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Experimental Markmaking - Tim Knowles
Experimental Markmaking - Tim Knowles
Look at the image below and consider with the person sitting next to you:
Look at the image below and consider with the person sitting next to you:
1) What are we looking at?
2) What does it remind us of?
3) How do we think this image came to exist?
Don't scroll down if you are still looking at the first image!
Let's take a look at some more images...
Let's take a look at some more images...
Discuss the following questions:
Discuss the following questions:
Write down answers to these questions on a new page in your VAPD with the heading "Experimental Markmaking"
Write down answers to these questions on a new page in your VAPD with the heading "Experimental Markmaking"
How would you describe what is occurring and being made in these images? How does this differ from what you thought when looking at the first image?
Did you ever think that a tree could make a drawing? Do you think that the tree is making a drawing? Explain why you agree or disagree.
Would you now give a tree the title of 'an artist', like you would a person?
How do the above images problematize your prior understand of what counts as an artist/drawing?
What 'rules' about artists/artmaking did your discussion uncover or make apparent?
Oak on Easel #1
There are many interesting things about these works, by artist Tim Knowles, but one thing is considering how important it is for him to display the photographic documentation of the drawing being made alongside the drawing itself. There is an essential relationship between both images.
"A major component of this work’s concept lies in the process, which relinquishes control and allows things to take their natural course."
"A major component of this work’s concept lies in the process, which relinquishes control and allows things to take their natural course."
Key ideas:
Key ideas:
Come up with some definitions for these ideas... write on the page in your VAPD
Come up with some definitions for these ideas... write on the page in your VAPD
Experimental Drawing
Gestural Mark Making
Chance-based artmaking
Non-representational
Challenging the 'authorship' of the artwork
Let's watch this short film about the artist Tim Knowles and his project 'Tree Drawings'.
Let's watch this short film about the artist Tim Knowles and his project 'Tree Drawings'.
Who do you think is more responsible for the work, the trees? or Tim Knowles? Discuss.
Summary about the artist:
Summary about the artist:
"Tim Knowles’s creative practice incorporates chance, process, and performance into mark-making systems. Art is approached as a generative process aligned with the games and experiments of Situationist and Fluxus artists. In his automatic drawings, formal elements are open to mechanisms or phenomena beyond the artist’s control–seeking to reveal the hidden, or otherwise unnoticed, motion of objects. These projects capture ephemeral traces: of footsteps in the forest; the full moon’s reflection on undulating water; or intricate movements of a parcel traveling through the postal system. Marked by a romantic take on conceptualism, he travels with torches through the night landscape or attaches drawing tools as freehand extensions to the tips of tree branches to create a record of their movement. In collaboration with the wind and local weather conditions, calligraphic gestures and readings are rendered on paper. Nature becomes an eco-agent of sorts in automatic drawing."
Non-representative, Gestural & Chance-based mark making: Exemplified by artist Jackson Pollock
Non-representative, Gestural & Chance-based mark making: Exemplified by artist Jackson Pollock
Blue Poles,
by Jackson Pollock 1952
Blue Poles,
by Jackson Pollock 1952
Jackson Pollock is perhaps one of the most famous abstract painters, working in America in the 1950s, his artmaking practice consisted of pouring or splashing house paint onto a surface, known as his 'drip technique'. He covered the entire canvas in dramatic action. Critics of his work praised the immediacy of creation, and others detested the randomness. One of his most expensive works is valued in the range of $200 million.
Experimental Drawing Artmaking Activity
Experimental Drawing Artmaking Activity
In a small group of 2-4, find a way to create an experimental drawing machine that depends on an external factor to produce marks on paper. You will need to work collaboratively for this to work!
Document your actions by taking a photograph of the MAKING PROCESS, document the tool you used/created, and document the final 'Drawing'. Put these images onto a new slide In your Digital Visual Arts Diary.
Here are some examples you could try:
Like Tim Knowles – tie pens to the ends of tree branches and hold the paper up to the pen, allowing the wind to push the branches and make marks on the page
Look at his 'ink on paper landscapes' below and recreate with paper folding, ink, and photograph with strong lighting.
Ink on paper landscapes
Ink on paper landscapes
In a new drawing series commissioned by the Blackwood Gallery entitled Ink on Paper Landscape, Knowles makes visible the geomorphological forces that perpetually mark the surface of the earth. Here, folded crushed paper acts as a landscape for the sudden flow of ink. The creative act is seemingly simple: load one pipette with ink, squeeze, and release. But the process the ink visualizes is complex. It is pulled by gravity, picks up speed, slows down, undulates, and, at times, cleaves. Like a signature, each system reveals the characteristics of an otherwise unnoticed physical experience.
Research and Writing Activity: Tim Knowles - Experimental Drawing
Research and Writing Activity: Tim Knowles - Experimental Drawing
Write ~150-200 words about Tim Knowles's artmaking practice, describing and comparing 2 of his artworks that demonstrate the variety of approaches to experimental drawing.
Write ~150-200 words about Tim Knowles's artmaking practice, describing and comparing 2 of his artworks that demonstrate the variety of approaches to experimental drawing.
The first artwork should be one of his “Tree Drawings”, and the second artwork should be one from the list below: (scroll down to see these)
Nightwalks
Ink on Paper Landscape
Balloon Drawings
Vehicle Motion Drawings
Postal Drawings
Integrate the “Key Ideas” in your response (see below)
Integrate the “Key Ideas” in your response (see below)
Experimental Drawing
Gestural Mark Making
Chance-based artmaking
Non-representational
Challenging the 'authorship' of the artwork
Make sure you briefly introduce the artist (name, location, year of birth). Introduce generally what he does. Then introduce the first artwork (title, year,) describe it visually, and explain the relevant artmaking practice he adopts, then do the same for the second artwork.
Nightwalks
Nightwalks
Created using super powerful lights and leaving a camera on long exposure at the top of a hill, whilst walking into the distance, illuminating the path.
The artist sets up a large-format camera on a long exposure, then scales treacherous ridges and inches along precipices for an hour while carrying three flashlights. The resulting images reveal thin streaks of amber light, shuddering across the pitch black.
Ink on paper landscapes
Ink on paper landscapes
In a new drawing series commissioned by the Blackwood Gallery entitled Ink on Paper Landscape, Knowles makes visible the geomorphological forces that perpetually mark the surface of the earth. Here, folded crushed paper acts as a landscape for the sudden flow of ink. The creative act is seemingly simple: load one pipette with ink, squeeze, and release. But the process the ink visualizes is complex. It is pulled by gravity, picks up speed, slows down, undulates, and, at times, cleaves. Like a signature, each system reveals the characteristics of an otherwise unnoticed physical experience.
How do you think Tim Knowles created this drawing?
How do you think Tim Knowles created this drawing?
(you will see how in the image below)
Installation details; And what, for example, am I now seeing?
Galleria Continua, Les Moulins, Paris, FRANCE
April 2017 - June 2017
Drawings produced buy a pen suspended below a buoyant helium balloon drawing onto a roll of slowly moving paper,
these drawings can be up to 24 meters long plotting the winds movements over a 24 hour period.
Civita 24 hour Balloon Drawing, 2001
'Vehicle Motion Drawings' ..
'Vehicle Motion Drawings' ..
..Are Like a Giant Etch-a-Sketch for Cars
Knowles sets up a slow-moving roll of paper and a pen affixed to sliding rails in the trunk of a car, then drives around. With each turn, bump and lane correction, the pen moves and makes a mark--sort of like a giant car-controlled Etch-a-Sketch.
Postal Drawings
Postal Drawings
Tim Knowles created this drawing contraption and then shipped it from London to Sydney via FedEx. Several other examples from this series can be found if you search Tim Knowles postal Drawings.
Tim Knowles, Mk3 Postal drawing, 2011, Perspex, cardboard, pen, ink on paper, UTS Art Collection, purchased 2011.
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