How does one place oneself in mythologized histories, fictionalised depictions of the present and projections of the future.
The placement of the self, as a very loose idea, is fractured and commonly misunderstood. It is not the same as anthropomorphism, but works along similar lines of understanding. Where anthropomorphism seeks to gift objects with human characteristics, dwarfing them to the limits of the human form and mind; placement allows the viewer to leave themselves and look back at how they might behave in a wider context. The individual’s character is not left behind, but cited directly in an alien object.
This method of viewing is a highly personal one and demands that the viewer seek to understand themselves in front of and within the piece.
In answering the above question (or a very similar one), I shall draw on my knowledge of the Science-Fiction genre, using texts that glimpse pasts, presents and futures; that could be, are not and never were. Most prominent in my investigation shall be the character of Deckard, the protagonist in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and his highly different depiction in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner. Deckard is human, therefore one would expect people to empathise with him and his job of killing dangerous androids; but this is not the case – Deckard is a murderer, an anti-hero who must take life. Questions arise here of who we are cheering for, who we believe to be morally right. Bladerunner is set in a dystopian future, therefore we can conclude that the ‘changing moral zeitgeist’, as Dawkins would have it, has moved on, the ideas of right and wrong have changed. How does one seek to cite oneself here?
The Futurists Edward Wadsworth and Wyndham Lewis, along with the conceptual-architects of Archigram provide a more visual and theoretical prompt to a projected future, one which provides us with an object based context – are these ideas to be aspired for, or left as ideals? Do they say more about the times in which they were made than the times they may well depict, or does it go further than that? Do projects of the future tell us about a context’s past?
Orwell’s 1984 contains the lovely quotation: ‘he who controls the present control the future, he who controls the future controls the past’. My concern with the idea of the past shall mainly centre on the fictitious Aryan Race, an ideal for the future being projected back into history.
A fictionalised present seems to be my main stumbling block, as of yet I understand this as a distorted present, an uncanny one where things slightly err away from the real. The work of Rachel Whiteread and Cindy Sherman lend themselves to investigation of the personal as universal and the ‘playing with known forms’ to disorientate or question the viewer’s viewing.
22/05/2008
09/05/2008
Done
Viv asked me to meet with him in his studio space for this interview. This seemed logical as his many catalogues and books are kept there and his little niche has a nice communal atmosphere to it. But his reasoning for talking within his working space goes further than its convenience.
The place, not the context, in which Viv works is one of the greatest influences on his practice. Context for him seems to be too large and set a thing to work with;
“I’m really affected by the environment I work in, who I’m with, small things that might have happened to me. I’m affect by that very moment, that’s where my interest lies.”
In less capable hands this method of working could end up as a skittish mess of tired and overdone themes, but Viv deals aptly with the amount of freedom that his practice allows him.
“I’ve always though that an artist is someone who works without context or reference and a critic is someone who works with.”
Viv is at ease within his space, two white walls and a white fall. For means of exhibition the studio floor is re-painted grey every year, but I’m sure something of Viv’s highly active work will remain. The small space has been constantly changing throughout the year, gaining and losing semi-permanent frames and anchorages. These have been made from such varied materials as wood, parcel-tape, and paper to name three; but none of these have worked as add-ons or backdrops, within Viv’s more recent work there is less of a distinction between body and surround – something he is quick to note,
“There used to be some form of camouflage in my work… but in moving away from this I am able to loose the body to a better effect in the objects around it…there is no presidency of one object.”
Figures are used throughout Viv’s work and I mention to him the idea of the personal being universal. “I see myself as a prop.” he says and I take this to mean not only as a figure in the work, but as a practitioner as well. He uses himself, his skills and the material with which he works as symbiotic aids. He seems like the kind of artist who would be able to surprise himself, to learn from merely doing. This comes across when he talks about a recent foray of his.
Several large wooden frames were constructed in his space to make a corridor like shape in which one was able to move. On each of the frames was placed a mesh of tape in a random grid. Viv then walked naked through the passage collecting layers of tape on his body has he went.
Now the wrapping of the body is nothing new in his work, but the rediscovery of it is, to my mind, key to Viv’s practice. There is a beautiful production still of some work of his from maybe a year ago, where someone is wrapping the artist. He is stood as someone else applies a long coloured bandage to him. Only part of Viv’s head can be seen, a sideways glance as he looses his individuality to become a body. But this new form of wrapping, this active, striding wrapping finishes with a similar ‘end’ but is so vastly different in its production to him being stationary and passive that one engages wholly with the process and not the outcome.
“(the process) is so ambiguous and so many questions are raised from it that any point can be taken and displayed in its own right.”
Recently Viv has taken to using a more low-fi and immediate approach to capturing his work. Where once he would have used a photography studio to tweak and redo ‘images’ he now carries a digital camera with him and reacts to the photographs he takes and not the ones he would like to have taken. I ask him if this is in preparation for the future, for surviving outside of the institution.
“oh yes, if I make work in a place where I’ve never work before, I want to be able to almost leave it there and take my reaction away from it.”
Viv’s initial fresh aesthetic and constant self-discovery are where my love of his work lies. There is nothing turgid or over done and any thematic message is never blatant. The work is not trying to say something merely trying to say.
R B Grange
The place, not the context, in which Viv works is one of the greatest influences on his practice. Context for him seems to be too large and set a thing to work with;
“I’m really affected by the environment I work in, who I’m with, small things that might have happened to me. I’m affect by that very moment, that’s where my interest lies.”
In less capable hands this method of working could end up as a skittish mess of tired and overdone themes, but Viv deals aptly with the amount of freedom that his practice allows him.
“I’ve always though that an artist is someone who works without context or reference and a critic is someone who works with.”
Viv is at ease within his space, two white walls and a white fall. For means of exhibition the studio floor is re-painted grey every year, but I’m sure something of Viv’s highly active work will remain. The small space has been constantly changing throughout the year, gaining and losing semi-permanent frames and anchorages. These have been made from such varied materials as wood, parcel-tape, and paper to name three; but none of these have worked as add-ons or backdrops, within Viv’s more recent work there is less of a distinction between body and surround – something he is quick to note,
“There used to be some form of camouflage in my work… but in moving away from this I am able to loose the body to a better effect in the objects around it…there is no presidency of one object.”
Figures are used throughout Viv’s work and I mention to him the idea of the personal being universal. “I see myself as a prop.” he says and I take this to mean not only as a figure in the work, but as a practitioner as well. He uses himself, his skills and the material with which he works as symbiotic aids. He seems like the kind of artist who would be able to surprise himself, to learn from merely doing. This comes across when he talks about a recent foray of his.
Several large wooden frames were constructed in his space to make a corridor like shape in which one was able to move. On each of the frames was placed a mesh of tape in a random grid. Viv then walked naked through the passage collecting layers of tape on his body has he went.
Now the wrapping of the body is nothing new in his work, but the rediscovery of it is, to my mind, key to Viv’s practice. There is a beautiful production still of some work of his from maybe a year ago, where someone is wrapping the artist. He is stood as someone else applies a long coloured bandage to him. Only part of Viv’s head can be seen, a sideways glance as he looses his individuality to become a body. But this new form of wrapping, this active, striding wrapping finishes with a similar ‘end’ but is so vastly different in its production to him being stationary and passive that one engages wholly with the process and not the outcome.
“(the process) is so ambiguous and so many questions are raised from it that any point can be taken and displayed in its own right.”
Recently Viv has taken to using a more low-fi and immediate approach to capturing his work. Where once he would have used a photography studio to tweak and redo ‘images’ he now carries a digital camera with him and reacts to the photographs he takes and not the ones he would like to have taken. I ask him if this is in preparation for the future, for surviving outside of the institution.
“oh yes, if I make work in a place where I’ve never work before, I want to be able to almost leave it there and take my reaction away from it.”
Viv’s initial fresh aesthetic and constant self-discovery are where my love of his work lies. There is nothing turgid or over done and any thematic message is never blatant. The work is not trying to say something merely trying to say.
R B Grange
03/05/2008
01/05/2008
WHITEREAD TWO
W’s and h’s practices share similarities of process. Not the process of making – cast and carving, as I have already said are almost binary opposites – but have sudden realisation have influenced their work. For Hepworth is was the ‘discovery’ of the hole, this breaking through to make an object of the space within the work, that after its first occurrence in Hepworth’s oeuvre remained a constant until her sudden death in 1975. The pierced for become for Hepworth a signature but not a bain or albatross. The freedom of modernist sculpture allowed her to explore her own work, not revisiting existing pieces, but looking again at how it was she came to work in the way she did. The carved form was not, by Hepworth’s own omission, not her’s – she did not work her tools against the grain, but merely moved them where the rock or woood would let her. The hole then, was something that would have naturally come about.
W’s equivalent hole would obviously be the cast of negative space, which too came about in the sudden and suprising way. What comedians might call the ‘pull-back-and-reveal’ happen for W with her first architectural piece Ghost…
R B Grange
W’s equivalent hole would obviously be the cast of negative space, which too came about in the sudden and suprising way. What comedians might call the ‘pull-back-and-reveal’ happen for W with her first architectural piece Ghost…
R B Grange
WHITEREAD ONE
This is a some writing for an essay, it is not good yet.
Whiteread, as any artist with a sculptural practice working in the twentieth century fits awkwardly into the ideas of modernism that lasted throughout that time. Modernism and its massive duality gives us a glimpse into the two fasets of the artist as a practitioner. The first; the individual pursuit – that an artist’s endevour within their own work is paramount to their understanding of art history and the context in which they find themselves. The second is material based and posses the question of worthiness.
If we cite W’s practice along side Brancusi (1876-1957) and Hepworth (1903-1975) this fracturing of modernism becomes apparent. One might argue that W’s work is post-modern and therefore very different in reaction from hepworth to Brancusi, but to my understand post-modernism is very much part of modernism.
Brancusi’s influence of hepworth is best seen in the manipulation of materials. Figuratiy Western sculpture at the end of 1800s was a process of casting. Figures would be made in clay and a cast made from them, the artwork being a bronze stationary figure. These strong static shapes were played with by Rodin capturing the motion from one position to another, but the process remained as solid as ever. Carving was the preserve of sculptors in marble, an adusoiuus process that left no room for mistake and had not been seen in contempory sculture for hundreds of years.
R B Grange
Whiteread, as any artist with a sculptural practice working in the twentieth century fits awkwardly into the ideas of modernism that lasted throughout that time. Modernism and its massive duality gives us a glimpse into the two fasets of the artist as a practitioner. The first; the individual pursuit – that an artist’s endevour within their own work is paramount to their understanding of art history and the context in which they find themselves. The second is material based and posses the question of worthiness.
If we cite W’s practice along side Brancusi (1876-1957) and Hepworth (1903-1975) this fracturing of modernism becomes apparent. One might argue that W’s work is post-modern and therefore very different in reaction from hepworth to Brancusi, but to my understand post-modernism is very much part of modernism.
Brancusi’s influence of hepworth is best seen in the manipulation of materials. Figuratiy Western sculpture at the end of 1800s was a process of casting. Figures would be made in clay and a cast made from them, the artwork being a bronze stationary figure. These strong static shapes were played with by Rodin capturing the motion from one position to another, but the process remained as solid as ever. Carving was the preserve of sculptors in marble, an adusoiuus process that left no room for mistake and had not been seen in contempory sculture for hundreds of years.
R B Grange
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