storms in a tea cup: Saatchi showdown

Showing posts with label Saatchi showdown. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

DEEP WATERS - REVISION OF MY LATEST COLLAGE

I decided to redo my latest collage from scratch. There were too many flaws in the first version that were hard to live with, I discussed it with Martin and simply had to concede that I could do better. I have said before that there is often a problem when a piece is conceived over a longer period of time and when it's fairly large, because it tends to be more tentative and less focused. What happened here was that some of the ideas just weren't as crisp as they could be. For instance, it made sense to try and keep all the other elements except the most semantically pertinent ones black and white. Thus the bottles all stand out a lot more. The bow in the child's hair is also in colour... as a last minute decision I decided to put it there as a more pertinent pointer to the contents of this piece.

The background is made up of many different found images of landscapes, but I took more care this time in making sure that there aren't too many seams that stand out. The idea of an explosion in the background became more obvious as I worked harder on printing out different size bottles and concentrating them visually.

In this piece, I am talking about my own mother and her past issues with alcohol abuse as well as the effect it has had on my own life. Surviving and fighting the effects of neglect and stress during ones childhood is like fighting a windmill. There is also the fear of drowning in emotional residue and having to make constant efforts to cope. The signs so typical of British "health and safety" are ironic reminders of a society that pretends to care about its disadvantaged members. However, as usual it's possible for the viewer to see whatever they like to see in this image.

My mother was evacuated from her home during WWII and put in foster care at the age of four. She had to revise her own identity and become part of a culture that was diametrically opposite her own. Something that sticks out from her vivid stories is how much she hated having a bow stuck in her hair. Her new mother was a prima ballerina and aristocrat.

I have been soul searching a lot, trying to decide whether talking about a dysfunctional childhood is a valid thing to do. Shouldn't I just get on with life and put all that behind me? Well, for one thing I have to try and just do whatever comes to me as a subject matter. There is no other way of being honest. The other thing is, I'm not really digging through past issues in a therapeutic kind of way. I simply wish to bring this subject matter to other people's attention by creating a visual representation of it. I want to communicate something that I'm familiar with. In this way I hope that my piece has more validity as art rather than as a therapeutic gesture. If anything, it could be therapeutic for other people to see such an image?

I struggled to finish this piece in time for the deadline of the Saatchi showdown for surreal art - I might as well participate. For this reason I had to try and get a good shot of the piece, which proved very hard. The muscles in my back are aching so badly from leaning over, trying to retouch areas where the varnish caused milkiness... My art is not really surreal but it's the category they offer that comes the closest. I wish symbolic art would also be seen as a valid category. After all, it's a lot more meaningful than surreal art, that tends to be rather whimsical and nonsensical. I really hope this piece has got what it takes to make it to this year's open exhibition in the MOMA in Machyntlleth. This year's theme is "movement". Yes, it's related to the Olympics but there is no need to stick to sports and the like. The idea of fighting a windmill came to me already last autumn. I actually don't like modern windmills much, as they are ugly bits of engineering that clutter the landscape. Meanwhile they are supposed to be a "good thing". There's a paradox if ever there was one....

Saturday, April 7, 2012

IS LESS REALLY MORE?

Tadaa... this is my latest in the Project X series. It features text which is stream of consciousness and not edited at all. One is complaintive, the other attempts towards a more constructive attitude to life. They tell about some of my ordeals with insomnia in particular. I don't know whether I was influenced by Tracey Emin or whether I would made this choice anyway... I hope the rest is quite self-explanatory. The figures are old copy right free drawings of the nervous system, which is central to a lot of invisible illnesses, including my own.

I started to follow the showdown at Saatchi, in fact I submitted one of my abstract photographs for the competition for abstract art, however without the hopes I had when I submitted my collage late last year. I actually got to the second round of 300 participants out of 3333!

Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "Nothing Was Quite the Way It Used to Be",
digital photograph copyright 2011

What strikes me is that the winning pieces are usually very simple. It seems to me that simple is still trendy, even though we've had a decade of that. Watching a show on Art Nouveau last night, I was thinking as I immersed in the beauty of the sensuous and life affirming yet stylized natural forms that that was the end of beauty. Don't get me wrong, I like simple too. But too much of it makes for too little. With Art Nouveau, you're constantly surprised, fascinated, excited, tantalized... it just doesn't get boring. Well, for the most part anyway, since too much of a good thing can be overwhelming too.

I was flipping through The World of Interiors the other day and came across an article about Maria Joao Arnaud who went to India to learn traditional methods of printing fabric. So what did she create when she came home from the land of intricate designs and opulent colours? Squares, and a lot of them. To be fair there's other stuff as well but the designs are overall quite simple. Nothing particularly bad about it... just boring. When is this boredom going to end? I feel so deprived that I have to buy stuff that has a decorative formal language even when I can't really afford it - it is so rare these days though a growing number of people actually want it. Next time I will show an interesting chair I bought a while ago (it actually was a bargain).

As I was thinking of a new collage, a certain simplicity came to mind. I thought, why not, I can do that too. But I will never give up a desire for opulence and intriguing shapes.

I have noticed, that people who get grants and other forms of support for their art are usually very articulate, i.e. they use their heads/minds very well. But what about their hearts? Check out the Julia Gomperts trust and the artists they have supported. It strikes me that most of them seem very young, articulate and conceptual. Their ideas are often complicated and deeply philosophical, but what about their art? I'm not sure all this headiness translates into art from the heart.

Friday, February 17, 2012

THE RESULTS FROM THE SAATCHI SHOWDOWN COMPETITION FOR COLLAGES & ASSEMBLAGE

This is what Saatchi has to show for. What do you think, is it any good and if so, why? Is this better than my own work? I don't really want to criticize these much as that could come across as feelings of resentment. But I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that the compositions are very conventional, and that there are many faces or the upper part of bodies seen upfront - and they are portrayed in rather typical ways as often seen in Flickr collage groups, for instance (I recommend going there for some exciting collages). My favourite is "Circus, Circus" by Michael Tierney, as being the one with some innovation. Though to be honest I'm not sure what it is about. I cannot see any social messages here, which is what I expected to see.

You might also wonder why the one's with the country name are from the United Kingdom and some from the United States, and why the two other ones have no country?

This is where I wrote extensively about the Saatchi showdown that I took part in.

1st Place Showdown Winner