This display explores a selection of nature-themed artworks and objects from the city’s Thomas Horsfall collection. As nature is a massive influence in my work, I really enjoyed looking at different artists interpretations in a variety of media.
It was interesting to see paintings of so many places that I knew and had visited. I saw two paintings of the landscapes of Conniston Lake (Lake District) and Lake Maggiore (Italy), both of which I have been to. One painting was painted from Chester Road, which is the main road where I live. It was interesting to look into the history of these places; seeing Chester Road surrounded by fields with cows in was a welcome contrast to the current towns and villages on the outskirts of Manchester.
One thing that caught my eye was a print that was displayed with the series of carved printing blocks used to make it. As I am interested in the variety of printing processes, it really got me thinking about block printing, and made me want to try a similar process like Lino Cutting and Printing myself.
Hidden amongst the watercolour and oil paintings was a gorgeous hand woven Silk Demask fabric by William Morris & Co in 1881 called Oak. It was lovely to see, as Morris has been my inspiration for a long time now, with his delicate floral designs from the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Do It 2013 - A world premiere for Manchester International Festival
The 'Do It' exhibition was initiated by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist with artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier 20 years ago, and consists of a variety of instructions for artists to follow in order to make the art. 'Do it' has been enacted in 50 different places, making it the widest-reaching and longest running ‘exhibition in progress’ ever to occur. This links really well to the work I intend to do this week based on Sol LeWitts instruction based conceptual, minimalist art.
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, and in homage to the original idea, this exhibition premieres 70 brand new instructions, bringing together artists from the first do it experiments with a new generation of contemporary artists such as Tracey Emin.
Below are some of my favourite pieces from the exhibiton as well as the Instruction the artist was given to create it.
^ Liam Gillick (Instruction 1989): Using a pipe and a cable detector locate all the cables an metalwork hidden below the surface of chosen wall. Loosely mark their location using a light blue pencil.
^ Yoko Ono (Wish Piece 1996): y.o. '96. Make a wish. Write it down on a piece of paper. Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree. Ask your friends to do the same. Keep Wishing. Untill the branches are covered with wishes.
^ Alison Knowles (Homage to Each Red Thing 1996): Divide the exhibition space floor into squares of any size. Put one red thing into each square. For example: A piece of fruit, A red doll with a red hat, A shoe. Completely cover the floor in the way.
I look forward to giving some people specific instructions as an experiment to see how different people interpret them. I also want to try giving people a more vague set of instructions to see how different the results will be.
No comments:
Post a Comment