Tom Railton

Tom began the lecture on an interesting note talking about his works that he really didn't like, describing his enthusiasm throughout the process of researching and making the work to then think the end result just didn't work. For example Tom spoke of a long process of researching before making his sculpture. The initial idea came from him looking at book covers where he found a 2nd hand copy of 'the interpreter' by Brian Aldiss, which had an artificial looking sunset in the background. Leading from this he looked at artificial sunsets on social media and psychologist studies of colour use on phones speeding/slowing down the brain. I found how Tom spoke about the processes more interesting then when he spoke about the sculpture he made, I actually cant remember what the sculpture even looked like, or if he even showed us it in the first place.

After this he explained how he continued looking at skies, this time looking at whimsical and idealised skies leading him to think about artists such as William Hogart who's paintings background skies lacked in detail compared to the detail of the foreground. He began making marbles using these whimsical patterns and decided to get school children involved. He originally had the idea of older children being involved so that it would go more to the idea he wanted but ended up working with 2 year old's who obviously where extremely unpredictable, which meant a lot of the marbles didn't really end up marble shaped at all, but he did find that he liked this unpredictable element that occurred in his work and thinks his practice has developed from this.

After this I noticed a lot of interactive elements occurring in his works, one of these works was an arched sculpture. Which was inspired by the weird dead end/dark ally outside of the gallery he was having an exhibition at and the church that was near the gallery where there stained glass window were broken. I loved this piece and how he filled the gallery room with these large arches where broken stained glass took out and the viewers had to weave in and out of these structures. Having an element of natural interaction with the audience, however the curator of the exhibition did accidentally cut his ankle on this which lead to some health and safety procedures having to being added.

So far this term Tom Railton has been my favourite lecturer, I found his work extremely interesting and I liked how Tom spoke thoroughly about the process of his practice more then just the end result of the piece. In the Q+A Tom spoke more of his practice and certain artist that he looks at for inspiration. Tom explained how he likes to do a lot of minor projects and art shows as it makes him work more due to having deadlines as well making him less anxious for bigger projects. He also spoke about how he finds himself having ideas of how the piece will be and be set out before even doing the piece but he is trying to be more unpredictable and experimental in his practice. I found how he described this development in his practice really important as I am currently trying to do more unpredictable and unrehearsed work, which i experimented with at the ' A Happening' show I was part of which I felt was a great success and worked extremely well, with positive feedback from the audience. I found it allowed me to get out of my own head when working and just being in the moment, improvising as I went along and responding to the atmosphere and my friend who I was collaborating with.