⁕ Site specific art ⁕
Group tutorial ~ Tuesday
This week I was absent because of feeling unwell but I caught up on blackboard. I read through the slides of ‘Location as Media’, and liked the idea of how something can lose or kill its meaning if it was taken away from its original location. I also was interested exploring installation art, which creates an immersive ambience for the audience, by capturing their attention more easily than a drawing or painting can. In the past, I’ve heavily relied and done 2D work, so I want to expand that, even if it doesn’t go to plan. I’ve never done anything like sculpting before, but doing creative arts makes me want to explore more ways of creating art, than just stubbornly sticking to what I know.
Research: Focus on nature and land art
Land art is a form of art that uses natural landscapes or natural materials like parts of trees, grass, soil etc, and creates impressions directly onto the landscape, sculpting the land into an artwork. I think its an important way of connecting to the earth as well as creating something from that connection in the end. It also challenges the conventional idea that art should belong in a gallery.
This week, I looked up several land artists, and came across the work of Fina Miralles, a Spanish artist, who’s work is marked by her connection to nature, reflection of the artificial and natural, and the barrier between animals and humans. She explores and questions concepts of belonging, women’s power and identity through her poetry and art pieces. She replaces herself with trees (partially underground) or animals (in cages) and asks the question of what is understood to be ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’. What is kept in a cage and why? I’m very drawn to her symbolic work and her determination to show her inner search and self-knowledge. Her perspective on nature and political views really spoke to me and gave me a strong understanding with what I want to achieve through this project and onwards.
“A cloud is water and air,
Rain is water and air,
Lightning is fire, cloud and air,
A bird is air, earth and water.
A cloud is when no longer
a cloud is rain,
Rain, river; the river is
the sea; the sea is a cloud.”
Fina Miralles. Notebook, no.1
Moodboard
We were tasked to make a mood board, condensing our visual styles and current interests with photographs and artwork that we liked. I tried to summarise certain states and things I wanted to explore this year, for example, the tree growing over the fence = how nature is consuming, and I really like how David Lynch uses different overlays over his characters, in a way making them disappear from their bodies and become places, which creates the feeling as if the place is possessing or consuming the person (Fwwm, 1992) or either the person is absorbing/becoming it, (Suspiria, 2018)
Class Exercise
Since I wasn’t here for the tutorial or to complete any of the exercises in class, when I felt better, I went to the woods outside my house and took a picture of this interesting tree stump as my focus to document. I chose this because of how deeply it was hollowed out to make a tunnel or burrow of some sort (kind of wonderland-esque too). I thought about if an animal lived there and what it must feel like to be hidden and submerged underground. Would it be claustrophobic or comforting?
Jerry Uelsmann
2 artists that inspire me…