Christopher
Bucklow
Developing
a Visual Language
June 22-28
Course
Description:
This course is for artists and photographers who wish to refine or develop
their work’s abilty to ‘speak’ for them.
We will look at work together and talk about what it says, how it says it, and what tradition the work belongs belongs within. In my experience, it is often these aspects of one’s work which are the hardest to see. Early in the course I will give a talk about the history of the shifting ‘speech’ paradigms that lie behind the art and photography of the past. With this perspective, we will then be able to look at our own work, and the art of our time, with a more actute awareness of the language that it speaks. I will then lead a discussion in which we will then test our new understanding against any work (contemporary or historical) that the participants wish to discuss. (Please bring reproductions of favourite works for discussion.)
Many people are content to trust that their work speaks from some unconscious source.This course is not aimed at people who are happy not knowing what it is their work says. It is my belief that work always springs from the unconscious. However, this course is for those who are curious to find out a little more about those unsconscious springs. The work produced after more knowledge is gained will still continue to emerge from the unconscious, but hopefully what we will have initiated is a dialogue which will enrich both the conscious and unconscious areas of each individual.
I also believe that all work arises from very personal needs and wishes. Even work which aparently deals with the external world seems to me to have a deeply personal dimension. This course is also aimed at those who might be interested in exploring this proposition. I will again give an illustrated talk, this time at the mid point of the course, about the historical setting to this aspect of self-symbolisation in art making, and I will lead a discussion in which we again examine own works or any other artists suggested by the particiapants.
I will expect paricipants to bring sketch-pads or digital cameras. Snap cameras will be adequate - we will not be aiming at hi-resolution in technique - but rather a higher resolution in our ability to think about our work. All work we produce is likely to have the quality of being a sketch. I will be interested in ideas rather than image quality.
In the last third of the course we will look carefully at recent artists who have sucessfully developed a very detailed visual language (I will also look at the art of the Medieval and Renaissance periods when there was no need for an artist to develop their own system - as there was already a common system in place within wider society). I hope that participants will by this point have ideas of their own that will be usefully contrasted with the historical artists we will discuss after my talk.
Depending on numbers attending this course I hope to be able to do at least an hour of one-to-one conversation with each person individually towards the end of the week. I encourage participants to bring past work or reproductions of past work to the course so that we can discuss work in depth.
My aim is to send you away teeming with ideas and desperate to get into your studios.
Biography:
Christopher Bucklow’s (b.Manchester, England, 1957) latest exhibition
is at Mssohkan Gallery, Japan (October 2007). He will shortly be exhibiting
at Riflemaker, London. Previous solo shows at Riflemaker were ‘I
Will Save Your Life’ (catalogue, 2004) and ‘Christopher Bucklow’ (2006).
His photographic work was published in the book 'Guest' by Blindspot, New
York (2004). A book of his drawings, with conversations with the psychoanalyst
Adam Philips and essays by Marina Warner and Roger Malbert was published
by The British Museum and the Wordsworth Trust in 2004. This book also
included Bucklow’s essay on Blake: ‘The Sea of Time and Space’.
The artist’s
interest in Blake is mainly centred around Blake’s invention of a
personal myth which is used as a dynamic description of his own psyche.
He has also recently completed a book on the symbolism of the late work
of Philip Guston. Bucklow’s
work was shortlisted for the 2007 Jerwood Drawing Prize.
Artist's
Statement:
I find it difficult to make a statement. But what I know is that I am forcedto
make images - and I am obliged to make them represent my experience in as large
and precise a way as I can imagine. The form, mode and medium of this desire
changes as I refine my means of reaching for my tantalizing goal. I may have
got more able. I have certainly become specific.