At this stage in my practice, I have been considering a range of experiences that I can respond to in a meaningful, artistic way. I often find myself in conversation with some of the more vulnerable members of our society, those who are homeless, struggling with various personal issues or just 'atypical' in some way. Many of these individuals have become good friends, and I find that some of the ideas of isolation, disenfranchisement and loneliness are actually not by any means limited to such situations as theirs but are in fact fairly unanimous among everyone. I was thinking about materials that could symbolise such feelings - metal, concrete, a sleeping bag. Emblems of the modern nomad and the struggles that some of us face. The use of the sleeping bag and the name BUM is by no means representative of homelessness, but instead serves as both a frank reminder of our own experiences with isolation and the clichés that are projected on the incredibly varied lives of vulnerable, lonely and displaced individuals. There is a definite critical link to be made between BUM and Gavin Turk's Nomad (http://gavinturk.com/artworks/image/270). But, whilst Turk's sleeping bag is a visual illusion, painted bronze made to appear as fabric, my sculpture remains very much set within a DIY aesthetic - I am not trying to deceive the audience, but to present a very raw interpretation of the images and the materials allude to.
In this piece, religious iconography is rendered kitsch, back dropped by a decorative rug, an item that similarly was once a sign of taste and high culture but is now in perfect with the clichéd domestic environment, as tacky an object of the 21st century home as the fridge magnets that are fixed to it. The angelic name of Gabriel is rearranged to become the arbitrary phrase 'be a girl' as the viewer tries to project some kind of semiotic bond between the objects. After reading MY NAME IS CHARLES SAATCHI AND I AM AN ARTOHOLIC, there were a few points about the nature of contemporary art, its philosophies and its business that I wanted to reflect on:
Many artists achieve iconic status by dying before their work has a chance to dwindle into stale repetition - a phenomena I have been interested in throughout my practice; how can an artist continue to stir interest and appear to yield originality? Some die, some seem to provoke and toy with offensiveness (think Shock of the New). I choose to work in the context that originality is not longer the key in this post-post-modernist arena, but instead a focus on the way ideas, themes and aesthetics can be reprocessed, reconsidered and revisited. Mediocrity can be taken for brilliance rather more than genius can go undiscovered - The reality that some of the most brilliant creative minds are often misunderstood or overlooked for a long period of time (Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock and Ray Johnson to name a few). This both serves as a reason not to become despondent when your own work falls short of the expectations of others but also as a realistic outlook on the fickle nature of the art business. There's a squad of conservators out there to look after anything an artist decides is art - the authority an artist holds, to express themselves in any way imaginable and have unwavering confidence in the value of their own work Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on I used to feel a little depressed whenever I visited an artist in one of those buildings housing 50 or so of those artists' studios, knowing that 49 of those artists would rarely get a visitor of much help to their careers Leave me a note if you think that anything there [his USA Today show] is truly more tasteless than so much we see around us every day and Some people like the art, some people like being shocked by it - the discussion of taste, the misconception that the primary function of works such as Terence Koh's Medusa (http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/terence_koh_medusa_toilet.htm) is to shock and offend when in fact most often they are reflecting the surrounding culture and musing on its absurdities |
Archives
October 2018
|