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Masters of fine arts Orchestration of light
MFA playing with light and caustics
orchestration of light
Masters of fine arts research
Resonance BFA 2019
For our group exhibition Reoccurring Echoes. Reverberations of sound ripple the pianos surface with projection mapping, augmenting physical reality.
Masterclass_Hemi Macgregor_2nd_August_1-4PM
Multi media artist Hemi MacGregor, is a highly respected artist and teacher at Massey University, he works across sculpture, painting, installation, video and public art.
His masterclass delved deep into finding your place. Your place to stand, your position, not in opposition but knowing where you stand and what defines you.
He allowed us all a window into his creative process, both theoretically and his process and the meaningfulness of collaboration.
“E kore au e ngaro, he kakano I ruia mai I rangiatea”
Atea means the open space between. The space between us. The ocean is considered an atea, a space between you and them .Knowledge between this realm and the intangible. The knowledge beyond in the darkness. Arrangements of knowledge. Korero, is the Spiritual surface of us shared. Rangi is sky father and also the mind.
“MY PRACTICE AS A MAORI ARTIST IS A REFLECTION OF MY CULTURAL BELIEFS. MY ARTWORK BECOMES A CONDUIT BETWEEN TE AO MARAMA, OUR PRESENT REALITY AND THE SPIRITUAL REALM OF THE ATUA. I PURPOSEFULLY RE-PRESENT EVERYDAY OBJECTS AS ARTWORKS TO CONVEY CULTURALLY SPECIFIC NARRATIVES. THE INTENTION OF MY PRACTICE IS FOR MāORI TO MAINTAIN A RELATIONSHIP TO THE PAST WHILE ALSO PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE."
Quote tupuna
You have to maintain it or it will die if you don’t follow your own path you will be a slave to someone else’s path. In maoridom we live in the world of light, when you’re an artist you turn your world on the world of light and to find the origin of the source of your energy. The color red, is the symbol of this. Put a seed into the ground and the darkness and the embrace of the “te kore” the known potential for creative energy.
While you are finding out who you are as an artist, what is your position, who are you. Creatively you are in the darkness, you make yourself vulnerable. Art has to come from somewhere meaningful within you. Nurture it or it will wither and die.
Dark and light symbolic.
Stitch the above to below
The dark to the light
Tension of being apart but together. The pole that holds the marae and pushes them apart. Rangi and pupa to anuku
Find your community the work you love and respond too. You are part of the threads from your past not alone, a continuation of the creative journey.
Research was around the stars and cosmology to inform the design of the Marae.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNiiQabSERE&t=3s
The structure that informs the practice. The scaffolding between the darkness and light, idea intangibility and the physical theoretical to outcome. Methodology is your process. How to get from the idea to the manifestation.
https://www.artzone.co.nz/post/art-waters-the-family-tree
This work speaks about the invasive violent raids against Maori people by the military. The installation was a reaction to the unlawful and violent Urewera police raids of 2007, which affected communities that included members of Te Ratana’s family. She says the collaboration was about “needing to have a collective voice through our visual culture that supported the people who were immediately and most affected at the time,” but also took on a “wider cultural responsibility in providing a place for discourse outside of the media and the mainstream.”
Saffronn Te Ratana, Ngatai Taepa, Hemi Macgregor “Ka Kata Te Po” cardboard, fiberglass, 2013. Courtesy of the artists and Auckland Art Gallery. Photographed by Jennifer French AAG 2013.
The black figure suspended in the lightning bolts of energy, a bulls head, is the colonizer. Symbolically using the bull as a metaphor, it will reach and mow everything in its path, representing the devastation of that force. A lament for the loss of culture, using mint green, lament le mint :) Hemi walked through the process of sculpting and mold making, utilising a mannequin, which was painted and molded in silicone, cast by a third party from Fibre glass, then finished by automotive painters. The sculpture symbolizes the relationship between the government figure and the energy and power of the people a tua.
“It’s important to learn how to speak from your heart, after twenty
years of being an artist I am only becoming comfortable with this
responsibility, I say this now to you because the world needs artist to
talk from their hearts.”
Like the song of the tui it is calling the return of the light and warmth. Find your calling.
“Am I a sculptor or am I a painter?. I’m an artist and do what I want. A dichotomy drew it together. The two feed one another.”
Agent Provocateur #4, 2012, aluminum, wood, paint
Masterclass #?_STELLA CORKERY _Monday 26 July, 1-4 Pm
Stella Cockery embodies the post punk ethos, making artworks that speak to musical compositions. Conceptualizing sound improvisation, musical improv has played a big role in Stella’s art practice. We can hear, through her paintings, frequencies, tone, color, waves and motion. Pop culture references and sensibilities, not a romantic paint language. Her practice makes a political statement, to keep Capitalism and painting separate. “Her process which is fast and open to impulse and change, experiments with the idea that we are surrounded by a mass of images and gestures that have been decoded and fragmented, resulting in a reduction of authenticity”
Mimicking powerful architectural buildings, paint smears and internet flows. Waves. Fringe artists, music, grunge. Like the grunge ethos of the outlier, a rebellion, not part of the art world. Making a political statement. Corkery explained how her works are composed, painting sounds and sound painting. Asa musician it’s a recursive process with one feeding into the other. white saucer room 2021. Sound creates visual patterns, frequencies and cymatics creates mandala-like formation of sand particles when placed on a steel substrate over a speaker playing different frequencies of sound.
Cymatics
During her BFA, criticality helped collect what it was she was taking from popular culture and indie music to base her works off. Over time she observed her own creative process, starting the painting process from nothing, much like her free form improv music making in three bands. Strict improvisations as a rule to quell the anxiety.
Found a movement which struck a chord with her personally, the “Riot grrrl” underground feminist riot protest movement, which began in the USA in the 1990’s.
History has sort to drive a wedge between painting and sculpture. Corkery says “I am trying to make a painting sculpture work.” Making paintings like doodles and thoughts, musical wandering across the substrate. A composition of visual sound is my reading from her works. The brush strokes and color palette are frequencies of sound meandering.
In terms of process, while there appears to be an iterative methodology, it is not a deliberate intention that has meaning, or symbolically being an abstraction or offer any reading a way in and helps explain it.
Thinking about returning for a PhD, one needs a topic. Is there a topic? How do you hold onto the trajectory without relying on a theory or topic? Using a contemporary theory, needing the Phd to help narrow the field for herself. Wants to consolidate and pull things in and help her own understanding of her work. It’s about the practice itself. Revolution is a theme in her work smoke signals and a pipe with Magritte
Painting to noise
Painting sound
Undetonated to be detonated bomb paintings who were they for? The bourgeois. “Making commentary on rich people owning the art and you could blow them up making a political statement about commodification of painting.”
Improvisation going from scratch you learn from the previous that helps build the next piece. Process of subtracting and keeping works. Process of curation like composition. Visual motif? Favorite medium is oil paint. Ditch what you know and put yourself into a difficult spot to get to something interesting. There is stress and worry in painting and needs to put herself into that improvisational space to make the work. Calm the monkey mind with music. The act of painting is problem solving on a canvas. Not wanting to conform.
Works in multiples and they have a dialogue between them and converse with each other. Resistance to verbalizing academically her works, painting is the language. Its a journey. Seeing her work develop across time shows. Mark making and colors. Color and form, painters find their methodology.
Asked herself the question how do I radicalize a painting? A counter culture stance against the art world. Opposing forces between painting and the history of painting. Punk and feminist subversive work.
Integrity and personal ethos about your art choices.
(Movie doco painting on painting)
”As a drummer who keeps time painting helped slow down time “
1_Research_critical reflection _Render_Me_ 16th June
Setting up the video footage and Generative particle effects in Lightforms Creator software. Also testing caustic effects of projection with holographic material (on right)
Have set up the Lightform projector in T24 test space. Painting the glass debris of pixels with a broom into a form that is reminiscent of ocean movement. Tried dragging a wig over it’s surface, but it wasn’t firm enough, a broom shifting the glass into a surface reminiscent of pebbles deposited on a digital shoreline, as if an invisible ocean had swept through long ago.
https://maifeminism.com/glitter-a-methodology-of-following-the-material/
Thinking about how the work can imply technological artefacts, digital debris, a simulation waiting to be rendered. To recreate an actual literal memory recall, our own stored files. The entropy of a memory
Thoughts while setting up the work. The material's properties and the effects it elicits. Properties of glass, dispersion, pixels, multidimensional, light reactive, physical medium, with light as material affecting its surface. The immaterial nature of water becoming material.
Trying to imbue elements of loss, of the death of our planet, our dystopian future, a remembrance, a eulogy for a memory. A memory that is fading. Glitched, a cellular trace level recording. Memoir artefact. Memory archive.
Augmented reality, using projection mapping to augment the physical space, to transport the observer into another realm, portal like.
Thinking about themes relating to what makes us human? Our attachments to memories, define our humanity.
Testing the effects of Holographic surfaces with the video work renders interesting caustics.
Interested in the word haptic and how it relates to the work, or the work relates to it.
Haptic perception (Greek: haptόs "palpable", haptikόs "suitable for touch") means literally the ability "to grasp something". Perception in this case is achieved through the active exploration of surfaces and objects by a moving subject, as opposed to passive contact by a static subject during tactile perception.
Painting the glass, moment frozen in time, interference, ephemeral, over layed with digital light projection of a memory, spatial and temporal. dimensional. juxtaposed against a still fragment of pixelated glass. Photons, shifts, memory, glimmers, cascading ocean, pools of flickering color. Holographic surface, shimmering reverie a moving subject, as opposed to passive contact by a static subject during tactile perception.
“Removing formalistic interpretations of nature and enhancing haptic sensibilities. Not to reproduce nature but to analyse human responses to nature.”
"the spatial and temporal dimensions of human interference in complex ecosystems”
“Why is the triad of medium substances and surfaces, our surfaces so important? The surface is where most of the action is. The surfaces where life is reflected or absorbed, not the interior of the substance. The surface is what touches the animal, Not the interior. The surface is where chemical reactions mostly take place. The surface is where vaporisation or diffusion of substances into the medium occurs. And the surface is where vibrations of the substances are transmitted into the medium.”
(Conjecture, projection, our perception of surfaces. Unrenderable. Unknowable completely. Fragments of reality, of truth.)
1 J.J Gibson, the ecological approach to visual perception (Boston, MA Houghton Mifflin 1979) , 23
It’s a metaphorical representation of both the external world of the object and the internal world of the self. “Can you see a whole opaque physical object in a given moment of the perception or most only some part of its facing surface?” and so on. 2
2. Reflections on surfaces
Avrum Stroll
University of California, San Diego
La Jolle, CA 92093
USA
Making the intangible tangible. Light and surface. Materiality, Glass reflects the light, momentarily coming alive. Absorbing, bouncing, refracting, changing, multi dimensional.
It’s a virtual landscape for a virtual world.
Themes and imagery from Bladerunner 2049, as Love, a skinjob cyborg, accesses physical memory orbs from storage.
Crit review feedback
Climate change
Vulnerability of the land
Erosive
Erosion
Entropy
Resonance, waves, frequencies
Fleetingness of human life and solidity and permanence of the land
There is a stillness and contemplation in the work.
Captured the stillness juxtaposed against the motion.
Breathtaking
Artificial
space to experiment with the work
Narrative story extension
Resonance
Laura prefers the stillness and repetition
Inspiration has come from artists Alison Shotz, Anne Veronica Jansens, Tara Donovan
What is the criticality in this work?
What is real? Do androids dream of electric sheep by Phillip K Dick questions in his novel themes around what makes us human, authenticity, our memories and how they define us and make us human. Provoking the reader to question what is real what is constructed? Defining that what makes us human is our memories.
Laura suggested reading the paper “The internet does not exist”
Have started watching “All Watched over by machines of loving grace” a documentary on how we are colonised by the computer. From its beginnings, with Ayn Rand and her myth around selfishness and it being a catalyst for silicone valley.
How does the work assert a position?
Drilling down into it so that you have a way to critique your own work, how do I find a position?
Connection between memory and what is present and not present?
Currents
Memory and hazyness and your own connections to oceans and water
Does have its own merits having an open interpretation for the observer, a way in for own interpretation and memories of similar experiences on the shoreline.
Theories on how memory works
In computer machines how it stores it and forgets it, blank pixels a corrupt file. look at several models or conflate materially and digitally and how things are stored in boxes and pods and layers.
Ocean is primordial what is held within the storage water holds memory. Water is ancient
Seeing pattern working close with the materials and then meta matter those two scales the personal memories and subjectivity and then overplayed with the larger scale of the large. Macro and micro.
Capturing that emotion and holding it
Fragmented glass
Macro and micro
The tiny pieces make up the composite whole
how do you title this work?
Render me
Physical materiality
Digital memory
Post digital art
Digital technologies emerges a hybrid of digital and physical realms
Making the Intangible tangible
Temporal and eternal
Subversion of media technologies
Revealing of its Infrastructure and materiality of the medium
The subsurface materiality of representation
Erosive wave motion a metaphor for
Beyond digitality
Tangible relationship that seek to make a connection between society technology and culture
Post internet art
The internet as a medium
Digital technology becomes embedded in the physical world
The infinite reproducibility and mutability of digital materials
Merging of digital and material realms
Blend digital and non digital as part of the same reality
To use material forms of engagement with technologies to supplement and extend critical reflection with an emphasis on critique and expression rather than technical sophistication and function
Can intersect in unorthodox ways
Cultural reference rather than just a medium
Cultural and social effects on us in daily life
Light as a material as reflection manifestations of reality in a new way
To decipher other reality’s
Temporal overplayed onto the static
Creating a other worldly experience
The movement of light on water
Childhood memories
Natural phenomena light and nature
Perception
Collaborations with programmers and electronic music
Light is multi dimensional
Painting the ocean movement
Observed phenomena
To share that experience
Immersive installations
Light refraction changes the materiality in the space
Donna harraway
Cyborg manifesto blurring of nature culture
Post internet
Matt suggested I could try using old monitor screens talking to past technology and the screen, how we receive our information and experience of reality now. Speaking to our times. Colonized by computers
What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Creative practice is the enquiry, we are not seeking to prove something. You can extrapolate many interpretations from someone’s work.
Subvert
Hack
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“Video feedback is a classic example of complex dynamical behavior. It arises from the way energy circulating in the system interacts chaotically with the electronic components of the hardware.”
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“The post digital aesthetic”
https://2020.xcoax.org/pdf/xCoAx2020-Ferreira.pdf
“In order to frame the main traits of a post-digital culture of artistic production, the paper starts by addressing the concept of the post-digital as aesthetics of failure. It then considers the changing conceptions of the term and related artistic approaches that gradually shift their focus on the digital medium’s infrastructure towards the broader socio-cultural effects of the ubiquity of computational technologies. According to this view, we highlight how a contemporary post-digital culture of audiovisual production explores two main forms of hybridity pertaining to merging digital and analogue media and conflating digital and physical realms.”
Discusses:
Our perceptions and experience of reality is shaped by the ubiquity of digital technologies
Artistic practices a hybrid media forms neither analog or digital and that merge digital and material realms
Hacker attitude of taking systems apart and using them in ways which subvert the original intention of the design
Against the corporate state of its usage
See behind the screen being it into the physical world with the environment and
Computation becomes experiential spatial and materialized in its implementation embedded within the environment and embodied
The involvement of the audience makes them part of the work not reducible to the digital world human and non human agents
Post digital aesthetics hybridity
Rejecting the new by the functional repurposing of old media
Deconstruct and subvert media
Reading suggestions from amber Strain:
Ian Cheng's "Emissaries"
His work using computer AI generated worlds to create his work? He has a book in the Library called: Ian Cheng: Forking at Perfection
Digital Biology: How Nature Is Transforming Our Technology and Our Lives
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television
Reading https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1191754/FULLTEXT01.pdf
”The internet doesn’t exist”
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fictionnownarrativemediaandtheoryinthe21stcentury/manifestly_haraway_----_a_cyborg_manifesto_science_technology_and_socialist-feminism_in_the_....pdf
http://raley.english.ucsb.edu/wp-content/Engl800/e-flux-no-Internet.pdf
Donna Harraway, The Cyborg Manifesto :
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fictionnownarrativemediaandtheoryinthe21stcentury/manifestly_haraway_----_a_cyborg_manifesto_science_technology_and_socialist-feminism_in_the_....pdf
Contact Greg Bennett
https://academics.aut.ac.nz/greg.bennett
Masterclass #3_AGENCY_Monday 15 March, 1-4 pm
An artist's work, whether deliberately political, or otherwise, makes a political statement. What an artist openly addresses or doesn’t, shows where they stand politically in the world. Artists can weaponise their works to address world matters, social injustice, animal rights, land rights, civil rights, environmental issues, issues around gender etc. Our lecturer, Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa), gave a wonderful talk in relation to his own Agency within his practice. Through the medium of writing, video and performance, he investigates and responds to material drawn from Māori paradigms. He opened the talk with an image and quote by civil rights activist and artist, Nina Simone. A good reference point for her works, for me, would be Mississippi Goddam, a song that addresses racial inequality. A direct response to the murder of civil rights activist, Medgar Evers and a church bombing that killed in cold blood four innocent African American, She said that the song was "like throwing ten bullets back at them", becoming one of many other protest songs written by Simone.
While my own work does not adhere to a political Agency at this point, matters of civil rights, land ownership and issues around how society deals with mental illness are never far from my thoughts. As It was confronting and educational to experience fellow students works and to view them through the lens of Agency. The works of … in particular, about the Jewish Diaspora was relatable for me as a mother of two children whose father is of Jewish Israeli descent. It generated old hatreds, far left leanings and heated discussions around Israel.
As a first year student, we were able to experience the works of the 2.5 MFA students, both through it’s form and it’s content. The performative poetry work left me in tears, as stripped naked and baring all to us, a Maori queer narrative,
Having been born in Australia, the plight and injustices of Aboriginal peoples weighs heavy on my heart and mind. Recently I discovered the works of Aborigianl artist
Yhonnie Scare. A master glass blower and also from South Australia, her exhibition Missile Park, is a sledgehammer to the Nuclear Testing and it’s rancid aftermath
Her works often relate to the on-going effects of colonisation on Aborigianl people.
She has explored the Stolen Generation and forcible removal of Aboriginal children by the State.
Yhonnie Scarce. Missile Park
Yhonnie Scarce
Blood on the Wattle, 2013
Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective Paul Louis
“I understood perception to involve the construction of internal representations of the world (e.g. Palmer 1999 for a full account of this view). I assumed that creativity was explained by the mapping and manipulation of internal conceptual spaces (e.g. Boden 1994, 2004). And I held agency to be the triumph of mind over matter.”
Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective
Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective
*Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective
Here is how Francis Bacon attributes agency and creativity. BI foresee it in my mind, I foresee it, and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint… I don’t know very often what the paint will do and it does many things much better than I could make it do.^ (Sylvester 1975, p. 16).
Exactly how i feel, no control, the material and form take over from the thinking,
the act of making something breathes agency into it.
For Latour (e.g. 1996) the world contains the constant potential for the formation of networks of action between humans, artefacts, things, ideas and cultural constructions. Agency emerges only when these elements come together to form actual networks and becomes distributed symmetrically across those networks.
Agency and AI digital art
If agency is our cognitive deliberation over matter than AI is a ceding of our own agency.
In social science, agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. By contrast, structure are those factors of influence (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, ability, customs, etc.) that determine or limit agents and their decisions.[1] The influences from structure and agency are debated—it is unclear to what extent a person's actions are constrained by social systems.
One's agency is one's independent capability or ability to act on one's will. This ability is affected by the cognitive belief structure which one has formed through one's experiences, and the perceptions held by the society and the individual, of the structures and circumstances of the environment one is in and the position one is born into. Disagreement on the extent of one's agency often causes conflict between parties, e.g. parents and children.
Stream of consciousness
I think therefor I am
Endless permutations
action or intervention producing a particular effect.
"canals carved by the agency of running water"
“The design process strikes a balance between the expected and the unexpected, between control and relinquishment. While the processes are deterministic, the results are not foreseeable. The computer acquires the power to surprise us.” — MIchael Hansmeyer
Researcher and professor Margaret Boden estimates that “95% of what professional artists and scientists do is exploratory. Perhaps the other 5% is truly transformational creativity.” Generative systems are helping to explore much broader ground faster than ever before.
"Generative art is the ceding of control by the artist to an autonomous system. With the inclusion of such systems as symmetry, pattern, and tiling one can view generative art as being old as art itself. This view of generative art also includes 20th century chance procedures as used by Cage, Burroughs, Ellsworth, Duchamp, and others." - Cecilia Di Chio from the book Applications of Evolutionary Computation.
https://aiartists.org/generative-art-design
Mark J. Stock is a generative artist, scientist, and programmer who combines elements of nature and computation. His work explores the tension between the natural world and its simulated counterpart— between organic and inorganic, digital and analog.
one person's sermonising morality is another's pious enemy.
Human agency. Agency is contrasted to objects reacting to natural forces involving only unthinking deterministic processes. ... Human agency entails the claim that humans do in fact make decisions and enact them on the world
Agency is thinking in action
Video feedback is a classic example of complex dynamical behaviour. It arises from the way energy circulating in the system interacts chaotically with the electronic components of the hardware.
The two leading contenders – Stanislas Dehaene’s Global Neuronal Workspace Model and Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory – both claim that consciousness results from information processing in the brain, from neural computation of ones and zeros, or bits.
Masterclass #2_MATERIALITY _Monday 8 March, 1-4 Pm
Class discussion of what Materiality is":
Tactile response and materials
Fabrication
Sense response
Meaning of the material social political eg embroidery and its history
Silicone material bodily and motion
Social cultural political
Environmental
Material as an English
Originality
Integrity
Reductive
Denoting an instance degree or quality of condition
Specificity
Julieanna breaking a cup to disclose what it’s materiality is
Physical aspects
Everything is material we differentiate
Light as material
Reading for my work, Aurum Stroll surfaces
things appearance
Immaterial material
Readings on Materiality -
Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation, and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966.
“There are no facts, only interpretations,” Nietzsche, 1880, Sontag used Nietzsche’s theory as the catalyst for her 1964 masterwork “Against Interpretation,”
“to interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world — in order to set up a shadow world of ‘meanings,’ first published in 1966, Sontag was an American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, teacher, and political activist. Her extensive writings about photography, culture and media, AIDS, human rights, and communism and leftist ideology.
Against Interpretation, examines our culture’s generally well-intentioned but ultimately perilous habit of interpretation, which she defines as “a conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain ‘rules’ of interpretation,” a task akin to translation. The problem lies in the interpretation of a work, the translation it’s self, re configuring the works meaning, the very act of this is altering it. For example Philo of Alexandria, re interpretation, or revamping the Hebrew Bible into spiritual paradigms, excavating the old text for a a “…sub text, which is a true one...”
The earliest writings on art criticism, the Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, claiming that art was purely imitating reality. Since this affirmation, art has sought to justify it’s self. All western theory and thought on art confined within the paradigm as either mimesis or representation, therefor since has been in need of it’s own defense. Creating a division between form and content, …”making content essential and form accessory…” (pg96) “Interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys…”
“It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world.” And biography, by the same measure, is the revenge of research upon the intellect. The life of the mind is turned into “the life,” a coffin full of rattling facts and spectral suppositions, less an invitation to read or reread than a handy, bulky excuse not to.”
Sontag argues that is to resist the tendency to over focus on content, at the detriment of the form. Sontag insists that a new way of viewing and understanding art needs to be described, the question is how. Arguing that more insistence on the form of art will silence the intellectual pursuit of excessive focus on content. A new vocabulary that is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Arguing that what we don’t need now is “… art into thought or worse yet, art into culture…”
What is needed is a vocabulary — a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, vocabulary — for forms. “content” Sontag says, simply makes a profitable commodification of art.
“Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.”
“content” — perhaps the vilest term by which professional commodifiers refer to cultural material today — and how it defiles art:
The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.
Material Response:
My intention is to find materials that relate to my own work and some of Kates. Glass has been a material that has always fascinated me for it’s multi dimensional and refractive qualities. Rather than go through the process of firing to create a glass artwork, I felt the need to find something immediate to form. After some research, it became apparent that car glass, which is already fired, could be explored. At the car yard, a broken windscreen, with it’s fractured geometric fragility had caught my eye. I set about returning to the car yard to create a work using this material. It would behave in a very different way to the previous safety glass, it would shatter and fracture but hold it’s form due to the glue that holds the two panes of glass in place.
Response to Materiality based on Yes Tomorrow:
Riffing off of Kate Newby’s, Yes Tomorrow exhibition, using broken laminated glass pieces as my material, found in a car yard, I fossicked through dog poo and dirt to find these glistening gems. Many ideas have come to mind in terms of a digital simulation of the ocean. Responding to both the material and the test space site, it has occurred to me as I respond to the space, that a motion, made by my hands, that is reminiscent of the tidal motion that I’m entranced by when seaside. As if invisible digital water has swept in and deposited the sand in such a way as to leave its trace.
Yesterday I went back out to Upper Hutt to salvage a cracked windscreen as I’ve been envisaging a black glass ocean wave, to be wall mounted. The process of gently breaking by hand the forms, the laminate gluing and holding the forms in place. Very excited to try this sculptural glass approach. Have been wanting to make glass sculptures for years but have been held off by its process. This immediate touchable and formable laminated glass gives me access to a surface renderable. Reminiscent of refractive ocean surface
Thoughts is reaction to using the broken glass within the test space":
Cubes are pixel like, tying in with simulation theory. Could this be a representation of pixels and a simulated ocean deposit.
Motion, flux, deposited, shifting, churning
Processes biological coastal processes driven by winds, waves and currents sculpt the edges of the coastline
The transportation and deposition of sediment.
As a material , glass is sand that’s been melted down and chemically transformed.
Beaches are the result of wave action by which waves or currents move sand or other loose sediments of which the beach is made as these particles are held in suspension. ... Beach materials come from erosion of rocks offshore, as well as from headland erosion and slumping producing deposits of scree. The three principle marine processes that influence coasts are erosion, transportation and deposition. Erosion refers to the breaking down of the land by the force of waves.
Definition
The physical, biological, and chemical processes operating on the surface and shallow subsurface of a beach, resulting in stratigraphic, granulometric, and sediment compositional variations, construction of physical sedimentary structures and biogenic structures, authigenic/diagenetic mineral responses, and biogenic mineral products.
The glass functionality as it was intended, as car windscreen material is set free from its intended use and is framed within a new context, removed from its former meaning of car glass and transformed.
Exploring the beach of Oruaiti Reserve, a place I go for much inspiration and connection with nature, I started, as Kate had described, to really look at the processes that were happening on the shore. Noticing the patterns created by the motion of water, it’s depositing of sand and pebbles,
Most other substances in solid form are crystals, minus a few exceptions. These include things like glass, which doesn't form a regular structure. Instead of crystallization, materials like glass and clear plastics freeze before a structure can be set up.
Researching how to lay the deposits of sediment left on the digital shore. Throwing gives an organic motion similar to the sea. Could also sculpt by hand a symmetrical pattern. The feeling of ocean movement. Residue of the event.
water and glass cleaning, watching the biological processes of how water creates deposits
Moved by hand the material looses an organic water motion, using a broom or brush with motion brings some interesting results. Interested in the idea of symmetry at a quantum level from Tenet. Studying the shore line and taking photo reference there is a trace of the ocean where the pebbles are deposited by tidal motion. Imagined a ocean moving through and leaving its deposits rather than following an illustration created, sculptural as opposed to contrived
Crit review presentation
digital debris
This brings me back to my final work for Exposure. Understanding Entropy
Entropy is order. When (anything) is in a particular state, or a bunch of things in a particular arrangement, you might say it is in order. The opposite being disorder. Entropy is a formal (mathematical) definition and measure of how ordered something (a system of things) is. One way you can visualize this (it is but one illustration — the scope what entropy applies to is universal) is say a deck of playing cards. When new, the cards are in order of suits (spades to hearts) and each suit is in order of value (ace, 2 … 10, jack … king). When you think about it, of all the possible ways the cards could be arranged into a deck — there is only ONE arrangement which we call ”in order”. In this case, we say the deck has low entropy, and if fact it has the minimum entropy — it can’t be more ordered than in order. If you shuffle the deck — the CHANCE that the deck is still in order after you shuffle it is extremely small (so small you would be accused of cheating if it ever happened). After it is shuffled, we say that the entropy of the deck has increased — it is less ordered. The value of the deck entropy depends on how well you shuffled it. If you just cut the deck once and put the two halves together the other way around, the deck is still nearly in order — every card is next to the one it should be, except the two either side of where you cut it. We say the entropy has increased only a small amount. It’s all about the chance of randomly putting the cards in order. The probability that happening is 1:52! — one in factorial(52). Factorial 52 = 52 x 51 x 50 x … x 3 x 2 x 1. Which is a stupendously large number — way larger than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches on earth. The chance of you shuffling the deck into order is correspondingly small. It just isn’t going to happen. We can justifiably say it CAN’T happen (even though technically it can). This has profound implications. It means that the deck of cards can ONLY go from ordered to disordered — and in fact from a little disordered to more disordered. We say: entropy must always increase (this is the second law of thermodynamics). Entropy must always increase. How? Through time. As time elapses, the entropy of ALL systems must increase. In fact, the current hypothesis is: the increase of entropy IS time. Or at least, it is the ”arrow” of time — the reason why time never goes backwards. The heat death of the universe is also the result of maximum entropy.
Sculpture in the Expanded Field Rosalind Krauss October, Vol. 8. (Spring, 1979), pp. 30-44.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/materiality
Last night I dreamt that my childhood bathroom, red tiled and full of memory, shattered into millions of tiny pieces.
Artists_Talk_Monday_24th_May 2021, 1-4 pm
Reflecting on what I’ve explored this year so far. Really have enjoyed pushing myself out of my material comfort zone, from behind a computer making simulations to exploring new materials and locating my Site and thinking about what Agency means to my practice. To begin I need to go back in time and reference my earlier work from Exposure 2019. A 3-D sculpture monolith installation with sound and light, a still fragment of compressed time, juxtaposed against an ocean in flux, the eternal within the temporal. Using light as material and drawing from the Light and Space movement, artists such as Ann Veronica Janssens, Helen Pashgian (image) and James Turrell, artists who utilized technology from the aerospace field to render their objects, with a focus on perceptual phenomena, where light becomes the material, via glass, neon, resin and cast acrylic, often forming installation works. Objects of light that pushed beyond the material of an object and became about the immaterial atmosphere of light itself.
Helen Pashgian
NEW LENSES AND SPHERES
VITO SCHNABEL GALLERY - ST. MORITZ
JUL 16 - AUG 31, 2019
Reassessing my own process I noticed a correlation in my own practice, where they utilized aerospace technologies, I had been utilizing visual effects software to generate intangible atmosphere, natural phenomena, finding ways to articulate and render into sculptural form the processes of nature. A somewhat mediated view of nature, although the works are based off real world statistical models and mathematics of water. In terms of Agency what interests me as an artist is the tension between real and the digital, so much of our reality today is half digital hallucination. Part of my interest in utilizing technology to generate these objects, is the relationship between myself and the computer, withdrawing my agency and ceding of control by the artist to an autonomous system.
Responding to Site, my aim was to bring the oceans memory into the gallery setting. Casting a resin wall sculpture the is a partial incomplete form,
This year I’ve pushed myself out of that comfort zone to explore these ideas through a physical material, (video)one in which I can interact with in a tactile way. Also not having the time or finances to create an ocean simulation sculpture, asked me to explore new content and form. As an artist I’ve always been fascinated by glass as a material, which like resin, transmits, reflects and absorbs light. It’s has a multi dimensional quality that appeals to me.
Have been rethinking how Agency relates to this new process and material, drawing some interesting ideas from the paper, Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective, Paul argues that:
“In this paper, I describe how close attention to the process of sculpting clay from the perspective of Material Engagement Theory (MET) can create a detailed description of a mutable sense of agency and sense of self….
I assumed that creativity was explained by the mapping and manipulation of internal conceptual spaces. And I held agency to be the triumph of mind over matter…
Now a sculptor who works with clay I find these information processing models of the mind incompatible with the process of making. Sculptural forms seem to arise directly from the interaction between my body (eyes, arms and hands) and the clay. It feels like the clay and I create something together.
As a response to Materiality, riffing off of Kate Newby I began investigating Render Me, a digital shoreline. I went back to the site that has inspired me, Oruaiti Reserve, Breaker Bay, that I locate in my practice. Recording with video and observing the natural phenomena and the processes of nature, between the ocean and the foreshore. Noticing that the patterns of deposited sand and pebbles on the shore are the results of wave action by which current move sand and sediments, particles being held in suspension. Researching this sparked the idea of broken glass as material, being similar to the deposited sediments. I had seen broken car glass along the ocean road, behaving in the light like the water over the sand, and then sort out about finding how to get my hands on some. The material is set free from its intended use and is framed within a new context, removed from its former meaning of car glass and transformed.
Back at the test space after fossicking through broken glass and dog poo at the car wreckers, this interaction with the material started me thinking about the motion of waves and how it would deposit these pixelated pieces of cubed glass. Studying my research videos taken at the site of water moving around a rock, (video)
I began trying to simulate the motion of the water at the test space. Using my own agency, as if the glass had been deposited by an invisible ocean around the architectural pillar of the Site. Trying different methods to structure the glass, I found that a broom was the best way to organize the forms Into organic simulated like sediments. At this point also becoming aware of my own agency and material engagement theory from the paper playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. Agency has long sought to be a triumph of mind over matter and the writer argues that sculptural forms seem to arise directly from the interaction between your body and the clay. That the active forming of a material opens the boundaries between what you think to be yourself, it becomes “…uncertain and permeable through the very act of interacting with the medium. The medium becoming an extension of your mind. “That sculpting can be used in an Investigative manner As a tool for material conceptualizations.”
For our response to Agency, (image) is an oil painting titled Eulogy that reflects on to the aftermath of the bushfires in Australia in 2019 the fires combined with the death of my father being rolled into one. This brings up issues around climate change and politics for me, the politics around our shared complicity in this complete devastation. A wasteland of ash, a emotional Response not a literal depiction. Reminiscent of both Rothko and Monet, Turners skies, for warnings of the industrial revolution. “Issues around social inequalities that fire present.” Speaking to an ambiguity around the foreground and background, are we looking from a forest into the light or is it ash hovering amidst the darkness. A void, a questioning of self. One of my fellow students mentioned it being like a recorded memory before it’s disappeared. Much of my previous paintings explored memory and I think it’s showing up here also if subconsciously. The textural paint seems to be pulling the image out. A tenuous bond between the site, electric sockets and lighting, in collaboration with the material. Reflection of a memory? A cry in the dark for all the flora and fauna that burnt in these fires.
Resonance, waves, frequencies, the reverberation of sound, piano vibration.
I often find a painting begins as an emotional response to music or an event, that while I may try to create what I have in mind, the relationship with the paint has it’s own voice, I’ve learned to let go of making the painting what I intended and letting the material take partial Agency I kind of surrendering.
“Here is how Francis Bacon attributes agency and creativity. BI foresee it in my mind, I foresee it, and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint… I don’t know very often what the paint will do and it does many things much better than I could make it do.”
looking forward for the next semester, I’d like to continue the pixelated glass works with projection mapping and sound for immersive installation. Working with a friend to generate AI soundscapes in conversation with a digital ocean.
Masterclass #1_SITE_Monday 1 March 2021, 1-4 pm
Assignment 1: Response
Masterclass #1_SITE_Monday 1 March 2021, 1-4 pm
Reading: Sculpture in the Expanded Field
Rosalind Krauss
October, Vol. 8. (Spring, 1979), pp. 30-44.
Kate Newby
YES TOMORROW, Adam Art Gallery
Proceed to develop a ‘close reading’ of the work that you have identified. Go experience the work directly. Investigate the work’s making, installation and presentation, who created it, what has been written about it, how was it made, what issues does it speak to—develop a meaningful contextual understanding. Each week’s provocation will then ask you to consider that work through a particular lens and then to develop your own creative response.
Very lucky to be given a guided tour and perspective from both artist Kate Newby and Adam Art Gallery Tina Barton. Yes Tomorrow is a sensory feast, a sculptural collection of childhood beach memories. As we toured the works Kate gave insights into her thinking, concepts and making of the works. The exhibition utilizes the gallery in ways that possibly haven’t been seen before. Up-cycling from years of collected “cherished... collections of found misfits over the last 9 years”. This exhibition, her largest show in Aotearoa, utilizes the whole gallery space as her sculptural canvas. The exhibition draws on several months of research and planning.
Working from Quarantine in Auckland, she began working immediately, contacting suppliers, manufacturers and crafts people. With collected clay fired pieces and newly made thigh tiles, made by forming rectangular sheets of clay over a person's leg, made by friends and family, bundled wind chimes bought over from the USA where she has been living for the past decade. These pieces, titled windchimes, are seen upon entering the gallery space. Dangling and connecting one side of the gallery to the other, being pulled together to suspend and hold the work in this space.
Wind chimes
Decades worth of practice surveying her craft, the clay moves and dances within a draft. Replacing four gallery window panes, with four cast textured membrane like panes with holed glass, reminiscent of rock pools and ocean patterns, the panes create an opening up of the gallery space, a letting in of the elements, sunlight and draft to open the gallery space, a breathing and inviting of the outside world within.
The piece evokes a timeline of kept cherished pieces, a memory chain of events, ordered by color and groupings of size. The draft creates a sonic resonance of these earthen chimes. I imagined higher pitched tinkling’s of sound with the tiny pieces and deeper sonorous tones for the longer pieces. The very act of this work is like the natural processes or phenomenon found along a shoreline of breathing and sighing, the motion of waves, the ebb and flow.
The next adjacent work, with corresponding glass pane installation, sits above a channel cut from the floor tiles.
Within the channel are clay and glass shells, reminiscent of a child’s collection from days foraging along the shoreline. Made by hand from fired clay and fused glass, having been arranged into similar chosen colors like a child’s schematic play. Kates works antagonize buildings and spaces, commenting that it’s too passive to leave the shells on the floor, needing to be showing a threshold between inside and outside, between the gallery space and the work. Entrenching itself into the space.
ocean floor installation
The next piece, which can be viewed from the mezzanine down to the lowest gallery floor, a cobalt blue watercolor stained like ocean, or seabed blue sand ground sculpture. A unique experience as a viewer to be able to walk on top of this textural floating world.
Constructed by hand from fast drying concrete and stained later with paint, highly visually textural, deliberate subtle marks have been made, pitted and scratched, like traces of a child's hand playing on the beach, the work reminds me of sand or a seabed.
Silica orbs
The whole show is a sensory and sensual feast, tying into one's own experiences and memories of a coastline. It’s a rare sensory experience, walking on the surface of an artwork, a feeling of temporality, a changing surface made by footsteps, varied and unfolding under your feet. The ocean floors sculpture is restrained in its texture and ornamentation simplifying your focus as the recipient, multisensory tuning, tactile and textural. Finger marks, the artist's hand, are recurring motifs.
A sense of touch and gradual movement as you move through the space. If the land art movement makes art from its environment, this show brings the memory sensations of the beach into the gallery. It speaks to our environment, possibly Kate's desire to be within her own memories of her childhood beach while cooped up in NY. “The logic of sculpture, it would seem, is inseparable from the logic of the monument. By virtue of this logic a sculpture is a commemorative representation.”
In a corner, catching the light of the day, are a collection of glass orbs. Made from a material found along beaches of the world, silica, these responsive light collectors trigger memories of light bouncing on the water's surface, or rock pools filled by sunbeams.
Made by cupping and forming wax by hand, then casting with glass, they speak of transformation, of processes found in nature, linking into the previous collection of glass filled shells.
On the mezzanine, we glance through a textured glass with rock pool formed aperture like holes, peeking through we glimpse an extension of the works, terracotta tiles from locally dug clay. Highly responsive to the internal space the tiles respond to the architectural orientation, allowing a view from the textural glass window below.
Glass pane aperture
Reminiscent of washed ashore found objects and ceramics.
The final piece, grouped collections of works that span her career, the pieces placed on a pier like barrier. Feels like a museum display and survey in the way it’s presented. Resisting the temptation to touch and experience the pieces. These works also remind the viewer of the world under our feet, as a viewer, we look down to experience them, just as Kate has. Intention is to create a window install which plays and changes with the light of the day, rather than a projection of light within an installation space. Like Kate, to “bring the outside within”
I think these works are a glimpse into a happier time along the shoreline of her childhood, juxtaposed against Newby living in New York City, an over populated condensed megalopolis. Beneath it’s veneer, the question kept arising for me, in this environmentally ravaged world where many are forced to live in high rise cities, devoid of nature, perhaps a political statement of sorts, who has access to nature?
Kates work for me is speaking to the monument that is nature, “It sits in a particular place and speaks in a symbolical tongue about the meaning or use of that place”... Where sculpture sits within the monument lexicon, flipping the switch so that nature itself is the monument that is being represented. “a marker at a particular place for a specific meaning/event.”
“Because they thus function in relation to the logic of representation and marking, sculptures are normally figurative and vertical, their pedestals an important part of the structure since they mediate between actual site and representational sign.”
Response: Over the past six months I have been developing a series glass pane Ocean Cathedrals, in continuation of my Exposure exhibition work,
Crit response, ocean sculpture
“A compressed moment of time, underplayed by light refractions, in silent contemplative stillness.”
The philosophy and aesthetics from the Light and Space movement has guided this works development and where this movement utilized a parallel technology for fabrication from the military, mine has derived from computer film technology.
Drawing from the Space and Light movement, artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Ann Veronica Janssens and Anish Kapoor, who generate the experience of light through objects and like them create an atmosphere through immersive installation art. Riffing off of Kate's concept of bringing the ocean landscape within the confines of a gallery space,
Ocean Cathedral proposal
This current body of work seeks to present a mediated experience of nature that interrogates our sensory perceptions of time and light and our relationship to the natural world that generate experiences of light through objects, I utilize technology to fabricate immersive atmospheres through objects, light and sound installations.
A Reverie on entropy
This past six months has been enriching and incredible. Finishing my post graduation in fine arts with honors at Massey University Wellington. Here are some of the pieces I have created alongside my research paper on The Post Digital Artefact.
My paper has researched the benefits of digital fabrication as part process for the contemporary artist. To do this, I researched and provided examples of contemporary artists utilizing computer technologies to create works that are not possible to form by hand and how these technologies have emerged as recognized art practices. There is no longer a demarcation between handmade and digital made, these disciplines for artists are feeding into one another, it has become a recursive process. Twenty years ago, in Design school, my thesis researched how the computer was being utilized to generate art across a broad range of media, including computer graphics in the film industry, games, the web and digital art.
My intention for my final body of work is a 3 dimensional ocean surface within a carved cavity, recessed within a monolithic style block, the back side of the sculpture presents the observer with a billowing cloud, the other side a surface of the ocean. Presented upon a lit plinth, in front of a digital printed oil painting of a cloud. This enables the viewer to walk between the two pieces, when in front of the resin sculpture the two merge and become one optically. It leaves the optical process of bringing the two pieces together in the mind of the viewer, potentially more interesting than my previous works that simply placed the colored print behind the resin sculpture leaving no exploration or participation on the part of the viewer. A conversation between the two pieces stemming from previous content of the relationship between the clouds and ocean. The color from the painting can be seen refracting within the acrylic sculpture of the cloud, the sculpture and painting becoming one, no longer a dichotomy. The very phenomena of the color transferring across the gallery space to be collected and refracted into the waves of water, like we see happening in reality, to me is the most interesting aspect. A sculpture painting. Between the digital and the analogue. Stopped motion, compressed time, an infinite moment. Between stasis and potential activity.
Reverie on entropy
perspex sculpture
65x60cm
2019
Ocean keepsake
Revisiting an earlier body of work “keepsake”. A lecturer at Uni had described how he can feel hemmed in when he can’t see the ocean, perhaps a pocket sized reminder in times of need. Loosing the frame but retaining its cameo keepsake shape. Reverie of the ocean. These refract and reflect light in a precious blue used by the old masters for spiritual holy characters. I’m reclaiming it here for our oceans. Limited edition of 20 ✨
#keepsake #simArt #cg #ocean #resin #frenchUltramarine #belindagriffiths #art #fineArt #3dart #motiongraphics #simart #simulation #cg #cgi #computerart #fluid #vfx
Infinite gaze
the infinite gaze
80x80cm
oil on wood
prototype
#contemporaryartist #belindagriffiths #oilPainting #fineart #art #artist #twilight #nocturne #fractal #digitalart #simArt #waves #wallrelief
SOLO 45
A sneak peak of my new collection of sculptures for Solo 45.
New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts
Queens Wharf
December 7 - January 13
Leap into a virtual world, Solo 45 will showcase the current body of work, 'sea of clouds’ accompanied by there process through the virtual headset, thanks to Brian at I want to experience. https://www.iwanttoexperience.com/
These wall pieces, held within the traditional setting of the frame, merge classical motifs with digital water effects. The ocean floats, stopped in a moment of time. Beneath the resin sculptures, the painting becomes diffracted and refracted encouraging viewers to closely examine and move around these pieces. Alongside these sculptures is the oil painting ‘Fade into you’ which captures the moment of metamorphosis where
liquids dissolve into atmosphere.
sea of clouds
To be showcased at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts,
Solo 45 exhibition
December 7- January 13
Love to see you there 🌊
Belinda Griffiths is a visual artist whose practice explores
a hybrid of traditional themes through modern day technologies. An artist who has a love for water,
clouds and natural phenomena, who infuses the
organic complexity of nature with digital technology.
She works across a broad range of media including painting, digital art, photography and sculpture. She studied digital illustration and graphic design, successfully working in the film industry for some 8 years and has extended those disciplines into her practice.
Belinda's current body of work, 'sea of clouds' is exploring the face of the ocean, etched by the wind.
These wall pieces, held within the traditional setting of the frame merging classical motifs with modern
day digital movie driven water effects. The ocean floats, stopped in a moment of time. Beneath the
resin sculptures, the painting becomes diffracted and refracted encouraging viewers
to closely examine and move around these pieces, prompting individual experiences.
Accompanying these sculptures is the oil painting, Fade into you, which captures the moment of
metamorphosis where liquids dissolve into atmosphere.
A full-time practicing artist at Bayview Studios, Shelly Bay. Her works are held in private
collections in New Zealand, Australia, France and the USA.
'the temple of all life'
Keepsake of the ocean. A framed body of water. Water is symbolic of our emotions, we are surrounded by it, our bodies made up of it. This computer simulated ocean pattern is captured in the medium of wood. Throughout history water has been a symbol of our emotions. Nature is to be protected, we are the custodians of earth and sea and all creatures that inhabit it. There is something very finite about placing a frame around the ocean, it gives a border to the artwork, a space between what is real and what is not real. A window to the soul, the setting of a jewel. It holds the contents as precious.
A little bit about the colour, french ultramarine.
“Even the finest natural ultramarine, ground assiduously by hand, is riddled with odd minerals: calcite, pyrite, augite, mica. These deposits cause the light to be refracted and transmitted in subtly different ways. No two strokes of paint are the same in their fundamental composition. Stand at the right angle and you might catch a quiet glimmer of white or gold, like a prick of light from some distant province of the cosmos.”
Butsudan ‘the temple of all life’
Oil on wooden 3d sculpture
45x30x6cm
$750
#contemporaryart #belindagriffiths #butsudan#3d #sculpture #ocean #buddhism
refusal of nature
'refusal of nature' depicts a framed body of water. Water is symbolic of our emotions, we are surrounded by it, our bodies made up of it. This computer simulated ocean pattern is captured in the medium of wax and ready to be cast into the delicate translucent ancient technique of ceramic.
Pottery is one of the oldest human inventions, originating before the Neolithic period. This new series will be cast in the age-old medium of porcelain. Throughout history water has been a symbol of our emotions. We are surrounded by it, our bodies are made up of it. Nature is to be protected, we are the custodians of earth and sea and all creatures that inhabit it. There is something very finite about placing a frame around the ocean, it gives a border to the artwork, a space between what is real and what is not real. A window to the soul, the setting of a jewel. It holds the contents as precious.
#belindaGriffiths #contemporaryArt #sculpture #wax #ocean
lucent memories
It has been a busy few months, here is the latest.
First major commission is finished and installed. What a tremendous feeling it is to create a piece for someone. While it took some time to get together a preliminary image, once that happened it all fell into place. Following on with my body of work, exploring coalescence as my theme, the sky and water as the subject and the romantic notion of these two as metaphor.
confluence
This one is fresh off the mill, there is something beautiful about raw wood. This new design depicts the symmetrical world of nature.
It's really interesting to hear peoples feedback about what they actually see in these pieces. From a certain light I can see Buddha peacefully sitting cross legged. They provoke different responses, very much like the Rorschach tests of 1927 , used by some psychologists to test and examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. Mathematical symmetry found in nature I've often found fascinating, our own human form being a divisible copy of its self, a mirror. Since the earliest uses of pottery wheels, pottery has had a strong relationship to symmetry. Designed by me and fabricated by my vfx technical guru husband Ronnie Menahem, this collaborative project wouldn’t have been possible without his efforts and genius.
‘Confluence’
Wood
$2,750
600mm diameter
#cnc #ocean #fractal #belindagriffiths #nzartshow #digitalArt
NZAFA Winter Exhibition
The NZAFA Winter Exhibition on until the 16th of July. Come and see a collection of new works, really excited to have two sculptural paintings in this gorgeous gallery space.