Studio Day: Painting
The Painting Studio Day, led by students Rosa Allison and Çağla Ulusoy, was a chance for young people from Dunraven School and The Laurels to explore abstraction by taking an experimental approach to painting ‘in the expanded field’.
The workshop posed the questions: What abstract patterns are there in our everyday lives? How can these patterns of colour, texture and form be abstracted and translated into art?  How can abstract painting portray a feeling or make us remember a real time or place?Â
Rosa’s practice investigates effect in painting, the feelings that are produced by looking at and experiencing abstract painting, and her works often take the form of three-dimensional installations. ÇaÄŸla explores the relation between everyday objects imaged online and their abstraction, through physical processes of cutting, collaging and painting. Together they devised a series of activities and discussions that explored not only our own feelings towards abstraction but also a more unusual proposition: what do objects and pictures want from us?Â
In asking this question, the artists wondered how pattern, shape, colour and form in abstraction can produce meaningful social relations and critically reflexive thought. They invited the young people to experience a dynamic interaction with their work and potentially others, as a participant rather than a passive viewer.Â
In small teams, they constructed a large-scale collaborative installation, as painting ‘in the expanded field’ – incorporating found objects, manipulating materials and hanging, stretching, building and painting directly onto the items to create a three-dimensional painting that could be experienced in the round. They discussed the experience of making the installation and also how it might affect others who encounter it.
Later, drawing on examples from art history (such as Henri Matisse and Robert Rauschenberg), they wrote words to describe the installation and matched them to colours, textures and forms, which inspired collages using creative rules. For example, one student chose the word ‘party’ and visualised this using ‘neon’ colour, ‘flashy’ texture and ‘spikey’ form.
The day ended with a discussion about the collages produced and the value of abstraction – that we might express something which cannot be represented figuratively – and what contemporary painting might be. If expanded into installation and collage, painting, as a practice and a material object, might be an attitude, a feeling.