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BA Project in Fine Art Statement and Thesis Joe Keys BA Project in Fine Art – Statement and Thesis Supervisor: Jóhannes Dagsson Iceland Academy of the Arts Department of Fine Art Spring 2021 Notice Joe Keys BA Project in Fine Art – Statement Supervisors of BA Project: Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir, Ólöf Nordal and Páll Haukur Björnsson Supervisor of Statement: Jóhannes Dagsson Iceland Academy of the Arts Department of Fine Art Spring 2021 This statement is about a 16 ECTS final project for a BA-degree in Fine Art at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. It is not allowed to copy this statement in any way without author’s consent. The installation ‘Notice’ revolves around a playful compromise of ´usefulness´ in found objects. This is something I rely on in my practice; by starting out with used material I establish a beginning place where to play with composition, aesthetics and function. I am looking to accentuate useful aspects of objects, so much so that they gain a new and awkward logic. The wheeled corner table is adjusted to clumsily fit around a column, the notice board is built with a corner, perhaps made for particular size notes or a specific amount of notes. The magazine holders become an object that has to be held by wooden rods coming from the column. These three sculptures were made in reference to each other and speak directly to a place of work, not a specific work environment, just somewhere mundane and empty. The enlarged printed sudoku is unsolved and framed and speaks to this emptiness. The emptiness in this sense is abstract, as it has to be figured out to be filled, unlike the notice board or magazine holders, their space can be filled intuitively, whereas the sudoku needs prior knowledge of the mathematical rules. Looking closely at the print you can see that the puzzle has come from a newspaper as the reverse image appears faintly. In this case it is an advertisement for an easel, the sculptural elements of the easel reflects the sculptures in the installation. As well as this, the negative space in the installation is important to me and highlights an uncertainty of purpose in the objects. The corners of each work are important to this installation, which came out of my intrigue into what a corner symbolises. I see it as a meeting point, a balance and a compromise, how objects exist in space. This is also a space to consider how people exist and coexist. The process of changing the found objects is self-evident, the viewer can see that the objects have their own history of purpose and function, from the worn, lacquered orange wood of the table, or the pin holes of the notice board. I emphasised the works as objects in their own right, not just as material. This has been a consistent aspect of my practice, though the works made for this exhibition have grown in scale compared to the works in my previous solo exhibition (see page 17/18 in the BA thesis). There is a shift from the intimate quality of my smaller works, to an absurdity in these larger works. This suggests a consideration of space, more so than a small, delicate sculpture. With the smaller works there is a suggestion of precision and detail, and there is a combination of disparate material. With the larger works in this exhibition all of the material relates to each other, so the absurdity comes from the fact that the logic of the objects is played with subtly. With ‘Notice’ the architecture of the museum was important, and gave me a chance to play with the notion of compromise. By working with the columns in the exhibition hall, I could install the works in a composition that both takes up space, and hides away. For instance with the magazine holders, they are low to the ground and tucked around the corner from the other works, yet they stick out of the column with rods that should not need to hold them. The sculpture contradicts itself, it is a container made to hold certain items, yet a wooden rod fits perfectly through its holes that intervene with its purpose. I like the poetry of an object that holds, is now held. As the installation of the sculptures was so important, I then added the sudoku print to reflect another kind of space, a conceptual idea of space, yet still an object that fits into a formal system. Just like the sculptures are made to fit in the exhibition space, the sudoku needs to be solved and given its order. It is an understandable urge to look for patterns and systems in the objects around us, the sudoku represents this urge of organising space. With the sculptures there is a sense that they could be placed in various ways to fit in the exhibition space, the right placement is, of course, subjective. With the sudoku there is generally one correct solution and many incorrect possibilities. Image 1:: Notice. Installation view. Mixed media installation. (2021). Photo Joe Keys. Joe Keys, Notice, mixed media installation, On Purpose, Iceland Univeristy of the Arts Degree Exhibition in Fine Art, Hafnarhús, Reykjavík Art Museum, May 15 – 24, 2021. Installation view of ‘Notice’ (2021). Photo credit LHÍ/ Claudia Hausfeld. This paper is a 4 ECTS final thesis for a BA-degree in Fine Art at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. It is not allowed to copy this thesis in any way without author’s consent. Abstract Potential Solutions examines my art practice in the context of contemporary art in Iceland, looking firstly at my perspective on gathering material to make art with, then broadening this inquiry to include artists that I relate to. I focused on material that I find in everyday circumstances, often single-use plastics and stationary and consider how and why I work with these things. After this, I discuss repetition and its relationship to artists as a method of honing a craft or as a concept in itself, predominantly through the practice of installing exhibitions with multiple frames filling gallery walls. Later in the text, I looked at containers and how they complicate my interpretation of objects and function, as they exist as accessories to hold objects. The chapter looks at my developing intrigue from what the container holds, to then my sole interest in the container itself. I have researched many artists that have influenced me, through critical texts in exhibition catalogues, monographs, and online journals. A significant amount of the thesis is informed by the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard’s The System of Objects, which gave me a context to discuss the logic and utility, or lack of, in the objects I have worked with. As well as this I discuss Duchamp’s Readymades and the Fluxus movement, two historical moments that revere the everyday. The works of mine I discuss put forward an idealistic way of organising, a suggestion of how objects should exist, with an awareness that these suggestions are not pressing or necessary. It is hard to imagine, as I contemplate a career of art-making, that I could be tackling the same drawing or sculpture for 30 years, yet I empathise with that drive of many artists to understand one certain subject. Table of contents 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….1 2. Gathering………………………………………………………………….2 3. Repetition………………………………………………………………….7 4. The Containers……………………………………………………………12 5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………...14 6. Bibliography………………………………………………………………15 7. List of Images……………………………………………………………..17 1. Introduction I am concerned with and interested in the reasons an artist makes art, as well as the choices they make. These are both spontaneous and long term choices, as in how an artist responds to material in a moment or how they stick to a certain practice over decades. This thesis, amongst other things, deals with material in three main chapters, Gathering, Repetition and The Containers. It is an attempt to present my art practice directly and to consider the influences that have shaped said practice. The Icelandic art scene and its history have influenced my perspective on art and my art-making. Ingólfur Arnarsson, Hildur Bjarnadóttir and Bjarni H. Þórarinsson, I refer to in the text, as well as younger Icelandic artists Bjarki Bragason and Leifur Ýmir Eyjólfsson. Another aspect of influence is Conceptualism and the Fluxus movement that I look to in terms of repetition and the intimacy and poetic nature of art-making. A certain philosophical thread runs through this thesis concerning the nature of objects, in which the writings of Jean Baudrillard have informed. A large part of the text delves into specific artworks of mine with a focus on how the works are organised. The objects I write about emerge from the dominant culture that relies on single-use materials and are maintained by consumerism and globalism. This notion is something that informs my work, but my focus does not often stay there. A mass- produced piece of plastic can represent all that is wrong with the world, but it can also represent something mundane. 1 2. Gathering The walk to the bus stop is not always lucrative in terms of objects or things, but occasionally there will be something worth stopping for. In the everyday, object and thing can be interchangeable, but it might be important to make the distinction. There are everyday objects that are recognisable for their function, elastic bands, paperclips, drawing pins, an item that does not need to be explained to understand its utility. Then there are objects with an unclear function, a piece of a larger machine or system that is needed to define its context.

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