Alongside our own studio practice we have been set a task where a text has to be the central motivation and influence. After a comment that all my work so far seems to be very ordered and almost systematic, I decided to look at text which is itself ordered and has to follow a certain formula to make it what it is - poetry, and in particular the sonnet.
A sonnet has to follow a certain structure, and it is the structure that I am interested in. The English (Shakespearean)Sonnet comprises of 3 lines of four and then one line of two at the end. The 'turn' comes at the end of the poem, making the ending couplet quick and dramatic. Experimenting by just starting to write out the poem in different layouts, concentrating on the structure and layout of the lines on the page. Splitting each of the lines into their quatrains and literally turning the direction of the writing when it comes to the 'turn'. Admittedly in my mind when I was doing this was the work of Mallarme, which we had looked at in Contemporary Art Theory and which I absolutely loved.
Anyway, when doing this I realised that this was similar to what I have been doing with the cut out spaces - making shapes. So, the next step was to block out the words themselves, to get the shapes, and in consequence showing the structure in its most simplistic form.
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