Artist Lectures #2 - Marjolaine Ryley & Erica Eyres
Marjolaine Ryley, a photographer working at the University of Sunderland spoke about the two different parts of her practice; archiving and collation of materials, and the study of culture based upon her life when she was younger.
She showed a quote from Walter Benjamin 'to dwell means to leave traces' which is particularly relevant from the point of view of a photographer.
This is something which I can relate to - feeling the need to record everything. On its own, a photo is a partial view of life, just as a memory is a distorted view, yet together they build up a picture of the past.
The recording of life often starts when those around record birthdays and other events from a young age until we take over.
Marjolaine studied at Farnham, afterwards working briefly for a commercial photographer, before taking an MA at the Royal College of Art, later publishing a book based on her social photography.
She grew up living in a commune in London, and had two visits a year to Belgium where her grandmother lived. The sharp contrast between how her parents and grandparents lived made Marjolaine want to record this. She stayed at her grandmother's house and photographed daily life; the bright vibrant wallpaper, different rooms of the house, her grandmother drawing the curtains and 'moving through the space'.
She described her parents as being in exile and therefore the awkwardness between family members when they shared space 'love and loathing'.
She tries to represent the many voices of different family members from their perspectives rather than her own as an individual observer. Her photos, together with some quotes from her mother's creative writing, and objects from her grandmother make up her exhibitions. She chooses to display her photos in galleries as she has in her book using grids (squares) as a means to piece together a collection of moments that people can choose to read in what order they wish to.
When her grandparents apartment caught fire in 2008, she recorded the smoke damage done to the apartment. One of the photos showed how objects on the table had prevented the smoke staining the table in those areas. Whilst her grandmother was recovering in hospital, she and her mother had to decide what items to keep and needed cleaning, and what ones needed throwing away, sorting through the objects of someone else's life. She kept some of these everyday objects for her exhibitions and displayed them in vitrines. She described the displaying of her photos and the objects as recreating her grandmother's home and life in the gallery, and their capacity to tell a story.
As mentioned, she partly grew up in a commune in South London. Not having the ability to go back and record this now as she has with her grandparents, she enquired if there were any photos taken at that time. A family friend who had been studying photography at the RCA's College of Communication had taken black and white stills. In order to try and connect to the feelings she felt whilst growing up, she stayed at a modern-day commune and photographed collections of objects such as wellington boots, multiple mugs, tomatoes etc. Trying to avoid the obvious cliches of magic mushrooms etc. wasn't easy and she collected objects in association to this. Along with the black and white photos, she put her collected objects with things from her parent's houses, including spirituality books, and her parent's autobiographies and creative writing.
Part of the definition of art is being able to convey emotion and feeling into work. Photography helps to create visions and understanding of the personal relationships that aren't our own. I feel that the display of photos in a grid form does help to connect each to one-another and convey this to wider audiences.
Erica Eyres the second artist works out of Glasgow whilst studying for a PHD at Northumbria University in Deadpan Comedy. Some of the mediums she uses are drawing, ceramics and unfired clay. She chooses to engage with the audience indirectly in gallery spaces, as well as more directly in presentations. She was clearly nervous when presenting, most likely because she receives mixed responses to her work. Some of her past work, for example, included making ceramic wigs that were placed in a domestic gallery space around a hearth. This relates to her other work where she has experimented with unfired clay, using it as make-up. She modelled a human head in clay and recorded a video of her adding a real wig to it and styling it as though looking it were looking in the mirror at a hair salon. The voice of a child was played over the top and they were describing the long hours they had to sit in a make-up chair when they were cast for a role in a movie. This gave the clay head a persona, as though alive. Like the wigs, her work is about creating a false persona for an inanimate object, being her but not featuring her. She also made other ceramics with eyes cut out like brown paper bag. Despite the fact that only two holes are cut in the bag, she realised that many people would associate this as a face. The idea of what to create came to her after watching a programme about how to create a mask for burn victims. She continued this idea by creating a half figure of a resuscitation doll and sprayed the clay face with water from a pump as though trying to keep it alive, preventing the clay from drying out. She was expecting a reaction from the audience watching this but instead gave a presentation by means of a video rather than being there in person. The audience's reaction was filmed and when no-one laughed, this added to the fact that it is dead-pan comedy.
Other work consisted of co-producing ceramic fruit and displaying it on shelves as though it were real, despite also having a door showing access to the pottery at the back.
I found her presentation awkward, confusing, and funny at times and clearly not everyone in the audience shared that opinion. I believe her work is about asking what is real, and questioning does it matter? The fact that no-one understands or laughs is not important and merely adds to the dead-pan comedy. That said I think if she were studying ceramics and not dead-pan comedy then it may be an issue. Art is often serious, yet can be fun, and it requires an audience to have an opinion or understanding or to question something. If the audience felt self-judged as though the joke were on them then I could see this work being quite unpopular.
