art
Sunset at Frankston
Mark and I had an hour to kill before our movie at Frankston (The Kings Speech, if you’re interested), so we decided to take a stroll along Frankston Pier. We don’t normally go to Frankston (our neighbours call it Frankghanistan – it’s a little rough around the edges), but it was sunset and the light was spectacular.
Luckily I happened to have my little Panasonic camera with a f1.7 pancake lens in the car, so I took a few quick shots of various interesting things. Like the abandoned chair in the tide. And the cheesy fairground rides complete with 12 foot tall fibreglass Sinister Kangaroo.
“Fun Slide”. Is that a bit of an philosophical oxymoron?
My 100th post – a Christmas fantasy wishlist of art…
Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog
One of the drawbacks of living in a mud-brick house is that you can’t hang anything off the walls. Every painting in our house has to be suspended by cable off hooks in the wooden beamed ceiling.
In any case, since we have large windows and french doors in every room there’s very little wall space for art. I barely found enough place to hang up our beloved turquoise & crimson splashed Gunarsa and the diptych Chua Ek Kays, and the rest of our art resides incongruously in our garden shed.
So I dream of beautiful blank walls. Especially those of my studio, which we are building in our upcoming renovation, along with a guest wing.
Since it’s Christmas and everyone seems to be sharing their fantasy wishlists, I thought I’d do mine as well. Only mine happens to be an Art-themed one, as I must admit I’ve pretty much have everything else covered. I mean it when I say please, no presents for me. Give them to someone deserving, someone who’s not a retail addict!
My Christmas fantasy wishlist of art
1) A post-88 Chuck Close woodcut print/painting
In 1988, Photo-realist painter Chuck Close had a spinal blood clot which left him virtually paralysed. Wheelchair-bound, Chuck’s paintings went from minutely detailed realist paintings to colourful montages of elliptical and ovoid abstracts, which when viewed from a distance, formed a human portrait.
I love the energy in these paintings, they seem full of dancing light.
Self Portrait, Chuck Close
Emma 2002 Chuck Close
2) A James Nares painting
I have loved these paintings for a long time. They seem to embody the essence of Chinese calligraphy and zen philosophy, as they are literally created in one breath, a burst of energy. James Nares suspends himself from the ceiling by a harness and uses a huge self-made brush, repeatedly lunging at a blank canvas to made a single stroke. It takes him hundreds of tries to get a “keeper” and his long-suffering assistant stands by his side to sluice the paint off the canvas after each rejected attempt.
John Barrett’s apartment from July/August 2007 ELLE Decor
3.) A Bill Henson Photograph
Of course there has to be a Bill Henson photograph in my wishlist. Either one of his luminously gloomy landscapes, or one of awkward teenagers up on the hill, overlooking the cityscape below. So Douglas Coupland.
Bill Henson 2005
Bill Henson
Untitled #63, 2000/2003
4.) A Marilyn Minter painting
I love Marilyn Minter. Everything about her paintings scream dirty glamour, JG Ballard-esque excess, peeling glitter and glossy surfaces.
One of these huge photo-realist paintings would be great.
http://www.whitewallmag.com/2009/10/22/sneak-peak-marilyn-minter-regen/
But I’ll settle for these limited edition skateboards she designed – I’d mount them on the wall of my powder room.
5.) A Rosemarie Fiore Firework drawing
Rosemarie Fiore who produces drawings through avant-garde techniques such as lighting fireworks on paper and containing them, to produce vivid neon bursts of colour. She also has “scrambler” drawings and “waffle-iron” works. This woman really knows how to have fun with her art. I’m terribly jealous.
Rosemarie fiore, “Firework Drawing #20” 2007
lit firework residue on paper, cardboard and collage
6.) A Phillip Lorca di Corcia photo
I’m not fussy, they are all gorgeous whether he’s photographing pole-dancers, rent-boys or subway commuters.
My favourite series of his is the Hollywood series, where he offered people on the street money to pose for him, and then subsequently displayed the photographs with the name, age of the person, and how much he asked for.
Phillip Lorca di Corcia, W.March 2000, #14, from Cuba Libre, 2000.
Phillip Lorca di Corcia, Hollywood Series, 2000
7.) An Anish Kapoor sculpture
I have loved this one since we saw it in the beautiful walled gardens of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. So minimal and intelligent, the two polished concave spherical surfaces reflect you in the world when you approach it, one the right way up, and in the other, the inverse reflection. Very thought provoking, and the picture below doesn’t do it justice in the least.
Untitled, 2007
Black granite, 225 x 145 x 30 cm
8.) And finally, a relatively affordable indulgence – artist Vuk Vidor’s very funny silk-screen work of “art history”
Munch owns Despair, Pollock owns Drippings, Koons owns Kitsch, Hirst owns The Pharmacy. Love it!
available at http://thirddrawerdown.com/shop/product/Art-History-Part-c-vuk-vidor/
Hope you enjoyed my fantasy, it was incredible to realise that this has been my 100th post in the short space of about a year! I’ve really enjoyed writing the blog and receiving everyone’s comments. Sometimes, I think that I feel closer to a lot of old friends now that I’m in Australia than if I had never left Singapore at all. And the new friends aren’t too shabby either!
p.s. Would it be trashy to admit to wanting a Jeff Koon’s Balloon Dog sculpture as well?
lit by the full moon
long exposure photos of the dam and front garden taken in the middle of the night, lit only by the full moon
My latest “Fake-it” photo projects…
Every week I have to rip off famous photographers for one of my Fine Arts Photography modules at the University of Melbourne.
The title of this module – “Fake It Till You Make It!”. Here are some of my latest ‘homages’…
1) Artist – Bill Henson
Famed for his chiaroscuro (use of shadow and light) and no stranger to controversy when prudes tried to get his photographs of prepubescent teens banned in Australia.
Bill is one of the few Australian (Melburnian!) artists that I know of, although that list is growing by the day. Check out his work on the internet, it is stunning.
Bill Henson – Girl in shadow
Bill Henson. floating girls series, 2000-2003
And this is my take on Bill – it is actually a candid photo of my neighbour Anne’s daughter Poppy. This was taken at our house during a bonfire night and Poppy was only lit by the outdoor tiki torches. She’s actually trying to ‘smoke’ a breadstick!
2) Artist – Cindy Sherman
One of the most revered photographers of the last 40+ years, Cindy Sherman’s schtick since the 1970s has been to take portraits of herself dressed up in various disguises with wigs, prosthetics and such, to create biting satirical works of art commenting on female stereotypes and male fantasies. Critics adore her and she is one of the very few women artists able to command milions of dollars for her work.
Her latest series – the metro pictures, are of rich ladies who lunch, the type you see in the pages of Town & Country or Tatler dressed in ballgowns while lounging about the house. She superimposes herself (dressed up as a tai-tai) on fake nouveau-riche style backdrops and layers on cheesy special effects. Quite daring when you consider that the pictures look exactly like the art patrons who collect her work.
Cindy Sherman’s work
My fake Cindy, complete with artificial hairpieces and Russian hooker make-up. Finn saw me all made up and asked “Mama, why do you look like a piggy?”?? Must have been all that pink blusher! My lecturer said that I could have pushed it a bit further with fake gel nails.
3) Artist – Sam Taylor-Wood
Ah, Sam. One of the first artists I heard of when I was studying in UK back in the late 90s. She’s quite the celebrity, the ex-wife of Jay Jopling, owner of the most famous gallery in London, White Cube, which championed Damien Hirst, the Chapman Bros et al. Now she’s pregnant with a 19 year old actor’s baby. You go girl.
Sam does intellectual installation, video art and photography and is known for her panoramic photographic friezes, the painterly Renaissance quality to her work and classical influences.
This is Sam’s photo – Soliloquy, which was her photographic remake of the very famous Henry Wallis painting “The Death of Chatterton” (1865) which portrays the suicide of a iconic English Poet.
And this is Mark Leahy Chatterton, wearing my reused Cindy Sherman wig. It was so hard to get the lighting right for this one. And the bloody wig kept on falling off too. Funnily enough, this was the photo that got the most praise – when I unveiled it, my classmates went “Whoa…. it’s the same guy!” and “We’ve seen your husband so often, we feel like he’s part of the class!”
You can see that some models are better than others…. I told Sean Leahy to stick to his day job of picking up dog poo!
The end.
Problem Set 1: Ryan McGinley
WARNING- NSFW! MUCH NUDITY
I’ve started my first week at the University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of Arts and I’m majoring in Fine Art Photography.
Every week, one of our assignments is to create or recreate a work in the style of a famous photographer.
It’s an ingenious way of learning about photographic styles because firstly you have to research the style of the featured photographer, then analyse it, break it down and distill the essence of that photographer’s style into 5 elements, and then try to emulate it technically.
This week, we got to choose between Nan Goldin and Ryan McGinley. I choose Ryan because I was less familiar with his work.
So Ryan McGinley. He’s the brat of the photography world. With no formal experience in photography, he started shooting with crappy cameras, documenting his life which seemed to comprise a neverending smorgasbord of high-as-a-kite 20-somethings cavorting in his apartment and au naturel in various outdoor settings. At 24, he sent out 50 copies of a photo book he created to various magazine editors and achieved instant fame and glory, and became the youngest artist to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney.
His earlier work had an exuberant, ethereal and naive quality to it.
Ryan_McGinley___on_BIKE
mcginley_jake_golden_2003
Ryan McGinley -tree
Later on, his work starts looking a lot more composed. He was hired to shoot oscar nominees in 2007 and the Olympic atheletes in the 2010 Olympics.
I decided to recreate the vibe of these McGinley works. Shooting in nature, through branches, twigs etc., playing with perspective and natural filtered light.
Ryan McGinley – Jennifer_Jason_Leigh_1
Ryan McGinley – Jennifer_Jason_Leigh_2
Ryan McGinley- Jim_Sturgess_2
So I asked the dear Irishman if he would strip off and run around in the forest. He was more than happy to get his kit off, until he realised just how cold it was outside, and how many creepy crawlies we had in the forest.
This is him, perched on a tree, very grumpily letting me test the light.
This shot was ok, but not spectacular. The light wasn’t as dreamy as I had hoped for.
I could put some more interesting shots up but I think the hubby would object!
Anyway I was a bit disappointed with the first shoot as I didn’t think the photos had that dreamy quality to them.
So we went out to the bush at the bottom of our garden again today. It was about to rain and the light was very moody.
I also used much wider apertures to make the depth of field narrower.
Poor Mark, he ended up being bitten by a host of ants and spiders!
Stop biting my bits!
This gardening work is hell on the cuticles…
Shite, I think it’s about to rain….
I’m happier with these shots. Thanks to my wonderful hubby for being such a sport. The photo shoot also scared him into getting a day job so that he wouldn’t be at my beck and call every time the light shifted, and now he’s taken some sort of consultancy gig on. Oh well, there’s always Sean, who told me that his going rate would be 10 bucks an hour!
Spectaculaires – incredible installation art
(photo by Benoit Quero/Jean Marc Charles)
Every summer night in a town in France, an 18th century public square called Place Stanislas is transformed into a surreal canvas for light-projected art by a firm called Spectaculaires.
I’m not normally one for computer graphics, manga, animation or the like. But this work is incredibly sophisticated and impactful.
It’s difficult to explain what it is about without watching it, so here’s a link to a video where the team projects a huge video onto the Hotel de Ville and transforms its facade into an epic canvas for a surrealistic play.
the crystal bawl 