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.