Art Fashion

What's in fashion at the moment? Like music and clothes, art has fashionable shifts. Do art magazines govern what is fashionable in art or do they simply report on what is already in fashion?

I noticed in Venice Bienalle in 2007 that there was a lot of taxidermy used.

At the same time in Leeds at PSL there was an artist, Kelly McCallum that used a lot of taxidermy.

In this months Modern Painters there is a whole article on taxidermy so I'm guessing it's still relevant a couple of years on. This seems to show that this particular magazine isn't governing the current trends, but drawing our attention to them.

Art magazines are aimed at a specific audience of contemporary art lovers who want to be kept up to date with what's going on globally. If I wanted to target this audience I would make a note of trends in the magazines and channel my practice towards it. Taxidermy could fit in nicely with my practice. Instead of using a plastic heron coming out of my briefcase, a real heron could work better. It could target the "art mag" audience, but alienate another audience. if I'm to use the briefcase in the public realm for a performance many people may be offended by me walking round with a dead animal as it has all sorts of connotations such as hunting and animal cruelty.

Instead of jumping on the taxidermy band wagon I think I’ll stick to the plastic herons as it has a more light hearted, comic effect which is what I’m going for.

In London a few weeks ago I looked round some commercial galleries. It was a type of gallery which I hadn't been in before; it was like a shop, hoping that every person walking through the door was a potential buyer. The art itself wasn't even very interesting, like something you'd expect to find in Frasier Crane's apartment. The exterior of the galleries looked like a shop window, but the staff weren't as stand offish as I expected, even when we asked how much each item cost, knowing that we wouldn't be able to afford. It was a side of art that I wasn't familiar with and hadn't had much experience with, but it is there.

This piece has stuck with me since going to Kendell Geer's show at the Baltic last year. It'd be interesting to see how this piece would work in the public realm. Obviously no council would give it the go ahead, but it would be interesting to see the reaction of the public. The public is made up of many different people and so it would be received in many different ways. some would be offended because they have been brought up to think that swearing is offensive, some would be offended, but not like it because they think it's trying to be controversial for the sake of being controversial and some would enjoy it and get something meaningful from it. A wide range of views from a wide range of people.

A way to do something like this without the hassle of getting permission and risk assessments is guerrilla projections or graffiti.

Berlin was excellent for this. Large scale graffiti art on the sides of buildings without any permission and seen by a huge audience, some will like it, some will hate - different people, different views. This is different to projections because it's permanent (more or less) and probably ticks off the local authorities a lot more, although Berlin seemed to be pretty relaxed about it.

It's interesting because many of these artists probably haven't had a traditional art education and wouldn't be able to get their art in a gallery, yet their work is seen by more people. The difference being people choose to go to galleries to look at art but graffiti is thrust upon everyone which changes the way it is received. Some of the ones in Berlin were very impressive though.

There's a video on YouTube by the same artist that did the one above but as a stop motion animation that moves all over Buenos Aires and Baden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4

Very impressive, but they didn't half make a mess...

The Interim show on wednesday went ok i think. A good turn out and a good mixture of students and the public. I'm quite happy with the way my piece was set up, but I'm sure there is room for improvement. I was planning on having another dish fixed to the outside of the building, but time was against me. However, I've decided to put an idea similar to this forward for this years Light Night. Would this be more effective than the dish on a wall and the tv on a plinth? (who keeps a satillite dish inside?) What do you lot think?

This week I went to a meeting for this years Light Night event. What’s great about Light Night is that it attracts a large and diverse range of opened minded people who are up for a good time. We held the Klanging Banging launch on Light Night because there was already a large audience out and about in Leeds. A problem we had to overcome was attracting people down from the city centre to the south side of Leeds to see it. We did this by marketing it really well quite early on with posters and flyers and an interview on BBC Radio Leeds in the week leading up to it. On Light Night there were orange balloons to mark the trail that linked the four pieces together.

I have a couple of ideas for this years event. One would be to fix many of my Dream Dish sculptures to buildings around the city centre. I think the budget could cover materials and technician fees for fitting them. It should also be quite easy approaching company buildings to fix them onto because of it being linked to Light Night and LCC and because I was part of it last year doing another outdoor public piece. I could approach KPMG who let me use their property last time. This would be a good place for views because it gets thousands of people walking and driving past it everyday with it being “the gateway to the city” and the dark arches installation should be complete by then as well.

Another idea is to do projections out of windows. The town hall has a row of windows at head height on street level that would be perfect for a multi-screen video installation. I’m not sure if the budget could cover the hiring of 5 or more projectors, but I could either down size the idea or apply for a Arts Council grant.

I’m going to hire one this week and project it out of my bedroom window in Leeds, just as an experiment. As far as engaging with audiences, it’s probably not the best location. It’ll mainly be people driving or walking to and from work who may not look up and see it. Howver, it’s quite near PSL so there is a chance of catching the eye of someone who may appreciate it.

My friends have developed this idea by planning to do it out of their front room in Hyde Park and put a bench in the front garden so people can sit and watch. The videos will consist of us engaging with it’s environment and community. Yesterday, Adam made a 10m rope ladder which came out of the skylight and down the front of the house which he then climbed up. This was an interesting and exciting performance which got a lot of attention from people walking past. This climb worked better than a later one in a tree because there was no audience apart from those involved and some deer.

I’ve recently been interested at looking at the different ways in which 3D work is presented in gallery spaces.

One of the most popular ways of displaying is the plinth. Although it’s an old way of presenting I think it is still significant and can work well in a lot of situations because the audience can view the object closely from a 360 degree rotation at their own pace.
It’s important though that the plinth is ambient and part of the room, not the artwork. This also depends on what the room is like. If it’s in a modern “white cube” setting then a white box plinth is probably best to blend into the environment (if this is the desired effect). If it’s in more of a museum like the V+A then a different approach is possibly required. There are lots of things to take into consideration to get it right; height of the plinth, width or whether a plinth is necessary at all.

A good piece of work I saw recently was at the Alter Modern exhibition at Tate Britain. Nathaniel Mellors’s ‘Giantbum’ requires the visitor to travel through a maze of felt that doubles as the giant’s innards until they get to the centre and encounter a ‘mini-Cerberus of singing heads. All three were on a large plinth at head height with all the wires and mechanisms on show, (another thing I like is visible wires, it makes the work or the show seem more real and honest).

I remember some young kids coming in with their parents to see this and expecting them to be quite frightened by it, but they seemed fascinated and puzzled. Their parents lifted them up and showed them behind the faces and how the robots worked which intrigued them more. I think that young kids in galleries are a good thing if they’re well supervised (which I think they have in mot cases I’ve seen). It’s comforting to know that art is being taught to the next generation at an early age.

For an exhibition I was in called Klanging Banging in October 08 there were guided tours every Saturday whilst it was on and one week I was told that a family with young children really enjoyed my work which was really rewarding and opened my eyes to how diverse the art audience can be.

There are many tangents I could have gone off on in this post like public site specific work, 'Alter Modern' interactive work, whether globalisation has opened the world up for a larger audience and much more I wanted add, but I’ll do that in my next post. Feel free to comment and discuss.