Article in the Commentary by Michael J. Lewis I couldn't help but find myself nodding in agreement to much of what was said in this article. I find it very difficult to openly voice my criticisms and even to write them down, but this article made sense to me (those who have spent the time mastering literature I admire whether I agree with it or not). I found it via a blouin artinfo site who was criticizing Lewis' article (I read only a few hours ago), but which now seems to be denying access to the article (so sorry if you cannot read it either). The article then lead me to have a look at the Michael Lewis' Visual Images in a Verbal Culture. All of humankind has lived on storytelling since the beginning of time. I don't think that there is visual without verbal. It is when I see things like this I am again so so grateful to Graham Coomber who gave me the appreciation and love of art and colour and form and line and echo and pattern and repetition and on and on and on I could go.
Okay I have decided to move back towards looking at the way we treat our natural environment and not each other for a while. This is a coat I made out of recycled shopping bags and water bottles a while ago. I put it into a slow moving outgoing current at Nudgee Beach, Brisbane today to photograph and film it (hats off to the people behind a film camera who get those beautiful and smooth moving images that I take for granted). So much of our waste slowly moves out to the ocean like this. Shopping bags is one of those things that unless we are really going to recycle it into another use, it is something that we can easily, very easily shop without having to use. Clothes are something else that is readily discarded after minimal usage. We all have a hand in it.
I have loved the work of artist Pawet Althamer (his outlook and approach) after seeing his work in a couple of exhibitions. Anyway, an artist he referred to often to drive his own concepts was from an artist around in the 60s and 70s named Joseph Beuys (his explanation after the performance is very good if you watch this link). I had never actually looked his work up, but the teacher brought his work to our attention this week and I am loving it. Beuys sees every person as artist whereas Althamer moved away from the 'glorification of the uniqueness of the artist...because he is so well aware of his position within a system of relationships, and thus distanced from the myth of the isolated artist (Gioni, p.91,92). Boundaries shift between engagement, influence, history, community and constant learning. (Matt Saunders, “Paweł Althamer” in Frieze 107 (May 2007), p. 162, cited in Gioni (above))
I have started back at classes at the University of Canberra @ Tafe Queensland Brisbane. One of the readings our teachers gave us written by Robert Pepperell, is among other things describing how we all view the world differently, but how often and similarly artists view their world. So much of this reading is resonating with me. It is blissfully reassuring. Anyway, I started a self portrait drawing at the beginning of the year and it seems to relate (in my mind anyway). I think I have done more to it since this photograph was taken, but while I was drawing it I tried to imagine my inside world in the external world and feeling thrown off balance. We can only see the image of ourselves in the mirror and the rest of it is sensations.
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