Domesticating German Pavilion in Venice 2009
http://www.smac.us/2009/07/01/domesticating-the-german-pavilion/
Monday, 5 April 2010
Sunday, 21 March 2010
David Mabb
http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/membership/artist-member/david-mabb/99#
David Mabb has been working with the designs of 19th century designer and socialist William Morris for about ten years. William Morris thought that interior design had a fundamental role to play in the transformation of everyday life.
This essentially political motivation - a commitment to the radical potential of design - is behind much of his work as a designer and craftsman and the setting up of Morris & Co. Morris' designs constituted a radical break with the orthodoxy of neo-Gothic of his time. They are highly schematized representations of nature, where it is always summer and never winter; the plants are always in leaf, often flowering, with their fruits available in abundance, ripe for picking, and with no human labor in sight.
This is a Utopian vision, an image of Cokaygne. Mabb's paintings, photographs, textiles and videos all, in different ways, work with and against Morris' utopian designs by contrasting them with other forms of modernist production, including Malevich, Rodchenko, Stepanova and Popova paintings and designs, modernist architecture and photographs of industry.
Mabb never simply paints or covers over the Morris pattern with another image, elements of the Morris pattern always poke or burst through. This combination produces an unstable picture space that is never fixed, where a Morris pattern and the other image are never able to fully merge or separate.
This essentially political motivation - a commitment to the radical potential of design - is behind much of his work as a designer and craftsman and the setting up of Morris & Co. Morris' designs constituted a radical break with the orthodoxy of neo-Gothic of his time. They are highly schematized representations of nature, where it is always summer and never winter; the plants are always in leaf, often flowering, with their fruits available in abundance, ripe for picking, and with no human labor in sight.
This is a Utopian vision, an image of Cokaygne. Mabb's paintings, photographs, textiles and videos all, in different ways, work with and against Morris' utopian designs by contrasting them with other forms of modernist production, including Malevich, Rodchenko, Stepanova and Popova paintings and designs, modernist architecture and photographs of industry.
Mabb never simply paints or covers over the Morris pattern with another image, elements of the Morris pattern always poke or burst through. This combination produces an unstable picture space that is never fixed, where a Morris pattern and the other image are never able to fully merge or separate.
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Nada Prlja
In search of Black Communism
Heavily influenced by the Black Wave or dissident Yugoslav cinema of her
childhood, artist Nada Prlja considers its unique balancing act between
iconoclasm and idealism, individualism and communism to be exemplary.
In the presentation on TUESDAY 9TH MARCH at 6.30pm, Prlja will talk about
the cultural context of communist Yugoslavia and its mutation into a
consumer culture, a shift that her artwork pivots on.
"Nada Prlja was born in Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia in 1971, and
graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Skopje, Macedonia. She has
lived and worked in London since she moved here in 1999. She was one of
the few artists to graduate with MPhil degree in Royal College of Art in
2002 who was clearly political in her intent. Her work has
progressed with a fearless determination since then.
Her work deals with complex situations of inequality within different
political, economic or religious formations. Working across media
(video, installation and a wide range of material including flags and
neon) her artistic work is site-specific, as well as ideas rather than
media driven.
Prlja claims to come from a ‘Red Bourgeois’ background but would like to
live now in ‘black communism’."
www.seriousinterests.co.uk/
www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/seecent.htm
http://redsalonarttalks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/margareta.kern?ref=profile#!/group.php?gid=24225774912
Heavily influenced by the Black Wave or dissident Yugoslav cinema of her
childhood, artist Nada Prlja considers its unique balancing act between
iconoclasm and idealism, individualism and communism to be exemplary.
In the presentation on TUESDAY 9TH MARCH at 6.30pm, Prlja will talk about
the cultural context of communist Yugoslavia and its mutation into a
consumer culture, a shift that her artwork pivots on.
"Nada Prlja was born in Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia in 1971, and
graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Skopje, Macedonia. She has
lived and worked in London since she moved here in 1999. She was one of
the few artists to graduate with MPhil degree in Royal College of Art in
2002 who was clearly political in her intent. Her work has
progressed with a fearless determination since then.
Her work deals with complex situations of inequality within different
political, economic or religious formations. Working across media
(video, installation and a wide range of material including flags and
neon) her artistic work is site-specific, as well as ideas rather than
media driven.
Prlja claims to come from a ‘Red Bourgeois’ background but would like to
live now in ‘black communism’."
www.seriousinterests.co.uk/
www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/seecent.htm
http://redsalonarttalks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/margareta.kern?ref=profile#!/group.php?gid=24225774912
Saturday, 6 March 2010
Guiseppe Recco
I was struck by this painting by Guiseppe Recco. It's a still life but more then a half of the image is beautifully painted textile. What a joy!
Thursday, 21 January 2010
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