27/04/2009

Presentation seminar today. There were many different artists discussed; again a great variety themes. Mathew Barney; Obscure works; successful football player, All American , Trying to take this apart? Uses many materials, some significant. Androgynous figure; notions of the classical figure (Cremaster). Ideas of a story but not really telling a story.
Peter Saville, Peter Blake, Stanley Donwood; all album cover designers. Saville worked with joy division, (factory records, Manchester post punk). Blue Monday cover; Italian futurist influence. Peter Blake; Kind of pop art style; sgt Peppers, Paul Weller album, also recent commision for Coke.Stanley Donwood; cites Casper David Friedrich, Hieronomyus Bosch and time spent in museums and mountains as influences. Existentialist type influences dreamy, Peter Doig like.
Lawrence Weiner;Coloured objects (in Ghent), Text on gallery walls. Marcus Harvey; Myra portrait made from childrens hand prints.Tony Cragg: collects discarded objects from streets to make images. Chuck close;portraits using shapes like puzzles. Richard Prince; text in art (humour) to take away from the seriousness of art world. A lot of the artists today question the notion of the visual in different ways, also raises questions about the nature of museums. Ann-Marie Busschers; hyper realism, child with chicken pox, highly detailed. Ron Mueck; Sculptor, Giant size sculptures of people etc, again highly detailed.
Afternoon; spent time in library reading for thesis.

24/04/2009

More reading today for the thesis.We still cannot find the mini dv tape that had our performance on.Amanda (Sculpture tutor) has suggested that we create one still image of the performance; the image alone would be strong enough to give a representation of what thie performance was about. My self and Mathilde agreed that this is an excellent suggestion if we are unable to find it. We Managed to get Mathilde connected to the lit wireless internet; this will be great for our presentation on Monday. Alan has asked if they can show my practice diary as part of an exhibition, of how artists use different processes in their work; this is a great honour.

23/04/2009

Presentation seminar this morning. It was very interesting, a great variety of work and artists. The were a good few artists which I particularly liked; Gregory Crewdson for his film set type photographs, Claes Oldenberg, for the everyday objects he turns into 'extraordinary' sculpture pieces. I liked the humour in the artworks of Erwin Wurm (stuffing things up nose), Banksy's Elephant with wall paper, and Terry Borders' little wire sculptures; very humorous, something we could do with a little bit more of in the art world, it's far too serious ! Fred Wilson is an artist of particular interest to me as I will be referencing him in my thesis. Cultural identity is one theme in his work; he argues that museums are only a kind of truth, and not an absolute truth. There was mention or the Alter Modern exhibition in the Tate gallery in Britain; again this held a special significance for me, as I have a very strong interest in contemporary art. Charles Avery's Aleph Null head was intriguing. Issues of displacement and cultural identity, were a theme of Navin Rawanchaikul's work, while travel, politics of places, and trade borders were evident i n the work of Simon Starling's work (An artist of special significance to me). Walhed Beshty work about airport security x ray's were intriguing, while the artist as traveller was a theme covered by Darren Almond; Mark Dion was also mentioned. All in all it was an excellent presentation seminar, very informative, educational and thought provoking.

22/04/2009

More reading again today for the thesis. It is intriguing to read of the research that Pierre Bourdieu has done; and how a lack of artistic familiarity and education can effect the way people feel about museum visitation. Have also done some research on the artist/professor Alastair Maclennan; he is a well known contemporary artist who works in performance art, something which myself and collaborating colleague Mathilde are undertaking at the moment. Michael s Reidel is another artist I have been researching, he parodies other artist's exhibitions. He has done a send up of a Simon Starling's work too.

21/04/2009

Reading for thesis. I am reading 'love of art' by Pierre Bourdieu, it is about the research he has done regarding Museum visitation by people from different socio-economic backgrounds. It is very interesting and thought provoking; a valuable reference source for the thesis.

20/04/2009

First day back after Easter, did quite a lot of work today without actually getting a lot done (does this make sense? well it does to me in my own mind, and as Sean Lynch says, "once it makes sense in your own mind, that's all that matters")LOL. Talking of Sean Lynch; met him and his wife today at lunchtime for a chat, they were teaching for the day in the college. We spoke about the Starling egg; the historical significance of the Unter Den Linden area in Berlin, Joseph Beuys's 7000 oak trees, Simon Starlings studio in Frankfurt etc. It was very interesting to hear an established artists opinion on the work.
Returned Ann's video camera to her (she lent it to me over the Easter)fair play to her. Unscrewed the video mounting bracket and returned it to the canteen where it came from.Prepared another five eggsaws; that's the last of them now.Myself and Mathilde worked on our presentation; it is looking good. A catastrophe has occurred, the video performance we did with the hoovers etc has gone missing, I can't find it anywhere; we are so disappointed as it was really good, I do not think we could recapture the magic that happened spontaneously that day.Enquired from Matt (just in case we left it in the video camera) also asked Nigel, Sean, etc, no sign of it anywhere.Got an extension loan from the library, on the book I got on special loan.The lads have agreed that the man from the gallery in Berlin was very condescending in his e mail to us. (I sent them a copy of the e mail he sent me). Sandra has organised a bag packing week end starting next Friday and Saturday,and Sunday, fair play to her; also to Tadhg who is putting in a lot of work for the exhibition, in fact; all the lads seem to be taking their responsibilities very seriously, fair play to them all!!! Got a couple more additions to the beauty board today; it is close to completion now.

15/04/2009

15/04/2009

Still on Easter hols but went in to do our performance piece today. We put the paints into plastic cups/jars to give us more freedom whilst painting. The paint was thinned by adding linseed oil, we used turpentine to dilute it further. We began by lying on the floor whilst listening to the music (Steve Reich), this we did, as it were, to achieve an altered state of awareness/consciousness; we listened to the music for a few minutes, then went about the job of painting the boards. The music was on a loop and it played for the duration of the work. It was an unusual experience; no planning as such (as to the structure of the painting) we just went with how we felt. It was in some sense quite liberating; being free of the usual restraints within the painting genre; we felt the painting as opposed to constructing it. It developed from pure unadulterated creativity, intermingled with generous helpings of spontaneity. Was it a success? most definitely so, the painting is full of energy.There is a wonderful array of different strokes, lines, swirls,reduction marks etc. Perhaps the next time we might use a more restricted palette, and maybe an even shorter time frame. We are both very happy with the result, it's not everyone who gets the opportunity to undertake this kind of painting/performance experience.Jackson Pollack is an obvious reference but many artists have used different means of altered states, to do paintings: alcohol, drugs, sensory deprivation and overload, etc, etc,etc.