Sunday, 29 January 2012
Friday, 20 January 2012
The Northern Art Prize- Leeds City Gallery
We were lucky enough to see the shortlisted artists for The Northern Art Prize on the same day that the winner was announced at Leeds City Gallery. Although, after seeing the work first hand I think it'd be fair to say that none of the work really captured my imagination, I didn't have an immediate connection to any of the pieces the first time round. I did however warm to the work of James Hugonin, probably just because of how labor-intensive each piece is and the amount of time and dedication he must have put into the collection. I think I'd have liked him to win the prize. Unfortunately he didn't and Leo Fitzmaurice did. My least favourite out of all the shortlisted artists.
Leo Fitzmaurice
Liadin Cooke
Richard Rigg
James Hugonin
http://www.northernartprize.org.uk/2011-prize/shortlist
The BLK Art Group- Graves Gallery, Sheffield
One of the exhibitions I visited while in Sheffield was The BLK Art Group's in Graves Gallery. Full of really interesting stuff- very relevant at the moment.
"The BLK Art Group is the name of a group of four influential conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in the United Kingdom. Keith Piper, Marlene Smith, Eddie Chambers and Donald Rodney, initially based in the Midlands."
"The group were all from the British African-Caribbean community and exhibited in a number of group exhibitions in both small and prestigious galleries throughout the country. Their work was noted for its boldly political stance, producing dynamic conceptual art that offered a series of inventive critiques on the state of inter-communal, class and gender relations in the UK. They were themselves influenced by the a variety of artistic currents including ideas associated with the USA's Black Arts Movement."
Donald Rodney -Britannia Hospital 2
David Rodney- The House that Jack Built
Eddie Chambers- How Much Longer You Bastards?
Keith Piper- Black Assassin Saints
By far my favorite piece from this exhibition. I think that without even reading the words written on the canvas there is a sinister feel to it. The colours themselves aren't particularly angry or threatening but when paired with the repeated faces at the top they seem to change, to me anyway. I think it might be something to do with the way the poster paint has been applied, being allowed to run and dribble, that reminds me of blood.
Out and about.
The last few days should have been really lonely with so many people on my course being in either Valencia or London, but, strangely enough, they weren't lonely at all. I spent Wednesday in Sheffield and Thursday in Leeds, visiting the galleries and meeting up with friends for coffee etc. etc. etc.
As always I ended up coming home with a bag full of leaflets and booklets, but I also picked up a few napkins, some lovely pieces of corrugated card- one plain and another with an amazing pattern and a length of string.
We ended up spending a lot longer than we originally intended in Leeds City Gallery, mainly because of the ArtSpace- probably aimed at children we but really enjoyed ourselves! It was so so nice to sit down and just be creative without having to over think or over analyse things. We lesarnt to make origami chairs and shirts and threaded ribbon through hessian. But, it has to be said the activity we enjoyed most was the colouring in- it was so therapeutic just to sit down and colour the squares.(There was a game to go with the colouring sheets but we couldn't find the dice to play, disappointing as we'd have loved it!!) I think the sheets were designed to mirror the work of James Hugonin's in the gallery.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Twigs.
Twig shape covered with map copies, painting with emulsion
and detail added with acrylic paint and felt tip pens.
Twigs
Twig shapes cut from plywood with found marks.
Second twig after sticking photocopies of maps in areas,
covering parts in white emulsion and binding with blue electrical tape.
Zander Olsen
Cadair, Oak 2010
Untitled (Cader) 2008
Untitled (Corbi) 2005
No Mans Land 2004
An artist that I stumbled across during this project is Zander Olsen and the photographs of the trees he has wrapped.
‘This is an ongoing series of constructed photographs rooted in the forest. These works, carried out in Surrey, Hampshire and Wales,involve site specific interventions in the landscape, ‘wrapping’ trees with white material to construct a visual relationship between tree, not-tree and the line of horizon according to the camera’s viewpoint.’
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