Chris Nash

Chris Nash is one of the UK's best dance photographers. Each project he does is so different and he always captures so much emotion in the dances. I like the colours in the photographs and the gracefulness and dream like state of them. 

Kings of Leon performances

I saw on the television in the summer Kings of Leon perform at Glastonbury. I'm captivated by the way that they perform; they create such a mood. I really think the lighting and back display worked perfectly with their music. I also think that their music video Sex on Fire, although fairly simple sums them up really well and the people that directed it really listened and understood who they are.

The Tate Britain- Francis Bacon

I wasn't a huge fan ever of Francis Bacon but the exhibition at the Tate Britain was so well set out and his work is overwhelming. I had an audio guide which was so educational.  I could relate to how he loved to tear photographs and pictures from magazines or newspapers and draw on top of them. I loved seeing all the different photos that he would take or be inspired by.  And also to how he was an atheist and was intrigued by his representation of what it would be like to live in a world without God or afterlife. I love how much of his emotions were put into his representations of the figure. There is so much tension, hopelessness, desperation and  isolation; the paintings haunt you like a nightmare with figures trapped in the scene or line boxes.  I love how he would slightly distort on some, and then completely on others such as his crucifixion paintings. It was interesting to learn of how he would paint vertical lines on the paintings to make it more dream like and feel like there was movement and his obsession with the Velazquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X c 1650. The  These were some of my favourite ones, and are probably not the ones that are usually conventionally associated with Bacon.

Rothko

" I am not an abstract painter. I am not interested in the relationship between form and colour. The only thing I care about is the expression of man's basic emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, destiny. "

I went to the Rothko exhibition at the weekend at the Tate Modern. I was slightly disappointed as I didn't realize it was just his later work but it was still really enjoyable. Rothko is known for his signature style of stacking vertical fields of colour in layers; I'm so inspired by how there was so much progression and transition in each piece of work. I love how his work was influenced by myths and philosophy such as Freud.  I love the layout of each of his paintings and wonder whether you could use it graphical pieces?

Thoughout the late 1950s and 1960s Rothko explored the concept of his colour field from previous years. This interest emerged, in part, from various commissions to create ambitious paintery environments. For example for The Four Seasons restaurant in New York - The 'Seagram murals.' 

As you move around the 9 rooms you see that he begins to darken his palette because he hated that people thought his work was decorative.  For example the colours become more subdued- blacks, reds, maroons. 

It was amazing to see 14 of his red series in one room. They were so calming and engaging due to their size and extradonary array of tones. Part of the exhibition allowed you to see through special dyes on samples of the work so that you can see how many different layers of colours he used. 

I also really liked seeing his Black-Form paintings as they are so different. He uses a radically different deployment of colour, and also much more defined edges.  Although they all seem solid black there is so much texture to them and I love the way they reflect the light. 

The first picture is my favourite one of his paintings as it always reminds me of being young and going to see it with my Dad. If you stare at it for long enough the purple rectangles disappear!

Weapons of choice- Fatboy Slim

Such a simple concept in reality but works so well. I love music videos with dance routines and this one is so unique. 

Spencer Tunick

Spencer Tunick has been doing nude installations since 1992 in the USA and abroad. I remember watching a documentary a while back on his work which included conversations with the volunteers and I thought how interesting it was to get the public involved in art like that.  Last year he did some work with Greenpeace to promote awareness of global warming. He got hundreds of people to pose for photos on a glacier. A lot of people wondered as to how this tactic would help. “Receding glaciers are a clear indication of climate change, and Switzerland is especially affected. The installation will symbolize the vulnerability of the disappearing glaciers and the fragility of the human body. The images of the installation are intended to stir up emotions and to emphasize the naked truth: we have to act now.” - Greenpeace. I think he is clever to have chosen a way to express his creativity which is hard to copy, as everyone will always know it was him who did it first; so he'll always be unique. I don't think that it is the actual shapes of the bodies, or the fact that they are naked that make the pictures interesting but the different colours. They remind of when I saw hundreds of flamingos migrating in Africa a couple of years ago!

Jeppe Hein

 

I thought that after seeing and placing the blog on about Jeppe Hein's appearing rooms, I'd have a look at some of his other work, and discovered I really love some other things he has done.  He is a Danish artist who is now based in Berlin and has had international success especially with his performative installations. I have included some of the pieces which I really like. 

I love the spiral Labyrinth which I think is in the Tate modern?, so if it is i'd like to see it next weekend when I go to see the Rothko exhibition. A lot of his pieces explore the relationship between the viewer and the artwork. His shaking cube has invisible field of motion sensors and so the work is impelled by the movements of the viewer. His neon wall switches off as the viewer approaches.  "One side of the wall is interactive. If you walk along the wall, the neon modules turn off - one after the other. As they turn on and off the light modules change from a live, healthy, humming luminescence to a dull, cloudy object but the moment the visitor leaves, all of the neon lights are restored again."

Fountain displays- Heathrow T5, Bellagio hotel, Jeppe Hein's appearing rooms.

 

Over the summer I worked for a company that meant that every week I would have to go to Heathrow airport for the day. The highlight of it was that I loved to go see the fountain display at terminal 5. It was just bursts of water that went up and down at different heights but it was mesmerizing. I once saw a child walking straight down in between two lines of them and waving her hands up and down; so that it looked like she was controlling them- it was really beautiful!

I also remember how amazing the display was at the Bellagio in Vegas. It was just on an enormous scale, and it looked like the water was dancing.  

Last week when I was in London, I also went to see the Jeppe Hein, the Danish artist's, appearing rooms at the Southbank centre. It was originally commissioned for the garden of the villa Manin in Italy. You are able to enter into the sculpture, darting the water. He wants you to interact with the 'changing spaces,' as the walls of water rise and fall. This was so great to see as it was a step forward in an idea after seeing the girl at Heathrow and it was really fun. "This public artwork explores the relationship between spatial perception and memory, presence and absence, inside and outside. "

Cavan Huang

I'm a huge fan of his, especially of his prints for  "Dusk" typographic concrete design poem and the Harlem Document project( the first print.) His also does some really cool motions. The way his website is set up also makes it really easy to view all his different pieces and I really like the way his describes his pieces of work. For instance the second one is the result of a twelve week explorative process. And it is in response to an assignment to visually transcribe audio narratives; his is a passage of slurred speeches from street drunks. 

I've learnt from his work that you can have a certain individual style to your work, as he does, but it is important to be interested and produce different ideas too, especially if the criteria is not really to your style. You can see this especially in his videos. Unfortunately I couldn't get them to download.

http://www.icav.ca/motion_06.htm

Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville is a British born artist who's focus has mainly been on female bodies. She has been compared to Lucian Freud and in 1993 Saatchi purchased all of her work. She paints in a way that views the architecture of the body; her paintings become a sort of sculpture. Some feature target rings which help to give a feel of shape and form and mark making causes you to move around the painting and few all aspects of the skin. She paints how woman see themselves, and there is a sense of frankness and vulnerability in them which I love. I believe she was right when she said;"I want a painting realism. I try to consider the pace of a painting, of active and quiet areas." 

Helmut Newton

The moment I saw the front cover of a book on Helmut Newton's work I knew I was going to be hooked. It wasn't that I found it provocative or shocking; it was just so bold; the picture was so.... piercing. Like Tom Ford states in the book celebrating the whole spectrum of his work and also his 80th birthday; " His world spoke to me." He allows the female subject matters to have so much power; Not just in the way he gives them a masculine authority but also in a hidden  message that these woman know how much control they can have over someone with the beauty of their bodies. Even when the picture shows a scene where the woman seems to be under control of the man, there's something in their eyes that screams "that's what he thinks!" I particularly like his black and white fashion photographs and his portraits. . Pierre Berge words conclude his work so well; "What he created was an exemplary vision, on a knife edge between humour and seriousness, between imagination and clinical vision." I've added some of my favourite pages from two books I have on him; Helmut Newton- Work, and A Gun to Hire.