Whilst researching my current ideas of optimism and enlightenment, I have become interested in popular ways to save the world. I googled ’10 ways to save the world’……….. and came up with this interesting and inspiring blog………
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
I really enjoyed some of the works in this show at the Lisson Gallery. The most compelling was ‘Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful’ 1975, this was a video of the top half of the artist naked brushing her hair and face, repeating the title as a mantra. She says about the performance “I brush my hair with a metal brush held in my right hand and simultaneously comb my hair with a metal comb held in my left hand. While so doing, I continuously repeat ‘Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful’, until I have destroyed my hair and face. Having watched/read the video of her traumatic upbringing ‘Confession’, which I imagine to be true having seen her other work I see she was pushed to her limits whist growing up and her artwork has become an extension of this. However I think it should be noted that if she wasn’t beautiful then the work wouldn’t be so compelling, it would be far more grotesque.
I have just finished reading a book which in my mind links with this work, A fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, this book tells a story about four characters in India in the mid-1970’s who are caught up in various life struggles from repressed child hood to extreme poverty and caste abuse to political corruption. The fine balance from the title is the theme throughout the book as we, through the characters, find out the fine balance between hope and despair. Linking to Marina’s work I would comment that the ability to endure is something that will tip the balance to hope rather than despair. These are themes that I have been thinking about in my current work.
Back in the whirl of college again, I must keep a constant note of shows I’ve seen & ideas that pass through…………before I forget…………
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.” Goethe (also attributed to Ginott)
Sinta Werner
The other show that I particularly liked was Sinta Werner’s show Along the Sight Lines.
This was at the Nettie Horn Gallery on Vyner Street. She deals with space, how an image can be manipulated to show a different space or exagerated space, concerns of illusion that Renaissance painting explored. But she literally takes us beyond that with her interventions of the 2D image. The installation Along the site lines explores multiple view points as analogy to post modern principles.
After enrolling back at college I had a gallery day yesterday, and saw some really interesting work. I went to the jerwood drawing prize, tate modern & Vyner street where Salon Art prize had its PV.
My head is so full of ideas that I’ve had insomnia all night and I’m too tired to write or draw properly, but I have to get the ideas out of my head somehow. I have been reminded of a quote about sleep deprivation that I’ve saved.
SLEEP DEPRAVATION
‘Sleep deprivation can mimic the symptoms of starvation, particularly in children – victims become disoriented and cold. They lose their sense of time, becoming locked in an interminable present. Sleep deprivation also causes a number of neurological dysfunctions, which become more extreme the longer it continues. In the end your waking hours take on the logic of a dream, where odd things are connected and you are just angry, angry, angry with the world that will not let you rest.’
(from Mark Wallinger the Russian linesman p34. anna funder, stasiland: stories from behind the berlin wall, London granta, 2003. chapter 3, ‘bornholmer bridge’ is about Miriam weber who, as a sixteen year old, nearly succeeded in scaling the berlin wall.
JERWOOD drawing is always interesting to see the range of work. But I enjoyed more seeing the drawings of Louise Bourgeois at Tate Modern I havn’t seen the drawings before and so they made a particular impression, spontaneous and amusing. The other artists of course are good too, David Shrigley, Jake and Dinos Chapman and Marcel Dzama but I have seen them before……
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/explore/room.do?show…
I thought the SALON ART PRIZE was brilliant. So many interesting themes and manifestations around notions of utopia/ dystopia and futuristic visions. Sort of what I’m thinking about at the moment. I’ll post a few images of what most links in with my ideas. I’ve been thinking of drawing people and patterns. Thinking about ideas of community, loneliness, alienation, utopia & enlightenment.
