These recognisable yet functionless objects are the invention of Alicia Ongay-Perez. These cast from inner space of everyday objects that are then transfer into positive forms is incredible. More detail about the project and how she made these are found on her website
I recently wrote about the book ‘Edgelands’ Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts. The book encapsulates so much that we experience within our everyday and for some it is a place we actively return through intrigue and compulsion. There are lots of words to describe various edgelands however the word itself really does capture the sense I get when i pass through or visit the outer limits or our urban life. Photographer Dara McGrath has done a series of photos titled ‘Edgelands’ and like the book really resonates with me and highlights these mundane yet thought provoking wastelands. Here is a link to Dara McGrath’s website:
Noemie Goudal is a London based photographer who I came across in this months Foam magazine. Her play with Michel Foucault’s heterotopias within her scenes really comes close to ideas and current threads within my practice and research. Here is a link to her website
Ergin Çavuşoğlu – Liminal Crossing (2009), two channel synchronized (1920×1080) HD video installation, sound. Installation view Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, 2009
I am currently reading Spatialities: The Geographies of Art and Architecture by Judith Rugg and Craig Martin. It has a great chapter about Liminality and uses Ergin Çavuşoğlu art praxis as a case study regarding the thoughts and concepts about liminal places.
Dust breeding – 2011
Within the chapter they discuss the importance that place and mobility have within a liminal place and how even though we have a fascination with the journey and moving we tend to go in circles and return to where we started:
“Despite the grand traditions of stories of voyage from the Odyssey onwards, the journey is so often to simply rediscover home, to become reacquainted with place: when Ulysses returns to Ithaca, it is to discover home. Or, as T.S Eliot put it, as the end of Little Gidding:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
(Eliot 2001: 43)”
This can be found on p.72.
Andrea Galvani’s work entails rethinking the photo and what it can capture. Each image has a magical quality that is gained through thought and then process. Click here to see Andrea Galvani website
“Car nous sommes où nous ne sommes pas.”
Pierre Jean-Jouve, “Lyrique”
(for we are where we are not)
This project by Meggan Gould is interesting, the thought of capturing the viewfinder versus the object. The actual mechanism that allows you to frame the object becomes the object. Yet this tool is not the actual tool rather the intermediary. Great photos. Please take a look at her other work here at www.meggangould.net
Michael Asher, Galerie Toselli, Milan, 1973
The new e-flux journal email arrived in my inbox today giving an outline of the current contents. I was a little shocked to read that Michael Asher had passed away and Michael Baers had written an article about his life and works. I came across Michael Asher last year whilst reading about his Institutional Critiques at CalArts that would run for hours and hours. I am sure these have left a huge impact on the students that experienced this. Having been in art critiques at art college its hard to sometimes think of critiques lasting so many hours as sometimes an hour and half is almost punishable. To hear that there are critiques that last for hours at a time makes me think there is hope and also rethink how critiques are run. I still have no answers and unfortunately will never experience a critique by Michael Asher which is a shame. However after reading about his critiques I started to read about his work and ideas such as situational aesthetics, realising how his approach to artwork will continue to affect my thought process throughout my life as an art practitioner.
Here is a link to Michael Baers article in e-flux.click
Represented by Galeria Leme David Batchelor’s work plays with objects and light, although quite humorous there is also an uneasy undertone with some of his pieces. These works leave you guessing as to whether you have missed a moment or whether like a joke it is a joke about you.
His Found Monochrome series are what caught my eye at first as they seem meditative at first whilst your mind starts to wander and wonder as to what was here on this blank paper/billboard/sign?
Here is a link to David Batchelor’s website
Whilst reading so much about space for my dissertation this book managed to restore some relevance and credibility for Place and its status alongside space and for that matter time. The book itself is a full historical look at Place and how it has been written and thought about right back to Plato and Aristotle. The quotes are enlightening whilst also thoughtful.
“The point is the space that does not take up space, the place that does not take place; it suppresses and replaces the place, it takes the place of the space that it negates and conserves. It spatially negates space. It is the first determination of space.” Derrida
Dickie Webb 