September 28th - Steve Rood

This week Steve Rood talked to us about his practice in photography, he mentioned he worked in different aspects of photography like documentary, fashion, advertising, and still life. I actually quite enjoyed this lecture, Rood was pretty funny with how he uses a mini fire extinguisher as his card with the story about his first photograph on the back of it so no one will forget him and no one will throw it away. I do wish though that he would have incorporated this kind of humour into his work because it would have been great to see combined with his amazing technical photography skills.

What started his interest in photography and likely his interest in the history of photography was what he experienced when he took his first photograph. The subject was a compost heap which after he took the photo of, later that day actually, it burst into flames and the fire brigade came to put it out. So he became interested in what photography can do as a medium and taking photos to see what would happen next.

I was really interested in his approach to fashion photography. He showed us images he took that were over exposed and out of focus which you would think would just be wrong but they really worked. This also continued as a theme for him.

The figures in these images look kind of ethereal which I think is an attractive element in the fashion industry, it speaks about this divine image women should strive for, fashion as a commodity. The image on the right, to me at least, looks like an exaggeration of women's desire to be thin and the lengths they go to, to achieve it. They look alien and distorted, tortured, but I like how they still manage to look beautiful and serene - like a swan's strange beauty.

It was actually kind of hard for me to understand his ideology because he has so many influences, but I found myself really interested in his photography for advertising. In the lecture he said that when he is considering fashion photography he tries to "romance the designer" so in these images a way that he does this is to leave lots of space for text, basically where ever it is white. This is a really clever idea for advertising, they would be perfect for magazine covers.

He did lots of work for advertising particularly in food, and from this he became the person you would call if you wanted a 'pour shot' (right photo). His goal would be to photograph food with a element of action, and this became what he specialised in but he assured us that once this happens an artist doesn't have to restrict themselves to that area of art which is very apparent in his overall work.

I really really really love his extreme close up shots that show great detail, it is a mode of photography I would love to ace just as he has. The textures and colours and moods of the images are more than just aesthetically pleasing. In my opinion images like these should not be used for computer screen savers, they deserve better than that.

For our photography brief I actually took close up photos as close as I could go and in a way that sort of reflected other artists I had seen so I was really pleased to see that rood worked with this.

This is my photo:

What I'm really disappointed about is that my work takes a lot of photo shop while Rood's great technical skills allow him to keep his images realistic in terms of colour etc, and also the texture is really strong and detailed.

From his website I saw that one of Rood's influences was Lou Reed which I thought was really appropriate because of the work Stefan Sagmeister made for his album. The close up image of his face is similar to Rood's images, the detail is great and the expression is key. I like how the lyrics on his face add to the emotion that is there, represent what the album is about. What I love about this however is that Rood's work doesn't seem to need any help with expressing emotion.

And finally I'm really glad that Harold Edgerton is one of Rood's influences, it obviously shows, especially when he talked about food and action. This image is pretty much the image for that idea. The technical side also relates to Rood in that it is perfect.

21st September - Fran Allison

Fran Allison trained as a jeweller but what she talked to us about in her lecture was the difference between collaboration and a collective. Basically a collaboration is a group of people working together on an artwork or project and when the work is resolved, authorship belongs to the group as a whole. A collective is more like a group of artists who work in similar concepts or the same space but make their own work individually. Allison raised the issue of a collaborative atmosphere which I found really interesting, how each person has their own ideas and interpretations but they have to fit and be agreed on by the others involved. For example you might have this idea that you really love and want to use but your collaborators might not like it and that would make continuance quite difficult. There is also this issue of authorship, like if a group's work involves audience interaction does that mean every audience member involved claims a share to ownership of the work?

Collaborating doesn't have to be like this of coarse, in a lot of situations it can be about getting help from other artists who have specialties in certain areas that you don't. A successful example of this is Cantilever, a mixed media by Deborah Crowe and Eldon Booth (one is trained as a weaver and one works in moving image).

Allison showed us a lot of groups and I really liked Unnatural/Naturally (Lauren Simeoni & Melinda Young) whose work explores ideas of botany and the body, also finding natural in the unnatural or unnatural in the natural and exploiting and utilising it.

Melinda Young, Fungal, Brooch, 2009, Pink Tourmaline, Artificial Plant Foliage, Marine Ply, 925 Silver, Acrylic Paint.

(www.dhub.org/articles/1233)

This work is an example of a collective as it is Melinda Young's individual work rather than a work made by both artists together.

One of the most famous collaborative groups is the Guerrilla Girls because they assumed the names of dead women artists and wore gorrilla masks in public. Their work uses provocative text, visuals and humour in the service of feminism and social change. They are pretty much the perfect example of collaborative art practice. From their website http://www.guerrillagirls.com/: Fighting discrimination with facts, humour and fake fur which I think is pretty much their approach to making in a nutshell.

The group Allison is a part of is called Weeds, the other members include Andrea Daly, Shelley Norton and Lisa Walker. After Bone. Stone. Shell allowed belief that these are the materials and this is the culture of New Zealand jewellery, Allison got together with these artists to change this view. They want to represent ALL the cultures NZ has today and they do that by working with all kinds of materials. Most of their work involves material exploration around domesticity. "For me, 'Weeds' is a platform for experimentation. Each 'weed' is different from the one before, and each could be cultivated into a body of work. Each piece is a new beginning, an exploration into new materials sourced from the domestic urban environment. The pieces explore the decorative possibilities of op shop discoveries, all containing previous histories and meanings." - Fran Allison

(www.quoil.co.nz/artists/fran_allison/)

Basically what she is saying is their work involves experimenting with found materials, domestic materials and these can be developed and re-worked, the reading or meaning of an object originally can be changed or continued in an artwork.

In her lecture she talked about this work or one very similar:

Ceremonial Daisy Chain

which is made from doilies, she talked about how she bought them from an op shop because she liked how they had previous lives. They used to belong to someone and they served a certain purpose but when she creates work out of them she is continuing their story and she can control the reading of the work she makes.

photo:(www.masterworksgallery.com/index.cfm?action=artists&page=work&artist_id=86&work_id=510)

Her individual work is inspired by ideas of found or discarded objects, of re-formatting and past histories. She likes to use pre-existing objects and mess with their original reading, they may start out as having a physical or decorative function and end up on the body as decorative fashion or jewellery objects but keep their original appeal about them.

photo:(www.fingers.co.nz/exhibitors/Allison_weeds_05.htm)

September 14th - Deborah Crowe

This week Deborah Crowe talked to us about her art practice. What I found most repetitive in her work was her exploration of space and containment, and construction and architecture. I especially liked her work with the human body's relationship to space, though you can also tell she incorporates ideas of containing the body and constructing objects for the body. One of the works she showed us really stood out to me, it was Aldina which were corsets constructed out of different materials. It spoke about feminism and politics, the 'correct' image projected by society and women distorting their bodies to suit it. Deborah stated that it also spoke about torture which she was interested in as a theme to explore.

In a work she collaborated with Kim Fraser on, Dual Outlook (1997), it really travels away from the 'norm.' I like how it is so out there, its very strong in using aesthetic and expressive effects. You can see from the top part of the body structure that she has worked with architectural elements like grids. Again this is very much a structure about containing the body and the space the body inhabits.

Collared (1999) is very fashion based, it really brings across her exploration with materials and how she never restricts herself to just one medium.

Caroline Broadhead's Neckpiece Veil circa 1986 relates really well to Deborah's work. It is very similar in its containment properties and I think the shadows that are created inside really add to the work, they're like a projection against the object of a human body. It is a very closed space and speaks of the human body wanting to have freedom of movement and not being able to.

A really great work by an artist that Deborah showed us that relates to space was Open Wide (2009) by Clare Barclay. Barclay has described these structures in terms of a physical manifestation of imaginary spaces (www.doggerfisher.com/artists/artistdetail.php?id=46).

These 'unfinished' rooms contain echoes of recognisable lifestyles and environments. They have a nostalgic element to them which allows the viewer to connect with the space.

My favourite work by Deborah had to be Shig because of the use of space, the viewer's experience with it and the effect of shadows.

To be honest, with this work, I'm more interested in the visual than the meaning. I like how it looks eerie and haunting, the ghostly suspension of the objects. It also has a kind of cluttered feel to it, I imagine it would be very interesting to move around in and in that respect I believe Deborah was spot on about art being better seen in reality than in photographs.