Urban Botany Year 4 Semester 1

This 'found' image of Palm Jumeirah, Dubai, seen in the National Geographic has sparked this years project. Palm Jumeirah is a man-made island formed in the shape of a cultural icon, the palm tree. For me, the palm tree symbolises warm, tropical island holidays while also conjuring an image of a fertile oasis, a refuge. Research looks at man's manipulation of the environment and infrastructure dealing with utility services such as water supply, sewerage and wastewater.

This quote from Dorothy Sayers in 'Why Work' , struck a chord.

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.

My interpretation of Sayers' quote echoes the impact of wasteful consumption today. Artificial stimulation could very easily refer to the effects of the superficial, man-made urban metropolis, where population growth and consumption place huge demands on this hedonist oasis.

The urban botanist experiences the city. So how does Palm Jumeirah form an alliance with a local, lived experience here in Dunedin? The association of Palm Jumeirah to the oasis, and reclamation both of the land and in recycling of materials, generate notions of the act of draining in a transforming and transient landscape.

Newspaper is pulped and transformed into handmade paper with fragments of the newspaper visible and partially legible. Also, in recycling newspaper, layers are built up through collage, deleting or exposing bold text in the manner of pasted city posters. The newspaper dries, taking on the form of cylinders or tubes representing drains. Newspaper joiners are made creating a network of interconnecting drains.

Drains imply dirt - waste – abjection. Robert Gober's work, with his use of sinks, urinals and drains is Abject. These mundane objects present us with the banalities of life that according to Gober, flow beneath the everyday.

The relationship between abjection and the botanist is explored in studio practice through an urban inquisition in what is often regarded as repulsive - the socially less presentable function of drainage systems. Drains in the urban landscape are neglected, somewhat obscured vessels of waste facilitating effective disappearance of human presence. The regular, labour intensive process of papermaking in the studio has become a ritualistic undertaking, like daily ablutions of flushing and draining. The handmade paper incorporates shredded newspaper, disintegrated fragments of daily news, a palimpsest, blending into a mid-tone grey colour suggesting an urban, man-made landscape of concrete and asphalt.

Photographs record and document urban drains where weeds persist in waste spaces of the cultivated milieu, fertile urban oases. Manipulated into b/w images for screenprinting on handmade paper, a chiaroscuro effect, integrating a relationship between the creative process of reclaiming newspaper and prosaic imagery celebrates the overlooked.

Samples of photographs using the infra red filter to accentuate the plant life.

Transformed into black and white screen prints using mid tone grey hand made paper.

Size approximately A3

3000 word essay

Year 3, semester 1, essay 3

Contextualising my current art practice - excerpt

My current body of work in printmaking relates to a project involving the apple, the multiple and screenprinting, merging art, life and science. Through exploration and research I am looking at the subject of gleaning. The initial idea has evolved through my interest in self sufficiency. The concern for the depletion of fossil fuels, their impact on the environment through globalisation, food miles and the search for alternative energy has led me to investigate the role of the wilding apple trees. These grow on our roadsides producing apples that generally go to waste. Apples have the potential of becoming an alternative fuel in the form of alcohol, a project that is currently of interest to my partner, through which I am also involved.

With regard to gleaning, a major art historical reference is the painting titled The Gleaners by Jean Francois Millet. This work, depicting women in a field gleaning grain after the harvest, represents peasant life and contemporary social conditions. There is a powerful physical expression and poignancy in this work that signifies his concern for mankind, particularly an empathy with the poor or lower class. The women in Millet's painting are gleaning grain, however, it is the subject of crops not utilised for harvest, food that goes to waste, that is of interest to me.

Daniel Quinn in Beyond Civilization stated that making food a commodity to be owned was one of the great innovations of our culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key – and putting it there is the cornerstone of our economy, for if the food wasn't under lock and key who would work?1 In today's capitalist climate, this statement implies the fate of our troubled global economy. Quinn doesn't provide an answer, instead encourages us to become engaged in the world, and change our way of thinking in our working environment.

Jean Francois Millet, The Gleaners

Jelly label

1 Daniel Quinn. Beyond Civilization New York; Three Rivers Press. 1999, p5

Art & Language

Year 3, semester 1, essay 2

Excerpt

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak.1

Seeing establishes our place in the world. To communicate what and how we see we need a language. As a child, one way I learned about language was through illustrated picture books that combine alphabet, word and image. As I grew and gained a broader understanding of language through books, the images decreased. As an artist, I feel I am returning to the idea of the illustrated picture book, so that I may communicate my thoughts and ideas. By verbalising the visual, I engage in communication with other human beings, so they may see what I see. Language is the key for our understanding of art. Language also influences our perception of the world. This essay will explore the relationship between art and language to human beings, through perception and semiotics to enable me to contextualise my current art practice in printmaking.

Understanding language is the key to understanding or making sen se of things. The human life world is a world in which human beings are engaged with others. Through language, human beings are engaged in a world of meanings.

This sentence highlights our need to understand written language. By using Webdings, a dingbat font that renders letters as symbols, I imagine this sentence is meaningless to anyone untrained in the interpretation of Webdings.

Understanding language is the key to understanding or making sense of things. The human life world is a world in which human beings are engaged with others. Through language, human beings are engaged in a world of meanings.2

For me, art is a visual language. Conceptual art has opened the door to artistic freedom, engaging with others in the human life world. Artists can, through intersubjectivity in a shared world, express concerns that affect their social environment. The search for a better way of life is expressed in my work, through concerns for the care and protection of my children. I consider social issues, ranging from human impact in the global and local environment, to issues regarding consumption and sustainability. Works I reference, will be analysed in a social context as this has a bearing on my work, to allow you to see what I see.

1 John Berger. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 1972 p7

2 This sentence is the translation of the Webdings version

Warhol

Year 3, semester 1

Why ARE We Still Talking About Andy Warhol?

This essay focuses on the theme of repetition. According to Arthur C Danto, the pop artist reproduced as high art what everybody knew – the familiar things of the ordinary person's life world: comic strips, soup cans, shipping cartons, cheeseburgers.1

What are the connections with repetition and the familiar? For Andy Warhol, the embodied meanings of his works belonged to the common culture of the time and were recognised as a part of every day life. What effect does the repetition of the familiar have on a human being?

The concepts addressed in this essayl involve research into:

• Introduction to pop art.

• Repetition in art

• Analysis of a work by Warhol.

• Analysis of work involving repetition by a contemporary artist.

• Comparing and contrasting these works.

• Psychology and repetition.

• Repetition and the role it plays in the human life world.

Excerpt

Repetition is with us from birth. As a baby, we live in a cyclical environment, a rhythm of life. We should be provided with warmth, nourishment and order. As we grow, we are taught by repetition to use the toilet and to talk. Repetition of words such as mama or daddy mean we have a language that we can associate with certain objects. We remember nursery rhymes and counting games through constant repetition. Our early upbringing in the world is a series of repetitions, and for most is a memory of happy times. For some less fortunate, childhood can bring back memories of abuse, a topic exposed through media frequently today.

Warhol's soup cans are represented as comfort food, a product of his everyday life and a packaged commodity. In contrast to the soup cans, Warhol also produced works relating to appropriated images in mass media production. An important body of work is the Death in America series based on newspaper photographs of car crashes, suicides, the electric chair and civil rights confrontations. These works use repetition of images based on Warhol's comment:

“When you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn't really have any effect. The more you look at the exact same thing, the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel.”2

This emptiness reflects consumer culture of the pop era through the saturation of mass media in television, newspapers and magazines. We become immune or de-sensitised to visual imagery through constant repetition in the mass media.

Through repetition of familiar, everyday objects, Warhol has responded to social and political conditions of popular culture in the 1960's. The works of Renee Green and Willie Cole also respond to social and political conditions facing us here and now. Their use of repetition and familiar objects, reiterates the many layers of meaning, understood through a common language, that a work of art can reveal to the viewer, rather than being viewed passively. The audience is a critical issue to consider for a socially and politically engaged artist. These works encourage the audience to consider their position in the world, and their engagement with other human beings.

1 Arthur Danto. Beyond the Brillo Box. New York; Noonday, 1992. 3

2 Hal Foster, The Return of the Real: the Avant-Garde at the End of the Century. Cambridge, Mass.; MIT Press, 1996 131

Duchamp & Vernon Ah Kee

Essay- Year 2, semester 2 2008

Key texts - 1968 - present

Engaging in the World Around Us (excerpts)

Mankind is passing through the most profound crisis in its history. An old world is dying; a new one is being born. Capitalist civilisation, which has dominated the economic, political and cultural life of continents, is in the process of decay.

This quote, from the “John Reed Club of New York: Draft Manifesto” was originally published in New Masses in June 1932, but is just as relevant today in light of the current global, economic and environmental downturn affecting our communities. The work Fountain by Marcel Duchamp from 1917, was produced at a time when art was stimulated by intense creativity and experimentation in the period of Modernism. This was a time when avant-garde artists rebelled against traditional forms of art and rejected the bourgeois social structure of capitalism. With reference to the quote, this essay will explore issues of democracy and authenticity in the relationship of Fountain to a contemporary work by Vernon Ah Kee, titled Born in this Skin. I will discuss art, culture and political change over this time period. Emphasis will be on freedom of expression that resulted from Duchamp's ideas and the development of public art as a democratic voice. Vernon Ah Kee's work has had an impact on me, not only because I had the opportunity to experience the work as part of the Sydney Biennale but also to consider my own artistic development as an individual and where I locate myself as an artist in the 21st century. I believe Vernon Ah Kee was referencing Duchamp's Fountain in choosing the public toilet as a work of art. According to Grant Kester:

Arts role is to shock us out of perceptual complacency, to force us to see the world anew, to make the viewer more sensitive and responsive to the social world.1

I feel both Marcel Duchamp and Vernon Ah Kee have achieved this distinction of making us aware of the world we live in, a world in the process of decay.

1 Grant H Kester. “Conversation Pieces: The Role of Dialogue in Socially-Engaged Art (2004).” Theory in contemporary art since 1985. edited by Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung. Malden, MA ; Oxford, UK : Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 79

Art & Change

Essay 1 Year 2 (Excerpts)

Removing the object from its place in the world is like uprooting a plant: it denies the object’s origins and source of sustenance.... The object lives by drawing on elements outside of itself: matter, thoughts, bodies, etc. Take those away and you have a sterile and secure environment that is not touched by unstable factors, but you also have a setting which reduces the capacity of the object to find its mode of being. Thus, in the end, art loses its audience.1

This quote concerns ‘art and change’ and the exploration and infiltration of the west into the east with regard to personal ownership of ivory bracelets and silver decanters from Indonesia. The bracelets are indigenous to Indonesia and the decanters are a crossover of east and west influences. These objects no longer have their roots planted in original soil. The questions the above quote raises are what meaning do these bracelets and decanters have outside their country of origin? Are they considered art, artefact or merely souvenir? Have they, according to K. Murray, lost their audience?

The history, more than the objects themselves, distinguish them from being mere souvenirs into art objects of high regard from a psychological point of view. It is not the art itself but the emotion evoked that determines its category.

It is therefore important to have a historical awareness of art in the categories by which they are identified and examined in order to retain an audience. In this way art, even though outside of its origins, is kept alive like a plant that has been nurtured. A cutting is propagated and transplanted into foreign soil, with a knowledge and understanding to enable it to survive and spread its roots in a new and sustainable global environment. The soil becomes the stories by which the plant or the audience is kept alive.

1 K Murray. “ Till Death Do Us Part: A Structurationist Approach To Jewellery”. Craft in Society- An Anthology of Perspectives, (ed) Noris Ioannou. Freemantle Art Centre Press. South Fremantle, W.A 1992. 198

Essay no 2

This essay discussed works by Karel Appel and Diane Arbus. Both works shared a relationship between children and war but were produced at different times. This related to my studio practice in jewellery earlier in the year.

This essay concludes my first year of intense study!

Essay no1

Modernism was the topic of our first theory seminars. For my essay, I chose to discuss the impact from the introduction of gas lighting in paintings by Seurat and van Gogh. This seemed relevant to the current debate on non-renewable resources and power crisis.

Vincent van Gogh Starry Night Over the Rhone