if only all books were made of concrete

totally overwhelmed with theory and assignments and prac and the likes at the moment, so given the amount of time i have spent in the library recently, this work is perfectly suited to the mindset i am in at this present moment in time.

rachel whiteread's concrete negative space casting of the book-lined shelves of a library in the work untitled (library) from 1999 is an oldy but a goody.

a nice little witicism for my fellow teaching homies - a tongue in cheeck play on kolb's learning styles theory and his ideas of 'concrete experience'

i heart holmegaard.

...and so the question arises, when assembling a collection of colourful objects, how do you group them all? does the art deco stuff go with other art deco stuff, or does the silver go with other silver stuff, even though they are vastly different in style, shape and technique?
do you group all the blue objects together, but then what happens with the different shades of blue? does italian glass go on one shelf and danish glass on another shelf, and where does all the assorted stuff you bought from driade go?
Or is it a constant labour of love that gets rearranged every few weeks depending on your mood? This week, mine is a mixture of all of the above!

visions of heaven

more coffee table books again, (i think i'm going to need a bigger coffee table) and while i'm not a religious person in the slightest, i've always been fascinated by the architecture, symbolism and theory behind some of the church's greatest buildings. if ever you go travelling through europe, you will notice all these ancient tiny little villages and towns scattered over the countryside that all have these amazing cathedrals that dwarf any other structure around. and one can only imagine how many more of these would still be around had it not been for the destructive bombings of world war ii. in particular, i am mesmerised by gazing up at the domed/vaulted structure and defintion that adorns the ceilings of these ancient giants. and while i always attempted to capture for myself some of these brilliant visions, i never quite had the photographic skills required to depict what i was seeing in all its glory. the autistic in me is fascinated by the complex mathematical geometry and abstract pattern involved in the construction, the vast majority of which were built using the primitive technologies of years gone by.
which is where david stephenson's book"visions of heaven" comes in handy. tasmanian photographer stephenson has kindly taken the liberty of saving me a sore neck, snapping over 120 of the most amazing images you will ever see. check out more of his images here

tadashi kawamata

another massive influence from my art-studying days, japanese artist tadashi kawamata's site-specific installations recreate often unseen and unknown connections between the past present and future, between the internal and the external, the actual and the potential - they reveal another identity to the spaces they are installed in, highlighting the mostly invisible elements of their cultural, historical and social dimensions.
his installations trace the urban chaos that goes unnoticed behind such large, seemingly organised facades, kawamata's complicated amorphous timber growths' spilling out of every available door, window or crack in the ceiling to parasitically attach itself to the neighbouring
structures.

"without light i am not only invisible, but formless as well"

in previous discussions of hero worship, i mentioned art that references other artists, or songs as a homage to other musicians. here is another great example of hero worship, this time art referencing literature -jeff wall's "after ralph ellison (the invisible man)" 2000
ralph ellison's timeless piece of black literature, from 1952, opens with the novel's anti-hero/protaganist/narrator falling down a manhole after fleeing tormentors during a new york riot, and deciding to take up a life underground, covering the ceiling of his subterannean home with 1,369 illegally connected light bulbs, spending his time listening to recordings of louis armstrong's "what did i do to be so black and blue".

coffee table books

phaidon is reknowned for releasing some amazing books with lots of pretty pictures, i should know, my library is FULL of them. and it gives me fantastic excitement and spine chills when i check out the local bookstore in my lunchbreak (ariel at darlinghurst is absolutely phenomenal, for those who love art/philosophy/design etc, check out their collection!) and see that phaidon have released the third edition in their "10x10" series, whereby 10 design critics/architecture kingpins pick their 10 favourite up-and-coming architects (making for 100 in total) and cram this huge big book with lots of visual stimuli! also check out phaidon's other books in the series, "area"/"area 2" (meant to be little 2 to indicate area squared, but my typing skills are slightly lacking) which uses the same 10x10 concept, but with graphic designers as the topic of choice, and "cream"/"fresh cream"/"ice cream" from a few years back which went 10x10 on visual artists. makes for a well-wicked coffee table book for the design conscious mind, or for people who want to pretend to friends that they are actually "cultured".

landing sites - places to go when you die.

whoa. attempting to get my head around the work of arakawa and gins at the moment in a book called "architecture: site of reversible destiny", and getting majorly mind-fucked in the process. he's a philosopher, she's an architect, and their body of work revolves around the concepts of self-knowledge and self-formation, about how the human body interacts with the built environement and the socio-historical matrix, and the role the body played in the formation of the man-made world, presented through a philosophical argument into the realms of construction. some of the images presented are equal parts stunning and disturbing.

leaning strata

once again, (until i can somehow work into my budget the money to buy a new digital camera so that i can photograph my own work), works i admire by inspirational artists in my fledgling art/design career.
probably THE founder of the movement towards a supposed "anti-architecure" (although never categorising his work under any such banner) robert smithson was actually at one point a lecturer at university to gordon matta-clark (who took his teachers mantle and made it his own.) unfortunately, australian libraries don't usually carry a lot of books on the lesser-known artists of the world, so i struggled to delve much further into his body of work, aside from probably his best known work, "spiral jetty" (a 1500 foot rock coil in the utah salt lakes, that become more or less exposed depending on the weather and how the tides were - google it!)
although better known for his works that involved the rearrangment of natural landscapes, i actually had the pleasure of seeing a smithson retrospective at london's tate modern in 2005?, where upon i discovered that smithson also had an impressive body of gallery works too. anyone who has seen any of my work can understand why the geometrically-mathematical nature of smithson's "leaning strata" (1968) particularly appeals to me.
check also the book that accompanied his touring retrospective exhibition, "robert smithson" published by Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2004.

turning the place over

more images of inspiration, this one by british artist richard wilson entitled "turning the place over" from 2000.

following on in the footsteps of gordon matta-clark (the original architerrorist), wilson's irreversible structural "intervention" involved cutting a ten metre diameter section out of the facade of an abandoned building, then mounting it onto a set of giant motors to power it through the full 360degrees, only being flush with the building at one moment through its' rotation. it also spun at enough speed to strike some fear into the hearts of spectators beneath, as the huge segment of concrete hung twisted and turned, at times appearing to hang perilously out over the footpath below.

the armchair superhero manifesto

what started as a few notes in the back of a sketchbook on the way to uni one day has since turned into a lifelong obsession - to compile a personal manifesto as to what it is i am trying to achieve through my artistic practise. although not really a manifesto as such just yet, more an ever-growing list of ideas and concepts that is constantly added to and subtracted from, it has helped me better define some my ideas and concepts. some of the concepts/statements repeat themselves over and over again, so one day in the future when i have the time and patience, i will tighten some of these up a wee bit.

i don't know if it will eventually make some of the concepts behind my work easier for some people to understand, or whether it will just come across largely as a huge pile of art-wank. be warned - i have pages and pages of this stuff!

so here is an extract from it: (thank goodness for cut and paste!)
(art no longer a model of creativity and expression, but as a process of dislocation / disruption)
- An investigation into architectural genres in artistic terms
- Sculptural collision between "void mental space" and matter+objects
- Architectural dislocation and inversion
- Modernist ideals of systematic objectivity
- Renewed haptic experience of constructed space
- Superfluous architecture in a minimalist sense
- A personal reconstruction of left-over space
- Maquettes of a visionary low-tech architecture
- Representations of an individualistic reality
- The occupation of negative space, or rather, the non-occupation of positive space
- Sense of tension through the introduction of deconstructavist elements
- The idea of multiplication is implicit in a construction. -> Mass production
- The occupation of negative space, or rather, the non-occupation of positive space
- Rendered façade with a pop aesthetic
- Eradication of extraneous and distracting visual elements
- Visible content and invisible institutional frame
- Ways to counteract the static nature of singular objects
- Reconstruction leads to emergence of a sufficiently transparent and diaphanous place
- The extent to which modern architecture can intervene into pre-established historical settings
- Sculptural language bordering on parody
- Room dividers – components dismantling and fracturing ambient light
- a cartoonish representation or response of architecture rather than actually being architecture itself.
- permanent construction derisive of the historical buildings that have lasted for centuries
- vehicles for concepts about visual perception, re-presentation
- various forms of abstracted architecutre
- parodies of historical forms
- suprematist/minimalist bloodlines (postmodernist self-reflexivity)
- geometric abstraction
- minimalist seriality and machine manufacture
- constructavist geometry as pure abstraction
- architecture with a multiplicity of functions + experiences (simultaneous)
- establishing a point of tension with the architectural ensemble
- ethereal, immaterial qualities, integrating art with architecture. creating a dynamic interplay between viewer, object and room

hero worship

my last post on stephen hendee naming a work after a john coltrane album, and then a prvious post prior about coltrane naming a song after paul chambers, got me thinking about works of art/songs where one of your favourite artists dedicates the piece to another of your favourite artists.
been racking my brain all day for examples, and i think i've settled on this one, "untitled for v. tatlin 1966", with dan flavin paying homage to vladimir tatlin. 2 gods rolled into one. magic.
then i'm going to follow that up with the modern jazz quintet's "django" after django reinhardt. or what about bad religion's "21st century digital boy", as a mark of respect to king crimson's "21st century shizoid man". or the doves "m62 Song" after another king crimson song, "moonchild..." oh so many choices, better stop now before this list goes on and on and on

ascension

another artist who i wish i had known a little more about during my art studies, american stephen hendee creates large geometric, science-fiction inspired installations made from fluorescent light, sheets of plastic and black electrical tape. it's difficult to track down any of his latest works on the internet (i don't think his website has been updated in a while), but this one from 2007 entitled "the eye" appears to be one of his most recent, although i have been able to deduce that he is still plying his trades in the artistic arena as an associate professor of sculpture at univeristy of nevada, so i'm sure there is more work to come from him in the not too distant future.
although better experienced insitu rather than through images, the documentation is all that remains from temporary installations of this nature, so check http://www.stephenhendee.com/ for more pictures
also check out the exhibition book "ascension" (aptly named after being inspired by coltrane's album of the same title), a documentation of hendee's installation in birmingham, alabama in 2002-03.

concept model for "untitled (hallway)", 2003

I actually managed to find an image of one of the old conceptual models i used to make that reminds me so much of arne quinze's work. i made this one back in my days as a 2nd year fine arts student in 2003. built out of the scraps of an old model leftover from a construction principles subject i took in my pre-art days when i was a lowly architecture student, this unrecognised work was intended to fill a corner of the art gallery, but due to health and safety reasons, they wouldn't let me build it in large scale. also love the fact i did the cliche artist thing and labelled everything as "untitled".

i love chaos...

i'm currently reading (or more correctly, just looking at the pictures) an incredible coffee table art book about belgian conceptual artist Arne Quinze, and I found this image, which amazingly bears the same colourings as the image i used in my previous post, hence why i have pinned it here. plus the fact i really dig this guys work. i wish i knew about him back when i was doing my fine arts degree, this guy and i share some very similar visions with our artistic concepts.
see more of his stuff at http://www.arnequinze.tv/