Making this term has focused on three areas – each of which is outlined in more detail in three separate ‘Process’ blogs on this site. In these I also show some further experimental works, reflect on learning about each, and suggest some ideas for work in unit two.
Here I present images of the work I think most successfully resolved during unit one.
- Animal kidney cells (Human and non human) (We are taught that other animals are ‘less than’ human animals in all respects). I produced several other drawings of these cells, including mono print, risograph, and wood-block (see process) . Below are those images I think work best.
Above, left to right:
1). Biro on A4 PLIKE.
2) and 3). Biro and enamel paint on A5 Copper.
4). Biro on A4 PLIKE. .
5) 12 x 12 in. drawing in pencil, graphite, black acrylic paint. photocopied. worked on with biro and pencil. Images from Chagall (the dance) and Marx (the yellow cow).
6) A3. Collage combining two cells. Images from Chagall and Marx.
Of all the images above I think that 5 and 6) are most obviously subjects for development, but I have decided to shelve this cell work because of the ethical issues I identify relating to it (outlined in ‘Final reflection’ – see separate post on this blog).
2. Animation: All Connected, All Vulnerable. (We are taught that it is ok to kill other animals and not to question the animal agriculture industry).
The animation below is a first experiment and focused on destruction of the Amazon Forrest by the animal Agriculture industry for cattle grazing.
Drawing above filmed at different stages of layering/rubbing back for Animation.
All portraits below – biro on 4 x 4 in PLIKE. These are quick studies to be developed.
Ideas for development include redoing larger, as well as how to show them – involving lights, making shelves, and commemorative ‘offerings’ in ceramic dishes (that I make). Perhaps it might include ‘alternative’ ideas about food sources, for example hydroponics. See below.
3. We Are Taught Not To See. Prose Poem (to be further developed)
This term I have been thinking about how political critique and personal experience might be combined in this work. I remembered that I grew up on a mixed dairy and sheep farm and parents on both sides come from generations of farming families! I have been thinking about how to use this pivotal experience. One idea is to return to the Animal Farmer’s market that I regularly visited as a child, and make observational drawings. This could lead to an installation based on the cafe in the market, and include using the poem (perhaps as an audio recording), and possibly the critical discourse analysis on the right below, as a way to highlight the normalisation of violence. I was thinking this critical discourse analysis could be presented on the menu card. Me, as a ten year old child, could be made from paper mache and have my eyes and ears sewn shut.
(nb. The prose-poem below is long – most important part, for this work, follows asterisks)
Mouton
Mouton, Norber, Erratics, Oxenber, Limestone pavements, cairns,
Crummock, Feizor Nick, Austwick, Wharfe, Castlebergh. Giggleswick.
Scar, crag, klint, gryke, becks, stallegnite, stalagtite,
Sinkholes, potholes, caves, karst, Ingleborough, Pennyghent,
Whernside, Malham tarn, Malham cove, fells, moors, pastures,
meadows, dry stone walls, copse, – the language of childhood.
I grew up in the Craven area of North Yorkshire
‘Craven’ is generally understood as cowardly,
But the explanation for this naming of the region
Is thought to come from the Welch for garlic.
The ground in front of my cottage is covered in wild garlic.
In spring the air is rich with its scent.
I went to secondary school in Settle. Up beyond Castlebergh, sinkholes
And potholes open to swallow sheep. Victoria, Albert
Attemire caves are high up in Langcliffe scar. Their passages
Snake underground; and bones of bear and elephant,
Roman coin, jewellry, Even the remains of a chariot found by the excavators.
Further West in Ingleborough cave, stallegnite and stalagtite grow.
The river Ribble can rise suddenly and rush down
from Ribblehead, where the 24 arch viaduct crosses Batty Moss
and 100 men, living in the shanty town, lost their lives
When it rains the river is brown and foamy
In dry weather it burbles gently over rounded stones.
In October, Atlantic salmon leap up the rapids to spawn
I was born in Austwick; a cottage, built for farm workers by the council
At 7, On a nature walk from primary school we walked up Norber to see the erratics;
enormous granite boulders left behind in the last ice age
I remember watching my feet in their brown Clark’s sandals
Tread through the turf on the way down, feeling purely happy.
The village lies in a typical glacial valley.
Beyond, Mouton rears up; its back carved out by the limestone Quarry.
Earlier lead mining, weaving and cotton spinning industries flourished.
On top of oxenber are klints and grykes, with rare plants
holly-fern Polystichum lonchitis, whortle-leaved willow Salix myrsinites,
stone bramble Rubus saxatilis, green spleenwort Asplenium viride,
globe-flower Trollius europaeus and rock sedge Carex rupestris.
As children we followed our brother, running across the flat limestone pavement,
jumping from klint to klint.
The treeless fells are purple with heather in late summer
In the valleys narrow becks full of minnow meander across green pastures,
Carved up hundreds of years ago by dry stone walls, where sheep and cows graze.
Meadows are lush with tall grass waiting for harvest, when the smell of hay
Wafts across a dry June and we pack hampers of cold tea and fruit cake
For the Workers hurrying to get in the crop before rainfall.
In the pastures buttercups turn the field yellow,
and we search for four leaf clover. We pick rosehips for syrup,
that we take to school in exchange for half a crown.
We search for mushrooms that we sell on the roadside.
And make wine from the elderberry flowers. The back garden
Is rich with rhubarb, gooseberries and blackcurrents.
We build a pit at the top of the front meadow, lined with coal and twigs
To roast fish. Father drags a door from the barn and we hoist it with
Rope to build a tree house. Oak, Beech, Ash, and elm grow in the copse.
The woods are blanketed in bluebells in Spring, and ferns my horse must not eat.
Hazelnuts line the narrow roads on the horse-back ride I often take
To see my grandparents at Armitstead Hall farm.
***********************************
Here I describe the landscape that formed me.
A landscape that is wild, ancient, enduring and that I love; a designated National Park
So that its beauty can be conserved. Yet beneath all this ‘natural’ beauty
That we see and admire, human ‘nature’ enforces a cruelty that I did not see as a child:
I was not taught to see it, as were not my parents and their parents for 1000 years.
This is the cruelty of the farming practices that form the livelihood of
My family and the families of all the children I went to school with.
We knew, yet we did not know, that shearing the sheep, castrating the
Lambs, cutting off their tails was violent and harmful.
We saw, yet we did Not see, the sheep and cows crying out in terror when their children
Were dragged away to death.
We ate the flesh of the lamb that we had hand reared from birth.
We drank the milk that the raped cows produced each year for their child.
We played with the kittens that were later gathered up and drowned in a bag in the trough.
We rode the horses that my father ‘broke’ with terror and whippings.
We petted the calves in their stalls as they waited to be driven to slaughter.
We gathered the eggs and fed the hens that had their wings clipped.
We were taught that the beings on the farm, that we knew were gentle
And kind, were in fact objects. They made money for us. They were
Our means to survive. We learned to dissociate. We learned to be cruel.
We learned it was perfectly acceptable, in our human cultures, to be violent.
The diagrams below plot some key ideas:
On the right hand side below I mention the story, the Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster – a dystopian tale in which almost the entire population has moved underground and live in pod like cells in isolation – everything is brought to them and they never leave their one room. This links to the image I started with at the top of this page. I have made a number of drawings related to this story. Forster’s story is about the over-reliance of humans on technology and their eventual subordination to it. Currently I’m working on human superiority to other beings, but the possibility of Humans in turn experiencing subordination to a non-human power or a totalitarian oligarchy seems closer to me (We sow what we reap?). I may come back to work on this during the year. At the root of the tragedy I see humanist and materialist values , especially commodification – giving everything a monetary value, leading to alienation and making objects into subjects, and subjects into objects.
References
Minh-ha, T. T. (2016) The image and the void. Journal of Visual Culture. 15 (1), 1310140
Drawing As Critique 