ESSAY FOR cont studies

RICHARD ORJIS

Richard Orjis was born in Wanganui, New Zealand. He did his undergrad study at the Auckland University of Technology and in Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh doing a BVA in 2001. Then went on to graduate with an MFA from The Elam School of Fine Arts (University of Auckland) in 2006.

He has also lived in New York where he worked for photographer and film maker David LaChapelle and collaborated on several projects with Cuban American artist Anthony Goicolea.

Richard Orjis looks into Nature/culture, at different stages creating his own "cult". He also digs into surface vs. substance. With these themes creative control and manipulation is a very important part of the process of making his works.

A flow chart Richard showed us: explains how everthing kind of fits together and works into each other...
Nature – culture – spells- rituals - sacred objects - social groupings- art - religion- science,
-western art history – pop culture – film, music, fashion, television, magazine…


On the work oh His that was "cult-like"...

Orjis states he tries to work 'intuitively'…
This below work looks into fatherhood, linking it with art history.
Looking into art history, like the famous "Madonna and child"… mother and child. Maternal.

It is also inspired by heavy metal album covers. This work he has also manipulated on photshop. The candles weren't actually in the photo. Manipulation is a big part of Richard Orjis' work as I will go into later.



"All his work is designed to illustrated non-existent, shadowy social groups, engaged in ambiguous activity. They appear to be a group of Europeans who have gone feral in a tropical jungle. Covered wholly or partially in mud, they stare dully out at the camera through elaborate necklaces and garlands of brightly coloured, sensuous flowers. Phallic and vulval forms dominate the arrangements (pitcher plants and orchids). The figures are passive and unthreatening, but also generate frissons of evil and madness and exert a horrid fascination." - Quote on Richard Orjis from Wikipedia.

The work of Richard Orjis' graduation work was "My Empire of Dust".
Using mud and water, he did series of works on paper depicting semi-clad figures. Some scenes were set in woodland, and the heads of some figures seemed to have morphed into 'grotesque' wood galls while others wore helmets. In this work He looks into beauty vs grotesque and also just using nature as a medium, which is a recurring theme throughout Orjis' works.

Another cool work was where Orjis got 60 people to be involved in the work at an art gallery in Christchurch. Involving rubbing themselves in coal and getting their photo's taken all looking in the same directions…... He would then go on to manipulate the photos on photoshop and add a red mask - which he says "seperates them from reality"... "Coal, it’s a fuel, but it could be diamonds…"

Another statement I heard him make was something like "The coal of Christchurch..bringing up stuff from under the surface..."

This exhibition also involved a car fulled with flowers from local botanical gardens,creating this idea of either a hertz (symbolizing life and death), or a traveling greenhouse..

All of his ideas seem to be linked between nature and "cults"/religions...

On Nature and Beauty (Surface vs. substance)



A lot of his works are based around religion of some type… “I realy like that Idea that I am connected with everything around me"...
Orjis says he doesn’t believe in modernism… "we are always connected to something else"… Moses, bible, burning tree, tree huggers, decorating trees at Christmas time..



These works reminded me of a modern day version of Arcimboldo's vegetable faces work. Arccimboldo was an artist from Milan (1527). His portraits of human heads are made up of vegetables, fruit sea creatures and tree roots/ based on fascination.

It also kind of reminded me of what Steve Rood said in last weeks lecture, about people becoming sick of drawing and painting, and turning to photogrpahy...
Like a modern version of Arccimboldo's work, but made with photogrpahy. This also shows the way Orjis has made the most of creative control and manipulation. As the process he used to make the work for his masters was quite simple, just starting with the photograph of his subject (portrait) then he would go on to edit it and add in the parts of nature on photoshop.
I like this part of his work, different because so unnatural, but looks natural because done in a photography medium, unlike painting because painting can just be "fantasy like", but photography makes his work seem more 'real' because thats what photogrpahy does.


These works contained alot of flowers. Orjis stated that the orchid represents sexuality.
He used gorse, as in New Zealand it has a thing about identity...
Gorse a weed we want to get rid off, but Orjis then brought it into the context where we look at the beauty of the flower…
Posing the question, What is NZ’s identity? Over and over again we search for this in politics.

Had always enjoyed art for the way it is, cant be only surface, has to be more, surface beauty, attracts bee, but the substance behind it, is that flower wants to reproduce, the most beautiful flower will get pollinated more… has to have surface beauty for people to want to speand more time with it etc… cool idea…

On Creative control and manipulation...



The Spineless Nancy Pelosi By Salvador Dali...
Orjis mentioned Salvdor Dali- an aritst that put's opposite things together. He did this in some of his works - using french sticks then poking candles in them...



This is part of the public work Orjis did at te Tuhi. He said He was sick of the negative stuff and wanted to do something "affirming"... What's funny is that he got the text from a cult called Heaven's gate. ( A very strange cult)... haha, I like this work though, and the way he has used manipulation to make it simple, but effective and able to speak to you in a few seconds while driving past.

The Main conceptsof Richard Orjis' work were:
nature vs culture:
The natural and the artificial:
The beautiful and the grotesque:
Community and individualism:

Richard Orjis on art: "… all art is a lie that tells us the truth…"

By studying Richard Orjis' work we learn to look at nature in a way that can help us "look at the visual world"...We realize that objects are communicating with us all the time…This inspires me to look at what I do with the way I interpret how people are, things they wear, what they say etc, idea of communication..

STEVE ROOD:

OKEY DOKEY... As you can see in the above works, Steve has a very diverse quality spread over his works, so for this blog I will focus on the aspects of his work I found most inspiring and how he has been influenced by the history of photogrpahy and visual arts.


I think Steve Rood has a very interesting background. He appealed to me, especially after I heard he had studied in Holland and worked in Italy! :)

He started out with a passion for film making, then somehow ended up as a fashion photographer in Milan, then decided he needed an 'education' so went and studied in Holland. Then became an 'advertiser photographer'. He then discovered didn’t like adverstising, liked ideas but not the 'business' of it. He has also done work as an art director.



Something cool I first heard was that his last name 'Rood' means red in english, so he has used as a theme throughout his works.

He stated that when he was little he lit a fire to compost, from then he has associated photography with something 'weird' as this...
He also has an actual fire extinquisher as his card, which once people get they won't throw out.






I throughouly enjoyed all of his work, however his photography work I found was absolutley stunning. Many of his works use over exposure as an effect, He stated that a theme most of his work is based on is "reduction". This is shown in the way he used an "unfocsued" effect and overexposure. Some of his works (e.g the work he did for shoe designers) is kept nice and simple.
Birth, sex and death…overexposed and out of focused… theme about reduction…
Leave lots of room for text… versatility…


Some of His influences (the ones I could catch) were:
Led zeppelin, andy Warhol, apocoplypes, Lichenstein, DADA.

Also this quote by Mary Boone.

"Quality first, and foremost,
Has to do with authentic radical posistion,
it has to do with obsession,
it has to do with clearly defined and exclusive.
I mean intellectually exclusive, ideals, and it has to do with spirituality…"



What do you want to be known as – in the way of your specialism??

He states many of his works are "Kinda feminine products, that have a natural aspect to them…" but that being specilized doesn’t mean hooked up to work for life…

Also that the more "outlandish" they were the better…
The aestetic of his works are really amazing, I was like wow the whole time...


With his photogrpahy he also discovered he always wanted to "have a light coming towards him"… He would create objects and posistion the lights anywhere… lights that create shadows, his works became about the shadows and not the object…
From this he started to call himself “the shadow man”…








His portraiture works are also very emotive. We see him making photo's of his friends, people who are important to him.. Chuck Close inspired..."trying to be objective as possible and failing miserably, and being happy… "

this other artist I found, I thought fitted in quite well with the portraiture and also technology ... Joseph Kosuth :)




Steve Rood also as a job does design work, because its a "good way to earn money"...He has attracted architects- simply because he was into light and space aspects.
He started out doning cool as stuff for band sites (for free) then got massive jobs for export gold and stuff, business strategy, awesome and inspiring business strategy...

Some other really cool works that inspired me were the digital works that are Interactive.
Including the work he did for his Masters degreee at AUT. The images were all disconnectied (70percent was found imagery)… The idea is that identity of the person is generated through the interaction fo the photoalbum… I found it really interesting to watch, as for every viewer it would bring different feelings and thoughts into their heads.

Something interesting about the idea of media and interaction that has so muched changed the world we lvie in... this guy smule with his Iphone and being able to play flute on it and interact with people all around the world, (to be honest I wasn't sure how exactly this fitted in with his work) but it fitted with the whole revolution of technology and shows how fast technology moves...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhCJq7EAJJA

Some of his other really cool works have been where he has used 'light obscura' and a concave mirror to create works. He also talked a lot about how the history of visual art, the history of photogrpahy and how it is always changing. Which I think shows greatly in his work. He stated that "photography came along because they were deteremind to capture things in a certain way on paper and were sick of drawing…" And now, 150 years later, photography is a blip in the landscape of digital media..

I also liked the work where there were 2 images on a flip coin, and it spinned both ways, creating an image in the viewers mind that wasn't how it originally looked. Rood also stated that moving image is jsut a sequence of stills.

I think this lecture will help me greatly for the moving image breif we are just starting this week in Studio, which is awesome, a cool artist model to research even more.

www.rood.co.nz/talk.

Fran Allison

Fran Allison is a contemporary New Zealand jeweller. She is also a lecturer in jewellery at the Manukau Institute of Technology.
Her most recent jewellery, addresses ideas of re-formatting and past histories. Up close they draw the viewer to "reminisce of long summer days in the garden, of making daisy chains, and of times gone by".






The inspiration for her work comes from many areas, including a fascination with the connotations associated with found and/or discarded objects. She cites Julian Schnabel: 'I work with things left over from other things' as a source for this exploration:

On Collaboration and Collective...

Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor [that is creative in nature—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus... Or as Richard Loveless may put it - "Collaborations become great only when everyone in them is free to do his or her absolute best — and is committed to seeing other members do their best as well".

An artist collective is an initiative that is the result of a group of artists working together, usually under their own management - towards shared aims. The aims of an artist collective can include almost anything that is relevant to the needs of the artist, this can range from purchasing bulk materials, sharing equipment, space or materials, through to following shared ideologies, aesthetic and political views or even living and working together as an extended family.
Sharing of ownership, risk, benefits, and status is implied, as opposed to other, more common business structures with an explicit hierarchy of ownership such as an association or a company.

Fran described how a collaboration raises questions about ‘ownership’ over the finished work - I can understand how this aspect of it could become an obstacle, especially when several proud artists come together and want the credit of the hard work they put in. Collaborative efforts also involve those who employ the skills of others, from disciplines outside of their own, to execute or improve an idea, Like in the collaboration work I talk about below - often friends helping out other friends because they have differing technical skills that are in need. Collaboration allows artists to be risky/experimental - they may not have the skills/idea's own their own. It seems a collective is a group of artists working beside, and being influenced by each other, and a collaboration is people using a collective intelligence and working together to produce a specific outcome.
A successful collaboration relies on equality among the artists involved, no one person’s role is more ‘important’ than any others.


Fran is a member of Weeds (a group of New Zealand artists involved in Object or Jewellery making). They were all collectively ‘pissed off’ by a 'Bone Stone and Shell' lecture which suggested these materials and this traditional style as being definitive of New Zealand jewellery practise. So...Fran got together with Andrea Daly, Shelley Norton and Lisa Walker, to change things.

Fran’s works are often made from found items or appropriated, domestic materials, such as handkerchiefs, doilies, pins, fabric etc. The objects made by all four artists involved in Weeds all have an aesthetic which is far from traditional ‘bone, stone and shell’ which they were rebelling against, it is more domestic and hand-made because of the ‘craft’ materials, symbols and techniques, such as crochet and assemblages. "My work at present consists of reformatted doilies, embroidered handkerchiefs, children's clothes and crockery. I like to use pre-existing objects in my work that come with an already established language. Then I like to mess with that reading in some way. The objects start off as decorative in one sense or in one environment and end up on the body as decorative jewellery pieces. A challenge for me is to reconfigure these 'found' fragments so that they still possess aspects of their original attractiveness" - says Fran.

“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. The added advantage of working in this way is that any discards become compost….”



Another example of Collabarative work is "Paula Cunniffe" - A NZ artist who did collaborative work with Nic Foster...It was a Six day residency at The Suter Te Aratoi O Whakatu – 1-6 June 2004, named "Art Practices revealed". The statement Nic made was "Making art about ones physical surroundings, the immediate culture and the artists emotional capacity or state of mind within those surroundings is the phenomena that needs to be unraveled when an exhibition is being presented." In this work we see two different creative people bringing different sets of skills together to create one idea.

http://www.masterworksgallery.com/index.cfm?action=artists&page=profile&artist_id=86

http://www.fingers.co.nz/exhibitors/Allison_weeds_05.htm

http://www.quoil.co.nz/artists/fran_allison/

http://www.form.co.nz/exhibition_landg.htm

What is Deborah Crowe’s “One Idea” made up from and how does it keep recurring in various ways?

Deborah Crowe was originally from Dundee, Scotland. She immegrated to New Zealand over twenty years ago. This is visible in some of her works.

What ever this 'one idea' of Deborah's is she uses bridges, weaving, space, interdisciplinary, containment, construction, architecture, recyling works and textures as reccuring themes in her work.
I think one main Idea she has explored is exploring space, and the way we perceive space.

One of the works she did 'Beneath the surface', Deborah looked into the "contained body" (as she states), the idea of how women 'contain' their bodies , and in a way torture themselves. She also looked into 'torture' as a part of her work - putting people in the room with objects - creating space in their mind and imaginations.




'Beneath the surface', 1997.




Adina…This was another work where Deborah looks at women 'containing themselves'. The Idea of how we percieve space shows in the way she has used a material that we can see through, but also looks very painful to wear. Creating a space in which the viewer can feel 'torture'.

Another important aspect Deborah uses to portray ideas is her planning and drafting process. At the show she did in Te Tuhi (below), the 'edges and Ideas in how we plan and draft things' became the actual drawing process.




Contilever, 2006,




Dunedin public art gallery, how it intercepts with a building, responding to natural space. Art gallery in octagon.,




shift 2000:This is interesting because it shows how fabric can express weight, the reminiscence of people. The contrast between the light airy object and an object tht actually has weight. It is interesting also this work that Deborah didn't realise until later on what it was that influenced her in the making of this work, she states it was her mothers death. She also talked about how the shadow can be a symbolic element, the shadow can re represent ourselves, and act as a medium that moves between two-dimensional and three-dimensional.




One artist Deborah was influenced by was Caroline Broadhead a british maker trained in jewellery, she also made work in textile- she shifts betweeen disciplines. This work created a space in which the body was contained by a neck veil.






Collared – In 1999 Deborah suddenly became a jeweller, although she didn’t think of herself as a jeweller, instead she preferred to think of it as 'work of the body'.

At Fingers shot (gallery but sometimes like a shop) she had done all research on corsets, she found out when men used to wear them It used to cut their necks - (hahah) implied the torture in her work. She worked out of nylon and copper wire, emulating fabrics - but made them into harder surfaces… fine stainless steel gauze (from inside the tap) - a cool way of exploring materials and their potential…




IN her colab with Kim Fraser, at supreme smokefree fashion awards in 1997 they designed a garment 'for the future' (to be 2004)...She said the inspiration was 'On making a safe space for yourself… to hide away from technology… a visor on the front, related to architectural structure'… Using copper to conduct energy - creating space to escape from technology. Looked like it was closing the body in, but the model stated it was infact quite easy to move about in.

they started afashion label called 'FRASER CROWE', lots of inspiration came from the corset, and reflective tape to look like a line drawing in space…

She is also interested in how things fit together, weaving and how tiny little differences can 'make a difference'. SHe has done a lot of resource gathering at britomart, looking into construction vs. fabric - cloth and buildings how they are both constructed in a similar fashion. She said she was interested in people looking at it and thinking what might actually be behind the wall…she would take tiny details and blow them up, in one instance Deborah made work 3m tall from tiny piece in other works.




Catalogue mark Kirby, one type of work seems to mimik something else,





Warp: is also term for vertical threads in woven fabric…to make this work she used fishing line that was dyed. Her palette became what she hand dyed, looked like modernist paintings, it wasn’t deliberate.




Another artist that really influenced her work was BRIDGET RILEY…(shown is Chant 1967)… amazing about how colour works together.. No painter has ever made us more aware of our eyes than Bridget riley… became like this, with study of colours, when putting together the threads..


Her 'one idea' came uo also in the work she made for Hokianga art gallery. It was a 'Little bit like a labyrinth or maze, creating space of what u might be contained in', Deborah claims… Exposing people to 'what was real and what wasn't real'.
This was perhaps along the line of her 'one idea'. Playing on what was 'real and what wasn't real'. Through this using all the above manipulations to do so.

Other aspects/artists that have influenced Deborah Crowe include:


The Bridge - one of her favourite structures…

Janet Laurence and her work at the Sydney biennale aug 20 - 'qualities in her work that are so 'brilliantly, architectural yet expressive'.

The film Inception (2010) - influenced her in visiting Dubai 2010, making images and turning them on their sides.

Paul Pfeiffer - the saints, 2010,

Luc Besson.,

film “In the Loop”…. she was influenced in this when making work made of fabric to contradict what is sewn on it (Oxymorons, something that has a contradiction).

Nahem tevet, seven walks Dundee, www.tevet.com

Claire Barclay, a Scottish artist, she sculptured objects, Crowe states "there is an oddness in her work that I really wanted to have in my work but didn’t manage".


SO, the one idea... playing on what was real and what wasn't real. Using many different ways to do so.
Ciao :)

How has Steves Practise evolved over the period of his career, i.e from Political social and hisotorical concerns to issues of colour and form?

Steve was born in Auckland New Zealand. He now works and lives and works here too. He majored in printmaking at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, studying with Professor Carole Shepheard. He has noted an "initial attraction to the ‘Otherness’ of the print medium, to its technical challenges transferrals and displacements that he has acknowledged as having a certain parallel in personal experience".

At the beginning of Steve's profession career his work was very directed towards concepts of 'stasis and change'.
He also has many ideas of time, transistion and change presented in his works.
In many of Steve's earliest wors he examines the "shifting vagaries of identity politics" within New Zealand’s ‘cultural landscape.’
Posing questions shuch as "what is our cultural landscape, who can claim to have the authority to control its definition, who is seen, who is invisible, who is resident and who is deemed alien?" - in New Zealands culture.

He was very much concerned with history and story telling. "More specifically the process where we as private individuals participate in public space and so become part of public discourse and historical record" - said Steve during the interview.
At another level he is interested in private space and public space, how these spaces are determined by 'laws, rules and narrative'.




In the work "Holding the man" (1996) Steve looks at the HIV crisis. Here the personal and political become indistinguishable and impersonal from one another… this is how Steve somewhat describes the Political movement of the last 25 years..



The above work is "It's a life", looking at the things stated above.

Speaking parts.



As his work progressed Steve began to construct things that included audio files to, as the work "speaking parts" above. He looked into connection with close friends – way of constructing space between fact or fiction. He tests notions of objectivity. Building electronics etc. He said using this kind of stuff was really interesting. He 'bought junk' from superelectronics and stuff like that…
He then went onto a work called "Echo chamber" which was even more complex, it included 25 individual soundtracks.
Individual memory, and response intersect, a "concerned photographic memory". Steve sought to provide insight to ‘unremembered past’. He states his primary concern was the function of the first person narrative to oppose and to contradict the demand for ‘objective’ ’rational’ linear accounting of our lives.

In His work he liked to make the works about them, not about "me" - he said.works.

Steve stated he like finding ways to become resistant. This factor I think was very obvious in the above works, the works from early on in his professional career.




In 2002 started winding things back to more simple less electronics…
When he gave up painting, needed to employ photography allowed him to import into his work things from the world around him that seemed important.
He began using juztaposistion in his work, chaning the form around, and bringing collisions of events into the same realm.
Another major part of some of these works were doing them in dip tychs. I really liked these works where steve contrasts two images next two each other, as I think for each veiwer trying to find the link between the two images would be a very different experience. As with each image there are possible very different memories associated.



Up and down, video camera at britomart excalator then took stills…



Untitle, 08-09 …. Colour screen prints, they have gone to Egypt Alexandria.

Now adays Steve has gone completly off the political and historical issues,(maybe not completely - but one the surface).
In this work he uses scribbles which he says "cancels out division or maybe just indecisive"
He said "stuff about social stuff- I maybe need a rest form that stuff, more abstract"...
I like the aesticitcs of these pieces. He uses mauve against yellows, which I think is really beauitful, and now isalso doing more exploring into the effects of these colours.
He punches holes through things. About this he says, "there is something kinda abstract about putting a hole through something… a whole punched through the middle of something"


http://web.utk.edu/~imprint/Lovett.html

http://www.artbash.co.nz/article.asp?id=1031

Frances Hansen

Frances Hansen was born in New Zealand in 1962 and later spent 13 years as an Australian resident, completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts and a Graduate Diploma in Professional Art Studies from the City Art Institute in Sydney before gaining a Diploma of Education from the University of Sydney in 1990.

She returned to Auckland in the beginning of 1993. She then did Masters of Fine Arts (1st Class Honours) at Auckland University's Elam School of Fine Arts. She was awarded the Fowlds Memorial Prize as the ‘most distinguished student’ in the faculty in 1994.

Her work is full of elements of images that are certainly recognizable, and often ‘juxtaposes them in a manner that hints a particular reading of her work’.

In her 2006 series 'Split Level', Frances Hansen combined abstract and figurative elements to reference domestic interiors,'interspersing the flat, often neutral expanses' of interior space with detailed imagery which 'pinpointed' the domestic heritage of NZ culture.

One of these works that stood out to me as a ‘feminist’ piece, was the work we have in the library (not sure of the name) where she uses silhouttes of 'collected items' that all happen to be of domestic use, Items such as pamolive detergent bottles and Mr Muscle spray bottle silhouettes.
Another work I really liked was ‘How does your garden grow’. She made many works during maternity and when she was around her kids at home, which is interesting because they contain playful things that only ‘kids’ would do, e.g. copying exactly what her daughter had drawn onto her work.

Another thing I like about her work is how she always has her camera in her bag. By collecting photos of random things that capture her thoughts, e.g. patterns on letter boxes while walking then using them on her work.

Frances’ work contains a lot of collected items, from household items to plant tags.

Her works with the baskets I also really liked, as she used something ‘genuine’ ( I would call it) – she may have called it an ‘unsurprising’ object, to make something surprising and different. The collection all together was really effective as a body of work. Frances Hansen also stated she doesn’t like ‘titling’ work so with the baskets because they were made at that period of times (50’s-60’s), she labeled them from TV shows from that time period (cool idea).

Other things she had used that she had collected that stood out where Headboards, often hand crafted, personalized memento’s, doilies and even notes in a park. Making word banks of words that stand out to her. Packaging from the two dollar shop, packaging that comes with toys she had bought for her kids.. These works look at the use of packaging or the excess we have in packaging – that we really don’t need. Similar to Ruth Thomas Edward and the work she made, mountains out of tiny bits of cardboard with underlying issues of environmental concerns.

An artist she was heavily influenced by was Patrick Pound and his work ‘oil paint on plastic platters.’…She describes as ‘Low tech objects, which, through various manipulations makes them a lot more interesting…’

Now Frances Hansen lives in new Zealand and teaches here at MSVA.. She has exhibitions on regularly around New Zealand and also Australia and Canada.
She was a finalist in the Wallace Art Awards in 2001 & 2002 and many of her works are held in several public and private collections in New Zealand and Australia, including the James Wallace Collection, the New South Wales College of Fine Arts Drawing Collection and the University of Auckland collection.

ELDON BOOTH

Eldon Booths film work has used many different filming techniques to portray reality - or 'an illusion of reality'.

In one film 'Withdrawal', He use 'amateur' techniques he calls them, to portray an effect that seems it is being filmed in real life. Such as abrubd panning, making it feel like the camera man was part of the scene, e.g. home video.
There was the jerkiness of this handheld camera of 'worst quality'(Eldon Booth) being used that created the feel of adreneline, with the focus being often blurred, creating this action that wasnt settling. By doing this it created an effect that the camera man didn't know what was happening next, thus an illusion of reality.

He also uses juxtaposistioning of the two contrasting screens next to each other, this creates conflict between the sons life style and the grandads dying lifestyle, e.g. medical drugs for the grandad vs. by lifestyle drugs for the grandson.
This also creates dysfunction and shows the 'old' being replaced with the new, old houses being removed for new subdivison etc…(also in areas tha we as new zealanders are recognizeable with)
These shots have no definied beginning or end, seeming like a continous link to the shot but alsways having a change of clothes or location etc, going for this to emphaisiase 'grandads' detoriation, instead of chronolgical death…

Another movie that features Justaposistion is Gus Van Sants 'Elephant'. Howevere, this movie uses a very different type of juxtaposistion, He does this by jumping back in forth in time, and going through the same 'scene' but through a different characters point of view... This shows multiple levels of time unfolding, which creates confusion for the viewer but in the end everything interconnects. This way we get to know each 'character'. The director allows us to see from multuiple view point simultenously.

Eldon Booth uses majorly also counter view shots. This pulls us as the viewer into the film like we are following the character, or watching in. In doing so, creating reality or the lillusion it. I really found funny how Eldon Booth in Withdrawal used these 'amateur' video techniques. He explained that he was heavily inspired by reality tv at the time. Since the filming of Withdrawal, technology has had a major make over, now with youtube and video cell phones this kind of filming a lot more 'mainstream', maybe. In the late 1990s we were bombarded with real life reality shows such as worlds worst crimanals, and other similas (police ten seven etc)...

One of the reality t.v. shows that Booth was really influenced was the "E.R Ambush". A live show they did, typified by 'hand held jerkiness'.


I also really enjoyed the second film of Booth's we watched.It was a lot more dialogue based witch I found a lot more interesting as a viewer.

DION HITCHINGS

Interaction and cultural/ historical aspects and discuss how they relate to Dion Hitchings’ Work:


Dion Hitchings has a very unique way of making art. I will be discussing cultural and interaction aspects of His works.
One of the first points that Hitchings made about his artwork that stoodout to me was “What is my artwork without my audience?” and “Can my art be fully a piece of art without my audience?” -
this was something very cruicial, as interaction has been a big part of the works He has done.

The first work I found very interesting was “Te wao nui a tane”: This work had very strong historical aspects, and was also very interesting in the way it relates to the audience.




This work was part of the pivotal period of Dion’s life, that strated to ‘frame his art career’. Hitching stated this was the first point were he took on the idea of interaction. This is interesting because as the viewer, we look at a ‘pile of sticks’ like this and by no means expect anything to happen.
When the viewer walks into (he places them in a doorway) this art space a trigger is censored which is in the middle of the roof, which creates these to turn at 1rpm (very slowly) and a ‘funny noise’ is created, kind of scaring the viewer. They are very confronting to the viewer as they are bigger than the human body.

There is very much cultural inspiration behind the use of ‘weeping willow’ as the materials. Back when New Zealand was colonized the Maori would move pegs that the ‘farmers’ used to make their territory. Because of this the farmers (from England or wherever) decided to bring these (non-native) trees into NZ and plant them along their boundaries so they could not be moved by the Maori’s. These trees grew like weeds, soaking up the waterways and becoming ecological hazards. Hitchings’ was playing on a bit of a pun for the Maori with this idea. He was also interested in having the idea of ecology, a pun for Maori, “god of the forest, can the god of the forest be the god of a colonized tree?”

Hitching states that ‘art exists in a continuum’- briefly going over the modernism movement and stating that ‘post modernism is influenced by modernist art’ and it also questions modernism. That looking back on history we can pick things out of it that we enjoy and ‘pull them out for our practise’. This aspect is also a big part of his work, being part of the ‘post-modernist’ era has benefitted Him, he says, being ‘half Chinese and half Maori’, his practice suits post-modernism because He draws on all these things, the ‘minority voices’ and dis-empowers the ‘modernist movement’.

Another interesting art work was the work in the Auckland Art gallery in 1999 – this work was positioned in the window, sitting on the ‘outside of art gallery’. It was interesting for interaction as the ‘viewer’ didn’t have to even enter the gallery to engage with it. “it was positioned ‘between spaces’ – between the inside and outside that is.
Space between the inside and the outside… In this project he worked with a friend Lylod Brown, who placed the motion sensor on the outside of the window , and when the viewer walked infront of it , it triggered something and cause smoke to come up, and lights to come on and change, this would create a bit of a fright in the viewer, which is a really cool part of the ‘viewing experience’ as for every viewer the ‘interaction’ would be completely unique.



Another interesting work is the work at Civic square in Manukau, this is based on idea of the mountain in Tahiti, which is a sacred mountain. He states when we ‘colonize a space, you bring with it your memories’. This was culturally unique to the space it is in because he drew on the fact that, the largest numbers of Polynesian people live in Manukau. He used granite rocks from Asia, which relates to his ‘audience’ also the polualation of asians is growing, so could make them ‘feel at home’ and bring memories from home.

Another point I liked that Hitchings’ made was that he is only able to do all these works because of how he communicates with the people he works with. He has many friends that help him out e.g, spray painters, welders, engineers etc.
I really enjoyed learning about the depth both culturally and historically, and also the way Hitchings’ work intereacts with the viewer.

THE ABSURD -

I found this really strange at the beginning, after seeing her work without hearing her speak...

I am not the biggest fan of photography, maybe because I don't understand it so well..

well here goes my attempt:

Rebecca Hobbs presents 'humour' through absurdity which is found in the everyday live..

Coming from the outback in australia she had some works which were made there... One that I liked, was a man falling down onto an airbed in the middle of a desert, which is very absurd!

She explains that she has found and dug up absurdity in ready made situations: And I suppose for every viewer a different level exists at which that work triggers humour...

The other point she made was bringing out the absurdity in getting pleasure from constant striving to find meaning - so she strives to put humour in her work...she also talked of how 'we' set these standards for ourselves that we seem to constantly fail to meet (in striving for these standards)...

Hobbs explained that absurd humour is between ironic humour and on the otherside is slapstick humour...

Peter Shand in his essay 'walking backwards for christmas' states "I think it pertinent, then, that Hobbs’ work is devoid of irony, that it’s consciously generous and sincere. It’s part of how irony operates that it requires an assumed position of privilege in order to get the joke. For her, that reflects on the habit of some modes of practice to require understanding of structural codes in order for the work to be made or responded to."

She shows a light-hearted attitude towards sex 'that reflects back at us our own peccadilloes or repressions' (Peter Shand), this is shown in her work, Adam looks up Jennifer's skirt, which is clearly set up: it is very absurd, and I think is maybe dissing the morality of society.

My favourite work was 'Tethered Horse', The composistion was really effective, which is a 'frontal' shot, and she uses darkness very effectively, which even this feature in itself I think creates absurd 'humour', as it would be fully not normal for a horse to be tied up to a tree in the middle of the night, but hey, maybe it's just one of those things you see in the middle of a desert?

who I thought will win the Walters prize: Fiona Connors: Because I found her work the most intriguing and unique, to be honest, I was really confused by it and couldn't figure out if it was her art work or not, so puzzling :)