Helen Lyth

Artscape – The A-Z of contemporary Art – Ep1 of 2 a-k – Andrew Frost presenter

Paint drips

• What is art?  How does one navigate contemporary art.

• ‘A bluffers guide to everything you need to know’

A –

Artists

• Artists not defined by media – multi-media including computers, video, sound

• Dale Frank, - painter – conceptual artist

•  Julian Mahon (birds of paradise/with bottles of beer – display, plumage, masculinity –‘the male in the natural world is the one with the bright plumage’

• James Angus – Shangri La – Sydney Opera house – sculptor – sculptors to reflect the place where they are places – e.g. ‘reverse hot air balloon’ – inside opera house’

• Agatha Goethe-Snape – making lists of all the artists she could remember – the relationships between people, artists and history

• Soda Jerk – videos from other people’s movies – After the Rainbow – digital collage – from The wizard of Oz – cut with

• The medium changes to suit the concept

Artspeak – art jargon

• Special knowledge –

• Big noting

• ‘in isolation from the rest of the world’ –

Art school

• To learn techniques, history and art socialisation

• Argument – do we need art school –

B

Biennale

• 2 year art exhibitions – e.g.

• Most types of contemporary art – not for purchase – funded by government and

Body –

• Figurative painting

• Body art e- e.g. bellybuttons,

• Harriet Body – The Belly Series (months 1-3) 2010 –

• Rene Norwe Conceiving the Maternal 2012 – stills of women’s bellies from bra to bikini pants. 

• Body is cheap and vulnerable e.g. Dara Gill Untitled (rubber band portraits) 2010 – photos

C

Contemporary

• Vague and contradictory – a name for a kind of art for at least the last 30 or so years

• Painting, rock pile, video – eating – a single work may contain many mediums

Chinese Art

• Tu Wei-Cheng Happy Valentine’s Day 2011 – video of marching soldiers and plastic toy soldiers etc.  Shen Liang This is a book 2007 – painting – like a story map.  Shi Jindian Blue CJ750 2008 – wire model of motor bike with sidecar. 

• Are very popular – great prices – e.g. Zhou Jie CBD 2010, Cip Fei , Ai Weiwe Sunflower Seeds 2010, Zhou Xiaoku Renown 2007 – video

D

Drawing

• ‘Drawing is at the centre of everything that artists do’

• Some say its optional –

Doubt

• What is good or bad?

• Is it al

E

The Everyday

• A recent trend – drawing on day to day life as inspiration for art – may lead to ‘boring’ videos of people doing everyday things

Exceptions

• CA – not signed paintings

• Not usually picturesque etc.  – but

Fake

• Paintings in the style of – forgeries – but in CA – it may be an ironic or other ‘homage’

G

Galleries

• Commercial, art museums, artist run spaces

• Artist run spaces – are available for the up and coming artist –

• Commercial galleries are ‘art shops’ – may not have prices listed (ask if you’re interested) – large commission

• Art museums – all types of art – not for sale – permanent and temporary exhibitions – talks, tours, lectures workshops – big travelling exhibitions, competitions,

G –

Genre

• Installation, video art,

• Art fairs – dominated by painting (most saleable)

• ‘Taste create markets, and markets create taste’ Karl Marx

H

History

• Old art was representative – and hierarchical – in medium (painting at top) and subject history subjects at top,

• Romantic era leaving the hierarchies behind – 19th c

• 20th c – holocaust and other disasters of way – 200 million people died – radical approaches to making art – to reflect and comment on the world – anarchic – modern art started to lose its way

• 1960s ‘the last flowering of modern art.  By the 1970s, it was almost exhausted’. 

• Post – modernism – irony, pastiche, appropriation – the end of history? 

• Deep nostalgia for 1960s and 70s – revisiting old art movements (esp. The modernist era) in an attempt to define the social reality of the 21st c. 

• All is revisited – post modernity

I

Ideas

• The nature of the aesthetic experience

• How we interpret the translation –

• Tom Polo Disappointed with everything (not everyone) 2011 – neon lights

• Bill henson’s photography

• Aesthetics – is the response to beauty, ugliness, provocation (not always anger, or in your face)

• Catherine Nelson Sydney Spring – seduction waterlilies

• Juan Davila – gay porn in paintings to satirise modern culture

Installation

• Justene Williams Milk seeped in bread and rocked the leg 2012-2013

• Fiona Hall Give a Dog A Bone 1998 – cardboard boxes with yellow objects lined up like shelves on a wall + a painting/photo of a man draped in a quilt?

• Darragh O’Callaghan and David Sudmalis Aphasia 2012

• Trevor Richards 2013 – geometric paintings on white walls, plus the whole floor as geometric tessellated art work. 

• Mile Nelson The Coral Reef 2000

• There are no limits

J

Junk

• Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro Wohnwagon (flatpack – Past Times) 2006-2007

• Jimmie Durham Still Life with Stone and Car 2004 – crumpled car with huge rock in passenger compartment. 

K

Kitsch

• The over-common – may show us time and place – e.g. the asian beauty on leather

• Annett Bezor – takes these asian images and makes them into new works – Tension 2 2002

Good art is debatable –

Episode 2 – L-Z

Ideas of philosophy and science and directs them into art

Is generic, but is always evolving into many forms.  Artists are those who make art. 

L

Like

• Asked to make a preference – is it good?  Understanding is about more than like/dislike

• Patricia Piccinnini Sphinx 2012 – Ghost , Vanitas 2012 – spend time with a work discover what the work is about

Laughter

• Brown Council The one hour laugh 2009 video of 4 people in coloured dunces caps laughing. 

• Kate Mitchell I am not a joke 2008 – video of artist sawing a circular hold in the floor while she stands within the circle

M

Modernism

• Artists testing the limits of materials, representation

• Began 1850 – ended 1970s

Market

• ‘The Art Market” – the primary market – galleries, secondary – auctions – after the initial sale. 

• Monetary value does not show intrinsic value – desirability drives the monetary price

• Cultural value is something else – bad art may get sold for ‘way more than it’s worth’

Materiality

• Moving shit around – substituting junk material for

• ‘The state or quality of being material’ 

• James Angus Red I-beam Knot 2012 – materiality may mean the materials used in an art work.  

• Belem Lett

• Also to define e.g. film grain, the look of a video

• David Noonan, Untitled 2012

• Bianca Chang Form in white (Rotation 1V) 2012 – paper file rotated inside card circle, Peaks 2012

• Daniel Von Sturmer Painted Video (Sequence 4) , 2009

• Claire Healy & Dean Cordiero T + 79_black 2010 – lego bricks built into wall – making an image/painting

N

Notions

• A widely abused term ‘This work questions notions of...

• Meaning they are exploring conceptions of...

O

Other

• Art world ideas inherited from philosophy – the subject is about the artist depiction a contrast between the artist’s subjectivity and another sense of ‘otherness’  - meaning – the exact opposite of ourselves – can we speak for this ‘other’ – is this another way of making a statement about ourselves (e.g. Kylie’s series on Pakistani workers in the UAE?)

• Tom Lloyd Here is Everywhere 2012 – an unsettling, The Styles of Elements, Rivers Edge (both 2012)

P

Photography

• Dates back to 19th c

• E.g. Catherine Nelson – Sydney Spring 2013

• Polly Borland Untitled xx1x 2010

• Jackie Ranken Flying Birdcage 2013 – Moeraki Rice Cookers

• Rosemary Laing (Aboriginal heritage) Flight Research #5 1999 – artist in long white dress suspended in sky above Oz landscape

• Destiny Deacon Adoption 1993/2000 – Dark baby mini-dolls dressed and undressed in patty pans. 

• Julie Rrap Persona and Shadow: Sister 1984 – knocking painting off it’s perch

• Polixeni Papatetrou – Winter Clown 2002

• Anne Zahalka Karo, Performer 2009

• Reportage, photoshop montage, street photography, formal portraiture, phone ‘happy snaps’

• An excess of photographic images

Post-modernism –

• Dif from post-modernity – which is the condition of the contemporary

• Post-modern – 1970-1990s

• Post-modernism – a period and a style – marked by – appropriation, quotation, irony, pastiche –

Q

Queer theory

• Video of two naked men inhaling each others’ breath from a white balloon – very intensely looking into each other’s eyes. 

R

Representation

• Representing the world, filtered through an artist’s imagination

• Is uncertain – not, currently about literal copying of the real world. 

S

Serious flaw

• Art is compromised by commerciality – does this render it invalid? 

• But may not be ‘commercial’ inherently – if it then becomes ‘saleable’ is it then compromised?

T –

Theory

• Ca – Critical theory – a philosophical approach to culture that seeks to confront the social, historical and ideological forces that produce and constrain it. 

• Phenomonology, post-structioralism, post-colonialism, neomarxism and feminism 

• ‘If a work of art needs an essay to justify its existence, then it’s probably not working.’

U

Urban art

• E.g. street art – stencils, posters, graffiti, yarn bombing

• Street art – a combination of guerrilla art and political agitation... by white middle class artists (wouldbe outsiders) – some becomes lasting – in galleries, or preserved as a tourise attraction. 

• Urban aboriginal art –e.g Vernon Ah Kee Can’t Chant 2007, Tolerance 2005 – to differentiate city – urban aboriginal artists from those living the trad lifestyle.  Brook Andrew – Travelling Colony 2012 (set of brightly striped retro caravans in warehouse).  Ah Kee Annie Ah Kee 2008 (drawing)

V

Video art

• Daniel Crooks Static No.12 (seek stillness in movement) 2009

• Many technologies – many cameras –

• AK Dolvin Looking Back –

• Viewed on tv, in galleries, online

• Steven Jones Homage to Nan Jin Pike

• Daniel Crooks Train No.10 (onward backwards) 2012 –

• John Tonkin – These are the Days 1994 – mesmerising loops  - paper sheets falling in slow motion – e.g. the gifs of HPV on Tumblr. 

• Shaun Gladwell Storm Sequence 2000 – artist on skateboard, slow motion, beside stormy sea (Sydney – Bondi?) Tangara 2003

• Sue Healy Will Time Tell? 2006 (streets of Japan)

• Grant Stevens Crushing

• Nina Toss The Language Between Us 2012

• Heath Franco Your Door 2011

W

Women

• More art students and art – fewer are commercially viable artists, but many more than men in the gallery business and other areas of the art world. 

Wine

• The exhibition opening

X

• The X unknown

Y

You

• The person who admires, makes, or buys

 

Z

Zeitgeist

• The art of the present moment – quickly changed

Contemporary Art

• Art is more than mere decoration

• Retain Critical faculties – keep mind open