do ho suh: staircase

where do you work on your designs and projects?
I have two studios, one in new york and one near seoul.
that is where I make my work, where I give form to my
work. the conceptualization part happens in-between
places, when in transit, like in an airport,
on the airplane or on the train - those in-between places.
I think I have more inspiration when I don't actually make
something. in the beginning, I didn't like traveling too much.
but now it's part of my job. I have to travel a lot and I sort
of developed a habit to use that time for more creative
things. for example, instead of reading, I actually do a lot of
sketching during a flight. I carry a very small sketchbook.
that has been the same format since my college days.
I travel light too, so I always carry those little things and
make sketches.

Skaer makes sculptures, films and drawings mainly based on photographs sourced from newspapers and books as well as pictures taken off the Internet, and assembles them in installations. The transformation of her found material into pictures and objects is an elaborate, often manual process that also involves the collaboration of craftsmen. What results is a push and pull between representation and the still recognizable meaning and physical shape of the original subject matter. T

richard serra

Richard Serra's monumental steel sculptures are covered in rust. The 68-year-old American artist's work at the Gagosian in King's Cross, on show in London for the first time in 16 years, may all be new but they ooze oxidation. Orange specks that flake off, or flashes of silver through oil-slick blackness, the layered textures speak of another element.

And walking through them is like entering another element, chatter in the gallery muffled and reverberating to become a kind of whalesong. Two giant funnels called TTI London resemble beached hulls, their high-tide levels marked by mottled metal. Moving through the space makes each surface undulate, the top edges gently curving out of vision like an ushering maître d'.

There's not a straight line in the main gallery: beyond TTI, the towering black Open Ended leans in on itself menacingly. It has been likened to a maze but it's one without a heart; keep going, and you reach the edge again without ever feeling as though you've been at the centre.

It's a brilliant deception that Serra has choreographed as well as sculpted. In an anteroom, however, another piece is all straight edges. A huge block of steel leaks colour through accumulated layers and scored lines, as rich as any Turner landscape.

mike nelson : amnesiac pieces

Mike Nelson who presents a new, immersive Amnesiac Shrine. After a hiatus of nearly a decade the Amnesiacs, a mythical gang of bikers invented by the artist in the mid-1990s, have made a recent comeback. Here Nelson turns to them once again for their help in building AMNESIAC SHRINE or The misplacement (a futurological fable): mirrored cubes - inverted - with the reflection of an inner psyche as represented by a metaphorical landscape 2007. The materials and references used to construct it, provided by ‘flashbacks’ from the Amnesiacs, are elevated by their devotional context yet remain largely indefinable.

Hesse defined the word ‘schema’ as ‘synopsis, outline, diagram. general type, essential form, conception of what is common to all members of a class.’27 While the evenly-spaced, balanced grid of her eponymous sculpture (fig.9) may be read in terms of Hesse’s definition, her interest in ‘diagram’ and ‘essential form’ are also expressed in the meticulous planning and rigor with which she approached its design, including her choice of material. In addition to drawings,28 Hesse made numerous ‘test pieces’ (fig.10) prior to the execution (by her own hand or otherwise) of many of her works. She used these ‘material studies’ to experiment with the structural properties of rubber, papier-mâché, Sculp-Metal, and other matter so as to determine, in part, their potential usefulness in crafting specific forms like hemispheres, cylinders, and various vessels. For Schema, she chose to work in latex, as she did many of her sculptures dating from the late 1960s and about which she stated: ‘the materials I use are really casting materials, but I don’t want to use them as casting materials. I want to use them directly, eliminating making molds and casts ... I am interested in the process, a very direct kind of connection

luke fowler

A central figure in Glasgow’s vibrant art scene, Luke Fowler creates cinematic collages that break down conventional approaches to biographical and documentary film-making.

Fowler’s films have often been linked to British Free Cinema of the 1950s, whose distinctive aesthetic came out of a conscious decision to engage with the reality of British society. Fowler uses similarly impressionistic sound and editing, and avoids didactic voice-over commentaries and narrative continuity. However, the artist moves beyond simply referencing the work of his predecessors. He intuitively applies the logic, aesthetics and politics of his subjects to the films he constructs about them.
The results are atmospheric, sampled histories that reverberate with the vitality of the people he studies.

jilly sutton

Cedrus deodara, the Himalayan cedar or sacred Indian fir, derives its botanical name from the Sanskrit word devdar signifying 'tree of the gods'. Trees and tree imagery are fundamental to primitive belief systems - from the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Genesis to Odin's ash and Druid oaks - and their interaction with humankind is a constant feature of civilisation. The human head as the seat of the brain and thought processes, together with the expressiveness of physiognomy, make it the perfect subject for treatment in wood. However, since the long-term durability of wood can never be guaranteed, Fallen Deodar has also been cast in bronze.

juan munoz : a narrator sculptor

From his early architectural works - staircases, balconies and banisters - located in impossible settings, by way of his optical floors that dissolve the limits of space and time, to his dramatic, theatrical installations involving groups of human figures that evoke the solitude of the individual in society, Muñoz’s works play with the spectator, enticing him into relating to them, even awaking feelings of unease and isolation. Muñoz described himself as “a narrator”, and his ability to propose new forms of contemplation and thought, to create tension between the illusory and the real, made him one of the few artists capable of renewing contemporary sculpture.

antony gormley

Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live." Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside." His work attempts to treat the body not as a thing but a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical - a trace of a real event of a real body in time.

louise bourgeios

In 1986 the Andalusia Government started to reform and rebuilt the Monastery with the idea to reserve all essential activities from the past. In this context they installed at the plot of the Monastery an Investigation and Cultural Centre, back in 1989.

Additional works were later on be done for the World Expo 1992 in Seville, to change finally into the Andalusia Centre of Contemporary Art (CAAC) in 1997. The Centre was created with the aim of giving the local community an institution for the research, conservation and promotion of contemporary art. Later the centre began to acquire the first works in its permanent collection of contemporary art.

The CAAC, an autonomous organisation dependent on the Andalusian Government (Junta de Andalucía), took over the collections of the former Conjunto Monumental de la Cartuja (Cartuja Monument Centre) and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla (Contemporary Art Museum of Seville).

From the outset, one of the main aims of the centre has been to develop a programme of activities attempting to promote the study of contemporary international artistic creation in all its facets. Temporary exhibitions, seminars, workshops, concerts, meetings, recitals, film cycles and lectures have been the communication tools used to fulfil this aim.

The centre's programme of cultural activities is complemented by a visit to the monastery itself, which houses an important part of our artistic and archaeological heritage, a product of our long history.

kiki smith :

'A dream is like and animal, but an unknown one, and you cannot see all its limbs. Interpretation is a cage, but the dream can never be found inside.' ( Elias Canetti ). Quotation taken from start of book on Kiki Smith entitled, 'All Creatures Great and Small'.
The introduction goes on to say " Kiki Smith's works construct an image of the world that unites the fragmented experience of our time. It is an image that is permeated by the utopia of a harmonic whole but where the wounds and fractures of human existence and the desires and contradictions of our time remain, become tangible even."

Mark Wallinger curates the Russian Linesman

One of Britain’s most intellectually curious, socially committed and unpredictable artists, Mark Wallinger has often dwelt on the interface between two realms. The mundane and transcendent meet in Ecce Homo, his anti-heroic sculpture for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, in which an ordinary man becomes a life-sized Christ. State Britain, a painstaking recreation of Brian Haw’s protest running through the Tate’s Duveen Sculpture galleries is intersected by the circle defining the limits of freedom of political protest in the vicinity of Parliament.

For the 2007 Münster Sculpture Project, Wallinger has created his own ZONE appropriating the delineation employed in an Eruv, the area within which observant Jews are permitted to behave as if at home (carrying or pushing objects on the Sabbath, for example): a nylon cord, 4.5 metres above ground and 4,800 metres long encircles the centre of the city.

Mark Wallinger’s exhibition for Hayward Touring will be concerned with the liminal, a concept with physical, political, metaphysical meanings. It signifies the dissolution of boundaries and fixed identities, and is associated with rituals and rites of passage, transitional states characterized by ambiguity, openness and indeterminacy, during which the normal limits to thought, self-understanding and behaviour are relaxed, opening the way to something new. Where necessary the artist will show his own work, along with objects that fit the manifesto - whether they are aesthetic, scientific, political and social or anthropological.

‘The Russian Linesman’, Tofik Bakhramov, is famous (or infamous) for a controversial ruling in the 1966 World Cup Final between the home team England and West Germany, which had just eliminated the Soviet Union team in the semi-finals. His ruling gave the goal to England, a 3-2 lead in extra time, perhaps the most debated decision in all of football. In England, it is commonly believed that the decision was correct, while in Germany it is commonly said that the linesman made a mistake. Bakhramov was in fact from Azerbijan.

TOUR INFORMATION



Exhibition opens at the Hayward Gallery, London in February then tours to -

16 May - 28 June 2009
Art Gallery, Leeds

18 July - 20 September 2009
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea

For information on this exhibition please contact Alison Maun alison.maun@southbankcentre.co.uk

Image credit: Renato Giuseppe Bertelli, Profilo Continuo (Testa di Mussolini) [Continuous Profile (Head of Mussolini)], 1933. Courtesy The Imperial War Museum © The estate of Renato Giuseppe Bertelli

Endings and beginnings

I like this piece,it reflects a kind of ending or begining, like the empty cocoon of some creature that has emerged to a new life. But what is it? What might that new begining be like? Real beauty in the cast off skin, the left behind shell, the protective layer that is no longer required. Seems appropriate for the term, the season, the future.. Wonder if I'll fly, or crawl, or swim in this new world. Whatever, it won't be the same as before. Time to reflect, to ponder, to imagine, to look, to gaze, to draw. To do nothing.

internals

Another image from her collection, again demonstrating a labyrinth of images that suggest internal organs, intestines, innards. You can image it working, pumping fluids around its system, moving with the rhythm of the activity, almost mesmerising.

a body of work

Jennifer Taylor's most recent sculptures depict chaotic messes of interlinking pipes, chains and disposable objects coated in white paint and wax. Cancer cells, labyrinths and internal organs are just some of the images that spring to mind when looking at these troubled objects. Might use some of this imagery in developing this project, and it may compliment the ideas I have started to develop already.
I'm interested not only in the external body but on the internal, the unconscious, the hidden. This applies equally to the organs and the mind. In fact it creates a morass of images that could be dreams, flashbacks, imagination, or fantasy. Or bits of them all.

four humors

I like the ideas generated by the medieval view of health and illness. People were understood to be either in balance, or out of balance depending on the four humors, or fluids in the body. They were blood, yelow bile, black bile and phlegm. Any imbalance in the fluids created different illnesses and hence the practices of bleeding, leeches and purging. While the ideas behind this approach faded in the 18th century, with the development of medical and scientific techniques, some of its influences are still around. So for example peoples personality may be described as sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic or choleric. There are also some links to astrology and in certain cultures these practices still exist. In western societies, particularly with experiments in alternative medicine, some of these ideas are still explored and used. Interesting how ideas and knowledge develop, evolve and go full circle sometimes.

normal/abnormal

Who sets the boundaries, are they fixed forever or do they change? where are they now? are they personal, moral, physical, mental, environmental, cultural, financial, class based, gender based. do these boundaries involve intelligence, looks, speech, dress, posture, colour, age, ability, disability. who decides on them and their use? can you change them? have you changed them? how? why? why not? when. how about tomorrow?

the new canvas

I'm still exploring ideas for the project and this caught my imagination. It is a representation of the face transplant area that was replaced last year on a French woman. I believe it was the first successful face transplant in the world and I wonder what its significance might be. Are we moving into an era where body parts can not only replaced, which has been aroucd for certain organs for about 50 years, but where surgeons act as sculptors, or artists, redrawing/reshaping peoples bodies. Are we the new canvas? Is this the Burke and Hare of the 21st Century? Is it live art? Is it art? Discuss.........

metamorphosis by bridget riley

Each month, TATE ETC. publishes new poetry by leading poets such as John Burnside, Moniza Alvi, Adam Thorpe, Alice Oswald and David Harsent who respond to works from the Tate Collection. Subscribe to the Poem of the Month RSS feed.

In April 2006 Lawrence Sail presented his poem based on Bridget Riley’s Metamorphosis, on display at Tate Britain from March 2006 – February 2007.





Considering Bridget Riley’s Metamorphosis

Here it is, in black and white –
the optic nerve seduced into playing
a blinder. Pressures out of sight
mill all images back to latency,
the mind’s series, treacherous and true.

Yet definitions are at their sharpest
when speeding towards the point where disks
of silver and black throng to the mesh
of something like judgement, then a remix
of tried perceptions, making them new –
as, say, the image of holes in a colander
themselves drained away; or a swarming stream
of fish-eggs; or a geometer’s world
of ciphers somehow unhooked from time,
an eternity made of in betweens.

Now you don’t see it, now you don’t –
the invisible ink which you know is there,
the oxygen of desire, which can’t
be denied; that gasp of mortal love, or
the momentary gift of all its meanings.

metamorphosis of narcissus

I've always liked Dali's ability to manipulate images, to challenge the eye to look again at a picture. I particularly like how he has made these two images reflect each others but also remain so totally different. Wonder how this might feed into my thinking about the project, "body as a site of cultural representation"? Who knows where I'll end up with this one. I like the idea of metamorphosis, the process of change, of your body or character undergoing fundamental changes. Suppose we all have a bit of that at times, a wee touch of metamorphosis, but for a fundamental change, that would be something.

culture

In 1871 E.B.Taylor defined culture as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and many other capabilities and habits acquired by...(members) of society."

"Culture means the total body of tradition borne by a society and transmitted from generation to generation. It thus refers to the norms, values, standards by which people act, and it includes the ways distinctive in each society of ordering the world and rendering it intelligible. Culture is....a set of mechanisms for survival, but it provides us also with a defintion of reality. It is the matrix into which we are born, it is the anvil upon which our persons and destinies are forged."

body images

Marisa Maza seems to be an artist and teacher who has studied the body as cultural means of expression. Much of what I have seen already is about dance, so I'll have to continue searching.

self assessment

This is how you do it. As you can see this is stage one. Stage two I'll leave to your biological imagination.

Gravitacion : Eduardo Chillida

I like this piece, simple, strong, thought provoking, full of memory.

words and pictures

"Art used to have issues....art will become the occasional gesture of the isolated person."(Donald Judd)

studio/gallery/place

Art in a box, or in this case a container, in the street, a portable piece, a portable gallery. Interesting.

mind stretch

What does this say to you? How about archive? Museum of piano players? Extermination camp? Seven ages of man? CSI wherever?

my brain hurts/the friday rant

This is how you feel on a Friday afternoon, or is it a Monday morning? Or both! Felt a bit like this yesterday, as if my brain had started to melt, and I wasn't sure if I was going anywhere with this project. One minute you think you know and the next...doubt. So just got on with it today, seeing where the flow would take me. It feels better now. Think there needs to be some issues, challenges, controversy, argument, debate - danger of the studio becoming a cosy corner. Should we care about art school cuts and its politics, the future of art in a time of economic collapse, Gaza, whether art has any relevance to people in Glasgow, what is GOMA about, is it cutting edge, is it modern, should soap operas be banned, is the BBC right to ban the appeal for help for Gaza, did we tell them when they were in the art school, is there a life beyond this bubble?

profile

Tried to get this as my profile picture, but couldn't crack it. Helpers? Not sure it's my best side, but hey the light in the southside is fading. Not got as much done today as hoped. Read some more of Poetics of Space, and liked these bits.

"The first task of the phenomenologist is to find the original shell."

" the titanic importance of setting."

"Thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived."

glasgow zen

A wee bit of Alan Spence to round off the evening.
On the oneness of self and universe - it's aw wan tae me
On identity in difference - six an hauf a dozen
On walking the pathless path - by the way
On the music of what happens - one singer one song

new white space?

It seems white space has more than one meaning, news to me! But it raises the question is this the new studio? or is it an extension of the studio? the studio of the mind? does it matter? raises some interesting practice and process questions. Watch this space...........I may be gone some time!!
The space in front of me is a blank canvas, page, space to work in - be it 2D, 3D or virtual. Or indeed the space in my mind, the unconscious, imagination, dreams, fantasy. Mind games.

white space

The studio has become the white space, but was it always that way? Seems to have been a 20th century movement to create the clean space that would allow the art to be displayed/created without any impurities effecting its development. This has been carried on into galleries throughout the world - white walls, wooden floors, lighting from ceiling windows or lights.But other institutions are often white too - cells, padded cells, decontamination chambers, operating theatres. Are they creative spaces? What stimulus do they provide? Are they different? The same? What impact does the stated purpose have on the players in each?

studio - in ma cell!!

the studio, the gallery, the cell, the ward, the space, light, shade, cool. wandering or not wandering, daydreaming, asleep!

the black cat has the blues

http://www.nugrape.net/republic.jpg
Republic will encourage the listening to blues, jazz, rock and the occasional roll and sausage. Currently working on research ideas from thomas hirshhorn and gillian wearing among others.

Some posssible ideas around a video, a constructed piece and even a beehive.This is not a reference to Amy Winehouse's hair by the way.

Exploring the difference between the studio space and the padded cell.

Or even the prison cell, the white cube, the gallery space, the de-contamination centre.

More to follow.............................

blowing up or falling down

Who can tell? Does it matter? I like the ambiguity of the picture, interpretation can be left to the viewer - do you agree,or not? Though I think it may be an impact picture after all.

new republic formed.

Welcome to the new republic. Discussions of democracy, autocracy, accuracy, anarchy and tracy will follow. But certainly not monarchy.

Just having a wee ramble about site/place/context. Might try and import some images and the odd bit of text later. First explosion of ideas becomes visual after much hassle and coaching from the nameless one.