Toilet exhibition

This work was for a exhibition in grays toilets we put up last week. This work was an idea I had for my previous exhibition. The original idea was to just have a blank face with one or two facial features preasent whereby the audiance could deface it and in doing so give it a face however I found a, in my view, better way of achieving this by using a projection on to paper which the audiance was encouraged to draw on. I revamped the rejected idea by combining it with some of my more political interests.
This work is talking about how far politic reaches into our lives and how far the governments eyes peep. I found it cheaply amusing the phrase "The Right Honrable" when the politicions were staring at people doing the toilet. The pictures were hung on the inside of a ladies cubical. Not only the ideas of survallence and influence but also of ignorance are inherent in this piece. I couldn't put a face to alot of these names and yet these people are making desions on behalf of us, in our name and which will affect us in many ways, now and in the future. Surly its a diabolical oversight not to know who these people are that can peek  into our lives and make our decisions for us?

I have been trying to decide on what I am doing and it has been difficult. I know my blogging has not been prolific in any sense of the word. I am not a natural at this sort of thing. I don't like talking about anything until i know what I am talking about and blogging is strange anyway because who are talking to when you are doing it anyway? some homogious audience or the folk who follow you or just yourself until somebody body bothers to read it?
I still haven't worked out the function of this thing. Is this supposed to be my public face, should my sentences be grinning like a psychopath like those people who present infomercials? Should this be a sort of project diary? Well then today I sat around and look for relevant artist to my project to research and put in this blog O and I researched Freuds ideas on imagination and Kants as well, preferred Freuds his ideas are always such fun. Should this blog be about the things I have been looking at to give an idea of the ideas I am investigating and the artists I have been inspired by? yeah that sounds good but that just isn't enough about me. This is my blog I am the subject so the question goes back to who is my audience? Ho hum.  
    
I don't like writing. Its something permanent unlike conversation when you can go "I didn't say that" and "that will never stand up in court" or "Its just my word against yours honey, I'm a pillar of this community and your just a low down dirty harlot with a criminal record, who do you think they are going to believe? I could wipe you out right here and nobody would even blink, do ya here me woman!" without having to burn incriminating evidence. There is a lot of pressure in it. Words are a scary mode of expression I feel especially when I speak plainly like this because there is no doubt where these words come from. I am not a poet or anything. I can't spin beautiful clouds of metaphors around me so I have to just speak my brains raw and they are not nearly as clever as I would like them to be. To think one person might read this fills me with the most terrific dread.

Anyway, what am I doing and good god what have I done? I have completed one small project for the toilet exhibition, I'll see if I have remembered the dongle with the images on it. Nope I left it in uni. oops. Don't worry folks I shall discuss this in another blog post. Soon. I know I am excited too.
Well what am I doing now? At the moment I am working on a narrative film thingymajig. This rose from the decomposing remains of the group film project that people seemed to lose interest in. I suppose people who wanted to make a film didn't see the point of going to a group and having to comprise on ideas when they could be just going on out and filming their own and the people who weren't interested in making a film thought why am I here I am not interested in making a film.
Well one of the things that came up was an idea for a film about an outsider whose life is told in objects rather than speech. Objects have taken the role of people that have drifted away. This personification of objects reminded me of my audio project that I made last year so I was a bit wary of retracing my steps but I had also just watched a documentary on product design called "Objectified". It had been really rather interesting but what it made me relies is the amount of objects that surround us and the sheer amount of objects that we actually own. I decided to photograph all the objects that I own, but then I realised half my stuff was back home in Gorebridge so then i decided to photograph all the stuff of mine in my flat but then realised the momentous nature of this and realised I hadn't decided on the formal parameters of this project, yeah they are all in the middle of frame but should they be in context or not should they be in a uniform white space...yada...yada...yada aswell as this how far should I take this should I photograph each individual cornflake I own? Should I photograph the pillow and the pillow case separately. There is alot of niggly questions here that I need to get figured. Starting something like this really makes you aware of how many possessions we own without really thinking about it. I am not an avid consumerist but i have enough objects to make it a serious chore to photograph them all. Stuff like this makes you question why some have so little and why some have so much and what did I do to deserve all this stuff? I really am a very lucky boy! These sort of question tend to make me feel quite guilty But what can I do? I like having stuff its very comfortable. What do you want me to do? destroy it all. Surly that's a little wasteful why should I spit in the face of fortune and besides Michael Landy has done that already. Plenty of people have renounced their possessions. Isn't that a luxury in itself?
A point that was made in the documentary was that almost every single item that we own has been designed by a person or a team of people this led my to look more critically at this film idea of the outsider living along trying to keep people out because people are right there in the objects. Its almost impossible to escape people is there really any place left that is people free. Does Britain have any wilderness left? I don't really think so. Even the highland mountains have been gentrified and cut up into estates long since. I suppose there is the sea and I guess the sky. This reminds my of something that guy who was a sport presenter but then had an epiphany and realised their was an underground race of lizards controlling the world  yeah David Ike that's his name said in one of his lectures, it was a quote from some Native American chief and went something like "How can you buy or sell the sky we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of water. " What makes object yours? This is a question all this brings up. Its yours once you have paid for it with money or dug it out the ground or transformed it in someway, Its yours once you have named it. Stray dogs don't have names nether do undiscovered islands. I don't understand the concept of ownership. If you sell a piece of work is it still your piece of art or is it the buyers? If it is still your pieces of art how come a phone you by at a phone shop isn't still the phone companies phone or the phone designers phone and so on and so on. On second thought I am being silly we decide ownership simply by agreement. Heres your money, Heres your phone. Simple the system works. I still don't really understand what money is, really but it doesn't matter what it is as long as you go along with it. I feel like I have wandered of the path to the point and am now scrabbling around on a scree slope of nonsense. Sorry about that. I was going to talk about the artists
I have been looking at and try and talk about what the narrative film i am going to make was going to be about. I was going to consolidate all the smaller blogs I should have been blogging but didn't into this one large blog but I got waylaid and a bit lost and now its quite late and I am very tired. I'll write a proper blog tomorrow.                     

Amazing Art

These are some photos of my recent exhibition called "Amazing Art". This was a light hearted exhibition that played with the conventions of the art gallery by encouraging visitors to deface the art and put up their own. It looked at themes of narcissism by looking at self portraiture and poked fun at the pretensions of the art establishment using randomly assigned accompanying text placed next to contributors work. These texts used highfalutin language whilst being completely devoid of meaning. The these are below and disturbingly like the summery I have just written.

   
Simplistic yet charming this picture is thought to be based upon a childhood memory. The pastoral setting leads to a sense of sentimentality and naïve innocence but it is shot through with contemporary references. Swine flue, bird flue and foot and mouth these recent epidemics have undermined our fond memories of the countryside that we may have gained in early life. This complex subject comes to life in the artists

This work is notable in that it exists in a space between abstract and figurative imagery. It contains a mature rectangular vocabulary, which serves to emphasize logic and clarity whilst confusing objectivity. The onlooker is drawn into an unlikely space, which confuses sensibilities and leads us to questioning what is it we do when we look.

Every now and then, with a bit of luck, an artist will produce an exceptional work that demands attention. This is the case with this new work. The subtle use of light gives the piece a richness that equals any of the Dutch old masters.

The terms “visual language” or “vocabulary” are often used to help describe the distinct characteristics of an artists practice. This sort of language is blown away by the irreverent joy of this new work. However this does not damage the ambiguity of the questions posed. The artist questions, “what is this?” at the most basic level.

Creative, Playful and inventive. This inspired work reveals new ways of looking at something familiar. The artist

This work is addressing the artist

In this work opaque references to nature are made in order to create images with a wide range of associations. This work creates a solitary meditative experience that aims to launch an attack on the viewers

Some commentators have noted the numbing repetition and banality of this work however such viewer perhaps miss the powerful psudosexual paradoxes in tone and scale that distinguished this work as a landmark in the artists career.

This work questions the notions of visual veracity and reliability by appearing of a far lower quality than the surrounding artwork however sustained observation reveal this to be a fallacy. This surprising revelation redeems the lack of authority in the image itself.

Superficially this work may appear abstract however in fact it is an attempt to dissect, reorganize and reconstruct the very matter of reality however the key thing about this work is it

This work staunchly refuses to reveal any psychological insights into the artist. The glacial flat surfaces of the work which displays a manipulated prearranged reality that could as easily be a stand in for a blank canvas or an empty stare yet this is all part of the works perplexing hold on the audience.

Here we see the subject transfigured in space. The use of line and gesture bring to the fore ideas of repression. The subconscious undercurrents of this work lie firmly in the foreground detail, which give the piece a certain top-heavy metaphysical structure.

This piece displays a totally new and radical attitude to realism, or rather to the conception of reality itself. A viewer with an open mind and a well developed antennae for life will perceive an uncommonly clear mirror to contemporary problems with a use of material that is both traditional and unexpected.

In this work the artist has explored notions of consumerism, taste and banality, whilst contrasting them with childhood and sexuality. The surface is meticulously fabricated and draws on a variety of objects and images from American consumer culture to create surreal combinations of everyday objects. In this complex and multi-layered composition the artist strives to make us re-examine the structure and interplay culture has built around us.

The viewer in this work is faced with a rather unsettling proposition. Although it is often seen as an artist job to conquer territory that has hitherto been taboo. This artist has dredged the lowest of the low. Going to lengths to explore the strange, the freakish, the abnormal diving to the very deepest limits of humour and taste to give a refreshing and surprisingly moral new face to individuality.

This work is an investigation of the way our fantasies and desires are transferred onto ordinary artefacts. The surface gleams seductively. The neat lines summon up images of neatly tended lawns and preened hedges. The composition is sustained in a state of ultimate perfection. A perfection that in many ways only denotes an air of falsehood.

This abstract work attempts to convey spiritual and emotional values simply through the arrangement of colour and shape. There are some remnants of representation however this is not the true level of the form. The true content lies beyond the artwork itself. It lies between the onlooker and the surface of the work in the subtle social nuances that are evoked within this space.

Although it make no reference to the outside world, this work summons up the exciting rhythms of contemporary life, however underlying the dynamism of the works and the immediate aesthetic there is a strong feeling of revulsion at the falseness of materialism in our modern society. This art is freed from the capitalist mantra and appears to offer a solution to the spiritual crises that this age is embroiled in.

This work uses common, functional images to allow the artists thematization of semantic congruities and incongruities to be seen as a reflection of the problems, which the relations between concept and presentation pose. The artwork pushes forth the pluralistic anti- and post-modernist view of creative process.’s conceptual clarity. The viewer is left in little doubt concerning the thematic territory they are being led into. The argument the images form simply becomes more seductive and convincing as they become more involved with the work.

Using a variety of strategies to represent what one commenter described as “the anguish of contemporary life.” we see the artist evoke aggression, vulnerability or both in a powerful and uncompromising work. It is refreshing to see a work as an emotionally charged as this in an art world flooded by empty gesture.