racheltumeltybafa-blog - Tumblr blog

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Drunk and Sad. 

But this time on a larger scale and with words etched into paint with my nails. 

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Occupy

For this exhibition I decided to present both photography work and paintings I had done in response to the photography work. I have been interested in the ideas of a tortured body and mind and how that might be expressed through art and what it would look like. I also have a personal interest in the idea of ghosts and in particular the possession of dolls. Using these combined interests in the dark room I took to dismantling a doll and contorting its body into different uncomfortable shapes. 

Above are the three paintings I presented. Because of their small scale I thought they would look better as a series and decided to include the original dark room work with the paintings. I decided to keep the paintings small scale so the size of the doll was accurate. 

I choose to place the paintings in the middle of the photography because there were the main focus so I decided they should be at the eye level of the viewer. 

I would have liked each photograph to have been an equal size, but that was difficult as some of the images were printed on a diagonal. This is something I need to be more thoughtful with in the future. 

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

These were some experiments for the background of the exhibition poster. I thought something brightly coloured and nothing to figurative would be great for the background for a fine art poster.

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Art and Controversy

* To censor or not to censor.

* Some censors include the British board of film classification, they don’t specialise in film art, so some film has been wrongly classified before and restricted its views.

* Other things that influence the censorship of art include galleries, curators, stakeholders such as funders, art audiences and the tax payer.

* Index on censorship is an international organisation which defends freedom of expression. However freedom has context, so things are not free for everyone.

* An example of controversial censorship is ‘Exhibit B’ a piece that looks at the persistence of racism. The piece was a performance and exhibition where the actors pretended to be paintings. Inspired by the colonial history of Europe in Africa. There are references to human zoos, slavery and asylum seekers.

* It was going to be shown at the Barbican in 2014, but there was a campaign against the show. The gallery could not secure the safety of the performers so the show was pulled, even though it had been shown before.

* Brett Bailey was the mind behind the exhibition. He is interested in the relationship between looking and being looked at. The spectator and the performer in the same frame.

* Free expression that may be shocking or offensive is a right that must be defended.

* Kehinde Andrews states that the participation of black artists is not enough to say it isn’t racist.

* The exhibition presumes a white audience.

*I personally find it sad that the Barbican exhibition did not go ahead, as that was unwarranted censorship. And the artist should be allowed to say what they want to say with their work, whether the majority agree with it or not.

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

The Posthuman

* The dethronement of the human subject.

* Posthuman theory asks what it means to be human in a time when philosophy is suspicious of claims about human subjectivity. 

* A Cyborg Manifesto, written by Donna Haraway. The concept of a cyborg is the rejection of boundaries. She criticises traditional notions of feminism. 

* Author Steve Baker states that contemporary art can make a distinctive contribution to the understanding of animal life. 

* David Blythe examines the boundaries between the real world and the spirit world. Is there a link between the animals kingdoms turmoil with human technological development. 

* Stelarc is a performance artist who utilises his body within his work. He has created three films from the inside of his body. Has conducted many performances whilst being suspended naked from hooks in his skin. A suspended body is a zombie body. His piece ‘third hand’ says that prosthetic limbs does not mean a lack of but an addition to the body.  

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Week 17- Things and Thingliness

* Art that focuses on things and their essential quality as opposed to people and their thoughts. 

* Vincent Van Gogh- a Pair of shoes. Art objects intensify and express human subjects experiences of life. The shoes are out of place, surrounded by undefined space. There is a tension between emerging and withdrawing, as there is no outline. 

* We draw up the rules of interpretation. We stand before the world and try to make sense of it. Even though we design an objects function they will never 100% conform to our intentions.

*No socially involved work doesn’t include things. 

* Examples of this type of work. Bruce Nauman- Mapping the studio. This is a video of the nocturnal activity by the artists cat. Mapping his left over work from the last several years. 

* Jimmie Durham. He releases stones from their imposed inactivity, using them as tools. He restores their stone-ness by stoning a refrigerator. He has also done some written work around the subject. 

* Karla Black- Opportunities for girls. A partially dyed bit of plastic that is suspended from the ceiling. Flimsy and carefully balanced assemblages are anti-aesthetic, they make us consider changing relationships with objects. 

* Trisha Baga- Holiday. Which is named after the hit Madonna song. The piece is made from found and locally bought objects and digital found objects. Lots of downloadable decorations from MySpace from a found USB stick. Trisha is a self confessed hoarder. 

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Lisa Milroy at the Parasol Unit

* She is a Canadian artist known for her still life paintings of everyday objects, often displayed in lines or patterns. Work often looks at the relationship between stillness and movement.

* More recently her work has explored painting through installation and performance art.

* The works ‘Up and Down’ and ‘Off the Rails’ invite the viewer to interact with the work.

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Hyundia Commission: Superflex, One Two Three Swing! 

* The installation consists of and orange line of swings that weave around the turbine hall and some feature outside the building. Each swing is designed for three people. Swinging with three creates more energy potential to resist gravity.

* I find this piece simple but fun. As this is a free exhibition any member of the public can visit. This piece is an easy way to immerse the interest of younger children into the art world. 

* You don’t have to be an art expert to have fun with this installation. 

* As an adult I found the swings almost nostalgic of my childhood. You might get funny looks as a grown woman playing on swings in the park, but this installation removes any embarrassment of having fun. 

* Its hard to not be happy when your on a swing. 

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

3D Class 

* This was an experiment with alginate powder. Alginate is safe for the skin and is often used when casting parts of the body. It is also flexible and strong so body parts are easily removed from it. 

* Once it has set plaster was poured into the mould. Once the plaster is dry the alginate must be picked away carefully to reveal the cast. 

* Both casting and the body are major interests of mine so this is a technique I can see myself using for future work. 

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Drunk and Sad

Red and Black Acrylic. Painted with my hands. 

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Collaborations Week - Jack

*This is the view I had of the work as a performer. 

* For the performance each individual represented one of the six stages of infection. ‘Sepsis Six’. 

* Our movements were timed by a consistent metronome in our sound piece. We spent some time trying to escape from the bed, to then accept our fate as dying patients and retreat back to the bed to ‘die’. 

* I had lots of feelings of being trapped and imprisoned. For some people a visit to the hospital can end up being a life sentence. 

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Collaboration Week- Jack

* For collaboration week students were randomly put into groups to give them a chance to work with people from other artistic areas. Our group consisted of 2 Fine artists, 2 interior architects, 1 dancer and 1 theatre student. All of us were enthusiastic about the project which made working together with new people surprisingly easy. 

* We decided we wanted to make an installation. We picked our space before creating our final idea for an outcome. I was most intrigued by the cream curtains in the theatre room, it gave the clinical/medical vibes that our project was about. 

* Our project looked at the idea of dying in hospital and long term illness. The patient file we were given was for an old pneumonia patient. For our performance within the installation I suggested we be attached to the bed as if we were imprisoned and couldn’t leave the ‘hospital’. We tied ourselves with medical tubes, the same tubes used to create the webbing around the bed. 

* Inspiration for tying the tubes to the bed in a web like form came from Berlin based artist Chiharu Shiota.

* It was my first time creating a performance piece, making it very far out of my comfort zone. However I was confident in our ideas as a group so pushed myself to leave my comfort zone behind. 

* Throughout the project I learned how to create a sound piece on computer software, this is another area of working I have never delved into, It has given me skills I will be applying to future work. 

* I would’ve liked it to have been a more destructive piece of work, but we were limited as the props had to be returned in good condition. 

* Over all the week was an incredible experience, I especially enjoyed working with new people and finding new inspiration from the different creative areas. There was a huge emphasis on team work, which I think is a valuable skill. I would like to work on more collaborations in the future. 

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Oleg Kulik-Saatchi Gallery 2017

Kulik’s work was displayed at the Saatchi Gallery as part of the Art Riot show. His work heavily featured images of animals and documentations of his life as a ‘dog’. Between the viewer and the work was a metal fence with straw behind it which mimicked a cow pen. The straw was featured in all rooms of his exhibition which provides consistency and similarity when exploring his work.

Straw was also a feature when watching his video works. Rather than seats there were square bales of straw layed out to sit on. The videos were uncomfortable to watch and the straw did not make great seating. Perhaps this was to give the audience a real sense of being uncomfortable throughout the videos.

Much of his photography appeared to be in quite muddy and dirty environments, it is clear he is not afraid of animal waste. This makes further links to the straw as it is often used as animal bedding and to catch animal waste. However the straw was incredibly clean and pristine, which is something I personally associate with the inside of a gallery. But this is quite the opposite of the contents of the work. I think the exhibition would have had a much gritty effect if the straw was dirty and even a potent smell. This would completely engulf the viewer into the context of Kulik’s work. However this is probably against gallery guidelines and why the straw was so clean.

Unfortunately I did not capture any photographs of the layout of the exhibition, just some of the work. I have included two sketches I took that day to give a sense of what the layout was like.

In conclusion I found the work and the layout intriguing. I much prefer exhibitions which include their surroundings rather than just being placed on a wall. The aspects of presentation can sometimes make or break a piece and is something I take very seriously when displaying my own work.

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

undefined

Small Film produced in the video editing workshop.

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Piero Manzoni 

* Anchrome 

* China clay on canvas. 

* Manzoni wanted to banish any narrative content from his work. This meant even removing colour. 

* His Anchromes are an interrupted, single and continuous surface. 

*the canvas is soaked in clay which eliminates any colour. the weight of the clay then causes the material to sag creating folds on the canvas. 

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

Bram Bogart 

* White plane white 1974

* cement, oil paint and canvas on board. 

* Bogart previously trained as a house painter. 

* He is particulary interested in the boarders of his paintings, often wanting the width of the painting to be his wingspan. 

* He manages to spread his cement/paint like substance by working on the floor.

* using brushes and towels up to six feet wide.

[racheltumeltybafa-blog]

* Throughout his career Leonardo Da-Vinci produced plenty of life drawings, still life and biological/medical drawings. 

* often including strong muscles in his life drawing, he would also layer bones and ligaments on top of the image, this makes for a more interesting image than a ordinary life drawing. 

* I also admire his emphasis on the surrounding and negative space. Drawing things such as drapery give the image a grounding and shows other abilities other than figure drawing.