Blog-Backlog_Day Seven_A

Trafalgar Square

The Four Plinths in Trafalgar Square have in the past decade become a place where contemporary is publicly centered amongst a historic backdrop. The sculptures in the past have mostly been a social commentary (link here for past plinths). The square is riddled with tourists every where and small crowds here and there of tourists, taking pictures with the giant stone lions, or the fountains of the court yard. The Square is right in front of The National Gallery.

The plinth itself has its own history, having been left blank, since the original statue to go on there lost it's funding in 1841. The plinth commission only started in 1999, so this is fair contemporary idea. (This is post modern to say the least). But thinking about the plinth on its own, and the obvious parallel to a pedestal, the function in a slightly different way. Pliths, are usually in honor of someone (or something) for a moment in history that people, usually, in their own time, deem note worthy for history's records. This fourth plinth rotates, and speaks or doesn't speak about specific evens, moments, or people if the artist doesn't want to.



The current plinth by Yinka Sonnibare references it's own site specificity. The artist used textiles that are the hallmark of the bodies of work he is known most exclusively for about the Britain's textile trade, commenting on (lack of) fair trade, and the interconnection of cultures through this partcular type of trade. He then calls the piece Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, referencing the site. He seems to coyly be playing on the grand notion of the plinth, but the belittling it with a nonsensical ship in a bottle.

Blog-Backlog_Day Six_A

FREE DAY

Started the day with coffee and little Skype sesh.with the parents.

This free day was not as productive as I would have liked, however, I did cover a good amount of my popular culture basis, including a visit to Paddington Station (the subject of one of my sister favorite books when she was about 6, which, had minor sub-plot about immigration in Britain). I also was twisted and turned about on the underground because of planned (however, unplanned by me...) rail work over the weekend. Which gave me plenty of reading time which I finished up Design and Democracy by Gui Bonsiepe. (More on that below...)


little park sketching at
Postman's Park

Alice Ayres pop culture moment from
the 2004 movie Closer

Wandering around the tube to
Paddington Station

For me there's no better way to spend an afternoon than reading up on some idea floating about contemporary thought (it was from Bedford Press 2010) on two of my favorite things : ...design and democracy. This, I found to be highly relevant to what I've been thinking about "form and function" which Bonsiepe considers a dead argument. What I found particularly interesting, was that he brought up capitalism and creating a market for products and the social responsibilities of these designers. He writes about how design, aesthetics and consumption inter relate, almost inseparably, and how to make this system work efficiently, to be (eco)logical.

I can feel this working perfectly into with The System Of Objects, which was not in the (work cited page). The System is about objects (thus far ... midway thru chapter 2) influencing personal space, Design & Democracy is about objects influencing social space (and thusly defacto political space) I would some how like to link this into my final paper for this class, mostly because I bought and read the book during the duration of the trip, but he referenced Benjamin (Illuminations : which I plan on starting shortly after returning home from break), and Barths.

Naturally, I feel like this will fit in snugly to any bibliography I will end up writing on post modern aesthetics.

Blog-Backlog_Day Five_C

I have been dragging my feet with blogging, but this one in particular. This is mostly because, I feel like, I am being overly critical of the artist/activist blur. I am huge component of Beuyisan theory, and the ideals of community based art. However, since then I think that the artist has to be more assertive, and do a bit more than a minor intervention at best. Or perhaps, use better rhetoric, or vernacular, in calling it a happening. I think artist really need to claim their vocabulary and use it efficiently.

Brigitte Jurack's lecture further proved this point. I felt the lecture was a little long. I found her work interesting, but really the work posed to me, more questions about post production and at times, authorship in so far as the communial work goes. Can the work be successful without the participants, I think not. While, I wouldn't go as far as to call this the death of the author, rather, I would consider it, a credits reel. Fine Artists, should they be highly conceptual, outsource their work, include participants (this statement does not necessarily include all interactive pieces). Not only in particular websites, but in professional lectures as well, I am not only speaking directly about Jurack's lecture but many of the lectures I have been to.

My honest opinions of Juracks work are mixed. I really enjoyed the deer with wax sculpture in so far as it was mildly curious with little sense of whimsy. I also enjoyed her figurative work, because they were whimsical with a sense of curiosity. The overall trend I found, was that from the work she showed, I found what I enjoyed about one I had almost the inverse reaction when she showed the next. It could have just been the fact that she gave the presentation from present to past, rather than past to present, so rather than her work becoming seemingly more cohesive, it became less so, which I found frustrating, and hard to follow, because there was no way to look at it without referencing what she had just shown, so it seemed like reading a book from back to front, where by the questions you would want to know the answers to, you didn't care so much for asking, because you already knew them.

Lakes (no.5).//Monument for Damian//Moonshine Walk

Blog-Backlog_Day Five_B

Back to the TATE Britain

Rachel Whiteread : is known for large scale sculptures of negative spaces, including stairwells, under chairs. Some of her most notable works are the Holocaust monument, and her installation of an inverted version of the Forth Plinth. Her primary mediums are plaster and resin. Her pieces are enormous feats of craftsmanship resulting in awe striking ephemeral pieces. The drawings on exhibit were really wonderful.

Eadweard Muybridge is a photographer. He is known for photo studies of motion. Degas made a bronze horse statue based on one of his studies. Muybridge also invented the zoopraxiscope, which I didn't know. I really enjoy his panoramas, however after a while, the photo studies became repetitive. I did find the colors used on the walls to be inviting and and lush, which, I know is not necessarily about the art per say, but i want go into museum studies, so it is a point of interest.

The Damien Hirst room, was kid of disappointing. I was hoping to see some of his more provocative sculptures, I suppose after seeing the shark, butterflies and an arrangement of scientific plastics are pretty lack luster.

One of the rooms that was the most interesting to me was Art For Whom. It was filled with political art from the mostly the 70's. There was a piece called She/She by Linder, a feminist piece done via photo collage. Another was a collection of slogans from the North of Ireland, about the troubles in orange, white and green. It asked questions of who is the audience, about the politicization of art.

Blog-Backlog_Day Five_A

Westminster Abbey

The Abbey is a Church of England, and its lure to tourists is just how much history is embedded within it. The final resting place of England's finest including, Darwin, Dickens, Queen Elizabeth I, and personal favorite Mary Queen of Scotts. The abbey has with stood the tests of time in England, through Henry the 8th to the blitzes, comprised of several different styles of quintessential English architecture. A few point of further interest, this is where all the kings and queens have been ordained, and the prince will be married. One of the more sentimental aspects was the grave for the unknown British solider, the only grave you cannot walk on in the church.

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The Globe

"This above all — to thine ownself be true" (Hamlet) : or be as true to life as historical have survived, as possible, and use your best guesses to fill in the gaps... With that being said i was mostly underwhelmed by The Globe and really have little interest in Shakespeare save for Shakespeare in Love and the numerous phrases that have survived vernacular history.

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Saachi

After a very rainy, cold, long, journey if you will, from the Serpentine Gallery to The Saachi Gallery, we finally arrived. I drugged by soaked boots from gallery to gallery, having pieces of My Name is Charles Saachi and I Am An Artoholic mulling about in my mind. I looked for "unmonumental" trends and found them without a doubt. I must say, Saachi is slacking, very few, if any of the artist, have the draw factor of a Hirst or and Emin, which I think I enjoy about the artists Saachi sensationalizes. He is in advertising, and I was really expecting more of edge, or sensational aspect, but really it mostly fell short. However it was not all for not, I did see some things that were notable:

Ximena Garrido-Lecca
I found these to be particuarly touching, and just emanating a Latin American essence, that seemed kitschy in its European setting. Upon reading read the little pink Picture By Picture guide I found that I was 100% correct. Garrido-Lecca was utilizing the the iconography of the death cult_ure from her Peruvian heritage.


Olivia Plender
I found these to be a feat for the graphic medium, in a sort of Roy Lechtinestein with a lo-fi kitsch undertone. She used a B-rated aesthetic to articulate her concepts literally, with the potential of "zine" style distribution, as well as housed in the high art space.


//
Maaike Schoorel used washed color, they look in a lot of ways like a large scale water colour, which i would like to pose as post-modern impressionism // Nick Gross canvases were brown washes relying heavily on masked linear aspects, to that the negative lines would dictate the eye to realize shapes. I would like to pose this as referential of cubism.



Steve Bishop
Appears to be the British poster child for what i was looking for in "unmonumentality." A kind of couture sculptural collages (pun intended) A sloppy appropriated style, with hits of self conciseness awareness of status, material, and dialogue between them.

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Anish Kapoor


A very rainy walk through the gardens, to find some of Kapoor's sculptures proved to be mildly underwhelming since the gray sky was reflected in the mirrored glass it was hard to even notice the shifted, in the disk. Which, I think references the site specificity, but is really telling of the nature of outdoor installations, and what is lost and gained when leaving so much up to the elements. Upon reflection it could have referenced a silver lining to the gray clouds, but i was much to wet and grumpy to see that at the time.

We did see the cutest little duckies tho...

Blog-Backlog_Day Four_A

Serpentine Gallery

Phillippe Parreno created an encompassing space both inside and out, thusly activating and internal and external relationship with the work. Large format, slow moving, short films, in a large space. The sound lending itself from room to room, inviting curiosity of familiar sounds in one room, while you are watching unfamiliar, slightly obscure screening in another.


I had little to no idea what the video here was about, but I think it was touching on light sensitivities in the dark, and the differences between they way things appear at night versus during the day. Anything that fades out with Devendra Banhart is okay by me, and automatically obscure, and haunting.



I didn't know until after the fact that this was about a Kennedy funeral train, but appreciated the scale, and solemness of the film. The sound was crisp as was the picture, so it was clearly a reproduction, rather than appropriated video.



This dark video follows a young Chinese immigrant boy, and the shadow creatures he sees via scratched in monsters by Parreno on film. It felt like the creatures could have been established by sound, score and absence, rather than scratched into film. I felt they were literally but not literal to the point of abstraction like the rest of his videos, that echoed the fictional déjà vu of Cindy Sherman photographs.

On another note, I could spend the better part of a small portion in the bookstore. Luckily, I was able to narrow it down to two books.

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War Horse was a play in a cozy theater. The play was emotionally striking for such a simple set, including projection and few props. The story was a boy and his 'orse. The boy joins the army to find the horse that was donated to the British cause to find the horse. With that being said, the story line, was slightly, over dramatic. The horse props were extremely well rendered, and Tine described them as "realized line drawings", which I cannot describe better if i tried. They were, i suppose impressionistic line drawings to describe them just a bit further, in that the motion of the horse was jerky, and as fluid as they could be, from a steel wood and mesh frame that probably weighted more than I do. I became extremely emotionally involved with the horse, despite what I'm calling an over dramatic subject matter; and I think that was due to the acting skills of those preforming and choreographing the horse.

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Other thoughts on the Tate

I was unimpressed with Gaughin, I have always hated him as a painter, I found him to be self absorbed, and his paintings lack luster. His brush strokes seemed more lazy and uneducated than painterly, and such was true (ten fold) when seeing them in person. I search the exhibit for something that would possibly change my perspective on his work, sketches, concepts, something, and was unable to find anything lasting.


ON THE OTHER HAND! All was not lost on the TATE Modern, The art-historical exhibits were fantastic. Nothing pleases me more than the importance of art modern art history in a contemporary exhibition of old works. They had a large scale map of art historical periods by year with famous artists from that movement listed near it. It really just delighted me to see that my interests are not isolated, that they are actually points of debate, at least in the London art scene anyway.

It was nice to see a piece from Art and Language all though it was just a tiny (literally post card size) portrait of Lenin. And I saw the work of Julião Sarmento for the first time and was completely and utterly blown away. Text based work referencing Joyce and Foucault. I have seldom seen work that is contemporary (as in within the past ten or so years) that makes me think, yes, art world I do in fact belong here. Normally, its work from the 70's that I am just stumbling upon for the first time in the 21st century.

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Forget Me (2005) // Dublin-Trieste 2 December 1909 (1996)

Blog-Backlog_Day Three_B

Ai WeiWei

An installation at the Tate Modern, in the Turbine Hall, was done by Chinese Artist Ai WeiWei. The floor of the enormous hall was coated with"sunflower seeds" (made from porcelain). The piece had several layers, speaking to globalization, working class, Chinese politics (Chairmen Mao is symbolized by the sunflower) and technology of the past and present. There was the installation and an informational video from WeiWei, explaining process and some concept. I found the piece, humbling due to the contrast of the flatness of the work, and the vast number of seeds with respects to the scale of the space. It was really awe striking. I really appreciate industrial architecture, steel beams, enormous ceilings, especially in repurposed spaces, I find brilliant. Therefore further enhancing the gray tones of the the space with the blur of seeds from a distance was aesthetically pleasing. To me it was all the play of industrial gray from Manet's Rail Station Series, with the awe of color scale of Rothko.

Politically speaking, I have a few more questions, with respects to the "Made In China" phenomena. I image the workers were paid well, but were they given above or below minimum wage? While the piece gave work the village for 2 or so years, what is to become of the economy now? At what point does it go beyond self service of a community? I really would have like to have seen more credit given to the 1600 or so workers who made the seeds because they became a blur, similar to the way each individual seed does when put in the large pile. If that was the point, this parallel of individuals, blurred in the grand scheme of things, at once labored over carefully, but then when tossed in the larger picture becoming anonymous, I don't find that politically relevant. I find it completely exploitative of a position, by someone who is well known, who isn't didn't have a hand in the labor process, save for overseeing. To me, that really falls short, while something is always better than nothing, for a community that is craving work, why not create lasting infrastructure, if you can.

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The London Eye is one of London's many tourist attractions. It is huge, but the view, i must say is breathtaking. It is not one of the things i would remotely consider doing in my free time, and I'm not totally sold in the idea that it was worth it. C'est le vie tho, its done, I'm intact.

Blog-Backlog_Day Two

Free Day:

The designer Dior is known quite well, some of his most iconic designs are illustrated by Rene Gruau. Gruau's illustrations are landmarks as far as fashion concerned. They are minimal yet radiate luxury. The exhibit consisted of the illustrations from Diors numerous perfumes over the years. While a small exhibit it was truly lovely.

After seeing Gruau, I wandered over to the Cezanne exhibit of "The Card Player" series, along with some other impression and post impressionist faves including Degas and Van Gogh. I can take or leave Cezanne, but Degas always has a warm place in my heart.

After impressionism I saw some photos of Joy Division taken by Kevin Cummins. Joy Division highly popular during the late 70's early 80'. Cummins worked for NME (New Music Express) a UK based music magazine, and is known for his photos of famous and well as infamous artists of the time; including The Smiths, The Clash and The Buzzcoks.

Blog-Backlog_Day One

^home sweet home for the next two weeks^

Oh my poor neglected blogger. I've updated Facebook and Tumblr (not regularly) but not you. Let's recap - back to day one.

So, after the flight, of head aches, 2 movies (Never Let You Go, and The Kids Are Alright) and a chapter of The System of Objects, we had a quick semi tour on the way to the flat, then onward to the TATE Britain to see the Turner Prize. Which is 50 thousand pound prize give to an emerging British artist under 50 years of age. It's highly controversial in art politics. This year the artists nominated were

Dexter Delwood


The paintings exhibited in the show were highly underwhelming, showing very little of the artists own idea beyond appropriating notable art historical pieces. Note able references were : Johns, Matisse and Picasso. The image above is part of the body of work that got him nominated for the prize, which is imagined spaces of pop cultural references, this one is Jimmy Hendrix's hotel room.

Angela De La Cruz
De La Cruz has paintings that want to be sculptures, to which I say, just sculpt. She has a series of deconstructive paintings, which question the dimensionality of the canvas, I find this mostly boring. This has been an on going question in painting, again, a nod to Johns's Flag piece, which is encaustic on plywood." What is a canvas? What is an object?" Also a nod to Frank Stella, and Elsworth Kelley. I wish there was a different idea to the pieces, which would change the execution or presentation that would separate her work from where I just contextualized them. I don't think the questions are relevant in this day and age. On a side note, I really dislike floor pieces, Caro did it better...

The Otolith Group
The piece above is from an installation called ' A Long Time Between Suns (part I)' which I wish we saw. The piece at the Tate was highly overwhelming after the flight and to be honest i couldn't stay focused. Dark room, white writing, multiple videos do not mix well with jet lag. While that is mostly a cop -out. I don't think their work for the Tate was inviting it was simply too dark. However, I am intrigued by their work, and look forward to hearing more from them in the future.


Susan Philipzs
The above image is 'Lowlands' how it should be installed under a bridge. She is the winner of the Prize, and with good reason. I think it is a great achievement for the recognition of sound art as a medium. She activated a calming space with a Lo-Fi recording in a High Art space. It was really very beautiful spatially and physically. While the intent may have changed due to site specificity I thought it was gorgeous, complacently sad and mildly haunting.