30 seconds text

Jessie: Execution Site Memorial makes me think of the Douglas Gordon work 30 seconds text, and the installation ...head. Has anyone else read about this anywhere? This was the only picture I could find, but there is a couple more in a book in the uni library. The work consisted of a couple of different elements - white vinyl text on the wall of a black room with a single bare light bulb, which was controlled by a timer to be on for 30 seconds and off for 30 seconds. The text was a description of an experiment in 1905 where a Dr communicated with a severed head to see if human consciousness survived physical death. And apparantly it does, for about 30 seconds, which was just enough time to read the text before being plunged into darkness. In the next room was a video which showed just a head severed from a body, and the next room showed a video of just the body. Pretty full on, hey?

Gordon says he showed the piece only once because he was too shocked by the images.

Execution Site Memorial

Jessie: There was an article in Sculpture October 2006 about a work by Brian Catling, who won a comission to create a permanent memorial for the Tower of London Site of Execution.
He says: ‘The sculpture is made of two circles, the larger circle is made of dark stone and bears the poem on its rim. Another smaller disc of sand blasted glass bears the names of those executed there. Above it is a clear glass pillow with an impression at its centre as if someone had been resting there.’ But its not someone just resting there, its just their head! Even just from the few pictures in the journal, I found the work pretty powerful. It gave me the creeps a bit, just thinking about that moment, and that there were (prob still are) people who could actually commit the act, freaks me out, but I love that it was able to get that reaction from me. Also love that something so big can be simplified down to the one small detail, and that such a horrible thing can be represented in a nice way.
I wasn't able to get a very good picture, but the one above is from www.modusoperandi-art.com/docs/project.php?id=2:2:11:0:0

check your emails..

about end of year exhibition.. :O exciting stuff!

jimmi

art montly 192 august 06

This fella is roger ballen, does alot of photoes of sculptures with drawings or paintings as back drops or in the back ground. i liked this one and it stuck out to me because im making an aqarium ish. Its called puppies in fishtanks, 2000 hanging in stills gallery, sydney. i wouldnt get madly excited about his other stuff but this is cool. c uz

jimmi

jimy

I havnt seen this yet but we probably all should so here is its name.
Drawing Restraint 9. Barney made it in 05, the sheila left is bjork and it basically reflects on whaling. I'm mainly putting this up because i was wondering what happens to art films once theyve been exhibited. if i wanted to c a film that was baught for a private collection what could i do to c it? Anyway its prob worth chasing up as no doubt it woulld be an extravoganza of an art film. cu.

jimmy

Doug Fishbone seems pretty cool. thats a pile of 30000 bannannas in london. he movedit around to various high profile locations. check out contemporary issue... p37 for a choice pic of it.
he well known for his conceptual art, sculpture, instillation video etc. he is down my ally cause hes into my three favourite themes of the week. corporate greed, saving the dolphins and pornography. big ups to fishbone.

archaeology and art

polly: The number one name for archaeology and art is of course Mark Dion. His right into digging up stuff and often presents his work like museum style. In Frieze, April, issue 90 last year there was a little review on his New York exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. Is pretty funny how obsessive this guy is about his digs. The write-up talks of how he rooted around with a bucket and spade for interesting artefacts from the demolished site of the old museum and surrounding sites. The project/exhibition was called Rescue Archaeology and consisted of 3 fireplaces, ceramic shards, razor blades and children's marbles, bottle-caps from the 50s and other such miscellany. This was the opening exhibition to the reopening of the museum and showed the interesting connection the objects had to the forgotten, ignored and destroyed artefacts. A melancholic sense of the memory of the old in a presentation of the new.

Cool quote about art, by Albert Barnes:
"Art is a fragment of life presented to us enriched in feeling by means of the creative spirit of the artist."

ps- check your emails!!
pps- danielle, your email address didn't send??

rays intro to james lynch.

images:
www.terminusproject.org
theage.com.au
www.artaustralia.com


hello all,
well this is it huh.Can i just say how sucky it is that we are never to have the "best" teacher again.waaaaaaaaa.
Thanks andrew,you are the super best-est.

okay Art and Australia.vol 43.no.1 2005. you know a little high end and all,but it looks nice and has tons of great pictures and is easy to read and look at.i like it and found tons of interesting things.
Anz emerging artist program: James Lynch.
James Lynch is this guy who does these beautifull handdrawn animations. He draws pics of friends and collegues and drops them into a video program with other textures like photos,text,pencil,watercolour. The ones talked about in the article are about dreams,so like dreams don't make lots of sense and are quite odd but thats good.
He is getting a powerfull reputation as a leader in animation but is also known for his drawings and instillations.
Sounds like one to look out for. these films look really excellent and lovely to look at. i like the mix of the drawings with real life back grounds.........

I also found an article on Candice Breitz who if you saw the video "mother" at the festival we all know is a legend.
i'll just give you a little flava.....
she was saying she's obsessed with the loop between lived life and fictional life and hollywood harvesting real life for iys plots. she has a film which i think is funny, based on "bennifer" j-lo and ben affleck. except she plays j-lo and j-lo becomes her. and some other works with real people (instead of footage of actors from films like in mother and the other one father)
performing their own versions of classic albums like micheal jackson.madonna.bob marley.
it seems from the article there is an australian artist doing simular video work.
Kate Murphy. she has one of a girl dancing to a britney spears song and others of her granparents.
anyhow this is getting a little long winded and my brain is very slow and tired so i will leave it for now.
i'll try to add a few pics later.

good work all.good luck or good skill as i like to say when its not a luck situation
with your projects. one year almost down.

CHECK THIS OUT!!!!!!!! DO IT - NOW!!!!

hello there munchkins!!
how r we all?? busy im sure- so i think il be breif tonight...so...sculpture journal article again, cause i really get into what and who they write about, i also seems to find endless amounts of minimalist works in there which obviously is so completly utter wicked!(this article from sculpture journal vol. 25 no.7)

PETER ELISENMAN'S - MEMORIAL TO THE MURDERED JEW OF EUROPE-. It is a field of abstract pillars located in the centre of Berlin. There is no symbolistic or iconistic significance to the designs of the pillars- they are just concrete slabs on a 4.7 acre site. So yea, it kind of takes up a whole city block. They are placed next to where the Berlin Wall used to be. People can enter the site and walk around this "forest" of pillars at any time of the night and day, although there are security guards so be wary of those guys. haha. Apparently it is very easy to get lost and disorientated here....


Elisenman's piece is extremly Minimalist and clean- exactly what I am into and love. "The opposite of safe, boring public art memorials". This is bold and the title explains the meaning of the work. The sizes of the 2,711 dark grey blocks vary in size and topography, not too much thought because an overal unity was intended to be kept. Underneath, like underground is part of the memorial too, and their are lights and videos under the slab shadows. (Again- if ur keepin track of my Minimalst find..light is very important i have discovered and is very cool....) hence another reason why im loving this piece. I admit, when i first saw the photo, as that is what caught my eye, i just loved the amount of blocks that were there and how they seemed so very the same. I think it is very good that this work has such a strong idea/theme behind it as it works so very well- better than alot of works i have seen. It is very mature and systematic, thought very intriguing. I'm not saying that every work needs a meaning behind it, because i love formal works that are just weird and strange, but it really suits this that is why i think its works like crazy.

well definately get into guys, and start lookin into Minimalism, as i feel as though it is sooo my thing above anything else, (haha dont get too into it, as it is going to be my speciality and no-one elses mwhahahaha)....it was great spending this semester with you all, wicked bonding times and I'll see you all next year when we kick ass in sculpture class!!! Ooooh-yea!! ps- i tried adding more photos but the computa like usual was being a bitch and only let me add one...check out others tho!!
Love Josie

sylvias time in melbourne

im back in a*town! gillian wearing exhibition was pretty sick. there were some naff parts though like the bad acting in the video (atleast is was presented cool). Tezuka is having an exhibition at NGV next week. sucks because i would have rather have seen that exhibition. but what can you do. CRY! BECAUSE I KNOW YOU ALL LOVE ASTROBOY. i have a book to show you guyse which i got from the exhibition though which has pictures of all the art works etc etc we can have some show and tell. okay, so, whilst i was in melbourne i went to polyester on brunswick street and spent like two hundred bucks on books. i got this "graffiti brasil" book and it is sick because thats where i heard of these dudes "Os Gemeos"




collaboration with banksy.

basically most of their work is illegal, but theyre huge so they have been commissioned to do trains and things even though they are "street" artists they consider themselves as fine artists but still continue to paint in blatantly illegal spots. everyone go google "brazil graffiti". now. its trippy, has heaps of different styles and allot of it is site specific. this stuff really pushes boundaries of what is seen as street art. its great. i love it. new obsession. now. i need sleep. sorry thats all ive got id post more pictures but im dying.

sylvia.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster

Jessie: Found an interview in Sculpture, March 2004, pages 22 - 23, with Tim Noble and Sue Webster. They turn rubbish into complex sculptures and installations, often using light and shadows. Quite often too, they do works that are self portraits.

They pile up heaps of rubbish and when a light is placed behind it the shadow created is not what you would expect. This one is called "A Couple of Dirty Fucking Rats". Not a self portrait surely...

.
The interview was fairly short, but their views on artists and making art are interesting. They talk about how some artists end up just "working for the system", being booked for shows everywhere, and letting someone else determine what is made and when; and how some become bigger then their work and that it doesn't matter how good their work is. They end up saying that "Artists have to be a bit more anonymous and let the work take stage".

Emily Floyd - The Outsider

Jessie: For my Image and Text subject have been looking at a Melbourne bassed artist called Emily Floyd. Throughout all her work she uses hundreds of cut out wooden letters, often in piles, or snaking in lines across the floor. Art and Australia Autumn 2006 vol 43 no 3, page 434, had a review of an exhibition she had at the John Curtin Gallery in Perth , late last year. Called The Outsider the installation represented Floyds imaginary view of the city of Algiers, consisting of more than a dozen turned and gilded spires, nearly 200 handmade architectural blocks and thousands of wooden letters. Sentences taken from a novel called The Outsider by Albert Camus (written in 1942) formed a landscape around the city. I dont know much about the novel the work is based on. Apparantly though, Camus was an existentialist, and the book implies two things. One: that the world is a bleak place, one without transcendence, liberation or the hope of escape. And Two: that it is a celebration of the artist as outsider, one who is completely at ease with their place in the world.
The installation was described as "A joyous, hedonistic and life affirming velief in the power of the object and text to express a world of sumptuous beauty, chaos and diversity that must be lived in the present".
I love the way she uses the text, and that it is not always easily read. When the text is spelling out whole sentences it can be viewed from all angles, and may have to be read backwards, and the piles of letters hint at words or conversations, but are all jumbled and don't make sense. One of my favourite pieces is from an exhibition that has just closed in Melbourne and is called 10 Things I Really Care About. It is such a simple but lovely idea. We know she cares about whales, but what else?

CELESTE J. DISCUSSES RYAN TRECARTIN

ARTFORUM, JANUARY 2006, PAGE 188 ONWARD...

This article was an exception to the beginning of my previous post, it was quite interesting and long, pictures etc (text still too little). It discussed video works by Ryan Trecartin, the images of which looked incredibly tacky / psychadelic / intersting / bright and shiney (last one is the cherry on the cake). However, he also makes very bizarre sculptures. Very childlike, the remind me of outsider art, I think the new trend in art might be appearing to be but not being outsider art (aka 'naff' etc). Some of his sculptures:


Vicky Veterinarian, 2006, mixed media


Abraham with the long arm, 2006, mixed media

Shots from the video discussed in ARTFORUM, A Family Finds Entertainment, 2004...




From http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/ryan_trecartin.htm:

"Ryan Trecartin’s film A Family Finds Entertainment is a camp extravaganza of epic proportions. Starring Trecartin’s family and friends, and the artist himself in a plethora of outrageous roles, A Family Finds Entertainment chronicles the story of mixed up teenager Skippy and his adventures in ‘coming out’. In this over the top celebration of queerness, Trecartin’s film mines the bizarre and endearing in an unabashed pastiche of ‘bad tv’ tropes. Cheesy video special effects, dress-up chess costumes, desperate scripts, and ‘after school special’ melodrama combine in the fluency of youth-culture lingo, reflecting a generation both damaged and affirmed by media consumption."

THE END.

CELESTE JAY ON UGO RONDINONE

ARTFORUM JANUARY 2006, PAGE 108.

Generally I don't like this journal, it's too big, there are too many ads and lots of large amounts of small text boring reviews of boring looking exhibitions. There was an image which caught my eye though (I feel like everything I post is so boring caompared to everyone else, maybe I'm not being picky enough...).

Ugo Rondinone. The image was:

It was the gateway to an exhibition the Swiss artist had comprising of 24 paintings and sculptures inside this building. I like the idea of everything being an experience, the experience being the 'art itself', very into that at the moment. I.E- making the gateway seem like the beginning to your adventures coming during his show.

Other works by him:


If There Were Anywhere But Desert, 2000, sculpture using Fibreglass


When the water went south for the winter it carried us down like storm driven gulls, 2003, sculpture using Résine moulée semi-transparente / Semi-transparent molded resin (looks like melting ice!)

and also did anyone go to Romy etc exhibition at the now costume shop in Adelaide Arcade?? I can't remember her name, but this second year art girl did some work which I now know is TOTALLY ripping slash paying homage whatever to this dude!! Check it yo!


All Moments Stop Here and Together We Become Every Memory That Has Ever Been (Edition for Parkett 52), 1998, mixed media

THE END.

LINK

Hey guys,

Polly here, I signed up to this site called design boom, it's cool, they sent me this link to the Frieze Art Fair.. check it out (especially look out for tom friedman's work 'yarn dog' is hilarious!) :

http://www.designboom.com/snapshots/frieze06.html

ps- who's interested in this idea of the an end of year exhibition???

rays extra suplamentary cool images.

www.mocanomi.org.

hey peoples i came across this in a journal and i think its rad.
nice deers.i love deers.
its christian holstad.from an exhibition terms of endearment.
on at moca.(museum contemporay art in miami)anyway just thought i'de share
all this extra journal bits i got floating around.




and this is a funny one......its called "one flew over the void"
by javier tallez.he shoots himself outa a cannon across the mexico/u.s border.
deals with lots of issues,but also very amusing.sorry kinda crap image.

ray tells of one of the greatest recentish film......YOU AND ME AND EVERYONE WE KNOW.

all pics from thecia.com.au

before i start let me just say two things:
1. whats with the newish weird code of distorted letters one must enter to comment?
2. how do you put pictures without them all being in a weird line or on one side or other not how i want things?
okay so i asked two things,but one is retorical.

Frieze(quite like this journal)nov-dec 2005. pg.38-39.
An article about the excellent film "you and me and everyone we know".If you heven't seen it you must go get it,andrew recommended it to me.its about an artist and according to him(i don't know i'm not quite one yet)is the most accurate portrayal.anyway its a really great film,if you like arthouse good ones. theres some great quirky characters like the kid above who is my fave and of course the woman playing the artist is actually an artist and the writer of the film.
Miranda July is a video and performance artist who was fairly successful in the art world and who was accepted into the Sundance screenwriting program for feature films,where where wrote this genius film. there are quite a lot of references to her own art work in the artists story.And there was a lot of focus on her being an artist during all the publicity for the film.
basicly as they said in the article"quirky video artist makes film about quirky video artist" july says its more accessible than her previous work and that she "traded the elitism of the art world for the star system".
Theres some great bits about the art world like when two curators think an artists hamburger wrapper is "ART" until he throws it away. anyway i'm so glad to have found this art-film in a journal so i can tell you all about it and
learn a little more my self.
so go watch it,if you like them emotional,quirky,arty,sensitive and funny you will sooooo love this film.
and its being about an artist makes it even better for us art school types.
enjoy.

THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE CURATOR - The Venice Biennale

Polly: eyeline 52 pg 36, I found a 4 page article on The 50th Venice Biennale, 2003 written by Graham Coulter-Smith who will be refered to as 'Wanker' in my blog. The theme for the 2003 Venice Biennale was 'The Dictatorship of the Viewer', a phrase that highlights the artist/curator/spectator relationship to the work itself. The article is long and alot of it is bollicks but I've picked out some of the cool stuff that was entered into the 2003 Biennale. In the entrance featured the word work of Francesco Bonami and Daniel Birnbaum's, titled; 'Delays and Revolutions', quote from the first bit;

"Art survives as its caricature. Its charm lies in its irrelevance. Everything concerning it is a justification of its gratuitousness. Its arbitrary values confirm the fact that they are vacuous. Art is a circensian mode of expression."

I think it's kinda funny/intriguing that the exhibition is so self-conscious in the theme.. I really like it.. I can certainly relate there! Art and expression is very much about self-questioning and making decisions etc. The piece of work that I couldn't miss (above) was a video of a crowd of naked people having sex, then behind is another crowd of spectators (clothed) who cheered them on at 'climaxes' of the film.. hehe.. wouldn't you love to take your grandparents to see this?!

Anyhoo Wanker talks about all the different medium and highlights from the show. Wanker also has a go at Patricia Piccinini (who's great I reckon!) saying that if she were a man she'd be a multi-millionaire by mass-producing her cuddly creatures. It really aggravated me that Wanker had such a gold intro that talks about artists freedom nowadays in expression.. then he goes on for 3 more pages critising great artwork. It was interesting nevertheless and lead me to check out some really cool international artists.

Lucy McKenzie

Hey there Brad here.

Found an article on Lucy McKenzie in Parkett no76 2006. She's a Scottish artist who focuses mainly on painting, but also indulges in drawings, prints, photographs, performances and videos. What grabbed my attention was her wide array of cultural references.

The painting below is called "The Danger in Jazz". Initially looking like a pretty dull Jazz reference, it's actually drawn from a video still of Lionel Ritchie's performance at the 1984 Olympic games. Wow. Lionel Ritchie eh.

Interestingly enough the 1984 Games was the one in LA that was boycotted by the eastern block, so rather than just being cheesy cheeky 80's nostalgia the painting also deals with the cold war, when both the east and west used pop music and sporting events as staged propoganda.

This then morphs into the above painting "They are lying on their C.V.'s"

I was also struck by this painting of Olga Corbut as my sister used to be a gymnast and i pretty much never heard the end of how excellent this Olga Corbut person was. Well, this painting is based on the moment when she lost. So there Alice. Nice effect tho. Must go to work now.

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/artnow/lucymckenzie/default.shtm

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/lucy_mckenzie.htm

ITS ALMOST CHRISTMAS!!!!

Josie: Hello there angels, how are we all this week? good im hoping. So who's counting down to Christmas already?? ay ay? Christmas and new years are such wicked times of the year, seriously the best stuff happens at that time of the year. its magical. so make your wishes now and i reckon they'l come true by then!! I know alot of you guys have known for a while what sort of art style you each have, but i've been stuck trying to categorize what stuff i like, BUT- i think it just hit me, a mixture between Minimalist (is that how its spelt?!?!) and interaction with people stuff.....so if there is a title for those two put together...that is sik and what category I would be under:):)
This week, again i have discovered a wicked Polish chick- Anna Skibska. Check her out, her stuff is crazy cool. She mainly uses glass to make her installations but sometimes includes drawings. I found an advertisement for her exhibition "No Exit" in the September 2006 Sculpture journal. The picture really caught my eye as there are hanging glass cubes with different lighting effects. Wicked wicked:) Anything with pretty lights for starters are cool as and have really interesting shadows and patterns which I fully get into. I like patterns and shadows. So I looked into Shibska's work a little more and her incorporation of lights to create shadows plays with themes of life and death....darkness and lightness....lights and shadows etc....interesting themes i guess.....but I like the formal aspects more than the theme itself. Anything that hangs....is just cool. How could you not agree. I find things facinating when they are hung, and therefore are rated highly in my books...haha..that sounds dumb haha. If you're into this sort of sculpture, definately look into her. I think I would say she is Minimalist, dont you guys think?
I'll keep looking into her past works and stuff, I like how she mainly uses glass, Im doing glass so I can relate, but it is really time consuming and I could never be a glass artist, so I give her credit for that, because I know I could never have the attention span to sit there melting all those stringers of glass together!!!! haha!
Neway- check it out darlings, have a cool week and relax. i suggest have a bubble bath if any one gets overly stressed, its really relaxing!:)
Ciao!! xx

THINK YOUR HARDCORE? YOU DONT GET MUCH MORE HARDCORE THAN ME AND POSSIBLY THIS DUDE....

sylvia: yeah i said it, but you'se were all thinking it. point being this guy is pretty up there on my hardcore list. he made a face mask ie:



yeaah okay a little bit lame and naff. paper mache mask, totally year three. text? looks like its from a newspaper? yeah okay WHATEVER right? WRONG!



ive told you all before not to fuck with the russians man. they carry around sacks of caviar and have harems of brides ready for you to buy. seriously, theyre hardcore. Anton Terziev basically proves that, and okay he may not be russian but he is their Bulgarian neighbour and he is one of the youngest emerging artists coming out of this place. if i were you, id keep a close eye on him. He majored in ceramics at National Art Academy of Sofia, but at the moment he is doing heaps of painting performace and video. He is really into representing pop culture, and allot of his works make political, religious and connsumerism references. he does this critically which goes beyond the usual pop-art-wank. can i swear this much? point being, in this project he collaborated with some dudes called "Ultrafuturo"who are just into making art a vessel for their opinions.

ANYWAY. he makes this mask right, covers it in text from the new testament, stitches it to his face, and then kneels out the front of this 16th century church in Sofia where the altar is missing. The long nose represents pinnochio. eventually he finds his way out of the temple etc etc mask is removed. to me, being all euro, this is a serious fuck off getsture to the ways of church which is so deepley embedded in that old culture which still has 16th century churches around. it would have been really interesting to see reactions of other people in that town would have commented on the way youth sees the world today etc etc. also i would have felt very very claustrophobic. i dont know what you skips reckon though...

when one of you'se goes past stitching-a-mask-on-to-your-face, ill put you on my hardcore list. (but only below me, because i am number one hardcore)

more pictures
contemporary magazine is where its at yo.

Glenn Brown

By Danielle Fattori

Hi Guys.

I found this pretty cool artist in the journal 'Flash Art' (May/June 2004, Pg 111), Glenn Brown. When I was flicking through the mag these painting automatically grabbed my attention. Although the colours are really strange, the smoothness of the way the paint was applied helps give the images a relaxing, calm feeling. The people in the images look like they are from the late 18 or early 19 hundreds. The way the people are posed for the painting makes me believe they could have been important figures of there time. Anyway regardless of who the paintings are of, I think that they are bloody awesome mainly because the way the paint is applied.

Richard Greaves' "Anarchitect"

Danielle Fattori

If you need a few repairs around the house I think you should get in contact with this fella. he he he.

I found this article on Greaves in Raw Vision (Vol 43, Pg 30) I thought it was pretty crazy and out there so I decided to put it on the blog. This piece was done on his country property in Quebec. I can't believe that Greaves has made this whole house plus many other installations out of crap. The one thing I really love about this artwork is the fact Greaves hasn't really made that much of an effort to make it straight. There's just something that gives you an unease, weird, psychopath vibe. What's even more frightening is that there is apparently 12 of these installations around his property (I feel sorry for his wife). The inside of these installations on the walls are pages from books and pictures of birds. I cant believe that people are actually allowed to walk through them (they have to hoist themselves up to the second floor).

That's it for this blog, have a good one.

Micheal Kutschbach by jock

Micheal Kutchenbach, article by wendy walker. in the easy reading layout of the Contemporary journal.annual 2006 mag #79 ? pg74-75. researching the new project andrew suggested for me to read up on this dude and i did on the net found his hm pg and some really good images and isight into his processes. flickin though some journals i found this article on him so i thouhgt id chuc it up because i really like his stuff. anyway he creates these biometric 3d or 2d shapes (or anthropomorphic blobs) in different media and they kind of have different characters depending on the shape and colours. Really cool colours creating lot of energy. they are really slick and fished well shiny bright all that jazz. the article is good nice and simple not much wank talk just basically describes the work then how it was deveoped- originated from a gestural mark whilst painting with the palm of his hand, little bit about some of his other works and awards etc. short sharp and shiny like his work and the article and the journal.

seen some brighter colours on other works couldn't find the images though bye