Biennial week – The old blind school

At the old blind school they had the biennial exhibition on and there were a lot of varying artists that had work on display. The old blind school actually a derelict building before the biennial opened the exhibition on, this meant that the building was very run down and dilapidated looking and all the paint was flaking and falling off the walls. This made the setting of the exhibition much more interesting than if it had been in a normal gallery. And in some places I preferred the actually state of the building and walls to the art work on display, especially the mural on the ceiling as it was really colourful and eye catching even though it wasn’t part of the exhibition, and it almost looked as if it was going to fall down.

I think that the old blind school was the least impressive out of all the galleries I visited during the Biennial, however there were some pieces that I did quite like, but not as much as at the other galleries.  

 

 

Biennial week - The Tate and The Walker gallery

At the Tate Liverpool they had on the ‘Claude Parent’ exhibition as part of the biennial. I found this exhibition extremely interesting as it was very unusual and like nothing that I had ever seen before, I particularly liked the way that you had to actually stand on the art work to view the other art on display.  I found that I viewed the art differently as I was very aware of the surroundings and what was happening around me and you just automatically viewed the work in a different way without really noticing. I have been to the Tate quite a few times and always enjoy the more permanent exhibitions.

 

 

 

At the Walker gallery there was the John Moore’s painting prize exhibition, I really enjoyed this exhibition and think that it is one of my favorite exhibitions that I have seen during this week. What I found particularly interesting was the way that the exhibition had been put together and the fact that it was right next to one of the galleries with the much older paintings in, and the way that that gallery had an older, darker more historical feel to it and then you walked though some doors and you ended up it a very bright, white more boxy room that seemed much more clean and the paintings were considerably brighter and more colourful. I feel that this was a really interesting contrast and worked really well and you could easily see that you were going to view much more modern paintings, I think that if the older paintings were in a white wall gallery, with very bright lights they would look very out of place and strange and the same with the modern paintings been in a darker gallery with more decorative walls, they just wouldn’t look right.

In the John Moore’s painting prize exhibition I thought some of the paintings were really impressive and captivating/thought provoking, such as:

·         Jo Berry’s – untitled 2013,(this is a painting of a woman lying in a field of on some grass), I found this intriguing as the whole painting is completely out of focus, I feel this makes the piece a lot more interesting and engaging than if it was all in focus and perfectly clear, however when you first look at the painting or look at it from a distance of just glimpse at it, your brain sort of makes it more clear and you just think that your eyes haven’t focused properly yet, but when you actually look more closely at the piece you can see that it meant to look that way, and then the more that you look at it the more you can make out the shapes anymore and it becomes an indescribable blur.

 

 

·         Nicholas Kulkarni’s – Tracer,( this is an abstract painting with a blue background), I was interested in this piece as it was quite different to the painting around it and it is just a very pretty, clean painting, it also reminds me of something (maybe another piece) that I liked but I can’t think what it is.

 

 

·         Frank Pudney – people69104, (another abstract painting made up of tiny marks), I think that this was one of, if not my favorite piece of the whole exhibition, as I find it extremely eye catching yet subtle and I think that it is one of the most beautiful painting I think I have ever seen.

 

 

 

 

·         Hynek Martinec – every minute you are closer to death,(large black and white painting), I was struck by this painting not only because of its vast scale in comparison with the work around it but because of its intriguing subject matter, this painting is of a deer lying on a table, surrounded by fruit and bottles and there is a skull painting/reflection in the background of the image. The deer’s head is the only part of the painting that is a hundred percent clear and in focus. I can’t really tell if the deer is alive or dead or just about to die and I think that is part of what makes this piece interesting, along with the title. I also think the fact that it is in black and white makes the image more captivating and I think that if it was in colour it wouldn’t have as much of an impact.

 

 

There was also a small exhibition about the dazzle ships, as they had four dazzle ship prints that show the work of Edward Wadsworth, the concept of the dazzle camouflage was developed by Norman Wilkinson in 1917. These prints were wood cut prints and they were just black and white and about A3-A4 in size. I really like these prints and they were even more interesting as I had already seen the Carlos Cruz-Diez dazzle ship at the waterfront.

 

 

In the walker they also had a gallery that was full of mainly marble sculptures and busts, I like a lot of them but the main one I found interest in was a sculpture entitled ‘Tinted Venus’ by John Gibson (made of marble and wax).  The sculpture is of Venus (nude) holding an apple with fabric (made out of marble) covering the lower left side of her body. Her lips are tinted red and her head is slightly tilted and there is a tortoise by her foot. I don’t truly know what it is about this sculpture that I like so much, it just really caught my eye and genuinely made me stop and look properly.

 



Biennial week – The Victoria gallery and museum

Art galleries:

During the biennial week I visited the Victoria gallery and museum; I had never been there before and found it very interesting. The gallery is located in an old Victorian building which meant that it has some very unique and historical features outside but especially inside, these features make an interesting back drop for the art work and bring a third dimension to the work, in particular the older more historical pieces.

The first piece I saw there were by the artist Susan Forsyth, entitled “Art sheds”, these were 3 large wooden sheds that had been painted pink and had a gold roof. (This was a participatory exhibition inspired by the history and collection of the victory gallery and museum.)   Inside of the sheds there were different thing that you could draw, the first was entitled nudes, this housed a small marble like figure, the second was entitled still life, and this one housed a vase of flowers and the third was entitled portrait and this one housed a marble bust of a human head. I found these pieces striking as they really drew your eye as you walked into the gallery space; however I was quite unsure what they were supposed to mean or reflect about the gallery. On the other hand I did quite like the fact that you could go into the sheds and draw and that this encourages more people to draw and take part in the exhibition rather than just looking at the work.   

 

 

 

The next exhibition that I saw was in 'The Audubon Gallery' John James Audubon (1785-1851) was a nineteenth-century wildlife artist and naturalist. He travelled the American wilderness identifying and drawing hundreds of species of birds and mammals. I found these pieces more interesting than the previous gallery, as they were really beautifully painted and of some unusual birds and animals I had never seen before.

 

 

 

I also looked at some of the art in the other, smaller gallery spaces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also went up to the museum part of the gallery to see the ‘Tate collection’, this was really interesting as the collection included quite a few more unusual objects, such as:

·         Teeth

·         Various animals preserved in jars

·         And bones and skulls etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liverpool Biennial 2014

 Biennial 2014

Biennial 2014

Listen: Project 2

During the listen project we were asked to create a piece of work based on a sound that we either loved or hated. I thought about these sounds a lot and decided that I wanted to respond to a sound that I liked, however I found it difficult to choose a sound as it was hard to pick out a sound that I really liked/loved. I initially thought about the sound of silence and every day background noises, but I settled on the idea of conversations and the sounds of people’s voices.  On the other hand while I was researching and trying to find sounds I liked I did discover a lot of sounds that I dislike/hate.

I used water colour paint to create my pieces, I decided that I wanted to create a few small A6 pieces that responded to the sounds of conversations, to do this I listen to the conversations of people around me and used black paint to create abstract shapes that sort of mapped out the structure of the conversations, I did this by using the paint darker in areas of the conversation where the speech was more intense or spoken quicker and added more water to the paint to make it lighter in the areas of speech where there was less said or it was quieter. Also the position of the paint relates to where people were standing during the conversation.

I feel than these pieces worked out well and became hugely abstract and interesting and in a way became a map of sounds and speech. And I think you can really grasp a sense of the mood of the conversations from the intensity or lack of paint.   

To develop this further I would like to study/respond to more varying conversations by a lot of different people, as some of my pieces look very similar, this may be because they are all of the same people talking and all in quite a short space of time/ about similar topics.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sound: Project 1

During the first project we were asked to create a sound piece that involved the idea of metamorphoses. During this project was listened to some sound pieces by John Cage and Morton Subotnick. Before this I hadn’t heard much sound work before, as I hadn’t never been that interested in sound before or heard a piece that really interested me, however I found the pieces that we listened to very interesting and quite striking. I particularly enjoyed the Morton Subotnick pieces, especially his piece entitled “Butterfly #1 (From "4 Butterflies", 1974)”, and this piece is highly distorted and sounds very unnatural and electronic. I find the piece very dramatic and varied and simultaneously weirdly unsettling but yet calming and even a little bit relaxing. This piece maybe something that doesn’t only have to be viewed as an art piece but could be listened to and enjoyed as a piece of music on its own.

During this project I worked in a group to create the sound piece and we decided that we were going to look at the metamorphoses/ changing of sounds throughout the day and the sounds of daily tasks.

Ideas including:

·         Rain

·         Traffic

·         Children

·         Crowds

·         Music

·         Trains, etc.

We decided that we would each recorded some of the sounds that we heard during the day and then we would used audacity to fit them all together to create a single morphed day.

On reflection I feel that this project went well, since it was my first times (and all of the people in my groups first time) creating sound art and I think that we handled it pretty well as we had no previous experience creating or really listening to this type of work.

I found using the audacity programme relatively easy as everything was rather straight forward and simple to use, once I had played around with it a little, I found it very quick and clear to create sounds and put them together. I think that working in a group during this project really helped as it made the thought of doing something completely new less daunting /intimidating, and there were more ideas to play around with and research.

On the other hand I do feel that this piece could be improved and developed further, as working in a group did mean there was a lot of varying ideas, and I think that we just tried to include too many things, meaning that the sounds we created were very crowded and dense and many of the individual and interesting sounds got lost or distorted It would have sound better and clearer if we had stripped it back a little and used less sounds, so that more of the sound could have been heard better.