Philip Bodger
Walls and Boundaries
Artists currently influencing my practice
An introduction into my working practice
Claiming My Art Practice
The world has exploded into a paranoid wall building machine when it comes to building border walls in recent times, from seven to seventy-seven following World War Two.
Many have been erected following the attacks, which saw America’s Capital New York’s twin towers and the Pentagon targeted by terrorist on Sept 11, 2001. Indeed, fences, walls, and borders have throughout history been used to isolate or separate and repel migrants and refugees, warring nations and protect trade routes, but can also create many more problems, and often affect wildlife such as deer or bears.
As an artist I am interested in this paranoid mentality that has gained traction since Sept 11, 2001, therefore I want to bring attention to the growing number of violent borders that exist and continue to harden across our planet, affecting so deeply the surrounding communities and societies on both sides of a border, boundary or divide.
Below are some examples of border wall, past and present:
The Berlin Wall, a symbol of separated the democratic west side of Germany from the communist east side from 1961-1998. According to the Berlin Wall Foundation, East German soldiers stationed across the concrete wall were given orders to shoot any fugitives seeking to cross from the eastern side, resulting in more than 450 deaths.
By the year 1989 revolutions in eastern countries like Hungary and Poland triggering East Germany to release the blockade, and the wall came down, consequently on the 3rd of October,1990, East and West Germany came together to reunite.
The Great Wall of China is a fantastic feat of engineering that took 1 million labours to build, is more than 13,000 miles long and is 2,000 years old. It was originally used in the Third Century to protect and prevent Chinese empires from attacks and invasions against a number of barbarian nomadic groups with an eye on expansion.
Another purpose other than defense, included immigration control, border, trade and duty controls on goods transported along a trade network, established during the Han Dynasty, known as the
In recent times, the wall has become a magnet for tourists, attracting millions every year, as a symbol of Chinese legacy.
Bangladesh and India share a 2,550-mile-long border, and India has almost completed the construction of a 1,750-mile long barbed wire fence to block smuggling and to curb immigration. Here is where India's border control, in-force a controversial shot on sight policy, this policy is designed to contain or stop migrants who live in the low lying Bangladesh areas, robbing them of the opportunity to seek a safer and better life in India.
Also, India has a militarized barrier line of control with Pakistan, which is 500-miles long, following ongoing tensions between the two nations.
In 2002 Israel build a 450-mile long wall in and around the West Bank following a number of strikes and attacks on Israel by Palestinian insurgents. The wall has often been referred to by critics and Palestinians as an apartheid wall as it obstructs trade, exchange, movement, and Palestinian livelihoods. The Israeli Wall is almost 20 feet high topped with barbed wire and has undoubtedly acted as a flashpoint for Palestinian fury in recent years.
This can be seen in the picture below, as a Palestinian demonstrator vents her anger, by uses an axe to damage the controversial wall, which separates the West Bank city of from Jerusalem during clashes with Israeli security forces on November 2, 2015.
The peace walls In Northern Ireland Belfast grew from local communities erecting barricades to stop sectarian violence in 1969, following a series of sectarian riots between Catholic Irish nationalists, who supported alliances with the Irish Republic in the south and Loyalist Protestant Paramilitaries, who looked to continue with British rule. However, due to their effectiveness, they never came down, in truth as the conflict hardened these walls and barricades became longer higher and more numerous.
One can still see the brick and wire boundaries that dot the Northern Ireland landscape today. Indeed, as relations have improved over recent years, there are plans to dismantle all of it by 2023.
Artists that I am researching and which have a reference to and inform my working practice and thinking.
These include the artist Banksy arguably the most controversial street artist in the world, who has transgressed all geographical boundaries with his graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique.
Indeed I have been drawn to Banksy's technique of uses stencils featuring striking dark humorous images and I have started to experiment with and use stencils in my own practice as a new and exciting development to portray the important theme of migration, borders and border struggles.
This distinctive stenciling technique can be seen below as a tearful young-girl becomes engulfed by teargas fumes, used to forcefully evict migrants in the French camp known as the in early January 2016.
Also below is an image that shows Banksy's use of dark humor, the image is situated in a Hotel that prides itself on the worst view in the world" The Walled off Hotel in Bethlehem looks out onto the concrete slabs of the controversial border wall Israel has built in and along the West Bank. Indeed, the rooms of the Hotel are full of Banksy's work, much of which is about the conflict.
The artist Gerhard Richter is another artist who has influenced my thinking and my working practice. Richter uses the technique of applying layers of paint to his canvases, before scraping, erasing, wiping and dragging the paint across the surface, as a result, Richter's surfaces, leave tracks, marks, and strokes, these tracks, and marks for me become a clear metaphor for what is left behind by the unprivileged and desperate along borders and border walls worldwide.
Indeed this technique has become a big part of my work, allowing me to express through this process of dragging, erasing and re-working the paint, how borders erase drag and separate people, places, and lives and like the paint maybe resurfaces in another space, place or time.
In other words, resurface when or if required by the needs or powers of a new labor market as a result of "governmentality seeking to produce governable mobile subjects from ungovernable flows" (Panagiotids and Tsianos, P82). Border as Method
Donald Judd is another artist whose work has inspired my practice in recent times, like my work it extends into the space from the wall or is free standing and relates to the viewers' feelings and perception, as they physically interact and engage with the art-work or sculptural form.
Judd in the late 1960 lost interest in autonomous modernism and making images of the world around him, which had continued in different types and forms for the last two and a half thousand years.
Indeed, Judd was trying to find a way that the world would manifest in the art object giving the audience a completely new experience, from the private world of abstract expressionism by Pollock to the open public physical world of minimalism and the way we see art in the present day.
Like Judd, I believe that minimalism activates a physical relationship between the viewer and the object, this relationship, the size of the object and the size of the viewer and where the object is placed in relation to the room will determine the type of experience the viewer will have with that object, giving the viewer a physical awareness of the perception of oneself.
The smaller the object the more you feel intimacy towards that object. The larger the object the less intimacy you feel. The feel of intimacy is not coming from within you it’s coming from the scale of the object you are corresponding too.
"The awareness of scale is a function of the comparison made between that constant one’s body size and the object. Space between the subject and the object is implied in such a comparison". (Harrison, 2001, p830). Art in theory.
An introduction into my working practice
Following my final work in unit-two, I wanted to continue using the same materials and ideas to underscore and draw attention to the growing problem of borders and border struggles across our planet.
I feel this work was a success and a turning point in my practice in many ways, allowing me to unpack the differences on both sides of a border, the abstract violent side and the clean smooth shiny side of a consumer capitalist culture.
Therefore the work adjacent is a continuation of my final work in unit-two, constructed from MDF board, dibond sheet and painted with gloss paint, this panel is again directed towards the Northern Ireland border issues and its surrounding troubles.
My plan is to make a series of these panels, which I hope to attach together to form a bigger barrier, or wall, entangled with what is left behind from the lives of people who have past through or live along
these violent border areas.
By presenting the work protruding from the wall surface and into space, I believe it becomes a physical barrier that interacts with the viewer, stopping them as they adjust themselves before moving on and around the object (or wall). Indeed, it is not unlike Donald Judd’s work, where there is an interaction that engages and activates a physical relationship between the viewer and the art-work asking them to consider their place and role within this dialog.
I have also used Gurnard Richter’s approach of wiping, dragging erasing and scraping the paint to express my ideas surrounding the erasure of places people and cultures around border and borderlands worldwide.
Likewise, the book informes this work and continues to inform my working practice in many ways, including the realization that borders are becoming more militarized. Indeed in chapter two the author Reece Jones discusses how “The changing practice of border enforcement has led to a blurring of the distinctions between security and policing on the one hand, and militarization and war-making, on the other. This distinction had historically been a territorial one, with police operating within and up to the state’s borderline, while the military exercises its force beyond the territorial extent of the state."
Mark Neocleous, professor of government and author of War Power, Police Power, suggests that "the underlying purposes of the police and military are the same to protect the sovereignty of the state from internal and external threats- but the distinction had been maintained to create the perception that internal practices are less severe."
Historically, according to justice studies professor Peter Kraska, “the failure of a government to clearly demarcate the two is usually seen as an indicator of repressiveness and lack of democracy".(Jones, chapter two), violent borders.
I wanted to explore this further and include the blurring between security and policing within my practice. To do this I researched the techniques used by the controversial street artist Banksy, before using and attaching images to the work, as can be seen below.
Indeed, through using a technique of placing or sticking the pictures onto the panel, along with scraping and dragging the paint across the surface of the board and images, I have tried to leave the images looking as if they don’t really belong there, as a direct response to the blurring between security and policing discussed above.
My second work or panel has been constructed from the same sets of materials, dibond sheet, MDF board, and gloss paint, but this time I have also incorporated and used builders bricks within the work. Indeed not unlike Robert Rauschenberg’s work where he combines and merges abstract painting with found objects,
I feel the inclusion of the bricks in my work has been a success and shows a major progression within my working practice, leading me to reflect and think about including bricks within all the panels that I have been working on in this unit.
Again I have used a dibond sheet and it’s shiny surface on one side of the panel for Its reflective quality’s to signify the continuing buying and selling and greed of capitalist culture. On reflection, I believe this idea has grown and developed following a work I made in unit one,
The other side once again is abstract, and as I have already stated it is combined with bricks, which for me signifies the violent side of walls and borders or borderland worldwide.
The work was shown in a group exhibition in the main reception area at Wimbledon, where we hung the show with direction from Richard Whitby. On reflection this gave me and my classmates the opportunity to show work outside the clutter of the studio and secondly, to get some ideas of what artists or works might particularly complement each other in our upcoming MFA show.
We also had a crit of the work and curation of the show with Tom Dale,(see image below,) for me, this was very beneficial as Tom talked with honesty and satire in relation to all the work on show.
But on a more personal basis, we discussed the audience's participation in relation to the importance of the placement of my work in the final MFA show.
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Following my recent use of bricks within my working practice I have been experimenting with using different materials, spaces and shapes between the bricks to construct the small walls that will sit inside all my panels, as can be seen above.
This experimentation not only gave me an idea of which materials and spacing between the bricks work best but has signified and highlighted the different borders that exist between the bricks.
These different borders and edges which form the material and gaps between the bricks that I have been experimenting with, include the natural line of the brick, cement and colored wooden spacers, as can be seen in the images below.
The idea of the experimentation was to see which material worked best, but on reflection, I have decided to use all three in the construction of my final piece of work.
By using all three of these different materials I feel highlights the borders between the bricks and will signify and lead the audience to question this difference, realizing that borders across our planet are constructed from many different materials, are different shapes and sizes, fixed or unfixed, open or closed visible or invisible, but at the same time the same in that all are designed to stop the free movement of people.
Looking back and reflecting, this journey has moved my practice on in a number of different directions, In fact, I came into this program as an abstract painter with no desire to change or do anything different, but changed I have!
As can be seen from the images below showing my final work at Wimbledon I have become more of a rounded artist with a number of new skills, and have discovered a different way of thinking and approaching my practice.
These new skills include sculpture and installation where I have explored the freedom to express my ideas in a different way and with different mediums and materials including using materials, which are related to my subject matter, rather than using metaphors and semiotics, as in some of my recent work including my final work for unit one,
Therefore my final work for the MAF Degree show is a combination of installation, sculpture and abstract painting, created by deconstructing, cutting and recycling all the panels I have previously made, which has allowed me the freedom to include bricks into all these panels.
Again I have stayed with the same sets of materials Dibond, MDF, and Gloss paint and bricks, but I have also included two steel frames, which are constructed to form two doorways within the structure and which signify for me an open border, but only open to the wealthy, those who have the right documentation or skill sets and are ether asylum seekers refugees immigrants or migrants etc, as discussed in the book,
The steel frames give the audience, like Donald Judd's work, the opportunity to move through and interact with the structure, leading to feelings related to being outside or inside the art object.
As can be seen in the images, I have joined and connected these panels, bricks, and steel frames together, which forms a violent border wall signifying, the inside and outside, back and front of a border, and hopefully will make the viewers reflect on the impact border wall have on an across our planet.
From Brexit and how this may impact on the Irish border and indeed on the Good Friday peace process to the walls along the West Bank, or Trump's planned Mexico border wall, all have become more militarised longer higher and more violent in recent times following the world's obsession with the need to control and curb the free movement of people.
