Materiality and hidden depths part 1 / February 12, 2023 by Shirley Accini

Experimenting with making stands and armatures for the freestanding elements, I understand more about the characteristics of cardboard, and what can and can’t be done with it. The warp and weft of the material, thanks to the flutes that comprise its inner layer, dictates its malleability, whether using a knife or one’s hands. Cutting a line in the flute’s direction (warp) is smooth and quick, but slicing through the flutes (weft) requires more patience and strength, often producing unplanned rips and tears. Although frustrating at first, I view these as happy accidents that allow me to stop and reconfigure my plans. Such rips and tears add character to the bland cardboard that, in turn, invites a haptic response from the viewer, along with the pleasure that comes from the sound and action of ripping and tearing. This aspect is evident in the work of Eva Jospin.

Cardboard flutes are revealed by cutting top layer with a Stanley knife to create bark. Photo Shirley A

Creating bark by scraping the underside of cardboard with a closed pair of scissors. Photo Shirley A

Ready, steady, stop / January 22, 2023 by Shirley Accini

I turn up on the first day after the winter break, keen to make the most of three weeks’ solid studio time. I want to reassess the installation in situ, take more photos and then continue developing the project. Instead, the room is in chaos, thanks to decorators who had been erroneously set to work. Most of my structures were piled in the middle of the floor, filthy, splattered with paint and damaged in some way, with a pile of detritus on top. I’m not sure that I can use these again.

What to do? I immediately complain in person and via emails for a week. Having been told that the decorating work would cease immediately, I turn up a few days later only to find the decorators still there, the room still a mess and most of the lights removed. I can’t work elsewhere as my materials are locked away and security refuses to open the room for health and safety reasons.

My motivation deflated, I stay away for a week as I can’t face going into that room and finding the mess.

Winter Show 2022 / December 19, 2022 by Shirley Accini

This was a work-in-progress appearance for me and I was reluctant to reveal something in its early stages. In the weeks leading up to the show I’d been focussing on the environment side of my project, which was a continuation from Prelude, the cardboard silhouettes of my second year, rather than the pop-up book. There were some frustrating hiccups in the days immediately before the show. In the project proposal, there is a section about having contingency plans should something go wrong, but I’m not sure what else I could have done to prepare for such events (transport strikes excluded):

The university’s heating system broke down a few days before the show, with everyone sent home and so no prep work could be done. I couldn’t take my work home because of the size and fragility of my work.
My allocated show display area was not fully available until the day before the opening, even so, I still had to wait several hours for another student to move their considerable belongings before I could install.
Bar equipment/stock for the events team arrived and I had to supervise where they were to be stored/set up.
The ceiling plaster kept crumbling, so some of my work kept falling down.
As no other students came in that morning, I was the only one clearing the room for the show. I asked some students to help with small clearing tasks, but I was largely ignored. I was still installing work and clearing the space as people were arriving.

Despite the above, there were positive takeaways. It was an opportunity to see how the work appeared in a large room and how people reacted to it, which gave me ideas for what to do/not to do for the final show. I’m keen to continue developing the large cardboard environment. I enjoyed watching people wander through the installation, stop and then look around and above, wondering where they are and what the work is about. Such a reaction shows an active involvement with the artwork rather than just standing, looking, then moving on.

Considerations

While my initial idea was to recreate the closed den of childhood – with the idea of using the annexe’s lobby area – this was an open-ended installation, and as such, had an effect on the viewer. The entrance and pathway through the work invited the viewer in, thus making them a participant. And while my work ‘enveloped’ the participant, as they walked through it they discovered options to walk out of it at any point, provoking them into making decisions. Using the main seminar room provides the space for this. While the lobby area immediately offers the enclosed environment for a den, the tight area will likely create the closed den I thought I wanted, but may actually put off the viewer from entering. So, the lobby or the seminar room? Closed environment or open?

Sketch of a perspective that draws people in, similar to the experience one gets going through the torii gates of the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto. It also shows the entry and exit points. Photo Shirley A

The long, winding perspective of the torii-gated pathway leading up to the Fushimi Inari shrine. Photo Shirley A

During the hang, I realised how fragile cardboard is as a material and I’m reconsidering making small interactive ‘pop-up/pop-out’ elements that would quickly become damaged if more than a few people physically handle with them. I could have things peeking out from orifices and have them positioned high up. Else, I could have any pop-up/pop-out elements contained within a garden area.

The long, winding cardboard-tree pathway leading to… Photo Shirley A

Without realising, the participant is making decisions about where to go, what to do and working out what the work is. Photo Shirley A

Tutorial - Nico / November 22, 2022 by Shirley Accini

Hew Locke’s Cardboard Palace shows the different textures of cardboard, which give a sculptural depth that my Prelude cut-outs don’t – and he further cuts into it to give it texture. When working with this poor material, you can use it as flat, textured or both.

Artists to research:

Marcel Dzama makes small avant-garde films that have exaggerated performances and little drawings using felt.
Jon Pylypchuk is an American artist who works with 3D cardboard shapes of humans and animals, paintings and felt cut-outs. There is always a little narrative, such as the racing horse that is half cardboard with a leg encased in concrete. Primitive in style but very carefully done. There is a need to be careful of sentimentality when working with poor materials.
Nathalie Djurberg, video artist – see Youtube interview with Hans Berg. Makes immersive sculptural landscapes.

I need to work out what kind of aesthetic I am going for – extremely minimal or a big installation with lots of stuff to look at and discover, such as Mike Nelson, whose work is abject. Nelson makes huge rooms where, even though they are entropic, every detail is purposely made and carefully choreographed. His works are theatrical and constructions of entropy. These are places to dwell. Or with the work of Ian Kiaer, which are fragile groupings of carefully chosen items.

*Étant Donnés*, 1966, Marcel Duchamp. Image courtesy www.dreamideamachine.com/?p=16663

In an installation, what do I want my audience to do – look at it from afar, or be invited to come into the work and be interactive with it? If I go for interactivity, I need to consider the fragility of the materials used. I could go down the route of Duchamp’s The Illuminating Gas, a peep show, where viewers look through a hole in a wall to see a naked female figure lying prone in a wilderness that has the layers of scenery, thus building a perspective. I like the idea of drawing viewers into my work, not just using their eyes, but also their whole body.

Doodle of a vortex perspective for the Winter Show. Photo Shirley A

Having a lot going on works in telling a rich story. Use lots of little bits and include lighting to make a convincing environment, such as the little hands that Jamie George used at his SE8 gallery show. These hands came from Naples, where they are used in nativity scenes. Nico’s suggestions recall one of my favourite works at the 2022 Venice Biennale in the Turkish pavilion by Fusun Onur. In a large, dimmed room Onur hung several platforms to display tiny sculptural scenarios made from everyday materials, and which were based on childhood memories and objects, like my own project.

Fusun Onur’s *Once Upon A Time…* at the 2022 Venice Biennale: small, everyday scenarios constructed from small everyday materials. Image Vernissage TV

Bookbinding workshop / November 10, 2022 by Shirley Accini

Stitching to bind the page sections, before the glue is applied. Photo Shirley A

While my intention for the pop-up book is to have a homemade, childlike aesthetic, learning the correct technique (City Lit’s Bookbinding: Notebooks and Folders workshop, 4-5 November 2022) will stand me in good stead if I have any problems as I may be able to use techniques learnt in class.

This was an intense course and we learnt a lot in the two days. Of particular interest was discovering the many layers that go into building a book. For my pop-up book, the most useful technique will be the stitching of the pages and ensuring there is enough leeway within the spine to incorporate the thickness of the cardboard pages and the pop-up constructions.

There is a lot to incorporate into building a book. I’m wary of following the same route as the papier-mache project, becoming bogged down in getting the method right, so much that I lose the free touch that a child has when making.

The finished books in their boxes. How enticing is the partially opened box revealing a hint of its contents? Photo Shirley A

Wallpaper stripping, tearing / October 22, 2022 by Shirley Accini

Cutting out and rearranging the different pictorial elements of wallpaper creates a more intense image. Photo Shirley A

I have also picked up rolls of wallpaper from the bargain bins of a DIY shop, thinking that wallpaper could provide an environment for the book. Wallpaper is an element of the home and this connects with my previous projects that were set in the home: Prelude, High Tea for the Birthday Boy (a papier-mache tea party) and the pop-up sketchbooks. Wallpaper tells the stories of homes and the people that live there. Old buildings often have many layers of wallpaper and peeling back these layers bring elements of chance to the artwork, revealing another story through, for example, a headline from another time.

I’m intrigued by the repetitive patterns of wallpaper, and how they could relate to behavioural patterns that humans make time and again. I like the idea of cutting out the patterns and layering them on top of each other to create an intense, oppressive environment.

Material choices
The materials I intend to use – recycled packaging, wallpaper – and my manipulation of them offers the potential of making intentionally imperfect work – for example, the wallpaper being torn rather than precisely cut. The torn paper and use of rubbish adds a tension within the idea of the ‘ideal’, tidy home. Torn cardboard reveals the different textures within its layers.

In the run-up to Christmas, I’m thinking about how advent calendars provide dimensions of surprise/discovery through actions such as opening a door to reveal an image, which, in turn, divulges further narrative elements. It also makes me think about the different aspects of the advent period and what they represent – old-style calendars have images of angels or nativity scenes, while calendars today often contain chocolates and gifts.

Tutorial - Patrick / October 13, 2022 by Shirley Accini

I’m leaning more to creating an installation in itself, and this may or may not house a pop-up book. I describe my thinking as ‘living inside my head’, which brings to mind German expressionist film sets, such as The Cabinet of Dr Galigari, a film that shows the contrast of sanity and insanity, with painted perspectives on walls, showing dreams of a mental state, a mise en scene, a psychological representation of space.

Stephane’s cardboard TV studio in Michel Gondry’s *The Science of Sleep*. Image courtesy of filmgrab.com

With my previous reflections on the child’s imagination and my desire to use household detritus as art materials, I rewatch Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep. The awkward child-like behaviour, fun and imagination of the protagonist Stephane is shown as he navigates an adult relationship with his neighbour. When his romantic attempts go awry, he reverts to an imaginary world that is reflected in a naïve-style of moving scenery and a TV/film set made of cardboard, eggboxes and other readymades.

Reconsidering the giant pop-up book, is my project really an installation? What is it that the two projects as separate entities provide? A book covers my interest in narrativity and escapism, while a life-sized installation provides a physical environment that has the potential for viewers to be invited into another world, both physically and mentally.

Things to consider when creating a giant pop-up book as an environment include the mechanisms of turning a page – what does it mean to do this? Will pages be turned at the show as part of a performance; and who does this – me, helpers, visitors to the show? When it comes to digital vs hard copy, I’m firmly in the traditional camp because that’s what the child within the context of this project grew up with. While eBooks are great for storage and portability, they cannot compare with the tactility of a 3D book and how they allow the reader to use it – to easily go backward and forward, and not lose their place – as well as its tactility and smell. See, below, the first pop-up sketchbook I made in a display unit made from recycling an old box.

Building on the opening and closing element, I took the pop-up sketchbooks to the next level by placing them in boxes to show as part of the text exhibition last year (being a part-time student, this was the first half of my third year). Here, I based these display boxes on the kamishibai form of storytelling that was popular in Japan during the 1930s, where the narrator used picture cards in a special display box to narrate stories to a public audience.

Kamishibai has seen a resurgence in interest and is now being used as a teaching method in Japan’s primary schools. Image WriteOutLoudSD.com

For the test exhibition, I recycled old cardboard boxes, then adapted them so that there would be three different ways that readers could open them. I used Command strips to affix them to walls so they were vertical instead of the traditional horizontal mode of reading. I could have turned this into a kamishibai performance, with me being the narrator, but I wanted the other students to explore how the boxes opened and then to open the books inside.

Test exhibition of pop-up books in their display boxes. Photo Shirley A

Exploring storytelling, based on kamishibai. Photo Shirley A

Hew Locke, The Procession, Tate Britain / October 8, 2022 by Shirley Accini

With The Procession, Hew Locke’s manipulation of cardboard turns this poor, bland, throwaway material into life-sized figures that portray individual people with rich characteristics such as seriousness, fun and pain. I reflect on Prelude, the project where I’d used cardboard sheets to create larger than life-sized silhouettes of my fellow students - the only discerning features were the outlines of their bodies, which was in line with the context of this particular project, where I wanted a simplistic representation of different personalities that viewers could relate to. I enjoyed building and installing this work, but especially how visitors to the show were able to walk in and around the individual pieces as if they were mingling with real people.

I returned to Locke’s show several times to consider the connection between the materiality of his work and its context – that cardboard as a poor material also reflects the poverty of the people he portrayed – and how I could adapt similar techniques to a giant pop-up book and/or installation.