WALK AROUND - ROYAL WEDDING DAY

11:00 AM, 29/04/2011.

I walked through this corridor from Watercolour to Romantics in Tate Britain; William and Kate processed on the red carpet in Westminster Abby.

DOCUMENTARY PROJECT - THE CRIT

As usual the final crit is like a photo festival with so many interesting works. My project concept was communicated well to my classmates. There was criticism regarding the presentation, as I did not mount and only sticker the text onto the prints. Surely I will do a proper mounting afterwards. I was preparing to hear some constructive suggestions or opinions on my works but there was none. Robert’s prose with his self-portraiture created such a poetic yet philosophical space to contemplate the surface and inner and external world. Several others works were also very interesting.

DOCUMENTARY PROJECT - SELF REFLECTION

I continue to explore the relationship between text and image in my projects this year. One is “Everyday” in medium format and the other one is “Bye-bye Yesterday” in digital. I found the impact and perception with the combination of text and image fascinating in creating synergetic significations.

“Bye-bye Yesterday” is my personal visual diary. They are the traces of my past and the elusive signifiers that click open memories. I photo document things around me and capture the thoughts in that day in text. After starting a few days forming the habit of creation of such works daily, thoughts inspired image taking and shots pushed my text expressions. One thing in doubt is the visual cohesion as the form of the image could differ greatly from day to day. However on the other hand, I am never static in style and therefore it seems right reflect the content of the project.

“Everyday” is my expression about the local and global, the private and public, the ephemeral and everlasting. Media connect us with the world. Do incidents happening in our planet mean anything to us? Are our surroundings and we influenced and shaped by things happening around us locally or globally? The train station stood there looking the same every day. Weather, colour, and light hang over the location with minor difference every day. People on the platform look subtly different every day. I took the image at the same time sharp 8:00am every day and then I juxtapose a story on that day with the image.

Both projects were created everyday for 4 weeks only. The series of the work strengthen the project ideas better than a single one. However, if the projects are done for one year, I feel it will stand stronger. I tried to work out the best way to present the text for “Everyday” however I am bit doubtful if this is done well. I need to spend more time thinking and playing different options.

Due to the nature of the project, I planned the context of my work as printing matters and therefore I have printed mock-up photo books on two projects. “Everyday” is the first time printing so there are many details to be corrected. “Byebye Yesterday” is the second time printing so in general everything looks better than “Everyday”. The publishing layout is never an easy job with many options and I wish I could learn more about this in the near future.

The analogue dark room prints are of some coloured tints. I originally tried to correct it but decided not to adjust but to use the same colour balance combination to reflect the subtle colour difference of every day weather.

DOCUMENTARY - COLOUR PRINTING 5

Photography is a patient practice. I really need to slow down and be patient. Due to my hasty operation, I messed up several prints in colour ring printing, such as wrong easel position, forgetting to adjust the colour way, etc etc. Everytime I print, I always ended up with some silly mistakes. Anyway... I did some cameraless photography in my darkroom. The light shed directly on me against the paper...

UNITITTLED

DOCUMENTARY - COLOUR PRINTING 4

I used a different paper - Fuji lustre 12 x 16 today. I totally printed 18 and chose 5 out of them for post production. I dodged one frame as the contrast is too much. It was quite successful. Colour tone of each image is quite different, some of them are even quite obvious. Different weather does produce different colour temperature! It is ok for my project as I intent to reflect the difference. However, I plan to work a bit more on different tones in colour printing.

TAKE A BREAK - SUSAN HILLER

Montage by John Stezaker

The Last Silent Movie by Susan Hiller

Nyima by Annelies Strba

I went to Frith Street Gallery to see Annelies Strba’s My Life’s Dreams, then Susan Hiller in Tate Britain and John Stezaker at Whitechapel Gallery. Susan Hiller’s show was the most inspiring. I found almost every single piece fascinating to me. She used appropriation, text, language, video, and installation to articulate her concept. She collected images, objects, videos, and sounds and re-contextualised them. I was particularly impressed by her usage of languages. The Last Silent Movie used sound archives and had poetic death aesthetics while not losing anthropology documentary significance. The Witness was very playful with a dreamy ambience. Walking around hundreds of hang speakers with difference voices surrounding me gives a hallucinatory science fiction feel. Knowing the content of the voice as an encounter of UFOs, I was lost in the fairyland for a long time. Her Homages Series were highly conceptual pieces as well. Appropriation and language are something I have been interested and this show encourages me to explore future. Annelies Strba’s works are pretty and of good conceptual ideas. The exhibition space is so cool with untreated cement surroundings that I quite like. John Stezaker’s montage and appropriation are no doubt creative but going to the gallery is very similar to read his monogram books due to the exhibition size. I was surprised he keeps his art style for decades.