than 30 colours in the end result is already very ambitious. Learning to handle this restricted colour range is a good thing for a designer. There are additional possibilities by changing the weave to make the weft longer and therefore more visible - or on the other hand, to create a very compact, flat weave, which shows a lot of ‘pixels’. Another variation is by changing the type of weft yarn: you can use ordinary cotton or woollen thread, or hairy mohair - or on the other hand, smooth, shiny viscose and acrylic yarns, and all of them thick or very thin. The results of these interventions are not entirely predictable and should be judged by woven proofs. All decisions made on yarns will influence the entire piece: a single red area will create a kind of shadow across the entire tapestry, because the colour will return every now and then as pixels between the weft. Personally I like the idea that every part will influence the whole and that a piece of cloth is built from individual components, but that there is also a common element.
Within the whole of my work, the tapestry ‘Our violence/ Ons geweld’, which deals with the 17th-century wars between the Netherlands and England, and with the painting ‘The Battle of Scheveningen’ by Jan Abrahamszoon Beerstraaten (1653) in particular, is an exception. The tapestry shows violent moments in Dutch history, as I included, apart from this naval battle (which was won by the Dutch, by the way), other shameful episodes. I used a welding burner to make holes in the tapestry and I filled these with textile prints. The events include the burning of a witch in Amsterdam, the iconoclastic outbreak in the 16th century, the murder of Dutch martyr Bonifacius, the rounding-up of Jews in the Second World War, the execution of members of the resistance and the murder of Dutch politician Pim Fortuijn.
At the Knitting Department I developed, together with expert Huub Waulthers, a representation of tree-bark. The technique of the knitting machine is quite different again. Because one of the four yarns is elastic, the cloth can be pulled into a relief which resembles tree-bark. Here again, there is a sophisticated computer application converting your picture into an image containing only two or four colours. This allows the work to become more three-dimensional. Again you can use all kinds of yarns - but difficult yarns, like hairy wool or wiry plastic threads tend to cause problems for the knitting machine. Thinking of lichen, I made a test with a very thin, white yarn, which resulted in a loosely woven, delicate cloth.
At the moment I am working on a group of stray dogs, the skins of which were made in the textile museum. I work on the pieces of cloth until they have the same broken, mangy look as the dogs I saw in India. I will tell more about that in the next blog, after the show opens.
www.textielmuseum.nl
Our Violence - image Mariëlle van der Bergh
Preparing for the show ‘Decay’/ Werken in het Audax Textiel Museum Tilburg
Voor de tentoonstelling ‘Decay’ die aanstaande augustus in de Patriothall Gallery in Edinburgh te zien zal zijn als onderdeel van het Edinburgh Art Festival, heb ik werk gemaakt dat is ontwikkeld en uitgevoerd in het Audax Textiel Museum in Tilburg. In deze blog vertel ik iets over hoe dat gaat: werken in het Textiel Museum.
Als beeldend kunstenaar of als student kun je opdrachten geven aan het LAB van het Audax Textiel Museum in Tilburg. Elke afdeling is gespecialiseerd en heeft een aantal experts, die jouw proces begeleiden, de vertaalslag maken van jouw ideeën naar de machines, proeven maken en uiteindelijk jouw ontwerp zo uitvoeren zoals jij het wilt. Er is een weefafdeling met Jacquard weefgetouwen, een breiafdeling, tuften, borduren, printen en een garenbank. Bovendien kan er ook geverfd en met lasermachines gesneden worden. Het hart van het museum is het laboratorium, in letterlijke zin maar ook overdrachtelijk. Veel ontwerpers en kunstenaars hebben er werk ontwikkeld en laten uitvoeren, veel studenten zijn er afgestudeerd en anderen hebben er stage gelopen.
Dan zijn er bij de weefgetouwen ook nog de experts, die alles van de machines weten; de juiste druk op zijkanten van een lap kunnen zetten, kettingbreuk nummer 47 weten te vinden, verloren inslagdraden opsporen en nog veel meer. Deze deskundigen komen uit de oude textielindustrie, die bijna niet meer bestaat. Tilburg was eens een echte textielstad met vele wollenstoffenfabrieken, spinnerijen, wolhandelaren en wolwasserijen. Niets voor niets heten Tilburgers in Carnavaljargon ‘kruikenzeikers’ naar het beitsmiddel, de eigen urine dus, waarmee de schubben van de wolvezel opengezet werden zodat de verf beter pakte.
Het Audax Textielmuseum toont vier maal per jaar een uitgebreide expositie over een eigentijdse ontwerper, een bijzondere ontwerper uit het verleden, een item uit de collectie of een techniek, waarop gefocust wordt. Zo was er de adembenemend mooie tentoonstelling van de Japanse ontwerper Akira Minagawa, die werkt onder het label Minä Perhonen. Hij heeft stoffen, borduursels, weefsels en prints ontworpen die de grens van het technisch kunnen opzoeken. Daarna kwam de tentoonstelling ‘Kraakhelder, 100 jaar huishoudtextiel’, met bijvoorbeeld servetten en tafelkleden met verfijnde monogrammen van cruiseschepen die allang uit de vaart zijn genomen. Vaak zijn ontwerpen te zien, technische tekeningen en proeven om het proces naar het eindproduct inzichtelijk te maken. Deze week vindt in het museum de presentatie plaats van het ‘Yearbook 2009 Textiellab’, waarin de meest toonaangevende projecten staan, die in 2009 in het TextielLab ontwikkeld zijn door o.a. het Jongeriuslab, Studio Job, Wieki Somers en Kiki van Eijk.
In de tentoonstelling ‘Decay’ in Edinburgh zal ik een aantal wandtapijten laten zien met als thema verval, overwoekering, het einde van een kringloop. Uitgangspunt hiervoor waren de korstmossen en paddenstoelen die ik in Tasmanië tijdens een werkperiode in 2006 had gezien en gefotografeerd. Deze beelden heb ik digitaal tot een nieuw beeld verwerkt. Door de expert van de afdeling Weven, Brechje Trompert, wordt dit beeld omgezet en bewerkt met een zeer geavanceerd programma. Mijn ontwerp ‘Korstmossen’ had 164 kleurschakeringen. Het weefgetouw gaat uit van 8 kleuren. Brechje kan mengingen van 8 hoofdkleuren maken, maar om naar meer dan dertig kleuren als eindresultaat te streven is al zeer ambitieus. Als ontwerper is het goed om te leren omgaan met de beperking van het kleurengamma. Er zijn verder allerlei mogelijkheden met de bindingen, zodat inslagdraden langer en dus zichtbaarder worden of juist een hele compacte, platte binding, waar veel ‘pixels’ te zien zijn. Dan kan er ook nog gevarieerd worden met de soorten inslagdraden; gewone katoenen of wollen draden, harige mohair of juist gladde glinsterende viscose en acryl garens, en met dikke of dunne draden. Deze ingrepen zijn niet helemaal voorspelbaar en moeten beoordeeld worden aan de hand van proeven, die geweven worden. Alle keuzes van garens beïnvloeden het hele doek: een enkel rood van een bloem ergens, zal in het hele tapijt als een soort schaduw te zien zijn omdat af en toe die kleur als pixels in de binding terugkomt. Persoonlijk vind ik het een mooi idee dat een onderdeel het geheel beïnvloedt en dat het geheel samengesteld is uit afzonderlijke onderdelen, maar ook een gemeenschappelijke component heeft.
Een uitzondering in mijn werk is het tapijt ‘Our violence/ Ons geweld’, dat over de Nederlands-Engelse oorlogen uit de 17de eeuw gaat en in het bijzonder de ‘Zeeslag bij Scheveningen’ van de schilder Jan Abrahamszoon Beerstraaten uit 1653 verbeeldt. Het tapijt laat gewelddadige momenten uit de vaderlandse geschiedenis zien, want behalve deze zeeslag, overigens door de Nederlanders gewonnen, zijn ook andere dieptepunten opgenomen. Ik heb met de brander gaten in het tapijt gebrand. In die gaten heb ik transfers gemonteerd. De gebeurtenissen zijn onder meer een heksenverbranding in Amsterdam, de Beeldenstorm uit 1566, de moord op Bonifacius, het oppakken van Joden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, een liquidatie van verzetsmensen en de moord op Pim Fortuyn.
Op de breiafdeling heb ik met expert Huub Waulthers een textiele verbeelding van boomschors ontwikkeld. De techniek van de breimachine is weer heel anders. Doordat een van de 4 garens een elastische draad is, kan een reliëf in het doek getrokken worden, zoals bij boomschors. Ook hier weer een geavanceerd programma, dat jouw digitale afbeelding omzet in een twee- of vierkleurenbeeld. Met de breitechniek is ander werk mogelijk. Breisels zijn op te spannen op of tegen frames. Het werk kan zo veel ruimtelijker worden. Ook hier kunnen allerlei soorten garens worden gebruikt, maar de breimachine heeft sneller last van bijvoorbeeld harige wol of springerig plastic draad. Met korstmossen in mijn gedachten, heb ik een proef gemaakt met heel dun wit garen, wat een ijl, etherisch doek opleverde.
Op dit moment ben ik een groep straathonden aan het maken, waarvoor de huiden in het Textielmuseum zijn gemaakt. Ik bewerk de weefsels tot ik de kapotte, schurftige uiterlijk heb gekregen van de honden die ik in India heb gezien. In het volgende blog, na de opening van de expositie, zal ik hier meer over vertellen.
www.textielmuseum.nl
images: Testsample Universe - Marielle van der Bergh
Weaving Lichen - image Mariëlle van der Bergh
