MITHILA SHAFIQIntegrated Learning

Resource Centre Project

Part-time Art FoundationWinter 2006

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Mithila Shafi qAfricenia2006Collage on paper

This piece was done as a responce to a brief for the ‘Lucky Dip Project’ by Lucy Jane Batchelor and Katy Walker.

“LUCKY DiP ProjectsNumber 2. Alphabet ‘A’s. (13/05/06 - 14/06/06)This project is making a letter ‘A’ or ‘a’. The work could be 2D or 3D; by hand in any medium (whatever is your speciality!) or even on the computer to create the perfect letter A. The letters will be added to a poster of ‘A’s, and also put into the LUCKY DiP and swapped.”

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Layla CurtisUnited Kingdom1999Collage on paper

“To her mind it makes perfect sense that she now works steeped in a glorious clutter of dismembered maps. What does it mean, however, when a jumble of inclines, lakes and roads that lead to nowhere are meticulously joined into seamless amalgams? Relax, because in a way deconstructing the deconstruction is to miss the point. What sticks is how arbitrary the symbols and semantics that structure our mental images and records actually are.” Karen Chung, Wallpaper, September 2001

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Michael DruksDruksland Physical and Social1974Lithograph

“Everyone accepts that a child has the right to engage in play for its own sake, and to set the rules to boot – a luxury for an adult. But for me as an artist, that situation is a way of life and a calling; to play in the sand, to seize the insubstantial mystery, to play without having to account to anyone; to be creative and try to bend time – that is the meaning of freedom and that is my life’s quest.” Artist’s personal statement, 1995, from Julie M. Gallery website.

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Paula ScherWorld1998Acrylic on canvas

“I operate very strongly with my instincts. If I don’t get it in my fi rst crack, I get it in the second. And if I don’t get it in the second I almost never get it. Because like I said it’s a very intuitive kind of process for me. I’ve never been a refi ner - my best works are kind of big bold strokes that came very quickly.” Transcript from video interview by Hillman Curtis

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Michael WorthingtonTypographic Landscapes???Digital print“The computer has really closed the gap between ideation and production.” Eye Magazine, Issue 31

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Mithila Shafi qSelf portrait – Mithi with ice cream2005Acrylic, screenprint on watercolour paper

This piece was produced from an old photograph of me and originally done as a gift for my mother. It is one of 13 prints produced (with two colour variations).

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Wayne ThieboudGirl with Ice Cream Cone1963Oil on canvas

“The ice cream eater, a single fi gure fi lling the canvas, casts credible shadow on the fl attened (Katzian) ground. The face (of the artist’s wife Betty Jean) is strikingly specifi c, and dress and fl esh are treated with meticulous attention, but precisely because of all this observational acumen, the work is studied. It adopts strategies from the language of painting to solve specifi c problems. It’s at once photographic and ‘arty’.” - David Cohen at artcritical.com

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Andy WarholEarly Self Portrait1964Acrylic, silver paint and silkscreen ink on canvas

“I read an article on me once that described my machine-method of silk-screen copying and painting: ‘What a bold and audacious solution, what depths of the man are revealed in this solution!’ What does that mean?” - Andy Warhol

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Gilbert and George Here1987 Hand-dyed photographs, mounted and framed in 35 parts

“They have made their life the subject of much of their art. Frequently, as in this 1987 work, they wear conservatively buttoned suits, garish ties, white-collared shirts, and deadpan expressions, and offer their unspoken commentary on a variety of subjects close to their hearts, including race, religion, and sexuality. In this case, they seem to express dismay over the horrendous conditions of a working-class section of London.” In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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John BaldessariYellow Guitar20053 Layer, 5 color screenprint, hand cut and laminated on sintra

“I will not make any more boring art,’ John Baldessari wrote over and over again in a work done in 1971. The impulse for the piece, he says, came from dissatisfaction with the fallout of minimalism,’ but its implications are far greater. It is typical of Baldessari’s work, for not only is it extremely funny, but it is also a strategy, a set of conditions, a directive, a paradoxical statement, and a commentary on the art world with which it is involved. Like all his work to date, it addresses, on many complex levels, issues about art, language, games and the world at large.” - Marcia Tucker, “John Baldessari: Pursuing the Unpredictable,” John Baldessari (New York: New Museum, 1981)

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“Africinea”

Cartography and Typography are two of my favourite subjects - so when the op-portunity arose to the combine the two, I went for it wholeheartedly. I had come across Layla Curtis’s work previously at the Tate Modern and was inspired instantly by her use of collage and rearrangement of what we perceived as true. It gave me a start point to my own piece. Having been a traveller from when I was very young, maps always held a special place in my consciousness. I love how they communi-cate so much, and how humans try and make sense of their world by drawing maps – georgraphical or otherwise. Michael Druck’s piece shows how maps can be used to describe just about anything – personally I would have gone for a Mind Map my-self! I chose the other two pieces, by Paula Scher and Michael Worthington (both graphic designers by trade) because again there was this melding together of car-tography and typography.

“Self portrait – Mithi with Ice Cream”

The original photograph on which this piece was based has been one of my favou-rite childhood pictures for a long time. There are several copies around, gracing the mantle pieces of several members of my family. It was taken by my father of me when I was very little. Having come across Wayne Thieboud’s painting I realised how I could use the photograph as a source for a piece of art. Last year I took up silk-screen printing and was immediately taken by how easy it was to produce fl at colours. Andy Warhol is obviously the king of such prints, and I chose one of his earlier self-portraits because it has a simpler quality than some of his later work. Gilbert and George also use the combination of fl at colours and photographic imag-es in their work which gives it the graphic feel that my work also aspires to. I was also pleased with how the use of a small section of strong colour in the middle of my picture (the orange ice cream) really made it stand out. I admire John Baldes-sari’s work precisely for this fact – he brings in a bright splash of fl at colour to an otherwise black and white piece and really makes a statement with it.

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