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.