#professionalcontext

I began investigation the statement ‘Truth and Truth to Material’  as I feel strongly about the materials I use being organic/recycled and to have meaning in the process of making. 

From The Whitechapel Documents of contemporary art. Susan Hiller is a London Based Artist, her work was prominent in 1970's in an interview on you tube she talks about many great female artists of this time only now being celebrated,  "The problem for every artists is to define who they are and what their work is going to be" Now we are seeing in UK and America that the majority of artists are women, this shows that repression is reducing. We are now making a history. Conversations around female body gender are being made public. She points out the difference between female and feminine.

Her work at the 5th Berlin Biennale was -The Last Silent Movie, 2007. 

 She talks about her feelings - that the people in art with money go to Venice but not Documenta - https://www.documenta14.de/en/news/25596/closing  this claims to be the most frequented contemporary art exhibition of all times.

Henry Moore was everywhere during Hiller's childhood and when  looking at reproductions she could not understand what truth to materials could mean.

She did however understand that he wanted to free himself from any proscriptive interpretation. Hiller went on to study anthropology, she feels this also links her to Moore in that he was an enthusiastic explorer of the exotic worlds. Like Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Jacob Epstein and the Paris Modernists before him.

In 1941 Moore wrote that one of the first principals of art so clearly seen in primitive work is ‘truth to material’, the artist shows an instinctive understanding of his materials, it's right use and possibilities  - he talks of power and sensitiveness in Mexican sculpture.

 At the Festival of Britain Moore was asked to comment on colonial sculpture and he went on to describe the mastery and possibilities of stone carvings being fully realized in the round and having no relation to the original form.

 Hiller states it is no wonder truth to materials was confusing as it contained contradictory quotes. After reading Roger Fry she chooses to ignore this attitude as the 'racism of the period' and spoke during lectures (as she began making art) of the parallels of the art moves of early modernism and specific ethnographic styles. She was critical of unacknowledged and literal borrowings of  the arts of Asia, Oceania and the Americas by European Artists in this period. She likens this to other forms of exploitation such as mineral and agricultural resources. 

Me, Emily and Caitlin presented at Program day about the MicroBiohome project we took part in. We discussed the ideas for the project, the making process, the putting up and the final outcomes of the project, including images and videos of the process too. I have a copy of my notes and the powerpoint in my professional context folder for reference. 

Programme day was a good opportunity to speak about the projects we have been involved outside the course and our own practices as well. Its an opportunity to discuss ideas and get encouragement for these too, and a more professional experience to talk in front of people by doing so. 

NEW YEAR: Level 6