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Exhibition, Mr T instruction

Tom Pope Exhibition

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On Friday 25th September our group went down to the old police station in town to see Tom’s exhibition. This was interesting to go and see as we have worked with him on a workshop earlier in the year as well as going to France for the day with him and the Archisle people to explore performance photography. Here we were able to express ourselves in the public eye, this was fun and we got to see what it was like to be a performance photographer like Tom Pope. Most of Pope’s work is based on weak anarchy that he has already explored, as seen on his blog. Pope wants to challenge the way people think and to challenge authority by doing things that aren’t necessarily illegal but they are deemed as unacceptable. I think that this is a vey interesting concept and think that Pope can work with so much for this too.

Pope’s Weak Anarchy: http://www.tompope.co.uk/weakanarchy.html

Pope’s Archive Exhibition: http://www.tompope.co.uk/iamnottompopeyouarealltompope.html

Tom took us through his exhibition explaining the meaning behind a lot of his work. Most of his work was inspired by John Baldessari as well as using his film camera for his photographs. The best part of the exhibition for me was the room filled with cutout faces of people from the archive. I found this really interesting to go around and look at all of the different people that lived in Jersey at some point throughout history. I think that this was a really great idea as well as Pope taking these cutouts around with him and randomly asking people that he met to wear one so he could make a photograph of them. I thought this was a really great way to spread the archive and get it out and around to the people in Jersey.

John Baldessari

Baldessari Portfolio:  http://www.moma.org/collection/artists/304

Pope was inspired by Baldessari’s work, including his work on throwing a ball up in the air editing it together to make three balls inlined with one another up in the air. This is where Pope did a small workshop with us when we tried to throw oranges at one another and catch it while making a photograph. I think that this was a unique way to respond to Baldessari’s work. In Baldessari’s image it looks as if he was throwing oranges which is where I think Pope gained inspiration for his mini workshop challenge. This was fun and a unique way to make photographs which allowed us to broaden our minds when it came to performance photography as well as just photography in general.

John Baldessari work

Another aspect of Baldessari’s work that has inspired Pope was the specific use of the colour blue. This makes his images stand out and capture the spectators attention straight away as the colour blue is very inviting. Pope applied this to his exhibition using it as a background for the images that were done in threes [like Baldessari’s image of the balls in the sky] and he dropped them onto the table. They fell in their position by chance and Pope changed this everyday for his exhibition so that they would constantly be changing. I found this interesting and fun to look and and try to spot the copies of each photograph from the archive. These images were taken from the archive again to bring it out from where it is hidden, into the public eye and so that as many people as possible are able to see these images.

One particular image that I really liked was titled, Jeffery’s Leap. Here Pope went to a cliff edge, with a wooden board and threw it into the ocean while someone else made the image. Pope went out to the bottom and got the board back. He then printed out the image 12 times to go along with the film camera that he has, Hasselbald, that has 12 exposes. This was interesting as Pope is using old film cameras instead of modern digital ones, meaning that the one photo that is taken at the time is the only one and it has to work straight away because film is very expensive to buy nowadays. Now Pope printed it out 12 times, he drilled a hole and added a bit of string to the board so that he could retrieve it easily when throwing it in. He added one image at a time and screwed it down then throwing it off the cliff and into the ocean. Each time he added another of the same image until all 12 had hit the water. Whatever had happened to them while hitting off rocks and being thrashed about in the ocean was how it was going to look and end up. This was all by chance and whatever the turn out was, was what Pope was going to add to his exhibition. I really liked this part of the exhibition as it was interesting to hear the story behind it as well as it looking really great and standing out almost like it was on a canvas, compared to the rest of the images that were all in orange frames.

 

Experimentation, Mr T instruction, Research

St Malo Day: Photographs

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Weak Anarchy

For the St Malo day I worked with Tania Ferreira and together we decided to work with the idea of Tom Pope’s Weak Anarchy set of images. I really like the idea of challenging what we as a society see as right. Weak Anarchy isn’t the idea of doing something against the law but instead a movement that challenges the way people think. It isn’t necessarily against the law but it also isn’t see as very good in the public eye. I want to challenge the way the public think and see if spectators will actually interact in the performance.
http://www.tompope.co.uk/weakanarchy.html

In St Malo we went round in groups of about 10 people where we could split off into our little creative groups. There were three different locations with three different teachers; McKinley, Toft and Pope.  Our first group was with Mr Toft and we headed around near and on the beach. Some photographs below are just images of documentation of where we went.

For the next hour we went up to the wall in St Malo and tried to get inspired. This for me was the most challenging part of the trip as there weren’t many objects we could take and create something different and unique with. The whole performance was a lot harder to do and create on this location. Here we were working with Mr McKinley. I managed to reflect a lot more on the movement behind performance photography and the theory of it in this hour rather than producing something great as a practical. Here are some photos of the journey on the wall [not performance pieces].

The third and final location we went to was around the streets of St Malo. Here we worked with Tom Pope which was interesting to see him as a photographer exploring the streets. This was my favorite shoot as we did work as a collective large group. All of these photographs are documents of our surroundings and where we went on the day. I am going to be making a short video of the performances which Tania and I did as well as some other performances which we watched throughout the day.

Analysis, Mr T instruction

Tom Pope 2015 Photographer in Residence

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Tom Pope is a British photographer born in 1986. He lives and works in London. Pope is the 2015 Photographer in Residence at the Jersey Photo Archives. Last Tuesday we worked with Pope alongside the Jersey Archisle where we did a few workshops to develop our understanding of Performance Photography. Pope is a performance photographer who usually goes on impulse and finds objects when he goes to where he is going to perform.
Pope’s performances are all recorded where he will find an image within each film. Often Pope’s spectators are those who happen to be on the scene at the time as he doesn’t pre-plan or tell anyone where he is going to be in a place.

http://www.tompope.co.uk

So It Goes Project:
http://www.tompope.co.uk/soitgoes.html

So It Goes project interview:

The So It Goes project is filled with many different concepts that Pope has managed to create and are displayed on his blog which is linked above. The story of the Grandfather clock has a deeper meaning of living a life without time, which explains destroying the clock and carrying it around in a hearse. I like the idea of this project as in many ways people of our generation would be lost without time. They wouldn’t be able to do the usual things that we are expected to do, such as getting to work and school on time. What if time didn’t exist? What if we didn’t have to live in a  world were time was the most important aspect and that we wouldn’t have to worry constantly about not having enough of it.

Another great project of Pope’s is the Fountain Bike. Here Pope made a bike with a mannequin hand holding up a hose pipe which was filtered from the rain water at the side of a road in the UK. Here Pope simply cycled on the spot in the rain and whoever was walking past was his audience and spectators.
tompopeI like the vibrant colour of his yellow rain coat and the bright colours on the bike which make it stand out, as well as the obvious that water is shooting off the front of the bike through a hose pipe which is being held up by a mannequin hand and the water being produced from the rain water on the side of a road. This film still show many spectators of Pope’s performance. The first is the woman walking past on the street, moving to the side to avoid getting more wet from the water coming off the bike. The other spectators are the children on the bus who are looks at Pope in an entertained/confused way. I like that Pope will just go out and create something completely random to make an impact and to perform for the people who happen to be there at that time.

On Wednesday 17th the photography group are going to St Malo for the day along with Tom Pope and the Archisle people to show our skills in the art of performance photography. I am excited to see how this turns out and if we manage to come up with visually interesting pieces.