Week 1: Nathalie Djurberg's 'Claymations'.

1. What do you understand by the word 'claymation'?

Claymation uses clay, a digital camera, a computer, and video software to make character come to life by posing them in multiple frames and creating a mini-movie.

2. What is meant by the term 'surrealistic Garden of Eden'? and 'all that is natural goes awry'?

The dark space surrounding with music implies the paradise, seems utopia. In Natalie Djurberg's work, the whole space seems odd and it looks so unreal because it is making me feel like in a dream. the 'all that is natural goes awry' seems obvious through the claymation, a body has been scratched down till a metal wire is left.

3. What are the 'complexity of emotions' that Djurberg confronts us with?

I think Djurberg expects to see different emations from viewers. I personal think the sexuality is pretty strong here, because of the animation shows how Eve scratched out Adam's skin until the bone is shown. this makes me feel uncomfortable and fear response to the work.

4. How does Djurberg play with the ideas of children's stories, and innocence in some of her work?
Usually claymation is made for children ends up with happy endings, the storyline is always full of joyce and fantasy. However, in Djurberg’s work, it results in heavy emotional scarring, because Eve is peeling off Edam’s skin, looks like doll’s head is cut off in children ‘s claymation.
5. There is a current fascination by some designers with turning the innocent and sweet into something disturbing. Why do you think this has come about?
I think these designers are doing this because they are telling the truth around us, not just like perfect, sweet and innocent world in children’s fantasy world. We wish everything is perfect and in positive position around us, but the truth is the real world is always full of complexity.
6. In your opinion, why do you think Djurberg's work is so interesting that it was chosen for the Venice Biennale?
I think Djurberg’s work is so interesting that it was chosen for the Venice Biennale because of the idea of disturbing in the work. Throughout the work, everything is making you feel uncomfortable, the eerie plants, the disturbing and I think most disgusting video clip I’ve never seem in a art gallery. It is not a fantasy sort of looking work, however, the disturbing objects really make viewers stop and watch, at the same time want to just walk away from that space.
7. Add some of your own personal comments on her work.
I don’t enjoy Djurberg’s work, because I think it is disturbing and of course so disgusting. If I was there walk around the space, I think I will be shocked and feel both want to stop and finish watching the whole videos and want to just leave that space so quick as well, the work is awesome because I think it is disturbing viewer while really attract attention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice_Biennale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVZq0H8mfvQ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathalie_Djurberg

http://www.likeyou.com/en/node/7962

Week 2 - Hussein Chalayan

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) andBurka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? AreAfterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?

Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?

When i first saw these two works, i was a bit shocking, kind of in both good and bad way. For the Bruka, when i saw the youtube, i didn't understand the meaning behind the show, but i didn't even have any interest to research it, because i think it is disgusting and scary. However, the Afterwords (2000) I find it is quite interesting, because on youtube, the whole video clip looks like a tv show combined with catwalk. The most interesting thing is that all the chairs, desks, cases turned into garments in sudden, which I think the idea is amazing.

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses, emotions, and intellect. But Fashion is a general term for the style and custom prevalent at a given time, in its most common usage refers to costume or clothing style. I think these two works are more into art, because in my opinion, something that you can’t even wear to the public in daily life is not fashion, it should be piece of art which should be displayed in art gallery. Just think about it, can we wear like that to the public?

2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like The Level Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?

I think when a piece of art has a value and starts becoming a product which can be sold, it is not a piece of art anymore, because piece of art can be something that people can have different critiques , can be good or bad. However, when a piece of art turns into a peice of commercial products, it should be created to a best result,so that most of the people can accept it and buy it.

4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?

As a artist, i think creating and experimenting and making piece is most important because art is not just about the result, it is about the process, a piece of work is not just a object, but a piece of work that contains lots of meanings behind and how to present can bring audience different feelings and thoughts by different artists.

http://www.husseinchalayan.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE07_aFF4no

http://www.fashion-lifestyle.net/designers_en_broi7

Week 4- Anish Kapoor

1.Research Kapoor's work in order to discuss the ideas behind 3 quite different works from countries outside New Zealand.

Cloud Gate looks almost like a giant drop of mercury that fell from the sky. Anish Kapoor intended for this beautiful sculpture to be a fate into Chicago by the city it reflects and thus the title. 33 feet tall, 66 feet long and 42 feet wide; Cloud gate is made of 168 highly polished pieces.With his mysterious Anish Kapoor form with the physiological and psychological space.

2.Discuss the large scale site specific work that has been installed on a private site in New Zealand.

Kapoor's inventiveness and versatility have resulted in works ranging from powdered pigment sculptures and site-specific interventions on wall or floor, to gigantic installations both in and outdoors. In his exploration, his view is rooted in the metaphysical polarity: presence and absence, being and non-being, place and non-place and the solid and the intangible. Kapoor’s idea is that if he empties out all the content and just make something that is an empty form, then he doesn’t empty out the contect at all, he is trying to approach the idea of content should be more surprising than the content itself. Kapoor uses red because it is the colour of the physical, the bodily, the earthly. He wants to make body into sky. This is the colour to form horizons which are bigt enough to encompass the view and bathe one in a field of colour.

3. Where is the Kapoor's work in New Zealand? What are its form and materials? What are the ideas behind the work

Site - specific Work at The Farm is ?at Kaipara Bay. Comprises three steel rings joined together by a single span of PVC membrane. Two are positioned vertically, at each end of the space, while a third is suspended parallel with the bridge. Seemingly wedged into place, the geometry generated by these three rigid steel structures determines the sculpture’s overall form, a shift from vertical to horizontal and back to vertical again.

4. Comment on which work by Kapoor is your favourite, and why

I like the Site - Specific Work at the Farm. I like the colour contrast. and the size of the work is making me confused with the actual size of the landscape. it is very interesting.

www.anishkapoor.com/works/

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/k/anish_kapoor/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anish_Kapoor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOfwsy5kxyI

http://www.sculpture.org.uk/image/910000000542/1/

Week 5 - Kehinde Wiley

Kahinde Wiley is a Gay American based painter born in Los Angeles, who has an international reputation living between Pe King and Brooklyn.

Last weeks ALVC class focused on the Post Modern them "INTERTEXTUALITY", re-read Extract 1 The death of the author on page 44 of your ALVC books and respond to the oil paintings of Kehinde Wiley. How do we make sense of his Kehinde's work? Identify intertextuality in Kehinde's work?

Kehinde's work relates to this weeks Post Modern theme "PLURALISM" re-read page 50 and discuss how the work relates to this theme?

Kehinde's work raises questions around social/cultural hierarchies , colonisation, globalisation, stereotypes and the politics which govern a western worldview.

Information on specific paintings was difficult to obtain however Matt has the info for the last 2 paintings.

3. Kehinde Wiley Count Potocki, 2008 oil on canvas, 274.3 x 274.3cm

4. Kehinde Wiley Support Army and Look after People, 2007 oil on canvas, 258.4 x 227.3cm

Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. It reminds us that text exists and relates to each other. As critic William Irwin says, the term “has come to have almost as many meanings as users, from those faithful to Kristeva’s original vision to those who simply use it as a stylish way of talking about allusion and influences” (Irwin, 228).

Wiley’s paintings always stand between traditional and contemporary art. Wiley first references old master pieces and than creates combination with modern subject, which is realistic. He ranges from French rococo, West African textile and human to design a urban hip-hop and Sea Foam Green. Rich green, red and Gold is the interior colour palate.

The model in the painting is the young men who Wiley finds on the street mostly from Harlem’s 125th Street and from South Central neighborhood where he was born. The painting embrace French rococo and hip – hop culture. The pose of figures mostly from contemporary hip – hop culture as from Renaissance paintings.

In his Passing/Posing paintings, Wiley reshapes and plays with popular constructions of Black masculinity, giving new meaning to old poses and historical context to contemporary style. The artist was driven by several provocative questions: "How is it that they arrived in these poses? What are they passing for? What is this universe that's being created?"

http://www.kehindewiley.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BQYimJtAWI

http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/recognize/paintings.html

Week 6 last blog for semester 2-Barbara Kruger

American conceptual/pop artistBarbara Kruger is internationally renowned for her signature black, white and red poster-style works of art that convey in-your-face messages on women's rights and issues of power. Coming out of the magazine publishing industry, Kruger knows precisely how to capture the viewer's attention with her bold and witty photomurals displayed on billboards, bus stops and public transportation as well as in major museums and galleries wordwide. She has edited books on cultural theory, including Remaking History for the Dia Foundation, and has published articles in the New York Times, Artforum, and other periodicals. Monographs on her work include Love for Sale, We Won't Play Nature to Your Culture and others. She is represented in New York by Mary Boone Gallery. A major exhibition of her work will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in fall 1999, and at the Whitney Museum in New York in 2000.

Research Kruger's work to find an example from the 1970s or 1980s to compare with a more recent work. How has Kruger's work changed with the developments in contemporary visual arts? Describe a recent work that moves away from the 'poster' type work of her early career.

Find 2-3 works by Kruger to add to your blog.

How does the audience experience a more spatial, installation art work compared with a poster?

Between Being Born and Dying (September,2009)

Your Body is a Battleground (1989)

Your comfort is my silence (1981)

Barbara was working as a graphic designer for magazines between the late 1970s and early 1980s. She played with the photo – based images overlaid in a signature color scheme of black, white and red. She has been using slogans to question the social and political forces within society, and to promote causes she believes in such as supporting legal abortion and fighting domestic violence during that period of time. Appropriation and replication of imagery from mass culture are used throughout Kruger’s work as she has inspired by the techniques of photolithography and screen print which allows her to make whether large – scale and unique or ephemeral and printed in thousands of copies. She has turned mass media to visual strategies which by returning to their sources on covers she created for magazines. She has said that "I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t."

Combination of images and texts containing criticism of sexism and the circulation of power within cultures is the main point in both Kruger’s early and recently works.

The works Kruger is making over the last 30 years have been developed from poster to a more spatial and installation art work range. However, the concept of feminism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire is never lost throughout all her work. For example, in Between Being Born and Dying (September,2009), she used graphical technology to create, to emphasize a space. The entire ground floor lobby of Aby Rosen's midtown office building is wrapped with black and white vinyl text. Quotes that Kruger appropriates in this installation include:

"The meaning of life is that it stops." -Kafka

"The globe shrinks for those that own it." -Humi K. Bhabha

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Kruger

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Barbara-Kruger.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPKqvRcMhu4

http://rogallery.com/Kruger_Barbara/kruger-biography.html

Week 3 - The http://www.eventfinder.co.nz/2010/jul/auckland-cbd/walters-prize-20102010

a) Saskia Leek
b) Fiona Connor
c) Dan Arps
d) Alex Monteith

1. What is the background to the Walters Prize?

It is established in 2002 by founding benefactors and principal donors Erika and Robin. The $50,000 is awarded to outstanding contemporary New Zealand art works that are produced and exhibited during past two years.

2. List the 4 selected artists for 2010 and briefly describe their work.

Alex Monteith

Motorcycle performance (2008) documentation for a two-bike lanesplit of Auckland`s Northern Motorway during morning rush hour traffic. The semi-illegal continuous passing maneouvre was from Greville Rd onramp, over the Aucland Harbour Bridge to the city exit. The bikes are a Ducati 996s (front bike) and a Suz uki GSXR 600 (rear bike).

Both video cameras record the semi-illegal commuter passing maneouvre simultaneously, and these recordings are installed in the gallery as a dual channel synchronised video installation with stereo sound.

3. Who are the jury members for 2010?

- Jon Bywater is the lecture in Fine Arts at University of Auckland

- Rhana Devenport is the director of the Govett - Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth

- Leonhard Enmerling is the director of St Paul St at AUT and now Visual Art Adviser at Goethe Institute in Munich, Germany

- Kate Montagomery is the director of Physics Room in Christchurch

4. Who is the judge for 2010 and what is his position in the art world?

Vicente Todoli will be the judge for this prize. He was artistic director for The Valencia Institute for Modern Art (IVAM), Spain, and before it opened he was their Chief curator from 1989-96. Throughout his distinguished career he organised and curated internationally renowned exhibitions of work by contemporary artists. He was director of London's Tate Modern from 2003-2010.

5. Who would you nominate for this years Walter's Prize, and why? Substantiate you answer by outlining the strengths of the artists work. How does this relate to your interests in art? What aspect of their work is successful in your opinion, in terms of ideas, materials and/or installation of the work?

I think Alex Monteith shoudl win the prize, because it is very smart to use camera to be involved in the work. when you go to the art gallary, you can just sit down take a rest and stearing at the big screen for a long time and think lots of ideas behind the work.
http://www.eventfinder.co.nz/2010/jul/auckland-cbd/walters-prize-2010

http://www.aucklandartgallery.com/whats-on/events/2010/july/the-walters-prize-2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhi2bSHeznU

Last blog question for semester one- Banksy's work

How can we categorize Banksy's work -graffiti or murals?
Graffiti is art piece that artists make to sell in public for the pleasure of passers-by, usually tourists, in order to earn money.A mural is any piece of artwork painted directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. First of all his work assaults you with the fact that it's graffiti. If you look his work into details, you realize its mixture with graphic visually and style from urban to stancilied image to challenge the socially and making people to think.

What are some of the differing opinions about Banksy's work?

Peter Gibson, a spokesperson for Keep Britain Tidy, and Diane Shakespear think Graggiti's work is vandalism asserts that Banksy's work is simple vandalism. Some people think it is great because images making us to think deeper to figure out messages that Graggiti is trying to tell. it is the way to tell the truth through his art about the society that we are living in, his way of making art work challenge the art, the politics, because he is telling what art truly is about. "He sees the i"rony and hypocrisy of our mundane lives (at times) and asks us to view a larger picture.
How does his work sit in relation to consumerism? Can his work be sold?

In his website in the SHOP area, it says "Banksy does not produce greeting cards or print photo-canvases or paint commissions or sell freshly baked bagels. Please take anything from this site and make your own (non-commercial use only thanks)."
What are some of his attitudes to the sale of Art?

He refuses to sell his work but he is using visuals and text provide us with puns that have more than one layer of consciousness.
Who is Banksy? Do we know his true identity?

Banksy is a British graffiti artist. He is believed to be a native of Yate, South Gloucestershire, near Bristol and was born in 1974 in Bristol,England, but identity is unknown. His father is a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s.

Upload 2-3 images of Banksy's work that you find interesting, and comment
on the ideas behind the work.

His artworks are often satirical pieces of art on topics such as politics, culture, and ethics. His street art, which combines graffiti writing with a distinctive stenciling technique. He creates some magical and truly original posters and paintings. He always put something that seems destroy the whole painting, but however, if you take more look at the painting ,you realise that, it is not destroyed, it is the connection between viewer and the work, because it makes me to think about the meaning behind the work and relate the work to today's society about human, politics.

reference:

http://www.saltlakemagazine.com/Blogs/Sundancing/January-2010/A-Sundance-Surprise/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

http://www.freep.com/article/20100515/ENT05/100514077/Graffiti-artist-Banksy-leaves-mark-on-Detroit-and-ignites-firestorm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239142/Banksy-graffiti-war-fellow-street-artist-painting-24-year-old-mural.html