Our last Kick-About celebrated our 100th prompt, with new works made in a short time on a theme of that auspicious round number. That’s a lot of new-things-tried and experimentation – much like Mainie Jellett’s exploration of abstraction, which broke away from conventional artistic norms.
Phil Cooper
“I love the Kick-About for many reasons, it introduces me to artists I didn’t know or makes me look at work I thought I was familiar with in a new light. This week‘s prompt is the former of these scenarios; I had never seen images by Mainie Jellett before and it was a pleasure getting to know this artist and read about her story. I find the period of art history when Mainie was working so fascinating, it seems such a dynamic and creative time; the art rule-book was torn up and artists freed themselves from traditional approaches. They started exploring whole new landscapes of possibilities, each new experiment paving the way for yet more discoveries, and women became more prominent in the latest developments. For my contribution this week, I‘ve taken some paper offcuts that have accumulated in the bottom of my boxes of collage papers and glued them together to make a sort of abstract forest. Before the likes of Mainie Jellett, working in this way would have been seen as a bit mad, but now I can call it fine art, haha, so bravo to them!”
James Randall
“I had this Narcissus started a month ago – an experiment in combining simple gridded shapes and dense textures – it went on hold with figures that needed development. Mainie Jellett as an art challenge prompt pushed me to include volumes and more pattern in the figures and I added a tree with an abstract posture. Could have been pulled apart and reassembled but I ran out of time.”
Kerfe Roig
“This artist had many different ways of making art, and so many directions to go. I was most attracted to her “Four Element Composition” which reminded me of layers of origami paper. I did a fairly faithful origami rendition and then branched off from there in two other ways – one less linear, and one more quilt-like. It reminded me how much I like origami paper.”
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Phil Gomm
“So these digital collages began as physical collages of torn sugar paper to produce textures from which I could cookie-cut these other shapes. I wanted to emulate some of the painterly surfaces of Jellett’s paintings, but also some of the formality of her layered shapes.“
Jordan Buckner
“I’d never heard of Mainie Jellett before this prompt, but my initial response was all about those amazing formations and compositions of block colour. As a quick win, I wanted to create a series of very quick colour blocks that at least held some of the complexity and perhaps history seen in Jellet’s work. And so I made these creations – all simply colour responses to historic photographs I’ve collected over the years. The particular photographs used here are from a set of Victorian photographic glass slides I found in a charity shop once. I have no clue as to the actual setting or location of the slides, but I think they are probably Magic Lantern images – kind of fake scenarios used to tell stories in local theatres. Nevertheless, they all still suggest full worlds lost in time – families, pets, buildings, holidays that somehow say so much, and due to their potential artificial nature, possibly nothing all at once.”
Charly Skilling
“Mainie Jellett’s artwork clearly shows the stepping stones she uses to move from figurative to abstract, so I thought I’d follow in her footsteps and see where it took me. I took a small watercolour portrait I recently painted and cut it into its constituent parts. These I then used to transfer the shapes to create a more abstract painting. As I worked on this second piece, I took a couple of photos of the developing image. I wanted to calm the colours down and did so in the painting, but I liked the shapes being formed and wanted the simplicity of the interim images to take the project further. I have an app on my computer called StitchFiddler which enables me to convert images into stitch patterns, so I used the photos I had taken, and restricted the number of colours used to create a pattern for a crochet blanket. I have not had time to actually make the final object yet, but the yarn is on order!”
Gary Thorne
“A doodle really, or a doddle which ever way you care to think about it. Just let go the desire to represent, and played. Thanks to the inspiration from M. Jellett.”
Marion Raper
“After looking at the work of Mainie Jellet I really liked her painting entitled Achille Horses. I decided to attempt an abstract design of my own but using birds as the subject. The actual picture came to me quite easily but I struggled with the colours. I don’t usually go with such muted shades so it was a bit of a challenge. Eventually it came together and by squaring off corners rather than my habit of rounding off I think it may just have ‘the look!’”
And for our next prompt, Raoul Hausmann’s Mechanical Head…
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