Stranger than fiction...

Last November after seeing a request for art pieces to celebrate International Woman's Day in Cardiff Art spaces I decided to enter the three that I had created during the summer.

You must keep in mind that I only started painting in August 2010 after at least twenty years of turning my back on acrylics and canvas.

I didn't hear anything so I thought the work hadn't made the cut, until  I received an email in January...

'Hi there,


Just to let you know you have been selected to show in Off the Wall for IWD. Please contact ...... a.s.a.p


She would like some more images, the show starts on 24th February'

My inital reaction to this was AARRGGHH! Withing ten minutes of receiving the message I was planning the three paintings I would create that weekend. A trip to The Range and many long arduous nights sketching and painting whilst watching the Sopranos back to back paid off. Ironically it was these three paintings that the gallery were interested in and selected for the exhibition.

The opening night was held on Thursday 24th February. It was a fantastic experience and worthwhile to make new contacts in the Welsh Art world. Brilliant for the ethnography work I need to do.

The WAA were interested in my PhD research so this could be useful at a later date.

New Year - New Ideas for PhD

Nat Tate

Finally got my hands on a copy of Boyd's novel!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nat-Tate-American-Artist-1928-1960/dp/1901785017

2nd June Supervisor Meeting

Strangeland - Tracey Emin

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Strangeland-Tracey-Emin/dp/0340769467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272284968&sr=1-1

An artist's biography

Recreating the past - Seren Rhys' background

Practice - Creating a retrospective exhibition

With the blog taking shape for Seren Rhys the idea is to start creating credible art projects that would make up her work over the last twenty years.

The photographs I have been recently doing for Backroom proved to be an interesting starting point. Going through the last two events I could see some kind of project taking shape - i was drawn to the way women presented themsleves and the freedom of their dancing as they were caught up in the moment.

A chance reading of greek mythology brought me across the term 'maenad'. The direct translation - 'raving ones' which I thought was apt for this first project.

http://www.maicar.com/GML/MAENADS.html

The plan is continue with this series and perhaps travel further afield. It woudl perhaps be useful to collect stories from subjects to enhance the reading of the project.
I have had quite a positive response to the Seren Rhys website  from Facebook friends. it is perhaps time to reflect on how to create a 'buzz' about the project.

The birth of an Artist - Creating Seren Rhys

To begin to create an artist I thought it would be useful to create a blog persona for her and her art.

 http://serenrhys.blogspot.com/2010/04/httpwww_18.html

I thought it would be important to develop some background detail regarding her life as well as imply her role in British art and the rise of digital photography during the last twenty years.

From my research it was important that she studied at Goldsmiths since many of the YBAs studied at this London Art school. I wanted to give the character quite a bohemian upbringing and thought Ibiza an ideal setting since it has a history during the sixties and seventies of attracting artists.

The idea that Seren Rhys has spent her life in front and behind a camera I thought this would allow me to explore how women are photographed as well as examine the history of women photographers such as Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, Jesse Mann, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin and Corinne Day. Other artists that will need to be explore are Sophie Calle, Tracey Emin, Sam Taylor Wood.

Through this persona I will be able to explore:

• The rise of the YBA
• Wales and the artist
• The impact of digital photography on the art world
• The female gaze - representation of women by women

Supervisor meeting - Planning the Practice

Sophie Calle - The Reader

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/index.php/fuseaction/shop.product/product_id/416

I picked up a copy of Sophie Calle: The Reader at Whitchapel Gallery whilst visiting the exhibition. It has proved to be extremely useful since it provides a critical tool for navigating Calle's image and text work from 1979 to the present. The book brings together interviews with the artist, critical commentaries by an international range of critics, curators, artists and art historians and a most useful index summarising recurrent themes in her work.



It will be most useful to refer to this as I develop Seren Rhys’ retrospective exhibition and it will be a starting point to develop the exhibition catalogue.

As I research this book in more depth I will refer to it on the blog at a later date.

PhD Practice Piece - planning

Nat Tate

The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields

Supervisor meeting

11th January meeting


We discussed my first draft of the lit review. We then went on to discuss areas that I need to now develop:

The Female Gaze – an area to explore in more depth

You also recommended that I return to WG Sebald since there is very little work on his use of photography and the positioning of the photos within his novels. You suggested Rings of Saturn.

Other writers/photographers to explore were:

William Boyd – Nat Tate

Johnnie Shand Kydd – Crash

Stephen Bull – Meeting Hazel Stokes

Andy Warhol – Photography

Alvar Gullichsen - Bonk Business Inc

I discussed some of the ideas I have been working on to develop the practice piece. I want to create a fictional female YBA who is Welsh and present a retrospective exhibition and book of her life’s work. We discussed the possibility of contacting real artists and art critics to respond to her work in some way with them being aware that the project is not a hoax but a celebration of the British conceptual art movement of the last twenty years. The practical would be made up of narratives reflecting on the work of the artist by ‘friends’. This could be a combination of digital stories, a series of photographs and an accompanying book.

You suggested the following things to work on:

Polish my Lit review and develop it in light of our discussion during the meeting:

• Write a one page proposal for the practice. Key things to consider would be to clarify the central idea

• Consider possible artists and art critics to contribute to the practical piece

Reflection - Sophie Calle Exhibition Whitechapel

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/sophie-calle-talking-to-strangers

In December I decided to visit a friend with the ulterior motive of going to the Whitechapel Gallery to see Sophie Calle’s exhibition ‘Talking to Strangers’. I discovered Calle a few years ago whilst researching conceptual artists for a project. I returned to her during my research on women artists using text and photography earlier this year.



My friend did not have any knowledge of her work so I was excited to take her.

The Whitechapel exhibition is the first retrospective of the French conceptualist Calle's work in the UK. 'Talking to Strangers' is a journey time-travelling back to 1979 with 'Sleepers', where she invited twenty nine people to sleep in her bed as she watched. This perhaps is a good indication of her the work that follows - she's been following, investigating into and exposing, the lives of herself and others ever since.


Whitechapel Gallery is beautiful.

Calle’s exhibition is everything I expected. It is like reading a postmodern and innovative novel. Photographs embedded with text. Calle creates art that an audience must read. The giant photographs that dominate the walls in the most spectacular installation, Take Care of Yourself, are only a part of the final piece. It is the words that constitute the work's fiercely beating heart.


Take Care of Yourself is particularly striking and holds a great fascination for my friend as I as women. The narrative of the installation works on many levels. Calle received an email from a lover, dumping her. Something the Bridget Jones generation can clearly understand in a world full of metrosexuals. Calle, rather than getting plastered on wine and listening to bad love songs like Fielding’s heroine she took control of the situation and asked a team of women – all experts in their professional fields – to respond to it. This is what is so fascinating about the installation – it is choir of women finely tuned to a singular pain.

The powerful roar at the eye of the storm – Calle’s rage and bewilderment at the man's cruel email – becomes louder and more resonant with each new variant on the text. There is a sisterhood in their understanding of the letter. Each woman interprets the letter from her point of view: a jurist analyses it as the termination of a contract, a translator examines its grammar and a composer turns it into music. Each creates beauty out of the misery reflecting the strength and fortitude of women in contemporary society. With each reinterpretation, the pain is added to each woman. Standing in the gallery it felt easy to remember upsetting break ups of my own. As an audience Calle allows us to make narratives of our own to explore and relive the pain of a break up.


This exhibition leads you into the fictions of other lives, other emotions. It allows you to create a narrative path of your own.

First Year Presentation

As the first semester draws to a close, I presented my research to my peers and the faculty.

Clubbed to Death (Lola) Yoland Zauberman 1996

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tLJKyGZpEU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk-KJJfqTTg

When I first saw this film at Chapter Cardiff it reminded me of the old rave days. The music was spot on and the jerky camera angles and movement was real. You feel the crowd. When you look at the club scene you understand it is directed by a woman. She catches the way people interact. Elodie Bouchez's performance of the innocent protagonist stumbling across the Parisian dance scene reflects many first experiences of rave culture. It is gritty and amusing at the same time. The music sound track is a character in itself because of the familiar recognition of the tracks. Its ironic that the tracks have been used in Hollywood films when this film has been forgotten. (Not even available on dvd!)

Research - Reading List

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: 100 Years of the Disc Jockey - Frank Broughton (2006)

Raving '89 - Neville and Gavin Watson (2009)

Night Fever: Club Writing in the "Face", 1980-96 - Richard Benson

Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture - Sheryl Garrett (1999)

Lastnightsparty: "Where Were You Last Night?" by Merlin Bronques (2006)

EDMC

Last week I joined Dancecult - Journal of Electronic Dance Music and Culture
http://www.dancecult.net/

Dancecult is is a peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal for the study of electronic dance music culture. In the next few months I will begin contacting other graduate students and scholars with similar interests to support my study and research.

Photographs, Narratives and Subcultures - A context for Practice based PhD

‘Everything is a self-portrait.’ (Palahniuk, 2000, p132 – 133)

‘To photograph is to violate them (the sitters), by seeing them as they never can see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.’ (Sontag, 1977, p81)

‘The photograph is an incomplete utterance, a message that depends on some external matrix of conditions and presuppositions for its readibility.’ (Sekula, 1982)

‘There is a popular notion that the photographer is by nature a voyeur, the last one invited to the party. But I’m not crashing; this is my party. This is my family, my history.’ (Goldin,1986, p6)

The contemporary world is continually in motion where new forms of art mediums are on the rise. In recent years artists and writers seem to be experimenting more with embedding photographs within their works of prose fiction and vice versa. As a result, the emergence of multimodal works of art are now reflecting how people experience everyday life, popular culture and the visual media of television and film by producing not just one story line for the reader/viewer to follow but also multiple narratives to analyse through image and words. This marks the increasing need for critical analysis that can manoeuvre such print multiple narratives. For this reason, photo diaries, multimodal texts and popular culture’s influence on them need to be considered in academic discussion in more depth.