Plan for Friday

Presentation this week:

• Slideshow of salient images
• Mock-up of wall with some kiwi images and colour with research
• Break down of wall size vs. images - will extra wall/partitions need to be included?  Mock-up of these
• Cabinetry ideas
• Typography ideas?
• Floor plan with ideas

Graphic design

Self Portraits

Architecture

Last week's meetings

Main points (to be expanded):

1. Graham Percy drew from life, despite his work's fantastical appearance.
2. Although drawing mainly for children, Percy worked from a modernist aesthetic, more evident in his earlier graphic design (a certainly a consideration for the exhibition design).
3. Percy employed a rich range of references (in works like Arthouse and Imagined Histories, as well as his children's illustrations).
4. Percy had a strong architectural awareness which can be identified throughout his work.
5. Self-portraits can be seen woven into many of Percy's works.
6. The kiwi series: likely to be a key feature and signature of the exhibition.

Provincialism

Just been posting another blog, talking about the "provincialism problem" facing artists working in New Zealand (an numerous other places).  An interesting subject, but I think I became sidetracked.

Graham Percy seemed to be quite comfortable dealing with notions of his own identity: his recent kiwi series examined and had fun with being "the New Zealand artist abroad." 

Arthouse

I'm about to send my copy of Graham Percy's Arthouse back to its owner, so I thought I'd write a quick piece about it.  It was published in 1994, and is based around Percy's design for a house for artists, with rooms and pieces of furniture dedicated to particular artists.  

Some of my favourites include:

• A guestroom for El Lissitsky
• A sewing room for Claus Oldenburg
• Doorway to study for Piero della Francesca
• Tableware for Kandinsky (silver and enamel)

As well as individual pages and spreads devoted to artists, Percy includes a floorplan in the book, as well as elevations showing the house's coastal location.  These are executed with a sense of real space, with details like stairs and doors.  

The back pages are an index of artists, with small bios and thumbnail reproductions (sketches of their works rather than photographs).

Gregory O'Brien on Arthouse:

"As well as being a marvelous person with whom to perambulate through a city, Graham Percy could also offer a similarly insightful tour of unreal spaces.  His most elaborate publication was Arthouse, which appeared from Chronicle Books, San Francisco, in 1994.  In this imaginary schema - part Escher, part Borges - he proposed an imaginary dwelling in which a selection of artists from the Western cannon have each contributed a room.  Effortlessly pastiching  their styles, Percy offers a mailbox wrapped by Christo, a Hieronymous Bosch kitchen, a Kurt Schwitters toaster and an attic derived from Casper David Friedrich and Anselm Kiefer.  Arthouse also presents a kind of self-portrait of the artist, the rooms in the book echoing the influences in his artistic consciousness."

The inclusion and detail of floorplans certainly illustrate Percy's architectural awareness, something that can be understood as a constant theme in his work.  

The book has an obvious respect and acknowledgment of the artists included, while remaining irreverent and witty.  

Percy uses a wide range of media, varying this from spread to spread, and creating a diverse range of visual styles.  Unification is created with Percy's sketchy handwritten captions (although there are a few exceptions to this too).  Media includes: pencil, coloured pencil, pastel, ink and wash, collage, crayon.  The most familiar look in coloured pencil, which shares the rounded forms of many of Percy's children's illustrations.

Most illustrations feature a hand-drawn boarder.  This is a feature of many of Percy's works for the exhibition.  Often ink or colour travel over this edge, which is always slightly irregular.   This is a key consideration in the framing of the works, as this edge should not be masked out.

11.05.2010

1. Graham Percy's house was an assemblage of objects.  Although his art is full of fantasy, Percy drew almost exclusively from life, making collages in his head which he translated to paper.  One example shows a fantastical hot-air balloon out of a window in Crear - the window frame shows high detail and features a realistic tap faucet in the frame.  Several of his works reveal the same toy being illustrated again and again, placed within new settings.  The original items can be found throughout his house, and images and films from his house are to feature in the exhibition as part of Percy's conversation with his work.
2. Also documenting Percy's rich references which colour his work, Greg O'Brien intends to include a full list of the books in Percy's house in his biography.  These will be the only works he includes as reference material for the book.
3. Graham Percy was colour-blind.  This was quite a secret during his life, and must have been a constant struggle.  He arranged his studio in such a way that his pencils and inks were labeled according to colour, and he largely used colour in a studied way.  This may explain why so much of the work he did for himself was in black and white.

11.05.2010

What I'm thinking about IV

I know it seems arbitrary that this should start with part four, but this shall be explained later (I hope).

1. Artist's studios. They feature on Julian Dashper's list of favourite things, and quite possibly mine. What was Graham Percy's studio like? Maybe a question for Greg O'Brien, Wystan Curnow etc. (I meet with Greg next week and will be arranging a meeting with Wystan too.) What about a curator's "studio"? How have studio spaces been exhibited, and how does an artist's studio relate to his or her practice? A 2009 exhibition explored this. The exhibition guide is interesting reading on the subject.
2. My presentation next week. How can I present my work in such a way that it explains my project and my progress in a valid way? I'm hoping to make it a useful exercise, and gain some good peer feedback.
3. The Percy works at Gus Fisher. I think I need to arrange a time to revisit the works and maybe gather some better quality images.
4. How to chronicle these lists. I've found this to be a more natural record of progress than keeping a journal/log. I completely worked myself into a corner with my McCahon blog and the medium feels tired to me, or limited at least. The good side of an online record is that it is an easy way to keep text, images, links and photos in one place. The down side is that I think the format suggests a finished product of some kind, with each post being "published," whereas what is really happening is a lot more immediate and evolving. I might find that a mixture of media is the best way to record the variety of goings-on. In the meantime I will maintain the blog - even though it feels horribly like I'm talking to myself!
5. Someone asked me today why I want to be a curator - "is it because you really love art?" she offered. I was completely clueless. I wonder how often artists are asked this - "why do you want to be an artist?" I assume it's fairly frequently. I wonder what the qualifying question would be - "is it because you're really good at art?" or something equally asinine. The interesting thing for me is that I was asked this by an artist.
6. The Queensland Art Gallery's Unnerved New Zealand Project. How dark is New Zealand art really? Where does Graham Percy fit within this archetype?
7. Off to Raglan tonight for fun.

Graham Percy (and me) Part II

Here are some of the things I am thinking:

1. Peter Campbell suggests that the roots of Graham Percy’s style can be seen in the work of Heath Robinson. Robinson was an English cartoonist and illustrator working in the first half of the 20^th century, and according to Wikipedia, “he is best known for drawings of eccentric machines and "Heath Robinson" has entered the language as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contraption.” Apparently, “Graham Percy had the same predilection for neat, even lines, well worked out architectural detail and chubby people.” (Campbell)
   
2. Campbell describes some of Percy’s best work as his animal drawings, saying that Percy was “happiest” with these: “elephants in particular suited the three-dimensional solidity he gave his characters.”
   
3. Imagined Histories, like many of the larger works in the Gus Fisher vault, are in black and white. Peter Campbell suggests Percy “wanted to get the sweetness of children’s book illustration out of his mouth for a while.” Some of the large works at Gus Fisher, in particular a series called the Alchemical Allotment, felt quite dark. Campbell: “the price for being willing and able to please may have been to cut off a potential creative stream.”
   
4. Bookman Beattie’s blog mentions that Percy had been working on a book with Hamish Keith (at the time of Percy’s death this was still in development stages). It was called Stories of the Inflatable Boy and several of the illustrations are to feature in the exhibition. I have seen them. O’Brien describes them as “evok[ing] darker, far more traumatic aspects of childhood.” Example: The drummer boy notices a Zeppelin approaching in the Night Sky. The title conveys a fear, as does the darkness of the illustration.
   
5. Percy’s MA at the Royal College included a thesis on the relationship between typography and food. I think this is great. Included in the thesis is criticism for the typeface used on Love Hearts candy – he suggests they demanded “a much more vigorous or whimsical letter form that the discreet sans serif.” This is from O’Brien’s chapter.
   
6. I like the parallel O’Brien draws between the Shakespearean dreams of Graham’s birthplace, Stratford, and Kiwi Ophelia illustration. O’Brien describes the Kiwi series as being “a part of a marvellously inventive, anarchic commentary on the national psyche.”
   
7. A favourite work: The young Modigliani, having brought his very first art book. I like the look on Modigliani’s face, and the French poster design. Typical of Percy’s titles for his works.
   
8. Notable works (children’s book projects): ‘Sam Pig’ stories by Alison Uttley, Gerald Durrell’s The Fantastic Flying Journey and a 1991 edition of The Wind in the Willows.
9. O’Brien: Percy’s “ongoing conversation with childhood.”
10. Although he began as a painter, Percy switched to design during his time at Elam. This “may well have been the result of a burgeoning interest in typography, which had been nurtured by the handpainter Bob Lowry back in Auckland." Bob Lowry was Auckland's best-known printer from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.
    
11. Hugo the Hippo was a smash hit in Russia but never released in North America. It now has cult status (thanks, youtube).
    
12. Despite his work on Hugo and experimentation with new technologies, “working with pencil or pen on paper remained at the centre of Graham’s practice.” Percy described his satisfaction with drawing as a medium (as being different from painting, for example), and states “I find a strong link between drawing and storytelling.” (O’Brien)
13. O’Brien’s article for Art New Zealand explores a theme of negotiating space in Percy’s work. As a personal friend, O’Brien describes Percy as an excellent tour guide, and says, “Graham Percy could offer a similarly insightful tour of unreal spaces.” O’Brien cites Arthouse as an example of this, conveying “Graham’s interest in imaginary as well as real structures.”
14. With its rich range of references, Arthouse seems to describe Percy’s inspirations and his ideas about his own practice. O’Brien describes it as “a kind of self-portrait of the artist, the room in the book echoing the influences in his artistic consciousness.”
    
15. I was immediately drawn to Percy’s titles for his works. The first one I saw in my diggings at Gus Fisher (at this stage, quite ignorant about Graham Percy’s work) was Franz Schubert emerges from a stream near to Crear with a trout he has caught. This, along with the five watching rabbits, has given him the idea for a quintet (1819). The relationship between image and text here is fascinating: you almost don’t need to view the work to understand its essence. There are many others as eloquently named.
    
16. Another book in the pipeline at the time of his death seems to have been the one to include all the Kiwi images. I think this series may have the widest appeal of Percy’s ‘adult’ illustrations, especially in terms of this exhibition. They are both immediately amusing and interesting, while making potentially complex statements about New Zealand, art, and our national identity.
    
17. It interests me that Percy should be occupied with thoughts of New Zealand almost 40 years after he departed for London. It is clear that he still considered himself to be a New Zealand artist. See The New Zealand Artist Abroad.
    
18. Due to his being based in Great Britain since the 1960s, the early part of Percy’s career seems to be the most recognised here: largely due to recent publications A Nest of Singing Birds; 100 years of the school journal by Greg O’Brien and Cover Up – The art of the New Zealand book cover by Hamish Thompson. O’Brien: “These recent books offer, I believe, a compelling case for Graham Percy and his near contemporary Jill McDonald (1927-82) as representing a high point in the history of book illustration in this country.”
    
19. About a wonderful quote from Wynstan Curnow: "Graham Percy was a
 remarkable New Zealander whose sense of the visual while largely
 channelled into his long and internationally successful career as an 
illustrator of children's books was all encompassing and deeply 
knowledgeable. This is evident enough in his own art projects, but it 
informs everything he did. Percy possessed a native humanism, which he
 laced with humour. The freshness of feeling with which he imbued 
the conventions he worked with and the art that he made, relied on an
 original and highly nuanced sense of comedy which ranged from the
 gentle and subtly understated to the satirical and the wickedly witty."

Graham Percy (and me)

Here’s what I’ve been looking at:

1. A draft chapter – “A kiwi floating down a dark river” - from Greg O’Brien’s book The BookIllustrator/Artist, Graham Percy (1938 – 2008)
   
2. Greg O’Brien’s article for Art New Zealand “A Tour Guide of Real and Imagined Places”
   
3. Graham Percy’s obituary in The Independent by Peter Cambell
   
4. A list of works (selected by Greg O’Brien) for the exhibition “The imaginative life and times of Graham Percy”
   
5. Original illustrations by Graham Percy, rolled up and stored in the Gus Fisher Gallery
   
6. Illustrations by Graham Percy in his adult picture books Arthouse and Imagined Histories
   
7. Text from the exhibition’s details on exhibitionservices.co.nz
   
8. Graham Percy’s website graham.and.martinpercy.com
   
9. Some of Graham Percy’s children’s picture books (the ones I could fine at the Epsom Library) - When Dad Fills in the Garden Pond, 36 Strange Little Animals Waiting to Eat, Another Custard Pie
   
10. Some of Greg O’Brien’s art books for young people – Welcome to the South Seas: Contemporary New Zealand Art for Young People and Back and Beyond: New Zealand Painting for the Young and Curious
    
11. Another art book for children (by Brad Irwin) - Let’s Get Art: Children look at contemporary New Zealand art
    
12. Various texts about children’s book design – for example Artist to Artist: 23 Major Illustrators Talk to Children about Their Art, Children’s Book Covers: Great Book Jackets and Cover Design, A History of Children’s Book Illustration
    
13. Children’s exhibition design, especially “Dialogues with places,” a 2008 exhibition at the Loris Malaguzzi International Centre
    
14. The design document for Te Papa’s 2008 Rita Angus exhibition
    

As this is a lot to look at at once, firstly I would like to deal with items 1 through 9.

Some Percy art

Some Imagined Histories:

From Arthouse:  


Some children's book illustrations:

Considerations from meeting 04.05.2010

• Who is to make decisions regarding groupings of works, framing etc?  What other decisions may effect the design of this exhibition?
  
• How can I track my own contributions to this project (it being somewhat collaborative)?
• How should I consider assessment criteria when approaching this project?
• How do I intend to present this work (other than the production of the main document)?  How do I intent to present my research/documentation?  Is there a more interesting/relevant way to present the main document?

The next goal I am working towards is the production of a essay/discussion of Graham Percy's work.  As well as a critical study of his work, I would like to feature my own responses to his art.  My deadline for this document is Monday 10.05.2011.

The other checkpoint I am working towards at this stage is a presentation of my work to a crit group next Friday (15.05.2011).  I need to think of ways to present my work visually.

Some links

Graham Percy's website here.  The exhibition's website here.

Hugo the Hippo

A song from Graham Percy's animated film.

Questions and notes to self

• How are children's book illustrations important as art?
  
• How should we talk to children about art?  (Greg O'Brien has written several books for children about art)
  
• Bruno Bettelheim - author of a seminal text on the importance of fairy tales
  
• How has the art of other children's illustrators been exhibited in the past? (Quentin Blake "Children's Laureate," Eric Carle)
  
• Other illustrators with clear links to children (Tim Burton)
  
• History of children's book illustration

The prototype

The concept development document I intend to produce as part of this project is a model used by Te Papa. It includes the details outlined in the previous post. Here are some images from the prototype I am working from, for a 2008 exhibition Rita Angus Life & Vision.

It's not the most attractive document, and quite dense - it's not immediately obvious what it represents.