Portfolio
Images of the Green Room - Progress shots
The peephole concept comes from the social aspect of my work and research, with relational aesthetics being what I studied and looked into to create work that had that sense of community and participation wrapped into it, where works echo the social, political and critical engagement. Reading about Olafur Eliasson, I read a statement he wrote that encapsulates everything I would ever want an audience to perceive. In the future I would hope to take my work to more political and ethical issues that combine within the social brand and relational aspect of art, I love that art takes the audience to join and becomes part of the artwork by interacting with it. That moment and affect it has it so one of a kind, with other ways of drawing an audience in a more political or socially heightened way like reading or protesting etc there is of course such a great following but art is the modern day therapist, speaking the silences that are over world and transforming them through a creative and approachable way.
'I believe that art is a practice through which the vital aspects of society and life may be examine, challenged and renegotiated. Cultural practices such as art are not driven by capitalistic values but operate through ideas and reflections about the values that define sociality, about how experience and ethics are intertwined and ultimately how subjectivity is defined. My interest is architecture, space, time and thus comes from a fundamental interest in human beings and our potential to reevaluate the conditions that determine or influence our sense of subjectivity.
Our ability to reevaluate existing structures and systems, such as still prevalent modernistic ideas about space and their value systems requires a critical engagement with the world. The spatial language of dimensionality I have chosen to explore is clearly also a construction, but when waves and frequencies are understood as spatial principles, they become elements of this dimensional conception, which in its critical perspective function as possible models for the understanding of values of m
modernist spaces that is relevant to the times we live in.
Therefore we must challenge the ways in which we engage with our surroundings and here, I believe art has great potential, it not only encourages critical engagement but also introduces a sense of responsibility in our engagement that has political as well as social and ethical consequences.
'I believe that art is a practice through which the vital aspects of society and life may be examine, challenged and renegotiated. Cultural practices such as art are not driven by capitalistic values but operate through ideas and reflections about the values that define sociality, about how experience and ethics are intertwined and ultimately how subjectivity is defined. My interest is architecture, space, time and thus comes from a fundamental interest in human beings and our potential to reevaluate the conditions that determine or influence our sense of subjectivity.
Our ability to reevaluate existing structures and systems, such as still prevalent modernistic ideas about space and their value systems requires a critical engagement with the world. The spatial language of dimensionality I have chosen to explore is clearly also a construction, but when waves and frequencies are understood as spatial principles, they become elements of this dimensional conception, which in its critical perspective function as possible models for the understanding of values of m
modernist spaces that is relevant to the times we live in.
Therefore we must challenge the ways in which we engage with our surroundings and here, I believe art has great potential, it not only encourages critical engagement but also introduces a sense of responsibility in our engagement that has political as well as social and ethical consequences.
The way that others interact and become apart of the work is how we act in private and bringing that into a public surface and space. That action is the social communication between the two and the language that comprehends the two together.
With my degree piece, the experience of touch and physical sensation of materiality is then cut by the door that will cover the entrance and there will be peep hole but in this case, a dog flap because it completely overrides the sensibility of the piece throwing all normality out the window. |
Images so far from the degree show - my concept and ideas are revolving around the notion of visual language through the curation and 'set- like' composition of the work. These tactile and fabricated pieces are covered in green patterned and non-patterned fur, the objects are transformed and defy the original and create a new sense of physical and visual experience for the viewer to partake in.
I have played with the idea of art as an experience and the way that the spectator experiences the work. The use of material is there for the sensory participation and compulsive need we have to touch and feel and become a part of the artwork in that sense. This idea of participation and the social communication between artist and viewer is what I spoke about in my research with Roland Bathes and the death of the author and if the role of the artist is translated onto the viewer. This concept is so interesting to me, to watch a person play and become part of the work changes its narrative and the way it is performed and used. |
This shift from artists as being the sole factor to the meaning of an artwork has changed, the audience brings their own interpretation to the artwork. Theoretically articulated challenges to conformist ideas of individual authorship and identity heavy pieces within the practices of artists have dispersed and the revolution of spectatorship and intervention have succeeded. This prompts the question of authorship in relational art, are these artists creating these platforms for the audience to dance on, or are they simply curators allowing the magic of participation and choice become the never planned or articulated movements that form the social bonds and produce the end piece of artwork?
Barthes famously stated that the ‘author was dead and the reader had been born’. However this declaration that the author was dead doesn’t just imply that the reader had a greater influence over the meaning of a particular text or artwork. If you look at this with the operation that the modernist avant-garde set out, you can see that a form of social organisation or notion of authority can no longer be enforced on passive subjects; it is something that is created amongst a collaborative menu. The meta-modern author or artist, who develops within culture and philosophy, stepping through modernism and postmodernism, politics and aesthetics, authority and authorship is creating a space to question and provoke.
Barthes famously stated that the ‘author was dead and the reader had been born’. However this declaration that the author was dead doesn’t just imply that the reader had a greater influence over the meaning of a particular text or artwork. If you look at this with the operation that the modernist avant-garde set out, you can see that a form of social organisation or notion of authority can no longer be enforced on passive subjects; it is something that is created amongst a collaborative menu. The meta-modern author or artist, who develops within culture and philosophy, stepping through modernism and postmodernism, politics and aesthetics, authority and authorship is creating a space to question and provoke.
Compositions and eroticism of space - George's Bataille
Playing around with the compositions of the space, using images and artworks of my previous work to experiment with how it is read and then changes the overall reading of the work. Using a print as vivid as this works with my idea of excess and working with interiors and the play on space and drawing into ideas of eroticism of space and material. For example materials that attract the viewer and basic formalities of curiosity and touch all circle around. With eroticism of space you transgress the language and material into a sexuality and formal want to explore further through the architecture and the immersive sense of the piece.
Aesthetic value - the eroticism of spatial impact and textural pieces, all combining through the exploration of touch, social art, relational aesthetics and the participatory factor that is provided by the audience.
Textual and materiality impacting sensesExamples of textural pieces i have made that impact in different ways, it is a very basic thought of seeing how different materials and textures affect the viewer but exhibiting them in such a way that it becomes a pieces of that in the act of experiencing them. The moment of communication between the two and how that reaction becomes the art, is how relational aesthetic art praises it practice. |
Iris Turns
My works from our exhibition at the Bargehouse at the Oxo Tower in London, I was experimenting with the idea of excess, Oscar Wilde famously said, "Moderation is fatal, nothing succeeds like excess" this quote is something I am putting into physical action, within the excess of material, surface and textural experience for the spectator. Through the exploration of touch and play the viewer is confronted by many encounters through kinetic sculptures and visually perceptive objects, I will keep playing with the different material that urge for the touch of a spectator, the curiosity of the mind is what I want as an artist to intrigue and continuously expand with, your engagement has consequences. You allow yourself to become the artwork and in essence, the artist, art is social, political and ethical and through spatial language I am exploring this modernistic idea of the critical engagement with the world.
Object, Painting and Materiality
L-R
This chair focuses on the sense of objectivity, taking the typical object and obstructing it with material, in this the material is clay shards. It is disrupting and transforming the object and forming a narrative within it. The lamp I too have redecorated in the same style, it is so there is a heightened textural and gestural experience cast to the viewer, my work is about that communication between the work and how the spectator reads it, these sculptural works I have made go along side the paintings, altering the composition and way it reads. Playing on humor and the traditional sense of a gallery space, I have made these to challenge the perception of objectivity and materiality of my work.
This chair focuses on the sense of objectivity, taking the typical object and obstructing it with material, in this the material is clay shards. It is disrupting and transforming the object and forming a narrative within it. The lamp I too have redecorated in the same style, it is so there is a heightened textural and gestural experience cast to the viewer, my work is about that communication between the work and how the spectator reads it, these sculptural works I have made go along side the paintings, altering the composition and way it reads. Playing on humor and the traditional sense of a gallery space, I have made these to challenge the perception of objectivity and materiality of my work.
Experimental Studio Work
Experimenting with form, texture, pattern and composition. I have separate pieces that I have made using fur, rubber, plastic and synthetic materials; I have looking at the position seeing if moving changes how it is read as an image and what compliments the contrast between them and whole image. The twisted black plastic is something I will continue to expand on as the size can be altered and the twist and bend of the material, leaving it open to experimentation, as well as covering it in material, painting it into a garish pattern and colouring. All this is to highlight the sensory experience in art that the audience is invited to participate in.
Sensory Pieces - used at Lewisham ARThouse exhibition TARMAC
These are some new works I have been developing revolving around the concept of sensory art and participatory art. This is a form relational art derived from Nicolas Bourriaud's relational aesthetics, this form of art is where the social communication between art and viewer is what is of importance rather than the work itself; it is about the interaction of the spectator and the effect it causes in a neorealistic space. So a fake/made reality, for example our is in a gallery setting and I am using materials from the outside and bringing them in, this neorealistic space is the stage for the viewer to communicate with the work like it is a performative piece, you have to touch to conclude the connection between the two, the participatory effect is in practice.
Studio Concepts for future work - off the wall, more sculptural and interactive
Ideas for new work, I want to make a large scale V shape or Z shaped board or wood sheet that will be textured on the inside on one half and on the other painted in a way that distorts/compromises our viewing, the idea is to walk inside it and be able to touch and really read the work. So the scale would be 2.5m long and 1.5m high so just a bit smaller than me.
Linear gallery proposal, similar to the new concepts for work, it would be like a concertina shaped canvases all joined by hinges but textured heavily and painted/using wax or materials to bulk it out but only on the inside so you once again have to participate and physically view the work to understand the narrative inside it. The space is a narrow corridor so it would intervene with people walking by, it is forced in front of you to experience.
Linear gallery proposal, similar to the new concepts for work, it would be like a concertina shaped canvases all joined by hinges but textured heavily and painted/using wax or materials to bulk it out but only on the inside so you once again have to participate and physically view the work to understand the narrative inside it. The space is a narrow corridor so it would intervene with people walking by, it is forced in front of you to experience.
Concepts for studio work linking to dissertation principles of relational aesthetics and relational art.
Tirvanija > relational art. The way that he cooks up an experience is the way that our eyes feast on an artwork.
Everything is an experience in itself, art is an experience that engulfs us as the spectators. It is sound and visuals, metaphorical and physically through the concept of the gaze. A feast for the eyes, an entrée and main course. The way we recognise an image is us understanding and us digesting it.
We as the viewer take the time to soak up the information, the narrative within the artworks are like a play; in my work I am trying to create this through the emphasis on textural and gestural imagery. Abstract artists craft works that are so densely woven with narrative and characters, it is like pulling a thread from a jumper that your grandma knitted, it unravels slowly as you pull at it, that is us as the spectator reading and understanding the meaning and perplexities of an image; it is us digesting a visual dinner for the eyes and mind.
Relational art > the mannerisms of relational art and the concepts of relational aesthetics that Bourriaud writes about follow the principles of audience participation and interaction.
Is viewing an image participation? Visual perception: it’s the onlookers observing a play, reading a book and sipping their wine. You come in contact with hundreds of tasks every day that require the simultaneous movements of looking and understanding what you are doing, this is how we view art, art is postmodern, its dimensional, it’s here and there and it’s a replica of then and now.
We automatically gaze upon such beauty around us without noticing, art is everywhere and always has been; these narratives within the artworks become like TV to us, they are our soap, our EastEnders, the Mona Lisa is Peggy Mitchell. The character is there, the visual perception and feeling you come to experience and identify with.
Art is our continuous play, it is a theatre production, a story that visually encapsulates a mass audience.
To view physically is to touch an image, this is how we find meaning. We picked up toys as infants to learn shape and colour, to develop our senses and discover why and how things and objects have importance. As adults we do this unremittingly without hesitation, in art we make contact with an image to touch the surface and seize our curiosity of what it may feel like, this is how we read visually the pictorial plane, to immerse ourselves.
As humans we want everything, we want to consume information about everything around us, about artwork we want to capsulate everything into a tiny bite of knowledge. Art is our dinner, Peggy Mitchell is edible and the Mona Lisa is a Fullblood Wagyu Tenderloin.
But who is to say they prefer their steak that way? Is the more expensive cut better because it is more acclaimed, or does Lidl’s frying steak still deserve recognition, reproduction is still art, everything is art, art is all around us. Steak for all.
Tirvanija > relational art. The way that he cooks up an experience is the way that our eyes feast on an artwork.
Everything is an experience in itself, art is an experience that engulfs us as the spectators. It is sound and visuals, metaphorical and physically through the concept of the gaze. A feast for the eyes, an entrée and main course. The way we recognise an image is us understanding and us digesting it.
We as the viewer take the time to soak up the information, the narrative within the artworks are like a play; in my work I am trying to create this through the emphasis on textural and gestural imagery. Abstract artists craft works that are so densely woven with narrative and characters, it is like pulling a thread from a jumper that your grandma knitted, it unravels slowly as you pull at it, that is us as the spectator reading and understanding the meaning and perplexities of an image; it is us digesting a visual dinner for the eyes and mind.
Relational art > the mannerisms of relational art and the concepts of relational aesthetics that Bourriaud writes about follow the principles of audience participation and interaction.
Is viewing an image participation? Visual perception: it’s the onlookers observing a play, reading a book and sipping their wine. You come in contact with hundreds of tasks every day that require the simultaneous movements of looking and understanding what you are doing, this is how we view art, art is postmodern, its dimensional, it’s here and there and it’s a replica of then and now.
We automatically gaze upon such beauty around us without noticing, art is everywhere and always has been; these narratives within the artworks become like TV to us, they are our soap, our EastEnders, the Mona Lisa is Peggy Mitchell. The character is there, the visual perception and feeling you come to experience and identify with.
Art is our continuous play, it is a theatre production, a story that visually encapsulates a mass audience.
To view physically is to touch an image, this is how we find meaning. We picked up toys as infants to learn shape and colour, to develop our senses and discover why and how things and objects have importance. As adults we do this unremittingly without hesitation, in art we make contact with an image to touch the surface and seize our curiosity of what it may feel like, this is how we read visually the pictorial plane, to immerse ourselves.
As humans we want everything, we want to consume information about everything around us, about artwork we want to capsulate everything into a tiny bite of knowledge. Art is our dinner, Peggy Mitchell is edible and the Mona Lisa is a Fullblood Wagyu Tenderloin.
But who is to say they prefer their steak that way? Is the more expensive cut better because it is more acclaimed, or does Lidl’s frying steak still deserve recognition, reproduction is still art, everything is art, art is all around us. Steak for all.
Wax images I have made this week, these works are sifting through the idea of textual imagery and materiality, are these bordering the line of sculpture? Where is the line? I filled these canvases/frames with soil, dirt, tissue, layers of wax to corrupt the surface, and conceal objects underneath. It changes the narrative of the piece, and for the viewer explores it visually and on a level of a sculpture piece as it breaks the 3rd dimension of the imagery, it isn't flat, it isn't fully coming out of the wall, it is the in between the two. Which is interesting as you can't fully explain it.
Idea for a large scale piece, filling a space with 50/60 'things' canvases, wax, objects concealed within the wax, thickly doused paintings all with layers upon layers objectifying the surface of an image, a canvas or material. It would all be rubbed lightly in white paint, so it a sense they are like tiles, tiling a surface of a wall but in this case, covered in lumps, bumps and edges. The sizes would all be different but closely put together. Found objects and made ones but all white. They must blend together but when the spectator views them they realize the surface is uneven and real. It is about obstructing the eye and the materiality of the images. I want it to be touched, felt, walked around and absorbance by the viewer. I want it to be read as a narrative.
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Wall Images
Francis Alys
Part of Francis Alÿs’s installation Fabiola. The Belgian artist spent 15 years collecting these images by a range of creators.
It would be hard to imagine a more startling show of portraits than the 300 heads now assembled, with barely an inch between them, in Fabiola at the National Portrait Gallery. The spectacle is overwhelming. It is not just the critical mass of so many faces, floor to ceiling, nor the fact that some of these works might not ordinarily be found in a public gallery. It is that they all show exactly the same woman.
The same woman, what is more, in exactly the same pose: facing right, her head in profile, hooded in a red veil against a dark background. That she is a cult figure is obvious, even to those who have no idea who she is; that the cult is religious becomes apparent from the veil. But beyond that, what strikes over and again is the paradoxical sense that no matter how alike these images are - how alike they aim to look - each is tellingly different. Fabiola is a Catholic saint and follower of St Jerome, who wrote a beautiful eulogy of her virtues when she died in 399. Born into a patrician family in Rome, she was married twice - once to a brute, as Jerome implies, whom she committed the sin of divorcing, next to a man whose early death she grieved in the streets of Rome before renouncing the world for her faith.
Fabiola might have remained obscure had not Cardinal Wiseman, Archbishop of Westminster, written an improbably racy bestseller about her life in 1850 which was translated into 10 languages; and if the 19th-century French artist (who would himself be otherwise obscure) Jean-Jacques Henner had not painted his celebrated "portrait". The first of the many tantalising questions raised by this show is just how Henner's portrait came to dominate all future images of the saint for the original disappeared long ago. It survives only in black-and-white reproductions based, one must suppose, either on a primitive photograph or an etching; and yet almost every artist here has painted the hair brown and the veil decisively red. It is as if Henner's painting, even at several removes, was unanimously upheld as the right version of Fabiola, quite a tribute to his imagination for he had no idea how she looked. But creativity is the true subject of this show - art and its power, its uses. This is the reason, one feels, that Belgian artist Francis Alÿs has spent 15 years unearthing hundreds of images by a whole range of creators from skilled painters to mediocre hacks and thrift-shop amateurs. There are hyper-real Fabiolas and Fabiolas worked on linen and black velvet. There are wood carvings, embroideries and icons accoutred with actual veils. There are glass works, pastels and images on tin foil. There is even a Fabiola laboriously worked in varnished sesame seeds.
Alÿs, one of the most humane of contemporary artists, is a great co-ordinator of ideas and people. He once brought 500 citizens together to move a vast sand dune, transforming the landscape (and their view) and one of his most beguiling works traces the sundial effect of a flagpole in Mexico City, providing shadow for passers-by even as it measures the passing of their day. With Fabiola, he has turned the act of collecting into a prism for looking. Where did this image come from, why was it made and by what sort of mind? Each picture inflects questions about the next. Fabiola looks more or less western, Mexican, eastern European. She acquires green eyeshadow, turns bottle blonde, appears by turns serene, tragic, meek, compassionate, powerful. Each artist makes her again to him or herself.
One has given her a presence so immediate she might be posing before him; another has tried to return her to Rome with the look of a classical mosaic. The portrait may be a sign of the times - art deco, Forties Hollywood - or it might be an absolutely timeless act of pure devotion. As Alÿs observes, the one defining constant in all this multiplicity is actually the scrolling fold of her veil, which looks variously like a loop, hook or ear, depending on the artist's abilities. Why they were painted - altarpiece, ex-voto, act of gratitude, penitence or prayer, just for the comfort of her company (Fabiola is the patron saint of the abused and widowed) - may speak of the artist's private need or devotion. But what this immense assembly of images conveys above all is the universal power of the portrait.
Portraits have powers quite other than pictures of apples or rolling fields; they appear to us as people first, however momentarily, before they revert to pictures. Fabiola is the purest expression of this effect: friend, heroine, living saint to all these people, she has services to perform in this world, not least in proving that there are an infinite number of ways to paint a portrait.
Part of Francis Alÿs’s installation Fabiola. The Belgian artist spent 15 years collecting these images by a range of creators.
It would be hard to imagine a more startling show of portraits than the 300 heads now assembled, with barely an inch between them, in Fabiola at the National Portrait Gallery. The spectacle is overwhelming. It is not just the critical mass of so many faces, floor to ceiling, nor the fact that some of these works might not ordinarily be found in a public gallery. It is that they all show exactly the same woman.
The same woman, what is more, in exactly the same pose: facing right, her head in profile, hooded in a red veil against a dark background. That she is a cult figure is obvious, even to those who have no idea who she is; that the cult is religious becomes apparent from the veil. But beyond that, what strikes over and again is the paradoxical sense that no matter how alike these images are - how alike they aim to look - each is tellingly different. Fabiola is a Catholic saint and follower of St Jerome, who wrote a beautiful eulogy of her virtues when she died in 399. Born into a patrician family in Rome, she was married twice - once to a brute, as Jerome implies, whom she committed the sin of divorcing, next to a man whose early death she grieved in the streets of Rome before renouncing the world for her faith.
Fabiola might have remained obscure had not Cardinal Wiseman, Archbishop of Westminster, written an improbably racy bestseller about her life in 1850 which was translated into 10 languages; and if the 19th-century French artist (who would himself be otherwise obscure) Jean-Jacques Henner had not painted his celebrated "portrait". The first of the many tantalising questions raised by this show is just how Henner's portrait came to dominate all future images of the saint for the original disappeared long ago. It survives only in black-and-white reproductions based, one must suppose, either on a primitive photograph or an etching; and yet almost every artist here has painted the hair brown and the veil decisively red. It is as if Henner's painting, even at several removes, was unanimously upheld as the right version of Fabiola, quite a tribute to his imagination for he had no idea how she looked. But creativity is the true subject of this show - art and its power, its uses. This is the reason, one feels, that Belgian artist Francis Alÿs has spent 15 years unearthing hundreds of images by a whole range of creators from skilled painters to mediocre hacks and thrift-shop amateurs. There are hyper-real Fabiolas and Fabiolas worked on linen and black velvet. There are wood carvings, embroideries and icons accoutred with actual veils. There are glass works, pastels and images on tin foil. There is even a Fabiola laboriously worked in varnished sesame seeds.
Alÿs, one of the most humane of contemporary artists, is a great co-ordinator of ideas and people. He once brought 500 citizens together to move a vast sand dune, transforming the landscape (and their view) and one of his most beguiling works traces the sundial effect of a flagpole in Mexico City, providing shadow for passers-by even as it measures the passing of their day. With Fabiola, he has turned the act of collecting into a prism for looking. Where did this image come from, why was it made and by what sort of mind? Each picture inflects questions about the next. Fabiola looks more or less western, Mexican, eastern European. She acquires green eyeshadow, turns bottle blonde, appears by turns serene, tragic, meek, compassionate, powerful. Each artist makes her again to him or herself.
One has given her a presence so immediate she might be posing before him; another has tried to return her to Rome with the look of a classical mosaic. The portrait may be a sign of the times - art deco, Forties Hollywood - or it might be an absolutely timeless act of pure devotion. As Alÿs observes, the one defining constant in all this multiplicity is actually the scrolling fold of her veil, which looks variously like a loop, hook or ear, depending on the artist's abilities. Why they were painted - altarpiece, ex-voto, act of gratitude, penitence or prayer, just for the comfort of her company (Fabiola is the patron saint of the abused and widowed) - may speak of the artist's private need or devotion. But what this immense assembly of images conveys above all is the universal power of the portrait.
Portraits have powers quite other than pictures of apples or rolling fields; they appear to us as people first, however momentarily, before they revert to pictures. Fabiola is the purest expression of this effect: friend, heroine, living saint to all these people, she has services to perform in this world, not least in proving that there are an infinite number of ways to paint a portrait.
Crit Show
A wax image, I built up using 56 candles dripping continuously then layering pans of paraffin wax over the top to coat and almost soothe the surface layer of the image. This is about the texture, grain and surface of the canvas, going back to my original proposal of looking at the touch in art. This is something I have always been a fan of working on/with. I love to explore and exploit different gradients of textual imagery, working with the materiality of a piece and crafting it into something innovative.
The response from this piece was about the scale of the piece, how if it were larger it would have a greater effect of visual impact, which I do agree on. It looks as if I am concealing objects underneath the layers of wax, so you try to read the narrative of this, trying to find what could be there. I add this extra sense of textual imbalance by adding chunks and shapes of built up wax so the surface would purposely be unsmooth. I think this piece reads in many ways, it could be the base surface of the moon, or a planet or the ground layer of something huge. It could be a section of Keifer's work. I like that there is a sense of mystery added to this, and from here I want to create large scale wax piece, totally divulging in the experiment of texture and mark making, using sand or gravel, more wax or dirt to emphasis the canvas the unfocus of the canvas reading as the sole narrative of the artwork. |
A piece I painted to represent the touch, the simplicity of a mark and how it can be moved and altered to create new pieces within itself.
I purposely chose a trip-tic, three panels of canvas to emphasis the concept and idea of move-ability, that from one turn or rotation you can generate multiple images from one, it is almost like a game where you continuously build and perform. I guess the art of it is in the moving, the physical act of it. In the same way that relational aesthetics is built from the experience of it, relational art offers services and experiences rather than objects to be consumed, the object is no longer materially or conceptually defined, but relationally. Bourriaud said “what is produced are connections with the world broadcast by object” in relational art meaning is to be elaborated collectively rather in the space of individual consumption; beholden to the contingences of its environment and audience.
I purposely chose a trip-tic, three panels of canvas to emphasis the concept and idea of move-ability, that from one turn or rotation you can generate multiple images from one, it is almost like a game where you continuously build and perform. I guess the art of it is in the moving, the physical act of it. In the same way that relational aesthetics is built from the experience of it, relational art offers services and experiences rather than objects to be consumed, the object is no longer materially or conceptually defined, but relationally. Bourriaud said “what is produced are connections with the world broadcast by object” in relational art meaning is to be elaborated collectively rather in the space of individual consumption; beholden to the contingences of its environment and audience.
Video Work - Appropriation
A video I made to recontextualise the 'Hand of God' by Michaelangelo. This is something intended to humorous, something quick, something to enjoy and recognise the references. It is appropriation but regenerated into a modern snippet of film. It adds a sense of humour into it, where Duchamp has his essence of humility and wit refined into his practice I am trying to almost take concept and turn it into a digital piece. This is something that I enjoyed making as it was very spontaneous.
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Appropriation in Art
In separating images from the original context of their own media, we allow them to take on new and varied meanings. The process and nature of appropriation has considered by anthropologists as part of the study of cultural change and cross-cultural contact.3
Images and elements of culture that have been appropriated commonly involve famous and recognisable works of art, well known literature, and easily accessible images from the media. The first artist to successfully demonstrate forms of appropriation within his or her work is widely considered to be Marcel Duchamp. He devised the concept of the ‘readymade’, which essentially involved an item being chosen by the artist, signed by the artist and repositioned into a gallery context. By asking the viewer to consider the object as art, Duchamp was appropriating it. For Duchamp, the work of the artist was in selecting the object. Whilst the beginnings of appropriation can be located to the beginning of the 20th century through the innovations of Duchamp, it is often said that if the art of the 1980’s could be epitomised by any one technique or practice, it would be appropriation. The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the artist selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object (or objects) and repositioning or joining, titling and signing it, the Found object became art. |
Appropriation art means to appropriate something involves taking possession of it. In the visual arts, the term appropriation often refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creation of new work. The borrowed elements may include images, forms or styles from art history or from popular culture, or materials and techniques from non-art contexts. Appropriation refers to the act of borrowing or reusing existing elements within a new work. Post-modern appropriation artists, including Barbara Kruger, are keen to deny the notion of ‘originality’. They believe that in borrowing existing imagery or elements of imagery, they are re-contextualising or appropriating the original imagery, allowing the viewer to renegotiate the meaning of the original in a different, more relevant, or more current context. |
Abstracting and appropriating the master pieces for a series I am creating, to be printed on material and hung like banners, or stretched over a canvas like a screen, or to be painted and stretched and made on a curved frame. The idea of a cinema engulfing us, the audience encapsulated by the image. That is what art does, it communicates.
Abstracting the 'value'
When you take a masterpiece you recognize it for that certain subject or moment of memorability. I want to create a series of appropriated images from masterpieces that took the art world and still to this day continue to show their stance and beauty. By re-energizing them, reconsidering them to be something else. The thing they are known for will not be there but the smaller focus, drawing light to it.
For example this is a test piece I have made with the Birth of Venus shell. Painting it to be its own subject and narrative, I don't believe this image has work particularly well as its I want the concept for this series to almost be unrecognizable. This scale is too small I want to fill the canvas with an almost pixlated like image, the zoomed in cross section of a masterpiece, a leaf, line structure, tone of skin colour, hair strand etc. I want a cinema style image, the size blown up out of proportion. This is to show that the abstract of value has been made, that even the over looked particle of these many great images are valued.
For example this is a test piece I have made with the Birth of Venus shell. Painting it to be its own subject and narrative, I don't believe this image has work particularly well as its I want the concept for this series to almost be unrecognizable. This scale is too small I want to fill the canvas with an almost pixlated like image, the zoomed in cross section of a masterpiece, a leaf, line structure, tone of skin colour, hair strand etc. I want a cinema style image, the size blown up out of proportion. This is to show that the abstract of value has been made, that even the over looked particle of these many great images are valued.
The birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli
The Birth of Venus has become one of the most heralded works of the Renaissance and a lasting symbol of feminine grace and beauty. Beyond being a beloved example of Renaissance art, the painting has also become a marker by which other eras’ beauty norms are measured. Her pose has been co-opted by various modern models. And as recently as 2014, The Birth of Venus has been used as a tool to criticize modern beauty standards. On Venus' right is Zephyrus, God of Winds, he carries with him the gentle breeze Aura and together they blow the Goddess of Love ashore. The Horae, Goddess of the Seasons, waits to receive Venus and spreads out a flower covered robe in readiness for the Love Goddess' arrival. |
Screen Printing the shell to abstract the value and leave what is not always considered the focus of the image.
Ideas for large scale canvases, exploring the idea of the touch in art. The sensuality and simplistic lift that the brush makes. Form, shape, texture and gesture all fall under this; there is no wrong, there is no right, it is purely about the first mark and feel the paint makes.
New works for third year. Looking at the absence of value. Value in art is typically the main focus of an art work, for example the Mona Lisa; you remember the eyes, smile and face. You do not notice the background or finer details you only take what is memorable. What if that was removed? How do you determine value in art? I am creating work that is now to be seen as the absence, looking for that part of the artwork where you take out the subject and are left with nothing, the nothingness becomes something and something that we may look at further.
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What - How - Why Mind map
Value as a subject
Art as a commodity
Chance / Spontaneity
Paintings original authenticity of the bare canvas
Collectibles/market
This was a piece for our latest show at the Flying Dutchman in Camberwell, London. It honestly is not something I am proud of, it was something to create because something needed to be created. I often struggle with the idea of the subject and this image is one that may be found in a hotel lobby. It is nice and boring and lacks contents. I think now developing on the idea of value I am starting to build a better body of work that exhibits that notion. My interest of the art market is what brings me into the interest in value. How artists create work like factories that churn out mediocre pieces that sells for millions. THE DREAM. I believe that painting is something that is so hard to master, with more and more artists becoming installation artists and using technology to master this trend and approaching it from the modern angle. Modern painters and sculptures form these works/images to such a prestigious level, it is commercial and in our elitist art world, commercial is success. So you begin to question where is the value in art? All the masterpieces have been made and we continuously strive to craft and format more modern pieces that encapsulate the very essence of capitalism within them. Money is power, money is art, money the seat belt that we all need to cling on to. |