Blank Media Collective presents Joe Doldon by Blank Media Collective

Blank Media Collective presents

Joe Doldon Exhibition Catalogue

Joe Doldon was the well-deserved winner of Blank Media Collective’s inaugural Title Art Prize in 2011. The Prize was judged by an esteemed panel: Paul Rooney (Artist), Neil Harris (Arts Council England), Tomas Harold (Cornerhouse), Alex Hodby (Curator) and Stephen Gingell (Sandbar Director). We are excited to welcome Joe back to BLANKSPACE for his Blank Media Collective supported solo exhibition. Joe earned this on the strength of his piece, Contortion II; a modest indication of his ability to show us the beauty and potential that resides in the ordinary. This solo exhibition is a collection of sculptures, images, projections and site-specific interventions. His work is notable for using everyday, manufactured materials and converting them into extraordinary formations that reference their organic origins. Transfiguration is a key aspect of the work in this exhibition. The Geoexplosion series makes use of light and transparency to beautify a geometric acetate sculpture. Perfect Marriage projects a film of a gas fire onto plastic tubing into which is cut the silhouette of a mountain range. Both materials are manufactured from oil. Shards at Windgather makes apparent this contradictory relationship between nature and fabrication. Joe’s approach to art making is relentlessly inventive and driven by an enthusiasm and curiosity for shape and form. What Lies Beneath derives its shape from a drop of royal icing. Ying Yang is the result of an experiment with parcel tape that uncovered its symmetrical potential. In the production of this exhibition, the continuous evolution of Joe’s practice has been very apparent. Earlier works demonstrate his comprehensive engagement in pushing a singular material beyond its logical capacity. This past year has seen an expansion on this, creating increasingly surreal works by combining and juxtaposing seemingly incongruous materials and references. Cleggy Whippy marries rusty corrugated steel with piped royal icing and obvious references to seaside ice cream vendors. Frills and Shards is a bizarre synthesis of breeze blocks intersected with fluorescent blue Perspex and black light. Its crystalline form is topped with an advertising swing board embossed with intricate piped icing, its addition a further element in the absurdity of the composition. Playfulness resides in all of Joe’s work as does skill, meticulous craftsmanship and conceptual rigour. The result is a show that is at once dynamic, intriguing and beautiful. A genuine accomplishment. We are delighted to have been able to offer Joe the opportunity to expand his practice through a solo exhibition and are confident that he will continue to push his work in new and unexpected directions.

Blank Media Collective

Artist’s Statement The primary reason I make art is to know more, to develop a greater understanding of the world which we inhabit and the world which we have created for ourselves. However, this enquiry frequently throws up more questions than answers. When I start the process of making work, I begin digging for gold. I go in search of gems, jewels and crystals in different forms. Geological and ‘organic’ forms and references consistently come up in my work. In the modern fabricated world we are somewhat distanced from the source and production of these mass produced materials – the foundations and architecture on which our society is built. For me, one of the important things I attempt to achieve is to at least perhaps hint at the origins of these materials. Through handling these everyday, often low value materials with a heightened care and sensitivity I also attempt to shed new light on their potential, putting them all on the same pedestal to behold and to instill new meaning in. Some works are rendered in a very quick simple process, and others have been laboured over for weeks and months. Either way they pander to the properties of the materials’ potential to transcend its usual make up and associations. Often the works which seem effortless and brief may have taken vast amounts of time experimenting in order to arrive at that particular conclusion. Other times, things may happen as a ‘happy accident’ through a deep involvement with the materials. More recently my work has become more physical, monumental and more apparently absurd. I have recently become interested in juxtaposing materials, often that seem to jar, yet are things that we often see side by side on a regular basis, perhaps failing to register due to our culture of visual overload. Two worlds colliding; a matter of difference in taste, and inevitably social class. Whatever the situation, it’s important that the work is beguiling, intriguing and always retaining an element of beauty. I hope that the work is so vivid and curious, that the viewers’ emotional encounter is a seed planted in their memory and revisited over time. That it seeps into their subconscious, their attitudes toward it develop and change over time as they themselves and the world around them change, my work could absorb different meaning and potential.

Contortion 8, 2011 Book and wood Contortion 7, 2011 Book and wood

Blind Contortion, 2012 Blinds and wood

Geoexplosion I, 2012 Digital prints on acetates and lightbox Geoexplosion II, 2012 Digital prints on acetates and lightbox Geoexplosion III, 2012 Digital prints on acetates and lightbox

What Lies Beneath, 2012 Plaster, bitumen, expanding foam, fibre glass insulation and light Pixellated World, 2011 Series of 12 Plaster casts

Ying Yang Tape, 2012 Parcel Tape

Inorganic Organism, 2010 Plastic tubing and light

Orbs, 2011 12 Glass mounted 35mm slides Perfect Marriage, 2011 Digital video projection and plastic tubing

Frills & Shards, 2012 Ultra light breeze blocks, flourescent perspex, advertising swing board, royal icing sugar and black lights. Shards at Windgather, 2012 Digital print on acrylic

Cleggy Whippy, 2011 Plaster, silk emulsion, cement and sand block, corrugated steel and royal icing sugar

Cross Section, 2012 MDF

Conversation with Joe Doldon and Blank Media Collective curators, Rose Barraclough and Nathalie Boobis

Where did you study and how, if at all, did this have an impact on your practice as it is today? I decided to go about as far away from home as possible yet still on these shores. Falmouth was somewhere my brother had done his foundation 2 years before I ended up down there and I think it was the nature of the place and the vibe I got from the kind of people studying down there that enticed me. I can’t think of a more stunning part of the country and I’ve always been influenced heavily by spending time in nature, in the sea, interacting physically with the landscape. I’m heavily indebted to my tutor Rob Wood as well. He taught me so much about the process of making art in so few words. He was a man of purpose and action, much like myself. Sometimes I think people spend too much time talking and not enough time doing.

How did you come to work predominantly in three dimensions, and was this a conscious decision you made? I went down to Falmouth set on being a painter. I was convinced that was my calling but in the end I think my attention span was too short for it. I also found there was a limit to the language of paint that I didn’t find with sculpture. I realised when we did a canvas stretching workshop that I enjoyed making the object more than I did painting it. Someone put it well to me recently when they said; “You either paint on the cave wall or you build Stonehenge”. It’s a primal impulse. It wasn’t really conscious, it just happened. When I began picking up different materials I became fascinated by how they could be totally transformed. It’s that magic in art that really works for me, when you look at something and just go “Wha’!?” Objects and materials really seduce me, especially when there’s that initial feeling of not having a clue how it’s made or what it’s made from. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s a real ‘take your breath away’ sensation, and that’s what I look for in my work.

You previously exhibited a similar selection of work under the title ‘Relics of The Now’. A relic is generally understood to be a remainder from a previous history without a contemporary use and your choice of materials (bitumen, concrete, plastics, electric light) are all in current employment in the built environment around us. What are you physically and conceptually doing to these materials to render them as relics? As I mentioned earlier, I like to see things a) from quite a primal perspective, and b) in an art historical context. I was thinking about my works perhaps being monuments to our time somehow. I mean, they’re rendered from modern fabricated materials. I started looking at them in a museum context and thinking about how they might perhaps say something about our times, how people may perceive

them in say, 800 years. I think they’d probably confuse people in a sense because generally speaking ‘relics’ would have had some sort of function and application, whereas my work is of course purely sensational and contemplative.

Does the history of your materials affect your usage and treatment of them? When I begin working with materials I try to detach myself from their function in the world. It’s a distraction. I see them all on a plane, on a level playing field where the possibilities are open and limitless. I work purely impulsively, trusting my intuition entirely and following my nose.The conceptual element comes later, it’s a reflective process. It can often come in at different stages of the works progression and I may be coming to terms with why something is the way it is before its conclusion. In which case I may start to make more reasoned decisions about what else I may include in the work and the best way of presenting the final article.

You say you begin making work by selecting a material and then manipulating its possibilities but what is the process at play as to what material you begin working with? Is the decision conceptual or practical or both (or neither)? The decision is never conceptual to begin with. It’s always just a case of what I see lying around that I can see some mileage in. They’ve all come from the earth and have gone through some convoluted treatment to arrive at their functional state. I see my working process as an extension of this treatment whereby I’m somehow hinting at the material’s origins through its form and re-manipulation. To heighten its status to a one off art object that was once in a line of endless replicas. Sometimes I pick things up that don’t end up going anywhere but usually I’ll get something out of it! Recently with this tendency towards combining seemingly jarring materials I’ve tended to select more industrial and building materials.This is something to do with an interest in the built, fabricated world, spatially and materially. Also, much of what I was making before this were things that were often ephemeral or incredibly fragile and so I thought it might actually be nice to have some work with more permanence.

Has concept always been important in your work or has it evolved through your relationship with the materiality of making? It’s always been important. Thinking about what I do and why provides just as much fulfilment and satisfaction as the making process. I think the concept is less laboured now than it used to be. I’d always have to find a reason for doing something first, but now I let that flow and follow more naturally. Personally I tend to find that approach makes the work less literal as well. Striking that balance has always been crucial in my practise. I don’t like to alienate my viewer. At the same time I don’t want them to walk away from a work feeling like they’ve been given all the answers. I don’t like to think that there are any right or wrong answers with regards to my work.

Has your work always been concerned with physical production, craft and materials? I’ve always used a wide range of materials. I think that keeps me engaged, and hope that’s the same for the viewer too, always springing that element of surprise. I often return to certain materials further down the line. Conceptually though, no. I used to make work that had a more direct intent.

I was always hung up on the idea of a discord between humans and the natural world and trying to represent this in my work. Maybe that’s still vaguely apparent, but since, I feel my work has become more optimistic which I like. I didn’t like the idea of being a ‘prophet’ as such. To let my work speak more subtly and openly has become a greater intention.

The configuration of materials in your work is so completely unexpected that the resulting pieces are at sometimes surprising and humorous as well as beautiful (thinking specifically about ‘Cleggy Whippy’, 'What Lies Beneath' and ‘Frills and Shards’). Can you elaborate on what role humour plays in your working process and whether you think it contributes to the capacity your work has to transcend even the least obvious potentiality of the materials? This is something that has come about recently. I’ve become more preoccupied with juxtaposing materials. I think these three are quite probably the only works in the show of this ilk. Oh, and I’m flattered by the way that you think I’ve got a sense of humour! I never really saw it as humour in the work, more as wit. Maybe it is though. They’re still serious objects, but there is an apparent absurdity to them. With What Lies Beneath I became transfixed with this form (through using the royal icing sugar that features in the other two works you mentioned). I think because I saw it as a form that sat somewhere between being ‘organic’ and ‘man-made’. I thought the gloopy gloss of the bitumen would have a really nice relationship with it, and detract from any common associations surrounding it. Cleggy Whippy and Frills and Shards came from seeing these two different worlds (embodied in the opposing aesthetics) colliding. I became interested in how the icing sugar became a metaphor for trying to dress something up. The advertising swing board (in Frills and Shards) came in to play because where I lived in Marlborough last year, the high street was littered with them, all trying to bombard you with generic crap. I think because I’d made this beautiful one off object that I felt referenced a crystalline formation, something natural and semi-precious, something one off and of perceived value, it made sense that I brought these two things together. It’s a juxtaposition that jars, and I’m still at odds with it, but they’re such grating aesthetics I think it works! Cleggy Whippy was something I made shortly after returning from where I grew up, in Cleethorpes. (Cleggy is slang for Cleethorpes). I think it was something that filtered in subconsciously. I was really interested in this tension between a really industrial battered old sea front and a highly kitsch aesthetic with arcades, flashing lights everywhere and big plastic sculptures of ice creams! It was a kind of beauty in the place that I hadn’t really considered before.

I'm interested in the level of artistic control you have towards your finished products; the parcel tape piece is very chanced whereas your other works show high levels of deliberated workmanship. How do you view your sense of control, and respond to its release? I generally like to be in control of the outcome. Occasionally however, the materials and the manner in which they’re handled determine exactly how much control I have. Even with the parcel tape work, I know roughly what the outcome will be. I can always do a number of them and be selective about which one I decide to use. This is an example of a work that came out of a ‘happy accident’. Although the majority of the works do appear to come across as being very controlled I usually work in a manner that demands my undivided attention – a place where I’m so focused that it’s almost meditative, and I’ll literally be on the brink of chaos or disaster (or at least that’s how it feels!). Even though many of the works are meticulously produced, there’ll always be minor errors that creep in, but that’s the beauty of work produced by the human hand!

You take materials that are in commonplace use in utilitarian contexts and you employ them as constituents in non-functional art objects. We have already touched on the history of the materials you use. What is their future? Who knows? We’re consistently filling the world with more and more junk that we don’t necessarily need. As long as that continues I’ll probably keep making work from the detritus that’s produced. It’s a strange relationship I have with it though, because as I’ve already mentioned, I’m fascinated by the language and potential that these materials can take on. It does amaze me what we can make with a few simple elements and yet most people don’t often see it beyond its functional purpose.Well, maybe they might now… In terms of how they might exist in my practise in the future, that is again something I’m unsure of. That’s what keeps me driving forwards with my work, that uncertainty, not knowing what I may actually do. I consistently surprise myself.

present

Joe Doldon 16 November - 9 December 2012