Friday 6 March 2015

Stephen Wright

Stephen Wright is an artist based in London, well known for his bold and colourful 'House Of Dreams' where he collages and mosaic quite unusual objects such as glass bottles, used hair rollers, broken dolls and sunglasses. He is an artist who takes risks. 
Wright came to ccad and led a markmaking workshop for one day. Before his visited I got an email with a list of object to bring in preparation of this workshop. It was goin to be a black white themed day. The list contained:

 

·         Pairs of scissors or stanley knives 

·         glue or tape

·         black paint

·         large sheets of black and white paper

·         black procion dyes 

·         white paint 

 

·         10 implements for mark making or for applying the paint or dye to the surface (NOT BRUSHES).

(choose 5 of the following and add at least another 5 or more of your own):

·         A sponge

·         a piece of wood

·         an old shoe,

·         an old pair of glasses

·         a rubber glove

·         pieces of rope

·         a string of beads

·         a spoon or fork

·         a dolls arm or leg

·         an old hand-knitted jumper

·         something that makes circles

 Considering Stephen Wright's work is very colourful I was suprised that he was planning to lead a workshop using blackandwhite colours only. 


When things quickly started to get messy

The workshop was very inspiring and fun.  In the morning session we focused on producing different marks on paper and then in the afternoon we started to make three dimensional garments using what we had produced in the morning. I enjoyed the morning session the most. We were told by Stephen to 'make marks on your paper without thinking about it or analysing it'.


Using our different objects we were guided to just drop the object covered in paint on to the paper and see what happened. He would go around telling people to do different things, to write down what they were feeling and he even came and pored water on your work and then would tell you to smudge it with your hands. I think in normal circumstances this would have been a complete shock if someone had deliberately poor water on your work but in this situation it was totally fine. We were creating unintentional marks on paper, it was messy, it was fun and it wasn't precious. 


'There no such thing as ruining art' Stephen Wright would say.


We were working at quite a fast pase, creating many pieces of A1 artworks. There was a really good working vibe in the room. The print room floor and walls quickly became full of paper filled with marks. 


It was amazing to see everybody's work hung up on the walls and to see how diverse all the markmaking drawings were. Even though we all had the same instructions, to make marks with black and white paint, it was interesting to see how everybody had their individual handwriting of such just by making marks. I think because it was in black and white it was easier to identify this factor.


Stephen said something along the lines of 'drawing/mark making like this is when the individuality of each artist truly comes out, unlike when drawing an object that's infront of you which any other person can  similarly draw...'


Seeing the diversity of everyone's work on the wall helped me understand that there was truth in what he was saying.


I thoroughly enjoyed the session even though it was quite intense and tiresome as Stephen Wright pushed us to work out of our comfort zone in order to take risks. I like the result of my work and I aim to continue this process for some of my final major project.

 

Here are some of the marks I made...

 

And here is my 3D garment I began to make...

What a creative day it was.

No comments:

Post a Comment