August 24th - Steve Lovett

This week I actually missed the beginning of the lecture so during it I was a bit confused about what his practice focused on, so my understanding is this:

Steve's practice is a lot about documenting life and he draws from his own surroundings and personal experiences. In his work Holding the Man (1996), from a show where he examined small resilient gestures in the HIV crisis, you get a sense of this autobiographical element to his work. This one in particular relates to the major loss he suffered due to HIV being predominant among his friends. So his work really focuses on his life and his thoughts and feelings about social, political and historical issues.

Build It Up Tear It Down (1995-2002) is a screen print made by Steve to deflect some of his anger at the fact that in the 90's politicians in Wellington were seriously suggesting that artists work for free 'because it was there passion.' He describes the work as a game for idle hands; it explores the idea that things are broken up and run down, not so they are destroyed but so that they don't work as they once did (a point made by Ivan Kilma in his book Waiting to Breathe).

Bambi/Darren (1997-2009) is a great social work, it is part of a larger body and features a man named Darren (on the right) and his alter ego Bambi (on the left). He worked with different pairs of people to produce composite images; each of the images said different things about the subjects in the work, it spoke about the subtleties of a relationship between two people whether they are very close or not.

Identity is so strong in Steve's work, he approaches it in such unique ways too. For example his installations involving voice recordings, it adds a sense of being overwhelmed by identity and all the issues people have with themselves. It's like in Darren/Bambi, why an alter ego? Is it to escape aspects of himself or to immerse himself in hidden aspects he wants to show? There is a juxtaposition of presence and absence, a boundary between the intimate and the private being crossed.

There is a nice progression from focus on social and political issues to focus on form and colour. Intersection (2007) looks at a single location at different times in a week. It helps you see all the different forms in a space, how people interact with each other. He expressed in the lecture his fascination with the ways people organise themselves in relation to others and perhaps this work can relate to those thoughts.

I really like Trespass (2005) because its very similar to Intersection in that it is one place over 16 hours, but it shows a great sequence of a blue colour palette. The colour of this work is very strong, it's the first thing you see and it actually takes you awhile to realise it's made from so many photographs.

(Photos from emit)

August 17th - Frances Hansen

This week Frances Hansen talked to us about her practice and I was really looking forward to seeing some of her drawings as she taught our class for life drawing, but the work she showed us was a bit different. As she said in the lecture, her work reflects what goes on in her environment. So because of her young children she spent a lot of her time shopping in supermarkets or cleaning her home with different kinds of cleaning products. Part of her process includes collecting so her art work strongly shows her noticing, photographing and compiling objects or images in relation to this sense of normality. Then she moves on to constructing and how she is going to compose her work, looking at her artwork you can tell she really thinks about arrangement and layering and scale. What I liked about her work involving these kind of domestic household products was how she silhouetted them in her painting, when viewing the work you get this feeling of familiarity but you have to think to discover exactly what the objects are. In a way this links to the idea that as consumers we don't realise how much product and advertising we are exposed to so we actually tune it out without realising, so its quite surprising that we have to really think to remember what this silhouette represents. This actually brings me to another part of her process which is thinking or reflecting; this is really about the reading of the work, the why? What? And how? of it, investigating the concept behind the visual. The environment she has found herself in, what is considered the norm, domesticity, is a big influence. She uses a lot of 50's and 60's aesthetics and she'll take photos of any small patterns or examples of this whenever she can, the reason for this is because the face of domesticity is a 50's housewife. I guess you could say that she confronts the domestic heritage of New Zealand with detailed imagery of interior spaces. Because of the products, the packaging, the waste, she also reflected on environmentalism. It's shocking how much packaging a mother of young kids can go through, so again she collected.

A really great example of art using packaging waste is Gush by Eve Armstrong, Hansen talked about how she is influenced by her and I understand this because though some people might say the work is just a pile of rubbish I think it is a very visually pleasing pile of rubbish with its layers and composition.

This is a great work to look at in regards to Hansen's practice as it can be read in different ways, one aspect could be about waste and materials and the materialistic lifestyle we live, another could focus on how hazardous a lifestyle we live like global warming as a big issue. But also if you're thinking about Hansen's work relating to her home life you could look at this work and think one persons pile of garbage is another child's playground.




While Hansen's work is very much about process: collecting, constructing, thinking and changing it is also very much about development of ideas and her influences. Her art may sometimes look quite basic but that is deceptive, you really have to look to see the layers of ideas she addresses. But what I really like about her work is that familiarity, that sense that you know what she is trying to portray through her work because you have lived it, it is about our culture and lifestyle.

August 10th - Eldon Booth

This week Eldon Booth spoke to us about his art practice in moving image, I actually took part in the 48 hour film festival last year so I knew this would be a very interesting subject to learn about but I quickly realised that I would need a lot of my media studies knowledge as well to understand and discuss this medium. Booth's work seems to address the human condition and social concerns in NZ communities within the wider context of Western culture. He deals with concepts of realism, the difference between reality and illusion, and the film techniques used to portray it. There are certain elements used in film to create the illusion of realism, three rather important things that must be used were realised by an academic, novelist and critic named Raymond Williams: a contemporary setting is obviously applied, action is described in human terms (this can relate back to the human condition), and it must be socially extended, meaning it deals with the lives of ordinary people. This actually relates to an essay, "Realism and Convention," by Marion Jordan where she analyses the soap opera "Coronation Street" in regards to realism and the film techniques used to create a continuation drama. Like Raymond Williams she talks about the characters and setting being realistic, working class unlike the characters in shows like 'Friends' where they always get into crazy situations or live in great apartments that realistically would probably cost them a fortune to live in. Its tone is that of "social realism," the show chronicles the lives of a working class community, all of whom live on the same street (hence the title) and frequent the same pub. To me soap operas are most realistic in their longevity, its a relation to real life's continuation, and Jordan argues that "it is through the organization of the passage of time, the relation between character and narrative and, finally, the use of gossip that the continuous serial is both able to 'run for years' and 'preserve a basic stability while making enough changes to prevent tedious repetition' (Richard Dyer et al. 1981: 9)" (Soap Opera by Dorothy Hobson, page 23). Basically these shows try to be realistic but go as close to the edge of fabrication as they can, creating barely believable events.

Some very useful terms Booth talked about were transparency and reflection in connection to documentary or recorded reality and docu-drama, a dramatization of reality. What he means by transparency is that the camera creates a window, anybody who watches TV or films has an understanding of what places look like even though they have never even been there because of a transparent window to the world through the camera. In this case naturalistic film techniques would be used like natural lighting and sound. Reflection is all about creating a constructed reality. In a docu-drama the reality is obtained from the illusion of realism, a really amazing example that Booth showed us was a special episode of 'ER' called 'Ambush' (1997). The whole episode was filmed live like a play, with the whole cast having memorized their dialogue and blocking. The illusion of reality had many faces: it was filmed with handheld cameras, the cast would talk about the camera and look into the lens, characters would get in the camera mans way, or vice versa, sometimes the focus blurred, and sometimes the camera movements became erratic as if the camera man got an adrenaline rush in the midst of the action. From these examples it sounds like a low budget, amateur documentary which I think is the point, if the camera man kept perfectly cool in an emergency room no one would believe it was even remotely real, or if the characters acted indifferent about the camera it would seem like any other episode.
These same camera techniques were used in Booth's film 'Withdrawal' (2001), unlike his work 'Five Good Reasons' which technically focused more on dialogue, this film was very much about the filming and editing process. The use of filming with hand held cameras is something the viewer associates with real life, in fact Booth said in class "we tried to use the worst cameras we could find to help with this concept," and the use of natural light and sound encourages the fabrication of reality. The synopsis of the film is an ailing elderly man is forced to sell his farm to pay for his own medical care, at the same time the life of his grandson is documented. The footage for the film was shot over a two year period which links back to this idea of continuation drama, it chronicles the deterioration of the grandfather. The film is presented as a split screen and puts the grandfathers medical drug use next to the grandsons drug use, we can find meaning through this use of juxtaposition, this kind of linkage the different types of deterioration have to each other (one willing, one without choice). The camera shots are bonded to realism as the film is shot in a way that you would expect someone would do for some family event, nothing serious. For example the film features a lot of establish shots, shots of long duration, they are a bit shaky but this is all actually intentional. This film was a great example of realism in film, I liked how it was filmed amateur style, it made you very aware of the editing and film making process and the fine line between reality and illusion.

3rd August - Dion Hitchens

This week Dion Hitchens spoke to us about his work involving interaction and kinetic technology. Hitchens says his art isn't art without an audience, I think it is this relationship between the work and audience that inspires and interests him. In order to create a close relationship between the two his work has to engage the audience physically, so he doesn't just take into account the appearance of the work but also its site and placement. A great example of placement comes from one of his works of large woven sculptures made from weeping willows. The name of the work means the God of the forest and the work addresses the irony of this plant being an ecological hazard in New Zealand, its history of being used to mark land for farmers and saying can he be god of a colonized tree?

The objects are placed in a doorway and it is here where the audience is confronted by the work, they are engaged by it and therefore are forced to move around it. Also the objects are larger than the human body and so are rather imposing, this kind of relates to the god-like symbolism.

Some of his larger scale work is also interactive but in a less confrontational way, the sculptures take up space but as a viewer you can choose to move through it or around it, its much more free than his gallery work though its still sharing. This idea of choosing to interact is actually present in one of his works called Seek where figures made from bronze and copper stand on a perplex base and the audience is allowed to move them around.

Hitchens' work with kinetic sculpture is where I can see the joy in creating interactive art. After he told us about his artwork of ghost-like figures all made from one 3m long Totara log I became very interested. The figures in the room are very eerie and their stillness really adds to that. So because the viewer truly doesn't expect any of them to move they scream and jump pretty high when one of them suddenly does a dance-like movement after its motion sensor has been triggered. He told us about how once somebody got such a large fright they actually knocked over one of the other figures. Hitchens said he didn't mind repairing it and I understand that, its a fair enough price to pay when you get such a great reaction from an audience member and that's really what the work is their to achieve; its the best interactive experience a maker could hope for.

Another really good example of his work with motion sensors is his piece entitled: From Iron Bird which to me looks like a giant white porcelain American football though it more appropriately resembles an egg. Once the motion sensors are triggered by someone the work starts to rock like a pendulum and a tapping sound begins from inside like something is trying to hatch from it. Again my imagination jumps to a baby dinosaur considering the scale of the object, an idea which according to Hitchens apparently seriously frightened a young boy. The title of the piece however relates directly to what Hitchens said about placing the work in a site where the trees can be like power poles or the birds can be like aeroplanes, and this brings in humor to the work by joking that it is an egg laid by a plane.

Hitchens' work seems to incorporate a lot of humour, it can be in the context of the work but its most obvious in these uses of kinetic technology, his work really creates a close relationship to its audience and inspires strong reactions. The reactions his work gets makes his art extremely effective, and its not just appealing to people who can relate to the concepts he addresses because they physically engage you. I have never really been interested in sculpture of any kind and I most likely wouldn't prefer to work in this field but I now find it very interesting, especially kinetic sculpture because the reactions it can make are much larger or much more intense than a lot of other mediums.