When is the essay due?

I'm getting confused..what date is the essay due?
and how do we hand it in anyway?

Art and Time - Daniel Von Sturmer

Video Clip 2004-7

This work is probably a very literal exploration of time. It could also be an exploration of the quotidian object, and other topic areas we've done. I saw this video in yr 12 and I just really liked it. It has a simplicity in concept and execution that is very effective.
The video shows a man's hands. They are holding a piece of straight wire. They make a few folds in the wire and create a perfect, in proportion paperclip. (Try doing this at home.)
It is of course a video of someone unfolding a paperclip, played in reverse.
When we saw it in my class it was interesting to see the time it took for people to realise. Some people knew almost immediately, and some were very confused even after the video finished.
Like what was discussed in the time and place lecture, there is value in spending time on a work to gain the information required to understand it. In this case, it wasn't a fixed amount of time, like many narrative video works. It seemed to rely on how you, personally, made the connections as to when you saw the reality of the work.
Playing backwards also seemed to link with the concept of linear time being disrupted, seeing the future before the present (which has become the past), and ideas of fate (it is inevitable that a paperclip in the hands of a bored person will become a straight piece of wire).
I couldn't find the video of this work. I've got no pictures. I think because I can't find the video anywhere I may have made a mistake of him being the artist...but I'm pretty sure this is right.

The link below has more of his works. He seems to do a lot of site specific installations and video art.
http://www.danielvonsturmer.com/cv.html

Biennale - Wang Qingsong, Competition & Debacle

Out of all the works that we saw last wednesday, Chinese artist Wang Qinsong's two c-prints stood out to me. As someone who is interested in society and its movements perhaps this is why. I also loved the color and use of space he portrays in the pictures. I have found in my research that society is the main focus of his work, and he has really interesting ways of portraying these themes.

I found an interview with the artist and Galerie URS Meile in Bejing that relates to his earlier work and how he progressed from painting to reflect society's rapidly changing pace.

http://www.galerieursmeile.com/artists/artists/wang-quinsong//work.html

The works Competition, 2004, and Debacle, 2009 were chosen as a part of the Sydney Biennale 'The Beauty of Distance - Songs of survival an a precarious age.' Qingsong particularly fits in the the latter of the phrases applied to this year's Biennale - as he captured the threads of society and how they are advancing and being altered. Competition is a frame depicting a 14 x 40m wall, displaying a random selection of slogans and phrases from local and international advertisements. There are over 3000 references to products and services. Here he captivates the overwhelming and fascinating amount of advertising that envelopes the world and society today. He also references the likeness of this conflict and the casualties that arise to war.

Debacle is on a similar theme, using the posters and advertisements, but reflects the emptiness and void created by the recession. The contrast of the two works cause a reflection of society's saturation and then the fragility.

http://www.wangqingsong.com/html/html/competition-large.htm

Become a Performance Space - Volunteer

Hi Everyone,

For those interested - apply to become a Volunteer at the Performance Space.

http://performancespace.com.au

A.

Bill Viola: Annotated Bibliography

Townsend, Chris. The Art of Bill Viola. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004.

This book gives a detailed critical review of Violas work since the 70's with 60 illustrations of his work. Chris Townsend edited Violas' work and organised the book into chapters of essays of ten other art critics who had contributed their views.These chapters dealt with the different thematic and conceptual aspects of Violas art. This was useful as i could access the chapter i was interested in (space, time, video, viola) easily.The information is fairly dense so is more suitable for someone who already had a basic understanding of Violas practice. The contents of these essays are useful as they provide an insightful all over view of Violas main concerns in his Artworks, such as an entire chapter expressing his use of the sublime. It is also nice to have a variety of writing styles contained within the one book.

Walsh, John. John Walsh and Peter Stellars. Bill Viola THE PASSIONS. London: Getty Publications, c.2003

'Bill Viola The Passions' was published in conjunction with the the exhibition held at the J. Paul Getty museum and London National Gallery, 2003 as well as the Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen gallery, Munich in 2004. The information contained includes an account of the exhibition by the curator at the National Gallery, interviews with the artist and observations of Viola at work in his studio.I found this book very interesting as the material wasn't too dense and the layout was organised and varied. The Foreword the curator says the "Getty museum is deeply grateful to Bill Viola for lending his generous spirit to the project", so it seems there is a personal link between Viola and this gallery. This I had also gathered through the contribution he had made to the production of the book through his interviews and the inclusion of his photocopied personal notebook.The exhibition 'The Passions' is given an in depth look here and an ides of Violas' work ethic and thought process are revealed.

Viola, Bill. Official Bill Viola Website. http://www.billviola.com/ [accessed on the 19th of May 2010]

For a Video artist the medium of the computer as a means of accessing information about the artist is very appropriate. The website is very useful as it contains biography, interviews and news of upcoming exhibitions. It is also possible to buy his video works from here. An overview of numerous articles and interviews are sited, which is very useful as a starting point while researching. Most of his recent works are displayed here as well in picture form.

I know this isn't what the blog is for BUT!

does anyone know the link to the photos of our very first (isnt it special) exhibition?

art and time

James Turrell
is a American artist who is highly involved and obsessed with Light and experimentation of light in his works.
"I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed and seeing, like the wordless thought that can come when looking in fire"

He Harnesses the light and embeds emotion and feeling into the light and work.

he has been known to "bring Heaven down to earth"

i relate him to art and time because his art in a duration where you have to be present in the works for a certain amount of time before actually realising what is happening and going on.

after your eyes have adjusted to the light in the room (where his works are) you are then able to start seeing the work and images and forms appear out of the "mist" of the light.

art space, Marcus coates

i was most drawn to the video installation work of Marcus Coates. I sat down and watched the entire film from beginning to end and loving every second. i found it was a bizarre and funny experience as i didn't know whether to take this man seriously or not. And also having to wear headphones to hear made it a very individual experience and personal as well as i couldn't hear any thing but what Marcus and his band were doing.

One of his works was projected onto a large screen and then there were four other smaller screens but only one person could sit at those ones.

The work i saw was A Ritual for Elephant and Castle

the video is a live performance from a show where he performed with Chrome Hoof. he comes onto stage wearing a silver suit and the body of a skinned horse attacked to his head like a cape and crown. i found it to be very ritualistic in the sense of wearinf animal head dress and shamanistic where he uses the animals to communicate to him what is going on and talking in "animal tougue" (which to the viewer sounds like babbling or squeaks) to ask and get question aobut whats going on in the world.

but all in all i lvoed it :)

and what i have seen of teh biennale

i can't wait to see more!

art space, Marcus coates

Art & Time: Jeremy Blake

Check out the video work of Jeremy Blake:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhScaTVYePk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuehJaCeS1I&feature=related

An artist whose work is at once painting and video, abstractionist and representational. His use of saturated colour is intriguing and seductive and combined with the video medium makes for an immersive experience.
Following on from Calebs discussion of James Turrell's installations, this work needs to be given time and attention to speak.

Art & Time: Liana Turnbull Bennett

"Father Time" ,

Liana Turnbull Bennett.

27" tall, 9" wide, 17" long.

Mixed media and acrylic. 2006.

This work is a contrast to the stereotypical view of 'Father Time'. It shows Father Time with a more conceptual perspective, rather than the, more common, literal idea. This would be a wizened old hermit with a long white beard wearing robes and carrying a staff.

Turnbull Bennett has taken an animal skull, painted it with images from the hubble telescope and also incorporated rusted parts from an antique clock. These elements present us with a Father Time who does not control time, but who is ravaged by time, as everything else is. Aged and as infinite as the universe it's self.

" I wanted to illustrate time in relation to space. Time as infinity..." says Liana Turnbull Bennett on her blog.

Biennale + Art and time

CHTO DELAT.

This was the video work in artspace, (the first one as you walked through). CHTO DELAT translates into 'what is to be done' and contains a group of russian artists. It was approx 30 min. The video is based on findings of eye witness accounts of perestrokia in soviet history. The film is set in 1991, after victory over the restorationists. There are 5 characters, whom all play a different role, in history, the Chorus then analyses there role. I liked this work, although I found it to go on a little too long, I found that with more time i probably could of sat through the whole thing. The chorus added some humour to the work. Overall it was very interesting and engaging.

Art and time.... Olafur Eliasson, need I say more?

Eliassons installations surround and focus on time.

Peronally my favourite is To The cubic structural evolution project (2004).
I went to the exhbition in its lasts days and seeing what everyone had created was amazing, you got a weird experience of time. Some constructions must of taken hours, some minutes, you also had no idea how long they had been there, if they had been changed from there original construction, and how many people had seen them.

pretty cool!

Annotated Bibliography

Crooks Daniel, Daniel Crooks : a small section of something larger : 22 September - 15 October : Sherman Galleries, Sherman Galleries 2005

This is a sort of a catalogue that was distributed by a gallery that had taken on Daniel Crooks. I found it in the library when doing a search for the name Daniel Crooks, I thought it may be a book written by him and possibly give me an insight into his thoughts around or departed from his time splice works. However it doesn't seem to be written by him even tho it says’s he was the author. This booklet allowed me to see high quality pictures of the works, as opposed to just my memory of the videos and pixelated images on the web. It also gave brief conceptual descriptions and alerted me to the idea of the code and how that relates to time and human body.

Kirsten Rann, All That Is Solid Melts, Photofile 87 – The Portrait Issue, Australian Centre for Photography August-November 09

This was a great profile on the work of Daniel Crooks, it had a lot of the same thematic concerns as the Sherman Galleries booklet, but it was longer, went more in depth and made historical links to the early stop motion video of Antoirnette-Bourard and Impressionism.

Lloyd Jones Jan, Campbell Paul, Wylie Peter, Art and Time, North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing 2007

While not giving me any information on relevant artists it did give me an understanding of the idea of art and time, it was both broad and specific in it’s approach as to what art can be considered ‘time art’. It’s a collection of philosophical essays that were formulated after a conference on the subject of Art and time/architecture/music.

Art and Representation: James Casebere

His works involve issues around the world and bring them to light, for example, the sewers in Berlin (Two Tunnels) and work referencing the Atlantic slave trade.






His own website: http://jamescasebere.net/group5.html

Art and Time

Found this exhibition in Venice, Italy about time. It's called the Artempo: where time becomes art.

A mirror by Anish Kapoor



Roberta Smith wrote a review on the exhibition, and this paragraph seemed to combine the idea of time with the exhibition - “The organizers of “Artempo” have used this setting [Fortuny Museum] to create a reverie in three acts, skimming across human and geological history, ruminating on the nature and effects of time. It dramatizes art’s ability to encapsulate time, and time’s ability to turn just about anything, man-made or natural, into art.” Time in this case is not taken literally, but “where an object's age and beauty acquire their own value.”

Here's the website – have a look at the 'virtual tour'! http://www.artempo.eu/exhibition_en/virtual_en.html

Annotated bibliography" Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik 'Nam June Paik's Official website', http://www.paikstudios.com/index.html /


The official website of video artist Nam June Paik, gives a great insight of artist and artworks. It explores the personality of him, as the website itself was all about video and technology. Also having, divided section on the website such as exhibitions, images, essay and so on it created further engagement between artist and viewer/reader. The essay written by John Hanhardt (Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts), Guggenheim of Art Museum, was very personal reflection on Nam Jun Paik's works and how he effected the world of art.
“The wide presence of the media arts in contemporary culture is no small measure due to the power of Paik’s art and ideas.’- John Hanhardt 1982(Nam Jun Paik’s official website essay)
The list on left-side of the website presented shows Nam June Paik's video tributes in different countries. This allows the viewer/reader to be part of these trubutes and it can create closer relationship with the work and the artist.

Michael Rush New Media in Late 20th-Century Art First published in the United Kingdom in 1999 by Thanmes&Hudson Ltd London. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Date.

This book provides range of artist and illustration on art in all its aspects. Michael Rush explores different theme within 20th century media art, such as media/performance, video art, video installation art, and digital art. The artist Name June Paik is introduced in differnt parts within the media art, how he impacted on music and video performaces during differnt time period. The involvement of Nam June Paik's artworks during late 20th century are well represented and illustrated. From this book the indept of his movement and collaboration works takes the reader to understand the artist practice and artworks.
"During his Fluxus period in the early 1960's in numerous collaborations with musician...Paik created musci and video performances that challenged the way music was traditionally played and heard"-(Michael Rush 'New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, p53)
Above:Cage (1990).Sigle channel video sculpture with vintage television casings, piano wire, toy piano keys, and nine monitors, color silent 90x72x24 inches.

Below:Robespierre (1989). Two channel video sculpture with nine monitors, vintage television and radion castings, and saw. 100x80x20 inches.

Installation view Modulation in Sync:Jacob's Lader,2000 "The worlds of Nam June Paik'. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 2000 Photo J Huffman

Arc Double fca (1985) Three channel video installation with forty two monitors and metal structure.

Art and Time

The Persistence of Memory

Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989)

"Time is the theme here, from the melting watches to the decay implied by the swarming ants. The monstrous fleshy creature draped across the paintings center is an approximation of Dalís own face in profile. Mastering what he called "the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling," Dalí painted this work with "the most imperialist fury of precision," but only, he said, "to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality." There is, however, a nod to the real: The distant golden cliffs are those on the coast of Catalonia, Dalís home."

-Gallery Label text

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79018

taking the theme of time in art literally here i know, however i just love the element of sympathy I feel towards the image of the clocks- warn out, tired, used, I'm not sure but you just seem to want to let out a big sigh at the end of a witty wise note to self kind of statement:

"time just passes you by doesn't it?" *sigh*

Art & Representation- DAVID CERNY

Fit

Shark

Entopa

David Cerny was born in Prague, 1967. He is a sculpture and installation artist. Cerny creates works that are controversial, they are made to shock and confront the viewer and make them think about the meaning deeper meaning behind his works. Cerny's work Shark was banned from two galleries fearing it would upset some viewer.

Cerny's work Entopa is an artwork made up of many elements. Each shape with in the work is the shape of a country, with in each shape there are objects that represent the stigma of that particular country. The objects move and make noise.

In the work Shark, Cerny has appropriated a work from Damien Hirst, The pysical impossibilty of death in the mind of someone living. By appropriating this work it creates a deeper meaning for the work, as well as creating a political meaning for the work because of the sculpture inside the tank.
Cerny uses many different matterials to represent the ideas and purpose of his works.

Marcus Coates

A Ritual for Elephant and Castle was one of the Big works at Art Space and it was entertaining, wierd and unique. There were four screens that portrayed Coates getting spiritual and in touch with nature in the most unlikey of places, in the poorly developed areas of London. When I was watching this i thought it was a fictional humerous take on the struggels in this area but he is really serious and considers himself a Shamen (they can communicate with animals). Where i grew up in Dublin there were alot of these badly developed housing complexes so for me this was really entertaining to see someone so naieve and funny trying to tackle the problems of redevelopment.

A similar work is 'The melancholy of Dawn Chorus' (2007).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCCpnDtgxXk

"The melancholy of Dawn Chorus is born of the solitary figures’ isolation, not only from the world of the birds and the beasts but also from each other. Deceptively, Coates’ real subjects are not the outdoors and the unknown but interiority and introspection. This is the true locus of ‘nature’ in the modern world, he seems to imply; not in the open spaces of the countryside, so obscured by cultural projection and anthropomorphism, but in the withered memory of something wild and ancient, buried deep within ourselves."
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/focus_marcus_coates/

Mind Life Art : Get into it.

Hi Everyone,

I thought you might be interested in getting involved in an art project I am working on:

'MIND LIFE ART'.

If you are interested in participating I will need 5 minutes of your time.

Event #1: You simply need to make a screen Grab of your desktop and send it to me.

If you have a Mac this can be done with the inbuilt software 'Grab' found here:
/Applications/Utilities/Grab.
Simply open software - go to Desktop, choose Capture then Screen to grab your entire desktop.

Save the file using your name then send - thats it (all readings will remain anonymous unless consent is given):

mindlifeart@gmail.com


What happens next?

These desktop images will appear on the Mind Life Art website with accompanying Mind Life Art Interpretative Readings.

I hope you will be able to take part in the esoteric activities of Mind Life Art - Event #1.

If you have any questions - please get in touch and feel free to pass this on!

Amanda.

Bie GNARLY

The 17th Biennale of Sydney is themed around "The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age" at first I didn't understand what it meant but with a little bit of help (thanks Amanda) it became more obvious to what it is alluding to.

'all art is folk art.'.....'fine' art and 'folk' art are here turned on their heads in an exhibition in which the only discrimination is whether the art is any 'good'

This is an interesting idea, but made me think: is this contradictory to say the only discrimination is whether the art is any 'good' and yet display the art work in certain groups? i.e. the Asia focus perhaps I need to see the rest of the exhibition?

There was one particular work that stood out to me which was Harry Smith's 'Film Number 12' this was the one displayed closest to the super deluxe bar. I had seen Smith's work before on youtube:

These types of experimental animations were made as far back as the mid 40's and are usually painted or

cut outs manipulated all by hand. They have elements of Dada and the Surrealists and also instantly reminded me of

Terry Gilliam who created the Monty Python animations.

Harry Smith was also an all round radical and was the inspiration for the Biennale theme. Apart from being

an artist he also collected historic recordings of early american folk music.

What a guy!!

I can't wait to see the rest of the biennale!