Thursday, 1 May 2014

Film stills

All underneath :
"Untitled"
Film stills from Baddesley Clinton, 2014. 












Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuyman's made figurative paintings.

1980s
"Made his first mark, when he began to explore Europe's memories of World War II. With harsh, elegant paintings like gas chamber like:




Gas chamber (1986) 

Which depicts the Dachau concentration camp. "

"Displaying the gap between represented image and historical event, Luc Tuyman's paintings delve into the inner workings of how mythology is created. "

Still Life, 2002, Oil on Canvas, 347 x 500 cm


2002 
"Luc Tuyman's focused on works of art with political or social commentary , many expiated Tuyman's to make new works in response to the New York attacks on September 2001. Instead he presented a simple still-life executed on a massive scale , deliberately ignoring all reference to world events leading to negative critiques."



Maypole 
2000, Oil on Canvas, 224x116 cm

Within
2001, Oil on Canvas, 223 x 243 cm 

"Luc Tuyman's paints the indescribable. His dark muted scenes seem vaguely familiar."

Tuyman's work will help influence my own work as the atmosphere he creates is captivating and I want to bring that into my drawings / paintings to create much more depth and atmosphere. 

Giving my drawings almost a story like Tuyman's so that the places I paint have a history and a meaning like my film work.



Tony Hill

" Tony Hill has an interest in space, place, viewpoint and orientation to his practice as an artist and film-maker.
He creates bizarre and sometimes humorous vantage points that make us re think our assumptions about perspective, gravity , scale and movement.

Developing his own camera rigs and ingeniously using mirrors and unusual lenses he exploits the great potential for film to see in different ways to show us the world afresh. "


100 heads

The doors

and Striking images.



Nadia Kisseleva Mac Birmingham

Artist statement based on the paintings in the exhibition I saw: 

"Document" is a very personal work for Nadia, in which the history of the country where she was born and brought up is closely intertwined with history of her own family. These paintings reveal the condition of people in the last days and hours of their lives. The images of people in''Document'' are based on the mug shots of ordinary people who were living during the period of Stalinist repression. They show workers, students, teachers, members of army and the communist party. The broad range of ages and nationalities shows the scale of the prosecution at the time.
The artist’s work does this with considerable compassion, at the same time examining the unfolding events that would soon change for ever these peoples’ lives. Nadia undertakes the daring task of limiting her usually colourful palette to shades of black and white only, in order to achieve this powerful imagery. She has said: "Painting in black and white helps me to get closer to the image and to the time when these mug shots were taken."
Although the influence of the original images, the mug shot photographs of 30s and 40s, are obvious, the aim of this series of works is different: it is to re-create the visual history of every person within the limitation of the primal material. This she does with a lot of dedication.
It is a compassionate study of human tragedy, in which the artist aims to examine the role of the individual within the framework of historic events and to question the relationship between the state and the individual."


from http://www.oneoffart.net/nadia/

(To show what interested me the most in her statement I highlighted the key points. What has influenced me is the way she creates her brush marks, and the choice to use a very minimal colour palette,  which is what I find to be more successful and powerful in my drawings of places. Even though it is a different subject matter, I can take away from her work the way she layers up the paint to create dimension. 

I really enjoyed her exhibition). 











Baddesley Clinton with sound.

Film I am going to be showing for assessments >> Link

"Untitled", 2014, length - 6:19

Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Baddesley Clinton youtube links.

"Baddesley Clinton with sound"
2014, length: 0:33 , digital film.


"Baddesley Clinton edit 2"
2014, length: 6:52, digital film.

Baddesley Clinton






2014, length: 1:00, digital film.

Contextual and professional studies interviews.

Samantha Cowie's statement for my work: 

Kate's work is video based. It is a continuous film using a tripod to shoot and then edited on the computer. It was filmed at a National Trust house at Redditch.

The video was shot at 9-11, as the lighting around this time is good, and so the video had really interesting shadows. Also the video had to be shot at this time, as this is when it is closed to the public.

The video is also going to include sound, such as sounds of the house. Kate has recordings of birds and the wind which are going to be edited into the piece.

She focuses on the details of the architecture and interior, such as cracks in the walls and personal items which belonged to the people who used to live in the house. It creates a story for the audience of the video as they are left wondering what is the story behind the items left there, and why were they left there?

I feel that Kate's video is trying to make the viewer think, and create the answers for themselves about what happened in this house, as she is not providing information about the people who used to live there, she is just letting the video speak for itself.

Kate has been looking at video artists such as Zarina Bhimji, Bhimji is a clear influence as her photographs look at human traces in landscape and architecture. She looks at walls a lot in her work as she looks at who built them, who lived within them and who abandoned them. Kate has also looked at Paul Winstanley who paints from photographs; he mainly focuses on interiors such as waiting rooms.


My thoughts:

I thought that Samantha Cowie explained my work very clearly in the statement and it will influence how I write my statement for assessment, it really helped make my work clear to me and how it is perceived.

This is my statement for Samantha Cowie's work:

Samantha Cowie's work explores the idea of sleeping, the concept of not being able to control your body. She does this by creating scenes of people sleeping; some photos are genuine poses of people sleeping. Whilst others are staged. The medium this is being explored in is through film and paintings in acrylic that seem to explore the use of colour in skin.
Artists that have influenced her work are Ted Spagna, Richard Billingham, Sophie Calle, Tracey Emin and Nan Goldin.

I think that it is a very interesting topic to explore. As it makes us think of something that is a normal everyday action. The choice in which to express ideas though painting and film is interesting as you get two different viewpoints. I think that the paintings are more successful because of the colour palette used. But then I think it is stronger to have the videos shown beside the paintings to see where she got her ideas for compositions.

For the next stage in her work I think that it would be visually interesting to explore scale with her paintings, exploring on a larger scale could make the brush marks and colours more prominent and make you look harder to view the painting.

My thoughts on improving this statement that I wrote:

I think now looking back at this statement I could have improved it a lot before handing it over. I think I explained it well, however I could have gone more in depth about what it explores and influences making it a stronger statement. 

I found her work really interesting and thought that it would be a different subject to explore than normal.

Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean is English.

She makes films and does photography. "Her practise of drawing took form of storyboards,  a narrative format used in the planning of movies. Her taste for storytelling triggered many of her works, often based on the possibilities raised by chance encounter.

Dean gave equal weight to fictional and historical narratives, emphasising their power of evocation: notions of time, memory or nautical elements are part of her personal themes.

Deans works play poetically on the theme of searching as well as on the blurred identities of mysterious people or things.

Deans stories embraced the notion of struggle over elements, which explain the recurrence of the sell as a major protagonist in her work.

Deans minimal narratives are imbued with a sense of human failure and never ending expectation resulting from actions that are curiously both heroic and modest.

Some of Deans later works are reminiscent of the works of Berud and Hilla Becher in their focus on derelict places endowed with powerful history. The quaint and obsolete buildings are the remains of some prototype air-raid warning structures built in 1920; by accompanying the images with ambient sound recorded in 1999, she doubles the act of preservation of those buildings, already saved from destruction in 1988.








Drawing Statement

For my drawing project I explored the theme of places, looking at exterior. The places I focused on were Leicester and Birmingham, as they are places I am particularly familiar with. 
I wanted to explore the use of marks and different colour schemes I hope to create atmosphere in the scenes that I depict by using different material such as tape and pen the images should have dimension. 

Artists that have been a particular influence have been Laura Oldfield Ford, Michael Craig Martin, Luc Tuyman and George Shaw. Because of their subject matter and choice of material, Michael Craig Martin influenced the idea of using tape, however I tried to make the tape different by cutting it at different width. Using a mixture of materials like tape and charcoal brings different values of black, which I find visually, compliment each other. I tried to change the colour combinations to try and discover what works best; I also wanted to explore the use of lots of detail and then very minimal detail.

I found working on a smaller scale worked better for me as I could demonstrate more detail in the places that I wanted to depict, when I tried to paint bigger the places almost seemed lost and I felt that was not what I was aiming for so decided to keep with the smaller sizes. This also meant that I could develop more of them as a body of work. 

What I would like to develop further is the use of mixed media, using different materials such as tape, charcoal, pen and paint on a deeper level and creates multiple layers of the scenes to create an image that makes you want to touch the paper to feel the different textures within it. 

I feel as though I have not yet been able to explore this as I only started using tape and different media's near the end of the project. 

Self directed statement

For my self directed I chose to focus on video, the subject matter was a National Trust house based in Worcestershire, the time that I filmed was 9-11am so the light was prominent which was important to me as it shows the house in a better way.

The video was also filmed at that time because it was closed to the public, this was also important as it meant that there was no one walking in the way of the objects of the house so I was able to film it as it was. I also recorded natural sounds of the house to add to the video and create the atmosphere of the house so it is like you are there.

My aim was to explore the details of the architecture and interior to show what you might miss as you walk around. Also to show the way that the people that had once lived their might have viewed their house and what it was like to live there. I hope that it creates a story for the audience and makes them wonder what type of people would live in the house and from seeing the sort of personal items they left behind, how that would determine what type of person they were.

Artists I have looked at have been Zarina Bhimji for her use of light, texture and atmosphere, I have also looked at Annie Leibovitz 'Pilgrimage' for influence on film stills ,Sam Taylor-Wood and Paul Winstanley who focuses on interiors such as waiting rooms that have an eerie atmosphere to them he explores this through use of paint.


Tuesday, 29 April 2014

Greyson Perry

"Inspired by William Hogarth's A Rake's progress, the six tapestries chart the "class journey" made the six tapestries chart the "class journey: made by the fictional Tim Rakewell and include many of the characters, incidents and objects that Grayson Perry encountered on his own journeys through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and the Cotswolds for the television series, 'All in the best possible taste with Grayson Perry.' In the television series Perry went on a safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain, to gather inspiration for his artwork, literally weaving the characters into narrative attention."

Some of Greyson Perry's sketches for his tapestry:






I personally prefer his sketchbooks as it shows how he works out the tapestry imagery. I also like seeing his rough sketches as it shows his process into making them large scale and all the notes you get to see.

The Adoration of the Cage-Fighters, Grayson Perry, 2011

Expulsion From Number 8 Eden Close, Grayson Perry, 2012

The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal, Grayson Perry. 2012

One aspect that I really enjoy about Perry's tapestries is the amount of colour, when you see these in an exhibition the colour is prominent and that is something that I would like to bring to my work, whether it be minimal colour or lots of colour like this one. I would like all of the colours to work together really well, and not look as though they clash or let the image look worst than it was. I would really like to look into colour theory to help my paintings. 


Drawing




"Untitled"
Watercolour on Cartridge paper with tape, 20 x 23.5 cm

David Rowan Mac Birmingham.

Artist : David Rowan
Title : The Dark River
Date(s) : 2014
"Running from Waseley Hills in Worcestershire to Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction, the River Rea is a comparatively small river, often occluded by buildings and almost forgotten in a city more famous for its canal network. The Rea is, however, the subject of a video installation by artist David Rowan showing at mac, Birmingham. Entitled ‘The Dark River,’ the work seeks to explore and uncover facets of its unique character."
"In moving images that glow against the black gallery wall, the colours of sky, bushes and red brick structures are vivid in bright sunlight, dappled by the trees. The river narrows and widens, rushes and then pools. Two young boys play football in the water and two other people ride bicycles through shallower sections of the river. Some of the lining walls are covered with graffiti and the lush vegetation is kept wild by a lack of human intervention."

What I found interesting was how it was a simple idea yet captivated me as an audience to see what would happen in each film. I like the way it is presented in more than one film, I think this will be something that I will think about in the future. 

"Rowan’s slices of time and space allow for a kind of distillation or preservation of these fleeting moments within the Rea’s course. Ultimately, the thing that makes this installation most engaging is its specific context. The river must be crossed to enter and exit mac, and therefore when viewing Rowan’s work, the Rea runs just a few metres away from one’s feet."












How it is displayed. 


Annie Leibovitz 'Pilgrimage'

"As a historian, nothing matters more to me than the chance to wander through the rooms where my subjects lived and worked, to imagine them coming down the stairs for breakfast, writing steadily at their desks, entertaining guests at dinner, settling down in their favourite chairs to read. The people may be gone, but the houses remain. The landscape may have changed, the furniture, rugs, and draperies may be only the best representation of what was thought to have existed at the time, and yet, somehow, as one moves from room to room the people who lived there are brought to life."

This is a quote from Annie Leibovitz and I feel this explains my work very well as it is what I am aiming to do with my films, as well.


All below:
Annie Leibovitz. From “Pilgrimage” (Random House, 2011)