Category Archives: Fine Art

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Task 2 – Consume a book

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My chosen book to summarize is the novel “The Castle” from Franz Kafka. It is not a book I chose from the library but a book I had. I chose this because it’s closely related to one of my recent works and it’s the only book lately I could read from it’s beginning to the end.

In the novel, the protagonist only known as K is coming to the village but struggles to fit or gain access to the local authorities governing from the castle. Kafka’s protagonist has to face a bureaucratic windmill fight which prevents him to settle down. He can’t start his work even though he has been called there to work as a land-surveyor.

As he tries to get access to the local bureaucracy he learns that the people from the village can’t address the people from the castle and they can’t enter the castle either.

Still, the people of the village holds them in high regard even if they are unsure about what are they doing in the castle so his determination to get access to the castle and to the authorities seeds distrusts in the locals. K is stuck in one place as he can’t progress any further and slowly being alienated.

The castle remains a mysterious form in the background as the book remains unfinished.

Kafka’s death prevented him to finish his novel.

Task 1

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Making these pictures was a direct response to the idea that artists need to have money to produce artwork because creating artworks costs
money, which I don’t have only bills.

To make these pictures I cut my letters and bills into pieces and made collages from them using paint as a glue. I used my bills or other legal documents I had to send to my potential employers or landlords to find a flat and a job in the UK as it became harder and a more closely bureaucratized task after Brexit.

The pictures represent my frustration with fighting these useless fights with these non- existent figures who only appears to me as email addresses and my fading hope under the bureaucratic pressure.

As I started to work on these collages they naturally became abstractions of the castle from Franz Kafka’s novel “The Castle”.

The Castle’s protagonist only known as K struggles against the local bureaucracy in a way that feels very familiar to me and in a way that I can identify with it. The book remains unfinished because of Kafka’s death so the castle in question remains a mysterious force.

To my surprise what was started out as a way to take out my anger slowly became something conscious and something I was interested in developing. In the future, I am planning to send these pictures of employer targets and then make similar collages from the responses I’ll get to further develop this project.

 

Task 12: Choose a large work and imagine it smaller

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Lorenz Quinn, Support, 2017 Venice Biennale

This work by Lorenzo Quinn was made for the 2017 Venice Biennale. It is titled ‘Support’ and was made to highlight climate change, as well as the specific effect of the rising water level in the city of Venice. For me, the sheer scale of the piece is what really makes it have such an impact. If the sculpture were any smaller the hands could easily get visually lost amongst the boats, posts and other things near the water/building. I think that the only way these could maintain their impact on a smaller scale is if they were moved to a completely different location. Having said that, they are a site-specific piece of art work and so to translate the same meaning in a different place would be a great challenge. I think that the current scale of the hands let your imagination envisage them belonging to a person who is only just big/strong enough to try to hold up the building and stop it sinking further into the water. On a practical level, reducing the scale of these hands wouldn’t be difficult, and you wouldn’t have to remove much detail in them, if any. If the sculpture was going to be scaled down, one would have to recreate the whole scene, including real water and the boats in order for the piece to carry the same message. You could, for example, create a scale model for showing in a gallery, which might still get over the same message. The rest of the scene would be the challenge.

Colossal. (2017). Support: Monumental Hands Rise from the Water in Venice to Highlight Climate Change. [online] Available at: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/05/support-hands-sculpture-venice/ [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Evening Standard. (2017). Artist takes on climate change with giant sculpture in Venice Canal. [online] Available at: https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/design/artist-takes-on-climate-change-by-installing-giant-hands-sculpture-in-venices-grand-canal-a3547486.html [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Quinn, L. (2017). Venice Biennale 2017 | Lorenzo Quinn. [online] Lorenzo Quinn. Available at: https://www.lorenzoquinn.com/venice-biennale-venice-2017 [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Task 9: Choose a work of contemporary art and show how a particular aspect of theory might apply to it.

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Ai Weiwei, Fountain of Light, 2007                        Tatlin’s construcivist tower design, 1919

The original tower was designed by Vladimir Tatlin in 1919 as a celebration of the formation of the Communist Third International after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Designed as part of the Constructivist movement it was supposed to be made from steel, iron and glass. These components were significant as they were symbolic of power, hope and modernity. It was going to be over 400m high, taller than the Eiffel tower, but never actually got constructed due to a lack of materials. Ai Weiwei transformed Tatlin’s monumental constructivist design into an 8 meter tall chandelier. Lit with 800 lightbulbs, it was shown at the Tate Liverpool, floating in the Albert Dock. It was a site specific work, designed specifically for Liverpool. This was particularly relevant due to Tatlin’s tower’s links with industrialisation which played such a big part in shaping modern Europe, especially Liverpool.

Their manifesto states that a constructivist object is ‘simply a product of an industrial order like a car, an aeroplane and such like.’ The fact it has been turned into this decorative chandelier made of crystal completely undermines the original constructivist ideals of powerful, strong utopian design. However I don’t think that Ai Weiwei is mocking Tatlin’s ideals by transforming his tower into a chandelier. Ai’s tower can definitely be seen as a tribute to Tatlin’s tower which was never realised.

 

The National. (2017). Louvre Abu Dhabi: the long-awaited first look inside. [online] Available at: https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/louvre-abu-dhabi-the-long-awaited-first-look-inside-1.673668 [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Royalacademy.org.uk. (2017). Ai Weiwei: 13 works to know | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts. [online] Available at: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/ai-weiwei-13-works-to-know [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Tate.org.uk. (2017). Cite a Website – Cite This For Me. [online] Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/6611 [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Ft.com. (2017). Auditions for the role of China’s Picasso. [online] Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/b31bc7f6-e910-11db-a162-000b5df10621 [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

www.wikiart.org. (2017). Monument to the Third International, 1919 – 1920 – Vladimir Tatlin. [online] Available at: https://www.wikiart.org/en/vladimir-tatlin/monument-to-the-third-international-1920 [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Mundy, J. (2017). Lost Art: Vladimir Tatlin. [online] Tate.org.uk. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/lost-art-vladimir-tatlin [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

The Art Story. (2017). Constructivism Movement, Artists and Major Works. [online] Available at: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-constructivism-artworks.htm [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Anneberk.nl. (2017). Ai Weiwei – Anne Berk. [online] Available at: http://anneberk.nl/articles-english/ai-weiwei/ [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Tate. (2017). The Real Thing: Ai Weiwei: born 1957 | Tate. [online] Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/real-thing-contemporary-art-china/real-thing-exhibition-guide-11 [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Task 9 // Philosophy and Theory and Politics

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For this task I chose to look at is Anselm Kiefer’s piece called Deutschlands Geisteshelden (German Spiritual Heroes), created in 1973. The large monumental painting caused controversy and was met with widely conflicting opinions. His work often deals with themes related to German History and national identity, including the Holocaust. As he was expressing about something that huge happened in the German History which was the holocaust. It had created a lot of controversy at the time as it was post-war and it was a taboo subject matter. The painting depicts an empty wooden room reminiscent of medieval architecture with tapers burning at intervals along the wall. The emptiness creates an unsettling feeling to the viewers. Many audience saw it differently as of the title creating confusion. The theory I noticed through his work is how he wanted to emote his feeling and opinions based on the catastrophic events that occurred at the time. He was one of the few artists to talk about the issue through his work, creating a legacy of the nation’s brutality.

Task 7 // Histories of Art

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Steinberg discusses about a shift in the picture plane from the “old Masters practice of using of devises to draw attention to the art. On how the conception of the picture is representing a world with a human posture. He talks about the works of Rauschenberg, Duchamp and Dubuffet, how they still hang them on wall. Richard Sierra’s text is about removing the piece from the site specific and talks about working outside the studio surround by Urbanism and Industry. He discusses using the knowledge, skills and capabilities of a mill, plant or fabricator making his work.  How the concept of site specific sculpture has nothing to do with opinion or belief. Similarity is that both authors talk about that there was a shift in their individual areas of focus during that time around the 1950s.

Task 12 The Matter of Time 1994-2005

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Richard Serra’s 8 sculptures that make up The Matter Of Time 1994- 2005 carry so much impact because of their monumental scale. Unlike Rachel Whiteread’s casts, The Matter Of Time are not on a human scale and so to reduce them down to smaller than human height would remove the epic proportions that make the an experience not just a sight. At 2 feet tall they would be a set of sculptures interesting for their material and design like other small pieces, purely aesthetic interest. At a few feet tall or even a single foot tall, I would choose to increase the number of sculptures in the set (possibly by using multiple of each of the 8) so that the pieces covered a large area of floor. The more elaborate miniature landscape like texture this created would be seen from above. This would reinstate more of an experience to the collection as viewers would be in a sea like arrangement of sculptures and could appreciate the collective shapes form above rather than the construction from within.

Photogapher unnamed (date unspecified) Guggenheim. Available from: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/21794 [accessed 6/12/17]

Task 11 Blog Reflection

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The blog has allowed me to practice key analytical skills from analysing and reflecting upon my own work to comparing past and contemporary works and analysing features of art history and the impact of social change in the art world. Similarly I have learned more about views of art history and political effect on art of which I was unaware before. Although politics still does not inspire my own practice particularly, some ideas of Raschenberg  which I had not heard before are an interesting start point in to more research. I am excited to continue exploring the library resources. As the blog has reminded me how to analyse images and how to review exhibitions, I have gone over again how, and what, I think about my own practice and the art world at large. My own practice shifts slightly with everything I learn but I become more certain of the key parts with each task. For example, after using the blog I am still sure that hand written notes are more useful for me in terms of reflection because the physical process of writing becomes part of the reflection and allows me to more freely and accurately map out my thoughts.

Task 10 Practice

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bty

Observational, exploratory, scientific, biological, psychological, organic, minimal, negative space, rethink.

My work often reflects my biological background and my personal interest in psychological conditions and the public understanding of them both. I find I conduct my artistic practice in a somewhat scientific method of observation, hypothesis, experiment.  It is important to me to explore the potential of art to rethink both its own position and the perceived ideas of science through observations, experiments and turning things back to front to look at them differently, in a similar way to why negative space interests me. I tend to work with very minimal outcomes, I think because it allows to ideas in the art to come across clearly and carry more impact in a stark kind of way. The organic interests me in both science and art. Line and form with organic qualities I find fascinating. The photograph of the remnants of art works on the painting studio tables reflects this interest in the organic and also in how we think about art. The debris of these pieces are just as much art as the pieces themselves, possibly more so given the maker was not concentrating on these marks but those of the intended piece.

Task 9 Theory and Politics

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Richard Serra’s Blank 1978 drawing comprises heavy linen covered thickly with black paintstick and tacked directly on to the wall of the gallery. It is one of a number of experiments of Serra’s in to minimalist work focusing on materials rather than subject. Although Serra had been producing minimalist work throughout, this work features toward the end of the height of minimalist movement which became prominent in the 1960s. A retaliation to the abstract expressionism of earlier in the decade, minimalism focused on the art itself, materials and surface, without the frivolous brush strokes and shapes of the post war pieces. Blank 1978 fits directly in to this ideal with no discernible shapes, strokes or subjects, just the solid black surface of the canvas. Minimalism continues through Serra’s works including in to his weathered metal sculptures in which the typical minimalist preoccupation with material persists.

Author Unnamed (date unspecified) Art Movements, Magic Web Solutions UK. Avaiable from: http://www.artmovements.co.uk/minimalism.htm [accessed 6/12/17]

Author Unnamed (date unspecified) Tate. Avaiable from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/minimalism [accessed 6/12/17]

Author Unnamed (date unspecified) Wikipedia. Avaiable from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Serra [accessed 6/12/17]

Photographer unnamed Available from: http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/artwork/1554-blank [accessed 6/12/17]