To curate my Christmas
holiday I had to find a way to document an aspect of it so as to have
something to curate. I decided to focus on Christmas day as my
limited time period in which to document it. Then from that I chose
to collect and document my Christmas card envelopes. I chose the
envelopes from my Christmas cards as they are a easily forgotten
part of Christmas and I like the idea of archiving and displaying
aspects of Christmas that are usually discarded and forgotten as they
become obsolete functionless objects once they have fulfilled their
purpose of containing Christmas cards from one place to the next.
Envelopes are an object with a very specific function and they are
unusual in the way that their ability function only lasts for a very
small amount of time once they have been sent. Though Christmas card
envelopes are often dissimilar to envelopes used for sending letters
in as they often don't have a stamp on them as they are either handed
over in person or send inside a package containing a present. The
need for an envelope for a Christmas card is then lacking. If I was
to display my envelopes as an art object I would display them as a
collection, with an intent to add to each Christmas to become an ever
evolving artwork. I would display them in the same way stamps are
displayed as there is a clear link between the two objects. Stamps
are displayed in an album and a magnifying glass is used to see them
more clearly. They would be displayed in a museum so as to preserve
them and present them as items of value and cultural and historical
significance to contrast with the way they are usual seen as items of
minimal value and importance. It would be a comment on the way items
that are seen as obsolete, gain value with age and by being placed in
a museum. Also the collection of envelopes embodys the feeling of christmas as they contain cards which something people give and recive at christmas.
The audience of this piece would be the sort of people that
enjoy going to museums, it is not aimed at a specific age range but
more at the people who frequent museums and are interested in the archiving of objects.
I don't think it is of
importance that I have not physically displayed the actual envelopes
in a physical piece instead of scanning them in because writing how I
would display them is enough that they can be visualised in the
manner I would wish to display them. I have scanned an example of
them in and uploaded it onto here to prove that I did actually
collect them.
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Evaluation of curatorial museum group exhibition project
In this evaluation I intend to outline key areas in which I feel we did well and areas which could have been improved in producing a body of work.
We began by chosing a theme. We chose The Day Of The Dead. I feel that this was a good topic to focus on as it gave itself to very community based artwork whilst broaching important topics, ie: death, in a positive and socialy acceptable way. By approaching death in this way it questions the way we veiw death by challenging our countries traditional veiws and questioning weither seeing death as something very awfull and morbid is right. It also gives a new perspective on a culture that is not often veiwed in museums and helps people experience the museum as a space in a new way.
We investigated into a specific theme and went through the curatorial process in order to produce everything needed to propose an exhibition. We chose our theme as a group, though the specific aspects that we focused on in our theme changed as we aquired new members. I felt that working in a group was an important experience as working with other curators and artists is a key part of working in the art world. When dividing the tasks that we had to complete bettween us we discussed each others strengths well, meaning that we finished tasks efficently to a refined level. Though on my part I felt my photoshopping was a bit rusty as I dont use it regularly, however as a group we overcame this by alocating different photoshopping tasks to different people, depending on the type of photoshopping required. Although we focused on individual stengths we made sure the tasks were split bettween us fairly and we each covered a range of mediums/tasks and often did our experiementational research together.
When beggining our work we brainstormed and produced mind maps to focus all our ideas and then went on to experiement a lot. However I feel that further on we got too caught up in experimentation and lost our focus a bit. We got distracted by the catering side of it and the food that is placed on the alter, which for heath and safety reasons could not be a part of our exhibition. Although, we got to caught up, we managed to carefully pin point our exact focus. From then we realised which experiments were impracticle, or drifted to far from our original aim and where able to mark them up as research and focus on our original aims. This wouldnt have been achivable if we were not able to work together well as a group.
I belive we made it clear through the artwork and resoarces that we chose to display that our exhibition would be community based and available to all age groups. With the ragdoll evidently intended for younger children, the tattoo photography for a teen audience and the sound instillation, as a less obvious arwork, focusing on reaching out to an older audience.
Although I felt we worked well as a group, it is still a difficult thing to do as everyone had different ideas about how things should look. Learning to compromise with each other but also when to say no was very important and a key part of keeping our ideas together and focused without anyone becoming unhappy. Balancing the work equaly bettween us whilst still focusing on individual strengths was also important so that nobody felt left out or overworked. To acheive these we met up regularly outside of lectures to discuss ideas and push forward our work. Then agreeing upon indivudual tasks to complete before we next met.
If we were to continue with this body of work to push it forward and where able to actualy follow through with it as an exhibition, I think we could look more in depth into advertisment and produce higher quality promotional material. Also I would photograph more examples of Day Of The Dead tattoo iconography and we would have the ragdoll produced as a full sized peice.
We began by chosing a theme. We chose The Day Of The Dead. I feel that this was a good topic to focus on as it gave itself to very community based artwork whilst broaching important topics, ie: death, in a positive and socialy acceptable way. By approaching death in this way it questions the way we veiw death by challenging our countries traditional veiws and questioning weither seeing death as something very awfull and morbid is right. It also gives a new perspective on a culture that is not often veiwed in museums and helps people experience the museum as a space in a new way.
We investigated into a specific theme and went through the curatorial process in order to produce everything needed to propose an exhibition. We chose our theme as a group, though the specific aspects that we focused on in our theme changed as we aquired new members. I felt that working in a group was an important experience as working with other curators and artists is a key part of working in the art world. When dividing the tasks that we had to complete bettween us we discussed each others strengths well, meaning that we finished tasks efficently to a refined level. Though on my part I felt my photoshopping was a bit rusty as I dont use it regularly, however as a group we overcame this by alocating different photoshopping tasks to different people, depending on the type of photoshopping required. Although we focused on individual stengths we made sure the tasks were split bettween us fairly and we each covered a range of mediums/tasks and often did our experiementational research together.
When beggining our work we brainstormed and produced mind maps to focus all our ideas and then went on to experiement a lot. However I feel that further on we got too caught up in experimentation and lost our focus a bit. We got distracted by the catering side of it and the food that is placed on the alter, which for heath and safety reasons could not be a part of our exhibition. Although, we got to caught up, we managed to carefully pin point our exact focus. From then we realised which experiments were impracticle, or drifted to far from our original aim and where able to mark them up as research and focus on our original aims. This wouldnt have been achivable if we were not able to work together well as a group.
I belive we made it clear through the artwork and resoarces that we chose to display that our exhibition would be community based and available to all age groups. With the ragdoll evidently intended for younger children, the tattoo photography for a teen audience and the sound instillation, as a less obvious arwork, focusing on reaching out to an older audience.
Although I felt we worked well as a group, it is still a difficult thing to do as everyone had different ideas about how things should look. Learning to compromise with each other but also when to say no was very important and a key part of keeping our ideas together and focused without anyone becoming unhappy. Balancing the work equaly bettween us whilst still focusing on individual strengths was also important so that nobody felt left out or overworked. To acheive these we met up regularly outside of lectures to discuss ideas and push forward our work. Then agreeing upon indivudual tasks to complete before we next met.
If we were to continue with this body of work to push it forward and where able to actualy follow through with it as an exhibition, I think we could look more in depth into advertisment and produce higher quality promotional material. Also I would photograph more examples of Day Of The Dead tattoo iconography and we would have the ragdoll produced as a full sized peice.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Wall Plaque
I had to produce a piece of writing for a wall plague aimed at 12-14 year olds. I had to think about what to write to help the children engage with the work and chose to focus on how it was produced because when showing my 14 year old sister a photograph of the artwork, that is what interested her. Also facts and figures, in a non complex writing style, are useful for children that age for research on school trips which is often the reason why children of that age visit art galleries. Although I used phrases like "light sensitive paper" and "photographic print", I feel that I have explained them in a way children of that age will understand. I feel that the facts and figures are the most important focus as they are the things children of that age will understand. Where as if focused on the concept behind the work I feel children would lose interest or feel like it is above them.
Wall plaque for Wolfgang Tillmans Freischwimmer 155 (2010) aimed at 12-14 year olds
Freischwimmer is a German word which means “free swimmer”. This
piece of artwork by Wolfgang Tillmans questions what photography
really is because this is a photograph print that was created without
a camera. A photographic print is a printed picture produced through
manipulating light sensitive paper. Light sensitive paper is paper
that changes colour when light touches it. This particular piece was
created by moving fibre optic lights across light sensitive paper.
Moving the lights across it produced the black lines you can see on
this piece of artwork. The blur in this piece is produced through the
movement of the lights when placed on and removed from the paper.
Wolfgang Tillmans was born in Germany in 1968 and is an artist who
creates photographic based work. He made Freischwimmer 115 in 2010.
piece of artwork by Wolfgang Tillmans questions what photography
really is because this is a photograph print that was created without
a camera. A photographic print is a printed picture produced through
manipulating light sensitive paper. Light sensitive paper is paper
that changes colour when light touches it. This particular piece was
created by moving fibre optic lights across light sensitive paper.
Moving the lights across it produced the black lines you can see on
this piece of artwork. The blur in this piece is produced through the
movement of the lights when placed on and removed from the paper.
Wolfgang Tillmans was born in Germany in 1968 and is an artist who
creates photographic based work. He made Freischwimmer 115 in 2010.
Saturday, 14 January 2012
Museum notes
- Museum as an archive
- Museum as a mausoleum
- "Museums are like the family sepulchres of works of art" - Theodor Adorno
- Put an object in a museum and it loses its use because nobody will use because will use it again because it has been given value as an artifact.
- Mark Dion - tate thames dig (1999)
- Christian Boltanski (1990) the reserve of the dead swiss
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Writting as a peice itself - examples
- newspaper article
- title
- artist notes
- narritive
- sketchbook notes
- writting already on components that make up a peice of artwork
- other people writting on a peice of public art
- interactive art through public writting
- instructions
- artist blogs
- blogs
- artist journals
- artist notebook
- critical essays
- accedemic journal
- gallery descriptions
- gallery plaques
- tv
- annotation
- breif
- poetry as art
- gallery pamplet
- novels
- monologue
- subtitles
- biography of an artist
- complaints
- letters
- envelopes
These are many forms in which writing can be seen as a piece of artwork or art tool in which to explain or inform a piece of artwork. For example, an artist blog shows progression of work through both writing and photography and can be an important tool in documenting progress and ideas. It is also a way of storing ideas that were not developed at the time so that they can be looked back on and progressed at a later date. Briefs are also an important written tool for artists to help focus their work and stop them deviating from their original goal or specific commissioned work.
Womens role in cinema - notes
Valie Export
-Austrian Artist
-Tap and Touch Cinema
-Performed from 1968 to 1971 in 10 cities
-Performed when the development of feminist film theory began
-performed in public on the streets, inviting men, women and children to experience the peice
-A peice of street performance art in which she wore a 'cinema' (box) around her upper naked body so with a curtain covering the entrance so that her body could not be seen but could be touched by anyone who reached through the curtains to experience the artwork.
- Tap and Touch Cinema looks womens role in film and how they are objectified.
-A comment on how male roles in film move the plot forward and the women in films are either bad or require saving, causing them to be a hindrance. Often the 'prize' the lead male role receives for saving the female is sexual.
-Looks at the use of traditional gender steriotypes in cinema to create characters the veiwers can relate to. Also looks at the Male Gaze in cinema in which the women is veiwed as the object of desire rather than the man being an object of desire as well as the woman, which reinforces veiws that its ok to sexualise women and that women do not feel desire as much as men.
-Austrian Artist
-Tap and Touch Cinema
-Performed from 1968 to 1971 in 10 cities
-Performed when the development of feminist film theory began
-performed in public on the streets, inviting men, women and children to experience the peice
-A peice of street performance art in which she wore a 'cinema' (box) around her upper naked body so with a curtain covering the entrance so that her body could not be seen but could be touched by anyone who reached through the curtains to experience the artwork.
- Tap and Touch Cinema looks womens role in film and how they are objectified.
-A comment on how male roles in film move the plot forward and the women in films are either bad or require saving, causing them to be a hindrance. Often the 'prize' the lead male role receives for saving the female is sexual.
-Looks at the use of traditional gender steriotypes in cinema to create characters the veiwers can relate to. Also looks at the Male Gaze in cinema in which the women is veiwed as the object of desire rather than the man being an object of desire as well as the woman, which reinforces veiws that its ok to sexualise women and that women do not feel desire as much as men.
Art as a pollitical tool - notes on the 1968 art workers co-alition/collaboration
Art workers co-alition/collaboration
-May 1968
-Began in Paris but spread all across Europe and the states
-collective action
-ideological possition
-anti-government
-pro-classlessness
-in response to the vietnam war
-artists removed their own names from their work and became a co-alition/collaboration
-created posters instead of the regular art of that time to removed their work from the gallery institution and the art market
-Paris was taken over by students who kicked out the accedemics and invited in new teachers who they felt would be truthfull and they invited in factory workers.
-May 1968
-Began in Paris but spread all across Europe and the states
-collective action
-ideological possition
-anti-government
-pro-classlessness
-in response to the vietnam war
-artists removed their own names from their work and became a co-alition/collaboration
-created posters instead of the regular art of that time to removed their work from the gallery institution and the art market
-Paris was taken over by students who kicked out the accedemics and invited in new teachers who they felt would be truthfull and they invited in factory workers.
Monday, 2 January 2012
Cal Andre - ALCLOUD
http://www.artnet.com/artwork/426066054/115807/carl-andre-alcloud.html
I looked in more depth into the work of Carl Andre after looking at him when we covered Site and Situation. I chose to look in depth at one particular work, linked to above. I chose this work because I feel it shows how his work is viewed is very much dependent on the situation in which it is placed. The positioning of his 144 cubes is key in how the viewer reacts to the artwork and the 'negative space' in between the cubes. The website claims the cubes are placed 'randomly' however I don't believe they were as someone would have to place them and would think about how they were positioned in relation to the site they have been placed. Considering Carl Andre's work focuses on situation and the placing of objects, this work being randomly placed would be an obscure deviation from his previous work. I do not believe this piece to be an anomaly but instead a carefully situated piece, in which the order is secret so appears random in its format.
Site and situation - notes on relevant artists
Guy Debord
- French marxist theorist
-writer and filmmaker
-founder of a letterist faction
-founding member of the situationist international
-He belives in the everyday becoming art
-He belives that we follow an unthinking path and that we should stop following it by walking new routes (routes you dont usualy take,routes that you dont need to take and routes that are out of your way)
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson was Anti-Gallery, he apposed the gallery/instituation system. This is shown in the work Spiral Jetty.
Spiral Jetty:
It was not made in a gallery and is part of the landscape so cannot be placed in a gallery situation so it is apart from the art market. It cannot be bought and sold in the same way that the large majority of art is because it cannot be moved. It can also be walked on and experienced in a different way to something in a gallery.
Carl Andre
-American minimalist artist
-Interaction with sculpture
-Politicaly questioning the role of the gallery/instution
-Looked at how space is used
Michael Heizer
-American artist with a similar style as Robert Smithson
-Digging/altering the landscape as artistic practise
-Produced work in the desert
-Famous for Double Negative, a 1500ft trench cut into the side of a mesa in the Nevada desert
- French marxist theorist
-writer and filmmaker
-founder of a letterist faction
-founding member of the situationist international
-He belives in the everyday becoming art
-He belives that we follow an unthinking path and that we should stop following it by walking new routes (routes you dont usualy take,routes that you dont need to take and routes that are out of your way)
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson was Anti-Gallery, he apposed the gallery/instituation system. This is shown in the work Spiral Jetty.
Spiral Jetty:
It was not made in a gallery and is part of the landscape so cannot be placed in a gallery situation so it is apart from the art market. It cannot be bought and sold in the same way that the large majority of art is because it cannot be moved. It can also be walked on and experienced in a different way to something in a gallery.
Carl Andre
-American minimalist artist
-Interaction with sculpture
-Politicaly questioning the role of the gallery/instution
-Looked at how space is used
Michael Heizer
-American artist with a similar style as Robert Smithson
-Digging/altering the landscape as artistic practise
-Produced work in the desert
-Famous for Double Negative, a 1500ft trench cut into the side of a mesa in the Nevada desert
Site and situation notes
Site -> Space occupied by work
Space occupied by work - political/physical/ideological
Situation-> Artwork becomes situated in a space
Quotes that reference site and situation:
"by situated we refure to those artistic practises for which the 'situation' or 'context' is often the starting point"- Clair Doherty
"Context as an impetus, hidrance, inspiration and research subject for the process of making art, wheither specified by a curator or commissioner or proposed by the artist"- Clair Doherty
"Re-imagining of place as a situation, a set of circumstances, geographical location, historical narrative, group of people or a social agenda" - Clair Doherty
Space occupied by work - political/physical/ideological
Situation-> Artwork becomes situated in a space
Quotes that reference site and situation:
"by situated we refure to those artistic practises for which the 'situation' or 'context' is often the starting point"- Clair Doherty
"Context as an impetus, hidrance, inspiration and research subject for the process of making art, wheither specified by a curator or commissioner or proposed by the artist"- Clair Doherty
"Re-imagining of place as a situation, a set of circumstances, geographical location, historical narrative, group of people or a social agenda" - Clair Doherty
Clair Doherty is looking at the way in which artists situate work. The first quote focuses on how artists create artwork for a specific space, the space in question often being a gallery space. The second quote reflects how the situation or context an artwork is placed in affects how it it viewed. Artwork has different connotations depending on where it is displayed. It also looks at how this context is not always controlled by the artist as it is often up to curators to chose where an artwork is placed, thus effecting how the artwork is viewed entirely. The third quote looks at place, not just as a physical geographic position but also as something less physical. It references how the time in which an artwork is produced is a context for which it is viewed.
"Derive-playful, constructive behaviour and awareness of psycho-geographic effects [in which persons] drop their usual motives for movement and action...and let themselves be drawn by the action of terrain and the encounters they find there" - Guy Debord (1955)
"Derive-playful, constructive behaviour and awareness of psycho-geographic effects [in which persons] drop their usual motives for movement and action...and let themselves be drawn by the action of terrain and the encounters they find there" - Guy Debord (1955)
Guy Debord is talking about Situationism. He was one of the key members of Situationist International. This quote looks at the way in which Situationism focuses on the creation of situations and how psycho-geography causes people to create new situations by removing themselves from their usual walking routes.
"a work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world" - Robert Smithson
"a work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world" - Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson's quote brings up the way in which the institution becomes a mausoleum for art objects. It stops being a functional object and its worth far exceeds the sum of its parts. It becomes disengaged through use of glass or rope, stopping the viewers from truly engaging through the work through touch.
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Curating objects
In this curatorial session we looked at curating objects, focusing on the object of an egg as the main feature, however other objects were provided for us to include in our instalation.
The egg as an object can be seen as something very significant as it has connotations of life, reproduction,birth, growth and if the egg is broken, it has the opposite connotations i.e: death. Also as we eat eggs, it also has conotations of consumtion and farming. These conotations have to be taken into consideration when curating it as an art object.
I worked in a group with Sarah and we chose to use the props, a doll and a plinth. We chose the plinth because by lifting our object up it brings it closer to the veiw so it is easyer for the veiwer to interact with. An egg in the corner of the room on the floor is veiwed very differently to one more central and raised on a plinth. An egg in the corner of a room would be questioned as to weither it was art at all because it is a form of food. We chose to use the small child sized doll as we wanted to bring forward the contotations of life, birth and growth that the egg presents. We felt that by having this prop it would highlight what we wanted to focus on instead of being very vague. We experimented with possitioning the doll and egg together in different ways, from the doll laying the egg (which we decided had more links with farming than we would like) to putting he doll in a superman pose, holding the egg (we rejected this because it focused on protection of the egg and the vunerability of life, instead of growth and birth). We finaly settled on the doll sitting on the plint, as though it was a seat, cupping its hands with the egg in them. We chose this because there is still the protection aspect of the doll holding the egg but it was more the doll presenting the egg than trying to hide it for safekeeping, which we felt showed life and growth more. It had quite a zen feel which linked in a way to rebirth which we felt was a good thing to show. This zen feeling was continued in the way we position the doll on a plinth which is quite statueesque. The figure of a statue gave the egg importance as statues tend to be made of important people/objects which was vital as part of our peice as we wanted to highlight the importance of life.
The egg as an object can be seen as something very significant as it has connotations of life, reproduction,birth, growth and if the egg is broken, it has the opposite connotations i.e: death. Also as we eat eggs, it also has conotations of consumtion and farming. These conotations have to be taken into consideration when curating it as an art object.
I worked in a group with Sarah and we chose to use the props, a doll and a plinth. We chose the plinth because by lifting our object up it brings it closer to the veiw so it is easyer for the veiwer to interact with. An egg in the corner of the room on the floor is veiwed very differently to one more central and raised on a plinth. An egg in the corner of a room would be questioned as to weither it was art at all because it is a form of food. We chose to use the small child sized doll as we wanted to bring forward the contotations of life, birth and growth that the egg presents. We felt that by having this prop it would highlight what we wanted to focus on instead of being very vague. We experimented with possitioning the doll and egg together in different ways, from the doll laying the egg (which we decided had more links with farming than we would like) to putting he doll in a superman pose, holding the egg (we rejected this because it focused on protection of the egg and the vunerability of life, instead of growth and birth). We finaly settled on the doll sitting on the plint, as though it was a seat, cupping its hands with the egg in them. We chose this because there is still the protection aspect of the doll holding the egg but it was more the doll presenting the egg than trying to hide it for safekeeping, which we felt showed life and growth more. It had quite a zen feel which linked in a way to rebirth which we felt was a good thing to show. This zen feeling was continued in the way we position the doll on a plinth which is quite statueesque. The figure of a statue gave the egg importance as statues tend to be made of important people/objects which was vital as part of our peice as we wanted to highlight the importance of life.
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