Tag: creative practice
Art This Week-At the San Antonio Museum of Art-Matisse: Life in Color-Dr. William Rudolph Interview
Archibald Prize Winner 2014 – Fiona Lowry
Photography Friday
Port Kembla. A progressive photographic project.
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.
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.
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.
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
A little visit to the AGNSW
Whilst in Sydney I figured that I would see what was happening at the Art Gallery of NSW. There was the usual permanent exhibitions which are always enjoyable. I also managed to check out a contemporary photographic and digital media exhibition about love, relationships, loneliness and sex. I will be refraining from documenting work in the exhibition, mainluly because it is fround upon but also because it ruins the exhibition for those who want to go see it.
I also managed to see a grouping of photographic works by Helmut Newton, and Bettina Rheims. Definitely worth seeing, themes and subjects positioning the work between the worlds of fine art and fashion photography.
Newtow Hub Gallery Experience
Well that was an experience. Wandered into a darkened gallery space in Newtown to the welcome of a short Argentinian man called Andreas who didn’t know what was going on with the exhibition so he told me to call who I assumed was his wife and gallery director, Anita. She answered and we couldn’t understand each other so she told me to put Andreas back on, and after much heated Spanish and many ci’s and buenos I was told that I could leave my work with them and it would be exhibited. I guess that this experience will be one of the stories told for years to come. I just thought that it was an experience worth sharing.