IN CONVERSATION WITH : ADRIAN BLAND
[Adrian Bland] I didn't expect anything like this. They remind me of insects moving across a surface and the trace they leave behind. I wonder if thats because of the relationship with the surface itself. The proximity to surface and the lines looks like they are moving across the surface in an organic way.
I don't associate this with textiles.
I would be very interested to see them in 3D. I would quite like to walk around it. To see how some of those shapes move in relation to each other. So I don't feel satisfied seeing it in two dimensions. I feel it requires movement around.
In a sense I am so used to not touching that I assume it was not touchable. There is a visual stimulus, hence why I suggest walking around it because it is my eyes that are doing the movement. But I don't know whether or not I would like to touch it. It would depend on the details of the live experience.
I'm not seeing textures, I'm seeing surfaces. I want context. I want someone else contexts that I can then make my own judgements about. I am not trusting of context but it gives me a starting point for my own engagement.
I immediately feel I am in a white cube gallery because of the white background. It is the automatic assumption.
[Adrian Bland] I'm starting to see textiles. for me it's Modernist; it's 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, so I'm starting to identify a style from the pattern. I suppose because I have studied art history I have seen so many abstract paintings. I do see, although it isn't really; abstract expressionism or colour field painting. I'm personally very drawn to that notion of a black on a white, or blacks on a white. That reminds me of the very famous Kazimir Malevich painting of a black canvas that is exhibited on a white wall. It's black but it's not black. The idea of black on black is an interesting thing. For me, it draws you in. Now because I can see black on black I'm starting to identify shapes. The shape on the top left is starting to look like a peat cap, because of where the blacks hit each other. I'm starting to see this flatness in three dimensions. It looks like one of those American confederate caps.
[Chloe Elie] So looking at these would you recognise them as three dimensional objects, or are they still very much flat to you?
The second image looks very much like a key hole. It looks like I'm supposed to be looking through something. Again, that might be interesting in a sense in the way that the black represents the wall, the white represents a space beyond. So even though I'm saying it's flat, there is the potential for three dimensionality there. I feel as though I am looking through something, into something. It's a bit like Howard Hodgkin and the way his paintings are like a window onto nature.
[Adrian Bland] I'm more drawn... It's starting to feel a little more sensual because of the physicality. I can clearly see, well I can't clearly see, it looks like materials that I am used to looking at, textured surface materials like clays with glazes or painting on them. I immediately find that more appealing, more tactile, more touchable. That is my kind of aesthetic. That kind of roughness. It takes me back to my earlier interest in Studio Craft, people like Baron and Larcher and Ethel Mare and that emphasis on roughness. Possibly on speed, quickness. I see coils and all those obvious things in that second piece.
It looks a bit like an egg cup. It's got a vessel aspect to it. It looks like a bowl, it looks like what I'm familiar with in the world of ceramics; a bowl that's not a bowl. There's a book about it called The Abstract Vessel. So you can see what I'm doing here, I'm drawing on the books and examples that already exist in the back of my head. That I already have. I am bringing my baggage to the object.
[Adrian Bland] I immediately saw a cow. Lots of black and white cows; who have a camouflage surface, mottled surfaces that are absolutely not symmetrical.
It's like the Rorschach test, what do you see when you look at this ink blot. Now because I saw a cow, I almost see it as a cartoon, so perhaps it makes it harder to get back into it on a non-cow basis. I have to almost forget that initial impression to be able to engage with it in a different way. A lot of those shapes interest me very much.
Again, they remind me of Hans Arp, the dadaist. The way he would create flat surfaces by dropping sheets of paper onto the floor to allow chance to play a part in the overall structure of the piece.
[Adrian Bland] We're back in the world of ceramics; I'm reminded of sea shells, the sea shore. An awful lot of ceramicists work to try and reflect the textures of nature or even the idea of ruin; degradation; dilapidation of surfaces, notions of patina. But I certainly see nature and natural forms.
I see bleached coral; it could be a comment on sustainability, ecology and the death of The Great Barrier Reef. I see bones; I see primitive marks, from documentaries, I see links to archeology.
[Adrian Bland] I'm just now making a link between all of these two dimensional black and white images now, so I'm starting to look for a narrative as I've already see two or three on a very similar basis. This one certainly looks very flat. It is quite appealing to me in the sense that I'm very happy to look at it and look at how those lines move and to take it in.
One exercise I used to do as part of my Art History degree was to put a slide up of an image and to see how long I could look at that image for and what would change. At a certain point you almost start to hallucinate and you start to make up stories in your head.
This kind of image does that for me. The lines in themselves are very beautiful, there's some very nice movements in there that I couldn't put into words and wouldn't want to put into words and don't want explained to me. For me it relates to that idea of aesthetics and the idea that there is a perfect beauty. Leave it alone, it just is.
[Adrian Bland] You're starting to alternate these things now so I'm almost trying to preempt what it is that's coming next in the narrative.
You've shown me a sequence so I'm starting to look for some kind of logic in that sequence. it starts to become something that can be predetermined or can have a logic applied to it.
I see animal droppings. I'm not interested, there seems to be a regularity there. it just doesn't do it for me, because they're all roughly the same size. They're all speaking at the same volume. So it becomes kind of repetitive.
[Adrian Bland]
I identify these as textiles. I can certainly see textures within that surface that make me believe it is a fabric and again this is my aesthetic; the dark colours, the blocky shapes. It draws me back to Baron and Larcher, the uneven surfaces on the left.
On the right, it reminds me of seventies retro. I suppose because of the brown and the flat shapes are clearly flat, identifiably flat. I see that as seventies curtains, seventies wall paper. I don't feel as personally interested in it. The one on the left I feel I need to get close to; the one on the left not so much.
[Adrian Bland] Looks like mixed materials. I'm unsure whether it is cardboard or clay. I can identify areas of green which I don't like initially. Although I can't see them clearly so I am kind of intrigued in the sense that I can't see what I'm supposed to be looking at. I can't see behind. I can't see above. I feel as though I am being given very limited information. It is initially my aesthetic because of the roughness and mixed materials. But I would rather see it on a plinth in a gallery so that I can walk around it. Look inside it. I want to see how the shadows are cast.
[Chloe Elie] How would you feel about walking through it?
[Adrian Bland] I'm reminded of the surrealist architect Frederick Kiesler; he did a lot of work on the idea of returning to caves, and us going back to living in caves. He was creating cave like structures which he then linked to the womb, in order to return to more natural living. I'm starting to think of Primitivism which reminds me of lots of films that I've seen. But it was you who introduced me to the idea of these being on an architectural scale, which then takes me off on another road.
[Adrian Bland] The only word I would want to use is nature or the natural. Then again that could just be me, desperate for a theme or narrative.
It is interesting that you chose 'the natural' as your defining theme because I have not looked at nature once so far. The basis of my work is all from the objects I created which I am now translating and the play between three dimensionality and two dimensionality. Materials and how materials can lead your making and the whole basis of it is that fragment of abstract expressionism that says that the painting can be enough, you don't need to know what it is. So the fact that you have attached a narrative and the visual stimuli that you have from your life is really interesting because ultimately they are just blocks of colour on a page or blocks on pigment on cloth.
That notion of the relationship between the three dimensional objects and the flat based objects and the idea that they was a relationship What you have told me there is that the three dimensional are "models for". Those predatory sketches for something else. Maybe it is the order that you presented them that makes that difficult to see. Because you are giving them equal weight by presenting them in alternation. If you were to present the three dimension pieces and then the prints and paintings maybe that would have created a different narrative. Which makes it clearer to see their relationship.
As soon as you mentioned walking through them your completely changing the scale. Scale is very very important.
Environment can be key, affecting environments to create different outcomes.
It is interesting you say that because I intend to write almost 'proposals' or instructions for how the environments should be "used" or "habituated". Controlling environments to some respects; but even knowing that giving you tiny snippets or words can completely changed your path is interesting. Even with galleries and their descriptions on the walls; if you were to read that first, you may get a different interpretation than if you were to do those things the other way around. That notion of influence and how much influence should a artists or curator have in creating meaning is key here.
I often want to find things instantly appealing so a lot of what I engage with will be based on that initial reaction. Am I seduced by those forms or does it pass me by
I think a lot of people are the same, especially these days; you see people in galleries just sort of wafting through.
I think that initial reaction is really important.
I think I potentially have so much "cultural baggage" that I have many more opportunities to make connections or links. But that is because my head is full of stuff. But equally perhaps that doesn't allow me to react as sensually or emotionally. It could also make me more likely to rush to judgement more quickly.
It really is that whole concept of connection or resonance.
