This Blog Has Moved!

Hello friends,

Now located over at:

www.naominicholls.com

See you there! :)

Graduate Exhibition - Documentation

After all the hard slog preparing, the Graduate Exhibition was a great success.  We had a great opening night, standing room only in many areas of the buildings.  Approx. 750 people responded with an RSVP and that seems about right.  We also had a great many through during the rest of the exhibition.

Thanks to my fellow artists, RMIT staff and all who contributed and made it a great opening and great exhibition.  And thanks to friends and family for coming to see the show.

Here are some documentation shots of my works in the show. 

 (c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Entry Point Plus Construction

Acrylic and vinyl on wall/floor.

 

 (c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Entry Point Plus Construction

Acrylic and vinyl on wall/floor.

 

 (c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Entry Point Plus Construction

Acrylic and vinyl on wall/floor.

 

(c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Entry Point Plus Construction

Acrylic and vinyl on wall/floor.

Installation view of Graduate Exhibition 2012

With Tape, Yellow Towards Left, Fold Out and Entry Point Plus Construction.

 Installation view of Graduate Exhibition 2012

Primary Space Informed by Brush and Orange Structure on Fold Out.

 Installation view of Graduate Exhibition 2012

With Tape, Yellow Towards Left, Fold Out and Entry Point Plus Construction.

Getting Ready for the Grad Show

A quick catch up post about preparing for my Graduate Exhibition.

It was an incredibly enhausting time. We emptied our studios of all furniture, painted endless walls and floors and began setting out work across many rooms and booths. There were lots of challenges to hang a cohesive show, combining the work of over 50 artists into the one show was an incredible undertaking and not without it's stressors. I was alotted a space to install my work quite late, which was a huge challenge for me. Normally I have days to prepare, to sketch and do colour experiements, but I almost had to enter the space dry. I found this so hard.

Here I am, about halfway through the install.

Blue Cubed

This work was born out of a series of drawings and paintings on paper and I wanted to see them in large scale.  Often when working on paper or sketching, the works don't feel complete until I can walk into them at large scale.  So I was keen to get this one on a wall.

(c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Blue Cubed (installation view)

Acrylic and vinyl on wall.

 (c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Blue Cubed (installation view)

Acrylic and vinyl on wall.

 (c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Blue Cubed (installation view)

Acrylic and vinyl on wall. 

(c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Blue Cubed (installation view)

Acrylic and vinyl on wall.

As so often happens, the work changed when translated from sketch to wall.  I extended the lines from the cube present in the blue form, to further interact with the features of the space.  Although I left these lines incomplete, they operate as an illusion, suggesting the presence of a cube.

I love this space because of its 'ugly' architectural features; the ducting, the pin board, the pipes.

Blue Cubed from Naomi Nicholls on Vimeo.

Structure into Pink and Blue is complete

Installations are hard to photograph.  I always find it tough.  Straight lines warp through the camera, light is hard to capture (for the novice photographer), and you can’t shoot around corners or capture two elements of the installation that talk to each other in the same frame.  I usually find solace in the fact that I take as many photos as I can from as many angles as I can, trying to focus on the sweet spots for reading the installation, or at least where I think the sweet spots are.  It was suggested to me a while ago to start filming my installations, as a way of capturing the spatial experience of moving through the work.  It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely something.  I have been doing this on and off for a while.

Here is the video (now in 2D!!) and the installation shots of the finished work.  (Note: there is no sound)

Structure into Pink and Blue from Naomi Nicholls on Vimeo.

(c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Structure into Pink and Blue (installation view)

Acrylic paint, paint pen and vinyl.

 (c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Structure into Pink and Blue (installation view)

Acrylic paint, paint pen and vinyl.

 (c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Structure into Pink and Blue (installation view)

Acrylic paint, paint pen and vinyl.

 

(c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Structure into Pink and Blue (installation view)

Acrylic paint, paint pen and vinyl.

 

 (c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Structure into Pink and Blue (installation view)

Acrylic paint, paint pen and vinyl.

 

 (c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Structure into Pink and Blue (installation view)

Acrylic paint, paint pen and vinyl.

  (c) 2012 Naomi Nicholls, Structure into Pink and Blue (installation view)

Acrylic paint, paint pen and vinyl.

This work, in signwriting vinyl, acrylic paint pens and acrylic paint, has again allowed me to use multiple materials to build the installation.  I love that.  It just doesn’t feel right unless there are number of different mediums being used.  Perhaps it doesn’t feel enough like a collage or that I’m truly building the work.  This, when you think about it, is heavily related to the content of the work – building structures in space that are related to architecture of a site.

I’m pleased with the illusory qualities of this work.  However, if you try to step into the rectangle across the floor and wall, it vanishes and becomes lines on the floor.  Perhaps this is something I can push further.

The glossy finish which the vinyl gives, is fantastic.  When it’s paired with the matt finish of the acrylic paint, it creates a kind of ambiguous spatial effect, highlighting the possibility of a fold in the wall.

Structure into Pink and Blue - Work in Progress

I am behind on posting what I’ve been working on.  That never happens.

Here are some photographs of a work in progress.  Working again in a hallway; there is just something about those spaces.  Availability of the space does play its part, as well as the constant flow of traffic, which adds content to the work and gives constant readings to the work.

This installation uses signwriting vinyl, acrylic paint pens and acrylic paint.  It has been challenging to work with such a large piece of vinyl.  Application had its problems, wrestling with the vinyl that wanted to curl and stick to everything.  As well as not being able to stand back and look at placement as I applied it made it hard.  I had tacked it in place before I started peeling off the backing, so I was reasonably sure of the placement as I was applying it.

A ‘happy accident’ presented itself while I was painting it in.  I ran out of blue house paint.  When I ordered more to be mixed and returned to the painting, I found it had been mixed a little darker than the sample and darker than what I had painted in.  I considered painting over all the blue of the shape again in the darker blue, but settled on just covering what I had to and making another shape of random brush marks.  It adds more depth and, I think, adds more questions about what space the work takes up.

Upscaling Didn't Quite Work

Sometimes things just don't work.  Many times I have painting things in small scale and then tried them on a large scale and it just flopped.  That happened again recently.

It was the first time I attempted those random and deliberate brush marks in a large scale.  I had plans of linking the shape together and unfolding an installation across the room, in a similar way to these works on plywood, but the upscaling did nothing for the shape.  To me it just looked like the beginnings of a graffiti mural, which is not the content I want to bring to my work at this point (if ever).  As with before, it seems the problem was the size of my brush in relation to the size of the shape.  It may have worked if the shape had been half the size.  Or if it was filled in, which I have since started to do.