PLACE

"These portraits by contemporary artist Marlene Dumas (b.1953) represent Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945), also known as ‘Bosie’. Wilde is one of the most significant writers, dramatists and poets of the late nineteenth-century. His relationship with Bosie, which took place when male homosexuality was illegal, led to his incarceration in Reading Prison between 1895 and 1897. Wilde’s final works, ‘De Profundis’ (1897, published 1905) and ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ (1898) emerged from the profoundly affecting experience of his imprisonment.

These portraits are based on nineteenth-century photographs and were originally exhibited as part of Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison, 2016, an installation developed by Artangel that responded to Wilde’s time in Reading. The portraits are exhibited here to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalization of male homosexuality and are resonant of the conflict that existed between public and private identities in the Victorian era. Dumas's work explores constructions of identity, often probing questions of gender, race, and sexuality."

Taken from: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2017/marlene-dumas-oscar-wilde-and-bosie

I think this artwork demonstrates how the placement of an artwork is extremely important and can completely change the context of the artwork. As Oscar Wilde was imprisoned at Reading himself for his homosexual relations, I think this adds a profound layer of intimacy to the audience that the artwork could not possibly convey on its own.

"Better Scenery is an artwork made up of four components, two photographs and two site-specific sculptures. It was commissioned by Camden Arts Centre, London. The sculptures are large signs, one located in North London, the other in the Painted Desert, Arizona. The photographs, each depicting one of the signs in situ, are displayed as a diptych. In the photograph on the left the sign is set within the O2 shopping and leisure centre’s busy car park off London’s Finchley Road. The photograph depicts a dark, built-up environment beneath an overcast sky. A few trees, shopping trolleys and lampposts are scattered among the many cars in the foreground. In the background the blur of a moving underground train is visible in front of a large Victorian red-brick building. In the photograph on the right the sign stands out against a vast blue sky in a landscape of grasses and yellow flowered brush receding to a flat horizon echoed by a line of mountains behind. A dark sandy hill rises at the left edge of the image. Each sign is a large black rectangle with yellow text that gives detailed road directions in simple language. Both signs are fixed in the ground by two timbers with a wind chime fixed to the top of the left strut. The sign in North London gives directions from Flagstaff, Arizona, to the specific location of the sign in the desert which, in turn, gives directions from Central London to the location of the sign at the O2 carpark. The final sentence of both signs is ‘Situated here, in this place, is a sign which describes the location of this sign you have just finished reading.'"

Taken from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/chodzko-better-scenery-p78530 

"Caroline Walker’s paintings portray women framed in a particular interior; often these belong to sleek or affluent properties, like Hockney-Esque houses or hotels.

According to the artist, these environments are so far from her personal experience, that she can consider them as imaginary spaces, and this aspect makes them suitable sceneries where Walker can stage and explore her pivotal subject: contemporary femininity.

A hotel room with minimal furniture. Stylish and vacuous canvases on the wall. Although the room might be reminiscent of fictional space, a movie-like environment, in the body of work Service this painting belongs to, Caroline Walker adopts a more documentary approach. Indeed, rather than employing models to perform scripted actions as she did before, here the artist shadows and captures photographically the female cleaning staff of high-end hotels, thus exposing a process that is supposed to remain hidden, conducted behind the scenes.

Shaking-up voyeuristic instincts are one of the purposes of Walker’s painting, as the artist aims to explore the relationship between viewer and subjects and make her viewer reflect on social, economic and gender issues of our contemporary society. By portraying before us women intent on performing their usually-unnoticed jobs, Walker stresses the complexity of femininity in our society."

Taken from: https://www.artuner.com/shop/fresh-linen-room-44-2018/ 

In this painting, Walker takes a different approach to channel a certain place, by directly painting a specific moment in time. Unlike the other artworks, we have seen in this project brief, this painting brings attention to modern-day gender issues.

'Bedding, room 44' itself is a soft, photographic image. It appears as though it has a filter due to the soft painting techniques that Walker implemented into her work. I like how the artwork captures a specific element of place - there is a sense of narrative on who was there, what happened, and what is about to happen.

"Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home (2013), is a site-specific installation by Korean artist Do Ho Suh (b. 1962, Seoul, Korea) that represents a conceptual structure, within a conceptual structure, within arguably one of the most pregnant of all conceptual structures, the contemporary art museum. The inner sanctum of this massive and translucent installation artwork is a traditional Korean home, built in the style which was predominant in that country prior to the twentieth century, and its shell is a Western-style house, which bears some Victorian elements. This can mean a great many things to many different people, but it seems to represent the dual cultural identity of a migrant individual, who on the outside may show signs of cultural assimilation, but whose heart and soul remains encoded with the traditions and values that were learned in their place of origin. The artwork raises many questions, and captures the fractal nature of individual or cultural identity – the work contains the spectator, who is a living component of the chain of containers which run on ad infinitum from the physical world as we know it, towards the vast reaches of the cosmos, and inwards into the quantum realm."

Taken from: https://craniumcorporation.org/2014/08/28/home-within-home-within-home-within-home-within-home-2013-by-korean-artist-do-ho-suh-at-the-mmca-seoul/

I really enjoy this artwork. Besides the unique concepts and presentation, I can relate to a large part of it due to my upbringing. Having parents that are from two different cultures and being raised in places outside of my 'home' countries means I have always felt alienated when visiting the places I'm originally from, or as Do Ho Suh describes through his artwork, I've felt like a migrant. While Do Ho Suh's artwork is more suggestive of a conceptual house rather than a physical house, the idea of a personal home is still a very intimate place for viewers and demonstrates how the artist can present ideas and evoke successful responses from viewers without necessarily presenting something that is real.

"SUH: I would say the Korean house project started from this need to fulfill a certain desire when I graduated from [Rhode Island School of Design]. I was in New York for a year before I went to grad school. I was living on 113th Street, near Columbia, and my apartment building was right across the street from the fire station. And it was really, really noisy, and I couldn’t sleep well. And I was thinking, “When was my last time to have a really good sleep?” And that was in a small room, back in Korea. And I wanted to bring the house, somehow, to my New York apartment. So, that’s where everything started.

So, I started to think about the materials and the practicality of that project or the possibility of the project. And the choice of fabric came very naturally. Literally, I was going to install that fabric Korean house in my New York apartment, but apparently, my apartment was much smaller, so I couldn’t really do it. But it turned out to be a project, later. I did do a test because it was a fairly large project for me to tackle at that time. I did the test in my small studio in New York, in a muslin cloth. And it worked. But I didn’t have time and money to actually do the Korean house project until 1999.

ART21: What was that experience in your studio about?

SUH: The experience was about transporting space from one place to the other—a way of dealing with cultural displacement. And I don’t really get homesick, but I’ve noticed that I have this longing for this particular space, and I want to recreate that space or bring that space wherever I go. So, the choice of the material, which was fabric, was for many reasons. I had to make something that’s light and transportable, something that you can fold and put in a suitcase and bring with you all the time.

That’s actually what happened when I first made that piece, the Korean house project. I brought that piece in my suitcase—two suitcases—to L.A., where I showed that piece for the first time, at the L.A. Korean Culture Center. It was about challenging this notion of site-specificity because the piece was made inside the house. Everything was made in that space, so it was a site-specific installation. But once you take that piece down from its own site and display and transport it in a different place, this idea of the site-specific becomes highly questionable and [debatable]. And that’s what I was really interested in because, in my mind, I think this notion—home—is something that you can infinitely repeat."

Taken from: https://art21.org/read/do-ho-suh-seoul-home-la-home-korea-and-displacement/

Reading Don Ho Suh's responses to the interviewer is so refreshing as I can relate to many of the points he raises. There is something so special when an artwork has the capability of transporting you from one place to another, taking you back to a specific moment in time. However, in Don Ho Suh's case, he does not bring viewers to a specific place - he brings the place to the viewers.

At times I find myself longing my past homes in different countries, or perhaps a moment or feeling I experienced in a specific place from my time abroad. His approach of simply recreating that specific space is inspiring to me, redefining this idea of 'home' - because what exactly is home? Is it a physical space? When you live, grow, and change while passing time abroad, returning to the place you previously referred to as 'home' can be difficult as everything can feel different when you as a person change. I've experienced it myself, feeling alienated in my own home countries, when things simply don't feel the same. In Don Ho Suh's case, he has been able to create these physical spaces that he can transport with him. He can carry his 'homes' with him wherever he goes - I think there is something beautiful about that.

"The FedEx works […] initially interested me because they’re defined by a corporate entity in legal terms. There’s copyright designating the design of each FedEx box, but there’s also the corporate ownership over that very shape. It’s a proprietary volume of space, distinct from the design of the box, which is identified through what’s called an SSCC #, a Serial Shipping Container Code. I considered this volume as my starting point; the perversity of a corporation owning a shape—not just the design of the object—and also the fact that the volume is actually separate from the box. They’re owned independently from one another."

Taken from: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/01/fedex-works-walead-beshty/

"A digital camera inside a parcel looks out through a small hole and captures images of its journey through the postal system.  The Spy Box was sent from my studio to the gallery, without the knowledge or consent of Royal Mail, taking an image every 10 seconds recording a total of 6994 images these were then edited together to create an animated slideshow."

Taken from: http://www.timknowles.co.uk/Work/PostalWorks/SpyBox/tabid/296/Default.aspx

An interesting take on the concept of 'place'. This piece raises an ethical debate - taking candid photographs of people without their consent is problematic, especially when they are the subject of an artwork. This also raises concerns of legality - how legal is this process, especially if it is going to be displayed publicly to an audience?

"Knowles creates process-based works, often involving natural movements of trees, insects, and wind to generate his drawings. His works use mechanisms and systems to combine drawing, digital technology, photography and video to capture interactions of the natural and man-made world. Driven by forces outside of the artist’s control, the outcomes represent investigations into the unpredictable, making visible hidden systems ordered by chance and the environment.

Mk3 Postal Drawing is one of a series of works that trace their own passage through the postal system using cameras and ink. In 2011 this work was sent via FedEx from London to Sydney, equipped with a mobile pen that plotted the movements of the package while it was in transit. The resulting drawing, Perspex box, and the device used to create the drawing constitute a self-contained artwork."

Taken from: https://art.uts.edu.au/index.php/collection/postal-drawing/

Similar to Beshty's work, Knowles' artwork is determined entirely by external forces. I think this process is very clever and I would like to try something similar - setting up a contraption that will create an unpredictable artwork.

"Alys contributed to Insite, an exhibition held in the border region between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico. He used his commission fee to travel south from Tijuana, across to Australia, north up the Pacific Rim and south through Alaska, Canada, and the United States, reaching San Diego without having crossed the Mexico US border. This action addressed the difficulties faced by Mexican citizens when trying to visit the US and the excesses of art world travel in the 1990s. Alÿs disseminated this work through the postcard available to visitors, spreading the ideas of the action to a global audience."

Taken from lecture

ALTERED SPACES

'Passion Flower Over Paradise Pool' by L.C. Armstrong was one of the more different pieces during the lecture. The painting is serene, oversaturated, and utopian. However, this particular painting is tainted with burns, making the flowers look furry and exotic. It adds an aggressive, almost sinister layer to the painting when contrasted to the near-perfect elements of the artwork - an arrangement of flowers against a sky blue waterfall during the sunset. I almost did not notice them myself, but there are people painted in the background, swimming in the pool described in the title. They are minuscule, almost invisible, perhaps a metaphor from Armstrong's part. Either way, my eyes are continuously drawn to the flowers in the foreground as they carry so much character, some even looking alien-like or out of this world.

"Transforming the familiar contours of a street-front store into a deceptively illusory space, Anderson’s Untitled (Welcome Series) both challenges perspective and bars its indulgence. Drafted from a rustic palette of warm earthy hues and cool whites and greys, the walls, ceiling, and cabinets advance and recede in a disorientating labyrinth; their shifting planes expressionistically rendered as fields of layered texture, become insolvent grounds for graffiti-like sketches and texts, loosely suggesting posters and furnishings. The foreground, cut through with the bright orange star patterns of a security grill, affirms the flatness of the picture plane while situating the viewer firmly on the outside of this scene, a self-conscious voyeur or intruder."

Taken from: https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/hurvin_anderson_welcome.htm

I personally find this artwork very intriguing. The way the different elements in Anderson's piece work together also makes this artwork difficult to understand and quite complex. Despite looking at this artwork for a long time I still had difficulties comprehending the space I was looking at, which may be the reason I like this artwork so much. Thematically it fits in very well with the concept of 'Altered Spaces', presenting viewers with a street-front store that has been manipulated into a 'deceptively illusory space', as stated on the Saatchi Gallery website.

“Traveling to Jamaica, since he was in his mid-teens, [Anderson] came to notice the ubiquitous presence of security grilles on windows of residential and commercial properties there. For Anderson Jamaica is very different from that enjoyed by holidaymakers from the US or Europe, who, with rare exceptions, effectively barricade themselves into beach resorts. His Jamaica might appear to be very similar, in the ways in which people live, work and socialize, but instead, for Black British people of local heritage, it is loaded with an unsettling ambivalence signified by the security devices used by almost all Jamaican householders. And by noticing them, Anderson came to paint a remarkable series of paintings,” Chambers writes.

“The paintings—known as the Welcome series—are both a highly-charged visual investigation into the ubiquity of security grilles in countries such as Jamaica and an exploration of their geometric patterning. In making them, Anderson also triggered considerations of security, exclusion, and what we see, or what we imagine we see, when we look through other peoples grilles, into their homes and lives.”

Taken from: https://www.culturetype.com/2018/03/22/sothebys-contemporary-auctions-exploring-tension-between-security-and-exclusion-hurvin-anderson-painting-tops-1-million/

The context included above adds another layer to his artwork, that perhaps this is not an aesthetic or an intimate space but something more significant of his heritage and upbringing. I think it speaks for his body of work showing how he often explores his background, identity, and sense of place through his paintings and discusses them as if they are invented, but also reconstructs them completely with fragments of his observations. The geometric shapes in the work initially seem to be there for aesthetic or decorative purpose, but perhaps they add a sense of security and stability, based on what was written above.

“It’s hard to identify this urban-perfect scene as the suicide site of a grunge god; only the idle guitar and empty chair suggest that somebody is absent. Dexter Dalwood imagines his scenes with the up-close-impersonal sterility of Hello! magazine spotlights; everything needed to know about the person is in the paint. Like Magritte’s Empire of Light, Kurt Cobain’s Greenhouse is both day and night; a lot of time has been spent contemplating in this room. Bright-lights big-city success blares in the distance, the boughs in bloom offer unattainable promise on the other side of the glass. While inside there’s only a corroded pipe and pathetic box of posies to signify trampled self-esteem. Dexter Dalwood’s painting is an allegory of the fallacy of heroism.”

Taken from: https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/dalwood_kurt_cobains_greenhouse.htm 

From a technical perspective, it's interesting to see how Dalwood incorporated torn postcards into the artwork. Usually, when he makes artworks they are always deconstructed. There is never an attempt to 'create', but rather recollect an existing space - viewers can see he has done this, including the postcards or even Curt Cobain's guitar towards the left of the composition. I personally think this is a very interesting concept, making you question what previously existed within a space and what kind of significance it could possibly contain.

Khedoori's artwork demonstrates how you do not have to fill spaces, but instead simply fill them, play with them, and use them. Her artwork uses the space effectively to create a field of focus and achieves balance, allowing viewers to focus on the frame. What's interesting to note is that she often paints spaces like hallways, stairwells, and other 'portals' we intercept to access other places, in other words, a 'bridge' between two places. The spaces are also always very impersonal - up and close, her artworks have hair, dust, and other human remnants as a result from working in a studio, which adds a personal dimension to the piece.

"Over the course of a career spanning more than twenty-five years Woods has developed a unique painterly language that is concerned with the molding of an image in two dimensions. Her early practice as a sculptor continues to inform her exploration of physical form via the materiality of paint. Although at first concerned with landscape, a preoccupation with the human body and its connection to entropic themes of mortality, degeneration, and disease has surfaced in the artist’s work. For Woods, the corporeality of her subject matter and the physical element of the paint are inextricably tangled up in one another. In these new works, Woods employs an often-bilious palette that subverts the viewer’s expectations of her virtuoso application of paint on aluminium. Defamiliarising the everyday, Woods probes the boundaries of figuration to challenge her audience’s experiences of fear, anxiety and the fundamentally destructive impulses of humankind.

Woods derives inspiration from found photographic sources such as newspaper clippings, magazines, and other diverse sources of visual ephemera that depict unsettling and often transgressive imagery. Yet it is not the origin of the image that is important to the artist, but rather the emotional response it triggers within her and its potential for reinterpretation or translation once painted. In Woods’ work painting cannot live without photography, the former offering an interpretation of the representation of reality presented by the latter. The artist’s approach to her source imagery involves editing visual data, frequently via cropping or repositioning, thus distancing it from its provenance, while nonetheless retaining a tangible relationship to the original. In this way, Woods’ painting teeters on the edge of legibility, excavating the source image through the physical act of painting and providing new content and context, while restoring a form – albeit intentionally disturbed and disturbing – to the original photograph.

The disjunction between figuration and abstraction lies at the heart of Woods’ manipulation of her source imagery. These alterations can dramatically change the meaning of the work or the viewer’s emotional response. What happens out of the frame, what is lost, removed or invisible, becomes as important as what is seen. During the drawing process, Woods conceptually empties an image, yet this information is replaced during the act of painting. The use of vigorous, expansive, brushwork, compositional distortion and abstract color, remove the normality of the every day and position it in the artificial, forcing the viewer to question their ability to analyze and decipher the content what is in front of them. Woods’ approach to painting reflects our overconsumption of images in a world that treats banality and disaster in the same way: human stories are told in digital images, with the manipulation between the media, memory, and reality allowing these images to be consumed with ease and without thought. The paintings in Doublethink confront this phenomenon head-on, inviting us to review our responsibilities towards the processing of representational imagery."

Taken from Simon Lee exhibition brief

After viewing the Simon Lee exhibit, it's really interesting to see the inspiration behind Woods' work. Many of her pieces appear quite abstract because of how deconstructed the work is, or how simplified some of the shapes become. I would love to see some of her inspiring photographs or newspaper articles and to see how they differ from her final outcome. One of my favorite paintings is (what I believe to be) of a person's mouth. It was one of the first paintings that confronted me when I entered the gallery, and I couldn't quite make out what it was.

Seeing the work in person I was quite impressed by the thick paint strokes and how they predominantly make up the focal points across her artworks. I would personally like to attempt this technique - it's evident that Woods would think about the different colors she lay on her brush before touching her canvas. I've included some close-up images above from some of her larger works to capture the closer details in her paintings.

The JD Malat Gallery's 2019 Summer Exhibition featured a variety of different artists' works. I was surprised by the lack of cohesiveness in the exhibit, but in a pleasant way - each artist had greatly unique works. I have included above some of my favorite pieces, particularly those of Henrik Uldalen, and close up images of another artist's work (I can not remember the artwork title).

While I did not particularly like Ian Cumberland's 'Manufacturing Consent' (pictured below), I found its use of mixed media very clever, with the painting creeping out of the canvas through the use of wood to create a 3D artwork as a part of the painting.