Monday 31 October 2011

short absence while I write my dissertation!

I just thought I should let you know that I'll not be blogging quite so much as I have to concentrate on my dissertation!.....once I have got to grips with it and feel I am making headway then I'll be back to rambling and reinventing.... until then  enjoy previous posts and if you have any words of advice or information that could help aid my research into the significance of cloth within fine art and its association with memory....please feel free to enlighten me!

see you soon! 

Sunday 16 October 2011

Frieze fest!

Frieze and Art gallery fest!...
What a few days I've had in London. Gallery visits are always great but really wear me out!
We ventured down to London especially for the Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park.  Really lovely setting and a great area in London too.

We, that is a few third year and first year Fine Art degree students arrived on Thursday for a few days of serious art viewing! First of all we wandered around Cork Street, it's great how a street of galleries can exhibit such different work. My favourite pieces from here were...found....literally at the Mayor Gallery
the exhibition was
 "Do not remove"
Bruce Conner, George Herms & Robert Mallary
Called "junk" artists for their reclamation of broken everyday detritus Conner, Herms & Mallary reclaimed and reformed their objects' life, combining Surrealist obsession with the found object with a dark sensibility of the Victorian collector.
what unites these three radical Neo-Dadaist junk artists is their poetically artistic transformation of lost objects, lost souls and flyaway thoughts. Collected, reclaimed and reformed and given the chance to speak and be desired again.... 
burnt, tired and abandoned, yet my curiosity
about these objects was re-kindled
by the way they were all brought together.
delicate lace enhances this piece....
layers upon layers of singed paper not only builds texture
 but also my curiosity!
I just loved the attention to detail throughout
 the whole installation
love the freshness and neutral composition of James Dodds
exhibited at Messums gallery
http://www.messums.com

 At the end of the street we came to Haunch of Venison, Burlington Gardens...
it's a truly beautiful building and was exhibiting  Frank Stella's "Collections" including work from 1958 to the present day. His work transcends boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture. He continually reinvents himself. This exhibition brings together in broad thematic groupings two and three D work which explore Stella's involvement with planes, surfaces, space and relief, colour and movement and the limits of representation. The exhibition cleverly draws links between his artistic creations throughout his career.
K.37 - 2008 Polychrome resin
Combining weight, structure, solidity
and musical fluidity. 
I loved the fact that his pencil marks are often clearly visible .
 It's interesting to know that Stella rarely primed his canvas, the cloth being an important part of his art - how the paint absorbed the cloth for, in my eyes a richer and fuller effect.
great use of colours, Light, structure and shadows!
Jane getting up close and personal!...it was her idea to go to this exhibition
 and I'm really glad we did... it was really inspirational.
I was seriously intrigued by his maquettes, very clever
 I noticed there was a lot of Ian Davenport's work in the galleries and the Frieze,
 I saw his work for the first time in the Liverpool Tate last year, these paintings are normally quite large....I especially like the bottom of his paintings, how the colours are allowed to bleed into one another.
Frieze Art Fair features over 170 galleries from around the world, providing a unique opportunity to see and buy work by leading artists.

It's in a great location, on the corner of Regents park not far from Marlybone rd....I do love the shops around there! 
It's easier to just show you some of the pieces I valued the most...
Yuko Someya
water colour, lithograph & Chinese inks,
pencil & Japanese paper




















Always really
effective and a big crowd puller!





Cornelia Parker's 30 pieces of silver 2003







I love the way there was sooooo much mixed media on show!

The clever and selective use of found, old, mundane materials given a fresh new and creative twist.

The variety of techniques and methods used to not only evoke new interpretations but also cleverly entwined the old with the new.


It's inspired me to continue using detritus within my work, possibly experimenting and expanding how I portray them within my work.

Paul Chan Volumes 2011
Oil paint on 28 book covers
I was quite taken by this piece, simple yet effective
Michael Raedecker
Scheme  2011
Acrylic and thread on canvas 
I loved both the choice of colour and the effective sheen
 and the hint of shadow highlighted by stitches
Out of all the pieces I saw at the Frieze I think Raedecker's Scheme was my favourite, just so amazing to see up close, his clever use of craft within his work is just beautiful

 
To the left:
Peter Blake
Children's games: puzzle compendium
(In homage to Robert Rauschenberg....I've been collecting items similar to these to make an assemblage piece to!!

to the right:
Marc Quinn
Fingerprint painting2
Oil, acrylic & silicon

 Marc Quinn:
Zombie Boy (Rick)
Bronze

I loved the hybrid sculpture, but forgot to find out who it was by! ceramic face, fur, prosthetic....



 Do Ho Suh
Specimen series:
New York City
Corridor - 1
2011
Polyester fabric

 Totally loved these pieces...ephemeral, delicate, complex, quirky...fab!

A topical piece was by Michael Landy - the artist who famously destroyed all of his possessions. He's created a machine that destroys your credit card in return for a one-off, signed piece of art! You choose a colour, the operative then starts a huge Heath Robinson-style machine  pieces clank and clang the pen whirls and draws a pattern on some paper (signed by Landy) and you say when you are happy. The operative then takes your credit card and puts it into the machine which shreds & totally destroys it!
mmmmm!
I can't not finish without including some of the dhhhaaarlings I saw over the couple of days away....

hope you've enjoyed reading, back again soonish!

Sunday 9 October 2011

Art@41: reading and research, and a tiny bit of studio wor...

Art@41: reading and research, and a tiny bit of studio wor...: ....It's hard to concentrate on one thing when there's soooooo much going on at the moment! But the good news that the book I ordered from ...

reading and research, and a tiny bit of studio work!

....It's hard to concentrate on one thing when there's soooooo much going on at the moment!
But the good news that the book I ordered from the USA has finally arrived and it was well worth the wait!
"Whole cloth" by Mildred Constantine and Laurel Reuter. I  opened it to see this quote on the first page...

"whole cloth, wrote John Ruskin, is " wool of sheep, thread of flax, bark of tree - there exists no matrix. It can be shaped beyond the boundaries of origin. It shifts from the potential to an actuality that has a myriad of shapes and a myriad of ways of moving, responding to the action of the individual who manipulates it. It possesses the mysterious sense of unaccountable  life in things themselves" 
oh you just don't know how happy I am to read on further...this book is exactly what I am looking for! from a brief history of cloth in general to how artists have used it and why. Picasso and Braque's cloth collages up to 1990's. It covers areas including  sculpted form, space, clothing the body and the spirit and the camera view  plus much, much more. 
bottle-of-vieux-marc-glass-guitar-and-newspaper-
1913-by-pablo-picasso
I have 233 pages to digest and then research even further....I'm only on chapter "Metaphor and Symbol pg 43.......aaarrrggghhh, but thankfully it seems to be exactly what I need to form my dissertation...I just need to figure out how exactly and what to call it!!!

And......I'm off to The Frieze Art Fair in London next week.http://www.friezeartfair.com I'm really glad to finally get to go...in the past it has always been impossible....working in a school doesn't give kindly to time off mid term! so I'm off Hubby's looking after the rest of the family and armed with a limited budget, my ever faithful ginger camera and a couple of fellow third years we are going to soak up the artistic air of Regents park and if we can, meet up with one of our old Lecturers.
the pebble!
My Studio work has been somewhat lacking, but we all seem to be concentrating on our dissertation and I am just experimenting with ideas and materials at the moment....

machine embroidery using
Avalon, water soluble material
No matter what I do, my work it seems flat and lifeless, not what I am looking for at all! I seem to flit from one medium to another....trying to find one that Seems
both interesting and fulfilling. As yet I haven't had that.....feeling that excites me and make me want to develop further...so I'm still on the look out!




interior port hole casing - pebble shape!

 I have about 12 of these port-holes of varying size and although I have to add some hand sewing and details to the stitching, I might try one using rusty hues next!, I really love their colour, I can imagine them hanging together suspended by my favourite rough string, when they touch the sound is really beautiful....echos of the sea?

anyway....happy reading, bye

Sunday 2 October 2011

Art@41: mixed....just like the weather!

Art@41: mixed....just like the weather!: what.....I can't believe another weeks gone by, sooooo much has happened but not quite yet finalised and it's putting my art into perspecti...

Art@41: "Eatme Space" Micro gallery, Hanover Road, Scarbo...

Art@41: "Eatme Space" Micro gallery, Hanover Road, Scarbo...: "Eatme Space" Micro Gallery I Just had to mention the new compact and bijou micro gallery that has opened on Hanover Road, Scarbor...

mixed....just like the weather!


what.....I can't believe another weeks gone by, sooooo much has happened but not quite yet finalised and it's putting my art into perspective, what I want to do and how I want to do it!

... my week has been full of mixed emotions as to what to do! where to go next with my studio practice, my bloomin' dissertation....aarrrgghhhh and what to do in the future.

...so it was a lovely escape to be invited to an Exhibition preview night at Scarborough Art Gallery on Friday night - "Landscape revisited" with Joe Cornish (the photographer whose workshop my hubby went on recently)  and Kane Cunningham (one of my lecturers) curated by Jan Bee Brown.

I really enjoyed not only the company there but also the art on show. I am familiar with both artists and there work but when you see it first hand and on such a scale it takes it to another level. Kane's work to me is always energetic and I was pleasantly surprised to see such attention to detail within his work and the fact that he worked "plein air"and on such a scale really impressed me! I was really taken by Joe's photo over looking Teeside - my home town, the clarity and depth of his photos is just fantastic.....
below is the blurb presented by the gallery...
Landscape Revisited - Joe Cornish and Kane Cunningham
The landscape of Yorkshire has always inspired artists, whether it’s the stunning familiar contours of Roseberry Topping or the controversial contemporary slant of Knipe Point, photographer Joe Cornish and artist Kane Cunningham continue this tradition. This year they will be working with curator Jan Bee Brown to revisit the fabulous collection of landscape paintings held in store. Inspired by the work of Paul Marny, H. B. Carter, Atkinson Grimshaw and Ivon Hitchens, Kane and Joe will explore the context, tradition and future of landscape painting and photography in very different ways.
Joe Cornish - Staithes by moonlight
Joe Cornish
 Working at specific locations both will ‘stalk’ an image; Joe waits for the perfect moment when light, colour and composition simply ‘sing’, whilst Kane challenges the landscape to take him on a visual flight of the imagination. Working individually and collaboratively to push their work in fresh directions they will be our visual correspondents on the ground, responding swiftly as time and tide change our coastline. As we invite politicians, geologists, walkers and visual artists to tell us how the landscape inspires them, come along, join the debate and enjoy a breath of fresh air.
Kane Cunningham
Kane Cunningham
If you need or would like to see further details...

      
Take a moment out of your busy life and visit the gallery to not only enjoy but marvel in a memorable and beautiful joint exhibition, you definitely wont regret it!

happy reading, bye