have you heard of...cerith wyn evans??

we hear artists being refered to one another all the time and here is yet another examply. when i found wyn evans text piece '...in which something happens all over again for the very first time.' in this septembers, frieze magazine i couldn't help think of one of my fav's martin creed. which i guess is a compliment to my new discovery of wyn evans works.

reading about some of his work was very interesting indeed. to quote;

"wyn evans readily abmits that intextuality structures his endeavour: the author, or by extension the artist, does not originate a text but orchestrates what has already been written."

i think this is an essential tool for artists, god knows we've heard andrew say it enough; 'you can rip off any artist, as long you do it bigger and better then them.'well wyn evans is consumed with language and the use of it in literature. using refernce to the works of; j.g. ballard, judith butler, william s. burroughs, brion gysin and guy debord. frieze featured the picture above (which could be a bit small sorry) the text is hung from a wall, and serves as a title for the eiffel tower which peeks over the rooftop (actually outside the exhibition centre, ARC, in paris). in all his work he seems to play a game with his audience with words, these references are sometimes hidden but always present.

Brad on contemporary art's engagement with music

Hey people

Found an article in Frieze that discussed whether contemporary art's engagement with music could be more adventurous. It's an interesting question, and I kind of wish that this article was a bit more adventurous in itself.

Basically the article says that at present most contemporary visual art limits itself to utilising and/or responding to Pop music. This is because Pop music itself has it's own unique visual signifiers that seem to work pretty well if you want to express certain sociological phenomena. Say if a visual artist uses something related to the Ramones/Iggy Pop/other punk pioneers, or pure pop icons like Madonna, they're using references that are pre-packaged and easy to decipher. The values that these musos represent are well established and not too ambiguous. This might work really well depending on the individual piece, but it does mean that the relationship between music and visual art ends up being limited to Pop culture (or Sub-Pop culture) references.

Following this the article goes on to say how music and visual art used to be linked more directly via theatre etc and also mentions links between John Cage (muso) and Robert Rauschenberg in the 60's. Beyond this the article kind of fades out with a few brief mentions of current collaborations between musos and visual art.

So what do I think? Well, I reckon that using music as a pop culture reference can be really good, but it perhaps risks being a bit obvious. At the same time collaborations between visual artists and musos (using original music) can run the risk of being a bit wanky, and in themselves seem to be often limited to musos playing live soundtracks to visuals (although I've seen a couple of excellent examples of this). I think that what this article is trying to get at is that maybe there should be greater exploration into how visual art and music can be combined in an original way, rather than falling back on to already established modes of operation.....

Glad I got that off my chest..

henrys blog

Magical Ice Creatures..........

Josie: hello hello- me again...just thought id post some pics from mine and andrius sculpture....their makeup looks pretty cool....mmm.maybe i should be a makeup artist instead..??hehe..jokes... xx

SOOK JIN JO

Josie: Aloha y'all!!Bring on summer..hehehehe....man i wish i was moving to Hawaii for Summer- but instead...guess whos off to Italy and greece?!?!?!Oooh yea! so.... today was so tiring, kinda glad its over...

Heres my blog for the week.. artist named Sook Jin Jo who did a work called Isan in India. It mixes an environmental sculpture with a meditation space meant to uplift the spirit and heart. Article from Sculpture july/august vol.25 no.6, page 20. Its real inspiring and jumped out compared to some of the other srticles. Im interested in architecture somewhat, and she worked with a landscape architect to help develop this obscure space into a sculpture. Her inspirations were from temples and museums to incorpoartate history into her piece...(research helps ay ay???;)..)

So its made from bamboo and brick as materials used for traditional architecture. There are bells inside the sculpture which when blown adds sound. Lighting is also crutial as different lights create different shadows- therefore different moods. I think its pretty wicked, like pretty chilled out sorta piece, relaxing and looks calm and pretty spiritual. Overal, Isan combines innner and outer space, spiritualism, architecture...all nice and elegantly....more looking into her work wood be good i reckon. Very soft, subtle sort of artist me thinks..

Have a siiik week everyone. Make the most of this wicked sun!!
Lotsa love from Josie!! xx

Image from: http://www.sculpture.org/portfolio/sculpture_info.php?sculpture_id=1005176

Candy from a baby artist sparks controversy / NEWS.com.au

From Lilianna

NEWS.com.au

Candy from a baby artist sparks controversy


I am interested in other peoples' responses to the work of the US based photographer artist Jill Greenberg. She was inspired by a boy who during a series of photographic shoots couldn't stop crying.
The project she undertook was about snapping the tearful responses of the 27 young children after first giving them a lollipop and then suddenly taking it away. The purpose was to achieve a very honest reaction - which in this case was tears. The photographs were shown on the Internet on the photographer's website. It has been inundated up to 60,000 hits a day and the cause of controversial reaction among viewers.
Jill Greenberg has been called a child abuser by some and even a criminal by others. However, the artist is paid around $6,000 for each photograph and as a result is not upset by a controversy at all.

Flash Art, May-June 2006, by Lilianna

From Lilianna

Flash Art International May-June 2006

Another project that I have found inspiring.

In Warsaw, Poland the artist Aneta Grzeszykowska is displaying a series of photographs that do not differ from the common portraits of people usually used for passports or other documents for identification. Interesting is the fact that viewers automatically try to determine the identity of the person in the picture on the basis of the subject's external appearance. At the end the viewer is advised that the persons in the photograph are non-existent. They are in fact Photoshop creations and the viewers become very disappointed. It is interesting how society reacts in different situations and how easily we invest our energy into a sense that everything around us is rational. The article is in the REVIEWS section by Adam Mazur.

rays got the "General Idea"

image from home:atti.net
Called one day of azt(big pills) and one year of azt(little pills)

Sculpture journal,June 2006.
I came across this cool picture of giant pills and tons of little ones as you can see.
This is part of an exhibition of "General idea" which is three guys AA Bronson,Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal from Canada that lived and worked together for 25 years till two of them died of aids,they started in 1969 and went till 1994.The last one Bronson continues to work on his own still.
Their work was often about homosexuality and aids,dealing with aids like these pills(,azt being aids medication),which they started using quite a bit after the two were diagnosed and taking medication.they aparently used poodles a lot as well.Theres a lot of interesting stuff about them on the net and they did a lot of work over their 25 years together,being early masters of mixed media.This exhibition in Pitsburg at the Andy Warhol gallery was the first comprehensive show of their works, and from the sounds of it there was a lot of it.They used popular culture,kitch and modernism to deal with some pretty hefty,grave issues.
Interesting that they lived and worked together too. check them out if you get the chance..................