Using some ready made frames to frame up some old works in time for the Raw Artists Wollongong showcase, July 1st 2013. A great way to enhance any work visually as well as adding value to the work.
Month: May 2013
Artist of the Week: Sally Mann
Sally Mann (American, b.1951) is best known for her black-and-white photographs, featuring portraiture and landscapes in the southern United States. Mann was born in Lexington, Virginia, and attended Hollins College. She began working as a photographer for Washington and Lee University after graduation, and her photographs of the construction of the University’s library were included in her first solo exhibition, held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Mann received great acclaim and critique for her Immediate Family series, in which she photographed her own children, often nude, in ethereal, unsettling works, picturing the everyday activities and games of a child while alluding to darker and more serious themes of loss, sexuality, loneliness, and death.
Mann’s more recent works include photographs of landscapes in the Deep South, which incorporate 19th century methods of developing photographs, and use damaged cameras and lenses, giving her work a scratched, unfinished look that continually references the photographic process. Mann has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and has published several books of her photography. She exhibits her work around the world, in cities such as New York, Berlin, Chicago, Rome, and Tokyo. She currently lives and works in her hometown of Lexington, Virginia.
Fallen Child, 1989. Gelatin silver contact print, 50.8 x 61 cm
Untitled /At Twelve/ Lisa Tab, 1983-1985. Silver gelatine print, 19 x 24 cm.
Images and text: http://www.artnet.com/artists/sally-mann/
Artist of the Week: Annie Leibovitz
Photographer Annie Leibovitz (American, b.1949) is best known for her engaging portraits—particularly of celebrities—which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz took painting classes at the San Francisco Art Institute as an undergraduate, but found herself deeply attracted to photography after taking pictures on a family vacation. She switched her studies to photography, and began working on commission for Rolling Stone while still in school in the early 1970s, when the magazine was in its first years of publication. At age 23, Leibovitz became the chief photographer of the magazine; over the next 10 years, she photographed figures such as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and a particularly famous photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, just hours before Lennon was killed in 1980.
In 1983, Leibovitz became a photographer for Vanity Fair, and encouraged many other celebrity subjects to choose poses revealing the intimate, playful, and expressive aspects of their personalities; portraits included celebrities in the nude, in stunning gowns, covered in paint, and in tanks of water or baths of milk, often with dramatic lighting.
Her photographs have been published in several books, and have been used in many ad campaigns. Her work was the subject of a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.; she was the first woman to receive a solo exhibition at the museum. Leibovitz currently lives and works in New York.
Steve Martin, Beverly Hills, California, 1981. Archival pigment print, 101.6 x 101.6 cm.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono, The Dakota, NY, December 8, 1980, 1996. Off-set lithograph on card stock, 11.2 x 15 cm
Images and text: http://www.artnet.com/artists/annie-leibovitz/
I am a Raw Artist.
I recently applied to the international organization of Raw Artists. It is a free creative collective that helps get creative people’s trade out there to be seen by people who would ordinarily pass it by. I think it best to leave it up to you guys to find out more about Raw Artists, so visit the links below and enjoy. SO EXCITED!!!
http://www.rawartists.org/nikuzunovskiartist
Artist of the week: Zhang Dali
Zhang Dali (Chinese, b.1963) was born in Harbin, China, and studied at the Beijing Academy of Art & Design. After finishing school, he travelled to Italy, where he discovered Graffiti Art. In the 1990s, he was the only Graffiti artist in Beijing. Zhang became known for the 2,000 giant profiles he created of himself—completed between 1995 and 1998—seen throughout Beijing. The profiles of his bald head were intentionally placed alongside chai characters, which were painted by city officials as a way to indicate demolition. These images became subject of a media debate in 1998.
From 2003 until 2005, Zhang portrayed 100 life-sized resin sculpture of immigrant workers posed in numerous postures. Each sculpture or “worker” had a designated number, the artist’s signature, and the title, Chinese Offspring, tattooed to each of their bodies. Hung upside down, these sculptures commented on the fragility and uncertainty of life, as well as the lack of power these immigrant workers hold to change their own fates. Aside from Keith Haring (American, 1958–1990) and Jackson Pollock (American, 1912–1956), Zhang was one of the only artists to appear on the cover of Time magazine. He has exhibited his work at the International Center for Photography in New York, Courtyard Gallery in Beijing, the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. In 2006, Zhang participated in the Gwangju Biennale in Korea. He currently lives and works in Beijing.
Chinese Offspring No. 209, 2010, synthetic resin, h: 149.9 x w: 69.8 x d: 25.1 cm
Unititled, 2012, Acrylic on vinyl, 152 x 122 cm
Images and text: http://www.artnet.com/artists/zhang+dali/
Afternoon of gallery hopping
I will make the text brief, as I did not approach the work critically. I was just a passive, but engaged, viewer. I tried to just enjoy the art for what it was. Enjoy the images and I encourage you all to visit all of the local galleries in Wollongong, as well as the city gallery.
Artist of the week: Horishi Sugimoto
Hiroshi Sugimoto was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. In 1970, Sugimoto studied politics and sociology at Rikkyō University in Tokyo. In 1974, he retrained as an artist and received his BFA in Fine Arts at the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, California. Afterwards, Sugimoto settled in New York City.
Sugimoto has spoken of his work as an expression of ‘time exposed’, or photographs serving as a time capsule for a series of events in time. His work also focuses on transience of life, and the conflict between life and death.
Sugimoto is also deeply influenced by the writings and works of Marcel Duchamp, as well as the Dadaist and Surrealist movements as a whole. He has also expressed a great deal of interest in late 20th century modern architecture.
His use of an 8×10 large-format camera and extremely long exposures have garnered Sugimoto a reputation as a photographer of the highest technical ability. He is equally acclaimed for the conceptual and philosophical aspects of his work. Begun in 1978, Sugimoto’s Theatres series involved photographing old American movie palaces and drive-ins with a folding 4×5 camera and tripod, opening his camera shutter and exposing the film for the duration of the entire feature-length movie, the film projector providing the sole lighting.[4] The luminescent screen in the centre of the composition, the architectural details and the seats of the theatre are the only subjects that register owing to the long exposure of each photograph, while the unique lighting gives the works a surreal look, as a part of Sugimoto’s attempt to revealtime in photography.
Cinerama Dome, Hollywood, 1993, Quad-tone Lithograph, archivally framed (edition of 100), 34.5 x 27.5 inch image
44 x 34 inches framed.
Business Cards
I just received the business cards as well as some postcards that I designed and ordered from vistaprint.com. Having business cards and other promotional material as an artist is important because its is another form of promotion for your work and your practice, well designed business card can get a person interested in who you are and what you do, even people who may not have been interested in what you do in the past. Postcards act as another form of promotion, by offering a number of them for sale and strategically giving some away you further promote your practice as an artist and give people a taste of what it is that you do. Going through companies such as Vista Print is a cost effective way to get what you need, though if you are so inclined you can always hire a graphic designer to design the cards for you and print them yourself, though the costs can be prohibitively expensive.
D Hooks and Picture Hanging
Just purchased some D Hooks so that I can hang my framed works and works on canvas a lot easier, the only disappointing thing was the cost for delivery which was almost as much as the hooks themselves (100 pcs), I was disappointed that there was no option for standard international delivery, the only option was first class. However looking at the prices and quantities of hooks from retail outlets, I found that I still had a better bang for my buck by purchasing them off ebay.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/100-MED-D-Ring-Picture-Hangers-100-SCREWS-triangle-/150770353159
Artist Statement
Here is my most recent artist statement, it is a brief piece of writing relating to my most recent work and practice.
Painting is a meditative medium, whether you work in the figurative/representational tradition or as an abstract painter, or even cross between the two realms like myself, the act of painting transcends all schools, styles and movements. Over the past year there has been a major transformation in my work and my creative process, I have changed my practice radically, moving away from figurative and representational painting and investigating the potential results abstraction can offer. I have come to understand that the process of abstraction; especially when abstracting from life, is not just what we see, but also what we feel, remember, taste and hear. The act of abstract painting is the translation of these sensations, along with sight, into a visual art context. John Elderfield et al (2011) writes “A representational painting can be composed through abstract manipulation of the medium of painting and also the less familiar one that an abstract painting may be created through acts of representation” My current work is about the appropriation of representational elements and manipulating them into abstract compositions, I am questioning what we interpret as the world around us, experiences, happenings and memories and how these can be represented in an abstracted context.
Bibliography
Eldefield, J et al 2011, de Kooning a retrospective, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.