True to Life Painting - Dennis Wojtkiewicz

The work of Dennis Wojtkiewicz explores that idea of nature thought fruit's, each image shows the  delicate and intricate workings of the different fruits and vegetable that we consume on a daily basis with out thinking about what they look like on the inside. 

Each image is almost translucent and highly detailed, the images almost look like they were photographed, however this is not the case, each image is painted in oil paint.   

The Never Ending Wall - Noemie Goudal

Noemie Goudal's work looks at the landscape and how we consume the land with out thinking and the invasion of our man made substances into our landscapes. 
The images really raise awareness of the environment and how we interact with it.
'They loved it so much that they consumed it all at once. Then left.' (Sustain Exhibition & Award 2010 Themes: Noemie Goudal (MA Photography, 2010)

The work is set up of instillation that are large scale printed images that hang at the end of empty buildings, giving the illusion of the room continuing on out side. 
This yet another very interesting and helpful view on the idea of landscape photography, taking out the idea of the Picturesque and turning it into something that we can all relate to, environment, beauty and change.   

Hair Clips and Fake Nails - Laurel Roth

Laurel Roth works with sculpture, however the sculptures that are the most stunning come from the series Peacocks. This is a body of work that is created from hair clips and fake nails. The work is created to represent the choices that we make as human beings and the process that we take. 
The sculptures are made of artificial beauty products that are used on a wide bases, however the heads are skulls painted to match the beauty of the rest of the body -  

'The birds' heads are, again, mere skulls - that which lies beneath the décor. Their trimming is nothing more then the cheap tricks women regularly use to costume themselves' (Endless Beautiful Adoptions - Stefanie Sobelle)
The work reminds the viewer that there is a darker side to beauty, and that the surface beauty is just the beginning. 

The Deception People - Rob Mulholland

Rob Mulholland is an artist that works with sculpture and the environment. The Vestige project looks at our relationship with the landscape, The landscape that Mulholland used for this project is in Scotland. The land was once fields, however after the 1st World War there was a vast need for timber. The area was then plated up with fast growing trees thus creating a vast, lush, green landscape. 

Rob Mulholland - Vestige

'The figures absorb their environment, reflecting in their surface the daily changes of life in the forest. They create a visual notion of non – space. A void as if they are at one moment part of our world and then as they fade into the forest they become an intangible outline.' (Rob Mulholland - http://www.robmulholland.co.uk/#/vestige/4535738995)
The figurs almost reflect the idea of the ghosts of this very landscape, and how no matter where we are we leave out mark, no matter how small. You really have to look at first to be able to see the figures, in some ways your eyes almost reject them. 

The Shooting Gallery

The Shooting Gallery is a new show on Channel Four, on Friday nights. The show runs for an hour and looks at various different photographers and short film makers from across the world. 
On the 23th March is first episode was aired, it looked at seven different photographs that all looked at very different subjects. 
The first photographer was Irina Werning and her work 'Back to the future'. In this project Werning takes old photos and recreates them in the exact same way, the old difference is that the people in the images are older, much older - http://irinawerning.com/

The second photographer was David Gillanders, the images were complied into a short film, Called Neglected. Gillanders went underground for three years in Odessa, Ukraine, where he photographed the young children that have been orphaned and left to live off drugs as a pack. The film was heavy and highly emotional to see, children as young as eight shooting up - http://www.davidgillanders.com/

Irina Werning - Back to the Future

David Gillanders - Neglected

The third photographers that were looked at were two Japanese wedding photographers, that have changed the way that a traditional wedding photographs is made and creating  a more stylized, almost fashion wedding style.

In Focus is the next work that was focused on by Pete Eckert, a blind photographer that creates incrdibale images of light trails and the use of long exposures. The work that Eckert creates is inspiring and comfoting, that he can still create the art work that he loves - http://www.peteeckert.com/photos.php

Dark Clouds was the second short still film piece that looks the price that China is paying for it booming industry that, as Western consumers contribute to. Images were taken by Ian Teh - http://www.ianteh.com/

A life Alone is a touching film that looks at one mans tough struggle after the death of his wife. Maisie Crow photographs Tom Rose in his house alone, struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife. This was a tough watch Rose just seamed to desperate, so alone in such a big house - http://www.maisiecrow.com/content.html?page=1

Finaly the last photographer that was looked at was Noam Galai and his photo the scream. Galai posted his image of his face onto his Flicker page and with in a short amount of time his face was used on T-shirts, as graffiti art, graphic desing, magazines and book covers. While Galai knew nothing of this. The short film called 'The Stolen Scream' looks into his feelings about how his image has been used with out him ever knowing. 

Wristcutters - A Love Story (2006)

This post is going to take a break from art and photography, and instead looking at the film 'Wristcutters - A Love Story (2006)'. 

Love stories and many other films follow the conventional Todorov's Theory, this structure is made up of five stages - 

Equilibrium - all is normal in the start. 

Disruption - Something changes the equilibrium that we see at the start.   

Recognition - Realising that the balance has been upset. 

Attempt - To put things back as they were

Reinstatement - Of the equilibrium, but with changes as a result of the reinstatement of the equilibrium. 

The film is set in a parallel, mundane world - Limbo. Reserved for only those that have committed suicide. 

The film opens with the main charter Zia sat in his room after the break up of Zia and his girlfriend. The room is a mess and it is clear that he has given up, however he then performs a pre-suicidal ritual and cleans the whole room, before leaving for the bath room and slitting his wrists.  

The film then moves into Limbo, were Zia hears that his ex-girlfriend has also committed suicide after hearing about Zia's death. Zia then makes it his mission in death to find her and be together once again. He sets off with his Russian friend Eugene, on the way they pick up a hitchhicker - Mikal a girl who believes that she is there by mistake and didn't mean to 'Offed' her self. 

The film its self could be miss-interpreted as condoning suicide, however it simply explores the idea of life after death, love and miracles.  

The world is very much a dystopia of the common ideas of life after death, everything is dead, mundane and no one can smile.  

The love story eliment comes from Zia looking for his deceased ex-girlfriend, however Zia and Mikal become close and in the end Zia's chasing for his 'one' turns out to be in vain. 

There are many different meaning's to the film, life after death, fate, not to waste your time chasing something that is lost and most of all a second chance. In love and life. 

Light Sculpture - Rashad Alakbarov

Light is key to making photos, seeing growth and life, but the work of Rashad Alakbarov uses light in a different way. 
He makes sculptures of different materials then arranges them into positions, so that when light is shone at the sculptures it creates shadows, these shadows make up different images on the wall. 

The work is quite incredible and almost impossible to contemplate knowing where to start with knowing how something will look reflected onto a wall. 

The image on the left is made up of different coloured air planes that when light is passed through create this stained glass window effect of a beach on the gallery space. 

Room of Heights - Roman Ondák

After looking at the work of Karina Smigla-Bobinski and her kinetic sculpture, I was lead onto the work of Roman Ondak's work - Room of Heights. Again this work requires the interaction of the public that enter the exhibition space. 
Visitors are encouraged to take a measurement of their height and write their name and height on the wall at the point that they measured them self's. 
Once more the work requires the complete interaction of the views to work as a body of art. Once the work has been viewed my many many people the gallery space becomes a room with a thick black boarder around the entire room. 

Kinetic Drawing Sculpture - Karina Smigla-Bobinski

A sculpture, a body made of stone standing tall inside a gallery or with in a city on the side of a fountain. Isn't that what we all think of when we hear the word 'Sculpture'?
Karina Smigla-Bobinki is a German artists that works with in the ideas of sculpture, photography, video instillations and most importantly interactive instillation. 

The work in this post is her helium filled sphere with charcoal spikes. On entering the gallery space the audience is faces with a large floating sphere, that in some ways looks ominous, and much like a sea mine. However what makes this work unique is that for it to work as an exhibition piece it requires the audiences reaction to the work. It really looks at the way that people interact with their surroundings, when faced with an instillation such as this it is up to the audience to make the art work, work by pushing, pulling, turning, spinning and dragging the sphere. The result of the audeinces interaction is shown in the images above. The walls have become darken with the scribbles of charcoal, while the ball its self has become covered with the finger prints of all those who interacted with the sphere. In some was it is filled with memory of the people that worked with the sphere. 
What makes this even more interesting is that no two people with make the same markings and no two exhibition spaces will look the same after the show, each time this is shown with in a gallery it is different to the last. 

Boxes as Art - John Dilnot

Bad Apples - John Dilnot

John Dilnot is an artist that works with books and book art. However Dilnot has looked at other ways of creating art through the idea of boxes. 
Each box that Dilnot creates has a feeling of a story or an event such as migration of birds, or as the image on the left 'Bad Apples' looks at the memory of Dilnot when he was a child picking the good apples from the bad apples. In fairness this is a memory that many of us can share, the feeling of walking through the grass, barefoot and treading on a bad apple. 
However the way that Dilnot has chosen to arrange the apples on shelf's labelled with their names give the impression that he is looking a decay and how that nothing is immortal. 
What is interesting about the work is that it looks at all the different ways that different apples rot and blemish over the time that they have sat on the grass. Each apple has its own marking that in some ways defines it from all the others. 
The Pocket Atlas - Heading South looks at the migration of birds in the winter and how the fragile birds fly miles across the world every year. The birds hover over the map in a cluster, keeping close to make the journey together, this work reminds us of the immense journey that theirs creatures have to make in order to survive. 

Rasmus Vasli

Rasmus Vasli was the second of the speakers on the 20th, Vasli worked with film as his begins with images and photography, while spending 3 year in Australia Vasli worked with fashion photogrpahy but was unsure of his destination with in the photography world.  

This is some of Vasil's first work with looking at the idea of fashion photography. The model is very pure and you can see that she has an interesting, innocent kind of beauty. Simply adore this image.   

Relative Values 

The first body of work that he discussed came from his MA, in this body of work Vasil looks at the way that in-laws begin to looks like one another. 

Cup of Pea 

Vasli from this point knew that he wanted to continue with portraiture and began to take street portraits with his digital camera, Which he has now made into a blog called Cup of Pea. On this blog Vasli looks at the different characters that he sees while out on the streets. The work is very much about the communication of Vasli and the person and not just taking the image just because the people looked interesting, each one on Cup  of Pea has their own story and have had their own experience with Vasil as well. What I find inspiring about the work is the stories` that each person has to share. 

I have had plans now for some time about making a body of work that looks at the different characters that work on the Saturday market in Lymington, the market has been happening every Saturday for as long as I can remember now and I really wanted to capture that time less feeling of the hustle and bustle of the busy hight street. I also wanted to created some straight up portraits of the market stall owners. 

However after hearing Vasli speak about his work I began to think of my own work with in the street photography genre. Thought out the time I have lived in Lymington I have had many random, but up lifting conversations with people that I don't even know, yet people that I see regularly. from seeing Vasli's work I have really considered in photogrpahing those people that made a change to my day as well as me making a change to theirs. 

For more of Rasmus Vasil's work http://cupofpea.blogspot.co.uk/

Marcio Mascarenhas

On the 20th of March Solent was Privileged to have two guest speakers, Marcio Mascarenhas and Rasmus Vasli. Both talked about their very different approaches to the idea of Portraiture. 
Mascarenhas worked with in communication before he worked with photography, thought this he was able to understand people and their communications with the world, whether this be though photography or the internet. 

I as another 

The work 'I as another' was very much about the individual and how with out others do you have meaning. The way that Mascarenhas described this was the famous saying 'if a tree falls down in the Amazon forest, and there is no one there, does it make a sound'. In this same way if we have no one else's interaction of opinion or communication then what does that make us? 
From this we can further understand how others shape us into who we are, and that we are not just shape buy our serfs and our personal experiences. 

Moving on from this project Mascarenhas created a second body of work called 'The Bodies I live in'. With in this work Mascarenhas was no longer looking at the way that the images can be seen as an art work, but more about the meaning with in the images.

The Bodies I live in

With the series 'The Bodies I live in' Mascarenhas looked at how as people we are not built up of one central being, that whether we choose to except it or not was are made up of many different identities with in our self's. 
The images are constructs digitally and made into Cubist art works that allow you to see the areas of the bodies that you could consider to be each of their identities that have been contorted into one body.  

Dot to Dot - Yayoi Kusama's

Obliteration Room

The Obliteration room, an interactive insulation by Yayoi Kusama. The work of Kusama has taken many different turns in its time, from painting to interactive insulations, but all with one thing common they all use spots. 
You could argue that the work of Kusama is pointillism, where by the artist creates whole images from the use of different colour and toned dots. But Kusama has made this genre into something much more sophisticated and larger on scale. 
The work Obliteration room is an insulation that was made completely interactive to those who viewed the gallery space. 

The gallery was transformed into what looks to be a replica of the contemporary home, however Kusama painted the entire space white, creating a 'blank canvas'. On entering the show the audience is asked to participate in creating one of Kusama's many ponitalsit works. Each person is given stickers that they are allowed to place any where in the room, upon any surface, object or wall that they wish. You can see the results. The room in what you could call stage one, there is a blurring of boundaries between chair leg and wall, wall and book case, however when you reach stage two, you begin to see the lines that define the shapes and spaces that we inhabit. Once we reach stage three we are back at the beginning, there is no definition between objects and we are once again looking at an almost blank room of  pure colour. 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Four Seasons Painting

In conjunction to my last post on Levi Van Velum, I will be looking at the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
The work of Van Velum remided me of the work of Arcimbldo, the four images have a personal connection to me as my Grandfather had replicas of the images in his home, every now and then he would get them down for me to look at. 
the work is very similar, though creating a landscape though the use of portraits. 

Arcimboldo's work has been considered to be the work of a mad man, the product of a deranged mind. However this is, an work that is full of imagination, as well as cleverly arranged objects, creating abstract, surrealist images representing each season. 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Four Seasons 

Van Velum

You can see that there is, possibly a connection to the work of Arcimbldo and the work of Van Velum, this idea of creating a landscape upon some ones face, whether this  be though painting or though sculpture and instillation. 

Facial Sculpture - Levi Van Veluw

The work of Levi Van Veluw is outstanding, its simply beyond words. The work is both sculpture, photography and insulation. The work is created from self portraits of Van Veluw, where he constructs landscapes onto his face. Other work that he has created in this way is self portraits using light, that sweeps the face in different formations. 

The work is just incredibel, Van Veluw become one 
with the surroundings that he creates that then become 
a part of him. Combining surrialsum with the his world 
of nature and surroundings. 

Familiar British Wildlife by Clive Landen

meles meles meles A48

Clive Landen's work looks at the idea of capturing death, but though the use of road kills of British animals. 
All the image have been taken with the use of a tripod and have been titled or labelled if you like with the name of the animal with their zooalogiacal name and place of where the 'incident' took place, for this poor badger it was the A48. The text for each image gives the viewer the understanding of the image, allowing them to grasp the meaning. 
"Modern technological living, it is suggested, has distanced us from Nature and we need to somehow become reconnect to 'it'." (Martin McCabe)

"Barthes would later go on to say about    photography 'it must be described in relation to death'."  

oryctolagus cuniculus B4063

Outside Inside - Regine Ramseier

Regine Ramseier is a German artist that works mostly with instillations, the image to the left is one of her instillation pieces. It consists of 2000 dandelion flowers suspend from the celling to create a surreal landscape where by she brings the outside inside. I really enjoy this work, its interesting and works well with in the space that she chose to construct it. As an instillation this would have required continuous upkeep to make sure that the space that the dandelions in habited was kept clean and inviting much like a garden should be. 

Sven Fennema - Urban Decay

Sven Fennema a German photographer looks at decay in places, mostly architectural spaces. much of his work looks at buildings and spaces that had history such as old theatres,hospitals, castles and churches form all over the world. 
Fennema's work is captivating, there is almost a feeling of fantasy to the images, the lighting gives a warm feel to some of the images, as well as cold in others. 
What is so special about decay and photography is that there is a dialogue between photographer and the subject weather that is a car tangled by nature or a building whithering away. The idea of this dialogue is that you can feel the past echoing all around you when you are in the spaces, if the image is good that the view should have the very same feelings of past echoing of the people that inhabited these spaces.