I signed up to this course to do so and began by looking at Typographies utilising the industry around me in Cornwall and what remains of it. I initially started by looking at the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher and produced some digital medium format portraits of Cornish Engine Houses and planned on focusing from here.
To extend this into my second module I took the time to look at re-photography utilising the archives at the Cornwall Studies Library in Redruth. This really interested me and enthralled my passion for history and photography once more and Gary McLeod helped encourage this and give it direction.
Unfortunately, I moved on to my next module and the support staff I had, did not understand this and the direction it would travel and belittled it, pushing me in an alternative direction. Fortunately at this time, I was shooting other projects and had them to move onto as I was told it did not have the ability to travel.
This has led me to using my photography in a deeper artistic sense than I had before and created a collaboration between myself and Joseph Fiol which has been on going through my assignments and is building towards my FMP, exhibition and book.
The work began without a genre, without a title, without a direction. All that was certain was, we would create the images with what was at hand. We would fool the viewer as to what they were looking at and build questions in their mind. Over this time it has developed and evolved but one this has stayed constant, not always visible but always used… 6000 Luster Azure Blue Marbles that Joseph purchased in 2004 but had never found a use for. With mystery, randomisation and fun, this project will continue throughout this module.
During the break I have been discussing with work so far with artists, photographers and those with a passion in the arts. Not only has it turned heads and cause unexpected reactions when people have viewed the work, it has also been described as abstract and surreal. Two areas I had not worked in so I thought I should research these more and look at the building and construction of the images through this module.
I personally, haven’t had experience with these so I thought I would start with statements to describe them and the nature of them. With abstract, I have come to a conclusion that in it’s simplistic form means to show something indirectly or to suggest something in an un obvious nature. With the two forms of surrealism creating the majority of the genre, I do see some automation in the work. As much as possible is given randomisation or chaos, for the first shoot with a spinning light suspended on a pendulum to a adding weights to give more freak results.
The random continued in placement of pieces by dropped, smashing on objects with hammers and how light falls from a torch to name but a few.
Abstract Art
Refers to photography lacking identifiable imagery, or whose subject matter is noticeably obscured. In the early 20th century, particularly through the work of László Moholy-Nagy, the Surrealists, and Man Ray, abstract photography gained appreciation and recognition as a realm for experimentation. Representational photography still remained dominant in art circles until the past few decades, when the birth of digital photography and tools like Photoshop encouraged a new generation of artists. Some of the most prominent photographers working today create abstract work (often alongside figurative work), including Thomas Ruff, James Welling, and Wolfgang Tillmans.
https://www.artsy.net/gene/abstract-photography
Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect.
Strictly speaking, the word abstract means to separate or withdraw something from something else.
The term can be applied to art that is based an object, figure or landscape, where forms have been simplified or schematised.
It is also applied to art that uses forms, such as geometric shapes or gestural marks, which have no source at all in an external visual reality. Some artists of this ‘pure’ abstraction have preferred terms such as concrete art or non-objective art, but in practice the word abstract is used across the board and the distinction between the two is not always obvious.
Abstract art is often seen as carrying a moral dimension, in that it can be seen to stand for virtues such as order, purity, simplicity and spirituality.
Since the early 1900s, abstract art has formed a central stream of modern art.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/abstract-art
“Abstract art has been with us in one form or another for almost a century now and has proved to be not only a long-standing crux of cultural debate but a self-renewing, vital tradition of creativity. We know that it works, even if we’re still not sure why that’s so, or exactly what to make of that fact.”
A major obstacle to making an abstract artwork is the barrier in your mind that questions whether abstract art is a legitimate art form—legitimate for you at least. This block may be because you still wonder, “Is abstract art really ‘art’ at all?” Possibly you think you have to master realism before you can work abstractly? Or it could be that you worry your friends and family won’t approve?
The quick answers to these queries are as follows:
1. Historically, abstract art is a “legitimate” art form, and that judgment was settled well over a century ago.
2. No, you don’t have to earn a diploma in realism before you make abstract art; and no one checks your “artistic license” credentials at the door.
3. If you routinely did everything your friends and family approved of, you probably wouldn’t even consider making art at all, worrying about the dreaded, “You can’t please everybody all the time,” block which haunts artists throughout their careers.
“Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot see physically with his eyes.”
―Arshile Gorky
https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-inspiration/what-is-abstract-art/
“I enjoy playing with and rearranging colors, lines and shapes to create images that I want to look at. I want my work to be surprising, playful and provocative. Some of my paintings are doors, others windows. They are all portals. I continue to use these symbols because they are a joyous and mysterious language that is somehow both deeply personal and universal.” —Aria Arch
“For me ‘abstraction’ is not an art movement, a moment in art history or a style of painting. It is a crucial integral connector to the vitality of painting. What is extraordinary for me is that as I go out past what I know—past where I am controlling what I do—to find coherency and form. Contact with this wordless coherency, the gift of form is a profound homecoming.” —Timothy Hawkesworth
“I want to express a certain feeling and emotion by creating an entire environment for the viewer to walk into or observe from afar. I use materials in a direct and simple way, not transforming or altering them greatly from their natural state. I prefer to keep my pieces as broad and non-objective as possible to allow the viewer to bring in their own interpretations drawn from their own experiences.” —Chris Nelson
“When I am engaged in art making I am fully caught up in the medium and tools and mission. I’ve learned not to think about the product that I will end up with because the time spent engaged in the creative activity is what is most important to me. I enjoy the detached feeling I get when working in the abstract—it’s like a dance with my hand and my mind and they take turns leading.”
—Janet Stupak
“Abstraction, like poetry, does not dictate a clear narrative but rather, quietly offers a fragment, a piece of a mysteriously familiar narrative. In my paintings, there has continued to be a paring down of recognizable natural forms, which now have given way to a personal abstract vocabulary of shapes, colors and forms. The prominent use of abstraction has allowed me to distill and better communicate my emotions and ideas about life, nature and our respective place within it.”
—Nicholas Wilton
“I am always interested in a discovery process in art making rather than working for something I am familiar with. I also want to express internal feelings and thoughts in my works. Something more elusive, poetical and imaginative in my work is my goal. As a result, my work tends to be abstract rather than representational.” —Yuriko Yamaguchi
“Though my pictures are abstractions that don’t resemble conventional Chinese paintings, I still work from observation and I present my own honest feelings or ideas through colors and brushstrokes that have become my own tradition as an artist.” —Yuan Zuo
surrealism
/səˈrɪəlɪz(ə)m/
noun
-
a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.
Surrealism aimed to revolutionise human experience, rejecting a rational vision of life in favour of one that asserted the value of the unconscious and dreams. The movement’s poets and artists found magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional.
While ‘surreal’ is often used loosely to mean simply ‘strange’ or ‘dreamlike’, it is not to be confused with ‘surrealist’ which describes a substantial connection with the philosophy and manifestations of the surrealist movement.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/surrealism
Founded by the poet André Breton in Paris in 1924, Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement. It proposed that the Enlightenment—the influential 17th- and 18th-century intellectual movement that championed reason and individualism—had suppressed the superior qualities of the irrational, unconscious mind. Surrealism’s goal was to liberate thought, language, and human experience from the oppressive boundaries of rationalism.
Sustainable Prospects 
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