Research Catalogue

research expositions

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  Echo Theory (2014) author(s): Christopher Hollins published in: Research Catalogue
  Echo Theory explores the idea that a direct objective experience of any object or an event will bring recall of a dormant way of sensing into our powers of observation, and this idea looks to create raw indeterminate shapes and imprecise colour through art to rekindle sensations that our minds work to remove from our day-to-day lives. I believe that art made to avoid learned ideas and controlled content – working to remove recognisable images, stories, social comment, composition, harmony, structural organisation and technique – gives recall of this raw encounter with material that we look to remove from our perception, and my assertion is that using raw material as art brings back to mind echo's of animal impulses that we have evolved to suppress in all we see and do. My work implies any art objects that provoke recall of these animal impulses will disturb us rather than please us, and we will find ourselves looking to reduce the uncertainty experienced in the presence of raw material by searching for imaginative imagery - faces or figures in runs and dribbles of paint, patterns in disorder, or melody in sounds, etc. because this as a behavioural response that has developed through art to keep an older experience out of our minds. I am looking to the idea that any artist unaware of this behaviour will create work that removes rawness from their work, whilst those who are aware will look to promote rawness to bring recall of the remains of a dormant way of sensing.
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  Abating Aesthetic character (2014) author(s): Christopher Hollins published in: Research Catalogue
  This essay looks to the idea that removing aesthetic character from art provokes an inherent natural way of sensing objects and events from our minds. This concept sees controlled meaningful content in art as the basis of intellectual values that work to suppress a view that only comes to mind when these values are absent from our thoughts. I am looking to see art as a tool that can be used to give recall of an innate inborn form of awareness that we inherit from our animal origins but now keep dormant in day-to-day awareness, and my assertion is that we have evolved to suppress this original experience through controlling how we create art through intelligent learned understanding. If an artist is unaware of this they will be working to suppress, rather than reveal, these old dormant powers of perception. I have used A Note on the physical object hypothesis by Richard Wollheim as the basis of this enquiry, and I am looking to understand that when an artist removes all controlled ways of working and intellectual ideas from what they do – by working through chance and accident – the end result creates a catalyst that triggers the return of our old ability to sense through animal instinct.
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  Two Ways of Seeing: Looking to Recognise or Looking to Unkowing (2014) author(s): Christopher Hollins published in: Research Catalogue
  A short essay outlining the founding principle of modern art as a search for an inherent way of sensing that once allowed us to look at objects and events without learned understanding.
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  Do Ideas Contaminate the Art Experience? (2014) author(s): Christopher Hollins published in: Research Catalogue
  This essay questions whether-or-not artists always destroyed the art experience by imposing learned understanding over what they do. I am considering the idea that art history has led us to believe that established work practices allowed artists to create an experience we call art, when, with hindsight, we can now see that they actually work to suppress the sensation. My premise here is that any Research Based Artistic Practice would have to be set up to describe art as a sensation that only enters our thoughts when we find ourselves at a loss to understand what confronts us.
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  Trace Element 2013 (2013) author(s): Christopher Hollins published in: Research Catalogue
  A painting created by chance – as opposed to an art object pregnant with intellectual meaning. This work tries to provoke a sense of uncertainty in order to rekindle an old way of sensing that our learned ideas about what we see suppress in our day-to-day lives.
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  PRIMALISM (2013) author(s): Christopher Hollins published in: Research Catalogue
  A proposal for art to avoid categorisation
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  A LETTER FROM A MODERN ARTIST (2012) author(s): Christopher Hollins published in: Research Catalogue
  This letter describes the outline of an individual artists ideology. It presents an insight into the foundation of what drives an artist to create an art object from a personal point of view. Don't let that put you off the validity of the content, because the only way you can come anywhere near to understanding this sensation that an artist encounters is to get an artist to describe it. Studying objects that artist create will not help because all works of art transform the experience that is, at its manifestation, a glimpse of an inherent sensation hidden within our powers of perception. I believe this sensation is a vestige of a primal state of mind that we have evolved to suppress in all we see and do. Whether-or-not this sensation I described is a valid identification of the art experience is not for me to judge. All I can say is that, once the theory of evolution became known, the pioneers of modernism realised traditional practices had arisen to suppress raw animal intuition.
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  THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ORBS IN ART. (2013) author(s): Christopher Hollins published in: Research Catalogue
  This exposition documents an attempt to create objects that remove all intelligent ideas of recognition from your powers of observation. The works are designed to generate a condition of mind called Object Recognition Breakdown Syndrome. This condition – known as ORBS – is experienced when we find ourselves faced with an object that upholds none of the values associated to any ideas we hold to give what we see an intelligent form of identity. The purpose of this work is to provoke a sensation generated by animal instinct from the depth of your mind.
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  PRIMALISM UPDATED (last edited: 2017) author(s): Christopher Hollins This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Primalism would be a way of looking at any object or event to remove the established ideas we use to recognise what we see. The aim of the Primalist Artist would be to reveal that art objects can be used to generate recall of what remains of an inherent 'animal' sensation that is suppressed in our minds by the learned ideas we use to categorize and classify what we see To achieve this view, art objects would have to be made to direct our responses to an inherent way of sensing that stems from our old powers of instinct. This is a directly opposed view to the educated definition of art – that looks to the production of works of higher learning. Primalist Art would hold no intellectual meaning or content, and it would have to be defined by an ability to disrupt our learned view of the world. Primalism is the result of a direct biological response from our minds to how we conceive of objects and events when deprived of all learned ideas, and the Primalist view is that our higher thought processes have evolved to stop a natural way of sensing in our day-to-day powers of observation.
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  RAW ART (last edited: 2015) author(s): Christopher Hollins This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Presenting unguided paint, unformed clay, jumbled sounds, or undisciplined movement as art brings recall of a natural raw way of sensing that is lost when you learn to guide paint to make pictures, model clay to form sculpture, compose sound to create music, or control movement to choreograph dance. Indeed, any imposition of purposeful intent into your work will destroy the natural raw sensation of an object or an event. The idea that a natural raw sensation is suppress by our intelligent way of looking at the world is now upheld in evolutionary psychology. This scientific discipline theorizes that the most probable cause of our need to create art through controlled technique is the result of an unconscious behavioural response that arose in the past to suppress recall of an intuitive way of sensing. An old way that the mind interpreted it's view of objects and events, that our distant ancestors lived with, has been replaced by intelligent learning, but our learned way of looking evolved to suppress, rather than reveal, the old experience. Any artist who understands this and tries to regain a glimpse of what remains of the older inherent way of sensing by intuition and instinct has to find a way to make art without learned thoughts. This means stopping your mind guiding the paint, clay, sounds or movement.
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  Redundant Perception: An Artist's Enquiry (2017) author(s): Christopher Hollins published in: Research Catalogue
  Living things often display redundant and unused appendages of physical characteristics that once served to give them an advantage in the struggle for life. Examples would be the flightless wings of penguins and ostriches, and the vestige of a tail in we humans; which is made of three small loosely fused bones called the coccyx. This is known as the ‘tail-bone’ because it is considered the remains of the full tail that our ape-like ancestors once possessed. It is also probable that our brains generate the remaining impulses from an older redundant power of perception that once gave our distant ancestors an ‘animal’ awareness of objects and events. This experience of mind now lies buried behind our modern day thought processes, and for any artist aware of this the implications are that the way we create art through intelligent learned ideas hides an experience of deeper natural form. A state of mind therefore exists that once allowed us to conceive of the world in a natural way, but artists have always created intelligently structured artificial images rather than the spontaneous intuitive results need to glimpse the instinctive insight. Art has always worked to suppress rather than reveal an original way of sensing sight, shape, sound, and movement, and it is this realisation that I believe was the motivation for challenging the established principles of art upheld by the founding pioneers of modernism.
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