'JR'

Still on the Tate Channel, a video about 'street art' caught my eye. I have always had a big interest in street art and graffiti, my favourite being Banksy. In this video, 6 street artists have been granted permission to exhibit their work on the outside brick walls of the Tate Modern in London. All six pieces of work bring something new and exciting to street art. But the one Artist that really caught my eye was a man called JR. His work is slightly different in the way that he does not paint or draw onto the walls, infact he takes photographs of people then displays them in public on a very large scale. I personally have never heard of a photographer who works like JR, therefore find him really very fascinating. 'The street provides me with the support, the wall, the atmosphere, but especially the people. Depending on where I put the photo, the whole thing changes,' he says. JR's images can now be seen internationally but he started out on the streets of paris, using only his initials because of the illegal nature of his work.

For one project, JR created portraits of ghetto inhabitants of the suburbs of Paris – the scene of riots in recent years – and installed them on the walls in the city centre. In doing so, he aims to provoke and question the social and media-led representations of such events. JR's work often challenges widely held preconceptions and the reductive images propagated by advertising and the media.

                          

                                                      http://www.jr-art.net/

Kusama's Obliteration Room

Browsing through the internet i decided to have a look at The Tate Channel so i could see whats new or up and coming and also to look at some artists work that I am interested by. As soon as i got onto the Tate Channel website, a video popped up at me. The video was about an artist called Yaoi Kusama with what looked like an interactive installation piece. As I watched the video the concept and idea behind this white room with white furnishings became clear to me. Yayoi Kusama's interactive Obliteration Room begins as an entirely white space, furnished as a monochrome living room, which people are then invited to 'obliterate' with multi-coloured stickers. Over the course of a few weeks the room is transformed from a blank canvas into an explosion of colour, with thousands of spots stuck over every available surface. 

This particular piece of work is very exciting. Imagine being a young child and being asked to stick colourful stickers all over a white room! I know how excited i'd be to take part and im 20 years of age! That aside, you can tell the artist probably has strong interest when it comes to dots. After researching her a little further I was able to find this to be true, even being described as 'Obsessive compulsive nuttiness' which I found rather amusing.

This screenshot of Kusama's website clearly shows
her love and obsession for everything spotty.

'New Work' by Paul Quinn

Another series that had me emotionally attached instantly after viewing the work is a series called 'New Work' by Paul Quinn. These photographs represent the life of people that are no longer with us, taken in a house where a childhood memory of a man found dead on his sofa in some house is clearly very much still with the photographer as a vivid memory. The series of work consists of photographs of six different rooms. Lighting also plays an important role in this series of work, signifying the lives of people that have now vacated these rooms. The series to look at is emotional and distressing, yet peaceful at the same time. From this work I am able to recognise how important lighting is in a single photograph and how lighting, alone, can create deep emotional photographs.

                                              'NEW WORK'

 

 

 

I also found this work useful to look at and depict with relation to another unit at university which is History & Theory. For this unit we are having to write a 2000 word essay about critically analysing an image and deconstruction of an image to find meaning. To do this we are having to look at all aspects of a photograph, from composition and narrative, to props  and lighting. It is always good to put something to have learnt into practice, and with this series of work, i found how important lighting can be when trying to portray a strong message with photographs that don't allow the viewer to understand much. So in this case, this work should help me with writing my History and Theory essay and understanding lighting in photographs.

Untitled II by Louise Haplin

After looking at a few photographers work i had found on Source magazine online, i thought it would be helpful and very useful to browse the site for portrait photographers that might inspire me further for my Representation unit at university. The unit Representation asks us, in it's widest form, to create 1 portrait photograph as our final piece, along with, obviously, sketch book work and research. Although I already have an idea and concept for this project, I believe it it still as important to research portraiture to gain a broader knowledge of what types of photographs can be made and whether there are any restrictions when it comes to portraiture. I then found an archive for portrait photographers. This provided me with a list of photographers names and the names of their series of work. I browsed through them all but seemed to be drawn to one particular series of work. Usually a series of work would draw you in because it is seen to be aesthetically pleasing. Not this one.

The series I seemed to enjoy observing is called 'Untitled II' by Louise Haplin.

                         
                                       
                             
                         

I was unable to find any text or description as to why these photographs had been taken or what meaning or concept they had to the photographer that took them. However it is clear to see that the series of work deals with the idea of a hidden identity. Haplin has used spooky wax-like masks to conceal the identity of her subjects. This then allows for the viewer to make their own assumptions about who these people are and why their faces are covered. From the images I personally understand these people to be people that have something to hide, purposely. Im not sure why this is, maybe because the masks have elements of a worried, scared, sad expression. Altogether, I find looking at these images provide me with an uncomfortable viewing.

http://www.source.ie/archive/issue20/is20portfolio_Louise_Halpin_06_05_50_27-03-12.php

David Farrell: Innocent Landscapes

Whilst looking at the source magazine online, I came across a link for a blog of photographer David Farrell's. I decided to take a look as his online blog may deliver me with some much needed blogging inspiration. The blog Farrell had created was based on his recent series of work 'Innocent Landscapes'.


The background to 'Innocent Landscapes':

In 1999, as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, the IRA finally admitted the ‘killing and secret burial’ of ten people from a possible list of fifteen missing people. At the end of May they released a roll call of locations that were said to be the burial places of nine people from this list. The twist in this inventory of place-names and one of the main factors that drove me on in the project was that all the locations were in the South of Ireland. These people had been exiled in death, somehow uniting North and South in relation to the conflict – a dark stain lurking under the ‘peaceful’ landscapes of the South.
That Summer I set out on a short journey from the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan to visit and photograph my first ‘site’ where, three weeks earlier, the remains of Brian McKinney (22) and John McClory (18) had been found. They had disappeared on 25th May 1978 from West Belfast and were thought to have been abducted, murdered, and secretly buried by the IRA. Throughout the history of the recent conflict in Northern Ireland where grief and trauma were visited upon so many people across all communities, these young men were part of a disparate group of people who became known as ‘the disappeared’. Nothing was certain in relation to these people, even their exact number was difficult to ascertain. Virtually all were Northern Irish Catholics and were thought to have been victims of internal IRA ‘policing’ of the movement and the wider catholic community.

I followed the searches that were carried out in 1999 and 2000 and the resulting photographs were published in a volume entitled Innocent Landscapes in 2001 as a result of winning the European Publishers Award for Photography. However I couldn’t walk away from this work – for one thing there was the unresolved nature of the searches, as only three remains had been recovered. So, every year, usually towards the end of the Summer I would revisit these locations making photographs of a ‘healing’ landscape. In the back of my mind I had said to myself that I would try to do this for ten years. This blog will outline my intended final visits to these haunted places.
- David Farrell
                                    INNOCENT LANDSCAPES

After learning the background behind the series of work, you begin to understand and feel the sadness and earyness of the photographs. The images to me now all hold strong connotations of death, pain and suffering. Yet now, these landscapes seem almost peaceful and tranquil. Im not usually a big fan of landscape photography but this series of work really catches you off guard and plays with emotions, the photographs are very strong.