No Progress in Pleasure, 1982, Barbara Kruger
Kruger’s “No Progress” draws clear attention to of the role of social standing in perception. She is aware the audience is looking at her, but not making eye- contact, demonstrating both the power in the gesture of turning away, and the intimidation of societal gaze. I linked this to my exploration of hyper- masculinity and its opposite, placing two dichotomous images of the same figure in the portraiture style demonstrated in Kruger’s piece.
Body I Am, 1978,Hannah Wilke, Photograph
Within Wilkes’ photograph “Body I Am”, the viewer’s gaze focuses upon the gesture of her left arm rather than the chaos surrounding her, or the implicit nudity. In seeking to emulate the strength of this singular gesture, I selected a still from a performance based on found footage from my earlier practice; here the figure draws similar attention to hand, forearm, wrist and trunk of the body.
Life Fell To Earth, 2014,George Barber, Film
George Barber’s practice focuses around the Scratch Video Movement of the 1980s. His work involves editing found footage, through multiple layers of audio and text. “Life Fell To Earth” features footage found on the internet. Through inspiration of his practice I created my first Scratch Video based on the Undoing of Female Gender.
Paris is Burning, 1990, Jenny Livingston, Film
The documentary “Paris is Burning” features the Transgendered Ball culture in New York. Incorporating found footage from and the style of ‘Paris is Burning’ into my digital work elements is my next steps.
The Artist is Present, 2014, Marina Abramovic, Performance
RSVP, 2013, Senga Nengudi, Performance
Abramovic and Nengudi’s performances test the limits of the human body both mentally and physically. This is reflected in my performance through both the physical restraints on the performers and the emotional responses through my audio.
Projection, 2008, Andrea Fraser, Film
Our Bodies, Ourselves, 2003, Oriana Fox, Film
Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975, Martha Rosler, Performance
Cut Piece, 1964, Yoko Ono, Performance
My initial focus this term was on men within feminism. Two Radical Feminist performances, Ono’s “Cut Piece” and Rosler’s “Semiotics”, are recreated with male volunteers; a simple way of directly co-opting men into Feminism.
Art14 – Gallery Visit
At this exhibition I found pieces that were relevant to FGM:
Pieces that are inspirational in terms of sculpture and clothing items:
And pieces that the techniques used to create the pieces and the ending results were interesting:
Art and Language
- Places self in photographs – performative
- Never sure of how the work was created
- Use of shadow + contrast
- Diaristic entries on the work
- Use of objects for similarities
- Exploration of sexuality
John Coplans
- Sculptural forms – forces body into frame
- Playing with the ideas
- Breaks into triptychs
Melanie Manchot
- Collaborated with mother
- Somewhat provocative
- Mother – Daughter relationship
ORLAN
- Taking performance to the max.
- Link between performance and photography
Sally Mann
- Controversially photographed her children growing up
- ‘Photographing mothers’ fears’
Cindy Sherman
- Doesn’t title her work
- Only person she uses in photographs is herself
- Moves to theatrical photographs
- Works entirely alone
Wendy Ewald
- Collaborations with children
- Revolves around participation
- Asks to recreate dream
- Large format camera/ negatives
- Titled under artist’s name but who is the author?
Rineke Dijkstra
- Photographing teenagers using fill-in flash
- Reality
Danny Treacy
- Not sure about story behind figures immediately
- Larger than life prints
- Found spaces + painted grey, uses material found and creates costumes
- Very independent
Hippolyte Bayard
- Offended that he had not been recognised int he creation of photography
- Stage to create a message
Joe Duggan
- Romanticism staging
- Painted background
- Use of mannequins
- Interested in theatre studies
- Recreated plays and displayed and photographs
Melissa Moore
- ‘Land Ends’ – Ex-hippy colony
- Photographs in mother’s house
- Occupies odd space
- ‘Stealing their soul’
Trish Morrissey
- Collaborations with sister
- Dresses as anyone but themselves
Helena Almeida
- Denies every link you might assume of her work
- Doesn’t all it photography or painting
- Declines that it is herself in the work even though it is obviously her
Valie Export
- Body configurations – yoga positions in a cityscape
- Claim of space
- Performance – Touch cinema
John Stezaker
- Use of found images and combines
- ‘Marriage’
Alexander Rodchenko
- Pop artist
- Political statement through blacking-out faces
- Power of images
Man Ray
- ‘Dust Breeding’
- Solarisation
- Staged some images
Marcel Duchamp
- ‘The Bride Stripped Bare…’
Eva Stenram
- Old NASA images downloaded, rewrote to negatives, left to gather dust and then printed
Bernd und Hilla Becher
- ‘Blast Furnace’
- Topographic photography
- Pin-hole projection
Chuck Close
- Daguerra photography
- Printed on metal plate, shone, buffed.
Sam Ovraiti – Distorted Tracks
Jessica Stockholder
- Bright, sharp, crisp, plastic coloured
- Love chaos
- “Intuition’s a kind of thinking, it’s not stupidity”
- Plastic – cheap and easy to buy, inexpensive material that is part of our culture
- No literary story, just visual, put words to after
- Focuses on pleasure although it may not be easy to make
- “Feel” the materials
- Need to create a world, takes time
- Circulation of stories, how is or isn’t fluid
- Infinity of culture and boundaries
- Less narrative, more emotional landscape
- Audience to experience more emotional rather than a simple narration
- Humour is important to break the possibility of critical judgement
- Not interested in filming reality as it is given, or creating fiction, interested in creating a reality and documenting it
- Exhibition is not the end of the process but a starting point to go somewhere else
- Forced mythologised
The Shoreditch Sisters
Kittiwat Unarrom
Makode Aj Linde
Phyllis Evans
- Digitally manipulated, recombined a variety of images, ranging from photographs of the faces of young girls to 19th century medical illustrations.
- Simple forms, lines, and colours – the message conveyed in these vidual juxtapositions is direct.
- The red thread is essential for the concept of genital mutilation. Since it is a different material it stands out in the composition and its colour contrasts the grey, black and white background. It signifies the focus point of the images.
- Implies an ambiguous sense of violence and violation of women’s rights to their own body. The artist linked “stitch” or “sew” the paper prints to the methods applied in the mutilation.
Francesco Pedraglio
- Link to blog entry on artist talk
Clare Goodwin
- Link to blog entry on artist talk
Dior
Daphne Guinness
Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus & Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus
- Viewed as peculiar due to their historically practiced neck-lengthening.
- Interesting view of the emotional expectations towards this Kayan ethnicity minority. They appear aggressive, distant and unfriendly.
- These indigenous people were kept captive for entertainment purposes.
Angel Van Biljon
- Eye- catching and direct advert.
- The expression in the model’s face is crucial and a direct reflection of struggle
- Imaginative and minimalist
- Successful amalgamation of 2D images and 3D materials – interest in sculpture to be furthered.
Nikolay Korzhov
- Basis of the topic of neck rings and Kayan Lahwi women.
- Demonstration of women in their natural environment.
- Observation of the neck rings.
Tate Modern – Gallery Visit
Energy and Process – Gerhard Richter
“Gerhard Ricter’s panes of glass and mirrored works are literal reflections on the nature of pictorial representation.”
11 Panes 2004, Glass and Wood.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/richter-11-panes-ar00026
Poetry and Dream – Mike Kelley
“In Channel One, Channel Two and Channel Three, Mike Kelley brings together the rational forms of minimalist sculpture with a more mystical psychedelic sensibility.”
http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/supernatural-powers-plywood
Jenny Holzer
I would like to transfer the minimalistic appearance of Holzers practice into the promotion that will be created for my assessed performance.
Jack Brindley – Artist Lecture
This lecture placed emphasis on the importance of trial and error. The piece of work I found most interesting was one that was an unseen performance. The technicians who hung and placed his work were required to have black paint on their hands so that the process of creating an exhibition was recorded. This is definitely an idea I would like to recreate and then move forward into my own work. While is isn’t entirely relevant to my current practice, I am very interested in exploring this next term.
Pipilotti Rist
After a one-to-one critique with my tutor, it was decided that I should look into Rist’s “Selbstlos Im Lavabad’. In this video the artist is yelling at the audience in distress. To add to the shock value of my performance, I will created an edible photograph of my face screaming to be place on of the cake that the audience will cut into with a large knife.
Natalie Sideserf
This artist created her own wedding cakes to the theme of Hollywood movies. I am fascinated by how macabre they are on the outside and yet on the inside they are traditional and beautiful. For my cake I will invert this practice, making the inside of the cake the macabre aspect.
Please click here to view a short article.
Quilla Constance
Click to view the video of Vjazzled
A performance that focuses on the sexualisation of women and how women are viewed in the media.
Dieter Roth
Roth’s use of chocolate busts of his father adds to the original influence of Antoni’s “Lick and Lather” set.
I found Roth’s use of literature to create sausages fascinating. He takes pieces that he doesn’t like and turns them into something originally created from not the best cuts of meat. It reflects his disgust in the writing.
The Chapman Family – Tate Britain
This room was by the most chilling piece of art I have ever seen. The room was large enough for you to weave around the sculptures and the lighting was low enough for you to feel uneasy. The strength of the sculptures staring at you creates such a weight on you as you examine them. Their eyes seem to follow you around the room. I would like to transfer this level of dread and discomfort in my performance.
Sarah Lucas – Whitechapel
From Lucas’ exhibition at Whitechapel I was in awe of the spacial awareness that had obviously gone into consideration. There were pieces of art on the floor as well as on the wall, meaning the audience was always overwhelmed by the amount of information they were taking in. The audience had no choice but to examine the images that had been forced upon them. To transfer this to my practice, when I performance, I would do so in a small room that is at least slightly crowded. This way the audience would be forced to interact with one another when I would walk through them. As I would be blinded by the mask, the sounds and scents of the audience and the room would stands out to me more.
Rachel Price – Artist Lecture
Price spoke to us in detail about the transition from university to the art industry. Her talk was extremely motivational on using the opportunity of my degree to it’s fullest extent because sometimes after you can struggle to find the time to keep your practice alive. One thing she made of a point of drilling into our brains was to build strong relationships while at university and then remain in contact with those people as they will be the ones who will be in the industry at the same time as you. She also highlighted the importance at least attempting to gain some work experience in the industry and communicating in person with people who have the profession of curator or something similar, to be able to have people recognise you by your face and not so much your email or phone number. When she critiqued my performance, Price said art should make you feel uncomfortable and that my performance definitely had that effect. She placed great weight on the notion of the uncomfortableness of art. However, when she spoke about moving my piece forward she said to add a comical aspect to it. At first I didn’t understand how that could make you uncomfortable, then she suggested throwing a pie at a lecture in the middle of a presentation.
Grayson Perry
In terms of my practice, I admire Perry’s attire more so than his pottery. He believes these clothes make him feminine and as I am focusing on feminism I must take this into consideration. The use of a petticoat adds a certain element to his attire that could be linked the layering of a tiered cake.
Democracy Has Bad Taste, 42 minutes, October 2013: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03969vt
From listening Perry in this broadcastI have learnt to not expect participation from my audience, and that self consciousness can be crippling for any artist, especially those who specialise in performance.
Bobby Baker
I felt a kinship when I looked into Baker’s practice. She began incorporating baking for the same reason that I did, she simply enjoys it. Her performances have a air of sophistication about them from the way she holds her and talks, to the clothes she wears (a ‘chefs’ outfit and heels). I would like to transfer this sophistication as shown in performance set of “Table Occasions” to my own performance.
Click here to view a clip of “Table Occasions”.
Click here to view a clip of “Cook Dems”.
Kiki Smith
Smith’s use of modroc with a mixture of other materials has inspired me to try out similar combinations. Modroc is a strong and sturdy materials if moulded and layered together correctly. I will use modroc to create the base of the mask moulded on my face.
Millie Brown
The use of milk tinted with food colouring is very effective in creating a replacement for actual vomit. Brown creates a more intimate Jackson Pollock-esque paint on herself by using her own bodily functions. Such an act would definitely shock an audience, especially when performed live. I am not sure if I have the confidence to do something too similar to this performance.
Click here to view an article on this piece.
Eva Hesse
Hesse used abstract sculptures to display the absurdity of life. She preferred to create eccentric forms with odd materials. In the case of “Expanded Extension” she used rope, latex and cheesecloth. If I were to layer latex on top of the modroc base of my mask, the audience would be able to eat the icing off it. The latex would also strength the mask further.
Sylvie Fleury
Fleury uses the Pop Art genre to address the issues of shopping and the paradigm of the new age. While I don’t feel much of a connection to her practice, I can appreciate the effort that is required to create it.
Vanessa Beecroft
Through performance, writing, and drawing Beecroft addresses the topics of food, desire, bullemia and nudity. With my baking I would like to focus on my audience eating what I have prepare and in doing so creating something in opposition to Beecroft’s performances.
Krzysztof Wodiczko
These projections on to monuments invite an public audience to listen in on very private stories. If I chose to do a performance I would not put the act of baking directly on display for the public as this is a very private activity for me. However, whatever I baked I would allow the audience to interactive with and so there would be an indirect route into the privacy of this act, the audience would be able to experience the final outcome.
Allora and Calzadilla
This collective focuses on experimenting with topics such as borders, authorship, and democracy through performance, sculpture, installation, sound and many other mediums. In my practice I would like to be able to used a combination of mediums, as they do, to put across my passion for baking, and to present it in a professional manner.
Josiah McElheny
McElheny works with glass, and he claims to be unsure if the pieces are even real while he is making them because he is never able to touch them with his bare hands, because of the temperature. In my practice I am not meant to such the mixture when baking for hygienic purposes unless I wash my hands thoroughly before. Because of this I feel drawn to McElheny’s perception of his art and understand the feeling of not knowing whether or not something is real – in the sense that glasswork is not complete until the glass cools, baking is neither finished until the dish has cooled.
Judy Chicago
Chicago examines women in culture and history through installations. In her piece “Immolation” Chicago uses photography to capture an essence of the practice of immolation, inspired in particular by the tradition called ‘Sati’ of widows in India throwing themselves onto a funeral fire. I would like to further my practice by using photography to capture something shocking, in the same way that Chicago has capture the colours in this image, and through the concept.
Janine Antoni
“Lick and Lather” is a set of busts sculpted from chocolate and soap. Antoni used herself as the model for the bust. To transfer this technique into my practice I will use my face as a mould for my mask.
Mark Dion
Dion favours installation art that focuses on the scientific aspects of history and nature. While I enjoy the creation of his art I do not feel that my practice is related to his.
Ellen Gallegher
These edits of images remind me of hats and masks. I would like to create something almost as odd and elegant as them.
Oliver Herring
If I chose to do a performance, I would most likely choose to participate in it myself rather than have volunteers do it for me. To begin performance in his practice, Herring did this exact same thing. He experimented with different movement, equipment and scenery before involving outsiders in his surreal performances. Even when he did begin to involve others, he would often end up with a group of ‘usuals’ who would take part in his work.
My Fine Art Practice (W101) 