The Formal Elements

Line - recording a path of motion, recording vision and feeling and the ability to communicate what we see.

Jackson Pollock's use of line is very different to traditional painting. He creates the line by throwing the paint onto the canvas. In this, there is no careful mark making but Pollock

is recording more a feeling than possibly what he sees. This is interesting as this feeling he puts onto the canvas can be picked up by the audience in the random, quick mad movement of the paint.

Colour - the emotional part of art, attacks emotions directly and has no rules or boundaries

When you look at different colours, you often automatically relate it to a feeling, such as blue with sadness or green with freshness and life.

The deep red wax used in Anish Kapoors work is linked with a wide range of emotions and so is more open to interpretation and personal feelings. It could be seen as an angry, violent colour with death, hell like conotations. However, it could be seen as a passionate colour, emoting

love and happyness.

Space - distance or area around, between, above, below or within places, (shape) to any area of a real or imagined object which is defined and rendered by other elements such as line, texture, colour, space or light.

Kapoor uses a very interesting use of space, the sculpture being concave and taking up negative instead of possitive space. This adds and element of trickery and illusion as the audience is not as used to seeing like this.

Form - To shape or order, the organisation or composition or an object with both mass and volume unlike shape which has only mass.

The composition of this piece entitled 'Bird in Hand' by Ellen Gallagher is very interesting. The figure in the centre is the main focus, with the cloud like object above it drawing your eye up.

Texture - can be both real and imagined,texture often becomes an important clue to the material, its character, weight, and solidity.

Anish Kapoor's mirror sculptures are perfectly smooth. You can see this even from a distance as even a small scratch or dent would be very noticeable.

Light - Light in our culture expresses goodness, intelligence, clarity and completeness. Darkness is

just the opposite, expressing mystery, ignorance, evil and emptiness.

This light painting, n0. 60 from a project called  Light Mark by Cenci Goepel and

Jens Warnecke is a very interesting and different use of light. Instead of recording the way

light falls on an object or scene, the artists are actually putting light into a landscape.

I like the mysterious quality of this image and its very natural feel.

Anish Kapoor - Royal Academy

The mirrors were really interesting as they did very strange things to the way you looked and it was very difficult to work out how they did it.

I think this piece related to my work the most as it has that random, free quality of pollock's work and is also very bold to look at.

I went to see Anish Kapoor's exhibition on at the Royal Academy. I thought it was very interesting and especially like the canon piece where paint was shot across the room as it relates to the ideas in my work. I like the was it is very interactive and live.

Review:

Immediately as you walk into the courtyard of the Royal Academy, you are hit by the sight of a mysterious balancing, almost floating, stack of perfectly shining silver spheres. The effect of endlessly reflected surroundings creates a strange and mesmerising experience as you make your way to the doors of the gallery.

Anish Kapoor, winner of the 1991 Turner Prize, and known as an influential and pioneering sculptor has put on a very diverse show, all the pieces so different, every sculptural possibility attempted. The first sets of sculptures are that of large mounds of squiggly cement, tightly packed together. It reminds me of giant worm casts formed from wet sand on a beach. The intricacy mixed with spontaneity creates a wonderful balance with the twists and creates the felling of movement and no stillness.

Another set of beautiful small sculptures are Kapoor’s fragile looking pigment sculptures. The beautiful, intense colours clearly come from Kapoor’s cultural Indian roots and take you to the market places of India. The fun, playful pieces look so delicate that a small gust of wind could blow them away.

As you walk through the doorway into the next room you are struck by a large looming disk of yellow, seeming to pulsate.As you get closer, however, you can see it is just a dip in the wall, with not solid but negative space.

The shiny polished style of the balancing bubbles in the courtyard are followed through into a very large gallery space. From a distance, you cannot see how the curved mirrors are standing, as they seem to be somehow suspended of hanging. As you approach, just like the yellow button, what you think you see starts to change. You own body starts to appear in the object, stretched or squeezed, with the room around you interactive. It is the room and its content, not the mirror, that is the art.

The highlight of the show for me was ‘Shooting into the corner’. Every 20 minutes an attendant steps over to a large, looming black canon, audience held behind a cord. The room is filled with a strange anticipation, waiting for what has evidently been happening for the past few weeks. As the attendant switches on the pressure, suspense is built as the room is now filled with a loud hissing noise. Then suddenly wax explodes out of the canon, across the room through a doorway and ‘into the corner’. The thud bounces off the walls, shaking the room. Finally the suspense has been broken and the audience are left to jump, laugh or just look on at the now squished piece of deep red swearing its way down the wall. It seems that every time the canon is shot the action is identical, but in fact every time it is slightly different as the wax is building up on the walls and small flecks are spreading around the room. The piece is slowly creating itself, growing with every shot. The random, free splatting of the wax reminds me of a Jackson Pollock painting, with the paint so alive with movement.

This strange, mysterious waxy material is continued into another long line of rooms in the form of a giant looming train-like object. The slow moving, morbid block slides along a long wax covered track stretching 5 rooms. The ominous object squeezes its way through the arches, leaving a trail of itself. It if called Svayambh meaning ‘self-generated’ which is fitting as it barely moves through the white space. It is the complete opposite of the canon piece as , although it is made from the same material, it is slow not sudden, silent not booming and smears instead of splats.

Jackson Pollock...

I've been looking closely at the work of Jackson Pollock as I think it can tie in well with my work and even help me to develop my ideas.

                  

I like the freeness and randomness of his work and I think my photos of the peakock feathers especially link in with his work because of the long lines crossing eachother.

Responding to ideas in the real world...

Final photos close up...

Focusing in...

Second set of photos looking more at the line and movement of thread and strings...

Links with artists...

Elizabeth Neel - Good vs Evil

Cy Twombly - Leda and the Swan

Alexander Calder - Caracus

Giacomo Balla - A dog on a Leash

I looked for some artists work that related to my initail photos with strong links. All of these images have the effect of movement and include interesting line which relates to my photos.

First Photos...

My initial photos from the still life...