‘Gender schmender,

Put it in the blender

and drink it.’

I challenge the social construct of gender. I have chosen these 10 words to represent my practice as they are non-sensical and whimsical; yet destructive, reflecting the physical nature of my work. The idea of physically consuming the gender binary implies a sort of violence towards it; wishing it to jump down your own throat and dissipate forever. I have crafted my words as if like a poem; softly rhyming at first, but incorporating caesura to add impact to the vicious final line.

I came to university as an oil painter, only exhibiting portraiture; however, I now have a growing interest in new media of which I will explore further in the ‘Worn’ project. While my practice is maturing, I know that my main interest will always be depicting individuals. My choice of image- my own tribute to Leigh Bowery’s iconic overdrawn lips- is highly reminiscent of the club-kid scene in the 1990s. I chose to replicate this imagery because it is key, iconic history to my main focus. It was made by painting lipstick around my mouth in the form of an emphasised upward smile; almost clown like. Interesting, as a clown is an entertainer for all, yet is a commonly accepted and ungendered form.

Task 8: Appropriation of an Image

I chose a piece of contemporary art, by artists: Ida Tursic and Wilfried Mille the work is a painting of Bettie Page a famous pin up girl from the fifties.  I included mono printed text onto a photograph of the painting “look what you made me do”. this gives a different meaning to the painting of a pin up a commentary on her sexual appeal.

Task 6

Modes of Practice,

I start with a sculptural form, a 3D design or a found object,  develop a motif as a metaphor, linking to my life experiences. I will explore the sculptural element so that it stands alone as an artefact .  I then develop meaning from the form and represent that as a 2D image on the surface of a pre-treated photographic canvas. The image selected will have meaning through its context within the framework to the sculptural form. which infuses the 2D with a personal autobiographical context.  Colour onto the canvas through the printing medium using  a range of techniques to obscure  the image on the photographic canvas. The resulting 2D work remains in a flatbed style where it doesn’t represent the real world there is intentionally no meaning to any accidental depth of field, no top or bottom no right way up.  I need to obscure my own autobiography with paint in order to remain private and yet to reveal enough elements to enable a viewer to identify the everydayness of troubles that fall on us all like erratic’s falling from an ice glacier. The randomness of unasked for tragedies.  Throughout the entire process the made artefact  remains hidden in plain sight, a representational metaphor, a palimpsest to cover and curate my own work.  Then to daringly challenge myself to expose more of myself and overlay the work with text that has meaning for me.

The given text Leo Steinberg (b.1920) from Other Criteria explains how art has changed from being flat and revolving around a classic horizontal image, corresponding with the human posture to no longer being painted for a wall, instead it was art for itself. The flatbed picture plane was once horizontal as it was said they are more natural, harmonizing with an erect human posture. The natural element of this was said to ‘evoke sense data’, meaning that as an audience it would be recognisable and familiar, maybe even relatable as we can see our own form within the image. Even Pollock, an abstract expressionist followed this flatbed picture plane rule. The process of making the work on the floor was just a means to an end, because eventually he would sit the work up on the wall and let the paint take its natural course and drip down the canvas. Even the fact that the paintings were hung upright corresponds with this rule again. In this respect, Steinberg claimed that abstract expressionist artists were still just nature painters. Even artists such as Rothko and Willem de Kooning followed this rule. Steinberg claimed that the biggest change in art was Rauschenberg and Dubuffet. Their work no longer followed the flatbed picture plane rule, it still however hung on walls, but it didn’t correspond with the human form like previous work has. The process of how the painting was made became more important than the composition of the image. According to Steinberg, the tilt of the flatbed picture plane is just as expressive than the shift from nature to culture within subject matter.
In text two, Richard Serra (b.1939) from The Yale Lecture focuses mainly on the practice of sculpture. Similar to how Rauschenberg works, mentioned in the text above, Serra is also a very process-based artist to which the material and industrial quality of the work is more important than the aesthetic quality. Serra doesn’t produce work to be sat in someone’s house and admired, or to just be looked at by gallery goers, but work for everyone to view. He produced work so that it became part of the environment to which it was built in. Serra’s site-specific works cannot be shifted and moved to one place or another like many paintings can, they are ‘inseparable’ from the site, due to the scale, mass and even the social and political elements which was considered in the making of the work. Both Serra and Steinberg talk about the importance of moving forward with art and how it is viewed by the public.

Click to access Harrison_Charles_Wood_Paul_eds_Art_in_Theory_1900-1990_An_Anthology_of_Changing_Ideas.pdf

http://www.theartstory.org/critic-steinberg-leo.htm

Robert Rauschenberg and “The Flatbed Picture Plane”

https://www.halcyongallery.com/exhibitions/lorenzo-quinn-actions-not-words

During reading week, I went to visit the “Lorenzo Quinn, Actions Not Words” exhibition which was held at the Halcyon gallery in London. I had never come across Quinn’s work before; however, I was intrigued by his simplistic yet extremely symbolic sculptural pieces. Quinn had created a number of bronze and stainless-steel sculptures, illustrating hands in various positions and holding symbolic items such as a slingshot and the infinity sign, ‘to represent his dream and hope for love, support and protection amongst humanity’. I believe that he has selected these materials in order to create a rich and powerful symbol, allowing him to emphasise his powerful ideology that “It’s what we do in life that defines us not what we say. Love moves worlds and saying I love you is special but acting upon it is everlasting”.

When walking into the gallery, you are greeted by his large-scale sculpture of two hands stretching and aiming a slingshot, and as you walk around the gallery you are led through a maze of smaller dimmed rooms with smaller sculptures of the infinity sign and peoples’ bodies in the shape of love hearts. The fact he selected dimmed rooms with one spot light on his sculpture in an empty room, makes the audience fascinated by the visual simplicity of the gleaming bronze but also makes them question the deeper meaning of what this specific sculpture is representing.

I find Quinn’s work so powerful because next to each of his sculptures he writes a short description of his views of love and humanity’s love towards earth, he only writes a few sentences but they are bold and come across as emotive, allowing the audience to connect to his work in an emotional way as well.

.

Part (14) 2002 by Nikki S.Lee (Photograph) part of her “Parts” project 2002-2005

Nikki S Lee is a Korean artist and filmmaker, who dresses up and performs various characters for her projects, to demonstrate different everyday lifestyles. This photograph is from Lee’s collection “Parts”; a collection of cropped photographs of Lee performing her everyday social situations with her loved ones.

The photograph illustrates a glamorous Korean lady sat in the back of a car, that we could presume is a taxi, however she is sat staring out of the window looking blank and gloomy. The composition of this photograph allows the audience to ask many questions, as we wonder who the man sat next to her is and why he has his arm over her shoulder, is he a loved one trying to comfort her? Or is the reason she looks emotional due to the fact that they have had an argument and he is reaching out to her, yet she is shutting him out? We also need to consider the fact that maybe her emotional expression is due to the car journey and where they are off to. They may be on a journey to start the next chapter of their life, or end the current chapter that they are in together.

Overall, I find this image extremely intriguing because there can be so many questions and interpretations about the emotions this lady is going through, this makes the image mysterious and makes me feel emotional for Lee as she clearly felt a lot of physical and emotional separation throughout her life.

The book I decided to study was by Jessica Warboys, called “Hill of dreams”. This book marks the launch of Warboys’ new film ‘Hill of dreams’ and the process she has gone through to create it. Warboys’ film is influenced by her own personal and collective memories which she portrays through a wide range of media including performance, film, sculpture and painting.

However, the book mainly focuses on Warboys landscape scenes and the various techniques she used to make her work unique, such as “combining her painting materials with natural elements, such as water of the sun, and applying pigment directly onto large-scale canvases before submerging them into the sea and allowing the waves to distribute the colour”.

Warboys’ uses the film to tell her own personal memories through a third person account, as “Hill of dreams” follows a man through landscapes natural and painted, which is located in the hills of Caerleon near the River Usk. I believe that Warboys’ is directing this film to a contemporary audience due to her use of mixed medias and to all ages, as exploration and nature enlivens everyone to see the world.

I found the structure of the book very intriguing because the first 40 pages are photographs of her landscape scenes, performances and paintings, which she has warily considered the compositions, allowing the reader to focus on each specific piece and create their own stories, before reading the artists biography on engaging with the landscapes and their embedded histories.

Ekardt, P, (2016), Hill of dreams: Jessica Warboys. London: St Ives, Tate Publishing

I like to use acrylic paint and charcoal in my work. I avoid using precise lines with these materials, I like to make quick marks. I decided to mix these two medias together because I use them in the same way. I started by drawing a simple image of an elephant with charcoal and I avoided smudging it. I then painted over the top with some black paint. As I painted over the top, the charcoal smudged and mixed with the paint. The overall appearance of the drawing was slightly smudged and softer. Some of the charcoal wasn’t painted over so the texture of it remained.

I then did the opposite with paint first then charcoal over the top. I really liked the effect this gave as the charcoal allowed me to add more detail over the top. The overall appearance is a lot darker than the first image, I like this as there is a much larger contrast between the black and white.

I liked the second image more because the charcoal textures are more visible. I will develop this practice further, maybe adding colour or producing much larger pieces.

charcoal with paint over the top                                        Paint with charcoal over the top

close up of the image with charcoal over the top

Cathedral Of The Pines- Gregory Crewdson

In August I visited The Photographers Gallery in London to see Gregory Crewdson’s exhibition – Cathedral Of the Pines. The exhibition consisted of a series of 31 large scale photographs of different, unconnected situations and different people all set in a small rural town in Becket, Massachusetts, conveying a variety of intense human relations in a isolated area in the countryside. Crewdson’s style was inspired by 19th century American and European paintings and old cinema. The connection can be seen through the similar tableau style composition and positions of the characters.

Crewdson, G. Mother and Daughter, (2014)

I found this exhibition really interesting how a huge feeling of confusion is created. The numbness of in their lost, outward gaze creates an absence of emotional connection to the real world and the person who they are with. However, their nudity creates a sense of intimacy and vulnerability between the subjects.  This play on connection and separation of the subjects creates a running tension throughout the whole exhibition. Also a  juxtaposition of intimacy and isolation is not only created by the motionless figures but the vastness, the stillness of the environment they are surrounded by, a sense of loneliness and detachment from the world is spawn by being in a constant, dull, gloomy, cold setting of winter in a small town in the forest.

Crewdson, G. The Pickup Truck, (2014)

I also found the absence of a connection, a narrative or explanation of what’s happening in the pictures psychologically impacting. This makes their strange actions/settings (such as standing still outside in the snow, standing nude on a riverbed or laying nude on a flatbed of a pickup truck) even more intense as without any clue of an explanation they become arcane. Their ambiguity leads the viewers to a challenge of making up their own impressions of the situation, create their own stories, their own conclusions.

Crewdson, G. The Den, (2013)

Crewdson, G. Woman at Sink, (2014)