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.