AA2A Scheme:
Jason Hirons begin by introducing the AA2A scheme, which has been running from 2004/2005 nationally. It is aimed for artist mid career that are out of education and have been for at least a year. Plymouth college of art choose 4 artists a year, the artists are allowed to use the facilities, studios, equipment etc. The scheme is run by 28 college’s and universities over England, this opportunity allows artist to use equipment they wouldn’t normally have available to them, furthermore helping them to fund their practice. It is also beneficial to the institution as the artists are encouraged to interact with the students allowing the chance to share and widen each-other’s knowledge bank and networks.
Photograph of Tony Plant,
Available at:
Tony Plant’s DAILY DIGITAL SKETCHBOOK
Tony Plant is one for the four selected artists for Plymouth College of Art’s AA2A Scheme, he is an artists who predominantly works with landscapes. He began by talking about how over the last few years things have changed; due to internet. This is opening up a world of opportunities, brought in with news, from the outside (especially for him.) Increasingly opportunities are presenting themselves. He uses the AA2A scheme as an example stating that it helps him with the making of large contemporary work. As a lot of him time is spent on proposing the work that will not effect the environment.
Plant lives in Newquay, he speaks about the process of figuring out what to say; when to say it and how to say it. Explaining it’s increasingly necessary to talk-about yourself, on a website, put yourself online, with genuine information. He then began to talk again about his work. After speaking about how often he gets asked the question ‘What does it feel like to see your work get washed away?’ In reply to this question he speaks about how the way he looks at landscape is different to the majority of people, he looks interactively; a place to be, to move to, to travel across to.
Alot of his influences came from him being a surfer from a very young age, he shows an example of a 960low, he says how it is a spectacular thing to watch, he would get excited about this. You could use the maps to determine where he is and what he would be doing in 3-4 days time. Similarily to this he shows a satellite image of iceland, the shape isn’t confined to borders, it goes where it wants, you have to work accordingly and be accepting. He takes this approach within his work.
His drawing’s depend on the specific beach, he uses the example of a beach he has wanted to draw for years, with a 0.3m tide, a 12 second wave period, 14ft well. The bank this specific beach has been formed by the wave action, Plant works with this in mind, the understanding is the piece will be gone before he finishes; It wont last, it’s ever changing alike the landscape.
A photograph of Sand Art, Tony Plant
Available at:
prafulla.net
He fills the space, working with the time between a low tide, looking at filling space successfully, balance of intention, area’s and light. This why he uses curves at this point when it becomes an image. He begins by working out the tide, with no intention of one piece of work, he makes something thats a response to the place he is working in, he will stay for hours sometimes days to work out where the camera needs to be etc. In some ways he curates the space, working out where things are and what needs to be realised, i.e rocks, cliff space etc. he creates his drawings by dragging a rake, this way he is always moving into new space. It’s not as symmetrical as you think they are, your perceptions do this. He doesn’t mark them out anymore, its not about that, he wants to see what it looks like if he does make it, always asking himself what happens if?
He shows his work through time lapses, due to the variety of photographs from his pieces. Taking one shot every two sections, at 25 frames a second. People engage with this a lot, his piece TURN was Short listed for London Surf Film Festival 2012 shown at Riverside Studios London and was also shown in the Cornwall Film Festival in 2012.
His interest in art began when he studied Scientific integral graphics, at a school in St Austel, he remembers visiting the gallery downstairs when Richard long had an exhibition on and he ‘just got it.’ He then travelled and got involved with some art colleges. He came back and worked out he was interested in Fine art, he went to Goldsmiths, spoke to the dean, to which he was given the advice you know what you got to do but you have no cash. Looking back, the reason he does landscape non precious work is because he doesn’t like the prescriptive need for work to be approved by people, he likes to make work that will disappear.
He mentions Kickstarter, a crowd funder for creative projects; a social platform. Through Kickstarter he raised the money to but a remote control helicopter and a Go Pro, so that he was more able to document his pieces, due to the increasing interest in his photographs taken with Height, these have ended up around the world with people showing vast interest.
He spoke about how he is currently experimenting with seeing through the absences of things, he explained that he went to a beach to work on a light drawing and could hear noises, he was surprised he could be so scared in a place he knew so well. He wants to explore this further.
Overall, the lecture was very genuine, but was quite hard to follow as it wasn’t very organised, not knowing where photo’s were of pieces he was referencing, and often repeating himself. Plant made point of talking about how all he wants to do is make work, to change what people see. Yet he find it difficult to time manage as a short film of 3-4mins in length, takes a lot of time to put together from the shots, so a lot of his time is committed to the processing of the work. A large impact on his life stems from his wife getting breast cancer 7 years ago, and he continued making work, it allowed him to think and re-asses what he was doing and why. He mentioned how their was no guilt involved in what he does, a good day is to come back with nothing to show for it; as the work goes out beyond himself. Personally I feel as if with the sand piece’s it is hard for them to not look repetitive , as he gets used to the same routine and when you move down onto the beach the space is different, so previous planning is hard to contain. Yet I enjoy the fact he changes where he does these piece’s and when he mentioned he wanted to try some more in there environments with snow or liquidated cow manure. I feel as if his work reflects an attempt to take away the concentration from technology and allow people to realise their faded interest in whats happening around him.
Bibliography:
Aa2a.org. 2013. AA2A – Artists Access to Art Colleges – Home. [online
] Available at: http://www.aa2a.org/ [Accessed: 20 Nov 2013].
Canvases, G. 2013. Prafulla.net – Art – Geometric Sand Drawings by Environmental Artist Tony Plant at the Beaches of England as Canvases. [online] Available at: http://prafulla.net/graphics/art-graphics/sand-art-by-environmental-artist-tony-plant-at-the-beaches-of-england-as-canvases/ [Accessed: 20 Nov 2013].
Gopro.com. 2013. GoPro | World’s most Versatile Camera | HERO3+ Black Edition. [online] Available at: http://gopro.com/ [Accessed: 20 Nov 2013].
Kickstarter.com. 2013. What is Kickstarter — Kickstarter. [online] Available at: http://www.kickstarter.com/hello?ref=nav [Accessed: 20 Nov 2013].
Tonyplant.co.uk. 2013. Tony Plant – Artist – Water & Paint. [online] Available at: http://www.tonyplant.co.uk/ [Accessed: 20 Nov 2013].
Vimeo.com. 2013. Tony Plant on Vimeo. [online] Available at: http://vimeo.com/channels/tonyplant [Accessed: 20 Nov 2013].
Artist As Curator 