Category: Art

With a degree in Fine Art the world’s my oyster!!

“Contemporary-Art-History”

Having just handed my notice in at work, many people have been asking about what I will be doing once I leave. When I tell them that I’m going back to college, there is some confusion over what the course entails.

The title “Postgraduate Diploma in Contemporary Art History” could be either Contemporary-Art History or Contemporary Art-History, hence an emphasis on the Art or the History. When this first came up I initially DID NOT KNOW how to answer the question, it was one of those situations where your perceptions of a subject are radically altered by a simple question, revealing the shallow roots of your understanding. If I wanted to be hyperbolic, I could claim I’ve just accepted a place on a year-long course without knowing what it was about.

In reality, the choice between the two definitions would have made little difference to me, but the course outline clears up any misconceptions I may have been left with:

…the Core Course…is a lecture and seminar series that introduces you to a range of critical perspectives that have shaped the history and theory of the discipline. As such, the course encourages you to develop a fuller awareness of art’s cultural and political significance in the past, whilst also asking you to relate your historical understanding of visual art to current debates among artists, critics and historians. [my emphasis]

Reading the outline further shows an aspect that tickles me about the conception and presentation of the course:

The Core Course is accompanied by a Laboratory, which gives you the opportunity to process the taught materials further through a variety of strategies such as museum and gallery visits, film screenings and experimental projects.

“strategies”! Very military. I suppose you could see the course as defining the territory that I will be attempting to conquer.

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Sculpture on a house in Hemingford Abbots, Cambridgeshire

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DSC01913.JPG Originally uploaded by escdotdot.

This is a shot of a house that I passed yesterday while out walking. My eye was drawn to the metal reliefs attached to the wall. Things like these reliefs are what I look forward to most when I’m out walking – random pieces of artistic expression out in the wild.

Stylistically the house looks like it was built in the ’60s, and on the side wall of the wing have been applied some metal sculptures. As far as I can tell they’re the same piece repeated and rotated to create this arrangement. On each piece the silver metal is sculpted into layers which are then lifted and folded to form the relief. The piece or pieces remind me of the abstract artworks featuring repetiton that were being produced in the ’60s by Erwin Hauer or Norman Carlberg.

It looks like there’s some question over their status (or value) as ‘sculptures’ as the present owner of the house has hung a bird-feeder off the part second from the right on the bottom row (somewhat obscured by the tree in this picture). I don’t really care if they’re ‘sculptures’ or not, and – if I was being pedantic – I would also question their quality either as sculptures or as ornaments, but what I would say is they’re a great addition to the house and add a point of interest to the scene.

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Tate Triennial – Tate Britain

What did I like at the Tate Triennial?

For me the piece that seemed the most interesting was the first that I came across, but I don’t think that’s particularly significant – it’s not that I got subsequently overwhelmed with the number of works, it’s that the rest of the pieces just didn’t interest me as much.

As you progress down the Duveen Galleries, which are a long series of classically designed top-lit spaces, reaching the full height of the building, which form a spine to the Tate Britain, you’re introduced to the Triennial with the work of Rebecca Warren and Scott Myles.

Myles’ The End of Summer is the piece, the one that interested me the most, with it’s re-presention of his encounter with Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled, 2001 (no fire no ashes) (also included in the piece).

I think it’s a problem (or problematic, I suppose) when Myle’s piece neuters the crux of Tiravanija’s piece by divorcing it from it’s original context, using it as an context-lite object standing in as the distanced subject of Myles’ own piece. What meaning has the statement “Never Work” now? It’s become just an oddity against the great questioning uncertainty of Myle’s work.

Or has it? Doesn’t it force us to reassess the piece’s original actions, in the light of another person’s reaction to the piece, proposing that it succeeds or fails on the observer’s terms? From Tiravanija’s point of view it seems risky/odd to make the work try and survive without it’s original contextual meaning. And for Myles, does the Untitled, 2001 (no fire no ashes) become a permanent part of The End of Summer? If not, in what form will it live on – can it survive without without close proximity to it’s conceptual precedent?

That said, I liked the idea of the personal view of the piece and the conception of the mediated life of an artwork being presented as the art. I wasn’t really impressed with the screenprints as objects in themselves, so I cannot see them being particularly effective without the bricked up doorway.

I also really liked Nicole Wermer’s Untitled (Ashtray) and its reference to Brancusi, but as always it seemed a pity that such a potentially functional object should be accompanied with warning signs not too touch.

And what’s with using Liam Gillick‘s piece as the brand for the show? I think this adds a whole other level of meaning to the pieces that I wouldn’t have got just by seeing them in the gallery. Or is this following the appropriation theme of the show? Or is this following Gillick’s own ethos?

And why is there such a difference in the colours on the catalogue cover compared to the leaflet? Bad printing?

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