Belfast Trip 2013

My day of events started off with a nice coach ride down to Banbridge, were we then entered the F.E. McWilliams Gallery. This was a very spacious and interesting building that would fit very well within the modern and contemporary designs of today.

 We first of went into what was the outside section of the gallery and this contained some different sculptures from a broad range of sculptors.

A couple of which I seen were Laura Gibson’s “Bleacher’s Watchtowers” in which she made from a canvas material and then it had this interesting steel structure forming and holding it together. Along with that the piece also was around three metres high and had the “original” sounds of that period in history.

Laura Gibson’s “Bleacher’s Watchtowers”

Shane Donaldson was also exhibiting his piece of work that was this giant sphere/cube shaped piece on these cast iron “train like” wheels. It contained around 7500 or more/less steel nails that all moulded together for him in this interesting way, and really caught us all by surprise.

We also then took a look into the replica workshop that would of all been modelled around McWilliams’ own workshop. With all the replica and real original piece of bits and bobs that he would of needed day to day. This was very interesting and gave us an insight into just what he would have been working in when creating his pieces of work.

Within the studio itself we looked around a vast number of paintings that were all to do with the “understanding Cubinism” movement if I remember correctly. It unfortunately did not allow photographs and it was still great to see all the Irish artists with their great talents and pieces of work through the years right in front of our eyes.

Some Examples of F.E. Mcwilliam's sculptural work

We then hopped onto the bus and head to the Ulster museum were we then saw around its sculpture section with all its various amounts of pieces of work from various people. I then looked through an exhibition that was being held called “Reflections” that looked into all sorts of different types of old and interesting jewellery and clothing. This was a very good section for people who really liked fashion and also wire/jewellery work.

Just down from the museum itself we also went into the Queens University that was a very old and intricate building that is found in a almost “outer ring” of Belfast, but not too far from the centre of the city. 

This place in turn was holding an artist’s work called Colin Davidson and his exhibition called “Between The Words” and he really amazed me. His paint skills were that of pure excellence, and I am really in awe over his pieces of work of certain people that we all know very well from TV, Film and the Arts in general.

After that, we then decided to head further into Belfast near the Ulster University that deals a lot in the arts and different subjects. This was a very good experience to see the university in its entire entirety. There was also a small “Gallery” that had some installations within that were really quite interesting. (See “A Pattern Language” booklet for more info).

From there we then ventured into one of the places we could go and that was to a place called “The MAC”. This is a very contemporary building that I have been to before and really been impressed by when I headed to see the Andy Warhol exhibition last year.

Some sculptural work by Karl Burke, Maud Cotter, and Ursula Burke were there and these were very strange pieces indeed that contained a lot of personal and in-depth thought process. We spent that much time looking at the pieces in the MAC that we had little time left so we ventured on over to gain supplies from Bradbury Graphics which was a great store indeed. They had almost everything from a pen to a giant brush, and I really am glad I went over in the last bit of time I had in Belfast.

Over all I think the trip was a great success and I cannot wait to go back again and see the different exhibitions through the years and always gain a good in-sight into the arts of today and the future. It was a very fun learning experience that really opened my eyes to endless possibilities of Medias and future career choices.

Londonderry Turner Prize Trip 2013

So we left college early in the morning and set off for long drive right up to Derry. We arrived around 11am and then walked on over to the Christmas Markets that were taking place in front of Guildhall. Inside the guildhall you can learn about the history of the city and all different aspects of the life of the city through the years.

Around the city itself it always did feel like a very plain and old city with history to me. I didn’t get to see it in its best light as on the day it was raining and just a generally dull winters day. But it didn’t dampen the spirits as we looked around. We then walked across the peace bridge that had been built not so long ago, and it was really nice to see it up close and be on it as I heard so much about it.

At the other side we then made our way on over to the spot in which the exhibiton was taking place, which was called Ebrington Square Barracks. Within the gallery we could not take photographs of the nominated artists work but for the most part it was enjoyable and over all my favourite artist from them all had to be Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Her big life sized paintings of mostly black people, are all painted and constructed from memories and scrapbook gatherings which all come together to make her painted pieces. The other nominated artists asides from her were Laure Prouvost, Tino Sehgal and David Shrigley.

Over all, seeing this exhibition in our own country was really great and I was privelged to go and say I had been there while it was taking place.

Cecily Brown

I very much adore the blends of green and creamy textures in the centre that she paints within this piece, and they really make you centralize upon the essence of what she is trying to bring across within this piece.

Very much alive and bluntly seen when you look into this piece, you can see the image of a pair of beings caressing and fondling one another and you as the observer see this through the very tight and ridged branches and bushes of this “Hidden Garden”.

This disorientates your sight but makes you still get the essence of what is about to or going to happen between these two very sexualized and hormone filled people. So between the green shades of the trees and the light shades settling through the top of the piece you really get drawn into this feeling and emotion of this piece over all.

This piece is “Night Passage” which is painting with oil paints on a linen canvas. Brown’s pieces are very much colourful and blunt with their lumps of colours layering onto the canvas in her painterly style. Speaking upon that style, you very much see her originality within what she does and this makes her very much her own painter, and is a good thing to have within the work you do as an artist.

I can also see a lot of pastel looking colours within this piece and thus this comes through in that style of brown’s work. She very much keeps her work lightly coloured but it suits it a lot more than darker tones and shades of oil paint colours.

This piece named “The fugitive kind” settle s on the sheer tones of a humans flesh I feel. It draws you eye more towards the redder and more bloodier looking parts of the painting. Into this you see that really there is sensual feeling to this. A strong and yet more weird one that when two bodies join together they form this feeling that isn’t often seen when people get together and that there is something deeper than a “good time”.

Very much a abstraction piece, you get the feeling that Brown really expresses her feelings through her work and it is seen through quite a bit.

This piece named “High Society” is a take upon what the eyes of viewer might consider “rich men buying their way to a sexual experience”. In my eyes that is what I get from this. That this high upper class society really wants it all the time as they “deserve it” for all they have done for people and “how hard they work every day”. While they are in actual fact working at the same rate of everyday individuals I think they take things for granted and through this piece of them dressed up in the right side with their suits and top hats, they take something like sex for granted, and treat it like a buyable thing. I may be coming across strangely or even contradictory of my opinion, but sooner or later you might understand what I am trying to get across when I look into the heavily coloured piece that looks great… but very much so the provocative side to life.

Dexter Dalwood

Taking into account what Dexter actually paints, this piece “Sharon Tate’s House” is part of a dark story, were she and four others were murdered by the infamous “Manson Family” cult.

But the thing about Dexter is that he doesn’t often paint the famous places he’s seen in their past history whether dark or different. He looks at the details of the furniture like in this piece, in which he keeps the 60’s look of the furniture alive with the white sofa with the American flag sitting silently draped over it, showing instantly the pieces country of origin and that perhaps there was a proud individual living here. Then accompanied by a single arm chair that is reminiscent of the art deco style that many homes had back then. 

A lot of attention is drawn to how this very royal place is depicted with its plain layout of little to no furniture in place were we feel there would grand gestures of wealth and extreme spending. The curtains also drawn across to hide from the outside world is also a message to me that this a family who want the same privacy as anyone else, and really shows another side of the segregation between high society and the working class also. Though I have found on the web a short statement into why he added in the small heater and it stated “the tight-fisted frugality of a ma’am too cheap to foot the gas bill is cheekily implied with the addition of an electric heater on the floor.”

But the colours in which Dexter uses are very bright, and also fight very well with the overall décor and feel of the room, but his strokes of paint are clean and neatly compacted within the jewelling lines of precision that he very much shows through all of his work.

A more darker piece, made in 1999, in Room 100 at New York’s Chelsea Hotel which is the infamous site of the violent death of Nancy Spungen, allegedly at the hands of her boyfriend Sid Vicious.

Taken away from the everyday view of life, Dexter trys to show his view of the place with very little detail and devoid of light. In a way he perhaps use his style of work to depict the feeling of how dirty and gritty this room once was that night, and perhaps its better that the room stays this way. I say that because to set everything back in its place to me wouldn’t make it okay at all…. The room itself has been tainted just like Dexter’s dark tones on his canvas when he made this piece.

Within this piece “Camp David” Dexter depicts his views upon the Presidential get away that lies in the mountains. Not related to a lot of the dark places that dexter has seen and then depicted through his paintings, more so an example of a very secretive retreat for the high up governing body of USA. Down the years his place had held some very important individuals during the cold war and such times. Though Dexter paints the architectural styles if the house with its Oak and dark wood to be quite contemporary and very stylish. With its many books for general reading when the inhabitants get bored it makes for a normal place, for people regardless of their standing within society. So for me Dexter paints this place a modern and stylish way that creates a neutral feel for all people and one that I very much can relate to.

Peter Doig

Peter Doig is a well known painter that creates these scenery pieces that have this abstract style about them. One well known fact about him is the matter of the piece “White Canoe” which sold at Sotheby’s for $11.3 million which was an auction record for a living European artist.

In February 2013, his piece “The Architects Home in The Ravine” sold for £12 million at a London auction.

This piece called “White Creep” was made in 1995/6 and is oil paint on canvas. This is a very interesting piece and one I thought would not possible. To basically paint White Mountains would take some amount of patience and time to get the tone right like here thus making it a very intricate piece of work.

Peaking through sections of the piece you can see the rocks of the mountain region peaking through and creating a cool, cold look that truly resembles a deep snowed in mountain. You get a feeling from a piece like this and thus a piece that makes you feel as well as see is a very successful piece indeed.

Peter has this painting style were he paints things normal, but he adds his own flavor of abstract colours and tones to the pieces that photography could never capture. With this piece you can see a couple of Snowboarders in the bottom of a snowy drift. These feel very out of place within this twilight setting, and this orange feel that blazes across the top of the piece makes it look and feel not like a snowy scene.

But with closer inspections behind the red glow of the tress, you can see breaking through the white chilly mountains that bring the piece into reality and make you under the tones and colours used on the piece.

   

Jenny Saville

This piece called “Ruben’s Flap” was painted by Jenny. Her style of painting reminds of a more hand painting technique that basically does not stay within the refines and lines of her pieces. This could also be a statement in which Jenny wants us to see how we see, and that is how we all are narrow minded and do not see outside what we consider ”Beauty” to actually be.

Using almost creamy and warmer shades of colour, Jenny creates this look within the majority of her paintings. This piece named “Rosetta” probably focuses our minds upon the sad blue shades of this woman’s emotion and figure thus making us really try understand what she is going through.

She feels to me like a feeling almost of resentment, and perhaps is again a human personification of the human reaction to things today within society.

A fairly newer piece from Jenny, it is called “The Mothers” and was produced sometime in 2011. The oils upon the canvas resemble jenny’s style very well and show her soft, yet aggressive style of painting that spreads out across the canvas. Especially within this piece you can see the spreading and distorted black lines covering the piece, and it breaks up the normal flow and image of the piece.

It also could be a message into what the actual subject of this mother is feeling which is maybe distraction, tiredness and stress under the burdens of being a caring and good mother.

Claimed as a feminist view upon the female body, a lot of pieces of jenny’s work really trys to show the true female form and this is shown in this very weird way. But with a lot of her tones, shapes, and the female she uses within the painting itself is in fact quite contradictory. Why would she want to show the true female form but show it in such a grotesque way like she does?

It is an interesting point to take from a lot of her work and thus to sit and think why is something only she can answer really.