While I’m partial to printmaking I spent most of last year animating for an upcoming film Underpass Motel which be released on DVD in October. This year has disappeared under tubes of paint and assorted sculptures without a puppet or print in sight. Doesn’t mean I’m not interested…
Here we have a couple of very different animations - both involving printmaking.
made by a sort of video silkscreenlike printmaking process. Images printed (using VisualJockey SP1) over the underlying video…
While this one from You Tube is a “linomation” (hand carved animation using lino prints) by Mark Andrew Webber with music by Adam Dedma. It was done using 296 10cm square individual linocuts. It was took Andrew around 500 hours to produce. The work is titled Dehisce - a word which means:
(biology) release of material by splitting open of an organ or tissue; the natural bursting open at maturity of a fruit or other reproductive body to release seeds or spores or the bursting open of a surgically closed wound
Heard of them? They’re the artists behind a film called The Way Things Go. I will explain but I’m supposed to be up the hill finishing a painting (it’s not going that well which is why I’m down here - I’m procrastinating…) so I’ll make this quick by quoting You Tube:
In 1987 Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss built a enormous, precarious structure 100 feet long out of common items. Using fire, water, gravity, and chemistry they create a mind-blowing chain reaction of physical and chemical interactions and precisely crafted chaos.
And while I was grabbing that I borrowed a teaser of the animation - about 4 minutes worth - the real thing goes for half an hour. (Yeah, yeah, I know about the Honda advert - these guys did it first.)
So why am I telling you about a 20+ year old video now? I first saw it 3 years ago and, quite simply, had never forgotten it. It was in class - I only saw it once. Grrr… This past year I’ve done pretty nothing but animation. (Now doing pretty much nothing but paint.) Then just a month ago I stumbled on a little book about the film - tell you about that in a minute - and for the hell of it went hunting. Sure enough, it’s now out on DVD and available from Amazon. I wasn’t sure if it would work in our clunky old DVD player but intrepid I am. And it does. Yes!
In the same package came a copy of a book put out by the Tate on F&W’s retrospective called Flowers & Questions. Cut to the point here - it’s a good book - lots of pictures interspersed between articles/critiques/reviews by different writers. OK, so a few of them are dull and academic, but most are an easy and interesting read. Each is followed by a bunch of pictures of the particular work they were talking about. It’s one of those books that you can dip into when you have a few minutes. Good with coffee.
The big surprise was that F&W have done so much other work using materials as varied as plaster, unfired clay, photos, more films and, best of all, sculptures of everyday objects made with polyurethane. The objects are convincingly real - imagine a workman’s bench in a small room in a gallery looking exactly like that - no didactic - yet everything in there is fake. People stick their head in to look and suffer the uncomfortable feeling that they’ve intruded on a someone’s workspace. A delightful twist on Brillo boxes… And craftsmanship ain’t always such a bad thing. I (and no doubt every other self-respecting sculptor), having seen this, am curious as to what the material actually is - a quick Google says there are lots of kinds of polyurethane.
The other book, the one that prompted all of this search, was The Way Things Go by Jeremy Millar, is OK but not as easy to get along with. It’s smaller but then it’s only looking at that one work. One for die-hard enthusiasts or fellow academia. Good selection of pictures of the the film though. And not too expensive - sooooo - if you have a parcel on the way maybe do F&W justice and read both.
Finally, I can explain the slowdown in my online presence during the past year.
My involvement in The Underpass Motel, a collaborative video project under the directorship of Stuart Elliott has been an enormous commitment which overwhelmed both my life and my artistic practice. One which involved hand made puppets, set construction, scripting and thousands of frames of animation. (Old fashioned stop motion with a recalcitrant puppet is like that - fun, frustrating, addictive and tedious but, above all, rewarding.)
While production of “forensic evidence” continues, and the dvd will not be available until the opening of the exhibition in October, a preview can be seen at the official website. The launch and exhibition are to hosted be by the Turner Gallery in William Street, Perth. More details closer to the time.
Dredging up another piece of work from a while back - I promise I’ll get back to current stuff soon…
Not a painting but another stop motion animation - currently brought to by You-Tube.
I set up a simple still life (fruit, veges and some flowers) on our dining room table with some lights and a digital camera set to snap a photo every hour. My thinking was it would take a few weeks to disappear to nothing. Not…
Two and a half months later I stopped the experiment in a fit of annoyance. I wanted my table back. I couldn’t stand the smell a minute longer and worse the creepy crawlies were coming from miles around to join the party. Yuk.
Reviewing the photos I discovered that several of our cats (we have six…) had been visiting the setup. Sniffing the flowers, staring into the camera, eating the fruit. Double yuk.
Many hours of editing later one naughty kitty became the star of the show. No photos were changed. None were run out of order. I simply discarded some, played with the timing, added a few graphics and set it to music.
The “olde silent movie” graphics and music were chosen to suit the occasional shake that appears from removing the camera to download the photos - yes, every few days… Despite tape and texta marks for the positioning you can see the moves. Beaut. If life hands you a lemon… I had my theme.
And *that* is it for today, I really must stop procrastinating and get on with the next Bargue drawing. Isn’t it amazing how many little one can get done while trying to avoid doing something difficult?
Some time ago I began having a little fun with making stop motion animation using a webcam. Today I had the crazy impulse to upload one to You-Tube…
And when I figure out how - I’ll embed it here too.
In the meantime I thought I’d give a little background for anyone interested. I made the puppet with wire, cushion foam and latex. Sewed her clothes and painted her with acrylics. After many hours of movie stardom (ie being moved and photographed thousands of times her paint is a little worse for wear. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed should she perform again some day. Hang on, here’s a pic…
Portfolio is a "warts and all" blog from the point of view of aawilliams a West Australian artist with a penchant for art making in general, art books of all kinds and colour theory in depth...
. I wasn’t sure if it would work in our clunky old DVD player but intrepid I am. And it does. Yes!
