Untitled by Sherrie

Since first viewing Sherries work it has developed a great deal, but in a very directed manner which makes looking at the two new pieces exhibited very interesting, unlike other critiques i had not spent much time viewing the work before it was displayed and had little knowledge of the two pieces.

The two pieces themselves were placed on two sides of a corner creating a distinct  tension between the two images, the way that the images were presented, with screen print overlapping the sides of the computer printed background gave the distinct impression that there was a continuation to the picture, like a triptic with the center image missing. this i thought was a very intriguing idea.

Many people were making reference to the fact that they felt like the images were "landscapes viewed through windows" and although i can see where this thought comes from i think it was a bit a strange conclusion to jump to, i think, though, that this was down to two elements within the pictures, firstly the choice of colour for the background, the pink and blue soft pastel colours that formed the background were very reminiscent of the ones you would see well looking a stereotypical "beautiful view" and the other was the layout of the pictures, although there was no definite distinction to tell you so, you could not help but feel that these were landscapes being depicted, yet the paper was portrait, an interesting twist that surprisingly you do not see that often.

The images themselves were intricate, delicately done abstract shapes, laid on top of a printed background, yet shapes is not the right word because there was deffinetly something more to the drawings, although i could not put my finger on what exactly.

As i said at the start, it has been interesting to see how Sherries work has developed in the past year and judging by those two pieces I'll be curious as to where it goes next

Critique Of Katie's Work

HEAD

Another art show in Brighton means another graffiti based show, once again in the prescription gallery this is replacing the previous graffiti based show that was recently on. I find the main problem i encounter with shows in this building is that the building itself very often outshines the work. Head contains mainly wall based graffiti pieces/murals that were good but lacked something that made them great, i can not help but feel that i'd seen it all before, whether these were the same artists i had seen before i was not sure, but nonetheless i think graffiti has its limitations in terms of variety, certainly to a viewer who has a limited knowledge of graffiti.

That said there were a select few pieces that made it interesting, small objects hidden around the space and a selection of drawings and prints on one wall that particularly appealed to me, little of the work stuck in memory.

I am not saying that the show was bad, but i feel like with the amount of graffiti based shows in Brighton that they need to try something different to bring an air of freshness to they're shows, graffiti by its nature is incredibly broad and i can't help but feel that the artists at Head could of done something a little bit different

http://mysterygoogle.com/

show ends

So the show ends on Friday night, someone is coming from the Surrey advertiser to take photographs tomorrow, which could be deemed as strange, what with the show ending tomorrow, but getting your name in a newspaper for art most be a good thing on some level, better than for stealing cars although that might be more financially beneficial. The increasing amount of visits seem to be slowing down so for future reference when putting on a show avoid Sundays and Thursday mornings, and focus on Saturdays.

One thing that this show has led me to think about is the duration of an art exhibition like this one, a week is clearly too long, for the next show i am involved with i would like to try and go for the short approach with alot of specifically invited people for a specific period of time, this show was very different with it being in a good location we have had a fairly steady flow of people coming in off the  street and that has worked on a level but i'd like to compare it to the complete opposite.

It has also been interesting to see what people spend the most time looking at, i presumed putting on a show in Guildford that more traditional art such as realistic painting and drawing would have been the most popular but it doesn't seem to have worked out that way and i'm pleased, what else pleases me is when people clearly want to look at the church but can't see it because we've put big black boards up

sorry if this is a bit of a repetitive post  but it's really boring here

takes a long time to upload

funeral

http://www.theodoraallen.com/index.php

in spire, art exhibition

Tuesday the 10th of November 2009.

The show "in spire" has been open since Saturday morning now which has involved a fair few hours sitting in the cold on my own in this church which has led me to think about a few different things about this exhibition, and exhibitions in general.

For me, a show is an opportunity to show the outside world your art, this may sound obvious but the emphasis is on "show", now at some stage i will probably need to put on a show to sell my work to the outside world, which will probably cause me to change the direction my work goes in, i see it as being highly unlikely that anyone is going to buy a shoddily made wooden ramp, however clever a concept i have behind it, which makes me think, is this the right kind of thing to be making? On the one hand it has been getting a good reaction from people looking around the show, I've had a range of comments but it still seems to be going down better than Andrzej's piece (joke). When it comes down to it, i have to imagine that in future i will be paying at least some money towards putting on a show, I've been lucky enough to get this one for pretty much completely free so i can afford to show a piece of work(s) that are unlikely to bring me any money.

So if i am not going to make any money from this then why am i doing this? To get my work seen? To get my name out there a bit? because i wanted to miss Katie's seminar? Yes i do want to get my work seen, it's useful to see and overhear what people think when, firstly they are not on a art course and not at one of our critiques, and secondly to see whether people spend any time looking at it. So yes it is worth showing the work at this stage, but whether its worth the time and effort of putting on a show for a few reactions is a different question, so to the second point, doing this to get my name out there, this has been something that has been troubling me, so if someone came and saw my work, or anyone's work in this show, and loved it where can they go from there? which makes me think i probably need a website, its all good and fine getting your name out there but if there is no information out there about you no one can do anything with that name.

Saying all that though it does seem that the show has been somewhat successful, i think with something like this you have to try and look at the benefits, over 70 people have come and looked around so far including an Olympic runner, who looked around the show very quickly (not a joke) which i think is a pretty good amount, (especially if you compare it to our end of year show last year), the show itself looks really good and pretty professional, certainly i think we have done the best with the space we have within our limitations and i am starting to see why people are so keen to put art in a white gallery space, it must make life much easier. I also think that this is a pretty useful learning experience, i would like to imagine that the next show i put on or help organize will be better and more successful than this one, and on and on until i am a freaky exhibition god, that or i'll get bored of the process and stop trying, we will have to wait and see.

All in all, so far I'm fairly pleased with the show, I'm learning some useful things and that's got to be good, i can write it on my C.V on hopefully the whole thing will be a useful experience, I've been writing this for 37 minutes and no ones come in yet, it's probably because its cold outside.

"Eraserhead"

Last night i watched the film "Eraserhead" By David Lynch. This was his first full length feature film, released in 1977 while doing his masters degree at AFI Conservatory.

Revolving around the central character of Henry it follows him as he discovers that his girlfriend has fallen pregnant and the events that occur after, what these events are though depends your own personal opinion, its possible he is going mad but on the other hand it could just be about masturbation (real theories, not mine), Lynch himself, in an interview said "he says no one has interpreted the film the way i do" but i do not think that trying to see it from the same perspective as lynch is the point of the film.

Of particular interest to me was looking how he was influenced by surrealist and Dada (to a lesser extent) film, films such as "L'Age D'Or" and "Un Chien Andalou."

Eraser Head is definitely one of the strangest films you will see and i recommend you watch it if your given the opportunity. 

Video by Oliver Laric

CLICK HERE

Frieze Art Fair

Frieze Art Fair 2009

Frieze was for me a very strange experience, having never been to an art fair of this scale a did not realise how the show would be set up, that is with less thought put into how the art viewed and more into how it can be sold. Frieze is set up in a nearly purely financial sense, when walking around you can not help but feel that the galleries have different priority's.

That said, the was an incredibly broad range of on the whole, high quality work, ranging from painting to sculpture, interestingly there was almost no video work, obviously not quite as sell-able as physical objects.

On the whole the show was a worthwhile event to visit, it's good to see how the is a very real market for fine art and seeing the amount of galleries and work getting interest on the other hand it was also slightly disheartening to see that the majority of the work being bought was being bought buy rich people to show off being rich, saying that though, i wouldn't complain if it was my art being bought.

Film and Video

Yesterday i began a course of lectures that will last over 8 afternoon sessions, within this we will be looking at a wide range of video from film to digital and looking at what makes a video "art."


In the first session we looked at "Abstract and Found Cinema."
Starting with Melies.

These early video's (the above one being from 1938) were some of the first to feature special effects as Méliès discovered the ability to super-impose, reverse the film etc...

 

The above video "Le voyage dans la lune" by Méliès demonstrates the level of vision that he had as a film maker so early in the history of this new art form. To make a film of such grand scale with such limited equipment is incredibly impressive and the fact that the film is still very watchable today is further evidence of Méliès skill.

From Méliès we jump to Johan Grimonprez and his film "Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y" Winner of the Documenter award in 1997 this is amongst the most interesting films i have ever seen, the film is an amazing and intense selection of clips around the subject of Hijacking and terrorism and documents the rise of the terrorists status in modern culture. The video is juxtaposed with jaunty music which adds to the feel of menace of the film and clips from Guy Debord's essay "La Societe du spetacle" and Don de Lilo's novel "Mao II".



From that we moved onto the work of Stan Brakhage, Brakhage is seen

as one of the key figures in the world of experimental film making

and produced a large body of work over his life time with his influence

spreading into all areas of film.

 

His work is almost always viewed without sound, the sound of the projector playing the film being all the accompaniment the film needs. Interestingly, one of the aspects that Brakhage features in his films is making the audience aware that they are watching a film rather than trying to immerse the viewer in the film and make them forget they are watching a video, you can see a clear example of this in "Mothlight" 1963 (above).

The final film maker we watched was Austrian artist Martin Arnold who takes films/ T.V programs and re-edits them in order to reveal hidden sub-plots and meanings, he does this by slowing down, repeating and adjusting the footage as you can see in this short clip from "Alone. Life wastes Andy Hardy"

Itchy Scratchy

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Itchy Scratchy
An Exhibition of Photographs initated by Jason Evans

Charlotte Cotton, Head of Photographs at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, refers to career changing photographs as “The ones that interest and trouble you because there is something you don’t fully understand about them.” A quote that the Permanent Gallery has chosen to use on its show manifesto and one that could well describe the images provided by the wide selection of photographers whose work is on display. Interestingly it is how Jason Evans has decided to curate the show that brings the pictures together, saving the show from being a selection of less than brilliant pictures and images into a relevant collection. Unfortunately due to the nature of the show, many of the photographs being young graduates or just friends we can not really be sure to what level the principle behind this show has been followed, that said the photographs themselves are, in general interesting and different and not in keeping with the usual kind of images you can so often see at these kind of shows.

The photographers were selected on a friend of a friend basis with Jason Evans starting the chain. Images come from around the world and from a selection of photographs, most noticeably with a photograph by Tod Papageorge.  The presentation of the photographs; print outs from a home printer stuck straight onto the wall was not ideal but related well to the idea of the pictures coming from far and wide, therefore having to be emailed in order to reach the gallery. In all it is small quirks like how the photographers were selected and the raffling off of the images that held together the images resulting in an entertaining if not particularly memorable show.

http://mbimotmog.com/

www.vvork.com