Exhibition-selected MA show by Atkinson Gallery

I and Kay were selected by Jo and Atkinson gallery for their MA show in Febuary. It was great chance to see what other MA students are doing.

The work I got selected is this photopolymer print. Because of this exhibition, I framed it. To be honest, I am not sure about this frame, and they forgot to cut the mat into circular.

I never learn photographer professionally, and I am not sure how to represent it in a most suitable way.

This is Kay’s print on hand-made paper. She has series of works that print from some cardboard. It is abstract with abundant texture on it. The way she framed it made it looks a bit like some sort of archeological object in museum. I probably prefer it looks more like a standing sculpture, which she showed in the group crit before, by making her paper thicker.

Our peer from Last year, Christian Soukias

It’s a combination of etching and screen print. A combination of basketball board and some classical painting. In his paper, he did the research of uncanny. It says “The works explore and manipulate imagery that often produces an “uncanny’ sensation upon the viewer as well as to ask how this aesthetic can be re-thought and remade for a contemporary audience"

Atkinson Gallery

MA & Other Postgraduates Exhibition

25 February -23 March 2019

Film: Documentary of Francesca woodman + Sally Mann

It’s a documentary about Francesca Woodman by interviewing her family and friends. It is interesting to compare her works and she as a person and an artist. From the film, she seems like an introvert and melancholy young woman, but from her parents, she is more ambitious and brave and exciting to try new ideas. Probably from her childhood, she already absorb lot’s of nutrients and thoughts from her artist parents,  therefore she seems non stopped thinking.

From the document, we can see her parents’ art, too. Through, very different from Francesca’s.

Although I have seen some review of this documentary saying Betty Woodman (Francesca Woodman’s mother) is irresponsible and self-fish mother, for probably someone thinks her comparison for fame influence Francesca’s dead, I quite like her works. It’s playful, formed and deconstructed, transition between 2D’s and 3D’s, and it looks pretty much like painting on sculptures, or mix of them.

Her husband, seems have get more influence from Francesca after she died. Black and White photos and nude girls… it’s hard to not make connection with Francesca, maybe this is how he memorize his daughter. Different from Francesca, he is not the performance and the protagonist of his photos, he set up a scene, and let the models to post. He especially likes to compose the model and a/few photographs and make some connection between them.

 

Here I watched another documentary of photographer: Sally Mann.

She lives in a country side and she uses this big giant camera to do her shooting. At first, She mainly photoshoot her children. She asked them to post, and set up a scene. When she wanted her dog does certain things and stand in certain place, she would even smear some jam to lure it.

She started some series, taking photos of human faces. In the film, she let her model lay under her camera, and it took long time to expose the camera. Because the monochrome and the film quality, they all have some sort of “dead atmosphere", or you can call it uncanny, I supposed.

Alice made something similar in the last term. They are all a bit creepy.

Later, she even visited a cemetery, where let the dead body rot and decay naturally.

The similarities of Sally Mann and Francesca Woodman are obviously they all use black and white photography, and they all deliver uncanny atmosphere. I like both of them, but I probably more perfer Francesca’s works. However, my own practice probably more close to Sally Mann, or maybe closer to Vivian Maier.

I don’t create a scene much. I am more like observing what is there already, and use my instinct and way to describe it, just that simple.

 

Exhibition- Pierre Bonnard

One of the best colourists of the early 20 the Century.

No need to say they are all beautiful paintings. Just highlight some paintings related to mirror and self-portrait.

Although it does not specific if it’s a woman looking at the mirror, the form of the frame, it does look like we, the viewer, the woman is looking at the mirror.

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure if the post of reflection is so different from the woman. In the foreground the woman’s right hand is not really showing.

Nowadays it’s very convenient to paint from photos using camera or phone to insist. For capture the moment of daily life it’s different to set a model stand still for you. It’s interesting to see how he transfers the photos into paintings.

Painting, mirror, and us

Comparing to set the pose for models, he prefer to paint daily scenery. It’s like snapshot nowadays but he made himself invisible. He tried to see from his model’s angle.

Although he applied beautiful abundant colour that associate with happiness, however his expression looks depress in his self portraits paintings.

Exhibition- Klimt Schiele Drawing RA

It shows some drawings from Klimt and Schiele, therefore, there’s no large scale oil paintings that Klimt are famous for. They all like to paint on brown paper bag paper.

Klimt: Had more graceful, clean simple stroke, a bit like the fashion illustration we have today.

 

Schiele:

Fascinating by his stroke and the colour, a bit messy. However it’s lively. The expression of his models look so ambiguous,

How he used the colour is unconventional. Green, blue, bright warm colour on the skin…

One of the few print that Schiele did. He dropped it quickly because he found it too time-consuming. (which made me smile)

 

 

 

 

 

I love this textual and colouring wall.

Exhibition- Phoebe Boswell

Phoebe Boswell: The space between things

“an emotive interrogation of trauma, healing, and the poetics of endurance"

She applied various media, A series of selfportrait on the wall.

The floor mounted videos show her floating on a sea, probably referring the healing power of natural.

i was not sure why she used eyeball as main theme, until I went up to the secound floor. It was the one of the most disturbing video I ever seen, the surgery process of saving artist’s eye.

 

I was not able to finish it. It remind me a short film from Dali: so horrified, I think it’s because it is the organ clost to “us" the most. What we see constitue us,

Salvador Dali’s 1929 French silent film Un Chien Andalou https://horrornews.net/39235/the-art-of-ocular-violence-eye-violence-in-horror/

Filmings of two images of the artist overlapping.

It reminds me of another artist I saw in Royal Acedemy of arts

Rad Husak http://www.rhusak.co.uk/work#/mirrored-decline-triptych/

Exhibition- Dorothea Tanning

She uses doors frequently in her works, a intermediary between outside and inside. Lot’s of surrealist, fantastic element…

 

 

 

“Birthday"

 

“I think I could like anywhere if allowed to create freely… My personal spcace is so richly furnished that there is absolutely no room in it for any feeling of exile…. Alos, behind the invisible door, another door." Tanning.

It reminds me what Claude Cahun said: “Under this mask, another mask. I will never be finished removing all these faces.” They are talking different things, somehow there are still some connection. 

Layers of layers, discovering and discovering… Doors and masks are all surealism symbol.

“door 84″ used actual door as element in her painting

Eine Klein Nachtmusik

Another work used door element. The sunflower looks like creepping from the stairs like some sort of monster, and the kid is gathering some sort of magic to try to attack it or communicate with it. The door behind it opened, revealed outdoor scenery. Maye this scene more like a cinema playing inside artist’s brain.

Children’s game.

I like this one. Children don’t care about what they do might destroy things, they do things because they have natuaral power inside them.

I like this one as well. I feel like I can relate to it. The daughter sit still gracefully on the seat, look ike if she has no personal charactor, and the father is a huge silent exist, almost transparant but some how make you breathless. The status of mother is so humble, like a servant, as her value is just serving the family.

In this stage she painted lot’s of table and dinner to represent a family, home looks surrealistic in her works.

The Mirror

Her sunflower looks like monster, but also like human.

In this painting, it looks like a sunflower is looking at herself by using a sunflower mirror, and all of this is a reflection from another mirror.

Some printmaking(litho?)

Later her painting is more abstracted.

“In the first year, I was painting on our side of the mirror- the mirror for me is a door- but I think I have gone over, to a place where one no longer faces identities at all."

 

 

 

 

 Feel like her intention is shifted to colourful combination. For me they are beautiful, but less interesting.

The room echos her earlier paintings. The human part is crossing inside and outside.

 

 

 

Exhibition- Tracy Emin

in Whitecube

The first room is full of her selfie while she is on her bed, sleepless. She is suffering from insomnia(coincidently, it happened on Dorothea Tanning, the exhibition I went yesterday ). It was not a pleasant feeling watching her face, the photos of her face are enlarged, giving pethological feeling. 

Following are many paintings she has done. Her pen stroke are quick, intritive and chaotic, a shape of woman repetive apprears, some painting has red dripping on it, looks like blood.

“the Bed" probably her most significant work, and shows her private life. People look for something to look for satisfaction, for example: sex. It sometimes result more complicated problems. In another room, is her short documentary film of her narrative about abortion. She can clearly remember what happen during her found out she was pregnant, told the doctor about her decision, and the pain mentally and physically. Because she had doctor checked that she will only have 0.05 percent possibility to get prenant, that’s why she did not pay much attention. She regreted like most of us, and I believe this deeply affect her that why the image keeps appear in her works.

“People always want to have something small, so they can control them" She said.

The female body in her works looks all twist and painful, most of time lay down. The texture of schulpture remind me some of Sam’s works, and the text remind me Alice’s.

“She came to the revelation that art could not be made for art’s sake it had to be intrinsically bound up with her own life. As she described it:’the essence of creativity, that moment of conception… the whole being of everything….it had to be about where it was really coming from"(Statement of exhibition, white cube)

Exhibition- Bill Viola Michelangelo

Jo recommended me to see his works, and here comes his exhibition. When I saw his works on youtube I did not feel much, but the exhibition was quite impressive.

It also exhibits some small scale Michelangelo’s sketches, but the main focus is on Bill Viola. His trademark probably human in water, similar effect he uses repetitive in his works, as a metaphor of “Life, Death, Rebirth", which is the title of this exhibiton

The first work “The Messenger" is a guy fall deep into the water, float out to the surface. He opend his eyes promtly as he floats onto the surface, could indicates “rebirth, wake up". The part of the skin is warm and normal skin colour, but when he sinks, it’s light and cold blue colour image. By the deeper he sinks, his image becomes vague, distorted, broken, hard to reconize a shape of a human being. I direcly think of dream and hypnosis. What is our shape while we are in a dream? Is it not whole anymore? is it untouchable? What is the message this messanger want to tell us?

I wept a bit while I was watching the second work. “Nantes Triptych" consists three videos, the first one is a woman giving birth. She spreads her legs and show us her circular belly and genitalia, her partner supports her on her back. This part probably most strongly catches eyes, for it shows physical pain from her moaning and crean. On the right it was an old woman is on her deathbed. The image is quiet, the lens surrounds and seems like observing her. Beside the stressful sound from the mother-to-be, there is stable sound of breathing in the film, probably from the artist’s dying mother. The breathing ends when the mother hold her new born baby, open it’s eyes. These two videos are pretty documentary.

In the between is a person floating and sinking with a sheets ? in deep and dark water (a bit similiar to the previous work). While watchin, I was not sure what’s the meaning of the middle one, I was thinking maybe it could be some time lapse of some people’s ramdon life? Just remind me the ending of “The six feet under" one of my favorite TV serious, it briefly shows the charactor’s continuous life and how they end. Later I found out this work’s statement:

“In between a figure floats, at times calmly and at others in turmoil. It is an ethereal image of life, floating outside of time, suggestive of inner dimensions that are not bound by our mortal, corporeal presence." (Andrea Tarsia)

Slowly Turning Narrative

Personally I quite like this work.

It’s a large and dark room, with some sort of whispers. In the centre of the room there is a spinning monitor and mirror surface on it’s back. There is projector on two sides so the image is projected on the screen in the centre. While the mirror is facing the viewer, the viewer can see themselves clearly, and when it comes to the video, there are some image on it such a black and white human face. I am not sure much about the image means, but when the three colour project on the mirror, there are some beautiful rainbow project on the floor. It is very impressive in present. 

This work and “the Sleep of Reason" is one of my favirite, too. It is a set up interior room, and there is a usual bedside carbinet with lamp, clock, vase and a small TV on it.

In the TV, there is a woman sleeping. For few minutes, and the room becomes totally dark and the woman’s image disappears, some images are projected around the room, such as train turnnel, underwater, X-ray for 2 seconds, and everyone comes back to light. It’s like waking up and sinking into subconcious in dream. However, no matter it’s in the dark or light, she is all sleeping, therefore maybe it’s not correct to say it’s wake up and fall in sleep, more it’s like status of sleep and fall in deep sleep, and those fragment it’s like a dream, there’s no logic between each fragment.

This work is consituded by two vertical images, onw man and a woman. They have grief expression, they even drop tears. When they bend their waist their images become distorted. Then we realise the image we see is the reflection of the water. Their tears obscure them. Does “Surrender"shows how they react when they have reach the limitation?

Overall, it’s very impressive exhibition. It looks kind of nothing on streaming, but it has power to watch it in the gallery. He led us to enter a dream.

 

 

Exhibiton: Tate modern

Sandra Gamarra

Paintings of 24 photos referring the mesazine of 2008 Art Basel Art Fair booklet. The size and the layout is the same with the actual magazine. It says it’s reflectied the gender of masculinity within the art market. She is famous for reproduce other’s art works.

I think there is a question, to draw someone else’s work including photography, layout design, and make them into own works. Overall I like the images as visual, but is it some sort of laziness? (probably I do commission for other people’s picture, so I know how quick it can be) & I am not sure how we can see the masculinity within the art market here, is it the colour? the art works she choose?

Anni Albers

She was a textual designer in her time, but she also did drawing, printmaking and sort of material. The style is geometric and repetitive, fit the nature of knitting. Having problem with my camera, so not many clear photos left. She did some print without ink, to make the paper look like decorative texture.

 

https://frieze.com/article/tunga

 

Turga

Recommended by my classmate, he used an identical twins with connected hair to represent nordic folklord. “capillart conjoined twins upon us" is a performance. In the gallery, we can only see document and photos.

I can’ find the film on internet but photos. Depends on the photos, they wandered around the museum. When looking for it on youtube, many disturbing video comes out instead such as human parts connect together. It will be also very uncanny if those wander

around in the museum.

 

 

 

Exhibition-Christian Marclay: The Clock

It is a video montage that the artists made a 24 hours long film derives from over 1,000 film clips, and those clips are telling the time by focus on clock, clicking sound, vocal conversation, etc.

I watched it from around 4:15 to 5:15, It is interesting that the time in the film is synchronous with actual time, the film itself is a clock.

Another interesting thing is that we can see different people do different things in different time, and the moment of relationship between them and the time.

It includes old films and new films, film from eastern and western, they all share the on going time, equally.

Some is waiting for a friend who is being late, some are just staring at the clock. Something is happening and the time add the information of it.

Someone shut “Can you give me back my time?"

also the Big Ben appears 5 times in this one hours.

I think it will be difficult to watch it non-stop 24 hours, and because the period of time I watched is normally people finish their work, when it comes around 4:50-5:5 it shows people are wating for finish their work, and the scene they check out and going out of the builing.

It took about 3 years to finish this work, and I think it is interesting, that it reflect our life and time.

This film also reminded me another art work that I saw in Whitecube last year, using the same way to make the work, and I realize it was also made by Christian Marclay. “Made To Be Destroyed" are the collection of clips from many films, and it shows the moment the art was destroyed. It is much shorter, 24 minutes. Because they are clips, we can’t tell what exactly the stories are, it could be a moment the artists have emotional break down, so decided to destroy the work that they don’t satisfy, or it could be a gun fire in museum, or a woman threaten her enemy by thowing the schupture as defense. It’s also interesting what’s the boundary of copyright when you make works and using others work as resources.