20 Years of Dazed & Confused

http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/dazed-and-confused-mag

Worth seeing if you're a fan of Dazed & Confused Magazine, actually it's worth a visit even if you aren't familiar with the magazine.

Grayson Perry at the British Museum

A must see exhibition! The only thing I was ever so slightly disappointed by was the fact that it wasn't Alan Measles himself sitting on his throne. Then again, if I was Grayson Perry I wouldn't want to leave him there either, even if it is in the British Museum.

Alexandra Bircken at the Saatchi Gallery

What I find most interesting about Bircken's work is how wide the variety of materials she uses is. They range from aluminium for the frames, pieces of food, stone slices, acrylic paint and branches. They're visually interesting to look at both from further away because of the shapes that are created but also closer up as you begin to realise exactly what it is that you're looking at.

Gert and Uwe Tobias

Untitled 2007, Coloured woodcut on papers mounted on canvas

I wasn't expecting to like the the pieces by the Tobias twins in the Saatchi Gallery, but I do have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by their work. I think it's the almost child-like nature of the paintings that I find attractive as well as their graphic boldness and the use of block primary colours. It's not a style I'd consider using myself nor are they pieces I'd want displayed in my home but I do actually like something about them.  

Who Me? by Jennifer Allen - Frieze

I'm not going to pretend that when I first read the article named Who Me? that I understood it in its entirety. I found it particularly hard to read for the first few paragraphs mainly down to, what I would say is, an overuse of jargon and found myself having to re-read them again and again, and again. By the end of the article I had grasped that what the author was trying to say- basically that people are becoming more and more used to taking their own photo in a way that probably isn't conventionally or particularly well thought out, but they  seem to be enjoying doing so. I get a feeling that the writer is trying to say that she isn't a fan of the whole holding the camera/phone in front of myself and taking a photo kind of photography and that she much prefers pieces which have had more thought about composition put into them. Unfortunately though this is something that we are all seeing more and more often. I having read the article several times I am starting to appreciate the piece a little more but I do feel that she could have introduced her point much sooner and put forward a stronger argument rather than using overly complicated field specific lexis. 


http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/who-me/

Fine Art, or Craft?

We were asked to provide definitions and examples of both Fine Art and Craft and to identify the differences between the two. 
Fine Art
Noun:      Creative art, esp. visual art, whose products are to be appreciated primarily or solely    
                 for their imaginative, aesthetic or intellectual content.

Craft
Noun:      An activity involving skill, making things by hand.

I think the difference between these two images is that the first has been taken purely to be looked at rather than for any other purpose, i.e an advertisement and that the second image is of two felt broaches which have been made for a purpose, to be worn. To me this makes them craft rather than fine art.

Sean Scully- Colour

Colour work isn't something that I usually find attractive but one of the tasks in theory was to find an artist who works with it, so I kind of had no choice but to go trawling the internet in search of something I liked. I came across Sean Scully and his work and I have to admit that I do actually quite enjoy it. I think what I find attractive about these pieces is how the colours harmonize and the fact that they are all different tones and shades of eachother. The way the colour blocks have been arranged is another thing that i find attractive, they seem structured and you can tell each one has been intentionally placed to compliment those around it. I prefer this approach to some of the pieces of work I've seen where the colours don't look as though they belong together, as though someone has just plonked random colours on a page and called it art. I have been told that the positioning and placement of the colours is very important and well thought out in these pieces and that apparently it's harder to do than you think, I'm yet to be convinced.