Tuesday, 28 August 2018
Monday, 27 August 2018
Introduction to post Uni work.
Now that University has been brought to a close. It makes sense to start placing my works over the last few years on display in a much more coherent way. This is perhaps for my own sanity and also for the benifit of others who are taking a look at my work for the first time, Its a big step but it is about time work got out there for people to see. This along with videos of bouldering and climbing when I can, as well as the articles I write being dropped here when I get a spare moment will surely help get my work into some kind of public space. So here we are.
Below I shall drop work from my time at university, sketches and notes which forged my path studying art, as well as the pieces I made for myself and for my own sake.
Freelance
Now that University has been brought to a close. It makes sense to start placing my works over the last few years on display in a much more coherent way. This is perhaps for my own sanity and also for the benifit of others who are taking a look at my work for the first time, Its a big step but it is about time work got out there for people to see. This along with videos of bouldering and climbing when I can, as well as the articles I write being dropped here when I get a spare moment will surely help get my work into some kind of public space. So here we are.
Below I shall drop work from my time at university, sketches and notes which forged my path studying art, as well as the pieces I made for myself and for my own sake.
Freelance
Sunday, 17 June 2018
THE TERM AND THE PIECES IN THE STUDIO EXPLAINED
This is the round up then of my work. A reflection of the term and this, the final piece which brings together a year of work in a way which is focused, if dissected, but that is the path that this work has taken this term. taking components and separating them. Having spoken to Nathan about artists like Imogen Stidworthy who work in a multi media field of art to create a divergent series of pieces which each work together to create a larger piece. an installation. Honestly the installation idea is not something I would have initially gone for but it did make a great deal of sense and would capitalize on the work I already have. Breaking sound, film, text and painting into individual components which collaborate together to share an experience with the audience.
I must say that the meeting with Nathan really spurred me on. The notes I made kept me on a straight path and as we spoke about drawing being a 'tool for investigation', other pieces started to make more sense. I wanted to use the works surrounding this 'Boulder' as methods of exploration. The paintings are observed close ups of the boulder, the ones which are in the studio are created by studying the boulder, using paint as a method of investigation. The book which accommodates the other pieces goes into greater depth into the painting process. Progressing from the previous term and using the techniques I used last time, to convey the natural order of chance and chaos within a painting, reflecting the chance happenings which have been at the heart of my project all year. The randomness of discovering locations, objects and techniques which informed each step, splayed out as paintings, video, audio and text.
The dissected work is a way of changing out an unfocused approach for one which has focus, broken down and segmented into nuggets, with each telling a different story.
THE BOOK:
The book was a real hassle but worth it. I was looking at my own note books, of which there are many and weirdly I found them becoming my sketchbooks. Both are methods of recording, and after a year my notes on the boulder, Silverdale, my practice and my thought processes became a tangible way of navigating and investigating. At twenty thousand words the note books have done a great job of handling all of my ideas and recordings and in many ways they became instrumental to the overall work. I gave them to tutors to read and look at in all their messy, sporadic and incoherent glory. However as we came to the final term, I wanted to turn them into something even more personal. The originals were after all, filled with all of my thoughts as streams of consciousness. Every bad day, every failure, every coffee and rain cloud found their way to the books and they, like the drawings became tools.
The question was, how best do I turn books of poor spelling and worse hand writing into something special. Something different?
Nathan suggested a site, Mixam, which while cheap, has been a tad of a pain but that can be overlooked. They are book publishers and the idea of transferring all of those words, drawings, diagrams and mess into an artifact was born. I wrote up the words from the books, but straight away I hit a problem.
How or what do I include, exclude or alter?
I thought about my creative writing. About, Wainwright and his books about the Lake district which were in first person, filled with illustrations and were deeply personal. I loved those books for that, they were personal but put on display non the less.
I thought it best to correct all the spellings, to type it, so that it would be legible and make it as coherent as possible without losing the streams of consciousness which gave the piece personality. That was a tough balance and when the book is read, this should be apparent. Not all of it will make sense, but it has been placed together in such a way as to capture those loose threads of information and give evidence to the journey which I, and that wooden artifact have been on over the terms. It was a strange thing to type, but I liked the idea of typing and of text. other artists such as Roman Opalka appeared in my investigation over this term as a way of expressing words in an artistic fashion, even if he painted numbers, inadvertently painting up the numbers to his own death, the method of expression I loved. However his work also seemed somewhat detached. There is little repore between audience and artists. The connection between them severed by not finding common ground, at least that was what I took away from it.
I preferred Wainwright, his writing, his method of using writing as a tool. After all, that is all writing is, a tool. A means to express. I typed up my books, scanned images of my work and pages from the original notebooks. With regards to the language which appears now and again, I also wondered about removing it. I wondered whether it would be better for the reader, worse or would the language be indifferent. The thing about that is, is that it does change the attitude of the voice the reader hears. I cannot imagine someone reading the whole piece from cover to cover - its not that kind of book - but I can imagine them opening it onto a page and reading something which may provoke, or set a certain tone. These remarks were made in the moment and I felt that they should stay in for that reason. This has not been plain sailing and I would not want to fool the reader of this, it is a reflective piece in the end and it needed to do that. I scanned in pieces of my work to work in collaboration with the text. This is very much to give the audience a more tangible grasp of what was going on. Again I looked to my creative writing side and books which I used for my dissertation. The Epic History of Art in America by Robert Hughes served me well here. His book is a careful balance of text and pictures, but in each case the pictures are used as a means of aiding understanding. They are used to enhance the text and I have tried to do the same by mixing my text with pictures which enhance the viewing experience. This is made even better by the fact that I listed my tests one to however many, as well as the fact that my book is a write up of four note books and so having photos and pictures rather than plain text seemed like a much better way of passing on my project to the reader.
It was just one element of a much larger piece, however the video aspect also did wonders in expressing my new, dissected approach.
THE VIDEO:
How could I use that virtual walk around which I toiled over last term? It took a long time to make and in the end I did not use it to its full potential. However this term, it seemed like an idea to transform the digital work into a video. A piece of work in its own right which could express another angle of this investigation into the boulder, as well as provide a look into the glitching, altered angle on my work. The transformation from just paintings into a more installation styled piece came with it an idea of something evolving, glitching and separating. The separation of senses became a start for the video. To show the digital boulder as a film with glitching, colour changing transition effects which I made myself rather than import added to the idea of alteration and deviation within my work over the terms.
It was suggested however that these glitches, on their own, might seem out of place. A glitch for the sake of glitching within a video which would just be a distraction from the footage behind. However If I could find way to alter the actual program which made the boulder 123D Make and ReCap, I could them give a much better impression of separation and glitching. something which looked more professional. I have YouTube to thank for all the tutorials for Premier pro.
I looked at video artists throughout the year as mentioned in my book, however non of them were ones for altering footage to give an impression, for that I turned to Jennifer West who used bleach, lithium and mud to corrupt film before running it through a projector. I did not want anything so extreme, though her work certainly delivers on the experimental front, it also uses the damage of the tape as art. the colours separating and altering as the tape runs. It looked beautiful, decaying and sporadic. I looked at doing the same. To give the impression of glitching and changing as a mark for a changing practice and an investigation into the boulder as it bounced about formats and medias.
It was such a curious object when I found it and had I known how it would have changed my work, I might have been to afraid to touch it, but now I see it has expanded my practice and taken it beyond my comfort zone. I like that.
THE PAINTINGS:
I made several at the start of term and didn't particularly like any of them. The technique from last term was good by the work it produced was off somehow. I didn't like them. It was for that reason I discussed leaving them out of the show, simply because if I didn't like them enough to be in the show, they weren't good enough to be in the show. That was how the dissection of my work began, searching for an alternate path. However the ones which made it to the show, I did like those. I made them later on when I had brought the boulder home to study. Being intentionally loose with gelatin and paint, after all the genesis of the style was made from an investigation into agency and control, another conversation which is talked about at length in the book which sits with the other pieces. The style seemed best to finish with as well, a loose quality which changed on its own as it shifted and expanded and dried. Earlier pieces from last term, twp smaller tests, one black and one white, informed the colour scheme while the boulder itself influenced the marks being made. The large knot being resent in both, but on opposite sides so that when displayed together, they mirror each other creating a centre for the boulder to sit. This is intentional. I wanted separation it is true, but I also wanted to keep that installation focus. It's a fine balance but a good one.
AUDIO:
The final component. It is strange that I had so many elements last term and did nothing with them. But I am doing something with them now. The audio is a sound piece, not words but the boulder itself, hence the headphones being underneath the wood on a hook. The boulder was headed and as it creaked and warped, its voice was caught by a contact mic. Again all of this was put into the book as an artifact in its own right however this audio did become super important as a seed for ideas last term and with this final use as a sound piece in an installation I feel I have used the sound of the boulder to its potential, even if it needed to be edited to be more clearly audible for the audience, it is a piece which works in tandem with the others, adding to the overall feel. It tells its own story which is something I have been trying to do for a while.
I remember an artist in the Ikon, their name escapes me, but at the time I hated it. I didn't get it. Contact mic's in sand filled trays. The sound being played through the speakers was the vibrations from the sand which moved in accordance to the people in the room. I never got how sound could inform a piece, or be a piece in its own right however having finally put use to this looped snippit on an MP3, I understand, and I hope my audience does too. Certainly if they read the book, they shall.
With that, those are my pieces for the show and I hope I have shed some light on them and on the decision by which they came about. These works, last term were disjointed and were lots of individual pieces. I am hoping that this term, the pieces have found their own homes and are put to rest. It sure feels like the boulder at the heart of my work has lived a life and by placing my work into key elements, I am hoping I can express the journey which I have been on over the terms, and show how these pieces represent a culmination of works, as well as an insight into their being in the first place has finally been connected.
I must say that the meeting with Nathan really spurred me on. The notes I made kept me on a straight path and as we spoke about drawing being a 'tool for investigation', other pieces started to make more sense. I wanted to use the works surrounding this 'Boulder' as methods of exploration. The paintings are observed close ups of the boulder, the ones which are in the studio are created by studying the boulder, using paint as a method of investigation. The book which accommodates the other pieces goes into greater depth into the painting process. Progressing from the previous term and using the techniques I used last time, to convey the natural order of chance and chaos within a painting, reflecting the chance happenings which have been at the heart of my project all year. The randomness of discovering locations, objects and techniques which informed each step, splayed out as paintings, video, audio and text.
The dissected work is a way of changing out an unfocused approach for one which has focus, broken down and segmented into nuggets, with each telling a different story.
THE BOOK:
The book was a real hassle but worth it. I was looking at my own note books, of which there are many and weirdly I found them becoming my sketchbooks. Both are methods of recording, and after a year my notes on the boulder, Silverdale, my practice and my thought processes became a tangible way of navigating and investigating. At twenty thousand words the note books have done a great job of handling all of my ideas and recordings and in many ways they became instrumental to the overall work. I gave them to tutors to read and look at in all their messy, sporadic and incoherent glory. However as we came to the final term, I wanted to turn them into something even more personal. The originals were after all, filled with all of my thoughts as streams of consciousness. Every bad day, every failure, every coffee and rain cloud found their way to the books and they, like the drawings became tools.
The question was, how best do I turn books of poor spelling and worse hand writing into something special. Something different?
Nathan suggested a site, Mixam, which while cheap, has been a tad of a pain but that can be overlooked. They are book publishers and the idea of transferring all of those words, drawings, diagrams and mess into an artifact was born. I wrote up the words from the books, but straight away I hit a problem.
How or what do I include, exclude or alter?
I thought about my creative writing. About, Wainwright and his books about the Lake district which were in first person, filled with illustrations and were deeply personal. I loved those books for that, they were personal but put on display non the less.
I thought it best to correct all the spellings, to type it, so that it would be legible and make it as coherent as possible without losing the streams of consciousness which gave the piece personality. That was a tough balance and when the book is read, this should be apparent. Not all of it will make sense, but it has been placed together in such a way as to capture those loose threads of information and give evidence to the journey which I, and that wooden artifact have been on over the terms. It was a strange thing to type, but I liked the idea of typing and of text. other artists such as Roman Opalka appeared in my investigation over this term as a way of expressing words in an artistic fashion, even if he painted numbers, inadvertently painting up the numbers to his own death, the method of expression I loved. However his work also seemed somewhat detached. There is little repore between audience and artists. The connection between them severed by not finding common ground, at least that was what I took away from it.
I preferred Wainwright, his writing, his method of using writing as a tool. After all, that is all writing is, a tool. A means to express. I typed up my books, scanned images of my work and pages from the original notebooks. With regards to the language which appears now and again, I also wondered about removing it. I wondered whether it would be better for the reader, worse or would the language be indifferent. The thing about that is, is that it does change the attitude of the voice the reader hears. I cannot imagine someone reading the whole piece from cover to cover - its not that kind of book - but I can imagine them opening it onto a page and reading something which may provoke, or set a certain tone. These remarks were made in the moment and I felt that they should stay in for that reason. This has not been plain sailing and I would not want to fool the reader of this, it is a reflective piece in the end and it needed to do that. I scanned in pieces of my work to work in collaboration with the text. This is very much to give the audience a more tangible grasp of what was going on. Again I looked to my creative writing side and books which I used for my dissertation. The Epic History of Art in America by Robert Hughes served me well here. His book is a careful balance of text and pictures, but in each case the pictures are used as a means of aiding understanding. They are used to enhance the text and I have tried to do the same by mixing my text with pictures which enhance the viewing experience. This is made even better by the fact that I listed my tests one to however many, as well as the fact that my book is a write up of four note books and so having photos and pictures rather than plain text seemed like a much better way of passing on my project to the reader.
It was just one element of a much larger piece, however the video aspect also did wonders in expressing my new, dissected approach.
THE VIDEO:
How could I use that virtual walk around which I toiled over last term? It took a long time to make and in the end I did not use it to its full potential. However this term, it seemed like an idea to transform the digital work into a video. A piece of work in its own right which could express another angle of this investigation into the boulder, as well as provide a look into the glitching, altered angle on my work. The transformation from just paintings into a more installation styled piece came with it an idea of something evolving, glitching and separating. The separation of senses became a start for the video. To show the digital boulder as a film with glitching, colour changing transition effects which I made myself rather than import added to the idea of alteration and deviation within my work over the terms.
It was suggested however that these glitches, on their own, might seem out of place. A glitch for the sake of glitching within a video which would just be a distraction from the footage behind. However If I could find way to alter the actual program which made the boulder 123D Make and ReCap, I could them give a much better impression of separation and glitching. something which looked more professional. I have YouTube to thank for all the tutorials for Premier pro.
I looked at video artists throughout the year as mentioned in my book, however non of them were ones for altering footage to give an impression, for that I turned to Jennifer West who used bleach, lithium and mud to corrupt film before running it through a projector. I did not want anything so extreme, though her work certainly delivers on the experimental front, it also uses the damage of the tape as art. the colours separating and altering as the tape runs. It looked beautiful, decaying and sporadic. I looked at doing the same. To give the impression of glitching and changing as a mark for a changing practice and an investigation into the boulder as it bounced about formats and medias.
It was such a curious object when I found it and had I known how it would have changed my work, I might have been to afraid to touch it, but now I see it has expanded my practice and taken it beyond my comfort zone. I like that.
THE PAINTINGS:
I made several at the start of term and didn't particularly like any of them. The technique from last term was good by the work it produced was off somehow. I didn't like them. It was for that reason I discussed leaving them out of the show, simply because if I didn't like them enough to be in the show, they weren't good enough to be in the show. That was how the dissection of my work began, searching for an alternate path. However the ones which made it to the show, I did like those. I made them later on when I had brought the boulder home to study. Being intentionally loose with gelatin and paint, after all the genesis of the style was made from an investigation into agency and control, another conversation which is talked about at length in the book which sits with the other pieces. The style seemed best to finish with as well, a loose quality which changed on its own as it shifted and expanded and dried. Earlier pieces from last term, twp smaller tests, one black and one white, informed the colour scheme while the boulder itself influenced the marks being made. The large knot being resent in both, but on opposite sides so that when displayed together, they mirror each other creating a centre for the boulder to sit. This is intentional. I wanted separation it is true, but I also wanted to keep that installation focus. It's a fine balance but a good one.
AUDIO:
The final component. It is strange that I had so many elements last term and did nothing with them. But I am doing something with them now. The audio is a sound piece, not words but the boulder itself, hence the headphones being underneath the wood on a hook. The boulder was headed and as it creaked and warped, its voice was caught by a contact mic. Again all of this was put into the book as an artifact in its own right however this audio did become super important as a seed for ideas last term and with this final use as a sound piece in an installation I feel I have used the sound of the boulder to its potential, even if it needed to be edited to be more clearly audible for the audience, it is a piece which works in tandem with the others, adding to the overall feel. It tells its own story which is something I have been trying to do for a while.
I remember an artist in the Ikon, their name escapes me, but at the time I hated it. I didn't get it. Contact mic's in sand filled trays. The sound being played through the speakers was the vibrations from the sand which moved in accordance to the people in the room. I never got how sound could inform a piece, or be a piece in its own right however having finally put use to this looped snippit on an MP3, I understand, and I hope my audience does too. Certainly if they read the book, they shall.
With that, those are my pieces for the show and I hope I have shed some light on them and on the decision by which they came about. These works, last term were disjointed and were lots of individual pieces. I am hoping that this term, the pieces have found their own homes and are put to rest. It sure feels like the boulder at the heart of my work has lived a life and by placing my work into key elements, I am hoping I can express the journey which I have been on over the terms, and show how these pieces represent a culmination of works, as well as an insight into their being in the first place has finally been connected.
Monday, 5 June 2017
This term has been about that because a lot has gone wrong. This is a piece of work which i made thinking about Cornelia Parker's shed and suspended form as another avenue for sculpture. Frankly all the other hanging stuff ive done in the past has been poor and uninformed. However i couldnt just bin a weeks worth of plaster work away, all of that broken material can become something else.
So this is what i have experimented with here. Weirdly, its a notion of recycling my work...
Instead, i opted to return to the routes of this term and present the body on a slab to be walked around, observed and looked quite literally 'in to'.
In all honesty, i do like the table, it makes the sculpture appear to me more innocent, like viewing it is fare more about exposure, not just viewing.
Wednesday, 31 May 2017
Currently working on a head made from slices of Styrofoam board. the board cut into squares and stacked into a cube and then cut and sanded. The idea then is that i can see the layers, that mix of human form with something less... organic maybe?
The outcome is turning out to be much more primitive. Almost an Easter Island head figure.
My dad spoke to me about how i had come to look at the human figure in this light. We have joked for years now about a sculpture in Liverpool which looks like a head prayed to by a religious group. 'All hail the head' was the tag line we'd say driving past the thing.
The work 'Dream' by Jaume Plensa is enormous. Seriously the thing is 66 feet tall and build on the grounds of an old mine. It's a head, covered in a material called Dolomite. This makes the 500 tonne statue sparkling white.
Interestingly enough, because of its size and weight, it had to be built in slats from the ground up.
Thursday, 25 May 2017
Yuichi Ikehata...
Literally just found this artist whilst looking at the Body worlds Exhibition. That was mentioned to me after the exam. Using real bodies, stripped of skin and covered in silicone and moved into some, sometimes compromising positions. TBF its not like they mind.
However this other artist, Yuichi Ikehata, its different, i dont know if its digital or not, or a combination.
Im thinking of how i can combine metal with plaster now to create sculpture. I did sketches a while back about it. Using nails to create 3D images of children, refugees, now this might be taken to a whole new level.
But first up. I gotta break the molds.
Christine Borland?
Giant heads cast in fiberglass i believe.
The things look more like they are part of a history museum, like some ancient but advanced civilization used to pray to them to make the sun rise. She came about about a week into this term when the idea of making such a thing from plaster was much more of a realistic thought. But hey these are lessons to be learnt right?
Giant heads cast in fiberglass i believe.
The things look more like they are part of a history museum, like some ancient but advanced civilization used to pray to them to make the sun rise. She came about about a week into this term when the idea of making such a thing from plaster was much more of a realistic thought. But hey these are lessons to be learnt right?
Again whilst im here (I have done the research on days aside today so please let it be known that i am researching and just because all of these posts will have the same day stamp, the research is not the result of me sat here googling shit ti fill in the gaps. I will be honest the making of the molds has taken a lot longer than planned to have it simply break on me... that really pissed me off, i have been keeping up to date with things.
Irony that i spend most of my time in the work shop this term...
However, Antony Gormley. He was a different tune. Again his name had co,me up in previous weeks but the relevance had only become more meaningful in light of my recent... accident.
I'm thinking about all those broken pieces of metal and perhaps a figure with plaster pieces could work too?
I did look at wax as well to fill in the plaster molds. to see if they could be broken free into slate that would look like the patterns of neural networks in the brain.
It was interesting an aesthetic. Damn stuff fused to the plaster though even with Vaseline attached to it.
maybe it was a frailty thing? it could only be scrapped up.
Ollie had a good theory on it that because the wax was such a high percentage of liquid ,especially as i was poured in a melted state, the plaster absorbed a lot of that liquid, essentially gluing the two materials together.
Irony that i spend most of my time in the work shop this term...
However, Antony Gormley. He was a different tune. Again his name had co,me up in previous weeks but the relevance had only become more meaningful in light of my recent... accident.
I'm thinking about all those broken pieces of metal and perhaps a figure with plaster pieces could work too?
It was interesting an aesthetic. Damn stuff fused to the plaster though even with Vaseline attached to it.Ollie had a good theory on it that because the wax was such a high percentage of liquid ,especially as i was poured in a melted state, the plaster absorbed a lot of that liquid, essentially gluing the two materials together.
Cornelia Parker also appeared in my notes during last week so i better fill you in here so that i don't forget to put her in. Come to think of it, I began looking at her work for the reason of form being translated into something else. Initially this was to be the look into why i was slicing and dicing the human form. Now However, we have something else. My redundant molds are as her work was. Objects that once were, made for purpose, broken down and made anew.
its beautiful work.
And i can see her angle on it. Perhaps then it is something i should investigate further. More than that, can these broken pieces go on to make something else... something human and also, not human at all?
People i spoke to talked of Mark Quinn A LOT. He is just one of those figures in sculpture and his work is extraordinary. I just don't know right at this moment, how relevant it is.
its beautiful work.
And i can see her angle on it. Perhaps then it is something i should investigate further. More than that, can these broken pieces go on to make something else... something human and also, not human at all?
People i spoke to talked of Mark Quinn A LOT. He is just one of those figures in sculpture and his work is extraordinary. I just don't know right at this moment, how relevant it is.
Naum Gabo. Is an interesting idea, his flat plains to create 3D sculpture in the human form creates something that is organic yet some how detached from living tissue. the shapes are reminiscent... for me, of cityscapes and technology. A Deus Ex concoction which i like.However i have some bad news. The plaster molds have broken. This SUCKS because i spent hours on the stuff and now it is essentially useless as it is. I may have to break it up and find another use for it. Its a great shame because i loved the concept behind it. Frankly the experiment worked far better in Styrofoam than it did in plaster.
This is something i had hoped to recreate using Plaster. Its a first, I've never used the material before and because of that i poured the plaster to thin and with too much water. it was like chalk.
But lesson learnt i suppose, try try again and all that.
Thursday, 27 April 2017
Once mounted the layers can be seen and the original shape has been warped.
However i am very pleased with the out come. It is different and shifting and works within the space. It is very contained. frail but striking to see from every angle. Next i like the idea of taking the human form through the same process. If i can get the Laser printer to cut the MRI stills into the same slices. It will be rigid and angular but will also be very interesting. We shall see how it goes.
i bought myself a Styrofoam ball to play with as an early stage of experimentation. the idea is that it can be sliced up easily to give a small idea about how things like a human head might look if it was turned and separated into stackable slices.
Easily however, it was not. I decided to use a band saw however to avoid the ball bouncing around or making the lines wonky, thus cutting pieces that were narrower at one end than the other, i had to build a frame that would support the ball without destroying it, that would keep the ball in place as i was cutting segments. What i came up with was this!
The band saw was a success thank god and the slices reminded me a lot of sliced fruit, probably because most fruit is round-ish and can be sliced. But it was a success to have a piece that had changed and become some how more uniform crisp having been sliced.
Wednesday, 26 April 2017
For now this will be a sculpture project but we shall see how it develops. I am using K'nex (toys yes but they are like Lego and can be useful) to rapidly prototype ideas which can be photographed and then taken apart to try something new.
To get a better understanding of what i am starting to look at, lets have a look at Eugene-Louis Doyen. His work is morbid and horrifying but weirdly fascinating. I found him in a video by Vsauce wich asked why we are morbidly curious, why we cannot look away from war and gore. Car crashes and car chases. but his work looked at chopping up real bodies into well... stackable slices. Its amazingly macabre but also very interesting.
showing us what we are literally made of.
So i want to try and recreate that (Not with actualy people obviously) but with this stackable thing, it is interesting. and that is enough for now.
Ikon Ikon Ikon...
Oliver Beer was oh exhibition when i stopped by with no inkling as to what to expect as Ikon is always rather hit and miss. Frankly when i go there i always feel like an OAP in an O2 shop. Staring unblinking at walls covered in stuff that i am unmoved by and don't care about. This walk through was no different. Beer's work for me was well... boring and did nothing for me. whilst it might have moved others mountains, for me it did little to stretch my face muscles around.
His work included a large amount of ready-mades and vessels like his grandmothers chamber pot with microphones in them whilst the 'Tristan Chord' played to an almost ear bleeding volume. but in that room of white walls and wooden floors. it did nothing. it sat there, a large mass of wood and ceramics piled in a room, carefully, but not in any many i deemed captivating. Getting a kick out of flicking the pot and hearing a loud 'ding' before reading a signed marked 'do not touch the exhibit. For me this was a let down. Honestly this would have worked better if it had incorporated an interactive element.
his best work of the day was his reanimation of 'I Wanna Be Like You' from the Jungle Book. But where each of the 2,500 frames that go into that film had been split frame by frame, and been coloured in by 2,500 school children from around Birmingham. with the first frame starting with the youngest children to take part through to the oldest students colouring in the frames at the end. Leading to a natural growth and progression to the piece.
There was also an old cathode ray TV on the wall playing a Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech but where each word had been placed in alphabetical order... for literally no reason at all.
Personally given the genius and iconography of that speech. I looked at that as more of a vandalism of art than anything else.
Monday, 20 March 2017
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