Response to GB comment again

GB said...

These images look as if the environment itself is part of them. The wellingtons peeking out from behind an image or the bike etc even the garage walls all combine to develop an atmosphere that could be used. Another issue is scale. Looking at http://www.faeriefactory.com/art.html it’s interesting to think about the whole UV black lighting issue and how it can be seen as an environmental extension. Perhaps the audiences issue could be extended into whether or not your work would be suitable for the club scene.

I felt as though the photographs that i took of my work where quite interesting as you say the environment is quite different and if i could i would quite like to have exhibited my work in my garage as it was the place of contemplation, decision making and creation but the problems would arise as it is a private property and not many people would know where it is and it would have to be at night for the garage to be dark enough so i could use my UV light. As it turns out i am not going to be using it even though i wanted to but it didn't flow with the rest of the open plan of the gallery space and it would have looked out of place. As for having it in a club i think it could possibly work but there are certain dangers of people using the artwork and smashing the glasses which would be in a way quite interesting to see them destroy the work as it would show both the lack of respect and care for the work and also them helping me destroy the past and to look to the future. Using UV lighting does create a whole new atmosphere therefor completely transforming the atmosphere in which the viewer see's the work.

I took a look at the website you suggested and i liked what i saw. Although i must admit i have searched on various websites and i have not yet come up with pieces which are similar to my own. So i feel that i have combined what i have found from other artists and created something quite new. Although unfortunately due to the curating decisions I'm not able to use my UV light but i think that if i was to show this work again i would have it in that environment.

Response to GB comment

GB said...

The interesting thing with Sophie Calle's work is how she brings in so many other people. Would you employ a professional graffiti artist to spray up some of your own messages?

I feel as though that would be an interesting idea but i feel with my piece it is more of a memorial style piece as it is a sortof shrine to my old self. And you don't really get people re-adding parts to shrines unless it is for the death of a person at a roadside where people would leave flowers and photographs. I think that if i was to re-visit this piece i could possibly have the public engage with my work and have it more interactive by having them spray paint possibly on the gallery space walls around it or possibly add their own bits to it but i feel that it would make it less about myself and more about the public if i was to do that. And this piece is a sortof personal celebration of the death of something that i never want to return.

Artists and their audiences.

I came across this website which talks about the relationship between the artist and the viewer. I think that this piece of writing depicts how artists are seen and their relationship to their work. I feel that Art can cause anxiety as i have shown in my practice it also increases it when you are under pressure to create.

http://library.thinkquest.org/20868/ang/aaa/aaa.htm

Most people see art as something complicated, incomprehensible and unnecessary. Artists are often treated as "harmless fools". Why is this? Because art is always a new occurrence, it is original and it causes anxiety and therefore people are often ill-disposed towards it. A layman likes to say: "Even though I don`t know much about art I at least know what I like." But these aren`t actually their own preferences as their habits and the conditions they live in have made them like certain things and dislike others. We like the things we know and don`t trust the unknown. The past (which we know) seems better from the unpredictable future. We think of art in a similar way. Such thinking leads to the isolation of an artist who likes to penetrate new grounds of imagination.

The process of creating is always accompanied by loneliness and a certain incomprehension. Yet an artist doesn`t create just for his own satisfaction. Every artist wants other people to admire his works. The desire to be admired is in fact the main incentive of creating, while the process of creation itself requires a receiver as a natural supplement. One should realise however that as important to an artist as the audience is, it is not the quantity, but the quality of the audience that counts the most. The virtues of a work of art can never be described in terms of its popularity. This means that to an artist only the opinions of the people he respects and values are important. These are often just a few people - his friends, other artists, critics and people that show interest. The audience of course is also not completely without a word to say, but it is usually that little group of people (if the artist manages to convince them with his work) that encourages the creator to continue his work.

The audience can either accept or reject an art work. It is hard to forsee how people will take it. There is an emotional tension between an artist and the receivers, a feeling of insecurity and challenge, which are essential to an artist. A creator has to have the certainty that his work will overwin the public`s obstinacy or otherwise he will not make sure that what he has created is original, whether it was a work of art not only in his plans, but the actual outcome is as well.

The Observer

Art has changed. And so have the people running it. A sharp-minded breed of iconoclastic curators is revolutionising both the gallery scene and the way that we experience art.


This article is from a curators point of view i thaught it would be interesting to show as it is not from an artists point of view.


Curating art used to be a straightforward enough, if onerous, occupation. Typically, curators thoroughly versed in art history would use their research skills putting together what they saw as the best art works of a particular movement or historical period. For figures such as David Sylvester, curating wasn't really regarded as a major profession - more of a side show in the ongoing business of being an art authority. Things, however, have changed drastically since then. University courses in curating are springing up. And where once museums looked to the art historians of places such as the Courtauld Institute for the next generation of art supremos, they are now turning to something like the Royal College of Art's curating course, fast becoming the inside track for tomorrow's leading curators and museum directors. In turn, today's curators and museum directors have ditched anonymity.
'The curator of contemporary art is now concerned with the whole physical and intellectual experience of an exhibition,' explains Teresa Gleadowe, head of the RCA's curating course. Simply doing bucket-loads of art historical research is not enough. In the ground-breaking 1972 exhibition Documenta 5, Harald Szeemann - perhaps the first major freelance curator - dumped aesthetic categories and instead arranged the art through themes like 'Idea' and 'Individual Mythologies'.
Gleadowe argues that there's a huge difference between today's curators and those art historians of the past. 'Curators are now required to engage with new art as it emerges and find a critical context for the reception of that work,' she says. In reality, those critical contexts tend to act almost as curatorial trends - for instance at the moment there is a definite turn away from 90s irony to either some sort of return to socially committed art or art about everyday situations. And the broadening of the art world from a European-North American axis to a global scale means most contemporary curators now spend huge amounts of time flitting to and from art festivals around the world to keep up with what's going on - as well as to unearth buried talent.
Through the 80s and 90s curating evolved rapidly. In 90s Britain, there was a shift away from institutions - Damien Hirst and Carl Freedman famously took matters into their own hands with the Freeze and Modern Medicine exhibitions that set young British art rolling. Curators started putting shows on in domestic spaces, and combining art with non-art objects. In Berlin, Daniel Pflumm got the whole 90s Mitte art scene going by exhibiting works in his nightclub, Elektro.
In some ways curators became the counterpart to dealers: where the latter would shift artworks, the former would make works credible by putting them in exhibitions. If a work caught the eye of the right curator and got included in a big show it did wonders for its price and the standing of the artist. Inevitably the institutions have caught up, employing the new breed of contemporary curator to become museum directors and effect change from within. What's certain is that the days of paintings organised into neat chronological rows are well and truly over

My Work how am i going to display it?

I have finished my final piece and i was arranging it today and i think that this is the best way to show my work although there has been a problem as i cannot show my work the way i was going to using my UV light and the dark room. As there was a mix up in communication with the curatorial team. I think my work looks ok without it though although if i could i would prefer to have it in the dark space as first planned.

Leeds Art Gallery

LEEDS ART GALLERY

I went for a look around the Leeds Art Gallery and took a look at their current exhibition. I think that the pieces are really interesting especially as they were all made of scrap pieces from a junk yard.
I think that the curators have put this exhibition together really well as it flows really nicely and i think that the bright color scheme works well with the pieces as it makes the area seem more playful
rather than it being just a blank white space.


I have seen the engine which was displayed in another gallery space before and it was displayed differently. I think that the piece has totally changed now as it has been attached to a 1960's style chair. This to me now changed the piece to something less interesting. It gave it more shape to it but it distracts the viewer from the engine and focuses more on the chair that it is attached to.I don't really understand why the chair has been attached as i feel it doesn't add to the piece. I wasn't supposed to take photos but i took some sly ones :P

This piece at first i pretty much disguarded until i read the blerb which was written about the piece. Now i like how simple the piece is and yet so easy to disguard in a gallery space as it is just a box of light but the piece has alot more about it than that if you read the blurb above you will see what i mean. I think that this piece is cleverly done how people would not know at all that it had that many colours in the box they would just see what i did a box which changed colour slowly. So even myself a person who would take their time to apreshiate artwork wasent amazed at first. This makes me question myself and other viewers do we have to be impressed by giant sculptures of colourful bright things just like on TV? do we flick the channel if we arent immediately gripped by the amazing visuals? Do we disguard and walk past this work if it isnt gripping enough in the first place? and if we do are we missing out or is that the artists intenshon to get our lack of reaction?






This piece i didnt really understand but i liked the composition of the piece and how they used both visuals and sound both from seporate pieces of machinery.





I liked the use of historical art referencing in this work and how they have changed the scale of the work to create a very different looking piece. I thought the textures were interesting too as the paint was dripped onto the piece it created a melted look.








I think the use of materials in these pieces are very good as they are representations of something else made of of things you wouldn't expect. I think that the space monkey below is a fun looking piece made of materials from a skip therefore showing people you can make your cast a way's and left overs into something you would want and would even pay money for! It is quite interesting how you can make money from what people disguard.

Conceptual Art and Contemporary Audience

Kate Martens
December 2007
Conceptual Art and Contemporary Audience
The necessity and subordination of object and information
in the work of Kelly Sherman

A lot has changed in the art world over the last forty years. Perhaps most notable
is the shift in how work is looked at and experienced, and in who is expected to look at it
and experience it. The Conceptual art movement, which began in the 1960s, set out with
the aim to shake things up. And the proponents of the movement were successful.
American and British artists like Sol LeWitt, John Baldessari, and Joseph Kosuth
effectively trashed traditional aesthetic aims, cut down the critics, and created a discourse
driven by the removal of the object in art-making. The social and historical relevance of
the movement is undeniable. Yet there is an air of exclusivity in the work of the initiators
of Conceptual art. It was surely not art for the masses. It was cerebral, aloof, and
inaccessible. The audience was kept intentionally small. The publications were
distributed tepidly. Nonetheless, Conceptual art became a fixture in the art world, and it
affected other aspects of visual culture. Advertising, popular cinema, product
design—these things worked in concert with Conceptual art, as they borrowed from one
another, without ever fully acknowledging this system of interdependence. Still, the
public had little direct exposure to Conceptual art, although, as is the case in most all art
movements, they contributed to the necessity of its invention.
Needless to say, things have changed. Conceptual art is no longer exclusive or
shocking—it has been around since the 60s, after all. Forty years is a long time to
maintain the je ne sais quois it achieved so potently early on. Over the course of
Conceptual art’s history, its physical presentation has changed significantly. Artists who
were not involved with the early Conceptual artists, due to difference in time or location,
but who shared their value system of idea over object, found innovative, interactive ways
to engage the audience. Lygia Clark has challenged and captivated the viewer’s senses
with her “proposals,”1 for instance. Felix Gonzalez-Torres infused comedy and comfort

into his thematically somber candy piles. Conceptual art has become an accepted part of
the contemporary artistic conversation because it has reached out and touched the viewer
in some capacity. No longer is the message restricted to the flat white plane. No longer
does it feel antiseptic or detached. No longer does the cerebral meaning outweigh the
personal one. Since its remote beginning, ConceptuaLayoutl art, due to its appearance and
implications, has become relatable for the contemporary audience.


I think that this piece from the text is quite interesting as it tells you how art has evolved in the conceptual art world. Before the artists had a much more quiet approach to their art as if it was quite personal and only for the people they chose to show it to. Nowadays i feel that art is for everyone and you can have it anywhere and for as long as you like. The curatorial methods were quite different to how we are wanting ours to be as we are trying to get out there to the masses and to try advertise ourselves as much as we can. I feel that most of our pupils in our class are conceptual artists as are most artists nowadays as you dont really get many artists who just paint for the hell of painting.