Part One – Research point 3: Jessica Warboys, Rebecca Horn & Akira Kanayama. Comparisons to my own explorations

The paintings shown above are part of the Sea Paintings by Jessica Warboys. The creation process involves soaking the large canvases in the sea at different locations around the UK. The resultant marks and textures provide a record of both place and time. Jessica manipulates the canvases, sometimes removing part of them to create an overall composition.

I can see a link from my explorations with dripping and splattering paint that I completed in Exercise 1. Jessica has moved past the limitations that I had to allow the movement of the sea to create the work.

Rebecca Horn, a German visual artist born 24/3/1944 creates Installation art along with Film directing and body modification. I was interested by one of the pieces that is at Tate Modern. The work is called ‘Concert for Anarchy’ it is an upside-down piano which occasionally comes to life in a noisy outburst. An excerpt from the display caption states “The instrument was used as prop in Horn’s feature film ‘Buster’s Bedroom, 1990’ Horn has described how ‘having freed itself from the psychiatric clinic (the piano) is now composing its own music. The piano acts like a living thing: it gets upset and slowly regains its composure. this might mirror own experience of being startled by the sculpture.”

Concert for Anarchy 1990 Rebecca Horn born 1944 Purchased with assistance from the Art Fund and the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1999 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T07517

I have not tried anything remotely similar and therefor any comparisons to my explorations are not valid.

Moving onto Akira Kanayama, 1924 – 2006, one of the Japanese Gutai group I can immediately see connections with some of my experimental drawing and paintings that I have completed as part of the exercises in Part One. The first example is the coloured line drawing that I made using the drawing contraption. Below is my work on the left and Kanayama’s on the right.

There is a sense of random marks made in an undisciplined manner to both drawings.

Further examples, see below, show similar mark making. In both examples my explorative work is shown on the left. In both examples my work looks more primitive in its conception and outcome.