Gerhard Richter Retrospective // Tate Modern

I've been a fan of Richter for a while now but hadn't seen any of his painting in real life. I'd admired his technical skill and the subtlety in which he tackles quite profound and complex topics.

I loved this painting. I'd seen it online and wasn't that impressed but it was stunning in real life. It's the first painting I've seen and been extremely conscious of the physical movement of my eyes looking across the canvas . The immediate connotation is that of pixels and it made me think of the immense amount of constructed visual imagery that surrounds us now. It was that feeling of being overwhelmed that I almost felt physically through my awareness of the erratic movement of my eyes attempting to process it all.

George Condo // The Hayward // London

I'm not a big fan of George Condo's work, though I do like his use of humour and appreciate the homage to european portraiture that his work presents to us. I also found it interesting walking round and thinking about why these portraits were lighthearted, satirical humour and a mockery rather than the profound reflections of the human condition that the work he borrows from is received as. What is it about the visual language that defines these charicatures as comic and cartoonish?

One set of work was displayed on the wall in a traditional layout of portraits in a museum, house or gallery, something like a dysfunctional family.

I suppose these paintings make you look at those historical european portraits with fresh eyes, and with more awareness of the visual language they use.

Collection

These are some of the places, things and artists that are influencing my current project, starting from the idea of collecting and journeys. I've started by looking at the areas and structures that are ubiquitous with UK suburbia; the places in which the majority live and spend our lives. It came from looking at the surroundings of the journeys that I take everyday.

George Shaw

John Myers : Middle England
I went to see John Myer's exhibition at the Ikon in Birmingham this week. His photographs tie in directly with what I'm looking at at the moment and some of them had quite a striking presence.

The exhibition displayed his photos of 1970's Stourbridge. There were some interesting portraits but the ones I was interested in were void of humans and human interaction. These ones make us look again at the surroundings in which we live in. In an interview he says that his work is partly about "coming to terms with the place we live in" as opposed to desiring and lusting after the spectacular and picturesque.

Richard Gaplin: Collages inspired by architecture

Using photographs that are cut extremely precisely Gaplin recreates spaces.
This top piece is an earlier piece of his work, less abstracted and related more to the original space.

 The one above, 'BRACE VI (Braston)'  loses almost all resemblance to a reality, only recomposing some memorable aspects. The effect is an image of a seemingly futuristic and utopian city.

I'm more interested in the taking of photos, editing out and recomposing the space in relation to an idea of mental/emotional response to it.

Marbling

I love these marbled prints. The patterns and colours are hypnotic. The lines in this one also links in with my previous post. It was surprising to me that they're actually mainly from the 19th century, they look  so much like the designs and art being created in the mid 20th century.

You can see more here. It's also generally a very good website for posting series of beautiful and unusual images.  

 http://butdoesitfloat.com/2459380/Energy-and-motion-made-visible-memories-arrested-in-space

15/12/11

This started as a college project but I wanted to continue it and merge it with things I've been interested in recently, including mapping.

- Placing yourself in history -

The images above are collages I did on photoshop made up of photos of my tights. Bit strange, but I found that when stretched around my leg the fabric created these lines similar to a topographical map. They're very rough but it was more to experiment with what effects I could create. The blue one has been printed and scratched into.
It made me think of artists I've been looking at recently that try to place themselves within history as well as process their heritage and comment on the way we engage and relate to it. The power and wealth of the country I live in (though still decreasing)  is a remnant of that time of violent colonialism and as a result of chance of birthplace it is part of my heritage. Using the visible contours of my body might be an interesting way of exploring that idea, or perhaps other ideas to do with place and identity.

These are just rough results of thought processes. Hopefully I'll have time to develop them to a better thought through and polished work. I was interested in the simplistic symbols and the way that they kind of relate to my simplistic understanding of a time that collates a mass amount of history, cultures and values.

Colonial symbol and typographical map.

This drawing on fabric is part of the original project. A drawn collage of different colonial symbols.