Inspiration of the Week - Francis Alÿs

Francis Alÿs is a Belgian contemporary artist currently based in Mexico.

The work that I am going to be discussing is his piece titled "Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing" where the artist moved a block of ice along the streets of Mexico City.

It took over nine hours for Francis Alÿs to do this until the ice had melted completely.

I find this piece really interesting as the idea seems to me that the artist is trying to make the point that all of the time and effort that he has put into this work has been for nothing. 

One of the points that I want to make with my work that no matter how hard we try we will all eventually be forgotten, so everything we do will be for nothing, sort of the point that I take from this piece. 

For my next project I also want to follow route/ maps whilst leaving a trail of marks to decompose and one of my thoughts on how to do this was to use ice as it melts naturally and will pretty much vanish without doing much harm to the environment. 

In all I find this piece to be quite different and more thought provoking than most work that I have seen previously, and I think it was good for me to see another artist explore the idea of making something temporary and also going on site with the project. 

NB - all photographs here have been taken from the artist's site:

http://francisalys.com/
http://francisalys.com/sometimes-making-something-leads-to-nothing/

I do not own any of the pictures on this post.


Until next time
byyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Róisín -x

More Walks!

So this week I got some feedback on my work and also managed to go for a couple of walks.

The first walk I did was my so called 'Drifting walk'. In this I had premade up some instructions like "turn left" and "at broken wall or fence" and I took out a random pair and followed the instructions. I think this was a good initial drift walk to do as it gave me a basic gist on what to expect if I was to do this again. I really enjoyed this walk as I ventured into places I had never been before, although I think I could be better off getting a compass and then using instructions like "go north" as sometimes there wasn't a left or right to go down.

The next walk I did was where I left phrases from my survey that I did and left them in places around the route I took around Stenhousemuir.

Seeing as I have an interview at Glasgow City College tomorrow, I asked my mentor to look through my sketchbooks at the start of the week. In this he suggested I further an experiment I did way back at the start of this project with involved pining string on a pin board to follow some sort of route. So I did an experiment with this to work out how I could pin my map route onto the board. I went up town to get a few things on Friday so I bought a couple more boards to try and see how they look and I am planning on trying to mount them in frames.

This also gave me an idea on another display methods by having holes in paper and having light shine through so that is shows light on the wall.

So this week one of our lecturers suggested that we swap each others sketchbooks in class and give each other some feedback. I thought this was a really good idea and think that it worked well, and was extremely helpful to me. The two main points for me was to try and focus down my ideas for this project, which I think I am starting to do, and also maybe label my sketchbooks and try and show where the idea originates in my research file. After getting this feedback this is what I'm focusing on at this very moment so I can get everything organised for the examiners on Thursday D:  So far I've labelled and numbered the files in the research folder and have added a contents page so it's easier to navigate, and I am going to go back through my sketchbook and add notes on what page they should look at in the file if they want more information.

I also did some more experiments with taking catalogue pictures by trying to take advantage of daylight and using a tripod and no zoom or flash. I think what might be better for me would be to take these photos in college as the studios have off-white desks and plenty of light.

So that's all I have for you this week, I'm hoping to try and find time next week to do a walk leaving diary notes and also leaving a premade ogham mark, however next week is looking pretty busy, seeing as I have an interview, Frankie Boyle Live, the examiners coming in and babysitting duties.

Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.

anyways...

byyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Róisín -x