The Bandwagon

2 heads 1 mouth

2011-03-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

Alright ladies, so recently I've been working on some conceptual rubbish again, which obviously means, steer clear of the blog as I don't have the time or the patience in order to try an explain what Im trying to do in an almost readable fashion without sounding like a patronizing bellend, or at least more than I am normally.

As a result of this, I have some other stuff to show you. Because first year sculpture is full of incompetent inconsiderate pretentious fucks with made up nicknames like "Jeffro" (see what I did there?), we, instead of having a 5 week project, are having 5 single week projects of learning how to use materials. This week we hammered clay and cardboard, in a construction manor just to get used to making models for sculptures in the future.

this is the cardboard head I made, I wanted a big greek theatre head, just for a mess about and to see what the material was capable of. surprisingly fun and useful. I didn't want to finish the other side as I suck arse at making stuff look like I want, so no way would the second side look like the first, and I know it looks like craig david off bo salecta. shite.

I forgot how absolutely intense clay was before this, and I will work with it again in the future. It looks like this because, I was ill the day we were supposed to do this, so i came in another day to do it. I started making a rough shape and figured when other people came in I would modal it on them, yet no one came... for ever, so I got bored and thought fuck it and made a dope nose. This meant i stopped really caring about realism. I figured it would be completely original and reflect my total disregard for the rules and the history, show im cutting edge and renegade... Yet it looks like a shite 4000 year old african sculpture blanched of colour. fuck. back to the drawing board.

-Jeffro

Research

2011-03-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

For the next three weeks at college, we have a project strictly on research. This doesn't mean however that the next three weeks will be spent reading books and writing notes, oh no. That may be research as you know it, yet in the mind of a dyslexic artiste, research is making slightly smaller objects, drawing slightly smaller drawings and ignoring the justification completely.

This is a solid opportunity to do things for a laugh and not be arsed. I based my research on 'Materials'. We could base the research on anything we wanted, leaving the project almost retardedly open, I chose materials to keep it that open, as anything I make I can justify as being inherently reliant on its materials. I would argue that everything is inherently reliant on its materials, ie a building needs to be made of metal and bricks instead or bread and paper, and using this argument I can spend the next three weeks fucking about.

What I have been working on today, is playing with matches in a domino effect.

The videos aren't as good as you may hope as matches aren't as predictable or as quick as dominoes.

-Jeffro

Tomfoolery

2011-02-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

Me and Mr Winslow today carried on our extensive collaborative research into the mystical dimension of political art. By now we seem to have lost all coherence and relevance towards politics in anyway and are just doing stuff that makes us laugh a little bit inside.

Sadly, I have learned over time, anything that John and I laugh at, normally isn't funny and normally doesn't provoke a response from anyone. There are 10 steel Swans/Geese next to the canal. The original plan was to put them in suits and pop party hats on them all. This created a number of original problems, first of all, each party hat we found was 30p each. I doubt you reading this are as good at maths as I am, but let me break this down for you.

1 x hat = £0.30

10 x hat = £3.00

£3.00 is quite frankly out of order, and thats not even taking into account the suits. 10 balloons however was about £1.20 so that was much more sympathetic to our needs.

After this we discussed the social and moral implications of catching real ducks and making them blow up balloons. Being veggies one would think we would totally oppose this, however we felt that the statement made by a bunch of ducks with balloons on totally justified the sacrifice of said few ducks. This is our duck trap.

(its not really a trap, just imagine a duck trying to jump though)

-Jeffro

Political Art

2011-02-18T12:57:00.000-08:00

After a while of wondering, and a short time further of slagging off Intermedia art at ECA, me and my good pal John Winslow ended up doing it for two weeks. From what I gathered, it would involve more sitting round "thinking" yet what I have discovered as it involves a lot of visits to farm foods, and even more trips back and forth to a dingy canal.

Anyway, me and John are both vegetarians, and all stereotypes oblige. We love freeing stuff that isn't free, and telling you off for not freeing stuff, or not caring about stuff. Walking along the canal, we joked about drowning giraffes and other large animals so that parts of them would poke out (we are allowed to do this, if you eat meat you are not. fact.), we were told however that no littering was allowed which obviously meant a fuck off massive animal wouldn't be received to kindly by the council. This tickled our interest in the most useless of all art sorts, the fantastic and ever pointless political standpoint.

We love liberation, and we hope this video inspires you to free something from corrupt tyrants near you.

LINkYLINKYLINK

Pouring paint on things is cool

2011-02-08T12:39:00.000-08:00

Part two of the sculpture Im currently wasting my time over involved pouring paint over the stack of stuff I had conveniently and previously stacked. If anyone read the last post, they will be aware that I thought I may ruin it at this point, however I think it has worked out. Its drying overnight in the studios as I type, and if anyone of you knocks it over I will go akka.

Anyway, Im using the wifes laptop and her music selection is poor at best, youtube will inevitably remove the sound due to me not giving a fuck about copyright laws and such, however if you see it with the music let it distract you from the slightly monotonous visuals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTcPyrPpu_M

Wham bam.

-Jeffro

i like things a lot

2011-02-04T16:20:00.000-08:00

I've just got back to college after the christmas break, I obviously mean I've been here for a few weeks, however in relation to, lets say how old my nan is, its very recent. Anyway, I went to a badical lecture the other day that talked about formalism, and seeing as I just found out I'm dyslexic, and thus stimulated by visuals, I felt it time to embrace my visual stimulus and metaphorically hump the formal aspect of art with a passion, leaving the long winded thoughts and writing part to others, others that can spell words of 4 or more syllables.

TO THE POINT, I wanted to make something minimal and stack it, and seeing as my attention span is overtly short, I immediately thought of jenga and stuck with it. I made best friends with the chap in the woodwork shop and asked him to cut about 13m of wood into 13.5cm long strips in order to make my long jenga sculpture. Im sure he loves me, and I hope I've made him appreciate the stagnance and monotonous nature of life, so I'm sure I've enriched him.

Next week the idea is to grab a lovely tin of red dulux paint, pour it over my jenga tower, then build it upside down, the reason for this is to talk explicitly about the nature of building, the nature of stacking and the nature of materials at hand. At least, thats the justification going into my crit, really it's just because it will look like the paint has poured upwards, and I'll be able to laugh because gravity doesn't work like that and if it did, we'd all be dead HA HA HA HA HA. satire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5xvnPbig-A

theres a link to the video of me making my sculpture in which you can see my arse due to my scandalous shirt. no credit is given to Nina Sannes for this.

I'll post up the pictures when i've inevitably ruined it with paint.

-Jeffro

Shake wiggle wiggle

2010-12-22T15:47:00.001-08:00

It's been a long time since i've posted and thats because I really have done nothing at university I am particularly proud of, that is apart from what i am about to post, obviously, which incidentally is intense so hold on tight.

I just specialized in sculpture, which I've been told is the percussion of the art world, slow steady and I guess a bit bland, I like making stuff, I like stuff, i presume stuff likes me if the world works like that.

This project was about navigation, which made me think of Richard Long who i rekon is a serious contender for most boring man in existence, go have a quick google, he stacks rocks and walks in circles and stuff. fun man. I really wanted to dig a big square out of the medows, I was told not to do this and to dig in other stuff, and as a 19 year old boy with the mind of a 4 year old, i didn't think very hard and instantly went to toast.

I feel cutting stuff out is important, but carefully placing the remnants is also important right? and yes i have been trying this with all sorts of food, and soup is in the pipelines, i've nearly cracked it. promise.

Digging holes is good.

yeah, pissing about in the snow and digging holes counts as art. question it? bring it up with donald Judd, however i will warn you, he is stubborn.

That above was my final piece, because of the snow i got to go home and leave it in college for some one else to clean up YEAAAAH. im the bad lad of the sculpture world. anyway, i have an unnatural obsession with boarders and boundaries at the moment, and i was thinking deeply about the concept of space and how we perceive it. this is obvious from a pile of sawdust on a desk, right?

I've got some nicer photos i'll sort out at a later date.

-Jeffro

First year work

2010-10-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

Today we all had to set up our work for the little show in the sculpture court for tomorrow. As i expected, some work is fucking cool, the majority is shit, and some are just plain grim. I walked around it with my good pal john, we are both safe in the knowledge we have done the most minimal (and probably most annoying) pieces. but its always good to bitch at and about so here are some notable mentions that i figured are worth some attention.

First up is what looks like a dress made out of bacon with a pigs head on. this smells sooo bad right now, but is a fucking pigs head on a fucking manikin!!! dope.

some blocks, but the mirror makes it for sure.

i hope to god this is intentionally placed above this headless sculpture and not just there because it was the only free space. IF not, its wank. fact.

shamlessly ripping off jeff koons? always kool.

a 7 foot tall penguin being humped. amazing.

im not normally impressed by technical drawing skill, this seriously blew me away though.

i know what you are thinking, but right a girl painted these with blood.. she has only managed to do two in a month, i'll leave the rest to you to figure out. seriously grim for sure.

being a student and a vegetarian eggs are my diet and the greatest invention of all time, thus this is amazing, if not only for the chance of one of them falling and smashing all over some toffs foot.

no idea what this is about, or if it is finished, but you have to say, that chest of draws is fucking lovely.

this is a bamboo cage with mirrors on each side, for some one as good looking as me, this is heaven.

personally i was stoked on these models before they were covered in hair, but now it looks like there was a bestiality bukkake party, and that image is way too funny not to love.

seriously lovely box, i wanted my work next to this so the minimalism would rebound off one another buutttt i had to find a plinth for that, and plinths are heavy soo...

half bike, half bison/buffalo. shit that is half something and half something else is definitely worht the time of day.

this line of frogs was made by a french girl, amazingly when asked "why frogs?" her answer is "because im french" truely great.

this isn't actually some ones piece, but fuck i wish it was. orange squash in an iron brew bottle is so telling of our society and cultural activity... cough.

not normally into this shit either, but the branch is lovely, solid choice of stick, and the bird nest in it looks pretty solid too.

this is my piece, a fucking CD in a case. if you get thoughts about menagerie and captivity well good for you and im happy, however it prompts thoughts of "seriously, what the fuck am i doing with my life" to me. depressing.

My favorite piece by a mile. Im immature and secretly 5. the fact that dogs don't even reproduce this way and are only doing it for fun makes it even ruder and more immature and makes me laugh any time i did it. I hope i find out who did this piece so i can buy them a high 5 or something.

anyway, i hope you skimmed and looked at the pictures. i feel like i can't be too much of a dick on here about other peoples work, so next post will go back to being self deprecating yet extremely self indulgent.

-Jeffro

Shoppy

2010-09-06T09:38:00.001-07:00

I went shopping today, a massive ordeal, probably the most shopping I have ever done in one go. I came back with a medium pen, the blackest of black of course. I didn't only get that though, oh no, I went wild. I bought 3 blank sketch books and an inner tube, it took me close to 15 minutes. Anyway, one of the books is for a new project I decided to start a few weeks ago and only got round to starting today, I don't want to say too much as I know Jasper Jones lurks my blog all the time, and I bet he has more drive than me, will steal my idea then do it faster, as he is a massive shit. anyway, a little test for it in my usual sketch book.

-Jeffro

burning pigs

2010-08-30T05:32:00.000-07:00

Due to being a massive arse hole all my life, I never got round to reading many books. I just got this fabulous cutting edge piece of technology called an Ipod phone, and it forwards all my internets straight into my hand (it also lets me play golf in traffic, which is really cool). This, in a round about manner means i don't have to sit at my laptop all day and lets me have a good read. Currently I'm all over 'one flew over the cukoo's nest' and it's great, the mental imagery from some of the descriptions is rad and I kinda sort of wish I was deaf and dumb mopping the floor all day, thinking about fog and shit. Anyway, my favorite bit so far is what is depicted here;

-Jeffro

blog it like its hawt

2010-08-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

Due to the fact my last post was so weak, it depressed me far too much to visit my own blog in order to update it, hence the reason why its been so long. Anyways, since then I've done absolutely loads of stuff, completed fallout 3 again, got a mad blister on my pointing finger and even came out in some rad full body rash which is super gnar, so gnar you would not even realize. Life has been so hectic in fact, that i had to take a weekend out in order to go to Paris. All the touristy shit went down, i was underwhelmed at the Mona Lisa, shit scared on top of the scafolding tower, and sat in a park drinking the rouge stuff. Heavy chill.

To the point, While I was there I went to the Pompidou centre (shit hot), and my mind was blown with all sorts of historical radness. Personal highlights being Rachel Whitereads room 101

http://www.ghostofaflea.com/archives/RachelWhitereadRoom101.jpg

the replica of fountain

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/media/source/web_duchamp_fountain.jpg

my new favorite picasso painting, femme assise dans un fauteuil

http://www.oilpaintingrepro.com/images/Images/pablo-picasso-femme-assise-dans-un-fauteuil-1941.jpg

and Guillaume tell by Dali, which I believe to be the most technically impressive painting I have ever seen (the eggs in the bottom left absolutely kill it, shred the gnar)

http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-bunuel/popup02.html

finally, i was struck by a piece by Laszlo Peri called raumkonstruktion 3, which i can't find a picture of, trust me its dynomite. hopefully my sketch will suffice.

This sparked an interest in the nature of dimensions, which i think i've always been mildly interested in, honestly not in a spastic loser way, but dimensions are fairly cool (today i discovered whirlpools are really cool too, for a definitive list of what is and isn't cool, send me an email at alexjeffrothompson@gmail.com). This lead me to dick about with some brushes and some photoshops, this is what ensued.

Also, yeah I did scan a moleskine to put on my blog. Fuck I need a life, or some friends, or a girlfriend. Feel free to kick me in the shins.

-Jeffro

COME ON THEN

2010-05-10T19:33:00.000-07:00

my last post heavily hinted, if not directly pointing, at old work. This means that the only logical progression in my FMP (final major project) is to copy old shit and set on fire to pieces... Sooooooo here we go then.

there are more on my flickr. please, take exception to anything abnormal in the everyday. xxx

-Jefffro

ruining the past

2010-05-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've been doing my final major project at college for the past 6 weeks and only have 2 left. Sadly, i got into university before we started this project so all motivation and reason to do any work was heavily removed. The result was half comit to a shit project i made up the night before the start and I am now regretting it.

I say regretting it, I'm not really, I just have 2 weeks left and have realized i probably haven't done enough work to get a pass as of yet. As a result of this, i had a flick back through some old work and thought "what can i do again, slightly differently and pretend to put some meaning behind it"

After 3 episodes of top gear and 2 series of phoenix nights, i decided to pull out the doing shit to negatives again, my old favorite eh?

The idea behind these is they are supposed to hint at graffiti and make the viewers aware of their senses, for example, my favoirte is saying "the final countdown is now playing in your head" hopefully you will now be thinking "ITS THE FINNAALLL COOUNTDOOWWWNNNN deduuleeeduuuuu"

-Jeffro

Day In Day Out

2010-03-17T15:31:00.000-07:00

I haven'r blogged for absotively years, this is down to a number of factors. Firstly, being 100% super rad, I went to manchester, and lost my charger, my mac swiftly ran out of battery and i was forced to use a dreaded PC for a monthish. this would have been fine, but i don't know the password for my blogspot and the mac has it on autosave. Secondly, I got my xbox fixed so a fast proportion of my life has been spent in VATS mode murking super mutants. Finally i saved up and bought myself an iPod touch so my internet time on real computors has been cut.

Anyway, down to buisness, we had a project recently on something, can't remember the basis of it, but I do know i was getting hella stoked on Martin Creed at the time. If you aren't farmiliar with him, prepare to hate him for being more succesful in life than you will ever be for this type of stuff ;

http://www.martincreed.com/works/images/workno630.jpg

so yeah, he's pretty rad. anyway, without explaining too much as im tired and criminal minds is probably the raddest program on TV AND they are about to bare murk the unsub without him even having a clue here are a few photos of my little performance, trying to spread the love around the city centre of newcastle.

I had a ruddy spiffing time chaps xx

-Jeffro

Willies and Boobs

2010-01-26T11:31:00.000-08:00

Today I starting sorting out my portfolio so that universities can flick through my work along with everyone else's work then roll a dice to decide if I get in. On the upside however, it gave me chance to rummage through various older drawings sketches and rubbish from this year and many years before, and gave me another chance to see what I had to offer.

I've never really done much drawing before, never mind life drawing, but I really enjoyed drawing the naked people in various poses, even if it did get beyond tedious at the end. Rumor has it that life drawing is a dying subject and that most Art schools don't do it anymore, which is a shame. Everyone should have a chance to experience it, if you don't enjoy looking at a naked person for about an hour solid, you can at least amuse yourself by watching your neighbor draw everything in immaculate detail then tentatively avoid drawing a cock and balls. It's surprising how many peoples works show a very flabby man with a nice gap between his legs with an undisclosed phenomenon there.

Anyway, I doubt anyone reads that rubbish, on to the pictures.
3 line drawings of a sitting man

stick and ink (the most fun way to draw ever)

charcoal

(note gap)

colour isn't my forte.

-Jeffro

AND WHAT A GOOD YEAR IT WAS

2010-01-01T16:29:00.000-08:00

Hello there, right now i am sat in a room filled with artistés, there is a videographer to my left, a performance artist on the floor and, well, i don't quite know how to explain the lad in the seat. 2009 was a good year, i enjoyed it, it was positive, rekindled a love for painting and left me with a rather lovely bicycle. i want to wish anyone that can be arsed to read this a good new year, although we are all aware that new years day could be any day, it could be any time, but us humans just kind of decided that it was today (well yesterday, but fuck off) and now we should turn a new leaf.

new years resolutions i hear you say, what should we all do, how should we all try and benefit our lives. well, we are all aware that new years resolutions just make us gutted in a years time when we realize we are pretty poor at life and have failed, so most people would tell you not to go with them. i however would like to propose that everyones new years resolution should be to listen to yourself. over the past year i have realized that it is a lot easier to attempt to be creative and original when you listen to the childish voice that is normaly silenced in the back of your head for fear of being immature. go with your gut, listen to yourself, do what you want and express yourself, its what stops keeping life from being pointless so have an average new year everybody!

-Jeffro

ps words from liam armstrong

i like snow. especially when it's yellow. like a lime slush puppie. mmmm.

-Liam

pps word from rusty

2009 was a year that i will remember becus i's is watchin rude tube nd some like hunky guy spankin his lass nd whamin a custard pie in her face, nd hangon i have jus realised im watchin this in 2010 not 2009, hu can tell nd shit now ther is some hot scandanivian girl tlkin to me from the television. i am now in love with her, u have witnessed my love fallin into scandy lasses, i love em they is so coooooool.

- Rusty

artiste machine

2009-12-27T09:26:00.000-08:00

long time no post, bet you were all getting a bit worried and thought i'd caught the swine. well i haven't and im class. anyway we had a project at college where we had to choose one painter from a pretty boring list and one sculpture from another, yet surprisingly more boring list. My choices were Rothko and Claes Oldenburg. when you look at my final outcome, if you can't see the influence you are obviously hella ignorant or hella blind.

I've never really made a sculpture so i wanted to give this a shot, and although the idea of making an interactive sculpture that ultimately destroys itself isn't original, i wanted to do it by dropping a tin of paint on itself splashing everyone and being fucking hilarious. i'll get to why this didn't happen later.

Firstly, i think you all should watch this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xZCgFl6SRs

if it reminds you of something, its because the original thinkers that are honda blatently stole this for an advert and then blatently got sued for it. nazis. This is the kind of thing i wanted to do, a big pointless machine that is just a bit of fun at the end of the day.

To start myself off i found a nicely sized box some one else was using, stole it then damaged it so they wouldn't know it was theirs, then i bought some wood, a lot of 6 inch nails, some screws, some plastic pipe shit and other bits and bobs in order to essentially kill it.

i found the hardest thing was getting a succesful pully system and as a result found a practical use for fashion, yeah you heard it. fashion students have fuck loads of these things that you put thread on and they are perfect for sticking on nails and wrapping string around, lube them up nicely and you've got yourself a little pully set. get the fuck in fashion.

and as a whole.

and the video of it in action

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSWtd1hgwWc

-Jeffro

a day well spent

2009-11-16T12:56:00.000-08:00

For some stupid reason i went in to college today just for half an hour of information on UCAS that i have already been force fed hundreds of times before. I was pretty annoyed by this and decided to do something today to compensate. i took my massive painting home from college and thought i'd spied a space on my wall room for it.

Circa 12 I arrived in B&Q sporting very smart paint splattered shoes, tracksuit bottoms and my work shirt in the pissing rain, i wandered about looking for wood, got lost a few times couldn't find anyone and thus left. I arrived back at home, had a brew watched deal or no deal and plucked up the courage to attack another hardware store in the form of maxwells down the road. I bought around 8m of 20mm x 36mm wood, a pack of nails, some joining tech thingy's and a staple gun. then set to work on the build fueled by a tasty brew.

This is the first time i've ever made a stretcher and stretched a piece (despite it being paper, thus more folded than stretched), and as a result i am very proud of it. Next time however I will buy thicker stronger wood as screwing into it caused the wood to split every time, hence the heavy duct tape. Using duct tape just made me feel more manly though, next time im going to encorporate WD-40.

-Jeffro

ceramics and a favor

2009-11-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

I finally got round to taking pictures of my piece for ceramics, the project brief was on animals and the animal i had to base mine on was the hammerhead shark. This happens to be the most uninteresting being on the planet, (ken doherty being a close second). so i kind of slid away from that and on to sharks as a whole as the entity of sharks is far more interesting than just the hammerhead shark. During this i learned that shark skin is actually made up of millions of tiny teeth meaning shark skin feels more like sand paper than silk. for this reason i made my piece very angular and slab built it in clay, coloured it black and (what i wanted to be white) cream to hopefully keep it looking raaadddd. i hoped it would be a flower pot, but due to unforseen circumstances is not infact water tight.

i also got a print of a photo i took on canvas for my sister to give to her boyfriend for her birthday, the printer fucked it up so i couldn't get it on a stretcher and instead had to mount it on a board, either way, pretty please with how it turned out and made a solid £20 profit from it!

-Jeffro

pure abstraction

2009-11-13T10:33:00.001-08:00

Ready for pretentious waffle? Well you better be.

Today I finished off my abstract painting in fine art and then had to talk about it and defend it in a critique. The project title was 'abra kadabra' (a stupid brief) and so I started thinking about how fortune tellers read into the shapes of tea leaves, and how Max Ernst does a similar thing by working into random assortments of paint to create a surreal landscape. I also discovered a new profound love for mixing sand with paint, and painting with cardboard. Excellent fun.

I tried to keep the colours balanced and was heavily influenced by early Polock work, hope you like!

-Jeffro

FIRST!

2009-11-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

if you are reading this you probably have less of a life than me, anyway a few pieces of older artwork for you to look at

-Jeffro