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What do i, as the artist, provide? text 2007

Click to access AndreaFraser.pdf

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Born in London, England in 1969, Steve McQueen is an artist, film director, and screenwriter currently based in London and Amsterdam. His themes are universal and often focus on painful biographies. McQueen has mastered the art of minimalist storytelling to deliver the utmost impact on his viewers.  In his own words he “wants to put the public in a situation where everyone becomes acutely sensitive to themselves, to their body and respiration.” 

He has directed four feature films, most recently Widows (2018). His first, Hunger (2008), was awarded the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and his third, 12 Years a Slave (2013), received the Golden Globe, Oscar, and BAFTA awards for best picture in 2014.

Ashes, 2002 – 2015

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In 2013 McQueen returned to Grenada and discovered that Ashes had been shot dead by drug dealers. The artist then decided to record the story of his death. A second film, shot in 16mm, shows Ashes’s tomb being constructed and the etching of a memorial plaque for his grave. The soundtrack features two local men telling the story of how Ashes discovered a stash of drugs, stole them and was then hunted down and killed by a gang of dealers.
In the final installation, titled Ashes, McQueen’s two films are shown back-to-back on a single screen, the vibrant life depicted in one countered by the tragic tale of death in the other.

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The work explores Jonas’s love of folklore and of fairy tales. The work is her reinterpretation of the tale of the same name taken from the first volume of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. The story begins with a woman wishing for a child “as red as blood and as white as snow”, while standing by the juniper tree where she would eventually be buried. After giving birth to a boy, she dies and her husband re-marries and has a daughter. The step-mother, jealous of the step-son, kills him and serves his remains to his father in a stew. The son is then reincarnated into a bird and gets his revenge on his stop-mother by crushing her with a millstone. Upon the stepmother’s death, the son is reborn and reunited with his father and half-sister. This work became an important transitional work for Jonas, in that she uses paint, the practice of drawing, as well as narrative and text to represent the symbols and motifs in the story.

In discussion with art critic Robert Ayers, Jonas comments that her theatre boxes are “an extension of the studio. It’s as though you are looking into a miniature world. That’s the indoor space, and then I also include landscape space”.This notion of how performance art can exist without the performer is a constant theme at the core of the theatre box works. The new medium challenges the notion of what performance is. In an interview with the Tate, Jonas comments that she felt drawn to video so that her performance work would not simply “disappear” after its execution. 

Reanimation brings together many of the elements of multi-layered materials and meanings which Jonas has explored throughout her practice. Jonas comments that her interest in layers stems from “the way our brains function. We think of several things at the same time. We see things and think another, we see one picture and there’s another picture on top of it. I think in a way my work represents that way of seeing the world – putting things together in order to say something.” 

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the Artist

Visual artist, born Belfast, 1986
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design 2004 – 2008

Lauren Gault considers the political and ethical implications of our interactions with matter and the environment. Her work evokes intangible encounters with non-human experiences of time, space and physicality. In her sculptures, materials as diverse as silicone rubber, blown glass, pumped air, stitched suede, water or agricultural milk powder are subject to change through actions and physical processes that often involve pressure, tension and release. Exploring the transitions between different states of matter and scales of experience, Lauren’s work creates a space for objects to communicate and resonate with one another.

GAsworks, SOuth London, 23 jan – 22 march 2020

 CITHRA, 2020 – Installation View

Experimenting with unorthodox techniques and manufacturing processes, her work explores the often imperceptible changes that occur all around us, from microscopic events to geological time-scales, and confronts the ethical, political and emotional implications of human interactions with the environment.

In Gault’s sculptures, diverse materials are transformed through processes that involve pressure, tension and release. Her work evokes fleeting encounters between radically different materialities and opens up a space for objects to communicate and resonate with one another.

The exhibition follows on from Gault’s residency at Gasworks during the spring of 2019, in which the artist researched the writings of Irish-born female explorer, inventor and self-educated scientist Martha Craig (born 1866), digging into the manuscripts and rare editions of her visionary lectures on physics. A relative of the artist, Martha Craig published a forgotten science-fiction novel, The Men of Mars in 1907, under a mysterious pen name, ‘Mithra’. This became the point of departure for Gault’s exhibition, C I T H R A —its title an allusion to the early Zoroastrian term for ‘seed’, ‘species’ and ‘livestock’.

Intimately bound to the artist’s rural upbringing in Northern Ireland, Gault’s new body of work reflects on the changing shape of agriculture, considering the close interdependencies between wildness and domestication.

Materials & Mediums used in the exhibition (from Gasworks CITHRA press release) :

• Lycra
• Metal
• Colostrum milk powder
• Bolus gun
• Bolus ‘digested’ in human stomach pH acid
• Jesmonite
• Blown glass
• Solid glass
• Distilled water
• Horn
• Polished horn (Lanthorne)
• Silica
• Eaten strawberries
• Acrylic
• Water
• Cast 3D scan of Auroch hoof-print found on beach
• Agriculture lime capable of changing pH levels of soil
• Calcium chloride
• Sound

the experience

I actually had a chance to see this in exhibition in February at the Gasworks. The front desk attendant was lovely and gave us a brief explanation of the exhibition and a tour. One thing I remember her saying that was interesting to me was that the work is heavily research-based and the unconventional experimentation of different materials that are involved. I like how the work involves a lot of research and thus results in every form and material to hold meaning and context. The wide ranging collection of different and diverse materials and objects used creates a space for objects to communicate and resonate with each other.

I also enjoyed the second gallery room, where a series of vacuum-formed crystal-clear acrylic water tanks take the entire space of the ceiling and refracts the lighting, to recreate a natural occurrence. The lady explained that the gallery had to accommodate this work and completely re-built the ceiling, which I can imagine to be an extensive job for the gallery for a temporary exhibition. However, it worked very well and it’s impressive to see a non-profit art organisation so accommodating.

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HYPER FUNCTIONAL, ULTRA HEALTHY @ SOMERSET HOUSE 13 JAN – 9 FEB 2020

His current project is an ongoing work that includes original sound/music compositions, video, dance, movement and listening as tools for performance to create other spaces, dream/meditative states to explore repetition and surprise movement and counter movement. Variations of a theme, motifs – moments of definition defined by the previous, reliant to predecession and that, which follows.

The intention behind these happenings: to use expected and unexpected spaces for sharing, exploring and furthering conversations that give life to new and old concepts, processes, traditions and techniques; doing more with the constant dualities, healing, destruction, connections/disconnection, the ways of ‘being’ in and during the performance; and allowing for the unearthing of the somewhat conditioned approaches to sharing/expressing ourselves to each other and with one another.

Rowdy SS opens Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy with a sound experience and live perfomance inside their sound installation that synthesises the ceaseless urban noise of London to create a new soundscape of refuge and respite.

Part of Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy, a programme of six specially commissioned artworks exploring the concept and practice of wellness. – 5 channel audio installation

oyster / barrier gates / people / escalators / beeps / buzzers / broom / concrete / conversations / many / checkouts / shouts / automated voices / barcodes / sign / posts / buses / horns / billboards / atm / heels / shoes / robots / touts / vendors / pushers / news / phone calls / bright lights / helicopters / discount theatre tickets / rickshaws / music / electric hums / bus / air / conditions / doors / creeks / hum / glass / smashing / construction / breaks / engines / doorbells / breathe / trains / footsteps / announcers / protestors / prayer / silent whispers / rainfall / splashing or water / boats / sirens / laughter / cries / helicopter / cars / tyres / tarmac / machinery / metal / bells / whistles / calls / falls / traffic / lights / self service checkouts / rustling / lightning / pigeons / piss / shouting / vomiting / glasses / clashing / glasses smashing / rubbish trucks / horse / shoes / gates / church / bells / fireworks / confetti / construction / workers / machinery / congestion / bodies / the young / the old / vehicles / thoughts / internal thinkings / minds / heartbeats / rhythms / breathe / yawn / laughter / birdsong / stillness / wind /

‘Is This The End? A sonic collage of many endings’ synthesises the artist’s extensive archive of recordings of the unrelenting noise of London to offer a multi-layered soundscape for refuge and reflection. The multisensory installation invites us in to take time to decompress from the pressures of urban life and find time to consider ourselves apart from the demands that are placed on us and which we place upon ourselves. Three seats provide positions and sounds from which we can consider past, present and future agency. By taking sonic elements that are often a source of unrecognised stress and making with them a potential source of healing, Rowdy SS asks us to pause and consider how we might alter our lives for our benefit.

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Sadie coles hq, 31 jan – 29 feb 2020

I saw this exhibition briefly when me and Cosmo travelled around London on 5th Feb, visiting current exhibitions and galleries that had temporary shows. I was interested in this work because of his use of spinning LED Hologram fan projectors named HYPERVSN. This is a relatively new type of 3D hologram, and what’s more interesting is that EMS at university has one that can be used by the students. This allows me to see how the equipment can be used in a exhibition setting so that if in the future I want to use it in my work, then the possibility is there. I was also peaked by the title of the exhibition, the use and the applied context behind the words ‘Artists’, ‘Friends’ and specifically ‘Racists’.

the artist

the works

Jordan Wolfson presents a new installation consisting of multiple HYPERVSN 3D holographic displays. Arranged in a grid, these devices project a range of imagery developed by the artist to create a multipart digital mirage, alternately synchronized and syncopated. The exhibition also features a series of wall-mounted brass panels overlaid by snapshot photographs from Wolfson’s childhood. 

In ARTISTS FRIENDS RACISTS, Wolfson continues to probe American culture and contemporary life through an eponymously titled work which utilizes cutting-edge holographic display technology. Rapidly spinning fans have micro LEDs embedded in their blades, and these illuminate in a precise manner to create the illusion of imagery floating in space. The devices have primarily been marketed for commercial use – as a means of luring consumers and presenting brands and products in a visually dynamic and novel way.

Also on view are a series of new wall-mounted brass panels featuring UV substrate prints of photographs from Wolfson’s childhood. Part of the artist’s ongoing series of sculptural objects mounted to the wall, these new panels are the most personal that Wolfson has created to date. In contrast to the advanced digital technology of the fans, the brass panels allude to ancient metallurgy, classical sculpture, and the radiant, gilded surfaces of churches and altarpieces from the Middle Ages. Isolated on the surface of the brass, the childhood snapshots attain a surreal aura while also being intimately linked to the artist’s own past and to the universal experience of nostalgia mediated through photographic imagery.

Wolfson’s work consists of fans programmed with animated characters, symbols, and words, including a cartoon heart, a puppy, and an imprisoned cat, among other imagery. Thematically structuring the visual display are a series of animated words that read “Artists,” “Friends,” “Racists,” which crash down intermittently. At times Wolfson’s animations overlay different photographs and video clips, some of which appear relatively innocuous—such as cookies—while others depict more overtly charged subjects, such as police cars and 9/11 firefighters. Viewed within the space of the gallery, the sequence plays out like a choreographed dance or a musical composition, with imagery at times synchronized—with multiple fans featuring the same projection—and at others times syncopated and incongruous. The visuals and animations appear immaterial and free-floating, as though superimposed over the material, physical world. At once enigmatic, comical, and disquieting, the presentation highlights how symbols, characters, and even language have achieved a life of their own in today’s advanced image economy, existing like specters that reach beyond the confines of the media and systems in which they circulate.

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SOuth LOndon Gallery, 6 Dec 2019 – 23 Feb 2020

Bloomberg New Contemporaries returns to the South London Gallery with an exhibition of works by 45 emerging artists presented across both the Main Gallery and Fire Station. A guest panel comprising artists Rana Begum, Sonia Boyce and Ben Rivers selected participants from over 1,500 applications to the annual open-submission exhibition. The show marks the 70th anniversary of New Contemporaries, which since 1949 has played a vital part in the story of contemporary British art, reflecting and responding to developments in artistic practice, and supporting artists.

Works that i liked:

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The artist

• Born in 1976
• British artist
• Integrating modern technology and classical design in his interactive artworks

“A thread of existentialism exists in Dominic Harris’s work, a certain preoccupation with flowers, petals, butterflies, and a fascination with metamorphosis and transformative experiences. Harris’s works typically investigate a number of recurring elements and motifs, often working in tandem: interactivity/consequence, the aesthetic considerations of resolution and thirdly an investigation of animated life. However, rather than a series of static fixed points, there is a nuance, an interpolation effect where explorations of his pieces are experienced or spectated in as many different ways as there are individuals experiencing them.”

Sunny Cheung, curator for Liverpool Biennale

Dominic Harris uses groundbreaking technology to construct personal interpretations of the natural phenomena which surround us. His love of the natural world, coupled with his fascination for code, offers a surreal and whimsical take on reality, challenging the viewer’s perception of the world around them.

As technology, ever-changing and fascinating, occupies our lives in more intimate ways, Harris captures the sometimes menacing march of the information age, turning it to our advantage in a seamless blending of nature and code. He is part of an innovative community of artists who are pushing the envelope of possibility within the medium and redefining the relationship between technology and art.

Halcyon Gallery, Nov 7th 2019 – feb 16th 2020

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