Some photography from the Inner Harbour of Port Kembla, some of the images may be repetitive but it is my first investigation and venture into the realm of photography for quite some time and I am also learning the ins and outs of my camera. Enjoy.
Tag: artworld
New work 20/6/2013
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.
Artist of the Week: Vik Muniz
Vik Muniz (Brazilian, 1961) (Text and images from http://www.artnet.com/artists/vik-muniz/)
Vik Muniz is a Contemporary visual artist who was born Vicente José de Oliveira Muniz (Brazilian, b.1961) in São Paulo, Brazil. Muniz began to discover art in the books he borrowed from his high school library. After studying advertising at the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado de São Paulo, he moved to Brooklyn, NY, with his family in 1983. The artist began his career as a sculptor in the late 1980s, but he gradually became more interested in drawing and photography.
In 1988, Muniz explored the memory, perception, and images represented in arts and communication. He created The Best of Life, the series of drawings in which he reproduced from his memory some of the famous photographs he saw in the magazine Life. He then photographed his drawings to give more reality to his memories. In the mid-1990s, in order to create witty, bold, and often deceiving images based on photojournalism and art history, Muniz began to incorporate unusual and everyday materials into his photographic process. These materials included dust, diamonds, sugar, dry pigment, ketchup, caviar, and wire. In 1997, Muniz became well-known for his Pictures of chocolate series, in which he used chocolate syrup to create his works. The artist borrowed from popular culture and Old Masters artists such as Georges Seurat and Vincent Van Gogh to make his works more familiar. He called this approach the “worst possible illusion.”
In 1998, he participated in the 24th International Biennale in São Paulo, and in 2001, he represented Brazil at the 49th Biennale in Venice, Italy. In 2006, Muniz created the series Pictures of Junk. In 2010, the documentary Waste Land, directed by Lucy Walker, followed Muniz for three years. During this time, the artist created art with recyclables at Jardim Gramacho, a landfill which serves the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro. Muniz collaborated with the people employed to pick out recyclable material from garbage and created large-scale mosaic portraits; these works were sold at art auctions in London and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo. The artist has had his work exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the KAsama Nichido Museum of Art in Japan, among many other prestigious institutions. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
Maria Callas from Pictures of Diamonds, 2004, Chromogenic print (edition of 10), 101.6 x 76.2 cm.
The Flowers in the Blue and White Vase After Chardin, 2005, Chromogenic print (edition of 6), 101.6 x 129.5 cm.
Firing On All Cylinders
This is my third group show in almost as many months. After I had finished University last year and graduated, I had said to myself that I would aim for several shows, group and solo and at least one show in a Sydney gallery. Well I managed to accomplish most of those goals, with a solo show on the way later in the year. This current show which I am exhibiting in is a group show, showcasing the work of the newly elected management committee of the Project Contemporary Art space in Wollongong. The gallery was under threat of being closed down for good, so a new group of individuals came together to save the space so that there would be a place for contemporary art to be exhibited and sold in the Illawarra.
I also co-curated the show along side fellow artist Damian Bancks. The curatorial thinking was to show each artists work on their own, rather than mixing the works together, which could have also worked and would have made for an extremely interesting and wonderful show, however, we felt it necessary to show each artist work by giving them a decent amount of wall space each, followed by a smaller wall being occupied by a series of bio’s which informed everyone a little about who they were and of their practice. It is always a triumph when an artist sells there work, it means that their hard work and dedication has quite literally paid off, I’m not afraid to say that the creative arts industry is a hard one to break into and become a success; being able to live solely by selling your work. I have sold works in the past, but this was the first time I had sold work before the show opened and also sold multiple works on the opening night. I cannot begin to describe the joy that this brought me, the feeling of success. Firstly I paint and create art for myself, however the act of exhibiting is a way of putting out the thing you have created to be seen, critiqued and enjoyed by an audience. And you won’t always receive the best feedback, but that’s all apart of the creative process. Selling works gives you the sense that you have achieved something, that you were successful in creating something that caught the attention and admiration of someone, the work resonated with them for whatever reason.
Being still relatively young most would say that I have a very long way to go in the world of art, as an artist and as an exhibitor and even as a person in general. It’s moments like this that seem to make it all seem worthwhile, you know that you have had a hard road to traverse and will undoubtedly continue to experience a plethora of hardships, especially in this day and age where art has to compete more than ever against new age forms of entertainment; some newer than others. However hard the road is, it’s always worth the journey. And even though I like to think that my journey started seven years ago when I first walked in my first life drawing class while I was at TAFE art school, I see this moment as a milestone along the path to greatness and success.
Enjoy the pics from the opening night along with some images of some of the work I am exhibiting an get along to see the show if you’re in the Wollongong area before the 21st of April. And please take the time to visit and like my artists page on Facebook, plenty of content on there (link below)
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nik-Uzunovski-Artist/225201424159742
Late night creative urges
Just some random thoughts on why it is that I get the urge to draw at paint later on during the day? My general theory is that I am a nocturnal creature and that my creative juices get flowing at a later time rather than motivating me to create. Also it could be that it is a lot quieter at night, which allows me to focus more on the act of creation, whereas during the day there are many distractions. Picasso loved to work into the night especially as soon as he got a hold of some portable lighting that allowed him to work at night.
Here’s a little something I popped out the other night.
Painting for an exhibition
In the next couple of weeks I will be exhibiting alongside six other artists at Studio 19, Central Chambers Wollongong City Mall, NSW Australia. For this group exhibition we all decided to work under an overall theme and title; question:make:connect. We are creating work in response to a question we want to answer with our work, whether it be something political, personal, profound or in relation to the process of creating a work.
I am questioning the process of abstraction in my work. Responding to the world around me and my thoughts and feelings and composing them onto a 2-D surface of canvas and board. The connecting part of the show is how we connect our work back to the question and also how our work connects as a group. We don’t aim to make literal connections, for example: we all painted landscapes or sculpted figures. But small connections like working on similar grounds i.e paper, canvas, board, cloth. Materials that are all fragile, holding work that is soft spoken and contemplative, yet is still strong enough to please the aesthetic eye
and quench the conceptual thirst.
Once the show is up I will make another post with pictures of everyones work. Until then I will leave you with a image of one of my works.
Paper Planes 2012 UOW Grad Show
What a journey it has been. Last night was the culmination of three years of long hours and sleepless nights, tears and tantrums and a whole lot of creating. We put together an exhibition of visual arts, graphic design and media arts. A beautiful mix of creative works. I have enjoyed my time and am grateful for the people I have met and friends that I have made. Even though it may be the end of one adventure, it is the beginning of another, thank you to my followers of this blig and also my followers on my other social media outlets. I have included a few snapshots of our grad show as it was coming together and some from the opening night. Stay tuned for more developments over the new year.
*All images of works are owned by their creators.
Abund-Art 2012
As apart of our up and coming Graduation show, the students of the Faculty of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong have organised Abund-Art. This exhibition/art auction will be a means of raising funds to go towards our graduating show. Each student has submitted several works, we also have work that has been donated by our teachers and a number of established artists that have donated there works for sale. This show, much like the nude auction, allows students to not only exhibit their work and have it seen, but it also provides those students who have little or no exhibition experience with the experience they need to hang shows of their own and pursue careers in the Creative Arts Industries. The idea for Abund-Art came about as an idea to have a show, a show of abundance, hence Abund-Art. A packed out show with dozens of work up for grabs for the right bid. The auction will take place on 14th October at Gallery 5: Crown Lane in Wollongong, NSW from 1pm onwards. For those who cannot make the actual auction, do not despair, we will have a silent bidding box available in the gallery space for the duration of the exhibition. The idea of the silent bid box is for people who cannot be present at the auction to bid on any work that they are interested in, while also allowing those people who don’t feel up to competing openly for works of art to place a bid, well over the reserve price, to give them a fighting chance to get they work they so desire. All you have to do is place your name, phone number and email on the slip provided, along with the number and title of the work and the name of artist as well as your bid price and put the paper into the box provided.
One of the best features of this exhibition is that there was no set theme, the works up for auction are created by different artists, based on different themes and motifs and they are created through different media. We have a variety of drawings, water colours, oil on board and canvas, photography, print making and even sculpture. This appeals to a wider audience. So I recommend that you get down to Gallery 5 on the auction day and start bidding, alternatively you can make a silent bid prior to the auction for your chance to own a unique work of art. I hope that you enjoy the install pics below and take notice of the event poster that I have added; thanks to our design students, and standby for some additional images of the auction itself.
Ink on paper 2.0
I recently embarked on creating a new series of work, a series of ink drawings/paintings on paper. I felt that I needed to step up my creative process by incorporating some colour. But not for the sake of doing something different. I have tried to push my work, make it more interesting, more active and engaging. The images below are a sampling of what I have managed to put together. Using the same process as I did in the previous ink drawings, however, I have been forced to reconsider the properties of the mediums I have been using. Ink and watercolour, although they are similar; both being water based, they both have a series of varying properties. When mixing ink with water it comes quite close to being like water colour. When creating a work with different mediums, both fluid, you have to consider the process carefully. It can become very easy to end up with a muddy mess of pigment on paper, which is what happened with a few drawings, however they are not a waste, but a lesson on what not to do. So I hope you have enjoyed the progress of my work so far and I hope you continue to do so.
