AISH SAFFIGNA

“In those moments when you feel discouraged or lost in the studio, or when you experience rejection, rest completely assured that what you don’t know about something is also a form of knowledge, though much harder to understand. In many ways, making art is like blindly trying to see the shape of what you don’t yet know. Whenever you catch a little a glimpse of that blind spot, of your ignorance, of your vulnerability, of that unknown, don’t be afraid or embarrassed to stare at it. Instead, try to relish in its profound mystery. Art is about taking the risk of engaging in something somewhat ridiculous and irrational simply because you need to get a closer look at it, you simply need to break it open to see what’s inside.”

Jenny Holzer [no title] 1979-82 Lithograph on paper image: 431 x 431 mm Purchased 1983© Jenny Holzer Story telling in my practice is extremely important, to me. Whether they are silent narratives that creep in the background of the image, in the lines of the faces I mark or they are literal narratives that the characters I bring to life are conceived. This article in Tate describes the purpose, or place, of story telling in contemporary art really well.  “It begins with works that explore notions of setting the scene, and ends with those that document narratives using text,” Tate. 

Liam Gillick. Ways of presenting prints, text, paper, (2D WORKS)

“Do we face new forms of polarisation? Do we have a situation now where you have art and art history, on the one hand, which has taken over and consolidated older forms of critical positioning away from the autonomous critic, and curating on the other, which provides a new form of functional and engaged parallel discourse?” I believed I had found the word that summed up what I’m trying to talk about. That summed up my artistic enquiry. I then realised, full circle, that I don’t know what my art is about. ‘Contingent’, dependable, spontaneous, undefinable, state of unknown or untrue until supporting evidence or another component is provided. Perhaps I was drawn to this phrase because it loosely gave definition to my own uncertainty and ambiguity as to what my art is about. But I do not know what it is about. In a drawing approach to any medium I use materials to motivate and materialise thought. Using material as catalyst. Ie. I do not often know what I am thinking or feeling until I ‘draw’ (or make). I have been using ink, can my materials really stop there? And if so what is my art commenting on? These are questions I ask aloud for I cannot find an answer within.  Anyway, I thought I had found writing on exactly what I was looking for, but it seems to be focussed on curatorship vs. critic (pragmatism vs. theory?). The excerpt I’ve pasted seems to sum it up pretty well.

“...in the end they didn’t require flexibility. For me this started with the Berlin Biennale in 2001, in the attic space at Kunst-Werke. It was the first time I did anything that was a space for discussion or something to happen, and I made it virtually impossible to change the space. I did this deliberately in a bloody-minded way to make a point against the emerging ambience of the start-up or the tech company, or what’s become extremely common within corporate life: the break-out room. I wanted to do something that had a physical structure tied directly and intimately to the structure of the existing space, to create not a secure, but rather a fundamental place within which something else could happen. The place itself wasn’t flexible, the idea being that the discourse should be.”

Tangents strung in sequence in order to order the chaos of absurd existential matter.  Relationships. Conversation. Interaction and Thoughts dealt with in absurdity and black humour.  44 minutes. ‘Lucky’s monologue.

‘Language Face” is an “...exhibition [which] brings together a group of young Melbourne-based artists, each of whom approaches their art practice with a sense of gentleness and a depth of enquiry. Having worked with each of these artists during the course of their time at art school (some are recent graduates, others still studying) I see a common thread in their practices insofar as they each put processes into place that enable them to interrogate their materials, immerse themselves in problems to be worked through intuitively, or find new means to engage with the world.” — Helen Johnson, Curator, 2015

good selection of artists. Including carol bove

Pipilotti Rist’s website. Reference to use and transformation of space. use of ‘play’ is integral to her exploration of art and transformation of space

link to Liam Gillick’s website. Helpful texts. Useful theory into relational aesthetics from an artist’s exploration (rather than from a pure theorists perspective)

useful reference to find her collection of writings

Than a feeling

Save your words for scrabble, and the nonsensical For, I listen only to jokes that are funny and when asked if I’d like tea.

German Pavilion Venice Biennale, 2009 Liam Gillick There will be a cat that can speak. All the people of the town will be very proud of their speaking cat. People will come every day to hear what it has to say. It will be very cynical but never mean. It will see everything and understand it all. After a while people will only come on the weekends or drop by on the way home from work or school. During quiet times people will come and read all the newspapers to the cat or surf the Internet and find good stories aboutworld affairs that might be of interest. One morning it will rain. Things will have been very quiet in the world and the cat will have nothing to say. You might even think that the cat will be mildly depressed. A young boy and girl will come to see the cat on the way to school. This kind of thing will make the cat nervous. It will be sophisticated but it will betray its feelings through movements of its tail. The cat will like a degree of order. It will to call this “natural order” – something that will imply that people can be trusted to do the right thing. And coming to see the cat on the way to school will not always be the right thing to do because it will mean that the children will be late. But as we will find out, the cat will be mildly depressed, suffering from ennui and even bored by its role as the only talking cat in the whole world. The cat will want to know what is going on. Only by feeding it information will it be wise, interesting or even funny. But on this day it will have no new stories. It will hope that the children look on Google News or even Le Monde Diplomatique and feed its surprisingly agile brain. But the children will just stand in the doorway. They will be slightly scared of the talking cat. Something about it will make them nervous. Something deep down in their psyche will know that there is evil in this building. But they will like it when the cat coughs. The will find it very sweet when the cat laughs. But if the cat cries they will have nightmares for days – nasty nightmares that they won’t be able to control and that will come at the worst times. Nightmares that will wake them up and make them think of machines in deserts doing terrible things. So the children will just stand in the doorway. Not moving. And the cat will stay stuck on the top of the kitchen cabinets. The cat will not speak. The children will not speak. The cat will be in the kitchen and the children will be in the kitchen. To break the deadlock the cat will cough and shift its head. It will speak but unlike other cats, it will no longer smile. Liam Gillick, How are you going to behave? A kitchen cat speaks, 2009German Pavilion, Venice Biennale “Well, what are you doing here?” The cat will say. It won’t have spoken for a few days and whenever that happens it will have lost its accent and clarity and begun to speak with a cat accent. The children will hear something like, “Wheel waa aaa yew doo eng eer.” They will move closer. Hoping to hear more clearly. “What did it say?” the girl will say to the boy…. “Something about wheels and danger” the boy will say. “I don’t think it did.” The girl will say… The cat will try to smile, but it will just screw up its face into an ugly grimace. “I don’t like it”, the boy will say… “I don’t like it”, the girl will say “I don’t like you”, the cat will think. “Please come and tell me something”, the cat will say. The boy and the girl will move even closer. They will be curious to touch the cat’s fur and find out if it likes to be stroked. Once it starts to speak people will respect it more than love it. But they will all stop touching the cat. There will have been a point when it had been touched and loved and played with. But now all people will want to know is its position on the history of totalitarian architecture or the restriction of credit within the context of failed models of globalization. On this particular morning, after all this rain and all this mild depression the cat will feel its catness flooding back. It will want someone to read to it but more than that it will want these children to play with it. The boy will hold out his hand towards the girl. She will take it in hers. They will walk very slowly up to the cat. “Good morning speaking cat”, the girl will say, because she will be quite brave during complicated social situations. “Morning”, the cat will say, trying hard now to win back its voice and speak as clearly as a human. “If it’s not too much trouble”, the cat will say, “You could update me on world affairs. I would love it if you looked through some Internet news aggregators for me.” The children will look confused. They won’t know what an aggregator is. This cat will have become a little pretentious over time. “We were hoping you might tell us something”, the boy will say. “We have no school today” the girl will lie. The boy will look nervous. The cat will be wise and will know the school schedules. The cat will know that school starts in five minutes and the children will definitely be late. But today of all days, it won’t care. It won’t mind if the children miss out on their lessons or their playtime. It won’t care if they miss lunch or free-time in the library. All it will care about is that someone is here on a dark day in a dark building. It will sniff. The breath of the children will be close. It will have learnt that human’s know that cat’s steal their breath. The cat will know that this is nonsense. It is buildings like this that steal people’s breath. Anyway. What’s wrong with borrowing some child’s breath for a while? All cats know that it smells sweet and is full of intelligence and goodness and fun. It will take a deep surreptitious suck of the children’s breath and as they reel and swoon, glide and dream it will begin to tell them a true story about the wisdom of a kitchen cat…. http://www.liamgillick.info/home/texts/a-kitchen-cat-speaks

Marlene Dumas 2004 http://www.marlenedumas.nl/the-right-to-be-silent/

Marlene Dumas 1983 http://www.marlenedumas.nl/unsatisfied-desire-2/