photos of the suitcase project are up on facbeook

Join: "I can SPI higher then a pigeon cause you are the wind beneath my wings"
to have a looksie the photos

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=123447664360407

I had a lot of difficulty with this topic I didn’t want to reference obvious artists (Olafur Eliasson and Laib Wolfgang,) but couldn’t find/think of any other artist’s that fitted within the topic. I think I had so much difficulty with this topic because I couldn’t push past the connection to religion that spirituality has. When I researched the definition of spirituality it provided me with some sense of clarity, an understanding as to why I couldn’t find an artist that represents spirituality. The reason being that, spirituality is in fact unattainable we can experience it but we cannot contain it, thus It is impossible for artists to truly represent spirituality. My difficulty may also lie within my inability to see something that is spiritual from another persons percpective, as i feel that spirituality is an individual's experience. So instead of finding artwork's i googled some natural phenomena's which i think are pretty amazing.

Various definitions:
-Spirituality is the level to which one is able to see past there own self.

- The ability to tap into areas of life beyond what is normal (what is able to be easily seen, heard, felt, and smelt)

-Spirituality is often experienced as a source of inspiration or orientation in life. It can encompass belief in immaterial realities or experiences of the immanent or transcendent nature of the world

Art & Audience

I feel that this topic ‘Art & Audience’ is the most obvious and off the most importance, as art’s purpose is to be seen. Whether the audience is simply the artist who creates the work; the general public; or other artists. The artists Intention is to provide audiences with a different perception in relation to various situations and life in general.

The artist:

- Challenge’s > perception; values; beliefs; opinions

AND

- Trigger’s > thought; memory; and emotion;

Artist Derrick Haung held a residency at SCA this year for two week’s he’s really lovely and showed me some of the works he had previously created and exhibited. Derrick’s works are primarily interactive installations and sometimes include a performative aspect, fitting perfectly within the topic ‘art & audience’. His work frequently incorporates a sensory aspect, through the use of dried popori; fruit; and leaves which the audience is unable to ignore. Derrick uses both visual and sensory aspects within his work that enable the audience to fully interact and become immersed. “Another kind of aromas” exists as a darkened room containing a low rectangular container, filled with dried organic material free to touch, and a variety of hand packaged spices hanging neatly and freely on the walls. The packages and the material within the open box are beautifully illuminated by light. “Hidden Place” is within a small exhibition space, filed with dried leaves and warm lighting, central to the space is a cylindrical-like structure reminiscent of netting used to keep away insects, and pieces of loose thread which hang freely around the structure like cobwebs or roots. The structure is large enough for a person to stand; sit; or lie within it. The warm lighting and dried leaves evoke the sense of being within nature, and the netting seems to take me a step back in time, triggering memories of building cubby houses with pegs and sheets as a child, pretending I was elsewhere. “Consumption” was a performative work in which Derrick sat within a space filled with red cotton waste, peeling the rinds off oranges in which he then latter re-sowed together. How I interpritate this work in relationship to it’s title and the repetitive action in which Derrick performs, is essentially a statement concerning the overwhelming consumption of food. The loose orange peels represent the waste of produce and the sewing-together is then perhaps is a direction to recycle and reuse.

"Another kind of aromas" spices, box, documents, 2007

"Hidden Place" textiles, threads, leaves, light, 2005

"Consumption" oranges, red thread, 2005

I think Derrick’s work is beautiful and I’m a little bit jealous, I absolutely love the use of organic and deteriorating material, evoking the sensors, and mentally and physically recreating a space elsewhere. I hope you all got to meet him.

Art & Polotics

WHAT is the value of politics in art? Does political art work and should art be political?

Whilst researching this topic these questions constantly arose in articles and public feedback. One article pointed out that political art was not suited in museums, as it achieved more on the streets or on the web. I’m not certain that I entirely agree with this opinion, but there is a definitely truth to it because in all the feedback I was reading online their was a lot of noise being made in protest and agreement. However despite those interested in the statements being expressed, much feedback is negative and simply question’s ‘is this art’ scrutinising the arts rather than the subject addressed.
Thus bringing me back to the frequented question of whether or not political art works? I think it to be as it always has been; it inspires, influences, aggravates, and is ignored but has difficulty to sway large populations esp. on its own. The arts one of many means that keep society in balance, as is it also an influential measure in political activism. I feel that political art that is displayed online is highly practical due to the accessibility and immediate means for further research.

Here are a few political artists and blogs and sites with extra links for further reading. Hope your keen to be inspired about the problems that address you!
Artworks:
Tight Squeeze Assemlage, John Robertson
Shoot the Taliban out of Afghanistan, John Robertson
State Of Shock, Fletcher Crossman
Guantanemo, Banksy
http://www.socialpoliticalart.com/
http://artthreat.net/
http://www.live5news.com/Global/story.asp?S=12529493
http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/12/new-opium-war.html

Bibliography

Art and its Institutions

Janet Cardiff (born 1957 Canada)

Murder of Crows / Installation 2008

"The notion that art should provide a window on the world has been well established at least since the mid-fifteenth century, when Leon Battista Alberti laid out the principles for representing space through the system of one-point perspective. Conceiving the picture plane as a stage on which objects were arranged in diminishing scale, the artist drew the eye into the painting and hence away from any of the distracting apparatus that might have dispelled the illusion."

This idea of a singular perspective is similar to the establishment of the institution and its one-way path to success, its ability to ignore the ‘distracting apparatus’ that is art unbound by rules and conventions. Since the early 1990’s artists have explored this symbolic relationship between art and its institutions within their practice. Questioning and observing the hierarchy between curators, collectors, and artists; the commercialisation of art; the role of the audience; the housing and display of art. ect. Canadian artist Janet Cardiff is one such artist who is exploring the role of the physical gallery space of the institution. Cardiff works with sound and video within her practice and is perhaps best known for her signature audio walks, which she has made extensively internationally. Her gallery installations - often made in collaboration with George Bures Miller, Cardiff’s husband - are narrative and suspenseful sound and video works.

Cardiff’s audio walks transform an everyday stroll into an absorbing psychological and physical experience. In these walks Cardiff reinvents the audio walks offered at museums that explain current exhibitions, focusing not on the exhibition itself but instead a fictional narrative. The viewer is given a headset and simply follows the instructions of the voice. Most walks begin in an institutional space then either diverges outdoors or inwards into classified parts within the institution. The viewer is enveloped within a cinematic and non-linear experience as retrace the footsteps of another with no idea of what is to come. Cardiff’s audio walks invite and guide the viewer to notice and appreciate something from a different perspective. By removing her works from within the institution Janet Cardiff’s exploration in the physicality of art and the housing of art is clear.

Bathroom Stories 1991

Muenster Walk for Skulptur Muenster 1997

Bibliography

Books

Phoenix Art Museum. Constructing New Berlin: contemporary art made in Berlin/Phoenix Art Museum; [transi. From the German by: James Roderick O- Donovan], Munich: Prestel, 2006.

Art and its institutions: current conflicts, critique and collaborations/edited by Nina Montamann, London: Black Dog Publishings, 2006.

Heartney, Elenor. Art & Today. New York: Phaidon Press Ltd. 2008. Art and it’s Institiutions

Websites

City Gallery Wellingtons, Janet Cardiff: The Forty-Part Motet Exhibition Notes Issue #01, http://www.cardiffmiller.com/press/texts/Curatorial%20Notes JCardiff Web.pdf

[Accessed 19 sept 2010]

Janet Cardiff Bures Miller, http://www.cardiffmiller.com/index.html

[Accessed 19 Sept 2010]

Art and its Institutions

Hey amanda, just letting you know the artist i'm presenting is Janet Cardiff.

Art & Globalisation

One of the most important factors to affect contemporary art has been cultural and economic globalisation. Increasingly, international art exhibitions draw their contents from all over the world, and artists address a wide range of subjects relating to this developing situation. However despite an increase of sources, it has been suggested that an international style has developed rendering the variety stagnant.

I have attached the introduction to an article, addressing this idea.

Contemporary Art and Globalisation: Biennials and the Emergence of the De-Centred Artist

By: Mr. John Byrne

he impact of Globalisation on contemporary art practice has been both obvious and disconcerting, apparent and subtle. Most recently, the world wide growth in 'Biennials' has provided the most obvious evidence of the radical changes which have been taking place in the global economies of contemporary art practice since the collapse of the Eastern Block. Globalisation has, as in many other areas of social relations and endeavour, both homogenised and fragmented engagements with and responses to the 'art world'. This has led to a kind of new, postmodern 'International Style' of works which, despite their differing quality, simply appear to be the same in any kind of location. In response to the blandness of such 'airport art', many Biennials have recently sought to encourage a direct 'engagement' with the 'cultural specifics' of their location. The result of this has been, perhaps predictably, a kind of 'parachute documentary art' produced by artist willing to make lightening fast responses to the possibility of a financially rewarding brief. However, in spite of this polarisation of the contemporary art world, into the glibly general and the impossibly specific, many artists have begun to produce works which are intentionally 'de-centered' - dispersed over time, space and location – simultaneously denying the possibility of their works post-biennial absorption into a globalised economy of commodified art objects and further de-stabilising the traditional relationship between artist and artwork. Drawing on the experience of researching Channel 5's programme on the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art 04, this paper will attempt to evaluate some of the significant shifts that are taking place in, and as a result of, the growth in the contemporary globalised art economy.

http://h05.cgpublisher.com/proposals/631/index_html

Art & Architecture

Chris Burden

Born in Boston, Massachusetts 1946

Urban Light, 2008

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Chris Burden was a key performance artist during the 70’s, I’m sure you all are vaguely aware at the very least, about the artist who asked his friend to shoot him in the arm. Well that was Burden, November 19, 1971, in Santa Ana, California.

“Shoot” survives in desultory black-and-white photographs with this description: “At 7:45 P.M. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket .22 long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet from me.” Why do such things? “I wanted to be taken seriously as an artist.”

So do we take Burden seriously? Or do we not? In consideration of Burden’s recent work “Urban Light” it is clear that some of his childish imagination remains. Urban Light is a permanent installation piece on the grounds of (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) consisting of more than a hundred and forty handsomely restored antique lampposts.

Arrayed in ranks only centimeters apart, defying notions of space, especially public-space, the hundreds of lampposts make a bizarre yet beautiful sight.The courtyard where Urban Light is positioned, is open to the street and can be visited anytime night or day. The lamps turn on at dusk and remain lit until dawn, like any other street light in the city.

More info:

http://www.gagosian.com/artists/chris-burden/

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2007/05/14/070514craw_artworld_schjeldahl

Urban Light, 2005

Installation at Chris Burden's studio, Topanga, CA

Wolfang Laib: Returning to What Is

The article is essentially an interview by Darren James Jorgense and German artist Wolfang Laib. Which describes Laib’s understanding and opinion of “arts” function in the grand scheme of things, as well as Laib’s understanding and explanation of his own artistic practice.

Laib believes art that is, good art, can encompass more power than medicine. Laib feels that medicine can only go so far, it can only cure or aid the physical body. Whereas art exceeds the physical body and can influence not only the body but also the spiritual or psychological state of an individual. This is Liab’s reasoning as to why, he did not pursue his medical discipline and instead became an artist. It is clear that Laib is a true artist, as he adjusts his lifestyle to suit his practice.

Liab has repeatedly been characterized and referred as a nature artist, with minimalistic conceptual grounding by critics and scholars. However Laib sates in the interview, that neither of these are true of by any means intentional. Laib is considered to be a “nature artist” because his use of organic materials witch he uses (pollen, beeswax, and milk) and the ritualistic process that he conducts to collect these materials. Despite varied interpretation and categorisation of his artistic practice, Laib explains his intention as simply to alter and heighten perception. Much consideration and focus is placed upon “position and placement” within Laib’s practice, also the “individual qualities” of pure or singular material.

Laib’s work is created, to intensify our sensitivity of materials whether they are pollen, beeswax, or milk. Through displacing organic or pure materials, within the neutral environment of a gallery or museum Laib is removing all pre-existing connotations. The material is perceived singularly and its unique qualities that are normally overlooked are exposed. Within this practice Laib is interested in the audience’s observation, what it is they see within the material as each interpretation is different.

The closing ideas mentioned within the interview, expose Laib’s disappointment in contemporary art. That is the quick pass and popularisation of art as if it were a “fashion show”, whereby various stylistic approaches go in and out of fashion at a rapid pace. Laib believes that the function of art is to create something ‘new’ and ephemeral for society to experience, and he considers today’s rapid pace stopping artists to be able to achieve this.

Art & Identity

Art & Identity

An identity is the means that differentiates one person from another, makes a person both unique and yet still similar to others, in many ways. Our Identities are shaped by both nature and nurture, it is both genetics and chance that we are born a particular ethnicity and in a particular location. It is through the nurture of our parents, teachers and social interactions we are exposed to particular religion, beliefs, customs, political views and etticeit. Our identity encompasses all of these things, it is a combination of all that we have learnt, been exposed to, and are interested.

Relating art to identity, is a fairly broad process as our identities encompass so many things. More frequently artists place emphasis on a specific aspect of their identity within their work, to pin point their view and express their passion or hatred.

Ai Weiwei, (born 1957, Beijing) is a leading Chinese artist, curator, architectural designer, cultural commentator and activist. Ai Weiwei is best known for his controversial practice which strongly expresses his disdain for communist China, he is angry with China's leaders for holding its people in the past. Within Weiwei's practice he uses powerful symbols' such as Authentic Han dynasty urns and vandalises them with popular iconography as if the urn's were the Communist belief system that he opposes.

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 530 x 223, 1995

.

Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo, 10" by 11" by 11", paint/Han Dynasty urn 1994