Rock Rubbing on Translucent Fabric and Exhibition Planning.

Taking the idea from the crit before Easter, I experimented with the use of translucent fabric for my rock rubbings in order to further exaggerate the contrast between my work on light, delicate fabric and its solid, heavy subject, rocks.

I completed two roughly 1.5 metre square muslin pieces, one completed on Swanpool headland and another on the rocks next to Swanpool beach. I then exploited the translucent nature of the fabric and photographed the surrounding landscape through the muslin covered in rubbings in order to highlight its presence within my work and to strengthen the link between my rock rubbings and the landscape they are representing.

I explored different methods of photographing the landscape through my work, allowing the fabric to crease and fold, obscuring the landscape further, and keeping it flat. The photographs where the fabric was creased had the effect of bringing the muslin and rock rubbings into focus much more, whereas those where the fabric was flat emphasised the landscape, though the pencil markings themselves were still very visible. These marks, surprisingly, seem to actually highlight the landscape and make the viewer look more closely at it and try to see through the fabric, this is the case particularly in the first photograph of this technique shown above where the rock at the bottom and right of the image seems to be outlined by the pencil rubbings. The photographs with the flat fabric were the most successful as they achieve what I intended them to; to give the landscape and my drawing equal presence within an image, whereas the creased images prioritise the fabric over both my drawings and the landscape.

I began thinking about my end of year exhibition and what work I will display. From the positive outcome of my landscape photographs taken through translucent fabric covered in rock rubbings I have decided to exhibit this work in some capacity. As this work was rather performative and completed on location within the natural landscape, I had some difficulties deciding how exactly to display such a work inside my studio. Simply displaying the photographs of the landscape through muslin would have given a rather underwhelming representation of the works, despite being the most obvious, the light and physical properties of the fabric itself would not have been translated effectively. An alternative idea for display of this work was to mount a large photograph of the landscape where the work itself was completed onto the wall then hang a muslin rubbing piece over the photograph in a similar way to how the work was draped within the actual landscape for the original photographs. However this method would also lack the light required to bring the landscape behind the piece to life, causing it to appear rather flat and dull, despite the positive of the physical properties of the muslin being present.

I then began to explore the use of a projector to project a photograph taken from Swanpool headland (where the work was completed) onto the hanging rubbings on muslin. This method would provide light in a way that my previous ideas would not whilst also allowing for the lightweight, almost floating nature of the muslin fabric to be a part of the outcome of the whole piece, emphasising the contrast against the heaviness of the rocks. The muslin would not be hugely visible in comparison to the pencil markings and the landscape projection, giving the latter two the emphasis and making the connection between my work and the natural landscape explicit. I tested out using the projector on my rubbings and, though it was difficult to photograph well, the overall outcome was a success. Due to the large scale of the muslin piece I was able to project the landscape image to the same scale, allowing for the piece to immerse the viewer and connect them to the natural landscape through my work, which is my intention.

I have also been experimenting with my piece for assessment, deciding to display the above muslin/landscape photograph piece in some capacity. Though it is not likely to be practical to display it with the projector method mentioned above as I tested that idea in a smaller, darker room to my studio space which is very bright and therefore not ideal for an effectively projected image. To solve this issue I considered displaying one of the original photographs of a landscape through muslin on a television or screen of some description. Though this would give less of an immersive feel in comparison to the projected image due to the smaller scale, there would be less of an issue with the light situation in my studio space. I could alternatively display a different piece, such as my stretched works, however I feel that the photograph/muslin pieces are the best examples of the development of my project.

After much consideration I came to the decision to use one of my photographs taken from Swanpool headland through the muslin fabric with rock rubbings on as my assessment piece; they are also the most representative of my project as a whole, showing my rubbings as direct impressions of the landscape with said landscape visible through them, explicitly tying the two together. I will include a print of this photograph in my studio space accompanied by the URL to view this piece online as a higher quality image with the ability to zoom in on it. The display of a relatively small print of a photograph taken of my work on location references Richard Long's tendency to do the same thing.