Final CHINESE WHISPERS plan

I swapped John Keanes Untitled (Terrorist) for Basically we didn't feel they were terrorists (also by John Keane) as I like how it references the source of the imagery by incorporating text from a Russian documentary on the hostage crisis. It also shows both sides of the story on one canvas which is rare in media images as we are usually only shown the point of view supported by the newspaper or producer.

I also edited Andy Warhols Big Electric Chair as I thought that it stood out too much, didn't look natural. I much happier with the overall composition now.

I think that the first draft (in the first location) looks much more realistic as the images fit in with the surroundings much better but that is probably because it is in daylight. It is hard to reproduce the effect of lit imagery in a dark scene. Though I still prefer this final draft as I think the composition works much better as the work can be seen in one go and they look good grouped together. I like that its a night as well as it adds a sense og glitz and glamour which coincides with some of the famous imagery.

All that's really needed is the title of the show included. I would like to put it where the blue strip is underneath Wilhelm Sasnal's Terrorist Equipment John Keane's Submission III in the style of an old fashioned cinema or broadway font on the red and white screens above the ticket booths or in flurorescent font to match the showbiz, glitzy location.

New "Chinese Whisper" exhibition

I have chosen a different location for my improved design for the show. I prefer this one as the images are closer together almost like a collage and the bright likes make it so much more celebratory, flamboyant and glitzy which is in complete contrast to the dark undertones of many of these pieces. When I showed this redraft of my show to a friend she said that some of the paintings she thought were adverts intially which is exactly what I wanted to achieve.

All of these artists work I respect highly and have also been obsessed with at some point which is one reason I want to include them in my virtual exhibition to be able to say ANDY WARHOL'S work is in MY exhibition. But it is also the recurring theme of media influence that is present in all the featured works a concept that I am and have been personally interested in my own practice. Each artist uses and explores mediated imagery in completely different ways and each have very powerful results.

Andy Warhol Big Electric Chair and Marilyn

 

I chose to include two pieces from Warhol’s  Death series; One from the famous deaths and one from the unknown people that died.

Warhol lifted his imagery from media sources mechanically reproducing them through silk screening. This exact rendering of the image erased any sense of humanity in his work e.g. errors, smudges... much like the anesthetising affect the media has upon our senses - "If you look at something long enough, I’ve discovered, the meaning goes away".

Gerhard Richter Woman with Umbrella

I love how ambiguous and mysterious Richters paintings from photographs are. There is always a sense of some dark secret or history being hidden or that is about to happen unknown to the subjects included in the frame. The woman featured in this painting is seemingly unexceptional, from a blurry photo looking upset, grief-stricken. After further inspection one realises that it is Jackie Kennedy though I think that you recognise her deep grief before her famous identity.

Johannes Kahrs Untitled (Man Crawling) and Silent Depression

Kahrs takes "disposable moments" of media and erases, covers up and crops out any contextual information so the viewer is left with a gaze, a touch, a look etc... His work mixes the banal and the horrific stuck in the "frozen moment".

I love how Kahrs captures the "imperfections" of photography with blurred contours, edges of the TV screen left in.

John Keane Untitled (Terrorist)

This painting is taken from Keane's "Fifty Seven Hours in the House of Culture" series which focuses on the Chechen hostage taking crisis that happened in Moscow. The paintings focus on both parties - the Russian hostages and the female suicide bombers - highlighting the terrorist/freedom fighter paradox as the suicide bombers were victims of Chechen war as the hostages were victims of this crisis.

I think I am going to swap this painting for one that includes text lifted from interviews with the few survivors as it creates a sense of distance which we all sit at in front of our TV screens watching the world at a safe distance.

and Guantamerica

Paintings taken from low resolution photos of prisoners of Guantanamo Bay be subjected to sensory deprivation downloaded off the internet. In some of the later pieces from this series Keane abstracted the images further on Photoshop and the pixelated pattern that emerged was similar to the effects observed when oil and water mix (or don't mix). Keane linked this to America's pursuit of oil from Iraq hidden under the "War on Terror".

Oil Interference Patterns (inkjet print on jute)

Wilhelm Sasnal Terrorist Equipment

Sasnel uses everyday images as well as those sourced from of advertising, consumerism, propaganda icons and photojournalistic imagery. Terrorist Equipment is a banal, still life of a terrorist’s necessary equipment for a suicide bomb attack. The lethal items are dislocated from any personal or political commentary by its impartial, cold replication.

Arms Raised

I love how this painting could be interpreted as a powerful leader (heroic or dictator) or a victim surrendering to the other side - two very different positions.

Richard Hamilton Swingeing London

I love how Hamilton has reproduced this image through the mechanical process of screen printing. I like the rich colours and grainy texture of this newspaper image. When I first saw this I couldn't stop staring at it, I love how the handcuffs are physical in this piece. The inclusion of iconic celebrity figures is relevant now in our celebrity obsessed culture.

Elizabeth Peyton Kurt Cobain

Peyton lifts imagery from magazines and popular media sources. Though she her paintings depart from the stylized, airbrushed imagery of magazines and embrace a much more naturalistic approach which creates a sense of closeness to the subject - personalising a relationship between her and the famous subject. Peyton’s paintings are representative of the idolised status and worship of celebrity figures in the media.

Robert Rauschenberg Retroactive 1

Rauschenberg is famous for his collages of overlapping, seemingly disparate imagery that aptly recreates our experience in a society saturated by media images.

Translation Exhibition Space

Andy Warhol Big Electric Chair

Johannes Kahrs Untitled (Man Crawling)

Robert Rauschenberg Retroactive I

Elizabeth Peyton Pete & Carl 

Gerhard Richter Woman with Umbrella

John Keane The Painter Never Lies

I have taken a busy, urban street in New York and replaced the exisiting advertisements with selected artworks from my exhibition Translation (working title). I have taken the time to blend the artwork in with the light and surroundings to give the most realistic view as possible. I also want to see if people will notice any change or even distinguish the artwork from the surrounding advertisements. It will like a test to see how immune to or consumed by advertising/media people really are.

I split the selected pieces in my exhibition into two groups - the political and the aesthetic - I think that in this location the political pieces are most suited as they all question and investigate our (western societies) relationship with the media and the media itself - its power, bias, influence, control ....

Though I would like to include the work from the aesthetic group as there are some amazing pieces of art included and there are political/historical elements to many of the pieces but I don't want them to weaken or confuse my overall message/theme or undermine the political pieces. In the location I have chosen I think that an image from the aesthetic group would work really well where the KODAK strip advertisement is in the space where Elizabeth Peytons work currently sits but I can't just include one. I will look for different locations with more opportunities to present work.

The location of New York is important to me as it is one of the main art hub's in the world and somewhere I have always wanted to visit and somewhere I would love to exhibit and work. This street overloaded with imagery, media and advertisments is an iconic location and fits perfectly with the media concept/theme of my chosen pieces. It is from billboards and computer screens like these that many of the images used by my artists would have originated from or its where imagery like it would be seen now e.g. pressing news clips depicting crime/violence/sex/celebrities etc. as used in Kahrs, Warhol's and Peyton's work - imagery lifted from the popular press.



Title of exhibition

I have been using the work translation to define my chosen theme/concept for my fantasy exhibition but \i really need to think of a title before I can make a poster so here are a few bulletpoints to describe the concept and what I want the title to describe

- untrustworthy, subjective nature of perspective
- powerful influence of media in modern societies
- manipulation and distortion of message (as it is translated from one person to another, from one media to another)
- Transfer and translation of media

Through the looking glass
In the eye of the beholder

I think that these two phrase both fittingly describe the subjective nature of perspective. Depending upon your experiences and from where you are looking your opinion changes.

Chinese Whispers

I'm not sure that I actually like this as a title for an exhibition (a little cheesy) but it clearly illustrates the distortion and manipulation of imagery and its purpose/message once it is handled by the media. An example of this would be different newspapers will twist stories in accordance with their political and social interests.

The Painting of Modern Life Exhibition Hayward London

http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/minisites/painting/

I visited The Painting of Modern Life exhibition back in 2008 and it was the most inspiring exhibition I have ever been to and probably the exhibition that really made me want to pursue a career in fine art. It was "an exhibition of compelling canvases and seminal works that explores the use and translation of photographic imagery in the history of contemporary art". Here is a very interesting video of the curators (Ralf Rugoff) presentation on the exhibition...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQrxFYd6q7o

I haven't purposefully sought out to copy this exhibition but it just so happens that many of the artists I have selected were featured in this exhibition and the reasons as to why I chose them is the relationship between photography and paint; how they reference both in their work yet create an entirely new image. Photography is an important component and process within my own practice. It is usually the starting point of my work and I then spend the rest of my time translating these photographic sources into paint and print trying to achieve a proportional influence of both media upon the image. Because of this I will stick with my current translation theme even though it does reference this exhibition a lot. I have already decided to take it out of the white cube space and feature different artists and different works so I think I have already made it more personal to me and my perfect fantasy exhibition.

In my last post i talked about presenting work outside of the gallery and in a natural enviroment where my selected artwork would seemingly be out of place as it is focused on technology and modern communication. This led me on to think about artists work that bridge the gap between nature and science such as...

Annie Lapin

Alexis Harding
Mathmatical grids are broken down by a slow chemical reaction between the oil based and water based paints he uses breaking the solid form.



Tam Van Tran
Tran paints lucious, green forests then cuts it into strips piecing them back together with a stapler to make new forms. He is also inspired colourful microganisms. Macro and Micro levels.



Corinne Wasmuht
Wasmuht landscapes could simultaneously be depicting urban or natural enviroments.

I am going slightly off point but I think that this is also a very strong theme to work from and could make a very interesting exhibition I haven't really thought about how or where I would present it yet but I think that there is a lot potential.

Nature vs reason can be reduced to chaos vs order which is something I am very interested in my own and others artwork. Elements of chaos or loss of control restricted, defined or contrasted by controlled areas of paint. It is this style of working that attracts me to Cecily Brown's sensual, gestural paintings.

Cecily Brown
Bold, block areas of colour and contrasted with fluid, gestural marks to create on sensual, emotive piece.

Space

For the theme of Translation I was thinking of presenting them outside of the traditional white cube space. I want to put them in a real, existing location as these images are of modern life and so should be seen within such an enviroment.

I could present the paintings along a busy urban street in the space of or as billboards, advertisments in bustops, in shop windows or stuck to the wall like a fly poster posters. Would anyone notice them? Would they stand out or merge with the environment they originated from? They might become part of the everyday onslaught of imagery forced upon people in the public and in their homes.



urban street like these would work well as there are options with options to present work on different scales in a small space. 



People may be to consumed in their own world to look up and notice or maybe they will simply dismiss it as another advertisement and so not pay any attention. If they did notice they would have to work against the crowd and traffic to view the work which is out of snyc with the ease of access to imagery we are used to in this day and age.



I think that the Translation exhibition would also work well in a barren, deserted environment or a natural landscape like an open field where there’s no place for technology it is alien in this environment. 

Nevada
Present work alongside the road.

Still presenting the work as big billboards, posters bringing the city/modern life into this natural environment. Comment on technology taking over. Seeing/watching/interacting with the world through a lens.