Weiner was one of the main characters involved in the conceptual movement in the 1960's and works mainly in text. His work consists mostly of big text on large walls that make some observation about life. Nevertheless, Weiner works in a wide variety of media, including video, film, books, sound art using audio tape, sculpture, performance art, installation art and graphic art.
The work by Weiner is something that i think would stimulate my own practice, to take common sayings and understandings and put them in different contexts that question the meaning behind them and the intentions. i think this would keep me intrigued in my practice if i took a more critical look on language and how we use it.
Reference:
Salvo, D et al. 2007. Lawrence Weiner: As Far as the Eye Can See. Whitney Museum of American Art: New York
I then decided to work with a saying and i thought keeping in with the theme of exploring things that relate directly to my situation, rather then question of the world, i wrote a sentence and re-mixed the words around and came up with this:
"good enough, good enough again"
i then came across my favorite piece of music that i've seen in a film, it's a soundtrack that gets played often and always moves me but i could never find it. today i did, it's in 28 Days Later (a great film) and is from my favorite scene. it moves me every time, however, i only used the start of it in this work, but it may pop up in future works of mine.
this video i think is still effective in away as it makes me feel awkward/uncomfortable which is what happens (to me) when i cry or see someone else crying. personally i do not like to cry in front of people, the only emotion i really want anyone to see form me is happiness or even frustration but never me crying, as in the past i have had it held against me as weakness. i do like crying by myself though, so i thought it appropriate, as this work will be viewed by others, to make them feel how i'd be if they saw me crying. i say all this to give insight into the work and my thought behind it, as now i go into my video making with the vision of making people feel about the words as i would. so i give you my film CRY.
the video actually came out quite nice, i was surprised with how well the final film worked out but i really like it and think it's quite effective in it's message about the word BAD.
for me it's a word that surrounds all things we do (or i do) will someone think me doing this is BAD? will someone think my art is BAD? will i look back on this and think of it as being BAD?
it is something all human morals are based on, no one ever thinks of will it be good? but will it be BAD?
that is why this film has a pulsing rhythm to it, as it is a pulsating question in human minds.
This is my Appropriation video. it is based on Mel Ramsden's Secret Painting.
Mel Ramsden's Painting:
And my video:
I think it adds an interesting quality to what Ramsden did in the secret painting, as in a video the content is infact the text and therefore contradicts the message it is communicating to the viewer and then plays on what is real, what is intended and what is art.
Bob and Roberta Smith is a alias used by artist Patrick Brill. Brill is a British contemporary artist that uses text in his work to tackle issues about art, politics, pop culture and the world in general. the style of his art varies in font size and shape, but bright colours are used in each that compliment the text he has chosen.
Brill's art is something i can see my text work progressing into if it was 2-D, this being in respect to the play on words and font. it inspires me to also concentrate on colour and how it's interplay with text and text layout is also very important, not only visually but to effectively convey meaning behind something.
references: Bob and Roberta Smith, 2011. The Official Bob and Roberta Smith Website. Accessed October 15, 2011 http://bobandrobertasmith.zxq.net/
Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES creates text based work that in each work can tell a different story by only using text and sound and can range from information on the internet and art to the political situation in Korea. the works are web browser based so i'll provide a link rather than a video, but i recommend that you look at it.
http://www.yhchang.com/ it is an engaging example of how text in art can be effective by using simple text and good timing, my first three videos i recently blogged are inspired by these works and i hope that my future works will be as well constructed as these.
reference : Young-Hae Chang 2011. New and Improved Young-Hae Chang Presents. Accessed October 15, 2011
I had been producing videos that i wasn't happy with, just plain old didn't work for me at all.
however, it's been that way for everything with me and i realise that it's not my work i don't like but myself and my lack of faith. I found that i am a people pleaser, but apparently i don't count as people to me.
So I was shown a site that uses text and sound only. I like it (will blog about the artist after this) and it inspired me to pull myself up and do something, something that is mine, something that i can relate to.
so in context to my current feeling and mood of myself and my work i wrote down various things i could work with.
People Pleaser
I'm only human
Fuck You
Fat Bitch
Small town, small minds, small dicks
I'm not even kidding
CRY CRY
I get sad sometimes
The past never goes away
It never feels any less
BAD BAD
Good enough agian
These are just things that i wrote down one day, and i think if i work with text interesting ways, playing with text alignment and rearranging sentences i write, that i can keep myself interested in what i am doing.
The first one that i wanted to work with was "people pleaser" as it was what i'm tackling in my life.
I like the first three i made and got somewhat bored by the forth video, however, i enjoy the colour i used in it as i don't use colour often in my work.
This is what i wrote the other day in my visual diary on the train after the making of these videos:
I'm finding that my practice has been very stilted this term. i am very happy with my 2-D work, however, i found it hard to get back into making. i think this is due to my lack of confidence in both myself and my practice. i never thought that questions of identity would bother me, as i have always known who i am and what i do. Nonetheless, this has happened and over this term i have had to try and find myself again. it has helped me to think of myself and my practice in terms of 'conceptual art'. with my research into both conceptual and text artists i have managed to regain my feet and create video art again; a medium that i enjoy and like the results of. i'm glad that i had this period of loss now, in my first year, so i can recognise my pattern and how i can overcome it in the future.
This i think is an important refection to document, as i think it was a light bulb moment for me to look at myself rather than my art for 'why' i am unhappy with the results of my work. I have to trust myself and my judgement over others and take my mistakes in my stride, otherwise i will never be happy and never grow into who i can and want to be-a successful artist in MY eyes. I also now realise that i should be creating, not because someone told me to or for a good mark, but for myself as i should be the most important thing in my life and practice and people that don't support me are not important and will only hold me back. I hope this has given a good insight into my scattered mind and explains my art and why i haven't been on blogger in a while, one ranting post is enough for me thank you :)
Malevich is one of the first artists to push the idea of what is a painting and the significance of it to the limits. Malevich has influenced artists in ways that we can still see today ( artists such as Mel Ramsden and Jenny Watson) and continues to come up as one of the main topics in the discussion of conceptual and post modern art today.
without this break through by Malevich i would most likely not be on the path of art today in questioning what makes art, well art. In Black Square Malevich started a conversation that artists can still engage in today, is it the content in the work that matters rather than the technique in which it is made or the other way around?
Refrences:
Drutt, M (2003) Kazimir Malevich; Suprematism. Guggenheim Museum: New York
I've started to look at conceptual artists that question what art is an what objects are. the top of this list starts with Joseph Kosuth. Kosuth is an American conceptual artist who in his work tackles issues of what is worth more, a photo of an object, the object or the definition of the object?
he also address the importance of text in the world and how people respond to it. he has done this by using neon lights and simple text.
i think this is a very witty approach to the issue of what art is, if the concept is more important than the physical object, and if people should view these differently.
References:
Verzotti, Giorgio (28/02/2011). "Joseph Kosuth". Artforum international
, 49(6), p.245.
this was first attempt at working with static text and sound. i like how it has come out and think it'll be affective on a screen or wall with full surround sound or something. the text is taken form a Imants Tillers quote i found "Like a garden that is never finished, the work of an artist is forever in the process of becoming"
this made total sense to me in both an artistic sense and a personal one too, as i feel at the moment i am forever in the flux of change, of becoming something other than what i am at present or past. this is why i decided to use this text as my first text piece.
after talking with my tutor, i realise that i have lost my direction this semester. i lack confidence in my work and myself and have let this stop me from what i love doing. so i've decided to not put the blame on things that i can't control or other people.
things can only affect you if you let them, unfortunately so far, i have let them.
but now I have a sense of where i can take myself and my practice, as i work conceptually and at the moment with text so no idea is to great or small, all it has to be is interesting.
i want to stop restricting myself and ask in my art why i feel i have to.
i think i can pull myself back up before the end of semester and be proud of my work.
i will submit more soon.
oh that's also another point, i will be here more often, i neglect this space where i should really be posting here when ever i question myself or have something i would like to explore/ have found in my practice.
I have set myself these guidelines for my next peice:
it has to be
-text
-Playful
-not significant
based on Tuttle's small work i came up with the idea of making comments.
to do this i will write on pieces of tape and place them around the gallery, they will have witty comments on art, life or just silly jokes on them. this way i fulfill the guidelines i have set myself and also have a conceptually sound work that i am happy with.
Tuttle is amazing in how he has taken the media of drawing to new and interesting heights. the fact that he makes and places small objects he has crafted in unexpected ways, to make the viewer actually look and think about what they're looking at. i like this questioning and challenging of 'normal' art conventions and how viewers look and respond to it.
reference: Anonymous (31/03/2007). "Richard Tuttle". School arts
, 106(7), p.14.
Price is one of the highest selling artists in the world at the moment. His nurse paintings are hunting motifs of otherwise nice looking females and his large canvases of text, a mocking joke on society. i enjoy the way Prince has understood and utilized text to connect to everyday people, while making witty, critical comments on society.
Reference: Prince, Richard (01/08/2011). "RICHARD PRINCE". Artforum international
, 49(10), p.331.
Kozic is a female Australian artist that works with popular culture images. She is apart of the postmodernist movement and her work is very witty. I enjoy the way Kozic make her work to outline the constructiveness of art and the thought out procedures and intentions artists put potential images through.
reference:
Duval, D (1987) Pages from Maria Kozic’s Book. ARTSPACE:
Melbourne
Tillers uses others work in his own and changes them in various ways. in his most recent work he uses text, but i rather like how he puts his own personal spin on others work, it makes me confident in using saying etc in my work. he is an Australian artist that tackles the postmodern art scene of Australia and how art fits within the country in relation to locality and nationality.
Reference:
Hart,D
et al. (2006) Imants Tillers; One World Many Visions. Thames and Hudson:
melbourne
Cy Twombly has opened my eyes to the notion of text, writing and gesture in art. it is from his work i learned that text can become something visual, as an image rather than just text, and can be used in different more personal ways.
without Twombly I don't think i would have noticed just how much contemporary artists rely on text and the understood conventions of speech and conversation in their works. i think i would like to strip this back and show my own understanding on what text can be in art.
References: Dias, Elizabeth (18/07/2011). "Cy Twombly". Time (Chicago, Ill.)
, 178(3), p.1.
Mel Ramsden was a leading Australian Artist in conceptual art. where art and text become one and one element is just as important as the other. it is this idea that i am working with in my work
however, i don't think my work will ever be as refined as Ramsden's work, but i can now relate with the use of text and how it can be used as the key feature in a work, rather than something a critic adds on to it.
Reference:
Johnson, T. An Impossible Vision: Conceptual Art In The 70's. accessed August 30 2011 http://www.ianmilliss.com/documents/OnTheBeach.htm
For this video, like in all my video's, my process is dictated by what is directly available to me. I restrict myself to using footage that is filmed in one day alone. The rest i can decide once i see the footage and edit it in some sequence that i find visually pleasing. then i decide on audio, which i find in my itunes or i record myself and edit. i then re-edit my footage to fit my audio, and edit my audio to fit my footage. A film is only done when i am happy with the sound and the visual, and will change it many times until if am content with the product.
From this video i then find parts i enjoy and make separate films of, i think of these as my 'finished' videos. here is the one that i got form the above film:
I am happy with this footage also. overall i think the analysis of my process has helped me engage with my work and actually enjoy my work. i feel by doing this i am working with a purpose and that gives me motivation that i'd otherwise lack.
I then made stencils of this new language that i wanted to create.
I decided painted my old canvases with a brown, ore and blue washes and splattered them with black ink. i painted some so the image of the character i didn't like was semi visible so the comment of art is everything, will contradict my own thoughts on my past works. i thought that by doing this it would create an interesting hypocritical element that can be seen in most art really. I then painted these on in white paint a traditional colour throughout history and one that would mark my own language.
I actually really like how they've turned out and am quite pleased with it. the next stage in my work is to make a relating video to my 2-D work, but i have to say this is the happiest i've been with my 2-D work for some time.
David Lynch first came to my attention as a film maker and director, it was after i did some research on him that i found that his painting is also something that i admire. His film Eraser Head has inspired past works of films that i have done, but it is how he relates both his film and his painting into his own unique style that transcends all medium.
In his words:
"You go by most paintings, and they don't stop you. You can walk by so much because it's merely beautiful. I like to feel that you could bite my paintings. Not to eat them, to hurt them. I like to feel like I'm painting with my teeth. I call my painting `bad' because bad painting has its own beauty. It's not a designer tapestry or a commercial hype. It makes you react to it."
"Actually, they're really different [his paintings compared to his films]. It's a whole different experience, painting. And yet, a similar experience. It's like a creative process. A dialogue with something. It's action and reaction. It's an experiment. It's talking to you, it wants to be a certain way. And there are highs and lows in it. Many, many things happening in it, which are abstract, that you can't put into words. And I love painting because it's really an internal, personal thing. But then, so are films..."
"People have sometimes said my paintings stink."
"My mother refused to give me coloring books, but gave me blank paper and things to draw with. I was never limited by pre-conception, my imagination was never ruined - I was free." "Art means different things for different people and we all have personal tastes – where they come from, we don't know. But these tastes can evolve, or devolve. What worries me is that in the present time tastes are devolving and very few people are engaged in what is on screen or what is in a painting and it's just a one-way hollow thrill."
I enjoy the way Lynch has created his own dialogue in his images and in his films and how he creates them for himself, using them as a way to figure out his own emotions and thoughts. also i think his embrace of the dirty and the abnormal are inspiring and something i would like to develop my work into.
reference Hartmann, M. The City To Absurdity; The Art Of David Lynch. accessed August 30 2011 http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/
To get the primitive writing style i looked at runes and how they represented letters today.
I decided that i wanted to still be able to connect to the viewer, so the lettering i chose to create still keeps the basic English letter structures and sentence construction. however, in this newly developed visual language spaces between words were removed to obscure them.
I drew these up on photoshop, the decision to make them into stencils rather than hand painting them was decided for quick and effective application. on the other hand, i was not happy with how unobstructed the words were, as people other than myself could still work it out quickly. i wanted my language to be more engaging visually, so i tried manipulating the text until i found it interesting enough. this was unsuccessful (and unfortunately i didn't save them :( ... ) then the answer came to me, when i was younger i did develop my own writing styles, i used to write backwards, my parents thought my stories were just scribbles until they realised that i was mirror writing, then they'd hold it up to the mirror and see i had written English words. i think my first one was a drawing of my teddy bear with " I love my teddy" written backwards next to it (they'd later find out i had a mild form of dyslexia, but i'm glad they thought i was a genius), it was this that i thought i would employ in this text that i wanted for this piece. the photoshop trails look something like this :
I was much happier with these than the ones before. and this is how i developed my stencils.
I have looked at my process in great depth. At first i didn't think i had a process to my work, i truly believed that i just went and made stuff with no thought to it. However i know realise that i do indeed have a process that i use when i go to create work.
Therefore i will take you step by step through this lovely thing that allows me to create work, and explain why i do it this way.
My process starts conceptually with something i find intriguing. This term I have noticed in my lectures that each artist creates a language in their work, whether it is text or visual, it is still their. these languages allow viewers to connect with the work on a deeper level as they feel that they're being involved in the work, that the story the artist is trying to tell also reflects the spectator's life in someway.
It is from here where i decided that i wanted to work with text and the question what is art? for what i have learned so far is that art is everything and nothing and all things in between. I wanted to somehow utilise the canvases i used last semester with my 'twiggins' drawings, something i was not happy with and didn't think of as art but rather childish drawings.
I have worked with text before in my work and from that experience i wanted this piece to be simple. what is aesthetically pleasing to me in my work is a grungy, dirty, unclean look. therefore the text i used in this would have to be primitive, dirty and totally mine in some way.
Antoni Muntadas is a multidisciplinary artist who works with the concept of language. he examines in his work how translations on languages work and how people interact with one another. Muntadas examines tha human capacity for speech and how people interpret other languages.
I think his approach to this subject is well thought out and on a conceptual level very confronting on who and why people interact with each other. I find this very interesting and think it displays the ignorance of people and their understanding of culture.
reference
Rush, M.2003. Video Art. Thames & Hudson Ltd.: London
Jane and Louise Wilson then studied together on the MA course at Goldsmiths Collage, London (1990-2). When they left art school, they lived in King's Cross and made films of small living spaces, such as bed and breakfast rooms. Another early film showed them taking LSD for the first time.
Jane and Louise Wilson's work together includes multiscreen video installations and photo-pieces; their artworks often feature institutional spaces, for example an oil rig, the archives of the Stasi in East Berlin (the building had previously been used by the Nazis and Stalin's Russia) and The Houses of Parliament.
They create stories in their films that relate to them. they talk about writing scripts and sounds and I find that i can relate to these elements in the way they describe it. They say they don not have film training, but film is just another visual medium that can tell a narrative or story,
Refrence
Rush, M.2003. Video Art. Thames & Hudson Ltd.: London
