Adam Carr
Curator, Writer and Lecturer
For Carr his art practise is a blend between art and curating. He likes to question what constitutes an art exhibition and the social aspect of them creating norms and stereotypes for the art world. Recently he has worked with a young artist, called Caine, famous for his arcade built solely out of cardboard and found recycled items that as a child brought him hours of fun making, engineering and creating these intricate arcade machines for him and the local area to play. This act of kindness and the impressive innovation of this arcade from such a young boy gained attention. This is what another artist wanted to recreate in a more professional standard to showcase the possibility of using recycled materials and some imagination. Carr's role is to recreate the atmosphere, homemade and sweet aspect of the original but to showcase and select how to show off the skills and methods used in the pieces more as art than for practicality. This is the blend that he speaks about when performing curator-ship as an art practise because its his role to get the message of the pieces across in one show. I connected to the way he spoke about his use of graphic design in the marketing of his shows as art too because I also agree with how commercial design can be art that is more likely to be seen by more audience than your typical art exhibition. This encourages me to still use illustrations in my work as it keep my skill level and in future will allow me to use designs in commercial companies that to my opinion will be seen and read by more people than my work would in a gallery space. Carr also has a style to most of his shows that connects them with a theme and allows his shows to be recognisable as not just the artist's work but the curators too.
Carr's first hit show involved a clever and more practical way of making a collaborative exhibition. Entitled,"Post It",the show began with Carr sending out just the average sticky back notes too several well known artists for them to create some art upon and then send back to him for the show. This simple, yet clever idea meant it got rid of extortionate costs of shipping art from all over the world to a minimal postage due to the size of the 'canvas' they were given. This freedom too for the artists meant that Carr was offered a wide array of pieces that gave me a good impression that the works size doesn't mean it is better or more impressive in any other way, it is more about the content and message that the piece is getting across. The way Carr displayed this show was creative in that he chose the office space above the intended gallery because it made more sense for the post it notes to be in their natural environment stuck to windows, desks, doors and the kitchens of these used office spaces that when the audience attended gave a more authentic appeal than the blankness of the white wall. This connects back to my own practise in that my work often is based off the location it will be placed in. The surroundings give more story telling elements to the piece and allow for viewers with little art knowledge to understand in more detail without having to read about the description, its an aid to help them create their own interpretation of it.
Peter Appleton
Appleton has had many years of experience developing and understanding his practise. Mainly working with the medium of sound he creates sculptures that use the natural elements to make very alien like sounds. This passion developed from his youth being introduced to new industries such as oil rigs. These huge structures contrasting the natural seas surrounding them interested Appleton. With further research he started to observe the sounds the these beasts created, mechanical bangs and crashes, the wind passing through all the pipes and the fluidity of the oil being dragged up from the depths. This research is similar to my own whereby observing new and perplexing environments gives us inspiration. For example, just my new location of moving to Liverpool got me interested in the history of the place that I knew nothing about, but slowly developed knowledge that later turned into my final piece of the year. Using this Appleton started to create work on beaches and vast planes of land that gathered the wind and different weather conditions for him to experiment with. He quickly began to create a dictionary as such of noises made by different arrangements of materials and conditions. This gives the impression that he really focused on one piece at a time, to truly master it. he could of simply banged a few pieces of metal, however upon the use of wind and vibrations he found that the metals forms would give him different pitches of sounds. This later inspired some of his well known pieces that are both sculpture and instruments. this interaction with the audience connects to my work and upon the reaction of his pieces I have decided that the element of sound would help to give another dimension to my installations and would link it more to the theatre aspect of my practise. The piece that resonated most with my practise, pictured above, The link between two cathedrals shows both a well developed piece but also simplicity. It used the beam from a laser to transfer one signal of sound coming from the metropolitan cathedral to the anglican cathedral with it being echoed across the vast space. The laser that travels from the one to the other is on such a large scale that it becomes impressive on its own, its simple yet unusual because it's not something the public would normally witness. However the mechanics behind it show such precision and years of developing just to get to this moment. I like the fact that the more you research into this piece it becomes more mesmerising and less simple from what you originally view. This is what I aim in my pieces that on further inspection the brush strokes reveal and the time it took on the work becomes more aware and therefore more impressive. Another of his works, Shangpool 2010, also connects to my practise and reminded me of what my intentions of the installations are. This piece involved a collaboration of him and a group of IT technicians that helped him to create a virtual experience of riding a canoe in the peaceful Sefton park. This was exhibitioned both in the university and in our partner shanghai university. This ritual experience allowed for them to get a feel of what ur natural landscapes are like compared to there own and it connected them both by experiencing the same activity and emotions at the same time, place but thousands of miles alway from one another. I like the idea of art connecting these two far apart cultures in an activity that is similar to both. This for me is the reason in art and how it can start and connect people through topics and conversations that I'm sure happened on the night of the exhibit because it is works like this that spark these emotions and questions of how was it achieved etc. This would be ideal for my own practise as the idea of set design is to hide how it was made, the behind the scenes and construction of the sets, however I see that part of it to be more interesting sometimes than the perfection on the other side. Appleton work inspires me to show these aspects like he had by showing the mechanics of his instruments and all the technology behind the pieces that later interest people more after the small performance beforehand.
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