Art and Institutions – Candida Hofer

Hofer photographs interiors of art institutions architecture denoting the presence of the institution without the presence of people, this presents the museums without vitality. Hofer’s work relates to the fact that the importance of housing irreplaceable work is privy to the fact that art and ideas remain alive because they cannot be separated by the themes and reasons to which they are created to begin with. It draws attention to the focus on institutions and what they consider to be treasure. This is a notion towards the possibilities of art’s past and art’s future and the way art is reliant on the people and themes of the time that create the art.

Art and Audience – Vanessa Beecroft

Beecroft presents large groups of naked, semi-naked, or swimsuit clad women which resemble a high-fashion photoshoot. It creates a voyeuristic level of behaviour in the audience which brings attention to the ornamental portrayal of women in the media and also the way women are perceived in society. In reverse, she also depicts groups of men clad in military uniforms and aligned in military formations. The men are reversely depicted to the women as being anything but vulnerable and strong.

The performance invites the audience to observe and view them, but not to interact with them, it reduces them to a role of inadequacy in relation to the performers physical and behavioural perfection.

Art and Architecture – Bodys Isek Kingelez

Kingelez’s work evokes a progression from modernism’s depictions of cityscapes which zoom forward to portrayals of fantastical designs of future cities. Displayed like architectural models which resemble buildings from New York, Paris etc they are created out of recycled materials, such as bottle caps, tubes, corrugated cardboard, tinfoil etc. These works relate not only to architecture but also to globalisation bringing attention to the fact that a lot of the first world’s waste often becomes building materials of the third world’s housing.

Art and Globalisation - Chen Zhen

Chinese artist, Chen Zen’s installation comprises of Western and Eastern influences and exposure of religion and political opposition. The work Daily Incantations comprises of Chinese chamber pots that are arranged in an array of Buddhist bells, centred by a conglomerated pile of residue of electrical and electronic objects. These objects portray cultural differences. Also featured is a sound system which has recordings from the artists childhood of the reading of Mao’s Red Book from the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The human waste and industrial waste illustrate cultural difference between Western materialism and Communist indoctrination.

Zhen is suggesting that changes that have resulted due to globalisation and technology are apparent to all notions of politics and culture. The integration of these factors into his work suggests a collision of eastern and western worlds histories and futures.

Art and Politics - Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer (born March 8, 1945, Donaueschingen) is a German painter and sculptor. After attending numerous universities which included studying under Joseph Beuys, Kiefer initiated his career with images of himself in the Hitler salute and became astutely political in art. He has involved himself with German history and the horror of the Holocaust and other devastations that have brought him to question the role of art and the artist in the long, ongoing process of reconstruction.

This assessment of the role has led him to create a collective memory and reinvention of a national identity and to reinstate a people into a regenerative process that was guided by a cosmological vision. Kiefer’s work covers a broad range of ideas and looks into mythology, religion, the Kabbalah, literature of great poets and philosophers.

Art and Spirituality - Dorothy Napangardi and painting “The Dreaming”

Born in the early 1950’s, “land artist” Dorothy, grew up 400 kms out of Alice Springs with her extended family who nomadically lived around the Mina Mina area, living traditionally off the land having a complete diet of bush tucker. Dorothy paints a major religious belief called the “Jukurrpa’ (“Digging stick – possessing – Dreaming” also called Karnta-Kulangu Jukurrpa “Women belonging dreaming”), which is a code that sets rules for living, morals and interacting with the natural environment, thereby providing an integrated life with man and nature.

In order for the Dreaming to exist, it must be perpetuated to be regenerated. So not only is Dorothy illustrating their identities and spiritual connectedness to the country, but also passes on valuable cultural information for future generations and ensuring that the Dreaming mythology is kept alive.

Dorothy is creating visual spiritual illustrations through her work.

Napangardi, Dorothy. Dancing up country : the art of Dorothy Napangardi. Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002.

Identity - Melanie Bonajo

Are All Cliches True 03, 2007, C-print, 140x120 cm (55x47.2 inches), ed. 5.

The rabbit inside the cave, 2002, C-print, 60x70 cm (23.6x27.5 inches), ed. 8.

Waiting for something beautiful to happen, 2002, C-print, 60x70 cm (23.6x27.5 inches), ed. 8.

Melanie Bonajo statement -
My work is an irregular impulse of experiences and aesthetic enjoyments stemming from the questions I have and the things that I know. I am not interested in a particular truth or a common reality, but I do have to understand and embody my truth, which I find from looking within. Although these things might be universal, consequently, questioning myself leads to the act of questioning you. Nothing should control the spirit.

Reference: http://www.fette-gallery.com/artists/melanie_bonajo_add.php

Melanie Bonajo explores identity through the medium of photography. She presents an inward view of oneself, whilst demonstrating how the worlds possessions and situations are orchestrated into reality by ones own mindset. She believes this to be the process of us illustrating our identity.

Body - Gilbert and George

Oh, the Grand Old Duke of York, 1972

"Being living sculptures is our life blood, our destiny, our romance, our disaster, our light and life. As day breaks over us, we rise into our vacuum and the cold morning light filters dustily through the window. We put on our shoes for the coming walk. Our limbs begin to stir and form actions of loseness, as though without gravity they bounce about for the new day. The head afloat on top levels on the horizon of our thought. Our hearts pound with fresh blood and emotion and again we find ourselves standing there all nerved up in body and mind. Often we will glide to this frame of light. Our mind points ever to our decay....... We are just down at the river feeling around. As the shades of night are falling around our neighbourhood we stroll because we know full well that another sculpture day is over."


Gilbert and George explore the physicality of our body as a navigating structure of moving biology.

The mental realisation that the outside world moves and turns is related to our own survival in it and the way we make sense of every little thing within it.

Meg

Reference: Vergine, Lea. Body art and performance: the body as language / Lea Virgine. Milano: Skira, 2000.