Spain

This was a four day group project focussed on creating work based on our course inputs on artifice, site and place. During our presentation we spoke about our week long “trip” to spain, showing photographs, postcards and souvenirs from our travels. We also recounted interesting anecdotes about the journey. In the evening we organized an event around the “Spain” trip, exhibiting prints of our tourist photographs, postcards and a video of our journey to the airport. We also sold “Spanish” food, beer and candy to recover the cost of printing and attract a wider audience.

At the Loarre Castle, in Huesca, Spain

Projecting on Textures

Stumbling on the photograph below inspired me to explore projections on outdoor urban surfaces such as cement. The massive pillars give shape and personality to the projected paintings, changing their meaning.

“An extraordinary exhibition held in former bauxite mines in Provence. The hollow caves and pillars are used to project images, constantly changing and overlapping each other.” Photo and description by dorsetlass @ flickr.

Pier Stockholm

Pier Stockholm: Born in Peru, works and lives in Paris. “Pier Stockholm re-creates chaos in an apparent aesthetically ordered manner” (Julia Van Hagen, ArtStanding. Oct. 2010).

Drawings. Indian Ink & glass paint on paper vegetal. 2008
Visit image source

Detail: Metal by Pier Stockholm.

The theme of chaos vs. order is an important aspect of the Mumbai panorama’s and I intend to explore it in some detail.

Exhibition

My visit to Tate Britain and the V&A in London was helpful in several ways. First off, Fiona Banner’s work Harriet and Jaguar made a huge impact on me. The fighter jets looked beautiful and awe inspiring, especially because of the way they were placed in the museum gallery. In a way she has transformed them so that it’s difficult to remember that these are deadly machines: war planes used to kill people.

Another image from Fiona Banner called Top Gun (1994), this is a close-up I’ve taken. It interested me because of the way it pulls you in and persuades you to read more.

Inverse Reverse Perverse (1996) by Cerith Wyn Evans at the Tate, London

Inversions (1966) by Mary Martin

Structure 14c (1961) by Stephen Gilbert, at the Tate London.

Of all the work by Eadward Muybridge that was exhibited, Panorama of San Francisco from Street Hill (1878) was the one that came closest to affecting my practice as an artist. The idea of a landscape or panorama of the city of Mumbai had been churning in my head for a while, and experiencing this work at this scale helped me focus on the concept as a method of depicting a rich space. The landscape format reveals more of the city than what is seen normally, or parts of the city like they have never been seen before; a disillusioned and yet enlightened reinterpretation of a physical urban space. I will explore the landscape format in more detail in a later post.

Update (8th Dec): Photo documentation of more exhibitions I’ve visisted here.