Kathryn Davison

Another meal, seemingly art stained with blood, again juxtaposed a culture's obsessive associations with food, violence, and sex. Works like this one rely on small objects, isolated from their everyday context by their museum solitude and subtle juxtapositions. Unable to live easily alongside their familiar associations, their modesty and challenge look strikingly forward to the 1960s.

This tea set reference the decorum of the bourgeoisie and are clothed in another material index of social status: fur. Yet the convergence of opulence has the opposite effect. It becomes a tawdry and overtly carnal object that obliquely refers to the vulgarities that these tokens of class are meant to mask. One sees an object sink from its usefulness to the vapid adornment of decadence. This is a confrontation with the arbitrariness of the metaphor, of the accouterment or trappings of class that when decontextualized are coarse and unruly. An ironic pastiche of gaudy refinement becomes erotically suggestive and creaturely in its taxidermy.

...

The object of my visual enjoyment is the implied object of my abject disgust, at the possibility of inserting a fur-lined teaspoon into my mouth, or drinking from this hirsute mug. This work has managed to infiltrate some level of frivolity that is bound to revulsion and lies just below the effable. It manages to itch some primordial level of the imagination.

http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80997

http://mnaves.wordpress.com/meret-oppenheim-at-the-solomon-r-guggenheim-museum/

experimentation.

Been working with other production processes within the last couple of weeks and have aimlessly tried to create a block upon the wall where I've been putting up these used object.

I love how mechanical and computerized they look, like microchips which are essential to human lives. This contrast creates a tension for me, man-made vs essential to man; essential vs unusable; single differences vs the mass.

 Even how they are equipped to the wall is frowned upon in the art world so that has it's own dialogue. The temporariness adds to it's fragility.

Quoting artist Cornelia Parker as she discusses her work, including Cold, Dark Matter: An Exploded View from 1991:

“I resurrect things that have been killed off... My work is all about the potential of materials - even when it looks like they've lost all possibilities.”

Parker's compelling transformations of familiar, everyday objects investigate the nature of matter, test physical properties and play on private and public meaning and value. Using materials that have a history loaded with association, a feather from Sigmund Freud's pillow for example, Parker has employed numerous methods of exploration- suspending, exploding, crushing, stretching objects and even language through her titles.

For some years Cornelia Parker’s work has been concerned with formalising things beyond our control, containing the volatile and making it into something that is quiet and contemplative like the ‘eye of the storm’. She is fascinated with processes in the world that mimic cartoon ‘deaths’ – steamrollering, shooting full of holes, falling from cliffs and explosions. Through a combination of visual and verbal allusions her work triggers cultural metaphors and personal associations, which allow the viewer to witness the transformation of the most ordinary objects into something compelling and extraordinary.

Perpetual Canon (2004)

This, I find is one of my favorite works of hers. Not only disassembling the object so it's not only used, but the fact it echos the absence of the body and of the person. The loss of potential. The light intensifies this as the cause and effect of the person. The instrument is just the "middle man" in this symbolism. I love in a number of her works she plays with light and shadow. These small instances really do have a big impact on the art work.

The brass band is part of a robustness we used to have. Related to the unions, the British Legion, the Salvation Army – an anthem that is slowly winding down. So the instruments in my piece are permanently inhaled. They’ve literally had the wind taken out of them. 

There’s a lot of violence in the making of these things, but a quiet aftermath. I take things that are worn out through overuse, that have become clichés, like the shed, a traditional place of rest and retreat, and I give them a more incandescent future. Explosions are very familiar from films and the news, but how many of us have seen one or even touched a piece of the debris?”

"RedHouse" (working title) (2013)

Margins, thing/object arguments and death are all topics that interest me at the moment. 

I had a battle with myself with whether I should cut off the lead and the plug off this piece. But I decided it needed it. Not only to make the piece claim the platform and area it was on but I liked how vulnerable it made the piece. Knowing it's an (un-PAP-tested) electrical item poses make it's weak and exposed, even though it isn't exposed.

The sense of disgust and displease usually is created in the viewer, though they cannot help to look more.

The truth behind this object is that it's a fully functioning lamp, with the bulb still in. To connect it it would do the obvious job of a working lamp, which is emit light.

This piece was about making a working item, which still work after the modification. To turn on the piece would make the "shade" light up, maybe only through the small gaps but still work with the most limited amount possible. However, the vulnerably is that it is a fire hazard. 

I've noticed through my "labour" pieces, this one has a slight feminist turn upon, the shade resembles pubic hair to many viewers and the fact "you can turn it on" electrically has a sexual provenience to it. The vulnerability exposes the suppression of the woman in the modern home.

"Home Living" (2013)

This artwork is still work in process. I'm having a little difficultly finding a way to keep the piece upright and vertical. In these documentation pictures that I just took in the studio, it's being held up with white-tac. The way it's being held up either has to "add" to the piece or disappear and not be noticed at all. I feel like I can't get the tac to either of them.

I rather like in the photos how the piece itself plays on the margin of being seen, the white-on-white is over powering to the eye, playing on visual definitions of reality.

The piece itself makes the object into a thing. The clues are on the item to what it is, although the viewer will have to search for it. For me, the reason why it is placed upright is to sort of mimic the stance of pottery. The shape of it makes it into a vase. 

My work is very ephemeral. It's obvious process and time links to my work, perhaps it is the destructive nature. The reductive nature that I transplant into the work has mortality issues to the ideas and pieces.

All as well as the fragile nature of the pieces. They are there, yet not there and the stripping and destruction of the use of the object and the matter of the object makes the item have a stronger presence.

In addition, maybe think about the reverse. What happens when you try to repair these objects to their former self? Reversing the effect.

Hoover parts- use them to the point of destruction. Recyle, empty and over work them.

Artists and points of interest:

Amikam Toren -(because of the way I look upon things, esspecially in a tempeal sense and economy) http://nogagallery.com/Artists/amikamtoren/About.html

Robert Filliou - (interest in "unrealised moments" in my artpieces) http://artsbirthday.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/who-was-robert-filliou.html & http://www.artnet.com/artists/robert-filliou/

Adrian Stokes  - (making up for the reparation of damage) http://www.pstokes.demon.co.uk/

Ben Wilson (?) - chewing gum (waste - also looking at my bluetack images) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wilson_(artist)‎

"The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition." - W. H. Auden

Repetition is a device used in the arts to create emphasis, set up a structure for comparison, show the passage of time, unify disparate elements or develop an underlying pattern. Sameness is the foundation for universal rituals, routines, cycles of nature, human anatomy, emotion and instinct. It can produce comic effect, or express the tedium of daily life. Repetitious action and exact duplication may be used in the arts to suggest mechanical things, the workings of machines, mass-produced products and the broadcasting of information via technology. Does the human ear, as Auden suggests, have a greater tolerance for repetition than the human eye? Does a great piece of music depend on a repeated theme? Is variation the key to success in the visual arts or does repetition play an important role?

Eyesight does not fully develop until several months after birth. When a baby is born, it is capable of seeing light and dark patterns, but not able to track movement or focus very well on anything. The visual cortex is not fully mature until age eight, and it seems to be a very specific type of vision that humans develop. With eyes located at the front of the head, unlike many other animals, we focus almost exclusively on what is in front of our bodies, not our general surroundings. The precise "foveal vision" focuses on a narrow two degree arc, and the human brain is too slow to process images more than a few degrees per second. These factors limit what we can see while in motion, and how we perceive objects. Our view of the world requires constant shifting and scanning, as we seek a significant point on which to focus our fine-tuned sense of sight.

When we look at a painting or sculpture, our eyes naturally gravitate to a focal point or incident in the work. The rules of composition - as taught by traditional art academies - state that the eye prefers odd numbers, off-centre focal points, asymmetry, and curved lines rather than straight. An all-over pattern with exactly repeated elements does not allow the eye a resting point, and like wallpaper, will not hold the viewer's gaze long enough to sustain interest.

There are many famous artists who have used repetition as a key element in their work. Andy Warhol's career was based on grids of repeated silkscreen images, sometimes with variations in the colour scheme. His Pop Art multiples provided commentary on the proliferation of products and the making of celebrities in North American society. By ganging up large-scale copies of Marilyn Monroe's publicity photo, Warhol was able to boost the initial impact of the image, while registering a certain level of irony about the process that leads to stardom. For him, more Monroe was more and if the end result looked like wallpaper that was exactly the superficial effect that Warhol had intended.

In Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, there was one artist whose oeuvre was devoted to the same image repeated over a 25 year period. David Cantine's work was based on a still-life composition - two apples and their reflections on a tabletop - reduced to a minimal form. This model served the artist as a consistent structural support for the subject that really interested him, the dynamics of colour relationships. The artist claimed that repetition was tremendously freeing because he never had to struggle in deciding what to paint, but instead could concentrate on selecting colours.

David Cantine, "From SW Still-life Warm" acrylic on Plexiglas, 2001 collection of the Art Gallery of Alberta

A solo exhibition featuring works by David Cantine was always an aesthetically beautiful show to present, but a difficult sell for the gallery. The installation of a series of very similar paintings tended to bore the average visitor and many people took one cursory look at the show, turned around and left. The challenge as a dealer was to slow the viewer down to the pace of Cantine's colour studies. We actually accomplished this through sound; playing Gregorian chants on the stereo helped visitors to relax, take time to look closely and discover what Cantine's reiterative body of work was all about.