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

CELESTE JULIET ON DAVID ROSETZKY

I hope no one else has covered this guy...

he featured in an article responding to an essay published in an early issue of the journal (this article was in Artlink: vol 26, no 1 2006) and the image that I really liked was by david rosetzky. A lot of his work seems to be images of physical collage. For example, he may take a photo, print it and work it into or work into it with it's surroundings. I find this particularly interesting. He has also done a lot of video work in which his characters act in a similar way, they are worked into the surroundings, they are confinding are emotionally responsive in a space, spitting (in a way) their emotion into an area, it is hard for me to describe, you might 'get it' if you think back to the video installation during the festival of arts at the beginning of the year, I'm pretty sure that his work was the video installation with two characters in the video fading in and out, mindlessly talking emotively...

Anyway, that was his. It was called David Rosetzky Maniac De Luxe, a 2 channel DVD which went for 14min 32 sec. here's a small reminder:



also some other works not on video of his include


Commune 2003, type C photograph, composition board, flexible lighting product

The image I liked (from thIS ARTLINK) was called 'Self Defence (Sarah)', I couldn't find any images of it. like the above image it was a thick image of a pale girl near a small television. her image was pierced ith holes and through them delicately carved and placed branches poked through, as she sat amongst them. It is beautiful...

RAW VISION #46 2004- CELESTE J.A

RAW VISION #46 2004

I had to put this in because I remember mentioning this artist in Foundation studies and then I never brought any of his work in. The article was about American 'Outsider' art and the American Outsider Art Fair. This is a field occupied by people who are self taught, who aren't educated in art but somehow stumbled into the art world. Also 'Outsider' art seems to have a real folky feel to it. The artist mentioned in this that I mentioned back in the day was Joe Coleman. His work is very descriptive combining text and painting to create descriptive illustrative stories. Quite often he paints narratives of serial killers, or other outrageous and elaborate people which might be involved in his life (he's really really weird, when he got married his wife wore a mermaids tale and shells glued over her nipples, she's also got 'fangs' implanted in her mouth, he's much the same).

Some of his works:





and this is him. HE'S WEIRD...

Art in America, January 2006- CELESTE J. A

Art in America, January 2006
Although usually I don't enjoy this journal very much (it is riddled with stuff about boring artists and overloaded with ads, also too much writing vs. not enough images) i did flick through and see works by a few artists I found intersting...

Firstly Anne Cheung's "Small Stacks" which were just sand and glue but stacks and stacks and stacks of piles of it. So... imagine (because there aren't any images on the internet) she lays out (possibly this is how it could be done) a sheet of gladwrap and covers it with glue then covers that with sand (sounds pretty average...) but she must've made hundreds upon hundreds of these sheets and then she's stacked them at various heights, enough to almost fill a whole small room! pretty intersting.

Secondly Maiko Sugano. WHAT'S A LITTLE STRANGE IS THIS ARTIST STATEMENT I FOUND: " I hold on to feelings by carving soaps, as though keeping a diary. Each soap piece lets me recall and remember the day of its making. The feelings build a city with my experiences housed within." (http://www.thecentreofattention.org/exhibitions/sfsugano.html) Golly, it's like he's in our class or something. The little soap carvings-



However, the image that caught my eye was called 'jewelery holder mountain' and was carved from redwood. I couldn't source an image of this from the net. It was in the shape of a mountain, very smooth redwood with pointed ends jutting up and down. Bit designy. She has done some other carved stuff including:


"tree"

THE END. BY CELESTE.

Ai Yamaguchi - Celeste J Aldahn

issue 81, Contemporary, 2006

The image that interested me was only small and featured as a 'highlight' from the Singapore "biennial" Art Show. The image is Ai Yamaguchi. Her illustrations are very delicate and feminine. A bit boring, some might say, but I really like her oriental style and ladies depicted. So I am sharing... Alledgedly she has created this imaginary world- Yukaku, from which she draws her characters from.


some of her works...


...which is actually apart of an installted illustration...



Aokumo, Ai Yamaguchi 2003, lithograph (ed, 51-60/60)

THE END. BY CELESTE.

15th Biennale of Sydney: Zones of Contact

Alix:
Not a review of the WHOLE exhibition. Again just something that stood out too me. Thats what this blogging things all about right?

So I was flicking through Art Monthly and in it's summary of exhibitions that were on at the time I came across 15th Biennale of Sydney in huge bold letters, which already got me reading further. That was until I saw the work of Aei Weiwei. I thought the way this Asian man was feeling these layers of fabric was a bit strange. They didn't really look like anything at all. Just like scraps of fabric used in possibly the mass production of t-shirts and pants. Nope. I was pretty wrong.

Intrigued by this image I decided to find out what the title was. It could give me an insight into what Weiwei was thinking about when he decided to go down this path. The title of the piece is called "World Map". And suddenly the image was no longer rougly cut out layers of fabric. But it was a map of the world. The layering intended to give it the illusion of the coast lines. He has cut out each country/continent in huge detail. It's exactly how you would picture it in an atlas.

Weiwei's work hints at Chinas mass production of clothing for it's own people and to the world. Using fabric instead of another material puts this message across succesfully, and also looks sort of comftable. I wouldn't wear it.But depending how big the continent of Africa is.. I might just sleep on it.

(Art Monthly, Jul-Aug 06
Page 24-25)

(again I couldn't find a picture of this on the net)

yang fudong: as brought to you by ray

all images from.............. china.shanghartgallery.com ( this web site has lots about Fudong)
Article of choice from.......Parkett no.76 2006 pages 64-103

Sometimes its so difficult to find a journal article I really can relate to and enjoy.I have been trying to look at each one but some are such hard reading,wordy overly intellectualized the art while not really even telling me what's its about in content and form basics of the artist,how they work and other things I would find interesting. Parkett I would say is very into a lot of talk and I looked through so many to find something which looked interesting to me in a sculptural way, but I didn't get the write up i would like to be able to be excited about what i saw because i still don't really understand a lot about this artist even after reading many pages, i only understand what the people writing the articles think about it........Anyway that's my journal frustration experience and now here is the artist..................

Yang Fudong is a 34 year old artist from Shanghai china who does mainly video and photography work after starting as a painter. the article(s) mainly talk about the videos will try to briefly explain what I can of him from what I read and I hope i give the good info in a readable hmmm way.He has done so many videos/films,14 i think but perhaps more and they all sound really interesting. they feature common themes flowing through them like the sky,chinese culture,chinese fables,taoism,and the same story with different endings and possibilities.I actually came across some pictures of his work when researching the group project. Many of the videos are shown on many screens with different parts or outcomes on each and some with the screens in seperate rooms.They sound like they would be very impressive to see.They are called abstract films but seem to have a sort of
story or narrative. they look like they are really high production value well made beautifully crafted films that deal with interesting and thought provoking human subject matter.Emotions and sensations,intuition and practice.Sexual desire,food death, argument and essentially life are all in the context of his work.And taoism plays a very big role.His films are expressions of his personal history and experience,the connection between self and society/reality and the vulnerability and hope of dreaming.

Fudong came up with the term abstract cinema for his work and his description of it probably best sums up his works....
"the techniques for abstract cinema do not follow certain rules, they are broader than the traditional principles.In any case abstract cinema is different from realistic cinema,to me abstract cinema is about the images of ideas deep in peoples hearts and minds,it is like some non-describable collision in ones heart." which i think is really,really beautiful and makes me a little emotional.I would really love to see these works. they sound quite amazing.
i just found another beautiful thing he said(about the differernce between films and instillations as forms of expression)
"Every form of artistic expression comes to the same conclusion.They are like nets cast into the deep blue sea,waiting for the moment when the fish come in" wow.he said a lot of really beautiful things but this is getting long.touching stuff.

I guess the great thing about journals is no matter how disapointing the read may be they still peak your interest and curiosity to find out more about the artists which i shall thank them for......thank you journals!
and i hope i have done the same and not just been like a bad journal boring you silly...............and leaving out the good bits.


p.s i also just realised that usually i'm too rushed or the articles too wordy to get straight in but after a while something seeps out into your brain and sticks,nice one.

Pierre Huyghe - Tate Modern

Polly: I found this image of Pierre, a French artists, works in the exhibition review section of Art Monthly 9.06. The piece that was featured is a puppet dude titled 'This is not a Time for Dreaming' (2004) which was a part of his recently ended exhibition in the Tate. I figure that anyone who exhibits in the Tate has got to be pretty bloody good. It sounded that way in the review too. The exhibition room, 'Celebration Park' including paper/poster works that sprung a bit of contravercy after Liam Gillick claimed that Huyghe had stolen his idea with his 'One Year Celebration' piece that featured a text proposal by different artists. For example, Anton Vidokle suggests we celebration the exact moment when George W Bush leaves office.

In the opening room of the show is a really cool piece, which had neon text spelling out 'I do not own Snow White', 'I do not own 4'33' and 'I do not own Modern Times'. All these are symbols from pop culture. As a general rule Huyghe aims to 'make a better world'.. (i know sounds soo cliché) but his work is also richly absurdist and bound by visual detail and imagination.

I also found out that he had created a fictional character/alter-ego, Ann Lee, who has featured in poster and video works.