Seemingly Arbitrary Collections of Objects

I like the composition of this. It pulls together an odd collection of objects into a single balanced, elegant and seamless image.

Also by the same artist (Jeremy Fish):

Fantasy Worlds, Objects From People

I was creating sculptural 'fantasy worlds' before and was thinking of making these using objects other people named from their own environments. I now think this idea lends itself nicely to drawing.

I'm also running with the idea of instructions from other people.

Pictures For Sad Children / Sad Pictures For Children

I really like how a lot of these comics make no sense unless you can relate to them or the sentiment is familiar...

by John Campbell

also by John Campbell

...And how some just seem like vaguely surrealist and/or strange humour, but there's probably another layer to them. For example this one, which seems like it is poking fun at the attitudes of people who don't understand problems they can't relate to and won't try to understand that they actually come from something real.

also by John Campbell

Some are strange but still immediately make sense and are insightful and relate to real life.

also by John Campbell

www.picturesforsadchildren.com

www.sadpicturesforchildren.com

11/2

We had a lecture on the Sublime today. Since studying it in year twelve or so, I've been very into the fact that you have to explain it visually and not in words. Last year I made some work dealing with the idea of finding the Sublime in what is traditionally considered ugly (dirty streets, tube stations, roadkill). Sitting in the lecture I remembered how free that work felt, and how it felt uncomplicated while still being a challenge. Now my thoughts just feel cluttered in a way that's stifling. That might just be stress (with no source), though. I'm simultaneously really interested in what I'm doing, and really repelled by the fact that as soon as I start thinking about it, my head is going to go crazy. I have no idea why this is.

Light Show, Hayward Gallery

Questions this show brings up:

- Is creation of an atmosphere enough to be "art"?
- Does "art" need a complicated concept?
- Could intriguing aesthetics be enough for a piece to be considered "art"?
- If art that has a concept can still be "art" without any consideration of aesthetics or skill, why are aesthetics and/or skill not enough for something (contemporary) without a concept to be considered "art"? Is concept the most important thing to contemporary art?
- If a show has been curated based on aesthetic qualities (in this case all the pieces are electric lights), can we still say that the aesthetics are less important than the concepts? Surely within this show the main "point" is light, which is something aesthetic, and the concepts are just things which happened to come with the pieces?

"Tell Me What To Draw"

"what are you doing?"
"not much really"

"draaaaaaawing pictures

listening to hiphop

!"

"yay"

"i mean that's what you should do!

i made you a hiphop playlist and everything"

"hmmmmmmmm I could!

okay tell me what to draw"

"you should listen to the songs and draw pictures based on something from the song

!!!"

"hmmmmm alright"

"HMMM

yes

you don't necessarily have to do every song though :\\"

"I don't have to draw 25 separate pictures of blunts?"

"racist"

No, that was not a comment about race... probably more of a comment on how every song basically goes, "Hoes, hoes, biscuit, endo..." Which is mostly fine.

So, drawings based on this hip-hop playlist:

Stuff To Do

I think I may be sabotaging my productivity by making sure I remember every little shitty idea that I have. This sounds like it would at least result in a large volume of work, but it does not.

Anyway, I did a quick test of the idea of making something out of objects someone has chosen. It's just a wine bottle filled with stuff, really. I think it's actually helped me to polish the idea of getting people to choose objects for me. I think what I plan to do is get people to choose objects that are specifically from their own personal environment, and I will "RECREATE THEIR WORLD." And I will make it super magical and fantastical, which will simultaneously be accurate and ironic (or maybe that's just the way I see things... everything looks like magic and I can't tell whether my brain is genuinely full of childlike wonder or just being incredibly sarcastic).

I think I'm still interested in some of the other approaches I had before to the idea of following orders from people / putting huge emphasis on their lazy doodles. Most of the ideas for how to do this, practically, weren't exactly fully formed, but I do have one that could work, which is to take a simple doodle drawn by someone else and make it really elaborate, and try to use as much skill as I have. And also, I hate to say, invest time in it. I'm still not completely sure how to go about doing this, though.

Piece For The Next Exhibition?

More Turtles

I'm super glad you can click to enlarge.

A Draft

This was the first draft of an image I mentioned a little while ago. In a recent visiting artist tutorial (I think... it may have been something else possibly), I was told that my work, aesthetically, was a bit like "outsider art" created by mentally ill prisoners. This wasn't there, but I think it may have reinforced that point slightly. There's something sort of over-dramatic about the combination of crayons, finger painting and blood, so I think I'm going to reel it in slightly.

Mike Kelley

"More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin," 1987 - I like the morbid and childish humour in this.

"The Territorial Hound," 1984 - I like the irony and comic-like nature.

"Clusterfuck Aesthetics" - Jerry Saltz, Art Critic

"Clusterfuck aesthetics" is a term used in this article by Jerry Saltz, and I think it's a great term. "New Cacophony" is also a term used. The article describes parallels between the chaotic feelings in work made by artists such as Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, and the "havoc of everyday life." I actually feel like a lot of first year art students (although I can only speak for myself, I suppose) find their everyday life (workload, schedule, and such) completely devoid of "havoc," but their minds are the opposite. Personally I think that when I make cluttered work it relates to that.

I'm reading the article as I type. It's saying some vaguely insulting things that I could also see as being true of my own work. I kind of like that. Saltz seems to question the maturity of Kelley's work, referring to "bittersweet" "goth-teen-sex-blasphemy–bad-behavior motifs."

Apparently this mess thing is a very male thing: "New Museum curator Laura Hoptman says, "Women artists accrue like crazy but apparently don't get off as much on making messes.""

While I'm reading this and thinking that this whole "clusterfuck aesthetics" business sounds great, I'm also remembering all the Paul McCarthy work I went to see last year and didn't like (Paul McCarthy is one of the main inspirations for the essay I'm going to write that is probably going to defend the value of aesthetics and beauty in art).

I Drew Turtles A Few Weeks Ago

David Shrigley And Some Vaguely Coherent Bullet Points

Multiple people were telling me to look at David Shrigley's work, and I'm very glad they did.

I think I'm in a bullet-point-y mood.

- Shrigley's work has some of the quirky humour that the kind of web comics I like have, so I'm happy about that. Web comics inspire me. Yaaay!

- The way his animations are based on childish drawings is interesting to me because of the idea of putting time and labour into something which may appear, to some, to have little value. The reason this is interesting to me is because it seems relevant to the thoughts I was having about using childish, less serious "doodles" from friends and investing time into them in some way (although as I mentioned, I was thinking about carvings or elaborate paintings, as opposed to animation). I like the idea of having full control over what you do and don't take seriously.