Space. When given the theme for onefourfour this past month, I thought ‘I’m all over this’. Much of my work for the last few years has related to space, I have been obsessed. I can relate space to just about anything. But it coincidentally aligned with some ideas I have been working on lately around placing my body in the artwork, instead of just focusing on the marks it can make.
I mapped ‘footprint’ of my body, where my limbs meet the ground when stretching out and holding myself up off the ground. I cut out a black vinyl quadrilateral to match and upturned myself on it, pushing myself up. I ran back and forth to the tripod to check the shot, instruct my shutter operator and fret over the lines and bending limbs I saw in the playback.
I took about 120 shots all up, including initial mock ups, taken inside where it was warm and toasty, so I had plenty of shots to choose from with varying compositions.
The size of the artworks for One Four Four are 6 x 6 inches, which I had anticipated before taking the photographs, adjusting the composition to suit. I narrowed the field and started cropping them to squares. This one won out as I only just fit within the boundary when squared off, perfect. Pushing out on the afforded 6 inch space. Reaching to the very edges.
Reaching/Pushing (c) 2014 Naomi Nicholls
What is onefourfour?
Twelve Australian female artists have been invited to participate in onefourfour which sees them create one work a month for one year. Every artist is assigned a month to choose a theme that all the artists work to, and the results are posted on this blog at the end of each month. The only restriction is that the work is to be 6 x 6″. This small canvas size was chosen so it’s a quick and fun exercise and doesn’t become a daunting task to create a piece every month.
