a sea of plastic cups

Jessie: Flicking through Art in America, June July 2006, and saw this work by Tara Donovan on page 185. Untitled (Plastic Cups), 2006, is made from thousands of plastic cups (funnily enough) stacked in varying heights to create a rolling landscape inside the gallery. It measures 50 by 60 feet, and 5 feet at its tallest point.

It reminds me of snow on the ground, or clouds as you fly through them. Either way, there is a softness to them, which is not something you would not usually get from plastic cups. The work also seems very fluid, like the surface of the ocean or something, as though its shape could change at any moment. The fact that it won't though, gives the impression that it is caught in time. There is a nice relationship too between this fluid-ness and the the usual function of the material. The work apparantly incorporated light which changed with the differing heights of the cups and the lower stacks gave off a blue-grey light, from the concrete floor. The luminosity was also altered throughout the day, depending on the amount of light that came through the gallery's skylights.
Donovan is known for her use of inexpensive everyday materials, which she uses by the thousands. In the past has also used toothpicks, pins, and paper plates, like the work below. I like the way that she takes ordinary objects and puts them completely out of context, and you really have to think about it to see what the material is. One of the most interesting things I find about these works, is that they invite touch. While looking at lots of examples, I have had an overwhelming desire to reach out and run my hand along the surface. I know that it won't feel anything like I imagine, but I just really want to touch them.




Images from: www.artcritical.com/gelber/images/donovan1.jpg
www.artcal.net/static/artcal-images/0/821.jpeg
mocoloco.com/art/archives/001293.php

~Polly adds a few extra's~

Here's the link to CACSA website and the broadsheet write up by Russell Smith:
http://www.cacsa.org.au/cvapsa/index_frames.html

http://www.cacsa.org.au/cvapsa/2006/6_barbour/img/tricoleur.jpg

Tribute, John Barbour

Polly: I recieved my first Broadsheet in the post and it has been very useful bus reading material.. this morning I was reading Russell Smiths write-up on the exhibition 'Tribute' at the CACSA, that we went to visit during the SALA week. What was intriguing about the article was Smith's experience of Barbour's artworks this time round. The writing ephasises the humour in the work, as a response to the formlessness that Barbour engages. There is continueous reference to the interaction that the work has with human behaviour and the idea of the 'norm'. A power that doesn't need to big, bold, bright works to show it off.. the bare minimal is quite enough. Personally I really aspire to this simplistic approach, that doesn't force the art of the viewer but the viewer forces itself of it. Because the experience of the art is so personal it is like walking into the artists studio (much like the floor work we saw of Barbour's). It's a true winner for me!

Broadsheet v 35, no 3 p171

blu tac shoe

jess hancock: i chose to look at these pieces by tim silver because it is exactly like our project of making objects out of something else. In Untitled(i could stay here), 2004 he made a pair of shoes out of blu tac. When i first saw them they look like cement or something. It also has realliy intimate details such as seam holes and wearing tread on the sole. i wish i had though of it for my project because it seems kind of obvious and would hav been really easy to work with. I also like how he made shoes out of it because they would not be functionable in this material and the would pick up dirt and rocks and stuff and stick to the ground, this could be the reason for the name. In Untitled (outfit), 2004 He has used the same idea creating jeams t-shirt and socks out of silicone rubber. i dont like this one as much because the impact of the unusual matter is not as obvious or interesting, this may be different if you actual saw the piece rather than through a photograph however.art and australia, winter, 2005, page 564

ray thinks you will like Cory Arcangel

hello all, ( pics arn't working i'll try to fix later)
i found an article in Contemporary(my fave journal so far) no.84 2006 on pages 26-29
about Cory Arcangel.Who is a media artist from new york.He's done some very funny things.
the article jumped out at me cause it had these video game kind of pictures instead of the usual art
you tend to see and also when i got the journal there was a bit of card in it with music written on it
called sweet 16 which is said is a simple piece based on the guitar intro from guns and roses sweet child o' mine.
I thought someone had perhaps left it in there till the kind librarian pointed out that it has its edition on the back
and we saw the name cory arcangel signed on it and on the front of the journal.
anyhow i didn't even think of that when i came across the article but it all goes together so nicely.
if only i could keep it.wooo-hoooo a real art work for moi.
So back to mr.arcangel........... well he works a lot with video games,nintendo mainly and has made a re-made a game where you shoot mass culture icons called" I shot andy warhol"."Nintendo clouds" where he took out everything from super mario brothers except the clouds and some sneeky bit where he put the chip back into the original game i think.And "super slow tetris" which goes you guessed it super slow.He likes the idea of hacking into things, and antagonizing people with endurance(partly because he's a gittery nervous person)And working with obsolete things like super nintendo because in his field of media things keep frustratingly changing but these old obsolete ones don't because they are already obsolete so they will never change. Speaking of endurance i also found out on the web he made a video called "Colours" that is a 33 day long version of 1998 dennis hopper film colours. He also loves obsessive fan websites and he made a performance piece where he showed a dvd of a simon and garfunkle concert and slowed down and focused on the crazed fans.He seems to love simon and garfunkle because he did another funny one where he time coded all the spots where you could read tension between them.among others.I found a lot more about him on the net,the article didn't say too much more of an interview but a good one at that.he's interesting in a current,funny, non wanky way. Theres probably lots more i could say but you can check it out yourselves on his weblog at www.beigerecords.com/cory. he's also part of a few groups one being beige who do this sort of work. I will leave you with what i think is the funniest piece i found its called "doogle.com" and it was a google hack that looks just like google but would only return information on doogie howser md. please tell me you remember that show.
pure brilliance............................

fucking around with video

jock walker

this article from Flash Art, vol xxxvI no.228 feb 2003 Fucking Around With Video pg84- was about two artists workin with video- Monica Bonvicini and Anna Jermolaewa, comparing their video works relating too sex.

OK ha couldn't find any pictures of these video stills on the net so i made a detailed interpretation of them on highly advanced program called paint. This video installation was called, Blumenbeeet, by Anna Jermolaewa 2002

looking through flash art there was alot of good article to choose from the reason i choose this one was because it looked funny there fore attacted my attention hence has been put in blog. the article explained a fair few of both anna and monicas work, another that sounded pretty good was called on\off 1999 by anna the screen is black an erect penis switches a light on then retracts, coming bak again to switch the light off 15min cycle, and Monicas, Fuckin1995 about a girl touchin herself. My fav a little red toy car navagating its way around the curves of awomans body. I know the magazine stills, reviews and my explainations definately dont do these art works justise but it seems these works attact ur attention because of the wow but then dont make a last impact because there is no much more too them.

Maria Marshall

Gemma:
I found an article on Maria Marshall in a video special of contemporary (issue 71 2005). It was a still from one of her films called "when I grow up I want to be a cooker" that caught my eye. It's of a young child (marshall's own) staring into the camera while smoking a cigarette. The aesthetics are beautiful but evokes an extremely uncomfortable feeling. The article also looks at " Put Medication in his pocket", a film she made a year later in a similar style which featured the same boy eating an oyster "sensually". Together these two films talk of the artists view as a mother and her paranoia about her sons future. There is a sense of danger and wrongness to it all, maybe more so in the second film which not only indicates the future but also the idea of children and sex as she uses a widely assumed aphrodisiac in a way which matches the connotation.

"When I Grow Up I Want to be a Cooker""Put Medication In His Pocket"

Another featured work was "When are we there?" which features herself with her skin creeping and moving while she remains completely passive. This film is linked to the feeling of violation Marshall talks about having while pregnant.

Other works included featured a trip to disney land and a Clint Eastwood influenced transition of boy to man.

I think Marshall creates very human works and I think it's this quality that makes them so appealing to me.

Dannii: Backdoor Man

i found this crazy artical in an artform magazine about Larry Clark's 'Impaled' work, which is "art porn". he got all these ordinary guys to audition for the porno and tell him what their sexual fantacies were and their sexual experiences and so on.. these auditions were a response to an add that said "help wanted... there will be sex with a real hot porno girl, but it is more then that". mmm righto...

Fresh: 6th generation chinese video artists

i thought this was pretty funny. grabed my attention. theres so much good stuff its a shame but it seems to b that the immediately striking, bold, confronting, rude and in your face art that gets picked. fast art as in fast food art. if its an average of 3 seconds of viewing time of an art work in a gallery then i reakon its an average of 1.3 seconds in an art journal im sure there were heaps of other works in this mag i would have liked more had i had the luxury of watching the film or walking around the instillation but i picked this . i like it, its nice and shiny and red. most of all it made me laugh without reading into it too much. unfortunatley i couldnt find it on te web. The article by Alexandra Chang, discusses the recent bombardment of chinese film onto the world sceen. Lots of weird wacky zainy stuff. check out Art asia pacific summer 2004 no.41 p.58-62 for heaps of names of cool chinese video artists. c u

THE BURNING MAN PROJECT- RUBBER HORSES!!

Josie: Howdy everyone!The best thing for a big night out is vegemite on hot toast with peppermint tea....mmm....I feel like shit...but here goes.....

I found the absolutely most coolest thing eva! Really! I don't think you all will need much or any convincing once you've seen these pictures...Are the awesome or what? So I was flickering through the Art In America journal, june/july no. 6 2006, page 112 and came across this thingcalled RUBBER HORSES by Dorothy Trojanowski. I looked more into it and there is a festival called the "Burning Man Project". It is really really bizarre, people go to this place in America called Black Rock Desert for one week and live as a community, I think it is sort of like a game and everyone is a player, and they all make crazy installtions and dress up in funny costumes. It isn't a big party or anything, but there is some absolutely wicked stuff made here.

"Burning Man is an annual art festival and temporary community based on radical self expression and self-reliance in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada"...(google search)

So Dorothy Trojanowski of Brooklyn, created these horse sculptures made from rubber...(hence the name duh)....and steel. They're in the middle of the desert and I think just look amazing! You know like they look so wild and free and they're massive! So in the evening shadows would be made of these huge horses.....I really love it.

I've tried attatching some pictures of other artists work from the event as well as the attatchment link to the burning man site....for some stupid reason the computer would only let me upload one image- not the 3 that I wanted to, but I really would say to cheak it out guys, some of the stuff is really cool and extremely unique. There is alot of stuff with metal and fire that is burnt at nighttime to make it red like the desert, you will see what I mean if you see it!

(www.burningman.com/)- images also referenced from here- Iv forgotten that part before..

Love yous all xx