Gallery Visits

Gallery Visits

Walker

Tate Liverpool

Bluecoat

All these gallery visits have given me the opportunity to see and learn about new artists and ones that I knew before. Seeing famous works like Lowery's and Dali's has given me more insight into what the course will offer and what the art scene is in Liverpool. Especially the John Moore's painting prize as that showed me that my work was similar to others and that my style is worthy.

Wednesday Visitor - Laura Yulie

Laura Yulie

London based artist, Laura Yulie is originally from Glasgow and she experiments with videography and ready made art. She combines this with disused items such as soap, salt and other discarded household items to give them meaning and a different outlook. She explained her art journey, gaining a BA-hons Fine art in Glasgow and then an MFA at Goldsmiths in London once she had moved there. She has done both exhibitions and commissions outside her residency on the London city island. This was the main influence for her work because it showed a serious issue with new developments in the UK. It is aimed to be the Manhattan island of London and is aimed at multi millionaires. She sees this as an issue due to the housing crisis we currently have in England. Proving demand for the rich above the rest of the population. However, some space has to be allocated by for artists and creative businesses by law. Property developers are fast tracking the process, ignoring the usual gradual route. Studio owners, like Laura, are told by the developers to tidy up if their window is on show to the streets and public spaces because it will put off the investors and millionaires who are the target audience. In response she created "Big wall, little wall",pebble dashed surveillance technology that shows two aspects of a normal city and not the fake, perfect desirable ones they're trying to create. The resources she collects from skips or online cheaply and the pebble dash off the firm that is constructing the City Island project. Showing it frozen in its broken and misused state.   

Another project she created was a film showing the ideal target market for these developments and the contrasting majority of the population. She used the stock video from the City Island project and overlayed her own clips of a heavily tattooed man. This illustrated the opposite to who they're aiming at, even though his appearance can be misleading. In the film she used images of street art that has been commissioned for certain city areas to make them more attractive and seem "edgy and creative" to the younger generations. She believes that this is the wrong use of art and is actually fraud due to the graffiti artists doing it for free, but the developers in a way frame it and take it as their own. 

Carrying on with her style of pebble dashing objects, she worked off the theme of a local standing out from their background. Manikins have changed how the product is communicated through the shop front windows. Just like us through our phones. The last project she explained was how she used fridges and people to show that us humans waste billions in money and food each year due to lack of knowledge and consumerism telling us whats safe and what to buy instead. Overall she helped me as I was in the process of the 3D project where I had to create ready made art. she gave me ideas of what types of objects and materials that can be used. 

  

Wednesday Visitor - Rosa Johan Uddoh

Rosa Johan Uddoh

She experiments within the area of sound work, live performance and sculptures. She explained that she's interested in radical self love through exploring objects.For example, she researched common racist comments that women had to endure, "Black women are made for creating tiles off their thighs", this interested her to explore if it would actually work. She opened up a workshop where women could experience the so called tradition. She got them to lay clay on their thighs and in the drying process talk about their experiences with racism and other common issues. She originally started this off with her mom, but once she knew it worked she expanded the concept to more people to get knowledge of it out into the open. This wasn't the first time she had experimented with clay. Before she has made dinnerware out of her own body and gained response from hosting a dinner party using the dinnerware. She said that this came from the idea of clay being a presence and turning meaningful based off who has owned it previously. The more recent piece of the "Thigh Tiles", gave her physical work and connections through the other women's views. Now all the tiles are displayed on a roof structure, exhibiting it in context of with other artists works themed on race.

Furthermore, she has also delved into live performances. For instance she experimented with pantomime, on the theme of the Windrush Scandal showing depression. A week later, mixed race, Meghan Markle joined the British Royal family which shows progression and inspired Rosa to create more work to gain more recognition for the cause. She also did a performance based of the thought, "Who are we as a couple", she explained that as a child she felt pressured into straightening her afro hair to fit in. To show this to an audience she played the sound of the process to the audience, making a personal experience into one to be shared and recognised by many. Her work shows a reaction towards a cause similar to Montserrat and shows that a powerful subject produces strong work.  

Wednesday Visitor - Chris Alton

Chris Alton

Chris likes to focus on societal concerns and then turns them into pieces to convey the viewers that something should be done or to at least begin discussion about the matter. In the piece," A Hollywood Film in which Climate Change is Averted",shows how Hollywood behaves with the constant depiction of an apocalyptic world in which we have all mistreated our planet.However, in Alton's piece he gives the message that we should be imaging a better future for our race and that if we predict it to be that way we should change that whilst we are able to. Because with the mindset that we cant do anything, nothing will happen. It is always better to be positive about the outcome. If the majority of the population knew that they could make a difference then they would try to save it. This was the message he was getting across with his bold, textile banner that depicted the classic American colours and film sets of Hollywood. He believes this would spark a collective responsibility that can address large scale world issues. This is just one example of his work and many more show political problems especially with the Trump campaign. 

 

Wednesday Visitor - Morten Norbye Halvorsen

Morten Norbye Halvorsen

Based in Norway, he is focused on  sounds as he is a composer and sues this in his practise. He creates his desired atmosphere with the sound and then accompanies that with performances and props to give the audience more clues to what the subject matter is. To begin with he will gather the sound of the space he will be recording in to maximise reality when it is all edited together. For example, he collaborated with 20 artists to perform a verity show that would be the same everyday, but with the mix of having different audiences. This ended up with some of the days being louder, some being less busy and overall a mash up of silence, laughter and applauds. Without visuals it made it seem more abnormal than it would have if we saw the regular audience reaction clips. In the example below it shows his technique of setting up all the equipment days before to get the space sound and then the eventual track of weird fuzziness and airy sounds. Even though this wasn't my favourite style it was interesting to see that more goes into it than just speaking into a microphone. 

   

Wednesday Visitor - Iacopo Seri

Iacopo Seri

This was a very weird and odd lecture to experience and was the first time I had listened to sound art. He began the lecture by not talking English and using a made up language of humming at different pitches to communicate with us and to try to get us to react with similar sounds. As if he was teaching us this new language, we learnt sounds such as clapping, barking, wooing, and other various animal noises that he then later controlled. He did this by projecting a blank sheet and instructing us on what noise to make based of the mark he created on the page. It was impressive how he conveyed everyone to follow his wacky performance and to in the end have a piece the would later exhibit. In the Q and A session afterwards he explained, in English, that it was his first time doing it and wanted to see the results of his experiment. He relies on improvisation and reactions to inspire him to carry on with his performance. For example, someone sneezed through the lecture and he took that sound into consideration with the mark making. It was fun and interesting to see this type of medium, even though it wasn't influencing my own work.

Wednesday Visitor - Jade Montserrat

Jade Montserrat

She explained her work to be about being radical about race, feminism and other leading world problems that we all face today. This meant her work was personal to her and gave her a voice to express her feelings. She created the Holding Space Programme. where she contacted eight artists to create work based on their own concerns. Hers in particular was messages of racial abuse and support against it written in charcoal in huge letters on a vast blank wall that she had to use scaffolding for to reach the top half. She showed us a time lapse of her in progress and she chose to do this one naked as it meant she was in her own skin.

This gave off a strong message, especially at the end of the video when it was all washed off by a white male showing that she and many others fight against racism is pushed aside and forgotten. Her strength and argument of racism is influenced by Josephine Backer, a freedom fighter herself. Her story goes that she migrated to Paris form America due to it offering more freedom and less segregation. I found her work interesting and her presentation engaging to listen to, but not relatable to my own practise.

Mini Degree Show

17th Oct

Mini Degree Show

This is my final  piece from our introduction project of the mini degree. Whereby we had set tasks over four weeks that resembled each year of the course. For example, in the first week we experienced what we will be doing for the rest of the forthcoming year. We experienced life drawing and claimed our studio spaces, with this we had to create art that would correspond with the space we chose. As my desk was positioned in front of one of the big windows out to the rooftop, I decided this was a focus point to base my piece off of. The main viewpoint is the Gothic cathedral and seeing as I've just moved to Liverpool I thought it would be a great idea to show this through the symbol of the Liver Bird. My plan was to have a painted version of the mythical creature on a transparent sheet and in perspective for it to be perched on the cathedral. The overall outcome was successful and truly showed my style of art. The next week we had to experiment more out our comfort zone, so in my case that was to do abstract art. The topic being failure, I took it in art terms of not being allowed to colour outside the lines as a child. To represent this in a simplistic way I painted a black line down the middle and on one side it was all dipping paint kept within the section, until the middle where it spread out to show "failure". I was quite proud of this as it wasn't my area of art, but even though I believed it to be abstract, I was told that it was still controlled by me actually painting the drips perfectly, which I then realised that I do tend to want my work to not be messy. These first few weeks of insight into the course taught me more about my style and how it was quite different to others on the course. In the final year/week we first had a clairvoyant tell us our cards and tried giving us a subject or advice on what to do over the next week based off what she believed are style was. My results came out to be that I plan my works meaning, she told me that instead I should try experimenting more by throwing some paint down and then deciding, from what I can see, what the subject should be. So I went further by also using a medium that I haven't previously seen. By hovering normal wax crayons over a blank canvas and heating them up with a hairdryer they spread and mixing all over the area. I did however choose a colour scheme so that it wouldn't become a mess of colour. The dark reds and blues all came together with highlights of white to resemble a galaxy, in my opinion. So with this now being the set subject I was going to paint a steam punk ship on the waves of the crayon. But after showing my lecturer, he suggested that it was already finished and then looking at it with fresh eyes, it was. Unusual to my style, but I was still proud of it.