artist /theorist research

Karla Black’s work operates in an area of uncertainty, where things are ‘only just’ and deliberately ambivalent. Full of contrasts, her abstract sculptures are both commanding, often occupying the whole gallery space, and extremely fragile. Her work is informed by psychoanalysis and feminism alongside a pure fascination with the materials she exploits. Normally domestic items such as makeup, moisturising cream, fake tan and petroleum jelly are utilised alongside plaster, paint and polythene, creating works which overlap the formless and the formal.

Karla Black’s abstract sculptures explore material and physical experience as a way of communicating and understanding the world around us. She is interested in ideas of play and early childhood learning as well as the raw creative moment when art comes into being. She explores the capabilities of materials as well as the limits of what sculpture can be.

Many of Black’s sculptures have the appearance of hovering on the border between existence and collapse.

Suspended from invisible thread, the work appears weightless and drifting, but as with all of Black’s works There Can Be No Arguments has a commanding authority despite the apparent fragility of the materials used. Its ambiguous title, a seemingly definitive statement, invites us to consider the relationship between the use of language as a means of communicating and our understanding of the world through physical experience.

Cornelia Parker

For Parker, the process and the materials are as important as the object. In more recent work, she has also used art historical works as ‘found objects’, destroying them symbolically instead of literally (as in The Distance: A Kiss With Added String (2003), as well as using the language of props, sets, and fake architecture, to set up new relationships between art, architecture, and the built environment.

This process of collection, destruction, and then rebuilding is essential to representing histories as malleable, complex, and often traumatic things, and her seemingly delicate work helps open up the hidden stories of objects and the people who have used them.

The use of pornographic tapes ties in with Parker’s interest in “Avoided Objects” – objects whose meanings have been hidden or denied, or which suggest “issue[s that have] been sidestepped”. These include objects that have been squashed, burnt or exploded; the backs or underbellies of objects; objects only partially formed; objects that are avoided socially or psychologically; and non-objects like cracks, creases and shadows.

Author and researcher William Viney commends Parker for her engagement with the narrative properties of waste material

As well as being works of art in their own right, the pieces in “Room for Margins” represent the fragility and vulnerability of the works from which they come. As such, they have been compared to “shrines” to Turner’s works.

Materiality –

Narrative of waste material

Underlying issues – hidden

Felix Gonzalez-`Torres

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/gonzalez-torres-felix

Cube-like stacks of paper, strings of light, textual fragments, and the simple shapes of clocks, cellophane candies, and clouds were imbued with references to current events, including gay rights, gun violence, and the AIDS crisis.

Gonzalez-Torres wanted his work to be widely disseminated and he believed it was not fully realized without the participation of the viewer. “Without the public these works are nothing…I ask the public to help me, to take responsibility, to become part of my work, to join in.”

Materiality

Relevance to time /passing loss

Interactivity with every day materials

Take – away art – ( sheet of all those killed )

Gender prejudice /identity art

Summary of Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois’ life was a prolific demonstration of utilizing the creation of art as a tool for processing one’s inner emotionality and psychological landscape.

She would, for example, use rough or hard materials most strongly associated with masculinity to sculpt soft biomorphic forms suggestive of femininity.

The Femme Maison series of paintings are a poignant exploration of female identity,

worked on in conjunction with Bourgeois’ transition into motherhood and American life. The title literally means “housewife” and all of the works contain the common elements of parts of a woman’s nude body merged with architectural forms. The result is a Surrealist-worthy collage that was years ahead of the second wave of feminism, hinting at the struggles women would face in balancing work and home life.

. These works suggest that she felt both trapped and exposed by the domestic responsibilities that consumed her life as she wrestled with finding her artistic voice.

‘PERSONAGES ‘ These abstract totemic figures were shown with no bases and were arranged in clusters that for Bourgeois referenced a reconstruction of her peopled past.

Louise Bourgeois is heralded for her ability to depict the complexities of domesticity, family, sexuality, and the female body in her art. Fragile Goddess is a small, sculptural pin cushion reminiscent of the Venus of Willendorf. With no head, arms, or legs, this soft and voluptuous figure, tender and vulnerable, is made to be penetrated by needles. ( FRAGILE GODESS)

Gender Feminism ( quietly) fragility of emotions ( expression)

Materiality – narrative

Identity

Social constructs of the female

The Past .

Yayoi Kusama

She says that art became her way to express her mental disease, as most notably is seen in her Infinity Net paintings based on repetitive patterns and her installations in which she creates elaborate environments overrun with polka dots or tiny points of light.

Mental Health / anxiety

Artistc interaction ( dot sticking) )

Doris Salcedo

working within sculpture and installation, Salcedo found a new way to insert and present the power of silence and absence in a medium known for materiality and monumentality. At the same time, Salcedo has been praised by critics for her evocative use of a wide variety of materials, from wood to rose petals and surgical threads.
Salcedo’s use of utilitarian objects, such as a blouse or a pair of shoes, builds on the legacy of Marcel Duchamp‘s “readymades“. However, she has shown how everyday objects can

Salcedo’s use of found objects carries an emotional charge that can also, argues Molesworth, be situated within the representation of gendered spaces and objects in art, from Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro’s Womanhouse (1972) to Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document (1976).

A Flor de Piel

Made up of 250,000 rose petals sutured together by hand into a shroud, A Flor de Piel is a striking artwork that takes up space while also embodying vulnerability. Although fragile, the petals used for the piece had been treated and preserved to prevent wilting.

Such a material condition aligns with Salcedo’s aesthetic of “visually recapitulat[ing] the unresolved nature”

Sumando Ausencias

In this participatory public project, Salcedo, along with hundreds of volunteers, spent six days in Bogotá’s main square, stitching together 1900 pieces of white cloth. The title of the work translates roughly as “adding up absences.

Materiality – narrative of the every day

Cultural segregation

Gang violence – Political – Collaboration public

Cy Twombly

n both the content and process of his art, Twombly was interested in the layering of time and history, of painting and drawing, and of various meanings and associations. His art situates itself in the context of the history of Western civilization as well as the process-oriented aspects of Abstract Expressionism.

Time / layering – narrative

Materiality

Betye Saar

A cherished exploration of objects and the way we use them to provide context, connection, validation, meaning, and documentation within our personal and universal realities, marks all of Betye Saar’s work.

American woman, she was ahead of her time when she became part of a largely man’s club of new assemblage artists in the 1960s. Since then, her work, mostly consisting of sculpturally-combined collages of found items, has come to represent a bridge spanning the past, present, and future; an arc that paves a glimpse of what it has meant for the artist to be black, female, spiritual, and part of a world ever-evolving through its technologies to find itself heavily informed by global influences

environmental, cultural, political, racial, and economic concerns of her lifetime.

Similarly, Saar’s experience as a woman in the burgeoning Feminist movement also showed up largely in her art: items such as washboards, ironing boards, clothing, or other tokens of domesticity appear as odes to women’s work, refigured as representations of the creative female voice, bursting from its confines.

Saar also mixed symbols from different cultures in this work, in order to express that magic and ritual are things that all people share, explaining, “It’s like a universal statement… man has a need for some kind of ritual.”

“I am intrigued with combining the remnant of memories, fragments of relics and ordinary objects, with the components of technology. It’s a way of delving into the past and reaching into the future simultaneously.”

Female ness /feminisit – equality

Materiality -found object narrative

‘Mystical “

Autobiographical

Rituals – cross cultural

Collaborative – ‘Mojo tech’

Kiki Smith

Smith was fascinated by figurative art and became known for her visceral, often disturbing artworks that depict the human body in detail, focusing on themes of women from mythology and folklore, or that reference her Catholic upbringing. Her unique vision, breadth of experience, and prolific output, which includes books, painting, sculpture, prints, and collaborations with other artists, cements her position as one of our most important voices of contemporary Feminist art.

Examined more closely, Untitled characterizes Smith’s self-confessed preoccupation with visceral functions associated with life giving bodily fluids – exemplified here by the milk and semen.

Lilith is a study of contrasts. Created in the mid-1990s, while Smith was at the height of her exploration of strong women of biblical lore, she represents those traits considered by Church fathers to be dangerous for a woman to possess – the very antithesis of Eve. She is an empowered woman: independent where Eve is bound to Adam by her very flesh, assertive where Eve is submissive, and possessed of a carnal nature where Eve is modest.

Feminist Art ( 2^nd Wave) – celebrating the female – power – Female form

EVA HESSE

Hesse explored by way of the simplest materials how to suggest a wide range of organic associations, psychological moods, and what might be called proto-feminist, sexual innuendo. She also experimented with expressing semi-whimsical states of mind rarely explored in the modern era until her all-too-brief debut.

Hesse’s life was plagued by various kinds of physical and emotional hardship, ranging from political persecution to familial illness and depression, not least of all her eventual suffering and demise from cancer. Nevertheless, Hesse boldly forged ahead and made the most of her professional circumstances, ultimately to create abstract and endlessly evocative works free of any socio-political agenda.

The dual qualities of the box aptly characterize Hesse’s own “life of extremes”, the unknowing girl of a forced and tragic diaspora, and the accomplished university design student. Alluding to unexpected dangers and the need for a safe, protective space, Accession II embodies the artist’s own fears and desires just as effectively, perhaps, as any more representational self-portrait.

Feminism

Mental health

Judy Chicago

Chicago articulated her feminist vision not only as an artist, but also as an educator and organizer, most notably, in co-founding of the Feminist Art Program at Cal State Fresno as well as the installation and performance space, Womanhouse.

he women-only Feminist Art program, established at California Institute of Arts, centered on women’s identity, experiences, and collaborative, discussion-based practices such as consciousness-raising. Womanhouse, co-founded by Chicago and Schapiro as an outgrowth of the Feminist Art program, was an installation and performance space dedicated to female creative expression.

After The Dinner Party, Chicago continued to address the underrepresentation of female experience, this time related to the lack of imagery in Western culture portraying the moment of birth. One of the images from Chicago’s Birth Project, created between 1980 and 1985, Hatching the Universal Egg depicts a squatting woman giving birth to the egg of life, depicted in rich tones and a warm and translucent light flowing from her womb.

Feminist Art – exploring female issues

Summary of Frida Kahlo

Small pins pierce Kahlo’s skin to reveal that she still ‘hurts’ following illness and accident, whilst a signature tear signifies her ongoing battle with the related psychological overflow. Frida Kahlo typically uses the visual symbolism of physical pain in a long-standing attempt to better understand emotional suffering. Prior to Kahlo’s efforts, the language of loss, death, and selfhood, had been relatively well investigated by some male artists (including Albrecht Dürer, Francisco Goya, and Edvard Munch), but had not yet been significantly dissected by a woman. Indeed not only did Kahlo enter into an existing language, but she also expanded it and made it her own. By literally exposing interior organs, and depicting her own body in a bleeding and broken state, Kahlo opened up our insides to help explain human behaviors on the outside. She gathered together motifs that would repeat throughout her career, including ribbons, hair, and personal animals, and in turn created a new and articulate means to discuss the most complex aspects of female identity.

hlo made it legitimate for women to outwardly display their pains and frustrations and to thus make steps towards understanding them. It became crucial for women artists to have a female role model and this is the gift of Frida Kahlo.

Women prior to Kahlo who had attempted to communicate the wildest and deepest of emotions were often labeled hysterical or condemned insane – while men were aligned with the ‘melancholy’ character type. By remaining artistically active under the weight of sadness, Kahlo revealed that women too can be melancholy rather than depressed, and that these terms should not be thought of as gendered.

EXPOSING FRAGILITY – MAKING THE FEMALE ACCEPTABLE AND OPEN

Mental Health

Karla BLACK

Karla Black – Her materially abstract sculpture includes , paper plaster chalk paint and make up etc, They are fluid with the priority of the work being about the material qualities itself. Her language of communication is open and unrestricted in this way. Black often makes directly into the space, using the physicality of the space to progress and develop the work. Her sculptures are transferable and hence affected by what surrounds it, it does not stick to a ordered and strict integrity. Black is empowered by her sense of self and the physical attributes she brings to her work, her age her female ness her height her experiences. The work seems viscerally part of her, always experimenting and changing it as the sculpture materialises. An inspiring and confident artist exposing and expressing herself at a self-immersive level.

Material – narrative

Catherine Bertola

An artist that strongly resonated with my work and concerns, Bertola also seems to share these with other artists I am also inspired by including Cornelia Parker. Bertola’s work is seems mainly material led and her pieces concerning dust an detritus was particularly poignant for me as it was very relevant to my own work on this matter; Looking at the female trope of domesticity, traces of time, historic narrative and a sense of re looking and resurrection.

‘As an artist, I make site-specific installations, drawings and films that address the invisible histories of women, whose roles and contributions to society are overlooked and undervalued. The work gives voice to untold narratives, excavating the past to confront contemporary inequalities that women continue to face.‘ ( Bertola)

It’s fundamentally about value. Noticing what goes unnoticed, taking residues and materials that are usually removed and discarded, and making them take up space in a different way so they can’t be ignored. Transforming dust into an intricate wallpaper pattern immediately turns it into something that is beautiful and very visible, and connects to my interest in questioning invisible labour and the overlooked narratives of domestic spaces.‘ ( Bertola)

Bertola’s words above are an important part of my narrative and continuing journey as I look to manipulate and delve deeper into past materials, the essence of humanity they possess, what remains and how to manipulate it into future work and storytelling.

Narrative of materiality

Fragility – historic – transformation

Rebecca Horn

Rebecca Horn is one of few incredibly insightful artists to make visibly clear that humans are literally more than they appear. The artist’s ‘body extension’ pieces very cleverly display internal happenings on the outside of the body. As such, these sculptures serve to help viewers understand difficult emotions and have a therapeutic impact. They are also at once sculptures in their own right as well as being part of a performance; this was an unusual artistic development during the 1960s and 70s, and shows effective combination of very different media, one tangible and one ephemeral.

Although it is unlikely that Horn was familiar with Frida Kahlo’s work at this time, the resemblance between this sculpture and Kahlo’s 1942, Broken Column painting is uncanny. Both artists visualise trauma that they have experienced and transform this into meaning.

s such, these art works move beyond individual traumatic experience and become instead ciphers for dealing with some of the most difficult and universal experiences of both physical and emotional pain, and the subsequent necessity to re-build.

The film features one of Horn’s important sculptures, The Feathered Prison Fan. The work thus introduces an important and recurring material and theme for the artist, that of the feather. The feather and wings are long standing motifs associated with melancholy and the expression of creative anxiety.

The bluntness of the cuts deliberately reject notions of an ideal feminine appearance, and her stare suggests an attitude of defiance in the face of constraints placed on the body and mind.

HAIR

( Frida Kahlo cut her long locks when she divorced from Diego Rivera, and such is a recurring theme for women as they suffer loss in love. Taken in comparison to Marina Abramović’s classic performance Rhythm O, who aside from this performance made many works that dissect the dynamics of relationships with her partner Ulay, Horn commits the act of hair cutting unto herself, whilst Abramović submitted herself to the will of an audience. )

Fragility – vulnerability

Feminist – female power

Narrative of Objects (instalations)

imaginative currency”

( CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI) – DEATH , Jewish …

Rachel Whiteread

Her sculptures deal with psychological space as well as physical space. Evoking themes of absence and memory, their sheer presence in specific sites – such as deprived areas of East London and the Holocaust Monument in Vienna’s Judenplatz – provide an affecting social and political commentary

Whiteread is less interested in telling personal narratives but allows her materials to speak for themselves and by association create a series of emotional and sometimes nostalgic references. Here, the generic nature of the wardrobe chosen and its suffocating black felt cover help conjure up a confined space, recalling scary moments in childhood games of hide and seek.

However the overwhelming sense that this fragile, chubby little sculpture (one of many such works) evokes is its connection to a small living thing – a baby lying naked on its back perhaps. The work elicits a bodily and psychological reaction to an object that is at once unremarkable, powerfully intimate, and deeply unsettling. A hot water bottle is a source of warmth and comfort, to be hugged to the body. In Whiteread’s formulation, however, it is devoid of warmth and despite its tactile shape it is far from huggable. This points to Whiteread’s ability (fundamental to her career and to her contribution to contemporary art) to create a sense of the uncanny and to imbue an ordinary object with emotive power.

In 2005, Rachel Whiteread was asked to produce a commission for the huge Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern. Her resulting work, Embankment, consists of 14,000 translucent white polythene casts of cardboard boxes. Like giant sugar cubes, the boxes were stacked in large piles that towered over viewers as they wandered at random among them. Embankment is reminiscent of a winter landscape and it is significant that Whiteread visited the Arctic earlier in the year, while the title also suggests a relationship to London’s Embankment (the area around the River Thames), viewed perhaps in the pale light of day.

The work was inspired by Whiteread’s experiences following the death of her mother. Going through her mother’s things before packing them up again, the artist was struck by the emotional significance of the humble cardboard box, reflecting on how it is often present at significant times in people’s lives. Whiteread made casts of ten of the boxes from her mother’s house, and multiplied these, pointing ostentatiously to her sculptural process of transformation through replication and reproduction. She also demonstrates how everyday objects can be imbued with power and significance through simple acts and small changes of material, color, or scale.

indeed the industrial scale and materials of many of her sculptures takes any consideration of her work beyond any reductionist reading around gender.

Fragility to through strong –

Material narrative

Audience participation ( wish tree)

Alice Adams – plaster wall