Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon- The 4th Auckland Triennial.

Last Ride is the 4th auckland triennial, and situates its works around ideas of risk, travel, and economic climate.

One of the artist i liked a lot was Shilpa Gupta, her works Singing Cloud and Untitled (airport split flap display board), were the ones that related to the tittle and theme of the triennial the most for me. The interaction Singing Cloud has with it's audience is quite intriguing. The ominous cloud of microphones makes noises which are very hard to pick up. They lure you in to try and make sence of it all but this is to no avail. The hand out says that the cloud was made after the 2008 bombay bombings, I like it because it has a very scary presance in the room, yet it invites you closer. The cloud can be compared to a cloud of smoke after a bomb has gone off. This coupled with the air port flip board which rolls over very scary statements makes a very bold statement about the risk of travel. Both these works use common objects to portray their idea, and both use noises to atract the audiences attention.

I think these to works were the most succssesful in the triennial, I did not like Alicia Frankovich's works. I struggled to link the works to what the gallery staff were saying. Also I felt that the works did not tie in well with the theme of risk and travel, i know that the human body has a key part to play in risk and travel, however the works did not even hint towards it.

As for a Maori representation I think it would have been good, but I think it would have been hard to intergrate Maori work into the brief. I havn't been influenced by much maori work, and don't have a very good understanding of what I have seen. However in saying this I still think the breif would have had to been alterd to suit a Maori influence. Maybe this is why there was no Maori work.

The Male Gaze

Your Gaze Hits The Side of My Face by Barbara Kruger represents the feminists view on the male gaze well. It does this because there is nothing that the viewer can do to avoid becoming a voyeur. The woman who is looking away suggests that she does not want to be seen, however she is not stopping the viewer. The superimposed words on the image become her thoughts, and seemingly tell the viewer not to look. This horrible position that the viewer (supposedly a man) is put in is inescapable. Kruger has made it impossible for the man to not be objectifying the woman, as in the picture she is an object. It is also impossible for your gaze to not hit her face, as this becomes the subject of the image.

I do not like this type of art because it stereotypes all men as bad people. As much as men objectify woman, this photo fights back and subsequently puts all men into one category, fighting fire with fire.

The film Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock can relate well to this image by Kruger. The small segment that we watched in class was a great representation of objectifying. We see all things in this segment through the male’s eyes, he is spying on her and we only see her as an object. There is no eye content between viewer and subject, just like "your gaze hits the side of my face".

There is one part in the film where the gaze gets turned around. This is when the woman is looking at the painting. The viewer of the film is looking at the man who is looking at the woman who is looking painting, and the painting looks back at the viewer and the man and woman. This is the closest we get to eye contact. Another part in the film I liked is when the man is in the alleyway. We see both him and her in the same shot, however he is behind a door. This door literally represents the doorway between the viewer and the subject. She is the woman in "Your gaze hits the side of my face" and he becomes the viewer of the image. The only difference is he is there by choice.

Te Tuhi exhibition responce.

The exhibition at te tuhi was interesting. Ideas behind collecting were highlighted in all the pieces.

One idea that I thought about whilst at the gallery was the idea of hoarding, as opposed to collecting.

Daniel Malone's work was a category of his possessions. I define a collection as a group of stuff that all relates to each other in one specific way. His stuff does not seem like a collection to me, however it does all relate in one way, and that is that it all belongs to him. At the end of last year I had to move house, it is only when you move that you realize how much stuff you accumulate throughout your existence. I thought that Daniel did not own much stuff, and it was more of a accumulation then a collection.

However in his work I saw a lot of humour which I liked. There was a tone in his work which kind of made fun of his possessions, and I imagine if you trawled though your own stuff you would have a bit of a laugh.

The peice of art I liked the most was Found Time: Big Ben, by Elizabeth McAlpine. All I could think of whilst looking at it was the Clash song London Calling, It played in my head over and over again. Not sure if this means anything...just an observation. What I really liked about the work was the way it was layed out. We talked about how it was in order and was a collection of postcards. The postcards were in order of "time taken" so older photos were mixed in with newer ones. I thought this was interesting because the natural way of ordering for me would have been date...not time of day.

What I also quite liked about the artwork (and we touched on this a wee bit) is how it is an ongoing artwork. It has a very nice sense of time, a few of the postcards are really old, and it would be really cool to see some of them become quite futuristic, not only is this work a collection of big ben photos its also a collection of time (or has the potential to be).

As the work fills up with postcards it will become harder to finish. This reminds me of level 3 physical education, which I took last year. In fitness training there is a rule called the Principle of Diminishing Returns, this is where as you become fitter, the gains you make in training become smaller. This principle can be applied directly to the art work. I like this because it makes the artwork a project which is ongoing and could take ages to complete.

Response to Justin Paton-Ten Good Reasons.

I like Justin's writing and views. His position in his writing is as an artist not a critic. He feels that the people who ask questions like "what is art" take the fun out of art. He briefly brings up the point "is art whatever the people with the power say it is?” This means to me - are we all following someone else’s opinion?

I think Paton is not completely against the theory behind art, but instead feels that the time for theory should often take a back seat in comparison to actually viewing a painting. I agree with this, I like to make my own judgments when standing in front of a painting and find it sometimes painful to be told about it by someone else.

In our class the other day a girl talked about how in her opinion her friends art was crap not art. I thought who are you to judge what art is? And then I thought who am I to judge what she calls art?

I like Justin's idea of list making because it is so personal, no one can tell you your choices are wrong, and no one can tell you that something on your list is not art as long as you think it is.

Paton's piece of writing brings up allot more questions for me, and it leaves nothing set in stone. After saying all that I think it would be a contradiction to go in and critique his list.

I did read it, and I’m sure all the works are really good paintings, however I’m also sure that not even half of them would float my boat

The overall message I took from Justin's writing was that my opinions on paintings are not wrong, and that neither are anyone else’s. I may not agree, but I shouldn't judge.

My Top 5

no.1 The Gorillaz

The Gorillaz are a virtual band created in 1998, I love their music, but they do much more then that. The Gorillaz create environments, characters, art, movies ect. This band has been highly successful and they have 3 albums to date. Not including the two b sides albums, which are compilations of all the remixes done of their music. Many people love the gorillaz, and i think this is because when you become involved in their music you get dragged into a sub culture that can be very closely related to pop art and culture.

no.2 FFFFOUND.com

FFFFound is an image website complied of thousands of uploaded images. There is no rules about images so all sorts of stuff finds its way on there. Its a great place to go to get artistic insiration, because the images uploaded usually have an artistic taste. Design, Photography, paintings, and even little peices of poetry pop up.

no.3 Hockey

Hockey is a sport that i have played for ages, since i was 7 or 8. I Love the sport because it is such a technicle game to play. it is also quite dirrefent to othe sports because of the surface you have to play on. The turf is a peice of art in its self. it needs to be maintained and looked after well. Also, hockey stickes are quite artistic, you can get them with so many different designs and brands. The skills involved to play hockey well take years to learn and ages to perfect, i will play hockey for as long as i can. Im not completely sure how it relates to my art practice, but im sure ill use it at some point in time.

no.4 Artist Kaws

Last year i studied kaws and his art works, and during the holidays i had the chance to go over seas and purchase some of his clothing line, this would be quite hard to do in nz. I like Artists that do more then just paint pictures, Kaws for example makes toys and clothes aswell. I like kaws's contemporary way of modifying images and ideas from the past. He will have a big influence on my art in the future.

no.5 Adobe Photoshop

Last year during my design corse i used photoshop so much. i became quite familiar it, however at Whakatane high school we used cs1, even though we were not the most up to date version i still came to love photoshop, its a great programe and there are so many endless possibilities on it. I have a feeling most of the art i produce from now on will have been influenced and effected by photoshop.