Greene-ware 2020 Year 12 Ella J Inquiry

INQUIRY PHASE 1 ART AS KNOWLEDGE

Art is a form of knowledge and understanding. My investigation is a response to the personal and cultural contexts throughout application of techniques, as well as being inspired by the Hemmant Quarry reserve and cemetery. My focus was to express how personal, social, and cultural influences can be expressed through line and colour and what story it gives off to the audience of how they may be feeling. This then inspired my experimental works. The different flowers, lines of the graves, roughness, and emotions helped me to understand the meaning of different people’s stories and perspectives and how this can be shown through applications of technique, specifically through line. The key artists that are influencing my investigating are Sam Tupou and Keith Haring. They help me to demonstrate this sense of personal and social issues through art making, specifically line and colour.

Samuel Tupou is an explorative artist who is based in Brisbane, and also specialises in screen printing. Sam creates his artworks through a cultural and personal perspective, focusing on his Tongan and Polynesian heritage. One key factor that drew my eyes to Sam’s artworks is his use of incorporating patterns derived from traditional pacific island tapa cloth design, and his use of colour and shapes throughout his pieces. Same also uses photographs of his families from personal photo albums as a point to try and provoke a strong sense of time and place. This then also brings a story to the artwork about his personal experiences and how they have inspired him to create these pieces of digital art. The photographs designs are removed which then leaves the viewer with a series of different coloured structures, which are then pieced together to create an abstracted version of the original. This then creates an abstract image to alter the viewers perception.

In Samuel Tupou’s latest expedition “Duplexor”, Beyond the Double Island (Figure 4) shows the continuity of exploration into the methods of duplication and concepts of duality. In order to create this piece, Sam decided to use the screen-printing technique to represent imagery that Tupou has processed through bitmap pixilation.

This technique gives the artwork a sense of individuality showing that when you blur your eyes and look at the artwork, it shows the artist Sam wearing a pair of red sunglasses. This creates the viewer to try different methods in order to create what the actual picture displays. This imagery sees Tupou choose both cultural and social references to change and duplicate within his works, which represent his Tongan and Irish-Scottish heritage.

This piece also shows a wide variety of primary colours which he commonly uses throughout all of his pieces.

Similarly, the lines, materials, and colours help to show a connection to his works by expressing some of my own personal values and beliefs throughout my artworks, which then create a distorted meaning for the audience to perceive in their own way.

Sam’s working processes are very unique and individual which align with my idea of looking into the personal and social issues that help to inspire artists to express them through applications of technique. Although Sam uses the screen-printing technique, this could help me to explore different ways in which I choose to express my own personal values and bring in that use of digital printing throughout my own artworks. Through this research, I have been inspired to explore the use of screen-printing, and digital printing in my body of work.

Keith haring was a popular artist and activist who was a part of the New York art scene during the 1980’s. Whilst he was well known for his colourful works and iconic motifs, much of his works have responded to contemporary social and political events. As Keith is an openly gay artist, he chose to represent the hardships of the LGBTQ community in some of his works, including gay rights. This artist also shows his own personal meaning throughout his artworks whilst also tying in the more cultural and social issues. Inspires by graffiti artists, he began drawing in New York’s subway stations, and his aim was to make art accessible to everyone and these works allowed him to interact with a diverse audience. “All kinds of people would stop and look at the huge drawing and many were eager to comment on their feelings towards it” (Keith Haring, no date). His artists helped to bring the community together and ask question on the meaning behind his artworks.

Keith Haring’s Untitled 1983 works shows a wide variety of colour and line used throughout this piece (Figure 5). Haring’s also uses a range of primary colours, particularly in this piece red, white, and black which shows a connection between the previous artists’ works. Haring loved working with children, as he admired their imagination, sense of humour, lack of prejudice and encouraged young people to get together to collaboratively create their own artwork. In 1986 Haring painted a mural with 900 young people to celebrate the statue of liberty’s 100th anniversary. It was then displayed on the liberty tower In Battery park. Haring also often collaborated with charities aimed at young people, and painted murals in lots of children’s hospitals. Haring had an extremely fun way of working which reflected the content of his works. He often listened to hip-hop music whilst working and painted rhythmic lines to express the movement and energy, which is evident in many of his works. “He used to paint one stroke at a time to the rhythm of whatever he was listening to” (Kenny Scharf, no date).

The line and colour easily expressed Keith’s bright and fun way he chose to create his pieces, and how a personal message can easily come across through a simple piece of artwork and use of technique. Both artists have inspired me through their use of simple lines and primary colours to create my own personal and cultural beliefs throughout my artworks. This connection to public and personal matters is something I want to show in my own works.

My experimental research investigates how personal experiences can be shown through the making of art. For these works, I decided to mainly focus on line work, water colour, and trying out different printing skills to create an abstract meaning.

My experiments have been conducted through personal context which were guided the connection of myself to the nature at Hemmant Quarry. In my first work, I decided to focus on line work, water colours, and the printing process (Figure 1). Firstly, by painting a simple grouping of trees together formed from a picture taken at the reserve, I then overlayed with the line work with a fine point black pen. After taking this piece and sliding it through the printer, it created a multitude of different abstracted version of the originals (Figure 2). I experimented with turning the painting in circles to create a completely disturbed new piece. After getting multiple printings, I then overlayed once again with a fine black pen with some more line work. This process was extremely mediative and different as it was a technique, I enjoyed but seeing the different layers come together made it a completely different experience to what I was used to. By doing this, it helped to show my connection to the nature by highlighting the different rough surfaces and the overall flow that the environment brings. I’ve always seen nature as being an enjoyable and calming place, so overlaying with a technique such as line work that I loved helped to express my love for nature.

In my next work, I again went of an image to create my own original abstracted piece of the environment. This time, I focused on a bridge and the trees in the background (Figure 3). By going back in with my water colours and created a bridge like form with black, and then line work in the background with lighter greens and blues, this helped to show a distinct separation between the object and nature. By painting the bridge black, this helped to symbolise a item that I believed felt misplaced in the environment as it is a man-made object. By then creating the trees to be in bright greens and blues, it helped to display the calm feeling that the leaves and wind create when walking through the park. Then, on top of the artwork I did some more line work of human faces, but this time drew them with posca pens on a piece of clear card, then stuck it in a mirrored effect over the human faces on the painting. This then created a similar effect to my previous works, as well as Sam Tupou’s artworks. These faces also symbolised human interacting with the environment in a calm nature.

My investigation has shown that personal experiences can easily be shown and dictated throughout different art making and techniques. The selected key artists have influenced my artworks and understanding to demonstrate how their own personal and social experiences were expressed in their own personal way. I aim to show my own personal experiences in my body of work. I have discovered that Sam Tupou and Keith Haring are examples of how easy experiences can be shown. Tupou’s colourful, abstracted, and meaningful perspective will guide my control of digital making. Haring’s bright coloured, social influenced, and expressive perspective will be extremely influential on my research and making. Overall, I wish to express my personal interest and experiences through different techniques explored throughout and hope to create a clear message through abstraction.

The focus of my body work will be about how personal and social experiences can be expressed through different techniques and art making. This will be expressed through multiple different colours, materials, and artistic control. I intend to create an overall piece where my own personal experience will be abstracted in a way that the audience will question and have to think in a different way to understand. This piece will also show individuality with never being able to truly understand the overall meaning unless heard from myself. This will be shown through my control with materials and line. My body work will also be influenced by the Hemmant Quarry reserve and the cemetery, which will inspire me to take another people story’s and reflect on my own.

The overall quality and understanding of my pieces will be the critical subject matter of my work.

REFERENCES onespace. (no date). Samuel Tupou. Retrieved from onepspace: http://onespacegallery.com.au/artist/samueltupou/ Pacific., B. S. (2019). DUPLEXOR - BEYOND THE DOUBLE ISLAND. Retrieved from KickCotemporaryArts: https://kickarts.org.au/exhibitions/duplexor-beyond-double-island TATE. (2019). Five Things to Know: Keith Haring. Retrieved from TATE: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artterms/g/graffiti-art/lists/five-things-know-keith-haring

Appendix

Figure 1: Experimental 1 Fine tip pens Water colour

Figure 2: Experiment 2 Water colour Printer Fine tip pen

Figure 3: Experimental 3 Water colour Clear plastic Sharpie Fine tip pen

Figure 4: Beyond the Double Island Samuel Tupoa Inspired artist

Figure 5: Untitled Keith Haring Inspired Artist