I wonder what it would look like to paint into thin air?  Perhaps not so very much unlike this?

Another way of painting out of the conventional frame of a canvas dawned on me when I was de-installing my Hallway in Peachy Dream and Grey.  I was pulling up the contact from the floor, that I’d ‘sneakily’ (well I thought it was pretty sneaky) painted upon to avoid the wrath of the building overlords.  As I pulled up the contact, the paint is in three dimensional space, and ‘hello’, I thought – that’s something I can play with.

I’ve also been thinking about painting onto some balloons.  I’d love to get a really bit weather balloon-type to paint on and put inside my normal wall paintings, but I need to find a place to source them.  I love how many completely random things I need to learn about in order to make art the way I want to.  This week, it’s where to source comically oversized balloons.  Next week, the world?  Actually, this week, I think I will be content with average sized party balloons.  I just want to experiment at this stage and see what happens.

Here’s a test I’ve done already of painting into thin air.  I started with some clear contact, the type I have been sticking to the floor to paint on.  I installed it diagonally across a corner and painted from the wall, onto the contact and then onto the wall again.  Then I cut around the paint and presto.  It’s kind of alive.

It reminds me a bit of James Nares, but in space.  Space!

At this stage, it’s just a ‘disembodied’ brush stroke by way of a test.  We shall see where this method reappears in the coming weeks.  Oh the suspense.

Have you ever been to Trades Hall in Melbourne?  Quite an amazing building with an fascinating history.  Have you even been to the loading dock at Trades Hall?  I have.  Today actually. 

There are a lot of beautiful rooms throughout the building, but the one that jumped at me was the most drab – the loading dock.  So this is where I started planning this project a few weeks ago; with a site assessment, preliminary sketches and by sourcing materials.  The most exciting of these was getting my hands on some vinyl.  I took myself off the the sign writing supplier.  Bless their hearts – they helped me out.  I was able to get everything I needed cheaply and they cut the rolls to size too!  That made installation a delight.

Installation took about three hours straight, rolling around on an office chair leaning right over to the ground in front of me.  After a light sweep and a bit of measuring, I could lay the vinyl.  It has adhered beautifully to the concrete, as the concrete is quite smooth.  However, some parts were rough and dirty, so that may not last too long there.  I had my trusty vinyl applicator, which helps apply even pressure and avoid bubbles.  The classed as ‘three year’ vinyl, so I think it will hold it’s spot for the three weeks it needs to stay in place.

Aqua has been appearing in my work a lot recently.  Time to put the aqua away.  I like variety – except of course when I don’t like variety?  And I put lots of aqua in my work?  Yeah, not then.  Anyhoo, I’m 80% finished an installation in a hallway and remarkably, there is no aqua to be seen.

Painting on the floor.  I’m living dangerously. 

This hallway has a gap between the floor and the wall (the skirting board sits behind the plasterboard).  I thought it might interrupt the work too much, so I thought about how I could cover it.  Clear contact.  Yes.  Which opened up the next possibility, painting from the wall and down onto the floor, thanks to clear contact.  An exciting prospect, to be sure.  As soon as I have some parameters for myself, I like to see how far I can bend them.  Off the wall and onto the floor we go.

I had a recent fortuitous trip to a sign writing supplier to buy some vinyl, and was able to get a proper vinyl applicator.  What a gem of a thing those things are!  Excellent for applying vinyl without bubbles.  I am still mastering the art, but I’m improving.

At first, I applied the clear contact all the way along one of the walls, but I’ve now cut that back, since I decided not to make the painting ‘droop’ down onto the floor all the way along.

Here are a few shots of the work in progress.  More photos to come when she’s finished.

I love finding new materials to work with.  And I feel like I am finding just what I need recently. 

I visited an automotive paint supplier and have gotten a hold of some of their fine line tape.  Great stuff.  I can now mask off lovely narrow lines.  Plus, it’s a super colour just by itself!  The only drawback is that it’s not great on a painted all surface.  The paint does bleed a little bit.  It does beautifully crisp lines on very smooth surfaces, like the vinyl/contact – as you might expect, since it’s made for car panels.  But it still suits my purposes.

More to come on this installation.  Stay tuned.

 

Just a little catch up from last week.  Here is an installation that I completed last week.

An installation that sits inside an enclosed room with four walls, only one wall is blank.  From the doorway woodgrain look vinyl triangles are adhered to the floor tiles and project away from the door, toward the radiator.  Grey wool shoots up from the same point as the vinyl at the door and spreads out, attaching to a series of large hooks, already existing in the site, on the adjacent wall.  More grey wool launch from the corner of the radiator and fan out to attach to the opposite wall.  The wool creates a kind of half triangle in the space.  On the walls are a series of geometric shapes in pastel aqua acrylic paint and more woodgrain vinyl.  An outline in graphite of an interior is drawn with an untrue perspective and intertwines with other shapes.  Above the row of hooks is a patch of rolled peach acrylic paint.  Combined these various geometric shapes create an illusory space within the wall and appear to be a series of untrue perspectives combined.

This space had a lot of existing features to respond to, like the hooks, radiator and window.  I focussed a lot on perspective and line in this work, with only a small area for a painterly element.  I like painterly elements.  More painterly elements next time! I like coupling geometric shapes, lines and brushstrokes – or in this case roller strokes.

My installations are site specific.  That is, they are made to exist in specific places, and they respond to the elements and features of the site.

I have been refining how I approach a space.  If my work is to respond to the site, I need to do a bit of research and thinking before I rock up to a site and slap some paint on the walls etc.  That’s where a site investigation can be so helpful.  I need to make notes all about the site and its features.  It may also be helpful to document the space with photographs/video – which could help you to see what you wouldn’t normally notice.

When considering a space, think about:

• Light conditions: Is it dim, bright, dappled, changing, etc? Time of day, sunlight or artificial light?
• Shapes and forms present
• Floor level variances
• 360 degrees view
• Pay attention to your body as you walk through the site: this may be assisted by using ear plugs.
• Temporal nature of the space
• Site historical information
• Areas of transit: are there walkways through the space, etc?
• What people use the space? Who owns the space? Who has responsibility for the site?
• Interview someone about the site (user/owner/etc)
• Scale: How high are the ceilings, etc?

I’ve started work in a small space (see above photograph) with lots of elements to consider.  Just briefly: It is a basic rectangular shaped room with a door and a window.  The floor is tiled red and grey.  The walls are white and feature two plaster walls and two masonry walls with the outlines of painted bricks/tiles on its surface.  There are a number of clothing(?) hooks up high in the space, and a radiator in the centre of one wall.  Light pours in from the window, and there is a small amount from fluorescent light overhead.  There is no air movement unless the window is opened. 

I often find the challenge is knowing what to utilise, what to ignore – and is it too obvious to draw varying levels of attention to a particular feature.

Stay tuned for developments to this installation.