On Thursday 18th May and again on Sunday 21st May I went to see the Hockney Retrospective at Tate Britain. Plenty of hype had followed the exhibition celebrating almost 60 years of Hockney's work. It spanned his early work from his student days in London to his LA pieces, Yorkshire work across a wide range of mediums from paining, video, photography and late iPad works. The work had a profound affect on me (hence the second visit) and the breadth and scope invigorated me and my practice. Whilst not working primarily in the moving image medium of my practice I found many pieces of work inspired me conceptually, visually and creatively and will move my work forward.
There is far too much work within the exhibition to comment on hall of it on my blog so I will instead focus on a few of the key pieces, ideologies and mediums that inspired me. One of Hockney's recurring themes was that of a play within a play and challenging protocols of perspective OR highlight assumptions required for a viewer to read a picture creating works that are about making or looking at pictures. He is also very playful with character and narrative two themes which I am also preoccupied with and creating a story and often emotional ties within his pictures between characters. Lastly he has a sense of humour and playfulness in a lot of his works which in total echoes my interest in informing, educating and also importantly entertaining.
From the exhibition the rooms were curated as themes and bodies of or passages of his work over the last 6 decades. In the posts that follow I will deal with the styles, ideas, messages and techniques that have help influence my work in all of these areas.
What I learnt and will take forward.
- Having plenty to keep the viewer entertained and no one central focus. This is an area I am again starting to incorporate in my work and allowing the audience to read around the image (or video) in my case and to be led around the image through multiple images and subjects.
- Layering and constructed artificial composition really interests me and in my work the notion of a screen within a screen is an idea I want to experiment with.
- This use of multiple images and forced realities are themes that I want to explore further. In order to present the multifaceted sides to the characters personalities in my pieces using digital techniques but combining these with the moving image.
- The use of proxemics and profile staging position to alienate the viewer somewhat leaving the subject unaware of being observed and lost in their own thoughts. These are techniques I can employ in my own work.
- Consider a different approach to shooting a documentary echoing Hockney's portraits of couples together but alienated. The use of proxemics and staging position one character full front offering the viewer intimacy and inviting complicity with them. Then the second in profile making this subject more remote, unaware of being looked at and lost in their own thoughts. This could be re-created and applied to filming interviews with two characters in a manipulated frame sometimes both in the original frame sometimes a composite of two halves of the same frame shot at different times to create this isolation. they could talk about each other in the same frame aware that the other person it there but also independently to see how their revelations may differ.
- Experimenting and investigating fractured multiple images like Hockney's photography pieces using point of view with multiple images used to create multi faceted characters. I want to try this technique with multiple images of characters in some of my documentary work. Although movement can be used to do this in video/film work this can make the images merely seem cinematic. I want to try and show the multi-faceted nature of the characters appearing in the piece and a variation on this technique. this could be multiple screens, or elements within one screen.
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