CRIT, Thurs 21/3/13

NOTES

• Body as object
• Body as performance
• Common thread at this stage = PROVISIONALITY
• Can you apply this to performance?
• Provisional Painting article - re read
• ARTIST - John Reynolds
• Failure - of the practical elements. All work stands on the brink of failure
• Colour - relation to surrounding architecture outside. Texture, colour, concrete
• Orange - monochromatic plane that screams painting! Doesn't distract though, touches in and out
• Relationship between formal elements of materials - sharp edges of wood v's softness of clay
• Stick - measuring hight - body relationship
• Line on floor - conscious decision? = SITE RESPONSIVE/ SITE SPECIFIC
• Drawings - not big connecting between work and drawings
• Light - how it interacts with my work

Things to take and work through next.....

I flit in and out of using paint with a painting context. Last year I wanted to pull my practice back a little closer to painting, through monochromatic colour fields. So this year I want to figure out wether or not I want a conversation about painting as a trajectory in my practice.

Think through different ways to think about provisionality and failure.

Site specific and site responsive work.

Three Drawings, (21/03/2013), found wood, rubber bands.

Staying Orange, (21/03/2013), found wood, blue rope, acrylic paint, plaster.

Standing post, (21/03/2013), found wood, clay.

Gedi Sibony

        

Known for his sculptures and installations, which incorporate discarded materials and thrift store finds, turning them into poetic and harmonized assemblages. 'The works are fastidiously crafted, and not without humor; a 2008 sculpture in wood and colored light bears the title Its Origins Justify its Oranges.
When A.i.A. asked him about the exhibition's title, assuming there was a literary source, Sibony hesitated. "The source? The amazing . . . mind . . . word . . . jumbling . . . process," he said, breaking into a high-pitched laugh.'
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/news/2012-04-10/gedi-sibony-pulitzer/

I watched Sibony talk about his work in youtube video 'Framing Sculpture: Gedi Sibony' (where key contemporary artists are asked what sculpture is to them) and 'Chief Curator talks about the work of Gedi Sibony' (Curator talks about Sibonys' work).
I have struggles trying to pin down how I think about my practice and why I see myself as a painter when I very rearly will pick up paint and a brush. I found the way Sibony talks about his wasy of thinking about sculpture and his practice very helpful to my own thinking.
There is a gentlness and an awareness surrounding his objects and he talks about how he 'catches them as they come through and just gently turning them over. Placing them.' By going with what is there with the object already and not trying to force anything, lessening the pressure to produce.
He reuses and re-sieves objects, breathing them a new way to be in the world without covering up what they were.
Sibony also talked about details that function to absorb attention, to keep people moving around the room/space.

Saving cast away objects and pulling them back to life; said objects keep their marks which hold their testiments to their previous uses.
Humor serves as an element to Sibonys work, while being gracefully mundane, the viewer could be being asked to take a piece of carpet very seriously, so viewers need to remember to laugh.

"It is tempting at first glance to consider the work in terms of Minimalism. Industrial materials and a reductive appearance aside, however, Sibony’s work isn’t cold or monotonous. His materials have been lived with. The surfaces are not fussy, but worn. Because there is a distinctly narrative, romantic quality to these objects, a more apt comparison that suggests itself is with the artists of the Arte Povera movement, who employed everyday materials in a humble condition. And yet, Sibony’s show manages to feel simultaneously anachronistic and extremely contemporary making us less inclined to question the artists’ placement in art history, and more free to enjoy the simplicity and poetry in his arrangements." http://www.artcritical.com/2010/12/15/gedi-sibony/

Link to interview between Zak Kitnick and Gedi Sibony on IDIOM called 'the truest that i have: Interview with Gedi Sibony', October 20 2010.

Contextual Statement as of Year 2

“A human body grasping at its limit of potentiality is typically understood within the domain/dialectic of sport. To excel athletically, a body must suspend its tendency to be slippery, chaotic and imprecise. It is a technical challenge that sporting excellence is usually framed by both the amplification and the reduction of ways a body may move through space.” ¹

A passion for sport and fitness has merged its way into my multi-disciplined

art practice which - like sport - allows for play, experimentation and failure.

The body’s boundaries are pushed physically, through both sport, and within my art practice, by advancing on the limitations of my materials. This may equate to failure in myself or in the materials. Because of this, play becomes a very important way to create.

I am interested in investigating into material activation and tension, questioning how these concepts play into action.  An exploration into a potential for movement within stasis results in a provisional engagement with my materials.²

This provision adds to the conversations between the materials and the spaces I place them into. My practise also borders the boundaries of precision and temporality through the use of gravity and makeshift support structures.

Physical co-dependence is something that I create between objects, or between objects and body. I enjoy the honest relationship that occurs between elements. Without one, the other cannot be.

¹ http://www.laresakosloff.com/text.html#art1

² The possibility to create potential for movement within stasis. Stasis being defined as: A state of stability, in which all forces are equal and opposing, therefore they cancel out each other -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis

Link to ACCESS - an interactive art installation by Marie Sester

Just came across this video on youtube while thinking about how my final work (photos up soon) ended up becoming quite interactive... not what I intended but what can you do. I hadn't expected people to walk over my work, but when I got to the opening I saw footprints all over the piece of wood on the floor. And by standing on it, the whole work was falling down and breaking the painted clay weight. I heard that this happened over and over again during the opening and people then set it back up the best they could. I wish I could have witnessed someone doing it, would have been amusing. 
So final work wasn't something that I was that pleased with but ended up having funny interactions with some of its inquisitive or oblivious viewers.

In the clip linked above there is a comedic element to the voice and the effect it has on the people in the space. Some try to out run it, jump out of it or a pair danced in it.

Bruce Nauman - 'Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square' (1967-1968) and 'Art Make-up' (1967)

Watching some of Bruce Nauman's video works on youtube, I came across his 'Art Make-up' (1967) video and was able to sit and watch the whole ten minutes of it. 
It is an beautiful video to watch and it makes you so aware of his own body and its movements. It just allows you to watch him without feeling the need to look away, that it is ok to watch this even though it is semi personal.

Nauman's 'Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square' (1967-1968) was shown to me by Andy. I had been to scared to attempt any type of performance art because  in my mind it was done in front of an audience, the artist/performer made somewhat of a spectacle of themselves and above that there are so many contexts and so much history to performance art that I felt a little overwhelmed. Felt like to much to tackle. But the simplicity, the fact that 'Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square' (1967-1968) is made for the artist him self and is not trying to shout some sort of statement to it's viewers; made performance art a lot less scary!

Link to Bruce Nauman 'Art Make-up' (1967)

Link to Bruce Nauman 'Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square' (1967-1968)

Laresa Kosloff quote

"A human body grasping at its limit of potentiality is typically understood within the domain/dialectic of sport. To excel athletically, a body must suspend its tendency to be slippery, chaotic and imprecise. It is a technical challenge that sporting excellence is usually framed by both the amplification and the reduction of ways a body may move through space." 

(http://www.laresakosloff.com/text.html - Art #1, Wangaratta Exhibitions Gallery, Victoria 2010, Curated by Hannah Mathews , Catalogue essay: Olivia Barrett)

I like and connect with this quote in respect to my practice. It sums up the things that i'm interested in, both inside of my studio practice and in my job and life outside of uni. It connects with my job and training as a gym instructor, with my passion for sports - at the moment triathlon and the ways in which I like to interact with materials. 
I used this quote to start off my contextual statement as a way in to my own work.

Gabriel Kuri

Classical Symmetry, Historical Data, Subjective Judgement

01 March – 26 May 2012
4 New Burlington Place, W1