Peter Appleton

Appleton is a painter and artist who explores the progression of industrialization, looking at their effects on urban landscapes and experimenting with different technologies creating immersive experiences.

I love Appleton’s paintings.  His limited colours and shapes create an ominous experience, depicting buildings and factories towering above you.  They can be seen as portraying anything from the effect growing cities have on our surroundings,  to the effect they have on us undermining us by the effect capitalism has on our sanity as a human race. The paintings are really effective and inspirational to my projects and my own painting style, I want to incorporate a more dramatic effect in my paintings and begin emphasizing, appreciating and displaying how much these industrial structures really rise above you.  

Appleton is better known however for his interactive installations. For example “whispers in kanji wood’.  In this piece, Appleton distributed microphones on trees in a Welsh forest.  These solar-powered mics were activated by movement and captured noise from wind, rustling trees, muffled voices and the lingering sounds of mechanics. Much like his painting, this highlights the evolution of man and his effect on the natural world. 

Ines Doujack

Ines Doujack 

Doujack is an Australian, multidisciplinary artist whose work spans across performance, film, and installations. I find her most provocative pieces to be those focused on the inequalities in the fashion empire and the whole concept we have of that institution and the linking of art with beauty. She highlights the inequalities within the fashion industry and makes us,  the audience, question and criticize the morals surrounding the ‘glamour’ of the industry. She makes us question why self-perception is so hardwired into the clothing industry. 

The contrast between the classical statue with modern fabrics and textiles layered on top is such a contrasting image. It also blurs the lines of division, from old and new.  It comments on the constant change in the fashion industry and what is perceived as beauty or in style. Duojack’s photography and sculptures rely on her layering pieces, primarily fixing old with the new. She embraces two very different eras and brings harmony to each.  These layers also encourage our understanding of, in our everyday life, how many layers and sub-texts are built up upon each other just to create a single view as we glance at, for example, a skyline, a person or a style. This simultaneously shows the growth we have made academically and industrially compared with the decline we have endured in other elements of society. 

Joan De Oliveira Guerrerio

Guerreiro is an artist born in Lisbon who expresses and creates art in many different mediums, primarily painting but she also uses ceramics, sculpture and her interest in fashion to also help communicate her ideas.

Guerrerio's paintings are large-scaled and use bold colours but often without tonal elements. The paintings have a lack of depth to them which makes the characters come to life as if they are popping out of the foreground. The composition has a striking movement to it, which allows the visual narrative and explanation to be portrayed through a figurative structure. The way her paintings are structured is unique and inspirational - she follows an unorthodox point of perspective and composition which makes the audience feel as if they are given a first-hand glimpse of a much bigger picture; which is the way we often perceive information.

Guerrero doesn’t seem to be interested in portraying a self-absorbed narrative within her work but aims to raise questions and encourages her work to be subject to debate, wanting her work to echo and voice the diverse opinions of the general public. She does this by satirically misplacing ordinary objects into unusual situations and contexts inviting the audience to reach their own explanation and conclusion.

I find the way she paints and expresses herself is inspirational. She consciously adds irony using recognizable yet out of context objects within her work. I find this really effective and it feels as if it encourages a reaction from the audience. Her painting style is unique and free, allowing an image to speak for itself rather than needing to be fully explained and recognized by the restrictive rules of ‘art’.

“When you look at my paintings it’s almost like walking down the street where I used to live, where there’s a million neighbors talking to each other, there’s a guy cycling to sharpen his knives and he blows a whistle and everything is happening at once.”

Roy Claire Potter

Potter is a contemporary performance artist and writer who creates and embraces a whole new attitude and technique too reading and writing. She is well-known to write and recite dramatic sequences focussing on the witty and tricky elements of life whilst bringing a dark satire to the experience. Her readings are performed in an unusual and uncomfortable format for the audience - she slumps over onto the floor stuttering her readings and only making eye contact with the ground in eyelash distance. She likes to consider the articulation of her joints as well as her words embracing any mistakes from grammatical, timeline and speech errors enjoying her ‘own failings of articulation’. Her writing is never proof-read and she often enjoys the instability of typing her works on a typewriter.

One of her performances, “Posh man’s Pet” was read in fragments and repetitively recurrently from torn up bits of paper as she tried to piece the segments of writing back together. We hear slurred mismatched readings of the same pieces in different orders whilst she moves pieces of torn up A4 around until they are as one and the audience hears all these recurring words collide into this powerful reading.

Watching this performance was so powerful as all this confusion which relates to day to day life suddenly comes together and makes sense. This relates to mine and, I’m sure, sure most people's lives, experiences, and memories enormously. Potter says that she embraces all elements of fragmentation from memory to speech and writing and I feel like this relates to another level as it brings peace to humanity’s confusion of the past and present.

Moreover, she brings fluidity to writing which traditionally is perceived as static: her writing equates to tumbling form and seems like it is always moving and under construction; it’s never safe and can’t be displayed.

Patricia MacKinnon-Day

MacKinnon-Day is a Glasgow born artist who focuses on the landscape around us whilst bringing attention to the inequalities and underdogs of the working man and woman. Her work is about portraying her socialist views and illustrating those whose voices needed to be heard. For example, one of her first commissions was in the Liverpool dock area where she planted yellow flowers along a mile’s length of disused dingy tracks near the pier. It may have been reflective of the hierarchical system of the workers who were made to wear different colour clothes to indicate their level of seniority. Or bringing joy and happiness to an area where people suffered. The past ill-treatment of people, slavery and forced emigration, are never far from people’s minds when they look at Liverpool’s docks. This has sad and dark undertones of the power play the workers experienced. I love the imagery in these industrial works, reminiscent of a real-life lowry painting with new vibrancy and life

Another work was in response to the Conservative cuts in 1997 when a psychiatric hospital was shut down with just a week’s notice. The place was left abandoned with record books, minds and lives disregarded. One of the pieces she did in response to this was to replicate the soap dishes left in the hospital: the dishes were lined up with the patient’s names written on a label. The ceramic dishes were printed with the royal crest on it and were just another reminder of the lives and futures which has been abandoned here. The soap dishes were exactly the same as those given to prisoners, but they were given to hospital patients. It’s poignant as it shows that people who were ill and had done no wrong were been incarcerated as if they were criminals when they were actually vulnerable people neglected from society. MacKinnon decorated these soap dishes in glass with light shining up into them, shadowing the patient’s names onto a gallery wall.

I find the way she works so inspiring; bringing light to the smallest of details of a situation and using it as a metaphor for society.

Dan Howard-Birt

Dan Howard- Birt is a painter and curator whose work highlights the vulnerability of life. By recording this he immortalizes the element of life over which we have the least control. He seems to enjoy earthy autumnal colours in his paintings which evoke feelings of warmth and lust. His use of line contrasts from strong geometric shapes and patterns to a more blurred and textured style.

I love his oranges series as the layers of colours and patterns intertwine so many different styles harmoniously. It has inspired me to build up my own paintings with different styles such as my cat’s cradle pieces.

The focus on fruit in this almost two-dimensional composition reminds me of the still life pieces by artists such as Manet and Cezanne however not in a post-impressionist style. His work combines and embraces many different art periods bringing a new perception and techniques to the classics. By doing this he opens our imagination to new ways of seeing life in the present and the past. We look back at old paintings with fresh eyes as he takes a modern approach to classic still lifes.

Ariel Schlesinger

Sclesinger is an Israeli artist and sculptor. The foundation of his work is often based on everyday objects, de-familiarising and repurposing items we have grown accustomed to. The aesthetics of his sculptures generally focus on strong lines and geometry relating to the weaving twists and turns of natural life and the rigidness of the man-made world.

He places placing objects in unnatural surroundings, or at angles which appear to be going against the laws of gravity. An example of this is “Two Good Reasons” where two pieces of paper balance precariously against each other. Another example is “three Romans club VII” where two knives balance a lit candle. This technique makes the audience feel uncomfortable and seems to foreshadow a problem and suggest the inevitability of something going wrong. A big part of his work seems to involve fire or things being burnt such as his piece, ‘Elvira’ 2007, where blocks of wood are burnt in weaving and interweaving patterns. An interesting part of these pieces is the contrast between how easily and quickly things can be burnt away and destroyed. This contrasts with the great care and time Schlesinger takes to create such interesting pieces - this could be him implying the care we as a society should give to our surroundings which we conceive as burning or a lost cause/ unhelp-able. Alternatively / additionally he could be suggesting the burning out of our civilization and the ‘flickers’ of hope for our future.

The Harlem Renaissance

In this essay I will be exploring the influence and impact the Harlem renaissance had on the political landscape of the time and its influence on society using the display of African cultural roots to challenge stereotypes and notions around cultural identity.

The Harlem Renaissance was a movement which flourished in the North American in the 1920’s.  It freed culture, art of all genres and mindsets - which had been repressed for generations. It was an inspirational movement resulting in a positive movement towards equality. It flourished due to the so-called ‘great migration’ which started in 1916.

The great migration was a large social movement and relocation of more than six million African-Americans from the rural south of America to the northern states (such as New York, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia).  There were many contributing factors; the civil war had just ended a generation ago, and white ‘supremacy’ was at large. Attempts for equal rights had failed and people were trapped by the new “Jim Crow” laws. People felt it was time for a change.  Another factor was that, not so many years after one conflict had ended – another one started, the beginning of World War One. This resulted in the push away from the south, and the pull towards to the factory and industrial work growing up in the northern states.  Ironically, the African-American people were allowed, and encouraged, to fight for the country which in so many ways was against them. The north’s reputation for a lower tolerance to racism, the prospect of relief from the violence and oppressive approach of the south, and spurred by aspirations of better opportunities many people relocated.

The Harlem Renaissance was all about replacing these distorted negative depictions of culture with positive and more accurate ones.  This allowed the community to portray themselves as they felt themselves to be, and as they were. Corporations run by, and representing, the African-American community such as the ‘N.A.A.C.P’ and ‘Urban League’ now had their own newspaper.  This newspaper was a powerful force for migration, as it spread the message of a better future. The newspaper was called “Crisis” and its editor was a Harvard graduate and intellect, W.E.B Du Bois. Du Bois believed fine arts were essential to combat racism.  He thought that to move forward the community needed to reform their image in the arts:

“Suppose the only negro who survived some centuries hence was a negro painted by white americans in the novels and essays they have written. What would people in a hundred years say about black americans?”- Du Bois 1926 (https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/01/what-would-w-e-b-du-bois-make-of-black-panther/ )

This question was asked by Du Bois and published in the ‘Crisis’ magazine in 1926 and shows the urgent need for reform and ability to express themselves.

With this movement came predictable problems; there was competition for jobs and houses.  The dreaded Klu Klux Klan resurged and relations between the white and black community deteriorated.  This resulted in many African-Americans moving to live in a close community, effectively creating their own towns within the cities to which they migrated.  The led to Harlem, a previously white dominated part on New York City, being effectively a micro city inhabited by African-Americans.

The culture of America was renewed as art forms such as painting, music and poetry began to thrive in these areas.  This was because the inhabitants were free to thrive and express their repressed talents and views freely and without fear. The concentration of like-minded people created a hot-pot of creativity.  

In contrast to many other art movements the Harlem renaissance had no fixed style, it was solely based on political change.This freestyle was often expressed through bold colours and a near expressionist style. The works often depicted dancing, music and eating.  There was often a re-creation of stories of African experiences and history.

A key figure in the Harlem renaissance was Aron Douglas (1899-1979).  Aron moved from Nebraska to Harlem in 1925. He often contributed to influential newspapers.  He regularly switched styles from realism to expressionism. He was known for his dramatic, monochrome, geometric pieces depicting the struggle, anger and violence which surrounded him. A classic example is ‘Sahdji’ (tribal women) made in 1925. This piece depicts an abstracted composition of women surrounded by a metaphorical and decorative background. The woman seems to have connections to Egyptian art – with similar flattened bodies and postures.  This may have resonated with him due to the years of his culture being flattened and others trying to squash away his humanity.  ‘Sahdji’ displays a lot of artistic risks as many insisted that art from his culture should only be inspired by authentic African art.  I think Douglas was challenging this view and expressing his genuine mixed-nationality and was motivated to pave the way to acceptance of new cultural identities.

The piece ‘Sahdji’ was created whilst he was under the tuition of a German artist ‘Winold Reiss’.  We can see aspects of art nouveau coming from the abstract composition and organic line.  Despite this, there is an order and structure to the painting creating a sense of symmetry.  There are similarities to art deco due to its geometric and fragmented form. This was ground-breaking yet also highly controversial - instead of embracing and displaying the roots of African culture he used techniques from other cultures.  Some peers argued that this could be seen as his being embarrassed of his culture and thinking it not worthy of being celebrated.  However I believe Douglas is celebrating art, integrity and intelligence.  He was dreaming of a new integrated world - presenting developments to the freedom of knowledge and liberation.  As a result we slowly begin to see changes in the art world; rules become stripped and creation becomes a lot more expressive. The development of cubism and surrealism a few years later shows a flux in artists wanting to express themselves opposed to just creating a form of beauty. ‘Sahdji’ for me draws many similarities to Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ (1937) ten years on from the composition.  The style of the monochrome shapes depicting death and sorrow to the message, which commemorates people killed by violence.

Despite all odds, and with the great depression at its peak, Douglas was commissioned by the Texas centennial exposition in 1936 to create a four part mural depicting and honouring the centenary of Texas’s liberation from Mexico.  This inclusion of African-Americans in this anniversary demonstrates the effect the Harlem renaissance was already having.  Art was being noticed, their narrative being understood and their skills acknowledged and appreciated. This was revolutionary as for the first time in the southern states the African-Americans were recognized for their accomplishments and were given a voice in a white dominated society.

Douglas created ‘Aspiration’ and used it as a vessel to both celebrate liberation for Texas and to signal the journey his culture still had before it too reached freedom. The mural portrays three figures on a three-tiered plinth looking up with promise at luminous buildings on top of a hill, representing the journey and industrialization of the migration to the north. Beneath these characters are shackled wrists reaching for mercy, light blues and fine curved lines engulfing them and representing the ferocious waves his culture crossed as human cargo whilst enslaved by white Americans. Despite this, the figures are looking for change, turning away from the symbols of slave oppression and depicting a storm on the top right of the composition. The freedom and sense of hope created in the mural ‘Aspiration’ could be Douglas’s aspiration of times to come. The figures are turning away from the past and looking towards a bright future. He represents and defines creativity and the determination to beat any odds, using his unique artistic style to create a hybrid  of modernism and african art, paving a path for arts and culture.

I think the approach of welcoming and combining different art styles and cultures was a key stepping stone to the identity of ‘African-Americans’.  It allowed the heritage and culture of both Americans and African-Americans to join as equals in the depicted art and celebrate the joining of ideas and perspectives of these cultures, rather than hiding or fighting it.

The welcoming of modern advances and outside influences to the African style helped connect the cultures together, building bridges and similarities rather than more walls.

The art, culture and population of the Harlem community grew rapidly, this expansion led to more Americans experiencing and seeing these art forms and forming connections to them. On one hand this was extremely beneficial to the cause of harmony as their narrative was heard and began to deconstruct negative stereotypes, especially in the next generation. However as the African influenced population grew in areas such as Harlem many white Americans felt threatened and outnumbered.

Artists such as Douglas were hugely important to others of his culture encouraging them to  strive to express and create a new appreciation for their history. He inspired those around him and future generations such as Jacob Lawrence to a new representation of their heritage. Further Jacob Lawrence, and many like him, wanted to depict an explosion in cultural pride, creating works rooted deep within his African rooted culture.

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) moved to Harlem when he was thirteen from foster care in Philadelphia.  Whilst working at a laundrette and at a printer he attended the Harlem School of Art along with many other revolutionary artists, making this establishment famous for statement art.  Lawrence was a storyteller, focusing on African experiences and history. The bold flat colours of his work celebrate his culture and past whilst simultaneously the composition broadcasts the ever present struggle of his community. He depicts everyday scenes with warped perspective and angles, in an almost panoramic sense.  This wonky, ‘faulty’ depiction could be another way of conveying the flaws of the environment in which he lived. His paintings are all stories showing people being given a voice; from images of people ironing and standing in the rain, to documentation of their story of enslavement and migration. This approach supports Du Bois’ statement and the desire to correct the history books and to publicise the truth. 

Lawrence’s style replicates and celebrates his African heritage whilst portraying the big differences in shape, colour and tone in Harlem. The use of bold rich colours is a metaphor of his ongoing hope, despite the narrative displaying the metaphorical shadows on his community and the reality of racism.  The colour pallet is often limited and most forms simplified and flattened.  This was inspired by the art of his heritage, as African art is often based around primary colours and focused on people. However it also creates an aesthetic pattern, perhaps this pattern reflects the feeling of repetition, with racism still present not just history, with racist acts seeming to be repeating themselves. The pattern could also be paying homage to the patterns and designs in the textiles from Africa. The predominant focus and subject of his painting is the human form, often little attention being paid to the background emphasising the importance of his community culture and indicating a feeling of being misplaced and not at one with the surroundings.

The positivity and deeply cultural emphasis of the work eulogises pride.  It shows that people should not be ashamed of who they are or where they came from.

This celebration of Africa and the talent and beauty embedded within the culture helped redefine how the world viewed African-Americans, their battles with stereotypes and self-perception. 

Art can relate to everyone and the beauty, talent and innovation of the Harlem renaissance knocked away many views of race superiority and gave the population a window to publicise their own opinions and judgments. America had been filled with racist propaganda and the impact of new images and media being shared and produced confronted and challenged the negative stereotypes. The people championing the Harlem Culture were motivated and their message advanced by each art form created more determination.  Self-worth blossomed. It planted the seeds for the future of racial equality and from these ideas, the principles of ‘The Civil Rights Act’ grew. Finally, in 1964, the Jim Crow laws were abolished.

The influence and narratives formed in the Harlem Renaissance are as much of an influence in today’s society as they were a revolution then. The Renaissance engendered African Americans with control over their lives and freedom to accurately portray the representation of black culture. The resulting artwork depicted the first portraits of African-American life, the creation of a new culture and free artistic style. This expression allowed African-Americans to find a voice and place in modern America. Most significantly, it helped redefine how Americans viewed not only the African culture, but other races.  This creation of this art helped the move towards the vital goal, the elimination of racism across the world.

https://www.theartstory.org/artist-douglas-aaron.htm

https://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/collections/multimedia/collection-icons-aspiration-aaron-douglas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL8pcuuZNNM

https://ifitaintgotthatswing.weebly.com/faces-of-the-renaissance.html

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118325070.ch22

https://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/henken08/articles/h/a/r/Harlem_Renaissance_4884.html

http://scalar.usc.edu/works/harlem-renaissance/harlem-renaissance-summary

https://teachers.phillipscollection.org/harlem-renaissance

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.166444.html

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equianocentre/education/a-fusion-of-worlds/context/harlem

http://www.baas.ac.uk/usso/from-harlem-to-texas-African-American-art-and-the-murals-of-aaron-douglas/

https://mtviewmirror.com/the-harlem-renaissance-the-affect-on-todays-culture/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Renaissance

Lectures, Exhibitions and How it Inspired Me

Throughout this term the lectures have been so inspirational, I have found hearing first hand from artists has encouraged me to be more confident in my own artwork and to start appreciating and evaluating anything which presents itself. Many artists who came in to speak are  experimenting and expressing themselves in ways i had never considered. They break down this barrier against what is art and isn't art . They have demonstrated to me that art  isn't simply for beauty or as a message, the layers of what artwork can be are infinite and there are no rules. You cannot block any ideas, instead you must welcome anything and everything as a piece of art. My favourite experience has been at Liverpool’s Tate as throughout my life  i've always been in awe of artists such as Jim Dine, Kandinsky, Lowrey etc and every time i visit, there's is a piece there i've only expected to see through a screen. I also visited the st Ives tate and was hugely inspired by Anna Boughains exhibition exploring the human condition and the effect of factors; such as our past and present and future she also used  poetry and politics critique of the modern world. The multiple characters and figures featured in the display accelerated my focus on the many elements which make us who we are and made me debate whether nature or nurture is more significant to the creation of traits and characteristics of an individual. Up the road from St ives Tate is Barbara Hepworth's sculpture garden- she concentrates on shape and the use of stone to create fluent figurative stories, this is a great example that often less is more. Many of her sculptures were more prominent when they appeared almost empty or incomplete.

I love the idea of work appearing unfinished, as if the painting has consumed itself. This inspired me to leave areas of emptiness in my work where the audience can create their own meaning and fill the gap with their own thoughts. I normally struggle appreciating sculpture such as ‘Pratt’s’ as i find it constricted and hard to relate too, however learning about the intentions opened my mind to the possibility of paintings becoming three-dimensional, which later inspired my broken and boxed canvases  piece. My experimentation and composition techniques have also been revolutionised by Creed’s work, she fragments her work by cutting up photos and drawings which allows her to recreate a scene as she was experiencing it, this idea of dissecting my pictures allowed me to explore the use of line in a new way, as a tear, barrier or bridge between the norm and surreal. This concept of connecting two impossibilities and linking contrasting subjects in hope to find any answer is something i've learnt through artists such as ‘Brennan’. This fresh approach  has changed my way of seeing art for the better.

In conclusion despite style differences, each artist and exhibition has made itself apparent in my work and opened my mind to change and the contempt to any standing rules i had given myself.

Louise Giovanelli

Louise Giovanelli is a painter living and working in Manchester. Her paintings vary and battle between realism and abstraction, whilst she predominantly focuses on the energy in the painting, form and colour. whilst painting, she works in many layers allowing her to experiment with different effects such as; depth vs flatness, varying perspectives and light, these layers work to form the paintings history and background which she will then scratch into representing its age and growth just like us. these pieces always seem to have a cold weight and uncertainty to them, tis could be a result to her constant use of deep luminous blues and muted rainy greys. Giovanelli interestingly doesn’t like to give to much of a public narrative to her work allowing the audience to slow down for a moment and give them a space and time for thought.

https://www.paradise-works.com/louise-giovanelli

http://artfucksme.com/louise-giovanelli/

MA Students

• Ami Zanders

Ami Zanders is a printmaker from Bermuda currently living in liverpool, she layers warm and vibrant colours to bring excitement to otherwise mundane, ordinary scenes. Her textured and hypnotic silk screen printing is all based on appreciation; family, friends, building she likes and memories of Bermuda. injecting colour and aesthetics into her pieces is her way of ridding negativity from her and our lives, not always focusing on the blues but appreciating and celebrating what we have.

• Henry Chan

Henry Chan is a painter who mixes pop art and graffiti to relate to pop-culture and create aesthetically pleasing pieces. his use of vibrant colours and bold patterns is a method to uplift the audience and comment on the issues of commercialism in todays society. Chan’s work connects to all of us; his subject matters bounces from our general interests as a society, the exciting colours allows us to reminisce to our childhood and the style connects and relates us back to different eras.

• Angelo Madonna

Angelo Madonna is a sculpture who engages with locations and objects attempting to reimagine and reinvent them back into our society. He focuses on challenging our emotional connections between objects and places, whether that be materialistic or practical. He simplifies our pre-made judgments and memories into spaces to allow us to questions our own intentions.

• Charlotte Hill

Charlotte Hill is a multi-disciplinary artist who enjoys to deconstruct and challenge stereotypes of whats is beautiful. she creates her work through experimentation and often focuses on colour, form and pattern aiming to present the world through warped and confusing mannerisms.

• Matthew Merrick

Matthew Merrick is multi-disciplinary and politically based artist interested in examining our communities and the effects of events and concepts which mould our idealistic and unrealistic society. he simplifies societal issues into visual, exhibitionist works allowing us to fill the gaps and question what are the contributors to our humanitarian downfall. Merrick’s work and ideas are often expressed through line and shapes perhaps as a way of communicating the simplicity of life and the minimalistic we view our surrounding and one another.

• Serah Stringer

Serah Stringer is an artist who paints, sculpts or imprints / entraps objects into different mediums such as cement or resin. Her purpose is to up-cycle objects and to allow the material to speak for itself whilst simultaneously commenting on something, whether be her emotions or a social issue which needs magnifying.  Stringer’s work is largely based around metaphors and withdrawing yourself from expectations, she also enjoys adding satire to her work by playing with the contrasting subjects of death and humour.

Jasmir Creed

Jasmir creed is a painter who captures the the feelings of walking through a city, her practice mainly focuses on the architecture and behaviour in Manchester and Liverpool replicating the hustle and bustle, alienation and dis-orientations of life in metropolises. Creed’s unique style paints these emotions in a fragmented style; movement, disorientation and unfamiliar depth is her way of allowing you see as she does “the city as rich forest-like environment of the known and unknown”. this quote creed used to explain her feelings of the surroundings and her work is beautiful, the juxtaposition and un-naturalness of these two coming together perfectly summarises her work; “geometric and organic with exaggerated simplified forms” Creed’s pieces in many way grounds me and allows us to somehow relate and remember everything she depicts.

Her work “fragmentation” is one that really inspires me, layering a blackout pattern on top of beautiful monochrome figures and then using the lines from these fragmented shapes to add a cubist, surrealist element to the piece explaining real life blackouts, anomalies and the looming questions. it explains and sympathises with our knowledge that the unknown is far greater than our own life, and that we are constantly surrounded by it, wether it be; who are these people in this crowd ,what are they like, whats behind that door, or what will tomorrow bring? these frantic questions illustrates her life and alienation we can feel despite being surrounded by hundreds, the movement i can feel in this image demonstrates this.

creed explains how her practice begins from walking around taking photos and then rather than a digital process she then physically cuts up and dismantles her views into strange montages of otherwise familiar scenes. this seems like a really interesting way to work and had inspired me to be more relaxed and open with my work.

https://liverpooluniversitypress.blog/2019/01/23/dystopolis-in-conversation-with-jasmir-creed/

https://www.artinliverpool.com/review-jasmir-creed-dystopolis-at-the-vgm/

https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/wimbledon-college-of-arts/stories/ba-painting-and-mfa-fine-art-graduate-jasmir-creed-exhibits-work-in-solo-show-dystopolis

MAEVE BRENNAN

Maeve Brennan lives and works in London and Beirut, she focuses on documenting sites and materials that show historical, geological or political importance and aims to produce alternate accounts. Brennan carries out these investigations due to her fascinations in the mechanics of the world around us; viewing and displaying somewhat stagnant matters such as geology and architecture and rebrands them into living, breathing surroundings which need love and maintenance.

Brennan’s film; “Jerusalem Pink” (2015) focuses on the geology and ruins in Jerusalem and how the effects and ageing of both of these coincide with her roots. Jerusalem being a mecca fo religion, hope and conflict, and the home to her grandfather it’s a place of huge prominence in many people’s lives. Brennan enjoys simplifying and slows things down by focusing on geology and appreciating rock layers and noting the small yet still present growth of earth and ground we stand on. Simultaneously and contrastingly she also focuses on the fall and destruction of temples in the same area. These two subject matters almost imitates and coincides with the life and death of herself and her grandad. She uses video as a way to record materials and how everything is connected and can be joined together, “it all starts with something tangible, within an object there is always history”

Telling a story and portraying change using a concept otherwise thought of as unconnected is such an interesting idea, i love how she shows how life always prevails despite any circumstances. the effects of time on us, move so quickly but here we can slow things down and appreciate our ancestors and the sheer, daunting age of the world.

https://www.jerwoodfvuawards.com/artists/maeve-brennan

Mike Pratt

Mike Pratt is a British sculpture, painter and printmaker born in 1987.  His work echoes phases of culture and redefines these times into jarring and thought-provoking pieces. Pratt’s sculptures often seem to be toying with the boundaries between beauty and function and question the intentions and purpose of art. Pratt’s paintings are often an abstract reaction to others and a modern hybrid and reconstruction of art which has inspired him. His sculpture work is easily linked to his abstract painting and these two styles are almost one as both have qualities and connections of each other in them, merging and deconstructing the barrier between two and three dimensions.

https://www.workplacegallery.co.uk/artists/33-mike-pratt/works/

Tom Railton

Tom railton is a multidisciplinary artist who uses  unusual sculptural methods to create open-ended and ongoing pieces through experimentation with the aim to puzzle and dismantle the audiences interpretations and views.

He was born in coventry and worked and studied in leeds, later mixing and studying for his postgraduate degree at chelsea college of art and design, and throughout making and exhibiting a beautiful collection of works he has started being a technical instructor at sculputure and design in his old university.

Railton explains his creating process as never really knowing; sticking with the idea of not knowing what your going to make and immerse yourself into your own open-mind. His sculptures are often mythical and teases the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction which couldn’t possibly exist without his interaction. This sci-fi level to it reflects his desire to always add a joke or a level of irony into his pieces, which he calls ‘splinters” The subject matter and depth of his pieces are aiming to focus on what is actually there opposed to our attachments to it.

https://www.basementartsproject.com/tom-railton

http://www.tomrailton.com/

Haley Tompkins

Haley Tompkins born 1971 in Glasgow known for her broad range of work of  including watercolour, paintings, photography and up-cycling objects creating minimalist process as a response to the large chaotic spaces we live in, she says she looks to “ create an atmosphere, or a blurring of meaning surrounding the objects”. The traditional medium of watercolour and collections being transformed to this modern take on life-  it’s a really inspiring and interesting concept. Tompkin says she enjoys the process of getting her point across by allowing the viewer reach whatever conclusion is appropriate for them which is how i have always thought about my own work. Her focus on vibrancy and allowing the paint or objects to talk for themselves and create new possibilities and identities for all objects and subjects is again always something i inspire to do.

https://www.themoderninstitute.com/artists/hayley-tompkins

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayley_Tompkins

http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/donated-works/hayley-tompkins/

The Line is Drawn

Since my last project i was keen to develop my practice and understanding of my own process in relation to methods and exemplifying the meanings behind my works. I often express moods using a lot of colour and i was interested in being able to minimise the amount of colour i was using and reduce this into tones. I hoped this would concentrate myself and my paintings into portraying the atmosphere more effectively.

Moving to liverpool has been life changing and i wanted to explore and express my experience. There are many changes from culture, architecture, people, the reliance of myself and even what i call home. Starting fresh is an interesting experience and i was interested in seeing its effect on different people and fascinated by the effect it had on me.

My style is chaotic and I often feel like my creations become a battle; canvas vs pallet knife. I slash and scratch the canvas into shadings and perspectives until together we reach a solution. To combat this I started this project trying to simplify things into lines and allow the simplicity to tell its own story. I have found i have this recurring motif of perspectives, lines and angles in my works which i think blossomed from studies of Pablo Picasso, although Picasso captures life beautifully in his post impressionist period I was hooked by the way he expressed life with cubism. I love the focus on line and the how different angles and directions of these lines gave his pieces so much movement and energy. This idea of lines and shapes telling the story of the piece inspired me to do the same in my paintings diluting a view down to shapes. The idea of being able to tell a story with just lines and shapes really excites me and is something that i am always working towards. I wanted to continue this interest and add it to my process of painting. I did this by experimenting with using masking tape to help strengthen lines i struggled to define before.

My theme developed from my reaction to this new city and motivation to develop my practice and style into a new motivation powered by self reflection; what is my style? Not just as an artist but as a human, how is this new place going to develop me as a person? I then started looking at myself and thinking about my actions and the battle between the confident person i know and the lingering element of self doubt. I started creating different compositions of portraits inspired my an exhibition by Anna Boghiguian playing with repeated faces in different situations. The consideration of multiple identities then lead me to think about this line that is drawn between the good and the bad. Why do we think negatively and how come our actions can be wrong even when our intentions are good? Are we born with these feelings, does it develop inside us or do we learn them as a reaction/defense? good is often hard to find, despite out heart being in it does not always prevail, nor and shine when we are looking for it and answers. This line we have between right and wrong is perhaps a zig-zag, or is always on the move. Morals seem to change with time and often seem to be left behind with each generation. This leads onto st georges hall, a dungeon built in the 19th century and a place of punishment for people who have wronged, where two wrongs make a right.

The process of working out what was most effective to display in the curation process of st george;s hall was challenging. I had created many pieces yet no clear favourite or finale, so i experimented with the placement of each painting and its effect it had in each space. From clear white gallery walls, to deep darkened crevasses. I played with many different angles and eventually created this box out of the movement/company painting trio; i loved how this turned out and this sort of out the box thinking, making painting into sculpture has really inspired me with other ideas for the future. I also presented my multiple faces in a burning candle piece hidden away in one of the arches to replicate its portrayal of theme merging confusion with light/hope and then darkness and disappearance. For this piece i was considering having candles burning around the canvas although decided against it due to its potential as a fire hazard.

I hope my work was effective in the space it was in and the audience were able to have some reactions to it; it was all based on emotions and experiences everyone has felt and i’ve discovered is important to explore and share and accept. Whenever i create art my intention is to create something completely different to anyone else’s ideas; i want it to appear alien to how someone else has thought about it.

The aim of my pieces is to be a question to the audience and if i have painted effectively hopefully the audience will find their own answer based on my feelings and their reactions due to personal experiences.

different dimensions; 2d,3d,4d

Throughout this practice, I have found my techniques and ideas being released from any constraints i thought i had. Contemplating and experimenting with different dimensions allows you to welcome any idea and i have found myself wanting to break free from my usual methods. From my perspective, these big subject matters;,‘2d,3d,4d’ were vessels for us to focus and anything the small and random things in or lives and re-discovering and presenting them with a hole new interest and perspective on it. My 2d piece is an oil painting of a picture i took of myself crossing the road and the shadows created from the world around. I decided to paint it as i thought whilst in the mind of 2d, portraying the shadows contrasting with the flat curb and pavement could be something interesting. I decided i wanted to use strong lines because of the strong striped shadows of the railing and also inspiration from the webs Heath Bunting uses, his projects focuses on laws and scandals and highlights the facts connecting them together but also tangling them in a web of lines resembling a spiders web or a cell. I used this as inspiration for my work accentuating lines and angles and looking for ways to connect everything,  i also tried to keep everything quite flat and almost change the view into peculiar shapes and colours. I also experimented with using masking tape, i thought the effect of it was successful as you can create more layers for the piece. I only started using the masking tape halfway through but it has inspired me to experiment with tape more on my next pieces. My 3d piece is the first collective sculpture i have done. I used variously sized cardboard boxes piled and lined up with twine zigzagedly sticking to them on the string hangs my jewelry telling and tale and representing my life through their charms. I thought it came out looking really effective and it did have a sinister effect on my with my whole life, highs and lows, beginnings and endings showing there, i think it presents the inevitability of life and death i think this piece was largely inspired by laura Yuielle who connects and tangles human figures with daily,household appliances, shes uses theses objects the highlight the defects in our society and how that motif reflect through the general population, similar to my life line piece showing my struggles and how this is part of a pattern. Finally my 4d piece, my 4d piece is oil crayons on board. This piece is all imagined as i wanted to use the 4d brief to allow my mind create this new dimension and so i freed my mind and this image was the first thing i thought of. This piece was originally drawn and coloured in biro although the pens ran out so i then began using oil pastels. I think the composition is effective although the colours of this piece needs more depth.

The art of shock in London

THE ART OF SHOCK IN

LONDON

Art has always been present in our lives and cultures,  it is used a vessel to capture our thoughts and experiences, and is intended to be appreciated for its  emotional power/and or beauty. Elements such as locations the art was created in can be so important to our understanding of our world; the same still life could be captured by artists all over the globe yet each piece would express different attitudes and perspectives to the objects.

Recently, for the first time in history art is broadcasted all round the world. It has become a symbol of status and a product of money, this could be a factor of  the growth of technology and our development in communication abilities, such as the internet. The internet creates a bridge of communication between artists and allows us to learn about the  problems of our world we would otherwise be ignorant to. Collective goals such as climate change, the refugee crisis and various epidemics emphasises the need for a movement in art to protest the elements in our lives we have been denied to freedom to change.

Art protest often emerges in big cities as they can be an incubator for, fresh ideas and political movements. Collections of people in from those  fleeing persecution and poverty to strong artistic communities are all drawn to the center in hope of change. London currently speaks over 300 languages and and houses 3 of the 10 top museums and galleries in the world. The cities vibrancy echoes from it’s revolutionary past; bouncing back from the damages left after WW2 introduced the freedom of the swinging sixties, later rebelling into the punk era of the 70s. The community was ready to embrace changes and breakdown the problems of our society, everything was thriving off the shock factor. This leads into the 80’s containing outlandish fashion, Margaret Thatcher as prime minister and John Lennon now dead, there was unrest and something needed to change. In 1998 Damien Hirst was attending Goldsmiths College of art, himself and a collection of artists got together and created the exhibition “Freeze”. This involved a piece ‘boxes’ which was simply a collection of glossed cardboard boxes, another was paintings: “Row” and “Edge” both organised  coloured dots painted straight onto the gallery walls, creating an illusive and hypnotic effect. This was unprecedented at the time, the group were exploring using familiar objects and giving them a new concept and meaning. This exhibition is now classified as the nucleus of the Brit Pop art movement and the foundation of the YBA (young british artists) as it changed many artist’s visions, attitudes and ambitions. They began thinking on a larger scale and approval no longer felt necessary. Damien Hirst is now regarded as a great, contemporary artist, exploring the fragile relationship between art, religion, science, life and death and controversially exploring different takes on beauty . Himself amongst fellow artists from the “Freeze” project dominated the 90’s art world, most notably his groundbreaking piece in 1991, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” this a artwork of a tiger shark preserved in blue liquid in the large glass and steel box. The title suggests Hirst was experimenting with the idea of mortality whilst juxtaposing it with a symbol of pain and power, he toys with conceptions of status using a universal trigger for fear. This fear factor was working, and yet again people were thriving off the shock factor. Hirst began exploring this primal love/hate relationship to facing your fears, whether this be death, gore, or simply sharks.  He has expanded this ideas adding dark humour and sense of reality into his pieces. He places agricultural and household animals in a new context, he shows us a pig divided horizontally into two, names “this little piggy went to market” we also see caucuses hung in a sentient like way with the caption “only god knows why” I think he is playing with our boundaries and what makes us shocked however mainly exposing why we become intimidated by these sights, the fear of sharks and gore for example are modern inventions many things we are scared off now as a society are often created and capitalised. I think he is trying to show that whilst we are viewing his work, we are experiencing a complex web of created associations. Incurring this, what feeling or needs in our lives are our genuine feeling and what emotions are learnt through association and propaganda.

Chris Alton

Chris alton (b.1991 Croydon) is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator known for the way he is able combine and contrast elements of life we otherwise wouldn’t be unable to draw connections between.He is heavily influenced and by the prevailing social, political and environmental problems we are facing. Alton is so original in his techniques of and notes “Throughout my practice, I combine geographically and temporally distant points of reference” I think this is evident in many of his projects such as ‘Under the shade I flourish” 2017-2018, in this exhibit he used a fairly unknown rythm’n and blues band from the 60’s to express his protest to the offence of tax avoidance seemingly to be permitted by the privileged to the privileged. Alton’s projects are so creative and individual they all have a humorous and outlandish approach to them whilst still squaring up to massive cracks and flaws in out society. A stand out statement which has stuck to me is Alton’s “a holly wood film in which climate change is averted” which is projected on a 220x195cm textile banner. it addresses our cultural responsibility to shape our future generations and begin to properly address the time bomb of climate change.National and global decisions seem to only be made with the interest of profit, so in this ever-expanding world how we will unite and give a thought about climate change. In both “A Hollywood Film in which Climate Change is Averted” and “After the Revolution They Built an Art School Over the Golf Course” the combination bright colours and simple shapes creating this very capturing appearance reminds me of elements of both pop art and cubism.

https://chrisalton.com/A-Hollywood-Film-in-which-Climate-Change-is-Averted

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/croome/profiles/adam-speaks-artist---chris-alton

http://www.ukyoungartists.co.uk/chris-alton/