NEARLY READY FOR THE ART FAIR!

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

I’ve been thinking about developing a series of people? which can become familiar, and reused in certain situations. Here is a little person in a Beret wrapped up for winter! He has a certain french Art-Deco feel to him, I have been inspired by Edward Burra, I have a post card of his painting ‘The snack bar’ in my studio space, and each day I look at it and just think I love those faces! I love the ridiculously long eyelashes, and extenuated nose. So beautiful, the imperfections and unrealistic features are exactly what I embrace! my drawings are based upon the pure fact none of these people are physically proportional, making them technically mystical. The elements of magic and mystery are becoming more and more apparent in my work. I really enjoyed creating a character and then having him move from drawing to drawing. It felt contained! in a good way.

CHRISTMAS CARD SELECTION! YAY.

Here are the five definite designs I have so far, I am thinking a couple more maybe three more designs and then ill be ready for our Christmas fair.. and Christmas! so exciting! cant wait to experiment and print a few to see how they print out.

GEE VAUCHER

“Introspective is Gee Vaucher’s first major institutional show in the UK, and spans the artist’s career of more than forty years. It charts Vaucher’s journey from local activity to international ambition, from domestic concerns to world politics, and from healing the planet to healing the mind. Including collage, photography, photo montage, painting, sculpture, film, performance, typography, sound and installation, the imagery she creates ranges from the absurd and often comical to the harrowing. Her message spans the political and the personal, the environmental and the humanitarian.”

This exhibition was full on! there was so much work, and it was all really really varied, it showed how skilled, intelligent and interesting this lady is! I loved her political work, it was so strong, and so relate able. It got the message across with 0 words, that’s when you know power has been achieved! When no text is required to aid your message.

SERIOUS MOMENT.

OK so for all of my female artists, friends and family I think all of you can probably relate to this one. The 10th of November marks probably one of the most shocking days of the year, in the sense from this day on wards women theoretically work for free.. or to put it another way, men stop working on that day and for the rest of the year still earn the same amount as women. Neither way of saying it makes it much easier to digest. There is a lot going on in the world, and sometimes I think we get caught up and forget about the injustices that happen everyday, of every year.. for example the 24% gap!! in wages between women and men for the same job title. I did recently a little series about these statistics, but its still bothering me? So I thought id do a few more. Also its amazing how many people are completely unaware of any of this! (women/men my age, 21.) So its great to be a gender gap town crier.. ! someone needs to bang on about it till men begin to think that maybe its not okay.

“Today is Equal Pay Day – we mark this day at the point Britain’s gender pay gap will leave women effectively working for free until the end of the year.

Because of the gender pay gap, men could go unpaid from now until the end of the year and still earn the same as a woman working the whole year.

The Equal Pay Act, passed 46 years ago, made it illegal to value a woman’s work less than a man’s for the same role. However, the gender pay gap persists and last year we marked this day on 9th November, meaning we have only progressed by one day.

The Labour Party will not tolerate such slow progress. At this rate it will be another 51 years until we have pay equality.

The Labour Party, when we form the next government, will tackle the gender pay gap. We will introduce a Real Living Wage which will disproportionately benefit women who are all too often working in jobs that are under-valued.

It currently costs women £1,200 to take an equal pay claim to an employment tribunal thanks to Tory tribunal fees. Labour would scrap tribunal fees and strengthen trade union rights to help stamp out pay discrimination.

I have also committed to establishing a high level, strategic Women’s Advisory Board supporting the work of the Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, Sarah Champion MP, and I will be working directly with Sarah to ensure gender equality is at the heart of all our policies.

The Labour Party passed the Equal Pay Act and it is the Labour Party that will make sure we finally bring about pay equality between men and women.” – Published by the Labour Party.

 

I think when you read the statistics and dates as to when experts estimate equality may be achieved, it really sinks in! I felt quite fed up when I made this piece and just annoyed, also annoyed that some women aren’t phased by it? I still think its quite a funny little illustration though, with my new fabric man featuring, as if he is saying it. Equal pay for everyone!

DISCOVERING MIKE KELLEY.YAY

Much to my tutor and other people’s shock I had never heard of Mike Kelley.. and it wasnt like sometimes you know of an artists work but you aren’t sure of who created it, I have never seen a single piece created by this amazing man! So what a great discovery! We went to see his piece ‘Framed and Frame’ at the Hauser&Wirth Gallery, It was a great piece, I liked how mystic and magical it felt almost? I like getting that feeling, for me the less serious a piece is visually I think the more I enjoy it. Especially if it has a serious concept, I quite like that duo… a fun aesthetic with a darker and subdue meaning. Now I have googled Kelley to the deep depths of googles ends, this is actually one of his pieces I least enjoy, his work involving lights I am in love with, they are beyond beautiful.

For me once I started researching him and saw his other work I found that connection, when I saw his piece ‘Framed and frame’ I wasnt as excited as when I saw his other work. I do love the colours but I’m not sure, I just didn’t have that feeling where you are just smiling and can’t stop looking. There were smaller aspects of it I did enjoy, the colourful religious mini statues, and the mattress underneath. I think it was the concrete as a base material I didn’t enjoy! Conceptually I engaged with his idea, and understood his interests and where this piece derives from completely. I really like the idea of where do the real and imagined meet? what is that space? and can it be visualised! This piece is also extremely historical and political, I like how he has conveyed those thoughts via a magical grotto, cave, wonderland.

SKETCHING AT THE HAMPSTEAD.

Wherever I am I seem to be fascinated and attracted to lights, and architecture, I love sketching shapes of buildings and the different lights, and their formation! The downstairs of the Hampstead Theatre had a curved wall like the one at Firstsite gallery, and these rows of little bright lights, with the alluminated staircase. Aesthetically it is beautiful and the ratio of light to darkness was perfect. I really enjoyed being there and drawing, I did a version on my ipad, adding in pinks and pastel tones. I think it brought it to life!

Helen Marten: Drunk Brown House

Her installations employ visual and linguistic ambiguity in order to explore the potential for misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

Marten’s sculptural installations often serve as repositories for disparate material combinations, resulting in an exhibition that calls into question our changing relationship to the readymade. Underscored by a process of collaged abstraction, her assemblages resonate with associative meaning.  Creating a string of hieroglyphs or a kind of archaeological anagram, the work’s encrypted sequences are nevertheless driven by their own internal logic

“I’m really interested in the point at which things become husked down to geometric memories of themselves, where a house, for instance, a pair of legs or a cat could be communicated with huge economy and speed via just a few lines. The vector can become a mechanism of delivery. As incorporated extensions, even a simple nod towards a shape that might be reminiscent of a readymade form is quite literally a vocaliser of external things – an agent of the world outside art-making. And this is the point where you can use recognisable authority, the obstinate fact of a universally existent thing – an arm, a teapot, an alphabet – and extricate it from its own sense of intentionality.”

-http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/helen-marten-drunk-brown-house

I really loved this exhibition, I think its the only work I have ever seen where it honestly felt like these were abstract drawings or 2d works brought to life! Such a surreal feeling, if you stood back from afar, and squinted a little then they could easily be a huge 2d print. I think as there were Martens screenprints exhibited with the 3d work, then maybe this is why I was imaginigng it, but it was amazing! I loved it, and that there were 3d objects attatched to the 2d work aswell.. it felt like all barriers of 2d/3d had been crossed and actually it didnt really matter, and I think after reading what Marten says about her own work, this is what she was trying to convey, that its taking that meaning away from objects, and having them in this new alien format with no meaning or a new meaning. I was so taken back.. painted walnuts forever! amazing. Very inspiring.

‘ENOUGH TIRANNY’ MARC CAMILLE

“Enough Tiranny, conceived in 1972 (the founding year of Artists Space), was a proposal that aimed to bring about new models of collaboration and sociability, attempting to question the alienation between viewer, artist, and institution. Not unlike installations by his contemporaries, such as the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, Chaimowicz’s works require a level of participation on behalf of the audience as well as the institution. In the otherwise monochromatic environment of the early 1970’s, Chaimowicz developed an artistic language that responded to the dogmatism of its time by taking both political and emotional dimensions into account. His work speaks to the basic units by which we trade private desires with social hopes: building the texture of a communal existence. The remembering, the revisiting, and the recalling of works from different periods of Chaimowicz’s life is integral to his way of working.

Enough Tiranny Recalled, 1972 – 2009 demonstrates that “the future will, in all probability, fold itself into the past to better accommodate itself in the present.I was critical of the alienating distance between the work and the viewer, and this is a gap I’ve continued to review.

One thing I wonder about is whether the work still has a degree of radicality. It was shown several years ago in Zurich, where no one had heard of me. It was interesting because art students were asking about this “new young artist.” They presumed youth behind the work, which implies, perhaps, that there is still a critical urgency.

” (Marc Camille Chaimowicz)”- http://artistsspace.org/exhibitions/enough-tiranny-recalled

I’ve read a lot about Chaimowicz’s installation that I saw, and im still not 100% sure I understand what it’s about? I love that it was first made in 1972, when I first saw it, I didn’t know that at all, and I wouldn’t have been able to have ever said its date? It felt quite timeless. Aesthetically I really enjoyed being in this space, the music, colours and lighting was so beautiful and I felt very encapsulated in the moment of this space. installation can be quite a hard space to create, I feel personally. By achieve I mean, create a space which feels like an environment rather than a selection of objects and music in a room. This instillation was amazing, the lights are what made it so inviting, I just felt like I wanted to spend a lot of time in their absorbing it all. Low lighting and fairy lights create this mystic magical feeling, which with music works so well.

LAURA OWENS

I cant find any information conceptually on what this exhibition is about?? I really loved this exhibition! at first I couldnt work out how these had been made, I spent a while just looking at all of the techniques, the combination of drawing, screen printing, digital manipulation all work really as a collective. My first initial feelings were that, these techniques could work so well for my ipad illustrations, the layering and combination of geometric shapes and hand drawings! They look so good together. Really got me thinking and feeling inspired! I wish I knew more about Laura Owens work, and what is behind these pieces. They feel deeper than they seem, and I know they come from something. Im going to keep searching and trying to find out a little more. There was also a beautiful book of Owens drawings at the exhibition, which didnt have a title which I would love to buy! her drawings were incredible! it was such a fun little a5 book! Mission Laura Owens discovery.