(Image: http://assets0.artslant.com/work/image11/353094/qg7swq/20100926065416-Flat_Time_House_E_email.jpg?1285509257)
On the 10th of December the elective group visited John Latham's Flat Time House in Peckham, where we will be hosting our end of course exhibition. The visit itself consisted of an in-depth tour of the house, with discussions about Latham's work, as well as a consideration of how our work may be placed there.
(Image: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/images/page_images/685b1835d895eae0_john-latham-anarchive.jpg)
Latham's work was built around a concept of the world called 'Flat-time', which consisted of events based on spans of time. Although far too complex to go into too much detail, or even for me to understand fully, his is a body of work so fully formed as to completely relate to itself, and I found myself overwhelmed about the idea of even beginning to think about showing work there.
In consideration to Image and Text, and my own practice, Latham's work appeared to me to be almost entirely process-driven, any sense of aesthetic arising from the process of the work itself, with text used often as the image, as a description of an idea, or the definition or key of an abstract value.
With regards to my own practice, I would like to develop the themes that I began to look at when starting this elective, with ideas of the authority of diagrams, as well as their nonsensical appearance when deprived of context.
(Image: found, from collection)
This is an image that I have had on my desk for about 2 years, and I've always been intrigued by its absurdity and the fact that, although it is an explanatory diagram, it doesn't make any sense. I am thinking about using this content to create my own work based around playing with the authoritative nature of diagrams and keys, as well as the contradictions that text can lend an image.
Fiona Banner's 'Harrier and Jaguar' supports this train of thought, as the simple action of removing planes from their contexts and focussing on their animal names lends a whole new nature and language to otherwise simple objects that I find intriguing.
(Image: http://www.art-agenda.com/idea_images/12797401492.%20Fiona%20Banner%20Press%2001_sml_1.jpg)