IMPACT OF EXERCISING OUTSIDE
I wanted to find out why cycling does have such an impact on my emotions and why it helped put me in a better place.
A research team from the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry did 11 trials with 800 plus adults, to compare the effects of outdoor exercise vs indoor exercise to discover the outcome for physical and mental wellbeing.
From doing this study they found that exercising outside did have a greater effect on wellbeing than exercising indoors and exercising in natural environments gave an even greater feeling of revitalisation, increased energy and positive engagement, together with decreases in tension, confusion, anger and depression. The people doing the trial also said how they found exercising more enjoyable outside and this would therefore encourage them to want to exercise further.
Now holistic approaches are beginning to be being used for people suffering from depression and other such psychological ailments. I also saw a documentary on this on BBC One in 2016, The Doctor who gave up Drugs, where a girl with severe depression and anxiety was encouraged to go outdoor swimming everyday. It went onto show how this had a huge impact on her recovery out of depression, so that she could function again and get on with her life happily.
I think this is why cycling is important to me, because it gives me a sense of freedom and control and in contrast to the pain of being in cold water, my cycling pain is pushing myself to the extreme by not stopping and getting off the bike but pushing myself to go further and steeper.
Voigt set the first record of that new era, at the age of 42 in September 2014, before immediately retiring from the sport.
I also went on to read about Jens Voigt a .....cyclist and found his quotes below quite revealing:
'Now I am OK, but for some time I was actually happy to have the pain because I could release my demons in the right way,"
"Often people asked me what I would do without cycling, and I would say I'd be like the main character in Grand Theft Auto. Too much anger and too much energy.
I can relate to this because cycling is painful, I ride up a lot of hills in Highgate; Swains Lane, Highgate West Hill and Holly Lodge- and push myself to the point of feeling sick. The pain I get from cycling seems to take away my feelings of negativity, confusion, anger, frustration and as well as a distraction to these negative emotions, it in return gives me increased energy, positivity and general happiness.
bandaged up after falling off my bike in Majorca
Text
Hanson's work is made up of rough symmetrical shapes and patterns. Her work shows control, but at the same time presents a feeling of freedom.
CHARLIE FORD
Charlie Fords work in contrast is slightly more erratic than Heather Hansons and has more of a freedom about it. It looks more relaxed, slightly chaotic. However, you can still see there is control in his markings.
ADRIAN GHENIE
Adrian Ghenie a Romanian artist born in 1977 works with large canvases but not painting with a brush, instead he uses a lot of other tools as instruments to lay down his paint. He references artists as well as the tools to apply his painting.
'I've tried to create figurative painting, but using the building bricks of abstract: Pollock-like spraying, some things from Rothko, all those blobs you can see on my recent work which I took from Gorki, areas of decalcomania in the style of Max Ernst, all these are abstract painting tools.'
I feel like his work has a lot of passion and emotion running through it, that he has a lot to say and it all comes out in his work.
His colours appear heavy with a lot of depth and are like waves on a page, going in all different directions. His work is also full of texture and layers, and from the interview he did with LUIZA VASILIU, it is easy to see how textures mean so much to him, how they are part of the of his life, and how he misses them.
'I spent my summers in Constanța, at my aunt's, who lived in a nationalised house, which had belonged to a former Greek shipping magnate, an amazing art-deco house, destroyed by generations of tenants. You just can't imagine how much texture it had and what a fabulous house it was, a mix between Toate pînzele sus! and Grand Budapest Hotel, split up into all sorts of doors and little rooms, where all these people forced in by the communists during the 1950s were living, strange old bags, old whatshername, that drunk, a defrocked priest, such vivid colours… Do you know what's changed since the Eighties? Not just in Romania, everywhere. Textures have been replaced. A superficial, easy-clean world has appeared, mountains of laminate, polystyrene, double-glazing, plastic, we now use spray-on, ready-to-go things. Romania of the 1980s was a hard-to-clean world of textures, it gathered dust. If I go and visit Constanța now, they've replaced everything, they've taken out the old windows and put in double-glazing, they've replaced the old floors which saw 4 or 5 generations with laminated flooring… This changing of texture in the world has led to a change in our behaviour too, the way we look, our hairstyles.'
I particularly like the Van Gough collage which Ghenie then translates into a painting. The collage layers are replicated with his use of thick oil paints that like the collage are put together irratically.
HEATHER HANSON
Heather Hansons approach to her art is by linking movement, her mind and painting. She says how she doesn't differentiate between these things, just combines them so that they naturally become one. She recalls dancing in the sand and on seeing her footprints realised how they left an image behind and how she could and did pursue this further as she saw it as something that she wanted to hold onto.
What I personally like about both Heather Hansons and Charlie Fords work, is how unpredictable the outcome of their work can be, and how it is their energy and emotions that create their movements to create the marking on the paper.
Charlie Ford talks about his work as marking the paper. His work is improvised and will differ depending on the project and how he feels at the time. The physicality of the work comes across very strongly when he talks. I particularly liked the fact that when he looks back as his art, he will know which body part left that mark and the sensation he experienced while making it. This is something that the viewer could not appreciate as they were not part of the making, but his work does have an emotion about it that come off the page.
The photographs of Charlie Hanson working on his paintings to me create another piece of art also.
In Hunting Scene, there are three hunting dogs not quite figurative and not quite abstract. My interpretation for the rest of the painting is the brown in the foreground earth, the blue to the left water and in the background the green is pasture and the grey dull skies. These panels of colour hold together and without being figurative in anyway give you a painting that shows a landscape with three hunting dogs.
In Boogeyman there are two armchairs and a man standing in a suit with a hat. There may also be a rug on the floor by the man. The rest of the image is left to your imagination. Looking at it again, I then saw the back of another man sitting in one of the armchairs, I had totally missed this the first few times I looked at the painting. I presume this is all part of the experience of not knowing what you are seeing, and that every time you look something new will appear. These paintings actually make me feel quite exhausted by just looking at them, and I can imagine they were very draining for Ghenie too in painting them.
When looking at paintings such as this, it tells me that you have to have confidence, in laying down paint and not worrying that it is not working. As long as when I apply the paint, there is a reason for it, that there is a beginning and an ending, then that is enough.
FRANZ WEST, Lemur Heads, 1992
I saw Franz West at Tate Modern. His work was very varied, a lot of collages and sculptures mainly. I liked the fact that you could touch and even sit on some of his work, making very interactive, which is unusual at galleries.
I also think that writing on an A3 sheet somehow makes you more honest than if you were asked a question and answered it verbally. By not saying something out-loud and having to write what you are thinking down in just a few words, can have far more impact and longevity than a verbal answer in a long sentence.
These photographs mean when you look at someone you are not just making an assumption of this person by appearance alone, but with an added element of their thoughts you can establish a deeper insight to this person.
Franz West used a lot of mediums and a lot of his hanging work at the exhibition was made up from the most simplistic materials. A piece of cardboard with a hole cut out was spiralled with pen. A sheet from a newspaper with horizontal and vertical lines over the text and few squiggles also. A picture with torn coloured paper added.
A lot of this work was like mixed media doodles, and when put all together worked really well.
Just outside the Franz West exhibition were a couple of sofas and my brother decided to lie down on one, cuddling a bolster and covering his face. He was there for some time and lay so still that visitors to the Tate actually walked up to him slowly and peered down at him, some even took photos.
I presume they thought he was part of an exhibition!
GILLIAN WEARING SIGNS
Gillian Wearing did a series of photographs in 1992-93 where people in the streets of South London, were asked to write what they were thinking on a sheet of A3 paper and hold it up in front of themselves. Wearing then took their photograph. The exhibition consisting of about 50 photographs, Signs that Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say.
The thing that I like about these photographs is that so many interpretations can be used to decipher them.
The policeman is holding up a sign that says 'HELP' is he saying he needs help in his everyday life, is he unsure of what to say so says 'help' as in help me think of something to say. Is he thinking that his job as a policeman is just too much and that he needs more help. These are just a few of the interpretations, and that is what is so good about this project is that some people will really put their heart on their sleeve and say exactly what they are thinking and will write down their inner most thoughts.
There's the girl who writes 'I hate this world' is that because she is feeling down and depressed all the time, or did something that just happened on that day to upset here and make her think this.
The most famous image is 'i'm desperate' this one I like as it summarises the political going ons of that era, where there had recently been the 90's crash.
I also found what Wearing said about this photograph to be very interesting 'People are still surprised that someone in a suit could actually admit to anything, especially in the early 1990s, just after the crash… I think he was actually shocked by what he had written, which suggests it must have been true. Then he got a bit angry, handed back the piece of paper, and stormed off.’
The photographs all do work in their own right as images but I do think it is also good to sometimes get a little bit more information which then in turn gives the photograph more relevance.
Both Psyche and Francis Bacon are screen prints, Psyche is one on aluminium giving it a very reflective feel. I do like the way that most of Humes paintings are very limited in their use of colour and shapes.
Julian Opie
These portraits by Julian Opie are very limited with detail, yet they speak loads. There is no facial features yet for the Ruth with a Cigarette paintings, you get a sense of her character by the way she holds her cigarette.
GARY HUME
In both Georgie and Mum In Bed Hume has created his portraits faces by marking the enamel paint to create the features. I am not sure how Hume applied the features but I presume it was using masking tape and draft extractor as he did with 'Incubus'. Here he created ridges of paint to define the rectangles in his large household gloss painted doors.
Hume has said: 'the ridges are formed by applying masking tape and draft excluder and building up the edge with several coats of primer. The tape and excluder are then cut away. The gloss colour is applied in one or two layers'
Hume has also said that he uses household gloss paint for its reflective qualities, saying that 'the high-gloss finish starts to have a life of its own because it reflects the environment the paintings are shown in they make you think about light and about where the paintings begin and end'
The thick black outlines work to emphasise the blocks of colour, without distracting from it.
They highlight the shapes and are a great contrast to the colours. They make your eye look at each shape individually yet blending them together at the same time.
This selection of portraits has a circle to represent the face, the only way you can tell it is in profile is by the addition of the hair and hats.
Julian Opie
'I don’t invent or imagine things, just notice and record them. The choices about scale, style, language, materials and reference are my tools. I choose normal things because I must know them intimately and feel they are common currency so they can be turned into symbols. I don’t draw parrots or flamingoes, I like the boring as it’s only when you are bored that you can see.'
Opie for the Walking in Melbourne series, had a local photographer taking pictures of passers-by in various parts of Melbourne. Opie selected the best images and drew them. From these he had a large selection of 60 characters that he had drawn that he has used in his various work.
He says, ' Each one throws up surprises and opportunities that I could not invent – a tattoo or a tasselled dress, a goatee or the logo on a T-shirt. I have one group from the middle of the city and one from the beach. By making groups of six walkers I get a street crowd, and a list, and a kind of fashion parade'
The Therapy of Swinging
We all have five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell and we also have the vestibular system, which gives us a sense of balance. It lets us know if we are moving, in which direction we are going and how fast.
Some special needs children's vestibular system is not fully functioning and they can struggle with their body and movement, in general they just find life overwhelming.
It has since been found that swinging can be a great benefit to aid children with special needs.
As well as the swing being a relaxing exercise with the secure feeling of being cocooned in an enclosed space, children also get the added benefit of deep pressure therapy, where the swing reacts with their sensory receptors, in the places where the swing contacts the body. This allows the children to sense when their knees are bent, their legs are stretched, enabling them to get a better understanding of their body’s location.
This all gives a positive effect on their hormone levels and researchers have discovered it increases “happy” serotonin levels by 28% percent and stress hormone and cortisol is decreased by 31%.
The deep pressure therapy giving the sensors a feeling of being held in close and cuddled and the swinging calming the body’s “fight or flight” response gives a feeling of safety and soothing of the senses. Thereby giving a sense of relief from an overwhelmed nervous system.
Swinging thereby encourages children to focus and feel calm, helping them to put their thoughts back in order with ease, by removing any unwanted distractions.
Phyllida Barlow
Barlows work is albout relationships. The relationship that the works have each other, the relationship the work has with the space it is in and the relationship the work has with the viewer and the relationship between the viewer and space, all three are as important as each other.
To Barlow the sensory response is one of the main things she is looking for from the viewer, how they react and interact with the sculptures, how it makes them feel. When the viewer goes back to view a piece of work or leave the space how this is approached, how much input doe the sculptures have on the viewers actions.
The materials used in this exhibition are all quite industrial- plaster, timber, foam, hardboard, polystyrene, hessian, concrete. These materials allowed Barlow to manipulate and change what she had put together, more freedom to experiment.
I liked that when you were in one room, you could also see into the other two rooms and all the pieces linked and held together. However each room did create a different response and feeling. I actually felt quite at piece and at the same time consumed by the work, it had a real presence and energy about. It also welcomed you into the space and seemed to protect as well as amaze.
'Sculpture doesn't do that, it waits you to do something to it. That really puts sculptures in this extraordinary, vulnerable position, because we live in a world where images are in abundance and they're not just still, they're moving, they're flickering, they're doing all kinds of things, very speedily. Whereas sculpture needs to be given time, you need to just wait with it and become the moving object that it isn't, so this action between the still and the moving is incredibly demanding for all.'
Phyllida Barlow
BABEL by Cildo Meireles
I really liked this space, just filled with a tower of old radios piled ontop of each other, playing the radio in different languages. The tower and sounds draw you in making you want to feel part of the structure. You walk around the tower hoping to find who is speaking but the sound is only coming from the radios so you are all alone.
The tower of Babel is based on a story in Genesis, of a tower that was being built by some people of the world to reach and destroy God. God came down and scattered the people around the earth, ensuring they all spoke a different language and no longer just one.
I think Cildo Meireles‘ concept is clever as the same mix of audio can never be heard more than once as the mix of sound coming from each radio is always different, making each listening experience unique.
Sean Scully
I found the documentary on Sean Scully quite different to other documentaries on artists and I think this is because Scully is quite unique. I had also not heard of him until the Arena programme and this was even mentioned by an Art Critic on the programme how Scully was not that well known in the UK.
One of the things I liked was how Scully seems to paint like a painter and decorator, long sweeping strokes to produce his horizontal and vertical lines. His strokes just flowed loosely.
He spoke about when he was a student he was inspired by the painting of Van Gough's Chair. He put together a portfolio and applied to 11 art colleges, but was turned down by all of them, but did get excepted onto an art course in Croydon. Here his tutor Barry Hurst was a great influence to him and introduced Scully to German expressionism, this Scully felt liberated by. It gave him a new approach to art and he started to paint in coloured blocks and this in-turn evolved into abstract art. Here he learnt that if you slowly remove figurative forms from a painting they become blocks of colour.
When he did get into university after his art course, his main body of work was stripes/lines/strips and a great influence for this was when he was on his travels to Marrakesh and was touring around the markets, most things there such as the clothes, pottery, rugs and cloths where covered in stripes and this has been his main focus since.
His diagonal strips, became horizontal and vertical lines, he then added stripped inserts, on the death of his son his work became dark, due to his severe back pain and having to stay in bed for a great length of time his work was only horizontal stripes. He found he could no longer paint verticals. Most recently his young son he has painted abstract images of but alongside this are still his horizontal lines.
Overall it came across quite strongly how Sully was very much in control of his work. He always kept pieces of his work back, so that he could use them in a retrospective, he would talk about his work at all galleries and exhibitions, he would dictate to the galleries what they could and couldn't have and in some instances, he even came across as a salesman, selling his art and the thinking behind it.