Just my cup of tea, art-wise…

Something Specific About Everything, photographs of nifty little assemblages by Samuel Henne.

These really tickle my art bone and remind me that it would be really nice to make less figurative work.

Via Triangulation Blog

the fourth post title. all previous and deleted filled with comparative, self-loathing

How lovely are these embossed foil pans by Israeli artist, Idan Freidman? From his Profiles Project, he taglines the project in his Flickr account with the line ‘ordinary people disposable objects’ and by ordinary people, he means his friends.

I’m a bit obsessed by the entity named ‘friendship’ right now, and these are such a fragile devotional object to the cause. So nice. I would love to be this kind of artist. Gifted and free of bullshit.

I’ve got the horn for the work of Dr Lakra…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seriously. How beautiful is that?

And why can’t I find a title for this image that I found at We Make Money Not Art?

Some thoughts in the wake of viewing a collaboration

A Tendency to Construct @ 6A A.R.I. 9 May – 7 June 2009

I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I’m no scientist, but as I understand things, first of all there are elements.  Everything that comes after is the process of adding one thing to another thing and perhaps applying a catalyst.  But elemental substances themselves? They’re pretty much dead.

I have never failed to be touched by the nature of both creativity and chemistry to produce something out of nothing.  Or at least something out of something that seems like nothing. To infuse the dead with life.

I know how Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is perceived.  A cautionary tale, convenient for creationists to scare the creative away from operating in God’s territory.  But I can start life, or at least energy in an egg cup by adding white vinegar (CH3COOH) to bicarbonate of soda (NaHCO3).  It makes CO2 which escapes as a gas causing the bubbling and leaves behind H2O, water of course.  And you and I and all life could be viewed quite simply as a series of similar chemical reactions and constructions operating on an infinitely grander scale.  Anyway… I guess this lab-coat digression preceding the subject is because since I was a child, I have always perceived Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a metaphor for creative endeavour, with an understanding that things will sometimes fail.  And of late I have to come to realise that the art quite simply, is the things that don’t fail.

So, what happens when there are two creators?  Or indeed, zoom out the microscope further and view the equation this way: add one artist to another and what is the result?

Of course the answers are as infinite and varied as the skills, intent and leanings of the artists involved but here, the result is an anatomical diagram of creativity.  Both these artists, as in love with the creative process of others as with their own, celebrate creativity through the works construction, proximity, content and a rather generous intention.

Artists enliven the spaces they inhabit and the Brinckman/Robinson collaboration has produced something that tracks the paths of creative endeavour in this concrete bunker that the local scene knows as 6A, attempting to mark and map it’s arterial progress and the eddies of rumination.

The rhythms of the resident artist’s ums stolen from between their words about art and making, form a heartbeat that fills the open spaces, each marking individual work areas with animated waveforms of the sound, vaugely medical in appearance.

Is it romantic to present these ‘thinking sounds’ in such a way?  The word is that God made man in his own image, and regardless of the truth of that theology, I certainly know the reverse to be as, if not more true.  Our own bodies are our starting point for understanding everything else.  Why then shouldn’t creativity take the form of human anatomy?  Come on. We measured things in ‘feet’ until half the world realised it was easier to count by 10s…

What appears to me as a large anatomical heart hangs from the ceiling but if I could turn the room on it’s head, it’s an oxygen tent.  There is a perceivable ‘digestive tract’ that flows from the cluster of electrical wall plugs emerging from the heart/tent and flows through the narrow passage, branching though the main space and out into the carpark where a pink wire oesophagus breathes the energy of the thing back out into the world.

A Tendancy to Construct (installation detail). Trudi Brinckman and Cath Robinson 2009

At the opening of this exhibition I hear one of the artists talking with a gallery visitor who finds the medical nature distressing, it recalls for them memories of tragedy, the loss of a loved one in a hospital setting but the artist is insistent – it’s a life support system, this structure keeps things alive, it doesn’t kill them.  Actually I think it could go either way.  Creativity is perilous like that. Isn’t everything interesting balanced on a knife edge?

The thing that makes me both edgy and excitable is the dangerous potential; clustered, arterial groupings of tubes traverse the space,  half with the capacity to carry electricity, half to carry water.  Even if activated, those two things would be kept separate by their plumbing and cabling… but one error… one place of wear against another and it’s a danger zone. Bzzztt!  An out of control electrical charge that could stop a heart but if controlled and reigned in, could reactivate another.

Any collaboration is a risky exercise, and here is the result of that risk taken.  Two artists who know little about each other but admire each others work and want the experience of making in unison, not in tandem.  Emerging from the inevitably tense stage of negotiation, circling one another from a distance to get a feel for how best to play this out, they enter the gallery, combine, catalyse and depart leaving behind the outcome of their activity (their construction/baby/monster).

It is unfortunate for us that all we get to see is this outcome: the process being as valued by the artists (if not more) as the result and the work itself seeming to aspire to honour that process.  But this is not how it works.  If we’d been there, we would have spoiled the chemistry.

Sally Rees  May 2009

In which I replace the word ‘dealer’ with ‘pimp’ and the word ‘artist’ with ‘artstitute’.

So here’s the thing. I’ve never had any commercial representation (well, DUR like I haven’t mentioned that about a zillion times before but stay with me…) and to be honest I have, for some time been terrified of it. My time ensconced in a happy studio collective a few years back was both fun and educational but I was pretty exclusively surrounded by artists who were and are taken pretty seriously in both the art community and the marketplace, who made some (if not mucho) income off their practice and to a man seemed to be full of resentful stories about the wrongdoings of their dealers.

While once it had seemed to me that the logical way to make a living as an artist was to match-make yourself with the right dealer and if your primary practice didn’t seem to have a market, develop a sideline, once I had vicariously lived-through-my-studio-neighbours, I instead saw this path as a trap. A trap I figured I was smart enough to avoid.

However here I now sit a) having failed at art teaching b) having failed at arts admin and worst of all c) with sketchbooks, notepads and odd dusty back rooms of my brain piled high with unmade works that have not had the equipment, time or money to be realised (those good ol’ art-related jobs that keep your toe in the industry are, to be fair, immensely valuable for the experience and knowledge gained within, but the pay is beyond shite and the demands on both you and your time stretch way beyond the boundaries of your employ). This means my art practice has a particularly slow burn and what’s more I seem to be skint.

So what’s the next step? Well, monkeys and squeaky pigs are pretty cute but for whatever reason (honesty, practicality, plain old snobbery…?) I don’t view them as a part of my practice. Sure, I hope to find a place to sell them because I really need some cash (hey, the brain assisting naturopathic supplements I’ve come to rely on aren’t free you know… ) but they are pretty much without philosophy or concept. A product. A simple toy. And what I imagine I will be able to charge for them actually leaves me on less than minimum wage for their production anyway, to tell the truth.

But I know I could make ART that sells. I have a good eye for trends, memes and waves of ‘taste’ and if I knew I had an art pimp ready to take stuff on I could be churning that art out. I don’t mean to be facetious of course, I really couldn’t make things that I didn’t at least like myself, but at the moment I could quite happily pass myself over to life as an arts-titute. I know there are artist acquaintances of mine who think I am nuts in that I never expect to make a buck out of what I do… but am I just fooling myself if I believe otherwise?

I ask you my tiny readership – how do you get pimped? Are disgruntled complaints about the pimp system justified or just a bit of a whinge? Would the artist-neighbours I once had really have been better off without the pimps? Is it really so predictably naff as you being ‘discovered’ by someone? How does the whole pimp-deal work? I mean I know the general going percentages for the art-pimps cut, but are they pimping you, day in, day out and occasionally advising ‘we’re running low on art, can you please do some more pitchers?’ or do they only go a-selling when you are the feature of the week in your bi-annual, just-me exhibition? So many questions because I am so naive about this whole system… I’m not joking… I just don’t know.

My artwork is one of the rare things in my life I have very few doubts about. I stand by it. I have received a lot of great positive feedback about it lately, both here and by email and so I am really interested in the lack of response here to my monkey-product (as opposed to the capital A – ART). You are small but usually so regular, Readership… are you telling me by your silence to screw the product, just make the art?

If so dear Readership, could you please do me a favour? Unlurk and give me a piece of your mind. Also, tell me your experiences (and those of others you may have) of the dealer/artist (I still rather like pimp and artstitute as terminology though but let’s be clear…)relationship in the comments. No names please. Let’s play nice. Informative but nice.

And now I’ll go ‘cause speaking of art I have a fantasy of a creeping cat-fungus that I want to realise…

Sneak Peek

Matt’s PhD submission, Suspension of Disbelief – The representation of poetic faith through time-based media opens for public viewing tonight at 5:30 and will remain open over the weekend before being dismantled on Sunday night.

Edit: at the Plimsoll Gallery, Tasmanian School of Art, Hunter Street, Hobart. D’oh for not mentioning.

The work pictured is a recent one, In Haunted Attics, a sound and video installation.

Although obviously biased, I think the whole submission is pretty amazing and you should really try to check it out if you can. Matt kinda suffers the same fate as me in that it’s not often that you have the gear and the space to show this stuff so don’t miss the rare opportunity to see this great collection of work in the context of one another.

It’s just beautiful and I am immensely proud.

RIP Nagi Noda

Nagi Noda was an artist I was just starting to become familiar with in the last couple of years.

She passed away last week leaving behind a body of work that I would be proud to look back on at the end of a much, much longer life. It is all elegant and hilarious.

From videos of poodle aerobics to remarkable art direction to these amazing wigs she was consistently meticulous and fresh. How did she do that?

Here is her last video, a pop promo for Japanese artist MEG, displaying all the elements that make her work so like-able. It’s all good but make sure you hang in there for the cats!

Thanks BoingBoing both for letting me know she existed in the first place and for marking her passing.

Sundays with Mish

The Sally/Mish project is ramping up. Work on it to date has been confined to Sundays but soon that limited focus will expand and escalate as we aim to complete the video before Mish and Tricky (her partner in life/crime) depart early September for 6 months in Europe.

Today’s session focused on prop tests and choreography.

Laugh and grow fat.

The truck driving took me to the home of the delightful Tara Badcock of the Teacosy Revolution to return a sculptural work of hers.

She and her partner Rainier live in a lovely house on a sheep farm at Chudleigh.

Over tea (what else?) she showed me some old poultry magazines recently won in a farm auction she went to. This ad in particular caught my fancy.

How wonderful for this to have once been someone’s goal in life.

Snowflakes and Nylon

Sometimes I discover an artist who just fills me with a total joy in what they are doing. They tackle issues so gently, charmingly and playfully that they never feel bossy or instructive. They just inspire you to want to go play with them and join in their jolly crusade.

This morning I stumbled over Finnish artist Riitta Ikonen while trawling through the web waiting for some video to render.

The work pictured is Snowflake from 2007.

For two years now we haven’t had snow in Finland for Christmas. This is very unusual and worrying and prompted me to start an ongoing site specific project looking at the effects of global warming.

I also like the project Human Nylon where she took on the role of the man-made fabric in order to investigate and honour the importance it has in our lives.

But having long held an interest in the concept of making artworks for animals myself (I’ve just never worked out quite how I want to do it yet), the work I loved most of all was the public service artwork for urban wildlife Don’t be a Roadkill. Ikonen ‘performed’ as roadkill to educate squirrels and the like about road safety and distributed fortune cookies for them amongst the parks, containing road safety instructions and affirmative messages like “I will not become a roadkill today”.

You can see more on her website HERE.