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)