Tuesday 17 May 2011
Weekend Task
So I have the order not to spend this weekend eating frozen ready meals and watching free dvds. So... Egon Schiele
Thursday 12 May 2011
Mock Presentation
I am intending for my studio wall to be presented like this, I'm ruining the surprise a little but my frame still hasn't arrived for my glossy print so my attempt to simulate the staging hopefully means tomorrow will be less of a train-wreck… I have toyed with other arrangements but I feel there is some balance here.
Monday 9 May 2011
Speaking in general terms - On Feminism
Gender oppression has changed its colours, from auburns, to psychedelic, to neons and now to high definition.
“Feminism, a dated term but don’t be afraid of it” – I would happily categorize my art as feminist art, if it denotes empowerment to female sexuality. However, I would hate to stop there.
My work is about exploring the self, gender, aesthetics, physicality, consumerism, capitalism, the physcosexual and society. To conclude a feminist as an equal-rights-protesting-man-hater is not only lazy but boorish. Feminism has not had deserving accolades. Take Modernism, modernism has cultivated its strands, Abstraction, Minimalism, Dada, Post-modernism etc. the volumes of academic literature obsessing in these developments has been consumed by the art world but Feminist art and its strands have had little honours.
Feminism is a constant battle; the actual fight entails a kind of tribute to historical art genii and the sorrowful ambivalence of female dominance/participation in all the definitive movements that have ultimately shaped art today. It is difficult for me not to think of movements now in a very nonrepresentational way. Today, Post-modernism and conceptualism has found a way to detach itself from the open and municipal, in fact the great 50 influential have endorsed fine art to be incoherent, elitist and supressing. Movements like Stuckism is forlorn against the Saatchi and Serpentine, Intentism, a new movement that reverts the power back to the artist looks set to be like Stuckism – in a way that gender issues have been flouted for abstracted self-expression in the forms of coloured squares and geometric forms.
Is the feminist wall self victimizing? The iconic Marina Abramovich declares herself NOT as a feminist artist. Should we question the feminist fight? The battle of the underdog is wearisome, in the consideration that the first feminist art movement flourished in the late 60’s, the fight for equality has no end. Gender oppression has changed its colours, from auburns, to psychedelic, to neons and now to high definition. Feminism needs a contemporary intervention as it has come in a single handed form; Tracey Emin. In the fight to expand, to enrich female artists there should a freedom of expression but our own freedom to oppress, criticise and tyrannize is also empowerment. Francis Bacon depicted modern man lost in tragic existence and until women can authorize an existential crisis, that is accepted equally to a man’s existence then that is when feminism will be a dated term.
“Feminism, a dated term but don’t be afraid of it” – I would happily categorize my art as feminist art, if it denotes empowerment to female sexuality. However, I would hate to stop there.
My work is about exploring the self, gender, aesthetics, physicality, consumerism, capitalism, the physcosexual and society. To conclude a feminist as an equal-rights-protesting-man-hater is not only lazy but boorish. Feminism has not had deserving accolades. Take Modernism, modernism has cultivated its strands, Abstraction, Minimalism, Dada, Post-modernism etc. the volumes of academic literature obsessing in these developments has been consumed by the art world but Feminist art and its strands have had little honours.
Feminism is a constant battle; the actual fight entails a kind of tribute to historical art genii and the sorrowful ambivalence of female dominance/participation in all the definitive movements that have ultimately shaped art today. It is difficult for me not to think of movements now in a very nonrepresentational way. Today, Post-modernism and conceptualism has found a way to detach itself from the open and municipal, in fact the great 50 influential have endorsed fine art to be incoherent, elitist and supressing. Movements like Stuckism is forlorn against the Saatchi and Serpentine, Intentism, a new movement that reverts the power back to the artist looks set to be like Stuckism – in a way that gender issues have been flouted for abstracted self-expression in the forms of coloured squares and geometric forms.
Is the feminist wall self victimizing? The iconic Marina Abramovich declares herself NOT as a feminist artist. Should we question the feminist fight? The battle of the underdog is wearisome, in the consideration that the first feminist art movement flourished in the late 60’s, the fight for equality has no end. Gender oppression has changed its colours, from auburns, to psychedelic, to neons and now to high definition. Feminism needs a contemporary intervention as it has come in a single handed form; Tracey Emin. In the fight to expand, to enrich female artists there should a freedom of expression but our own freedom to oppress, criticise and tyrannize is also empowerment. Francis Bacon depicted modern man lost in tragic existence and until women can authorize an existential crisis, that is accepted equally to a man’s existence then that is when feminism will be a dated term.
Studio latest
This is how my studio space is looking now.
'Women in charge' seminar/meeting tomorrow at 12:30 with artist Bob and Roberta Smith. Not how I would usually spend my annual leave.
Friday 6 May 2011
Hoanna Frueh: Making a mess: women's bane, women's pleasure
'The modernist myth of genius constructs the artist as a man lauded for making a mess: the avant-gardist 'messes' up canons of beauty, and his habits and sex-life 'mess with' bourgeois conventions. Modernists 'mess' conflates the aesthetic, the erotic, and this visual. Within modernist discourse and moden life, the woman artist who 'makes a mess' has not experienced success rqual to en's. This is because tidiness has been and remains a norm imposed by culture on women.
The erotic is pleasure in its many forms. The erotic exists in genital sexual gratification, but operates much more expansively in recognition of plenitude and in development of wisdom regarding satisfactions unadulterated by pain, hostility, shame, or frustration.
Pleasure in these terms is neither utopian not Pollyanna-ish.
It is an urgent instinct beneath the cultural burden of belief in pleasure and pain as necessary correlates and feminist theories.
So problematising women's desire and pleasure as to suppress their ability to represent, let alone trust, their own pleasure, thus squelching an erotics of experience.
That images substantiate reality and reality substantiates images means that both women's lives and art reify the pleasure/pain model. Yet some women's art has substantiated pleasure, for pleasure is necessary to human well-being and social transformation.
I rip the discursive fabric and repiece it differently for pleasure and healing.
...culture-t-large believes make women women: masochism, victimage, and hysteria. In modernist discourse, women's feminity is a necessary and aberrational condition: feminity is a mess and a monstrosity.'
Ref
Women artists and modernism. Edited by Katy Deepwell.
Page142 Joanna Frueh, Chapter 9
The erotic is pleasure in its many forms. The erotic exists in genital sexual gratification, but operates much more expansively in recognition of plenitude and in development of wisdom regarding satisfactions unadulterated by pain, hostility, shame, or frustration.
Pleasure in these terms is neither utopian not Pollyanna-ish.
It is an urgent instinct beneath the cultural burden of belief in pleasure and pain as necessary correlates and feminist theories.
So problematising women's desire and pleasure as to suppress their ability to represent, let alone trust, their own pleasure, thus squelching an erotics of experience.
That images substantiate reality and reality substantiates images means that both women's lives and art reify the pleasure/pain model. Yet some women's art has substantiated pleasure, for pleasure is necessary to human well-being and social transformation.
I rip the discursive fabric and repiece it differently for pleasure and healing.
...culture-t-large believes make women women: masochism, victimage, and hysteria. In modernist discourse, women's feminity is a necessary and aberrational condition: feminity is a mess and a monstrosity.'
Ref
Women artists and modernism. Edited by Katy Deepwell.
Page142 Joanna Frueh, Chapter 9
Wednesday 4 May 2011
Sunday 1 May 2011
Stuckists: Enemies of Art
Bank Holiday hangover. I knew I should have posted this yesterday. I went to Archway’s Launderdale for the Stuckists Enemies of Art Show. There was something alfresco about the show, a breather from installations that could pay off your yearly mortgage, unfussy (borderline messy) and honestly motivated.
Paul Harvey and Ella Guru made the show but the ‘emotional landscape’ wasn’t manifested like I was expecting. The wholesomeness of the paintings, the apparent intention of the show did its work for the lack of emotional charge. I have little care for a 10 year old’s poster paint handiwork and I was actually running from the badly composed weepy figuratives, they were almost dialing for your sentiments - the words ‘organized fun’ springs to mind.
I was really excited about the show because their manifesto is inciting in a very good way , I’m pro anything that encourages honourable painting but the works didn’t correspond to their strong manifesto. I will still visit their next show, it was endearing but maybe I was expecting a very great deal. Grand spaces and luxury installations seems to be conditioning, it is probably all the facility attractions (i'm not at all adverse to a latte in between gallery rooms and eco power hand dryers) but when a gallery starts behaving like a Westfield shopping Centre, that is what it will become.
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