Turner Contemporary pt.3

Wow.. Alot can happen in three years.. It seems like I'm a completely new person, the only thing remaining from when i launched back in 2011 was that i was studying art. I'm at a new adress, at university, in a new band (http://www.facebook.com/WinterFloweringPansies), and have a new bunch of friends - well, that would be expected wouldnt it?..

I'm writing to update you on exhibition #3 at the Turner Contemporary in Margate (however, chances are you can't go, cos it ends on the 7th of this month). The gallery was split in 2, with a Hamish Fulton exhibition (old works and new), and a possibly more fitting exhibition of the man himself, JMW Turner. Also on display was August Rodin's The Kiss, which is set to leave on 02/09/12.

I wasn't really into anything i saw when i visited last tuesday (although i did do about 6 laps of The Kiss). I started up the main stairs, and was greeted by a gigantic wall work of Fulton's, documenting one of several walks he'd been on. There was more like this one in the three rooms of the gallery he'd had. I wasnt really taken by these - i guess i found it hard to link the large plastic letters adhered to the wall with the sometimes week-long walks that the pieces were talking about. There were a dozen or so smaller works situated on one wall - some as old as the seventies, some more recent. These were far better in my opinion, than the large works. Some were just painted pieces of lollipop stick-sized wood nailed directly to the wall, some were made during his time as a student at Central Saint Martins. (Can't upload image for some reason.. Here it is http://peterfoolen.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/hamish-fulton-galleri-riis-stockholm.html)

Then there was Turner. Very fitting for This gallery as on it's site used to be a bed and breakfast turner would stay in frequently. Apparently the light of the sky from Thanet is unlike any other, as theres nothing in its way 'til the north pole.. Or something. So yeah, alot of the paintings in this exhibition would've been paintes only a few metres away from where they're displayed.. I'll be honest with you, i didny pay much attention to this bit - i went to a watercolour exhibition at Tate Britain not so long ago, so i was all Turner'd out! There were some beautifully simple paintings of horizon's, coastlines and night times though..

Next up is a big Tracey Emin exhibition, of new work. Which is also very fitting for margate, and that opens 26/05/12, so we'll see.. I'll keep you posted

Ciao xXx

ERR... Hello??

Wow.. forgot i had this! I think i'm gonna start using it again.
I'm not gonna report anything today tho.. that'd be CRAZYY!!

My Love Affair With A Fabric Sex Doll...

Yesterday morning i started my final piece. It was a toss up between a series of watercolour stills of porno movies and a 1:1 fabric replica of the sex doll made from discarded women's clothes. After asking my classmates which one they preferred (and considering what could be displayed in the central space at the exhibition, where under 18yr olds will be around), i went for the doll...

So this is it - the project (and the year) nearly over!!. I've still got a bit of sketchbook work to do, and i need to find an old T.V. stand, but i'm doing okay for time. I've already got the head, chest and one arm completed. and one leg and one arm is halfway done.

Sewing this doll together is strange. I'm being very careful, like after i finish it will be alive...

Update:

So we're nearly at the end of the project, and all is going well...
I'm finishing up my initial ideas, they're really varied, it's great. One idea i had was to create watercolour paintings of stills from porno movies. I really like this idea, it's number 1, closely followed by a sex doll made out of reclaimed fabric, scale 1:1.
 I created this a couple of days ago, from thin neon-style bendable tubing bought on Ebay. It was developed from a rough drawing of the love doll half deflated with its legs in the air. The process was inspired by the way Tracey Emin uses neon to draw with.

Here's a really bad video, from my mobile fone -  it should be rotated once clockwise - i cant work out how to do it :S...

The SCI-FI genre - dominated by men!

Turner Contemporary

  Just over one month old, the Turner Contemporary is the newest gallery in the UK. Last weekend i went there, to look at Revealed: Turner Contemporary Opens, the first show.
  The artists displayed all had one thing in common: the influences in their work could all be drawn back to Turner. The art as a whole, and the gallery, was brilliant, but three artists stood out for me, Daniel Buren, with Borrowing and Multiplying the Landscape, Work in Situ, Mirrors, Self-adhesive vinyl, Yellow filter, 2011

 This work made great use of what the area already had to offer - a fantastic clean new gallery, and of course a beautiful coastline.

 Next up was what i can only describe as the highlight of my year! Limit of Everything, 2011 by Conrad Shawcross. Constructed from metal, oak, lights and powered by a mechanical system, the work looks at science, geometry and music. This is a kinetic sculpture of a chord in music. I sat in the room for at least 45 minutes! Heres a video i took of it:

Lastly, we have Ellen Harvey's Arcadia, Mixed media, 2011. This piece looked very intimately at Brighton, where the new gallery is located. As well as a projection of the sea including sound, and 6ft letters spelling ARCADIA, a room was built within the room. This is the part i'm going to talk about. The room was not lit from above, or with spotlights, or in any other conventional way. Inside there were lots of (i didnt get the exact number - at least 20) clear persex sheets, backed with black, and etched into them were views of margate, put together to make a 360degree experience. It was quite breathtaking:

I learnt that, although you have a starting point, (and in this case six artists had the same starting points), the outcome can shoot off in an unexpected direction.

As well as attending a perspex engraving workshop, I bought the book - a bit pricey at £20 but i figure it'll be a kind of souvenir. I'm definitely going back to this gallery!

RASHBLOG 26/05: My legs are now painfully prickly, as is EVERYTHING downstairs. There are small red dots on my underarms now - not as many as the ones surrounding my privates.

METALWORK UPDATE!!:   IT FELL THROUGH!! I sent the artist a text message, being really nice,  but i didn't get a reply. I've adapted a screen print from the same idea, and during the holidays i'll be creating the 2 sculptures anyway, using glue and solder for the metal one.

RazorBurn Blues...(and reds,and tiny black lines)

 On Sunday I decided to go ahead with an idea I’d been weighing up for a few days. In order to reverse the roles of 'Macho hairy men' and 'Pretty hairless women’, and the abuse that comes with being the opposite, I shaved off all my body hair. This piece of performance art is accompanied by a spice jar containing the hair once attached to my body and a set of photographs of my hairless body.
 Part of the art is the reaction it evokes. My female feminist friends tell me that the response to them not shaving their body hair tends to be something along the lines of 'EWWWW THATS FUCKING DISGUSTING!!' As WE ALL know, body hair isn’t an unhygienic thing - it minimizes sweat and rash.
This successful piece of art is titled Hairiness is next to Furriness - an adapted quote from The Female Eunuch.


Hairiness if Furiness, Glass, Plastic, Human Hair



RASHBLOG day 1 (Sunday 22/05): Removing my hair with a disposable razor was unbelievably painful. Once finished, I noticed my increased perspiration, so I applied roll on deodorant - woops. It stung like hell!! Although the shave was close, it wasn’t close enough - I’m covered in spiky hairs (its especially painful downstairs...). I cut myself 13 times.
RASHBLOG day 2: When my legs experience too much friction the cuts open again.
RASHBLOG day 3: I'm noticing tiny red spots around the newly grown stubble around my pubis and the tops of my thighs. Some of them are filled with pus - I guess they're infected...
RASHBLOG day 4 (today - Wednesday 25/05): Moving today is painful-really painful. The hair is downstairs is a couple of millimetres long now. I've tried several creams and ointments, nothing helps. I anticipate at least a week of this pain...