LISTEN: David Lynch - Good Day Today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IugOfDBWcGc
READ MORE: https://www.artsy.net/artist/david-lynch
"People have sometimes said my paintings suck". Known as the director of surrealist classic Eraserhead and cult TV series Twin Peaks, Lynch brings his cocktail of contemporary absurdity to the visual arts with his painting, drawing, photography and sculpture. He depicts ordinary objects, skewed in their portrayal to possess ephemeral, dream like qualities - the ordinary turned extraordinary (as I try to do with my use of found objects and imagery), combined with a poetry of disarming honesty (eat my fear, I see my love, memory head) . I think the aesthetic of David Lynch's artworks would lend itself to collage, with the way they appear to be composed of distinct elements and disproportions (At 3 A.M. I Am Here With The Red Dream is a good example of this). LISTEN: David Lynch - Good Day Today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IugOfDBWcGc READ MORE: https://www.artsy.net/artist/david-lynch
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Mathew Sawyer is a London based artist and musician. He creates drawings, ink paintings and sculpture, but it is his 'documentary works' that I am most interested in. Although utilizing visual elements, they are conceptual, concerned with interaction, intervention and reaction. They are socially minded, concerned with the idiosyncrasies of every day life, an interest in found objects and moments, driven by an awareness of popular culture. This is conceptual art at its most friendly. Post-modern in its subtleties and moments of quiet anarchism but deeply playful and inviting to others. LISTEN: Mathew Sawyer Daniel Johnston: an all American weirdo, a manic depressive and a truly singular talent. Johnston's unique brand of lo-fi folk coupled with cartoon imagery has attracted the attention of Nirvana, Sonic Youth and a legion of fans into the present day. His art and music depict the very real tribulations and triumphs of a creative individual. Although he is very much 'different', Daniel Johnston is not an outsider artist - he exhibits, he tours, he is aware of his own practice as an artist and dictates it to his own wish, making various connections to other artists and musicians along the way. For me, Johnston's story is one of triumphant optimism and celebration of the creative spirit. His work is emotionally raw, beautifully weird yet incredibly relatable. LISTEN: Daniel Johnston - Loner www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlhKXLhX7H8 Recently I took a trip to London to visit the Saatchi gallery and Tate Britain. Saatchi's current exhibition was Post Pop: East Meets West (http://www.saatchigallery.com/current/postpop.php), and at Tate Britain there was the BP Walk Through British Art, spanning 500 years although I was primarily interested in later 20th century/21st century works. The Turner Prize 2014 work was also being exhibited, but after prior research and discussion the exhibition seemed 'underwhelming', so I didn't view the work, although I do find Turner Prize nominee James Richard's work interesting. Some work I found particularly engaging during these visits are pictured below: SAATCHI - POST POP: EAST MEETS WEST TATE BRITAIN - BP WALK THROUGH ART Angus Fairhurst - "the partially forgotten one". A contemporary and friend of Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, Fairhurst never became such a household name. Often overshadowed by the news of his 2008 suicide, I feel his work has a lot more to offer than just a morbid backstory. I began researching Fairhurst after viewing his video work A Cheap and Ill-Fitting Gorilla Suit at Tate Britain. The artist is seen jumping around his studio, struggling with the inconvenience of the costume until he eventually tears his way out, emerging naked in a surreal metamorphosis from a cartoon-like ape to vulnerable man. It is this vulnerability I am interested in. It is not as evident as for example the explicitly sexual neuroses of Lucas' work or the deathly obsession of Hirst, but Fairhurst reveals to us an acute sense of humanity in all its confusion, absurdity and weakness. Through appropriating the symbol of the gorilla, the artist amuses us yet parodies our human nature in a series of opposites - we are intelligent yet can act so stupidly, we are civilised yet subject to animalistic desires, we are serious yet hilarious. In this way Fairhurst creates a subtle balance between the tragic and the comic, a balance which my practice is also concerned with - amusing an audience yet bringing experiences of a more intimate and emotional nature into discussion. He seamlessly combines a Dada sensibility (anti-art and anti-establishment - for example his piece Gallery Connections, in which two art collectors are forced to engage in a meaningless and confusing conversation with one another) with a Pop aesthetic - a seemingly illogical feat, but one which engages an audience on an immediate level with visual gags and every day imagery yet engages them with complex studies of individual human experience, the role of the artist and the futile absurdity of modern life around us, saturated with Fairhurst's unique blend of piercing satire, refreshing honesty and just enough ambiguity to keep us interested. |
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