Specialist Study

Extended Practice in The studio

Hannah Höch was an important member of the Berlin Dada movement and a pioneer in collage. Splicing together images taken from popular magazines, illustrated journals and fashion publications, she created a humorous and moving commentary on society during a time of tremendous social change. Acerbic, astute and funny, Höch established collage as a key medium for satire whilst being a master of its poetic beauty.

Höch created some of the most radical works of the time and was admired by contemporaries such as George Grosz, Theo van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters, yet she was often overlooked by traditional art history. At a time when her work has never seemed more relevant, the exhibition puts this inspiring figure in the spotlight.

 

 

DaDa Movement

The movement came into being at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in February 1916. The Cabaret was named after the eighteenth century French satirist, Voltaire, whose novellaCandide mocked the idiocies of his society. As Hugo Ball, one of the founders of Zurich Dada wrote, “This is our Candide against the times.”

So intent were members of Dada on opposing all the norms of bourgeois culture that the group was barely in favor of itself: “Dada is anti-Dada,” they often cried.

Dada art varies so widely that it is hard to speak of a coherent style. It was powerfully influenced by Futurist and Expressionist concerns with technological advancement, yet artists like Hans Arp also introduced a preoccupation with chance and other painterly conventions.

Raoul Hausmann

German Dada artist, poet, photographer and polemicist. Born in Vienna, son of an academic painter who gave him lessons inpainting. Moved in 1900 to Berlin, wrote articles on painting for Der Sturm in 1907 and later was influenced by the Cubists. Co-founder with Huelsenbeck, Baader, Heartfield and Grosz of the Berlin Dada movement 1917; made phonetic poems and in 1918 created photomontage. Friendship with Schwitters, Arp, Moholy-Nagy. Abandoned painting in 1923 and in 1927 invented the optophone, an apparatus which turned kaleidoscopic forms into music; also became greatly interested in photography and made photograms, rayograms and pictograms. Left Germany in 1933 and after visiting Paris, Spain, Zurich and Prague, settled in 1938 in France; lived from 1944 at Limoges. Corresponded with Schwitters in 1946 and together evolved a project for a revue calledPin. First one-man exhibition at the Galleria del Grattacielo Pagani, Milan, 1963. Died in Limoges.

John Stezaker

 

British artist John Stezaker is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.

His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention

This first major exhibition of John Stezaker offers a chance to see work by an artist whose subject is the power in the act of looking itself. With over 90 works from the 1970s to today, the artist reveals the subversive force of images, reflecting on how visual language can create new meaning.

My Work

 

Artists Statement

My work explores the relationship between politics and emotional memories, by this i mean the emotional memories that left the small town of Tryweryn devastated when ‘Liverpool decided to rule our world’.  My artwork takes a critical view of social, political and cultural issues.

For the first time I have started to work large scale, working on items of cardboard and also working on wooden pallets, painting and sticking what I thought was important to my work on to my piece. I looked at all sorts of topics from biblical views and conspiracy’s to politics, until I started looking deeper and thought what really interested my and triggered me to do work. I looked into the history and the story of Tryweryn, the more I learnt about it and the more research I made the angrier I got, and I was inspired to do work.

I do not consider myself a “Welsh nationalist” – at least not in the sense that that phrase is commonly understood – not because I think there is no argument for an independent Wales, but because the movement as it stands is mired in collectivist thinking, placing the (non-existent) rights of the nation above the (actual) rights of individuals, and advocating an economic agenda based on utterly discredited socialist premises.

Jesse Treece

Using vintage magazines and books, Jesse Treece creates surreal and simple works, often using images of space and children to create an inimitable perspective on everyday life.

 

Jesse Treece is a collage artist living in Seattle, Wa. whose work screams of the simple, yet ever complex, interpretations of both the mundane and whimsical facets of life. He’s somehow managed to mix both the regular and absurd, beautiful and disturbing and put them into images that you find you could get lost in for hours.

Here are some examples of work I have also been looking at, I could not find the artists but I thought these were good examples of what I was trying to do.

 

Biblical pieces i’ve gone and done.

 

Question: “What does the Bible say about art?”

Answer: The first mention of art in the Bible is in Exodus 31. God is instructing Moses to create a tent for the ark of the covenant, and God mentions several artisans whom He has chosen to create “artistic designs” to beautify the tent. God says, “In the hearts of all who are skillful I have put skill.” We learn two things about God’s view of art in this passage: He likes it, and He is the source of it. He wants man to create beautiful things, and their skill in doing so is from Him.

Later, in 1 Kings 6, we see Solomon creating a temple for the Lord. In verse 4, “artistic frames” were made for the house. This reinforces the fact that God does desire beauty and likes to be surrounded by it. If Solomon did not think that God was glorified by beauty, he would never have taken the trouble to create “artistic” window frames. Again, in Song of Solomon, the beauty of the bride is compared to “the work of the hands of an artist” (7:1). God is the creator; He is the artist whose hands create beauty. It follows that any beauty we create is glorifying to God, our creator.

 

I decided to make these small pieces with biblical themes and use the shock horror effect and try and push boundaries. Using text in my work has always come naturally so me and using the juster position of the biblical photographs and the crude text pieces worked for me as I am always looking for a reaction in my work and by pushing boundaries like this hopefully I will get the reaction I want.

Looking at these images and the color pallets i have used and the text I have used made me think of a book I have read and a film I watched – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Photomontage

noun: photo-montage

1. a montage constructed from photographic images.

   • the technique of constructing a photo-montage.

      

     

 Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas

“You have no faith in the essential decency of the white man’s culture. Jesus, just one hour ago we were sitting over there in that stinking baiginio, stone broke and paralyzed for the weekend, when a call comes through from some total stranger in New York, telling me to go to Las Vegas and expenses be damned—and then he sends me over to some strange office in Beverly Hills where another total stranger gives me $300 raw cash for no reason at all . . . I tell you, my man, this is the American Dream in action! We’d be fools not to ride this strange torpedo all the way out to the end.”

– Raoul Duke, Page 11

 

Here are snapshots of the large piece I did following the idea of ‘fear and loathing in las Vegas. After weeks and weeks and weeks of looking at the piece on the wall, it began to get boring and i disliked it a lot, I decided to paint over it in white and see what effects that would bring. In my opinion the effects were interesting.

Raoul Duke remains preoccupied with the American Dream throughout Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and he periodically suggests that the underlying purpose of his trip is to find out what the contemporary version of the American Dream might look like. This is the first of several instances in which he classifies a particular place or occurrence as “the American Dream.” Of course, most of these mentions are sardonic, including this one. Even as Duke embraces the freedom and power that his career has given him, he also recognizes that capitalism can create bizarre and surreal events. By situating his comment within ‘the white man’s culture,’ Duke also acknowledges his position of privilege. Meanwhile, despite his elite profession, Duke’s attorney is treated poorly by many of the people he encounters on the journey. Duke is sensitive to the challenges his friend faces, and they ultimately inform his larger critique of racism.

“I watched that fight in Seattle—horribly twisted about four seats down the aisle from the Governor. A very painful experience in every way, a proper end to the sixties: Tim Leary a prisoner of Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria, Bob Dylan clipping coupons in Greenwich Village, both Kennedys murdered by mutants, Owsley folding napkins on Terminal Island, and finally Cassius/Ali belted incredibly off his pedestal by a human hamburger, a man on the verge of death. Joe Frazier, like Nixon, had finally prevailed for reasons that people like me refused to understand—at least not out loud.”

– Raoul Duke, Pages 22-23

 

 

11 may Tutorial with Emrys – Make a series of books consider how much text in relation to image Research on artists books

Lara rieves

test out duanne michaels format

ambiguous narrative

update blog

collect childhood objects scan them layer with photos

3d experiments objects

look at books theoretical stuff looking at memory e.g suzan hiller, Annette messager

box form format put objects in – times with lauren when putting things in shoe boxes and burying them in the ground – digging fish ponds in the field

look at making a series of things

Lindsey sears matts gallery London

 

Artists Books 

 

What is Narrative Art?

“There are countless forms of narrative in the world,” wrote French literary theorist Roland Barthes in An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative. “Among the vehicles of narrative are articulated language, … pictures, still or moving, gestures, and an ordered mixture of all those substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fables, tales, short stories, epics, history, tragedy, … comedy, pantomime, paintings, … stained-glass windows, movies, local news, conversation. Moreover, in this infinite variety of forms, it is present at all times, in all places, in all societies; indeed narrative starts with the very history of mankind; there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narrative…”

Shoe Box Art 

 

Defining Narrative Art

The Illustrated Dictionary of Art Terms defines “Narrative Art” as: “Art which illustrates or tells a story. It usually describes self-explanatory events from daily life or those drawn from a text, well-known folk tale or myth.”

In the prologue to his book, Tales from the Easel: American Narrative Paintings from Southeastern Museums, circa 1800 – 1950, Dr. Charles Eldredge states: “Some of the stories told in paint are rather straightforward, easily read by most viewers: simple pictures. Others convey content through more obscure symbols, using details freighted with personal, often cryptic meaning—complex images that perhaps reflect the complex circumstances of their creation. But all suggest a basic and enduring fascination with a story well told, with a tale well painted.”

According to ArtSpeak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1945 to the Present, the term “Narrative Art” first appeared in the mid-1960s. In previous decades, what was to be described later as “Narrative Art” was referred to by individual categories such as “history” or “genre” painting. The umbrella term of “Narrative Art” can apply to any time period and any form of visual narrative, including painting, sculpture, photography, video, performance and installation art. It is thought that the most popular forms of visual narrative today are painting and video art, with performance and installation art the runners-up.

 

Here are some examples of smaller pieces I did, looking at family memories that I think made me who I am today. I enjoyed working on a smaller scale after pushing myself to work on a larger scale, I enjoyed working on a larger scale but when I had finished the piece it still felt empty and un finished in a way. These smaller pieces helped me get back into work, and I felt comfortable on the scale I was working. Simply using and printing on plain white paper and adding text to what I might of been thinking at the time, creating an simple but in my opinion positive effect.

Text based Art

 

Blurb Book

I wanted to make a blurb book to go along side the pieces I had made, like a life journal with snapshots and text pieces to go along side each other, following the small ideas as the other pieces I had made, giving my thoughts of what the individual might be thinking in the photo’s or what people might be thinking of them. Unfortunately my blurb book did not arrive in time, so here are some screenshots of what it will look like.

 

After figuring out that I worked better and rapidly on a smaller scale after experimenting with photocopying on plane paper, I decided to work the same way but on small envelopes, these pieces I have decided to show for my assessment. I found working on smaller pieces as small as these envelopes work well for me, buy using paper, sewing gluing and using text to create a timeline of events and thought and feelings, looking at artists such as Duane Michaels to see what way was the best way to lay them out, and to be careful not to put too much on the envelopes to ensure one envelope is as strong as the other 49.

 

Sewing on paper

Artists Statement  – Hanna Greenhalgh

My work explores the relationship between politics and emotional memories, by this i mean the emotional memories that left the small town of Tryweryn devastated when ‘Liverpool decided to rule our world’.  My artwork takes a critical view of social, political and cultural issues.

For the first time I have started to work large scale, working on items of cardboard and also working on wooden pallets, painting and sticking what I thought was important to my work on to my piece. I looked at all sorts of topics from biblical views and conspiracy’s to politics, until I started looking deeper and thought what really interested me and triggered me to do work. I looked into the history and the story of Tryweryn, the more I learnt about it and the more research I made the angrier I got, and I was inspired to make work.

I do not consider myself a “Welsh nationalist” – at least not in the sense that that phrase is commonly understood – not because I think there is no argument for an independent Wales, but because the movement as it stands is mired in collectivist thinking, placing the (non-existent) rights of the nation above the (actual) rights of individuals, and advocating an economic agenda based on utterly discredited socialist premises.

After a long period of time I came to a standstill, and I was struggling to make work, I went on to look at the book ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, looking at this book and the film and working out how I could interweb my work in the same way, using my life and daily things that happened. By doing my research I stumbled over artists Duane Michals and straight a way his work really triggered my imagination. Looking and examining his work I decided to make small pieces of work that were memories and quick snapshots of things that happened in my life, from the death of friends and family, the birth of my little brother to the failing marriage of my mother and father and how it has had an impact on me.

 

Nan Goulding

Nan Goldin is an American photographer known for her deeply personal and candid portraiture. Goldin’s images act as a visual autobiography documenting herself and those closest to her, especially in the LGBTQ community. Her opus The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1980–1986) is a slideshow of snapshots set to music that chronicled her life within the subcultures of New York in the 1980s, and is intended to be seen in an installation. “The slideshow is really my medium. I wanted to make films. That was always the ambition,” Goldin has said. The Balladwas first exhibited at the 1985 Whitney Biennial, and was made into a photobook the following year. Born Nancy “Nan” Goldin on September 12, 1953 in Washington, D.C., the artist began taking photographs as a teenager. Influenced by the fashion photography of Helmut Newtonand Guy Bourdin she saw in magazines, an instructor introduced her to the work of art photographers such as Diane Arbus, Larry Clark, and August Sander. She currently lives and works between New York, Paris, and London.

  

 

Altered Books – these are some altered books I have made, using old books I have found in charity shops

Broomberg & Chanarin

DIVINE VIOLENCE

“Right from the start, almost every appearance he made was catastrophic… Catastrophe is his means of operation, and his central instrument of governance.”
Adi Ophir

Violence, calamity and the absurdity of war are recorded extensively within The Archive of Modern Conflict, the largest photographic collection of its kind in the world. For their most recent work, Holy Bible, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin mined this archive with philosopher Adi Ophir’s central tenet in mind: that God reveals himself predominantly through catastrophe and that power structures within the Bible correlate with those within modern systems of governance.

The format of Broomberg and Chanarin’s illustrated Holy Bible mimics both the precise structure and the physical form of the King James Version. By allowing elements of the original text to guide their image selection, the artists explore themes of authorship, and the unspoken criteria used to determine acceptable evidence of conflict.

Inspired in part by the annotations and images Bertolt Brecht added to his own personal bible, Broomberg and Chanarin’s publication questions the clichés at play within the visual representation of conflict.

Broomberg and Chanarin were always in the back of my mind when I was making the small pieces of work, I have always had a keen interest in their work the way they layer photographs on paper, which is obvious to see in some of my work pieces also.