Coming Soon

Wow, it's been since September that I last blogged... Apologies! One of my (early) New Years Resolutions is to keep this updated regularly. I have been so busy but have a great new idea for a photography project so watch this space!

Until then I shall leave you with this wonderful image I recently discovered by Salvador Dalí to brighten up your day.

'Illuminance' by Rinko Kawauchi

Well, let me first apologise for the long delay in getting out a new post, I have been ridiculously busy working (goodbye student lifestyle, hello real world). I have seen, heard and read so many wonderful new things since June (terrible I know) that I hardly know where to start. So I decided, instead of recapping everything I have been doing since the Jubilee, I would start afresh and talk about a wonderful photographer I discovered on Thursday... Rinko Kawauchi.

I was finally able to get to the new Photographer's Gallery for the late night times after work on Thursday to see the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. I have to say this year I was a little underwhelmed by the exhibition. Firstly I am not a huge fan of John Stezaker, whose work I seem to have seen everywhere this year and secondly, I just found the work rather uninspiring... apart from, that is, Rinko Kawauchi's who was nominated for her publication Illuminance. Thee result of both commissions and personal projects, Illuminance spans fifteen years of Kawauchi's practice. Using a soft palette of colours, masterful composition and editing skills, her images evoke moments of dreams, memory and temporality. It is also one of those very rare finds, where the book is actually more stunning than the prints displayed in the exhibition themselves. I immediately had to buy it, draining my limited funds (I'm currently undertaking in an unpaid internship and only have one day a weeks worth of Costa Coffee earnings to live off) but I don't care. The book is utterly breathtaking and well worth every penny. Kawauchi's ability to turn the mundane into the extraordinary (sorry for the cliche but it's the truth) is poetic. The book gives beauty to themes of life, death and the everyday, a wide range for one photographer. Enjoy some of my many favourites from the publication below.

P.S. If you get a chance before the 16th September, definitely go see Another London at Tate Britain. Street photography, capturing my favourite place to be, London, between the 1930s-80s. Amazing photographers, amazing photographs and just a brilliant, fairly small, exhibition... post will come soon in detail about it.

P.P.S Own photography post will follow soon too! (I promise)

Jubilee Jubilations

As everyone is aware (unless you've been living under a rock) a couple of weeks ago it was the Queen's Jubilee and one thing the British know how to do is celebrate in style. Living in a small village myself, I was exicted to visit the many small village fêtes being hosted around my home. So I donned my wellies, Barbour coat and Union Jack flag grabbed my cannon film camera and set out to the various events. All in all I visited Chipperfield (who got top marks for their fantastic fête), Bovingdon (who I felt could have done a lot more), Berkhamstead (disappointing as when I arrived at half 4 they had finished and packed away) and finally Gadebridge Park for live music, fireworks and the lighting of a beacon. I am a huge people watcher and love documenting the interesting people I meet and for the Queen's Jubilee they didn't disappoint. Donned in an array of fancy dress mixed with country chic I loved snapping away, documenting a weekend that made me proud to be British!
Here are a few of my favourites from a weekend of celebrating our Queen's glorious reign.

'I've had a lovely time' - Lucian Freud

After seeing Lucian Freud's exhibitoin at the National Portrait Gallery I was blown away, he is one of my favourite painters and finally getting to see his work live was incredible. The raw fleshyness of his paintings was fabulous, and you could tell the emotion behind both sitter and painter automatically. This was definitely one of my favourite exhibitions, so much so that I ended up buying Martin Gayford's Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud. I have always been a fan of Gayford, I think he is an extremely interesting art critic with a wonderful insight into the world of art. I especially became a fan of his after reading A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney.

This book opens up both the mind of a world class painter as he works, as well as what goes through the mind of your "average joe" as they sit for a painting. Gayford describes his conversations with Freud in great detail, allowing us into the mind of a genius. These conversations are absorbing and entertaining as we learn of Freuds' relationship with other famous painters such as Bacon, his disdain for many other artists such as Leonardo diVinci who he claims 'someone should write a book about what a ghastly painter Leonardo da Vinci was', his daily routines and most importantly, how he begins, progresses and finally finishes one of his beautiful paintings. We also learn about his friendship with the infamous Kray brothers, something I found astonishing and hilarious at the same time. All in all it is a fascinating read into someone who has lived a life to the full, doing what he loves most, painting.

It was an easy, enjoyable book that I can see myself picking up again and again. So if you are fan of Freud's I urge you to read this insightful, witty and generally lovely book about Gayford's experience as a model for him. I think my favourite part was the last page, added after the death of Freud in 2011, which was extremely touching. Gayford quotes Freud saying 'I’m not frightened in the slightest of death; I’ve had a lovely time.” A poignant, true and simple take of what comes after a well lived and achieved life.

Dorota Sadovská's 'Corporealities'

The main theme in Dorota Sadovská work is the human body, viewed realistically, albeit from an unusual point of view, so it often loses its realism in an absurd optical shortcut, thus changing its actuation and wiping away the objectivity of the picture. For these reasons, and many more, Sadovská became a huge inspiration for me in conjunction with my Major Project, especially her body of work Corporealities where she bares her breast in an unromantic, unsexualised manner. Denuding them of sexual potency, she treats her breasts as sheer sculptural matter, also reminding us of the medical necessity of self-examination. By pinching, squeezing, pushing and pulling her rather voluptuous bosom she turns these feminine objects of male desire into something rather more comical, removing the romantic notion of them and instead portraying them as what they are, mounds of fat and flesh

I have always been a fan of Sadovskás' work dealing with the human body and after seeing this piece in The Body in Contemporary Art she fast became one of my favourite female artists dealing with the female form. Like Jenny Savilles' work (blogged about on the 25th March) it is the beauty of the flesh, filling the whole of the frame that really draws me to her work. So here is another set of deliciously fleshy photographs for you all to sink your teeth in. An aesthetic I strived to achieve with my final body of work entitled Bare.

50 Shades of Dull

After coming to the end of my degree I asked my sister for a good read to take my mind off feminist critiques, feminist artist and theories around the male gaze and so she recommended 50 Shades of Grey. Whilst she had never read it both of us had been hearing a lot of heard good reviews. As an avid reader I read the back cover and was excited, it sounded like my perfect pyschological thriller... how wrong I was...

Now I am no prude, but instead I found myself reading about a kinky sex story, every chapter had a new hot and steamy scene that ended up being well... not so hot and steamy. Instead of running for cold showers every chapter I was just left feeling cold as each session got more and more predictable (a bit like the story in general).

I also began to hate the characters. The girl Ana I just wanted to shake because lets face it, who (especially on their first try) would agree to becoming someone's well to put it bluently slave (not just in the bedroom but in every aspect). *Warning Spoiler Alert* I'm sorry but whilst I know whips and chains and the general dominatrix thing turn some people on, no girl, no matter how dashing and good in bed a bloke is, would agree to a) keep seeing him when told the only way they can be together is through a contract and b) the contract being full of rules like not being allowed to look him in the eye unless told. Any normal girl would run for the hills, instead in every chapter she mentions her Inner Goddess (a phrase I was seriously sick of by the end of the book as well as the use of panties to describe underwear on every page) doing backflips at the thought of this possessive man wanting her. She also kept constantly changing her mind from being able to cope with his kinky ways to needing more... what more was she never explained to us let alone the poor bloke. Which brings me to the male protagonist himself, the mysterious Mr Grey, dashing, rich and damaged but who mainly was just a character I loathed and no not because I am an avid feminist disgusted by the thought of a man claiming rule over a poor innocent young girl, he just wasn't a likeable character. Instead of feeling sorry for him I ended up "rolling my eyes" (another phrase very much over used) at all his "heart wrenching" problems because in the end he was just a control freak and didn't just want a girl to dominate in the bedroom but in life itself, telling her when to eat what to eat where and when to sleep etc. To be honest, he was a therapists wet dream!

To top things off, after determinedly persisting with this tedious book hoping to discover some big revelation of why it is so popular, the ending was actually the worst part. Disappointing, abrupt and completely ridiculous... I won't reveal it for those of you still interested in reading the book but let me tell you it's not worth dragging yourself through the appalling writing.

Overall, I did however read this book in a weekend and despite the poor narrative I was compelled to finish. As against all odds it was a page turner, and no not because of the kinky sex scenes (which by the end I wanted to skip past). Instead I just wanted to find out what was going to happen to the predictably doomed relationship... So if you love a trashy novel this may be the right book for you, if a bit flat. However, unlike the Hunger Games trilogy, all three of which I finished in a weekend (and was expecting this book to be more in the style of), I will not be buying the next two in the sequence because one can only take so much seductive lip biting and piercing grey eyes in a story and in all honesty, I couldn't care less what happens to the "star crossed lovers". In fact, next time I think I'll stick to New Feminist Art Criticism.

Gillian Wearing at Whitechapel Gallery

I have been a fan of Gillian Wearing for some time and as identity (her own and others) is often a running theme in her work something I have always been interested in, in regards to my work, she has always been a huge inspiration. Therefore, as a member of the Whitechapel Gallery I was so excited to hear she was exhibiting there. As soon as I was back home, the first thing I did was take myself off to see it and I was definitely not disappointed.

British artist Gillian Wearing explores the public and private identities of ordinary people through her photographs and films. Fascinated by how people represent themselves in fly-on-the-wall documentaries, she explores ideas of personal identity by often masking her subjects and using theatre's staging techniques. It was first time I got to see her video installations in a gallery context, some I had seen over the internet other works I had only heard about and I was mesmerised by the mixture of work, some humorous like her 1997 piece, 10-16 where Adults lip synch the voices and act out the physical tics of seven children in a captivating film which moves from the breathless excitement of a ten year old to the existential angst of an adolescent. Others much more poignant such as Prelude about a female street drinker who died during the making of Drunk. Wearing brings together fragments of the woman’s story as a tribute to her life. This four-minute piece is narrated by her twin sister and is an intense portrait that elicits questions about predominant social values and was really beautifully done. And of course there was her brilliant photographic series Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say.

Gillian Wearing was yet another exhibition I walked out of with the book under my arm and a lot to think about. All her work whether funny or sad is thought provoking, dealing with the ideas of the everyday and everyday people something I am constantly drawn to in my own work. I urge all you Wearing fans out there to go see it. Whitechapel is a fantastic gallery space and it really does justice to Wearing's work.

Final Shoots...

So with my project deadline looming ever closer, I spent my Easter holidays cracking on with my final project, if you remember my post from the 6th March you will know what it is all about. But for those who don't, here's the general gist of it, I am doing self portraits that focus on my body and the theories around the male gaze. They are also representing this transitional period of my life, leaving education and entering the world and are therefore very bold and hopefully like Jenny Saville's work (see blog entry 25th March) deliciously fleshy! I decided to stick to more subtle images than some from my first shoot, focusing on feminine curves and suggestions. So enjoy and please let me know your thoughts about any prints you think I should use for finals!

"If there's a narrative, I want it in the flesh."

For my new project I have been researching female artists who use the female form in their work. After purchasing Phaidon's brilliant new book The Artist's Body, I became fascinated with the work of Jenny Saville, especially her collaboration with photographer Glen Luchford of which some images are shown below. This work really caught my eye as it captures the female nude in the way I am looking into, unromanticized and raw unlike how I believe a lot of male photographers always document it. Saville's body is not perfect in the way the media represents women and the photographs are deliciously fleshy.

Saville lays on top of a large sheet of perspex as Glen Luchford, a fashion photographer, photographs from below. The resulting images present a female nude distorted by pressing heavily on the perspex but is also beautiful due to the use of light and the opulent slickness of photography. Both seductive and disturbing, Saville's form is being pushed out of the 'canvas' towards the viewer rather than remaining safely at a distance, a theme I am working with within my self portraits for my final project, showing raw, unperfect flesh right up in the viewer's face. The huge scale of Saville's photographs, together with the cropping of her body, which almost completely fills the frame, contribute to the overwhelming sense of flesh and are a huge inspiration for my, more subtle, but fleshy self portraits.