Part One. Assemble. Ex 1 Your initial thoughts on Sculpture

 Sculpture.......we have not, as yet, found a better word for the Art of manipulating 3D space but we loosely understand its meaning. As the flat brush and oil paint in tubes shifted the artist out of the studio to paint more loosely in nature and the proliferation of photography releasing the artist from representation much has happened. The change from receiving commissions to the gallery space has also effected change particularly as Victorian flock wallpaper was replaced by huge white spaces. Art schools also set trends, looking back I see that my foundation course in 1964/66 was founded on Cezanne, Mondrian, and of course the Bauhaus. On visiting the degree shows in London in the 80s, particularly the RCA, there was a noticeable change with standard departments of painting, graphics, illustration less in evidence but much to do with the environmental/land art, fashion and photography. Being in Milan from 1986' to 2013 afforded me the opportunity to regularly go to the Venice Biennale whilst visits to London were a great opportunity to see what was going on. Now based in Budapest (not the best for exhibitions) I visit nearby Vienna to see anything major, which I sometimes do.  However, I am aware that I am more familiar with European and American artists than what's going on elsewhere including Hungary.

Concerns. I do worry that these huge white spaces such the Tate Modern and the Venice Biennale are inspiring but also dictating what goes on. The work needs to relate to the space therefore difficult to transport and often therefore ephemeral. Not a problem as long as smaller work is not suffering neglect.

Some of the sculptural work that excites me. It seems I am drawn to delicacy and fineness (may I call it beautiful pain) rather than bombastic pieces such as work by Richard Serra, Anish Kapoor, or Anthony Gormley. I am not dismissing their work it just isn't where my heart lies. Here are some examples of work I like very much.

Most work by Doris Salcedo. Many artists have worked with furniture but she gets it right. 'Unland' stored away somewhere in the Tate is achingly beautiful along with her wardrobes as above.

Damien Hirst, some not all. I particularly loved his stunning chrome plated and mirrored glass case displaying prettily coloured pills spaced in neat rows and hard not to be moved by his 1000 years...a horror story that confronts hard. 

Berlinde de Bruyckere. Just about all her work to date.

Gordon Baldwin. Ceramic artist who makes wonderful sculptural forms that I'd dearly like to own.

Louise Bourgeoise. All.

Just a note to say that I am rather envious of artists with workforces at hand to realise ideas.

Exercise 3. Analysing and reflecting

 

Rachel Whiteread.   

With no found title or information on the piece I am left to guess how it has been made. It appears to be a photomontage made from an image of a section of ‘one of her cast sculptures perhaps ‘House’ superimposed onto a photograph of a different London building. Juxtaposing the images in this way presents us with a comparative study. We see the familiar victorian house beside her reconfiguration of a house by casting the interior space. This presents us with a leap in emotional as well as a visual response, on the right a house as a home, our place, a place of refuge and comfort where windows permit light and a view of the world which we have temporarily left, on the left a bleak grey hard flatness with windows now blind. This ‘leap’ feels as uncomfortable as does this perception test on discovering both interlocked images for these expressions of inside and outside are also giant 3D jigsaw pieces. Does the cast enlighten us as to our home’s interior spirit or does it present the truth of our futile empty existences in stark hard reality? Perhaps her holocaust memorial in Vienna where fineness of finish and mechanical symmetry presents an aesthetic quality too hard to bear in our knowledge of its purpose. The symbolism of a library and the forever closed doors mark starkly the brutality of its dreadful truth. 

No matter what one casts (particularly if using a fine material such as plaster) the outcome is always a thing of beauty and wonder, not simply for its inside outness but for its astonishing smoothness or exactness of forms. I’ve as yet to hear R W speak of about this but surely she has hit on a wondrous approach for a lifetime of visual exploration and she has not disappointed in manipulating this technique in powerful innovative and dramatic ways. 

 

Approaches to Sculpture Exercise 1. What do you hope to gain from your foundation course

What do you hope to gain from your foundation course?

I am hoping to encounter new challenging experiences to increase my range of making and more importantly thinking. I hope to find synergy in form and content to make my work more meaningful at least to me. Keen to get started I have a tendency to respond quickly to an idea perhaps without sufficient consideration as to its purpose, depth or potential and so in time I am inclined to lose heart. With this in mind writing may be as useful to me as experimentation with materials. I note that artists increasingly seem to justify their work in written conceptual terms perhaps to satisfy the need for prefaces and exhibition notes but surely this too must create a firm premiss for the work in progress. 

Developing purpose of expression.  

The strange and interesting upbringing of someone such as Louise Bourgeoise could take a lifetime to reflect upon but how not to lie in a stupor and realise that those pieces of fabric stored under the bed so meaningful in her childhood could present a way for her to express something 'unspeakable' and so emotionally raw. Her journey has been drawn from her personal experiences an approach continued by artists such as Tracey Emin. Other 'Young British Artists' have explored social, eco and political themes forever responding to shifting hot topics as they may well be the way to get noticed or funding. I suppose finding out what is sufficiently worth developing is much the same problem for writers who are usually advised to dig deep into their own experiences even if they are painful then, of course, to have the courage to see them as valid unique, and worth expressing.

Somewhere here I plan to refer to artists' works and musical compositions which correspond to values which I cherish and would like to find their way into my work. In trying to grasp what I am trying to express I often make lists of adjectives but the content through which to realise them continues to be the  challenge.