Crit#3, @APT Gallery, 10 January 2009
January 10th 2009
UAL- Wimbledon, BA Fine Art TBM.
My practice has gone into a flux – a highly experimental and confusing stage for me. I am using audiovisual crossovers between nearly obsolete emulsion film, contemporary digital tape and their interaction with soundtracks via e.g. analogue tape or direct hard drive recordings.
Dealing with duration and the cultural indicators of the interplay between sound and image and how we read media in relation to our experience of time- I am currently in a project provisionally entitled ‘Liquid History’. This experimental audiovisual hybrid is attempting to navigate within the human invention of time – past/present/future. Rivers play on metaphors of river as a ‘stream of consciousness’, they are a marked timeline of humanity’s existence and therefore I am utilising footage of the River Thames under the following premises:
Camberwell, BA Drawing.
My work evolves from a fascination with the transformative potential of mundane materials and the transient impact of light on form, surface and space. Nails, tissue paper, waxed bags, shattered glass and rubber washers – I am motivated by the sculptural possibilities of seemingly valueless materials which I translate into three-dimensional pieces and installations.
Currently, my material absorption is with paper. This is partly fuelled by my life-long, burgeoning collection of rare magazines. I am confused, fascinated and excited by their ephemeral, sometimes shocking and provocative imagery that reflects popular ideas, tastes and culture. But mostly it is the sensations of paper’s aesthetic and tactile qualities that drive my compulsion to work with it.
I am inspired by the crow and its related family of corvids, such as ravens and rooks, as conceptual springboards for my work. While I am intrigued by their physical form, their movement and their sociability, I am equally fascinated by our responses to crows as a real or symbolic species.
BA Art Practice, Year 2, Goldsmiths
My recent work has been about the study of objects and objecthood. I am particularly interested in the symbology of objects, especially when this overrides the object nature of the real item. In my work I aim to draw attention to this shift from object to symbol by creating interventions that attempt to polarise both the symbology and the object nature of things.
The work I am showing uses currency as the definitive symbolically loaded object. As well as trying to draw attention to value systems, I also want to contrast the object with its value in a way that I hope emphasises the difference between the two.
Matthew Dennis
PHD Art
Art criticism mediates directly between art and the public, determining which artworks are valorised and which are forgotten. Yet, whilst criticism is recognised as powerful, it is often regarded as an ancillary discipline, entirely dependant on art practice. Whilst art constitutes the object of criticism, it is my belief this relationship is fundamentally symbiotic as successful criticism determines an artwork’s meaning and significance. An artwork devoid of critical interpretation is one that almost lacks semantic content; an artwork surrounded by such interpretation is one which has its semantic content enriched. What I find attractive about art criticism is its capacity to facilitate crossover between art and other disciplines. Successful criticism is not content to remain contained within the context of an artwork, but draws its conceptual resources from outside this context in order to disrupt and challenge it. All criticism which is successful confronts the artwork with alien concepts in an effort to incite it to become relevant, significant, and meaningful. Many of these alien concepts have been developed in philosophy, and I believe that when such concepts have been incorporated into criticism the results have been extremely productive. Whilst evidently art history informs our understanding of contemporary art, the first part of my project will suggest that this understanding can be enriched and reinvigorated by using concepts outside of this history. I will begin by looking at how the concept of sensation has been adopted by criticism, and how it has been used as an exegetical tool to help understand post-war and contemporary art. Sensation is a concept which has featured prominently in French philosophy, particularly in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Cézanne’s work and in Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of the work of Francis Bacon. I will suggest that as sensation is autonomous from art history, it illustrates how art can be understood and appreciated without a comprehensive knowledge of the history of art.
Goldsmiths Graduate, BA Fine Art and Contemporary Critical Studies
The works I am bringing for the convener were made following an invitation from Elizabeth Croft and Jan Kjetil Bjørheim to show at their gallery in the old train station at Brusand, a small village on the windy south west coast of Norway, close to sandy beaches and main agricultural areas.
The works are inspired by the protected station and the surrounding landscape. The building’s interior is unusual. The wallpaper from the 60’s is intact, making the space a time capsule from when it was a ticket office and waiting room.
The area has different historical sights in the landscape. Anti tank defenses on the beach, known as Hitler’s teeth stand like overgrown spikes along the road, hidden in the grass, burying that which is there.The paintings are based on erosion of various elements in the gallery and the area around Brusand. They are made from a combination of techniques; painting, printing and photography. Inspired by thoughts of the time it takes to erode memories, memorials and landscape, to alter and disintegrate them.
PG Cert Photography
I am a recent PG Cert Photography graduate from Central Saint Martins. My current practise concentrates on photography within a fine art context.
This series is an exploration of the experience of pushing personal boundaries and releasing inhibitions within the context of the psychological concept of the shadow.
Using equipment currently underutilised in professional photography such as home-made pinhole cameras and a compact digital camera and techniques such as long exposures, I aspire to capture raw emotional narratives. The colour images are images taken in late night clubs when subjects are uninhibited and unaware of the camera.
The pinhole photography images are portraits taken in the private setting of the bedroom. The images portray a narrative where the subject simultaneously becomes better acquainted with herself and her different states of mind.