17th Biennale of Sydney-Visit to 'Artspace'

Finally!!! !!! first look of Sydney Biennale!!

It was interesting to visit Artspace and Art Gallery of NSW. The Art Gallery of NSW were all about 'focus on Asia', the works that represented different parts of Asia was fantastic. The most spectacular work that I personally liked were by Raquib Shaw 'The mild-eyed melancholy of the lotus eaters 111 (2009-10)'. The small details and colours were so beautiful and to see such vibrant colours on his work were amazing.

The works in Artspace were mostly based on video installation. It felt strange as I was surrounded by screens. The video installation of Hiraki Sawa "Out of the blue"(2008), was very peaceful, the sound of land, wind, bird, felt like standing on top of the mountain. There was a few repeated images in the video. The other screen that was behind me had a long-shot of the land where it was covered by snow and people were walking around. That part was strange but interesting to think why Hiraki Sawa captured that moment? does it represents the Japanese culture? was there reason to choose particular season?and so on. More research of different artists need to be done after all......!
In the end, the first sight of 17th Biennale of Sydney was FUN/INTERESTING/GREAT! but can't wait to visit other places!!! especially MCA!

Harm Van Den Dorpel

We briefly spoke about artists who have made art pieces that are meant only exist online.

http://www.harmvandendorpel.com/

When Harm van den Dorpels website started in 2005 it was mostly obscure web animations that he had created. His work has grown from being only on the web to being physical. Apart from that I dont really know anything about him! all I know is he is excellent!

His new stuff is pretty whacky but you will like it more when you see his old stuff

http://www.harmvandendorpel.com/work/animal_series

http://www.harmvandendorpel.com/work/highway

EXHIBITION VIEWING TOMORROW

Hi Everyone,

I am looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow on the steps of the AGNSW. I have attached links so you can find your way there.

Please email me if you have any queries.

IT IS THE OPENING WEEK OF THE BIENNALE PEOPLE - GET EXCITED!!!

http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/aboutus/getting_here

Barthélémy Toguo | 17th Biennale of Sydney

Barthélémy Toguo | 17th Biennale of Sydney

Art and Narrative: Cindy Sherman

Unititled Film Still #14, 1978Cindy Sherman© Metro Picture Gallery & Cindy Sherman

By turning the camera on herself, Cindy Sherman has built a name as one of the most respected photographers of the late twentieth century. Although the majority of her photographs are pictures of her, these photographs are most definitely not self-portraits. Rather Sherman uses herself as a vehicle for commentary on a variety of issues of the modern world: the role of the woman, the role of the artist and many more. She is known for her carefully composed photographic tableaux that draw on such familiar genres as porn centrefolds, fashion photos and film noir. Posing as subjects who inhabit these genres. Her photos deliberately mimic certain genre conventions but in a manner that shows them as being slightly skewed. At the age of 23 she created a set of 69 "Untitled Film Stills", in which she dressed up as a strangely familiar yet unnamed actress in shots reminiscent of foreign films, B-movies and film noir. The black and white shots, which Sherman completed in 1980, launched her career.

“Sherman has a history of a kind of withdrawal, a market retreat--a production of images that dare the rich to buy them. But while that may be part of the story, it ascribes too simple a motivation to an artist who watches the people who interest her so intently, identifies with them so fully, that she temporarily becomes them.”(1)

 I do believe that Sherman relates to our SPI genre as not only enacts the characters that she mimics, but she has a quite sculptural aesthetic to her photos. 



More info:

(1) Frankel, David. "Cindy Sherman: Metro Pictures." Artforum International 47.6 (2009): 186. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 3 May 2010.
http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A201622555&source=gale&srcprod=EAIM&userGroupName=usyd&version=1.0

Art and The Narrative : Penny Byrne

Penny Byrne is an Australian artist born in Victoria 1965, and has studied both ceramics and glass conservation.

Last thursday on Art Scape (ABC), i came across Penny Byrne wose work i absolutley fell in love with.

As a proffesional ceramic conservator i appreciate her work all the more, as she essentially dismantles beautiful ceramic pieces and either re-esembles them in an almost kitch manner with modern parts, often splattering the final work with red paint to resemble blood.

I think it is incredibly hillerious and incredible that as a conservator, Penny Bryne is doing the exact opposite to conservation. You can imagine the reactions of her clients, facination, shock, hatred, and confusion.

The use of china figurines that are associated with their feminie beauty and fragility, essentially makes Brynes transformation so effective. Blunt, cutting edge and straight to the point are many of her works and yet others that are subtle are perhaps more effective. Adressing political and social issues both of the present and past, Brynes sulptures create an emotive response by the audience.

Hiroshi and his friends are having a whale of a time (2007)

Altered vintage figurine, plastic manga toys, epoxy resin, re-touching medium, powder pigments
30 x 20 x 10

Guantanamo Bay Souvenirs (2007)

Altered vintage porcelain figurines, metal chains, plastic gun, re-touching medium, powder pigments
variable

The Four Horsemen of 21st Century Apocalypse (2009)

(Water Scarcity, Peak Oil, Food Shortages, Over population)
Water - 66 x 44 x 24cm, Oil - 55 x 37 x 27cm, Food - 63 x 48 x 23cm, People - 52 x 40 x 22cm

Her aim:

"Is to entertain and educate. The pieces may seem fun and easy on the eye, but the issues I address are very important to me. I often feel helpless and frustrated by the enormity of problems facing the world. I hope my work will encourage people to at least think about some of these issues."

More info:

http://www.artwhatson.com.au/ssfa/penny-byrne

http://www.emotionadvertising.com.au/artworldmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=261:penny-byrne&catid=72:issue-4-uk&Itemid=37

James Tisdale & Chuck Aydlett: Art & Narrative

James Tisdale - 'Blue Monkey'

"My work, simply stated, is a visual journal. It is easier for me to construct throughts and expressions in a physical venue rather than by word. The work is an outward manifestation of my views toward the world around me. These expressions are highly influenced by many things, but mainly by my rural, devout upbringing in Mississippi. This in itself is a wec of contraditcions. I draw upon both the beauty, and the ufliness of this region and its impact. For me, it has been a rich soil to cultivate, pulling both disturbing and revealing aspects of my life. The work is just a channel to better understand the world and my place within it. The historical art influences on my work range from the figurative work of the Renaissance, the Kitsch work of the 30's and 40s, to the innocent God-felt work of southern folk art. My pieces are constructed with terra cotta earthenware by mehods of coiling and pinching. Once the form is established, the surfaces are then finished with several layers of both stains and glaze, which are taken through multiple oxidation firings of cone 03 temperature"

Chuck Aydlett - 'Two Heads are Better Than One'

Chuck Aydlett - 'Facebook Frivolity'

All I know about Aydlett is that he creates his sculptures by hand using press-molds, drawn on with glaze pencil and painted glaze work. I found his work distinctively narrative as the drawing within or behind the sculptures depict a story through different light shade and figures of emotion. The titles i thought were also quite narrative in themselves.

Art and popular culture

Jeff Koon
Balloon Dog
Is an American artist which is known for his giant reproductions of banal objects such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surface, often bright coloured as shown in the above image. Balloon dog is based on Balloons twisted into shape to make a toy dog. Koons sculpture differs in two major respects to the original. Its is made out of metal and is more than 10 feet high.

Art and Narrative: Martin Eichinger

“I am a narrative artist. The language I use is form and anatomy, but what I try to sculpt is romantic, emotional, and perhaps mythic art."

His works are mainly wax cast bronze sculptures and explores themes of the different aspects of a man's life.

MYTHIC MAN SERIES
Shows: Perseverance and achievement shown through the presence of gravity and the struggle against it.

Weight of the World, 28"
All Down Hill From Here, 16"
Bringing Down the House, 22"

http://www.eichingersculpture.com

Art and narrative

Matthew Ritchie

Proposition player 2003

He embarked on an outrageous undertaking, he set out to tell the story of everything from the bigband onward. Ritchie has created in the Proposition player a veritable casino, including a 100 foot long three dimensional drawing an interactive craps table with digital animation that invites viewers to roll the dice for the future of the universe. An enormous floor mosaic that invites viewers to walk into the surronding pieces of work and a deck of cards featuring Ritchie's cast of characters.

Art and Narrative

I found this image on the net there is no name of the artist nor name of the work stated on the site. I really liked this image.

Art and Representation

Matt Mullican

American artist born in 1951. His conceptual work are are grounded in the symbolic meaning of their individual elements.

Matt Mullicans art takes form as drawing, sculpture and installations which has been peforming since 1978 to investigate the nature of reality, behaviour and association, video painting etc. He shows some ellipses and balls in the above image.

Annotated Bibliography: Edward Kienholz

Hopps, Walter., Rosetta Brooks, Monte Factor, Jurgen Harten, Richard Jackson, Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Alberta Mayo, Thomas

McEvilley and Marcus Raskin. Kienholz A Retrospective. New York: Whitney Museum of America, 1996.

This book provides over 400 colour and black & white plates of Kienholz work including detailed catalogue essays for each piece. It feature

s detailed background about the subject’s character and his life in and out of the art world. Essays are included talk to the American social climate and the effect of location on his work. The plates are arranged in chronological order and there is a chronology by his wife.

Pincus, Robert L., On a Scale That Competes With The World:The Art of Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Los Angeles: University of California Press Berkeley, 1990.

The author of this large over arching essay delivers a historical context in this book and through his referencing places Kienholz work in amongst his east coast contemporaries such as Donald Judd and Tony Smith. In this book Pincus Stakes a claim for Kienholz as one of the most underrated post war artist And as he says in his introduction “...This study is a biography of their American work. I have Aspired to trace the

development of this oeuvre as it has taken place over the past three decades and more so we can better understand its marked contribution to both American art and art in general.”

Kienholz, Edward. The Art Show. Germany: Berliner Kunstlerprogramm/DAAD. 1977.

This book is the catalogue of a show Kienholz had after being invited to the Berliner Kunstlerprogramm/daad grant program. The text is structured as a diary in French, English and German and details specific instances form the ten years of the project. The work is meticulously documented in its creation to give a behind the scenes look at the process involved in this project.

art and narrative - kara walker

kara walker (b.1969 USA)

my complement, my enemy, my oppressor, my love

cut paper on wall

-

kara walker is an african-american artist who explores the subject and issues of race, gender, sexuality, power, violence, repression and history but in almsot friendly mannerism. Walker's unique style consisting of tableaux of black cut paper silhouette installations on wall appear almost like a bed-time stody telling shadows, like those of classic disney cartoon character peter pan's. however when you study the narrative told by these silhouette figures, the playful scenes turn into rather provocative, disturbing images which unveil and confronts the dark history of america regarding such issues.

http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker

Art & Narrative: Jose De Creeft

This week, I have taken the topic of Narrative in art quite literature-ly (get it?). This sculpture is derived from a very well known victorian children's book.

This sculpture is an image taken and appropriated straight from Lewis Carol's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', resides in Central Park, Manhattan. It was commissioned in 1959 by George T. Delacorte Jr., a NY publisher, in honour of his late wife. The artist was Jose De Creeft, a spanish artist who worked mainly in wood and bronze. This Particular sculpture is in Bronze.

Art and Narrative - ilya kabakov

"The man who flew into space from his apartment"
1985-88

Ilya Kabakov to me in a very interesting artist who incorporates and is inspired by narrative when it come to his works. Kabakov uses fictional biographies that he has written previously which has been derived from personal experience and uses them as inspiration or a starting point for his works. Kabakov has also written his memoirs of his childhood. He used these and his works to tell and show the story of the birth and death of the soviet union.
The work pictured "the man who flew into space from his apartment" was a risky project for him to do and after every show he would take all the posters in case the soviets did drop in and he would get caught.

"I built the installation The Man Who Flew into Space in the corner, I glued Soviet posters from inside of it and I would take it down after each showing for fear that they would drop in, understand, and that would be 'the end of everything." ~ Ilya Kabakov.

this work tells us the story of how controlling the soviet union was/is and it talks about to escape out of the union to some kind of freedom that hopefully would be better then where he was before trapped. And then all that is left is a bed a table and a very large hole in the ceiling which fills the installation with light (this is the light source that lights the work) thus suggesting to us that he was heading to wards something much better.

Dali/Walt Disney short film: Destino

Please watch this, it is really good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU_f2vqEgGM

This is a short film (6.47) that Salvador Dali and Walt Disney collaborated on in 1946, but never finished. 6 decades later, and the disney artists completed the film using Dali's storyboards.
This doesn't fit with our studio area, but I just found it really interesting and wanting to share it anyway. It has ties to Narrative art (as film usually does). The storyline is like Dali's paintings, very bizarre but very intersting, with a smooth shift from one sense of reality to another. Within the changing dimension we have a simple story of longing, love and loneliness. The film has no dialogue, but instead is empowered by a beautiful song (written by mexican songwriter Armando Dominguez), at times mournful and then triumphant.

The style of this story telling can be related to some postmodern literature, which abandons the concept of a linear narrative.
Art and Today comments on postmodern narrative, stating that art critic Craig Owens sees it as a form of allegory. Allegory allows multiple interpretations of events or characters to hold deeper meanings, which can be applied to Dali's art.

Art And Narrative

I read An article called "Telling stories Through Contemporary Images"
written by B. Stephen Carpenter II an Associate Professor of Art education at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The article starts with a story by Antoine de Saint Exupery's Le Petit Prince written in 1943, which I have found the original from:
http://www.spiritual.com.au/articles/prince/PrinceCh1.htm

Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.
In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion." I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked like this:
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?" My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:
The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to theml

This story suggests the not always easily visable stories within art. Both pictures and stories depend on eachother and are both deeply connected.

It's a very short article (2 pages), but I would suggest it's worth a read. http://dd8gh5yx7k.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Telling+Stories+through+Contemporary+Images&rft.jtitle=Art+Education&rft.au=B+Stephen+Carpenter+II&rft.date=2004-03-01&rft.issn=0004-3125&rft.volume=57&rft.issue=2&rft.spage=4&rft.externalDBID=ARED&rft.externalDocID=574625411

I thought this sort of idea could link to Sophie Calle's work, in which Caleb talked about in our last lecture. She was the woman who became a temporary hotel cleaner in order to take photos, notes and delve into personal belongings of the visitors rooms. This idea that you could get to know someone through there personal belongings and diary entries, could be quite different to whom they really are. The same as how the little boys drawings appeared different to the adults from what they really were.

This work was called The Hotel, Room 47 1981 L'Hôtel, Chambre 47

Sorry I tried to find an image of it, but I was unable to find one clear enough to read.

You can take a look at it in these books that are in our library:

Sophie Calle
Book
Corporate Author: Whitechapel Art Gallery
ISBN: 085488176X Date: 2009 Pages: 175 p.
Subjects: Criticism and interpretation Call Num: 709.2 C157 X 1


Sophie Calle, m'as-tu vue
Book
Author: Calle, Sophie Corporate Author: Centre Georges Pompidou
ISBN: 9783791330358 Date: 2008 Pages: 443 p.
Subjects: Life in art Call Num: 709.2 C157 4

Annotated Bibliography: Matthew Barney

Gioni, Massimiliano. Mathew Barney: Super Contemporary, Electa, Milan, c.2007.

This text provided a general exploration of the themes, motifs and aesthetics of Matthew Barney's work. The author's engagement with the artist is on the whole non-critical and the piece is written as more of a glossy accolade than an academic assessment. Citation of sources like the New York Times indicates that the text is engaging with mainstream opinion rather than art-historical discourse. This said, the work definitely provided a comprehensive compilation of Barney's work thus far, particularly pictorially (with full-page, coloured photo-prints).

Keller, Alexander & Ward, Frazer. Matthew Barney and the Paradox of the Neo-Avant Garde Blockbuster, Cinema Journal, Vol. 45, No.2 (Winter, 2006), pp. 3-16

This article engages with the work of Matthew Barney critically, focusing particularly on its relation to the historical and cultural contexts in which it arguably sits. Keller and Ward primarily concern themselves with Barneys conflicting fusion of the blockbuster genre and performance art, and the socio-political implications of this act. Although it is useful to engage with critical perspectives when researching a subject, at times the tone of the article is unnecessarily condescending and the language overly verbose. It is important to acknowledge as both a strength and a limitation, that the criticisms made are mainly political and the work is largely silent in the sphere of aesthetic analysis. Thus the article was more useful in situating the artist and his work in an art-historical, ideological realm, and less useful as a piece of visual analysis.


Raizada, Kristen. Dominant Discourses and Social Fictions: Matthew Barney Plays the Body to Becoming-Woman, M.A. diss., 2007, California State University, Long Beach, In Dissertations & Theses: Full Text [database on-line]; available from http://www.proquest.com (publication number AAT 1448166; accessed April 26, 2010)

An intellectually engaged document, Raizada makes a balanced, well thought out argument, considering both the criticisms and praise of Barney equally and then forging her own path through these dominant discourses to bring new light to the subject. She argues that criticisms of Barney's engagement with gender and identity politics reveals that the white, heterosexual male artist is also restrained by a gendered art criticism. For Raizada, the importance is on shedding codification and engaging with the act of becoming. The work is extensively researched, citing a sweeping range of secondary material, reflecting an engagement with the full body of criticism on the topic at hand. This provided an extremely useful summary of the critical arguments surrounding Barney's practice but again was less useful in the realm of visual analysis.

Art and Popular Culture (catch-up post)- avaf

avaf (which is requested to be written in lowercase) is a group of anonymous artists who work within the theme of popular culture. It is difficult to find information on the artists themselves, although it seems they are based in Brazil, and have been displaying works from 2002 onwards.
The group uses references to popular culture in their works, “sampling images, words, video and music” from their own work and other artists.
They use techniques common to Pop Art works, including collage, comic and ad styled imagery and repetition reminiscent of mass-production. Their works are mixed media, and appear to cover all available space in galleries. These are installations which encourage interactivity from the audience, who are given freedom to do what they want within the space. The works are “ever-changing” because of the encouragement to add to them.

The nature of popular culture is reflected well in these works. They are energetic, changing pieces that create a sense of speed. They show instant communication with recognisable imagery, as well as symbolism of the ‘Kitsch’ as described by Clement Greenberg.
“popular, commercial art and literature with their chromotypes, magazine covers, illustrations, ads, slick and pulp fiction, comics, Tin pan Alley music, tap dancing, Hollywood movies, etc, etc.” –Clement Greenberg.

A key question brought up by these works is the notion of authorship, where it belongs and what needs to happen for authorship to change. The use of concepts or images by other artists creates the usual arguments on whether the work is an appropriation, designed to change the nature of how we view the original, or an idea that goes off on a tangent to the first.The fact that this is a group of artists working together also changes the dynamic, particularly because they do not identify themselves as individuals within a group, but under a collective name. Personal recognition does not appear important.


This is an article of art and popular culture, that refers to avaf (2nd last paragraph)http://quazen.com/arts/popular-culture-vs-contemporary-art/


Images from a number of their shows.
http://www.cheapcream.com/


An interview with them, also has exhibition information
http://www.cheapcream.com/text_interview1.html


More info
http://oneartworld.com/artists/A/assume+vivid+astro+focus.html

Art and Abstraction (catch-up post) – Jenny Green

I saw Jenny Green’s works at 2 Dank Street in early 2009. Most of her works are powder-coated steel sculptures, usually under a metre in size, in bold colours (red, blue, black). The works I saw were from her ‘Catching Whispers’ exhibition.
Most of her works are typically abstract, without any sort of representational symbols, and are often titled with words that don’t have a physical form (‘Rapture’, ‘Echo’, ‘Being There’).
I found her use of materials interesting. Many of the components of the works seemed to just be leaning against one another so that they looked like they could slip off, despite knowing that they were strong, self-contained pieces.
My favourites were ‘Being There’, a small blue work of interlocking curves and out of shape ovals, and ‘The Guardian’, a larger black sculpture which was more representational than the others, and reminded me of Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series.
Her website has a slideshow of some of her works. www.jennygreen.net