where are you? I have been enjoying your blog..are you coming back?
Congratulations to Belinda on winning the National Student Art Glass Prize. Have a ball at Northlands!
James Elkins, author, critic, professor is editing a book that will be a compilation of writing about art by graduate students.
“This is a collaborative book project, authored by graduate students from around the world. We are writing a “next-generation” anthology of texts and images for the study of visuality. The book has an unusual organization: instead of chapters or sections, we have Nodes and Perforations. Most of the book will be comprised of 100 Topics, each one between 3 and 4 pages long. Each Topic will include a text excerpt (for example, something by Judith Butler), an image (for instance, a performance art piece), and an introduction (written by you).” http://visualreader.pbworks.com/
Elkins is the author of “What happened to Art Criticism’ and the wonderful “Pictures and Tears” as well as “Artists with Phds” which features ANU’s own brilliant head of painting Ruth Waller’s Phd essay. Graduate students get cracking!
On Friday we were treated to review, in person of the Ranamock exhibit. The debate was lively and some questions about jurying, display, exhibition hosting, curating, quality, were, if not answered, at least addressed in a way as to spawn further discussion.
One question that stayed with me was “Why don’t the best glass artists in Australia enter?”
One answer was the fear of guilt by association. The famous Nick Mount, whose career is already well established in Australia and abroad, has little to loose, but, it was felt, for a lesser known artist, who takes their work seriously, being in an exhibition of such inconsistent quality can be a really bad career move. The wrong alignments at an early point in your career can be career breaking it was felt. All though there is something to be said for the “no publicity is the only bad publicity” approach; that just getting your work out there was a step in the right direction, a sentiment most likely held by artists whose careers are just beginning.
Another discussion topic was who were the judges and what were their backgrounds?
Questions arose as to whether or not these folks really understood contemporary glass and contemporary art, but without viewing the “Salon des Refusés,” it would be hard to judge, just what the judges could judge, if you get my drift.
The criterion for acceptence into the exhibition were clearly stated in the catalogue “excellence and innovation.” We discussed if these criterion had been met. The subject got a little sticky in the excellence area… ok in the innovation area too. Some felt that excellence would have precluded the inclusion of a piece with a lot of cracks in it, wanting to know “what were the judges thinking when they decided to to show that work?”
The concept of innovation may have been even more troublesome. How do you know if the artist is being innovative within their own career if you aren’t familiar with their work already? If you are not well educated as to what is going on in the world of glass how can you know that a work is innovative within the field? And was anything there innovative as far as the field of fine art was concerned? But it was pointed out that this was a glass award, not a fine art award, or even a glass art award.
One piece that we looked at extensively was the boomerang candle holder “Eternal Gardening” by Dorde (George) Drobac, Nollamara, WA. Previously this piece had been commented on in this blog as a possible spoof on the kitsch of contemporary glass. It was discoverd, in looking at it further and in reading the catalogue that, no it was in fact not a parody piece or a piece commenting on kitsch but was the very embodiment of it.
Another work looked at closely was “Isobar” by Dominic Burrell
Wanganui, New Zealand. Many pointed out that the bubbles in the piece were problematic to them, which made some of the instructors a little week in the knees, perhaps they had been pushing that point a little too hard? Another issue with this work, for those who had seen lots of glass work around the world, was that this work did not stand out as particularly innovative or unique. Lots of people are doing, multi-layered blown vessels, and most of them are selling their work in mom n’ pop craft stores, not in museum shops let alone showing in museums. Some liked the work, for its simplicity of form and zen qualities, and for it’s push and pull of material.
The discussion of the wining piece “Across the Lines” by Lisa Walsh, Waverley, South Taranaki, New Zealand
raised more questions than it answered ( or maybe that was really the case with every piece we discussed?) Was this piece chosen because of it’s Australia specific image? A monument to an important historical event? Did the judges see the work in person before awarding it or did they just go off the photograph? It was agreed that the reading of the two was extremely different: the photo making the work look much more coherent and well crafted, while in person the display had slipped adding some unpleasant angles and showed every pimple. Many positive things were brought up about the piece: the artist’s unconventional use of the material, the work’s folk-craft aspect, the tricky image shift that occurs when viewing through such thick hand worked pieces of glass. But the literalness of the work, it’s blatant use of narrative, was problematic for some: give us some credit we can figure things out, its poor construction and lack of attention to detail, all made many surprised that it was the winner, though many agreed that the artist would probably go on to put the money to good use as she develops her career. We didn’t ask the important question however: If this is Ranamock, what does it mean?
And the final work that time was spent on was “Cocoon” by
Masaki Kawanabe, North Manly, NSW. The final piece was chosen for discussion because some folks felt that it was the likely winner. Unfortunately at this point in time the authors brain shut off, and what was said about this piece is a big foggy. It was nice though, but I think someone said it reminded them of what they don’t like of much contemporary glass, “The Big Paper Weight Aesthetic.
Then we went and had beer.
Please if you have any thoughts, inclusions or corrections , thoughts about the last piece that I slept through, or comments about for the Ranamock Committee, post them here anonymously, or send them to me, and I will post them DOUBLE ANONYMOUSLY. Start your own thread, or not. Enter next year or don’t. But don’t stop thinking about what makes good glass art.
I am a pretty big apostate when it comes to Material Safety and Data Sheets, I kinda pay attention to them, but I pretty much work with materials that I am comfortable with and try not to get too much stuff on my skin. (ok I am actually a disaster in this respect at times, please liver, forgive me) BUT that said, everyone should read the MSDS that come with the materials that they are using. BUT don’t stop there! The internet is great resource for information about all sorts of crazy ass projects, and how NOT to kill yourself doing them. Don’t just check out one website, check 10! That can give you a pretty good idea what to expect. Like today I read all about life casting and how skin safe silicon sticks to hair! Fancy that. And it took me all of 3 minutes to find that out. But anyway… people…all people… wear your bike helmets and read your safety info and follow the directions. AND ALWAYS CROSS CHECK (no not cross-dress) your directions just might be a bad translation from Chinese or something.
Hey and a great place for getting instructions on making stuff is at Instructables.com, but once again don’t try something you read there as gospel, do a little more research before you make yourself a high voltage cat fence or whatever.
Monitor Hack – Security System! – Awesome video clips here
I heart instructables.
Let’s face it, Western cultural thoughts and preformances get filed by building: Museum, gallery, Craft gallery. But that same object can be in all, just looked at and exhibited differently.
Here’s a quote from one of the judges of the National Youth Self Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery (to 13 Sept). He also teaches part time at Sydney College of the Arts;
‘ ” ‘We were really won over by works that drew you into the artist’s world. Works with a strong concept behind them are engaging, but ultimately it was the works that seamlessly combine imagery, process and concept into a moving experience that really stood out.” ‘
Stuart Bailey
Can’t something that is made thoughtfully and has some thing to say, be put any where?
If the issue is what type of positive criticism should be offered in crits, Wouldn’t that just come from the comparison of what the maker wants from their work and what the viewers get.
Brooks defines art as ‘ a cultural Gell summarises current definitions of Western art is into the 1. aesthetic 2. interpretive (able to be analysed in terms of content, context and historic precedents) or 3. institutional.( the art world decides). However Brooks suggest something is art if it contains a neme
‘… a [sometimes new] purposeful action [or performance] undertaken in a culturally recognised context.”
Gell, Alfred Vogel’s Net:Traps as Artworks and Art works as Traps, in Alfred Gell The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams Hirsch (ed) (London ; New Brunswick, NJ : Athlone Press, 1999) pp187-188
Donald Brooks The Awful Truth about Art (Ausralia: Artlink Australia, 2008) pp 28
Glass doesn’t have to reflect on any thing, it could be aethetique and a similie. ie this glss bol is like a shell ref: Gell theory no 1. Chihuly is in plenty of art gallery’s, Clare Belfrage in the NGA. Just depends what you want your mode of communication to do when you express your life and times.
‘The deeper the awareness the deeper the message will be and the more profound the essence is. So also, the more subtle the philosophy and the more complex the theoretical aspects behind the art work, that much more spiritual awareness and conscious self-awareness must be respectively present in order to realize that work of art.’
http://blog.absolutearts.com/blogs/archives/00000516.html
That quote was from the site Admin suggested below.
Some one said the artist’ the spiritual pinacle of the cultural triangle. (I think it was Kuhn or Hegel). Sounds like that blogger swallowed this one whole. Surely everone has some thing to say. the cleared you way it with your design, control of medium and focused thought, the easier it is for insitutions and buyers to like it and everyone to enjoy it.
Admin would like to note that for some reason this is being listed as posted by Eliza. Well it is not. It is by Umi.
You know this all has got me thinking. A lot. What are the criterion by which we judge what is good and what is bad art? Here is another blog that deals with this issue. Specifically with the work of an photographic memory savant who flies around in helicopters and does photorealist drawings of what he saw afterwords. You may wonder what this has to do with “THE CRITERION” but it does. Trust me. http://blog.absolutearts.com/blogs/archives/00000516.html
Just start at the bottom. The blog posts chronologically which is a little confusing and is not totally spam free.
Here is a video about the guy Stephen Whiltshire, that they are talking about.
What do you think? Ranamok
The word on the street is that we aren’t very impressed. If that is the case: Why? If not, defend it. It does seem to be fairly unanimous with the folks I talked to, that tastes lie elsewhere. But if they do, where are they sleeping?
