Posts

Amalgam by Theaster Gates (Tate Liverpool)

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Where do you even start to write about an exhibition like this. Honestly, best exhibition that I’ve seen at the Tate Liverpool so far. It’s actually breath taking especially when you know a lot about the background history of Malaga which is the exhibitions running theme. So far I have visited Theaster Gates exhibition 3 times now and every time I have had a different experience to the time before. The first time I visited the exhibition I didn’t know any background information and although I had the little booklet which has small amounts of information of each area of the exhibition, but I was actually in a little bit of a rush. So, I kind of decided to just look and see what I kind of thought and felt and found myself making a lot of notes around the curatorial and installation kind of aspects. For instance, when watching the video, I took notes of how that space was used, it seemed like there where multiple speakers, each playing different times and parts. Being sat in t
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Marina Abramovic (1st artist lecture of lockdown)

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So we are now in Covid-19 isolation period and this is actually crazy, life just feels so surreal right now, but anyway for our first “visiting artists” lecture during this pandemic we are watching the documentary ‘The Goddess of Art- Marina Abramovic’ brought to you by BBC. Honestly, I feel weird writing this blog post, but here we go, I guess. So the amazing Marina Abramovic a well-known performance artist, who has been breaking the boundaries of art as she explores the use of body, endurance, feminism, male and female dynamics and the interaction/relationship between the audience and the artist. Often her work can be described as being interventions. In this documentary Marina explained how she wanted this kind of performance art to be more respected and she has definitely achieved that. I’m just going throw it out there now, Marina Abramovic thank you and I love you. The main piece of work that this documentary was discussing was ‘the artist is present’ where Marina h
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Frances Disley (Output vs Bluecoat)

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Frances Disley recently had a show in the Bluecoat gallery called ‘pattern buffer’. I was planning on writing about this exhibition for the blog until I done some research and realised that I have also seen another exhibition by Frances at the Output gallery and I was honestly so surprised. When thinking about ‘pattern buffer’ I really didn’t have too much of an opinion on it and honestly didn’t have a great impression of the artists until I realised that I had saw another one of their shows at Output which I loved and I was shook. Disley has a reoccurring theme in her practice of using art to create an environment that allows the audience to enter and almost leave the real world for a moment. Whether this being a relaxing environment or a distracting one, which can be seen in these two exhibitions as they both aim to be a no-pressure offer of mindfulness. However, the two shows convey this so differently. Frances’ show at the Output used lighting, sound, scent, visuals
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Yayoi Kusama (3rd artists lecture of lockdown)

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Honestly, I don’t know where to start with this blog post, I had never really looked into Yayoi  Kusama or her practice before, but after watching this documentary I can clearly say I am in love. I Literally fell in love with Kusama watching this documentary, just in terms of practice I relate to her so much, installations, happenings, political work, therapeutic sensory art, interactive art, the list goes on and just overall I think she is a bad ass bitch and have been incredibly influenced from watching this documentary. I might even change my idea for my art history essay and write about Kusama instead. My favourite of her works that I definitely resonate with a lot more are Kusama’s installations, performances and happenings, however I do appreciate her paintings and sculpture how she uses her fascination with dots to create abstract images of the real world, creating a dream like yet realistic effect is amazing, the amount of detail in each piece astonishes me and I truly do
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Facecrime by Jonathan Baldock (bluecoat gallery)

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Jonathan Baldock currently has his exhibition Facecrime at the Bluecoat Gallery, where he uses ceramics, sculpture and sound to create an installation full of expressive characters.  The ceramics sculpture consists of body parts and expressive faces. When I walked into the exhibition my honest first thoughts where this is a room of weirdness and I love it. The installation has this sense of surrealism, it almost felt like I was walking through a real-life Dali painting or something. There’s this weird almost demented way of expressing how we use objects and our bodies to communicate. Then there’s the crazy overexaggerated yet simple facial expressions within the ceramics where the sounds of laughter, sighs and groaning appear to come from and echo through the room, creating this creepy yet playful space. Jonathan uses this to discuss the importance of communication and how it is ever evolving form, from hieroglyphics to the English alphabet and emojis. Its kind of interesting
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Joseph Cotgrave - output gallery

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Joseph Cotgrave is an artist from Liverpool who aims to destigmatize HIV, raise awareness and educate people on the matter, this being via his art and the workshops that he runs. Joseph’s exhibition at the Output gallery definitely did this as he completely transformed the space into an almost distorted and fading memory of a club where he may have contracted HIV (it’s based around Liverpool’s gay bars in particularly the Navi Bar). The installation uses, sculpture, sound and light to create this atmosphere. The sculpture consists of items related to clubs and drugs like cans, keys, pills and legal highs, but there are also these sperm like shaped sculptures around the room. These sculptures reminded me of Keith Haring’s ‘Demon Sperm’ paintings that he made the day after receiving the news that he was HIV positive. These paintings show these demon sperms coming to get you representing the fear of getting HIV and this chase catching up to him. I don’t know if the sperm sculpture
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Adrift in Transient spaces by Karis Hopkinson – Art in windows

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During this corona virus lockdown sadly, galleries are closed but whose to say that means you can’t see any art in Liverpool. Art in windows is a little gallery at the side of the bombed-out church that displays solo exhibition via the window. I’ve seen a couple of different artists work here and its interesting to see how each artist works with the small space of the window there given. In fact, it’s made me think about experimenting with some of my artworks to see if I think they would be interesting in this space, but I always end up deciding against it.  Anyway, Karis Hopkinson’s work is the current work there during this pandemic lockdown, which I think is quite interesting. Her work aims to create a familiar yet unknown visual of the world. Experimenting with the nature of a place, including the landscape, the text and images seen and contrasts all of these to create a kitsch kind of landscape imagery. When peering through this window we are seeing a different view of t
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