MA Fine Art – Final Exhibition 2016
My Final exhibition as part of my MA Fine Art degree at the MIMA School of Art, Teesside University 2016 consisted of two rooms that acted both as performative spaces for creating live artwork during the opening event as well as showcasing some pre-made pieces/installations created specifically for the show.
The installations consisted of in the first room two toilet vending machines – The first a converted condom machine that visitors could use to receive a small box that housed within it a USB with a selection of sound work mp3’s that I had created during my course and a small limited edition print. The second was an old tampons machine that no longer worked but had the phrase ‘Caring for you’ written upon the front of it. At the time there was a lot in the media about women’s roles within art as well as a discussion about tax being added onto women’s sanitary items – so I taped a kind of ‘out of order’ sign across this one with the phrase – Has unfortunately been cancelled due to a lack of interest. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The final installation within the second room was called ‘The Tank’ – It was a sculpture made from polystyrene taken from TV boxes, as well as a hidden red light that also acted as a dim atmospheric light source for the room. Within this room was also housed my musical instrument produced from an old copper boiler ‘The Toothpaste’ named due to its look after having the bottom removed so that the inside section could be rehoused on the outside and the open side forced together and rolled creating the objects unique shape. Mounted with contact microphones and guitar strings the piece was played as part of my third live performance of the evening within the glow of the red light.
My first two performances took place within the first room where I painted sound using two different methods. The first had a projection that was made up of glitched footage both of my own and from TV and film that was projected over my performance. This piece started as a blank canvas with contact microphones placed behind it and ran through various effect and loop pedals. As I began to paint the sound of the brushes hitting and scraping across the canvas would be picked up by the microphones and layered on top of one another creating a symphony that was unplanned or rehearsed and the painting itself was not so much a painting as a visual representation of the musical score.
The second performance was painted on copper plates that were connected via electronics through my laptop using brushes that were enhanced with metal wiring so that when the brush and plate made contact with another it would produce a sound that I could manipulate through the laptop as I was playing. A the end of each performance the paints and brushes were left on display as they were when the performances had been completed, again acting as a visual interpretation of the sounds that had been created.
One of the photos of my Tank sculpture was used by the MIMA School of Art for all of their advertising both on posters, flyers and digitally for the next two years.
