The blog of an art student

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...

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...

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...

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 trul...

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 interes...

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...

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 ...

When it comes to the documentary and Louise’s work, I honestly don’t really know what to  write. Of course, looking at her sculptures and work in a psychoanalytical way that the documentary spoke quite in depth about is interesting, I just feel like I didn’t really resonate too much with this artist or their artwork. However, the documentary mentioned how Bourgeois uses her anxiety to find the form of for art, when researching I found another video of Louise where she described her work as making nasty work into good and hate into love. In my recent practice I have been experimenting with playful ways to discuss subjects such as my own anxiety and mental health issues. Using the topic of space and conspiracies to express these thoughts, the interesting thing is I have been making these artworks and then as I’m either creating the piece or maybe even performing it I realise more and more how its about my mental health. So if you think about it making these artworks about alien...

I feel like I don’t have that much to say about Grayson Perry, I don’t really resonate with him, his work or even his motives that seem to be important in his practice. Such as his value of the artists being a celebrity and this kind of idea of an artists ego. This idea was something that was spoke about a lot throughout the documentary, Grayson expressed his desire to make this kind of celebrity artifact, an artwork that would be in a museum not an art gallery and viewed like a relic almost. I definitely don’t think I resonate with these kind of ideas, but I guess it is interesting to see an artists discussing and owning their desire to be a celebrity almost, compared to my own opinion where this is definitely not what art is about, if you get me. Although I didn’t feel like I resonated with Grayson Perry watching this documentary it was interesting to see his work involving his teddy, you’ve got to admit its pretty fun. Grayson has a teddy called Alan that he has had since ch...

I have no clue where to start with this blog post, Bedwyr’s art is honestly so weird and indescribably hilarious, and I love it. Before this lecture I didn’t know too much about his work however I have been suggested by multiple people to have a tutorial with him and I never understood why until more recently. He uses such a particular almost sarcastic yet playful way of making art and it seems like he doesn’t really care if some people don’t get it and I love it. Just as an example of how funny his work can be one of the pieces I liked the most out of what he showed in the lecture is a video of the reflection of an eye and within this eye is a very tall Bedwyr being carried around these tunnels. But I can’t even find the name of this piece anywhere. I’ve been trying to search for a lot of his works as I found it quite hard to keep up with him at one point of the lecture, it was a little bit rushed and for some reason I can hardly find anything on the works I liked the most. ...

Gabrielle is only the bloody creator of the Output Gallery and I’m so psyched we got a lecture from her and I had a tutorial with her afterwards and it was so useful because I was literally in the middle of co-curating my own exhibition the ‘flat mat cat exhibition’, In fact I think meeting with Gabrielle was actually two days before the show. In the lecture Gabrielle discussed the Output galleries values such as wanting to get artists from and based in Liverpool involved and the importance of listening and taking suggestions from others (especially other artists), therefore shaping the identity of the gallery. I think this is amazing and I feel like I kind of related this back to my exhibition and how it was a mixture of multiple artists and art historians input to create the show we had and this definitely made the show what it was and not to toot my own horn, but it was a sick show. Some advice that Gabrielle mentioned in the lecture was that some things such as critic...

Throughout the lecture Jagjit discussed her influences and inspirations in great detail compared to when she spoke about her own work or practice, she expressed how these influences have a huge impact on the processes of her practice. The likes of Satyajit Ray an Indian filmmaker, Rainer Werner Fassbinder a German filmmaker, Edvard munch a Norwegian painter and Lucian Freud seem to be great influences on Jai’s work and help her develop a greater understanding of her own practice. Jai has looked at figures and capturing the human form in her paintings she looks and takes inspiration from these other artists to not only create the work but to deepen her understanding of the work, psychoanalysing her own practice further. Often Jai’s paintings of figures are often distorted and layered as the paintings go through many changes before she feels they are done. Chuhan described how this and the use of colour is extremely important in her work, she mentioned how there’s no way anyone...

It was so frustrating for me throughout this lecture, because normally I would absolutely love all of the topics and interests that Fiona discussed. She was talking about being a radical feminist, ethnocentric and the using psychology in her practice. I literally related to so much of what Fiona was talking about in her lecture. But I was feeling so sick and hadn’t slept all night and the whole time my brain was just frazzled I could barely concentrate and although she is definitely an artists I would have wanted a tutorial with or go to the Q and A, I just physically and mentally couldn’t and I’m super disappointed in myself for it. Positive note she created the Bidston observatory which is a community for artists, activists and likeminded people to stay in for only around 20 pound a night. It’s kind of like a hostel for creative people. I love it and iv already made plans to go for a couple of nights in the summer. Fiona understands this importance of creative energy and the co...

Not going to lie I couldn’t really hear a lot of the lecture especially during the beginning as I came in a bit late and had to sit right at the top and the mic was kind of quiet, so I’m not entirely sure what he was saying a lot of the time. Which might contribute towards the fact that I don’t really have an opinion on his work, I honestly don’t really get it except for the fact that its quirky. For instance, the piece where he does unboxing videos underwater, ye, it got viral which is kind of cool and an interesting thought to have artwork on that kind of meme culture social media platform. This could be something to think about for art I guess, but other than that, like what even was this. I get he was kind of raising awareness of mass consumerism, but i don't really think that the message was put across effective enough for a viewer to be like oh ye and take that kind of message away with them, if you get me. It seems more like he was kind of taking the mick out of certai...

The 12o Collective is a group of artists based in London who have been running several  projects for artists different to the typical. Rather than focusing on big exhibitions and building an artists cv they focus on creating a flexible, challenging and supportive environment for artists and their development. Two members of the collective Kelly and Eva where running tutorial meetings in the university that together me and Amelia (AKA-friend, flat mate, collaborative partner) took part in. Honestly, I got so involved in the conversation I completely forgot to take any notes and now I am struggling to remember everything that was said, but I remember they gave a lot of useful advice especially about shows. As at the time me and Amelia where preparing our show the ‘Flat, Mat, Cat exhibition’, as well as planning another exhibition focusing on the ideas of art and climate change/marine life. Due to the pandemic we have had to kind of put this exhibition to a halt...