Looking at new ideas and artists that emerged when writing my essay:

- My essay brought to life a new art notion, "Mundane Explosion,"

Intro:

“Mundane Explosion,” is an art notion that emerged in the art world towards the end of post-minimalism. This notion describes a movement in which artists such as Tom Friedman, Martin Creed, and Brandon Cramm pushed the boundaries of the value and importance of ‘everyday objects,’ using small transformations and a sense of humour. They have taken objects from the everyday, simply modified them, or given them background stories, and placed them in ‘a gallery.’ This has encouraged the viewer to firstly admire their simplicity, then reassess each object and question their significance, and authority as ‘art.’

 - after writing this essay my interest in pushing the baoundaries between 'object' and 'art' has increased, and aim to direct my studio practice more towards getting these ideas across to the viewer....I am still interested in taking objects from the everyday but am now going to focus more on my own small, personal, intuitive manipluations of these everyday objects and elements.

 -  I will continue to play with the idea of simple manipulation or totally transforming these objects to consume their origional purpose in the everyday... 

Artists:

Tom Friedman:

Hainley, Bruce, Dennis Cooper, Adrian Searle. Tom Friedman. New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 2001.1  

Friedman is a sculptor, who works with ordinary objects and materials from the everyday, to create specifically designed works that are often seen as comical or make ‘magic out of the ordinary.’Friedman is concerned with paying special attention to small transformations of these everyday objects that bring into being an unexpected beauty. One example of Friedman’s creations is a sculpture titled, “Untitled,” plastic cups 1993, made from a continuous ring of plastic cups, one inside the other. “Anyone can make a ring of plastic cups – the point, however, is that Tom Friedman made this ring of white plastic cups, and did it with as few cups as possible, and placed the ring on the floor, drawing our attention to it. The factor of the least number of cups is significant: it signals both concision and eschewal of embellishment. It lends the work brevity and authority. It is almost a statement of face, about the nature of these impure forms, and of the possibility of their configuration into a form which has a kind of geometric purity.”⁹ Friedman invites the viewer to firstly admire the simple beauty and precise form of the ring. The viewer is then reminded after a closer look at his choice of material, the ‘plastic cup.’ If it wasn’t for Friedman’s carful play and manipulation of this everyday object, it would barely impose on our daily consciousness.

 

Friedman has made another two works that at first appear even simpler than the perfect ring of plastic cups. These include“1,000 hours of Staring,” (1992-97), ‘a piece of paper the artist stared at for one thousand hours,’ and “Untitled,” (1990), ‘a partially used bar of soap inlaid with a spiral of the artists pubic hair.’  It is only when the viewer reads Friedman’s titles, or takes a closer look at the detail of the soap that ideas of intensity in time and labour, humour, and also pure amazement and disgust from the viewer are surfaced. The artist’s personal baggage placed on each art work becomes apparent to the viewer through his obsessive attention to detail, and time spent with these everyday objects. Their validity as artworks has sky rocketed far beyond the ordinary. The critical theorist, Theodor W Adorno stated that “if the use value of things dies,” these alienated and hollowed-out objects can come to be charged with new subjectivity. While the things become  “images” of subjective intentions, this does not erase their thingness: dialectical images remain montages, constellations of alienated things and meaning.”¹⁰ ‘Mundane Explosionists,’ such as Friedman have been able to consume these everyday objects pushing them far beyond their original status, giving them new meaning and raising their significance.
 - "if the use value of things dies," - taking objects away from the everyday where they are no longer used for their origional purpose but can now take on the new meaning and purpose that I as the artist can give them.  

 Sven Lütticken, Sven. “Art and Thingness, Part I: Breton’s Ball and Duchamp’s Carrot.”e-flux, no.13 (2010): Accessed 28 June, 2013.
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/art-and-thingness-part-one-breton%E2%80%99s-ball-and-duchamp%E2%80%99s-carrot/

Tom Friedman, “Untitled,” 1993, Plastic cups

             Tom Friedman, “Untitled,” 1990, A partially used bar of soap inlaid with a spiral of pubic hair'

Tom Friedman, “1,000 hours of Staring,” 1992-97, ‘a piece of paper the artist stared at for one thousand hours’

Martin Creed:   Thorne, Kika. “Nothing and Something in the Work of Martin Creed.” C Magazine 73 (2002): 38-40. Accessed May 26, 2013. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/docview/215547641?accountid=8440

Martin Creed is another central artist to take part in the art notion “Mundane Explosion.” Creed likes to keep his works simple and humorous, “‘using the simplest possible means’ to make us laugh, he transforms the object and conditions around us into zones of contemplation, so he can bypass the interpretation of the museum staff to speak directly to the average citizen-someone who uses paper, moves through doorways, turns the lights on and off.”¹² Creed chooses simple materials and deals with ideas of ‘nothing in particular,’ experimenting with objects in a way that prevents him from choosing without making decisions. Some examples of his works include, “ Work no 88” (1994), ‘a sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball,’ “Work no. 79” (1993) ‘Some Blue-tak kneaded, rolled into a ball and n depressed against a wall,’ and “Work no. 227” (date) ‘the lights going on and off.’ With a simple, light hearted, humorous touch Creed brings the attention of the audience to the simplest of everyday occurrences. “His precedents include more than the history of

 nothing: there is a whole other trajectory that meets the nothing in his practice. Perhaps we can call it the history of something: the understated and the ordinary, things that were over-heard and changed us, cheap familiar materials played with to implode meaning and context.”¹³ When placed in a gallery Creed’s crumpled piece of paper and his personally pressed Blu-tak suddenly leap out of the everyday with the potential to ask the viewer questions of their importance and value as an ‘art work’. What might this simply crumpled piece of paper, or instantly squashed blu-tak mean to the artist, or the viewer? ‘Mundane Expressionists,’ like Creed have focused on opening up the willingness of the viewer to acknowledge this power given to ordinary objects by the artist, that allows them to reference ideas beyond their everyday position. 

 - using my intuition when working with everyday objects that I have selected

Creed is an artist whose humour is apparent when he simply interacts with elements of the everyday to press the boundaries of art, giving objects the authority to be seen as ‘works of art.’ In each of these examples Creed has picked regular, insignificant occurrences such as a light switching on and off repeatedly, or a crumpled piece of paper and a small piece of pressed blu-tak, and brought them to the attention of the viewer, to be further contemplated. “All of them are flukes of a kind: unique, but related in their differences. Banality is an important aspect of Creed’s production.”¹⁴ Creed works with a ‘system of opposites,’ it often seems to the viewer that Creed’s works being so simple ‘the flat that becomes crumpled, the lights that go on and off, are resolved, “Is the happiness his works induce because our culture has an unlimited appetite for balance...”¹⁵ These works of Creed’s are so simple in their beautiful form and function, yet surprisingly unsettling in ways that they challenge the viewer’s perception of the everyday, taking the viewer on a journey of thought, on their own accord.

Martin Creed, ‘Work No. 88 “A Sheet of A4 Paper Crumpled into a Ball,”’1994

 

Martin Creed, “Work No. 79,” 1993, 
‘Some Blu-Tack kneaded, rolled into a ball, and depressed against a wall’

 

      Martin Creed, “Work No.227,”2000, ‘The lights going on and off’

 

Brandon Cramm:

“Brandon Cramm.” The McKnight Foundation and Walker Art Center, 2013: Accessed May 28, 2013
http://mnartists.org/work.do?rid=289643&pageIndex=1 

‘Mundane Explosionist,’ Brandon Cramm is an artist who continues to question the value of everyday objects by presenting mesmerising sculptures, often heavily loaded with personal stories. “Nobody better...” (date), is an art work of Cramm’s with a long existing story behind it. This work consists of a Butterfinger wrapper displayed on a pedestal inside a transparent plastic box. Prior to Cramm presenting this wrapper, Cheyenne Seeley Cramm’s former girlfriend made a work of her own using this exact Butterfinger. Seeley repurchased the same candy bar repeatedly until she spent $300.00 on it, granting this one candy bar a much grander economic value, and titled it “300 Dollars Worth of Candy Bar.” When Cramm decided to make a work with this object it had already gained previous significance through its history with the artist Seeley. Cramm took Seeley’s Butterfinger, ate it and displayed the left over wrapper in a simple yet humorous way. His manipulation of Seeley’s original brought out in the work an additional significance. “Through my appropriation I am re-establishing the economic and social worth of Miss Seeley’s Butterfinger, and extending the myth surrounding the work by instigating a continuation of its narrative. The title; “Nobody Better...” both constitutes the threat inherent in the fragility of the original work and plays into the humorous parallel between my actions and the coined slogan for the Buttefinger candy bar. “Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger. The question of what is just or right becomes secondary to recognition of value.”¹⁶ It was through this work that Cramm wanted to explore and question the positioning of art in the contemporary (modern/current) context, how everyday objects could be granted by an artist the power to tell a story and challenge the viewer’s thoughts via familiar everyday elements.

“Pool” is another work of Cramm’s that presents the viewer with a sculpture of two ordinary plastic cups both sitting on separate plinths, lent against one another and balancing using solely the volume of water in each cup to create a fine water bridge between them. The work speaks to the viewer about balance, delicate beauty, and the power of ordinary objects in the gallery context. The harmony in this work of Cramm’s is similar to the idea of balance and resolution found in Creed’s work, where the viewer seeks to find harmony created by the  beautiful form. “Pool,” has such a delicate and mesmerising presence which holds the power to push the viewer’s thoughts past what their eye can see. Like the other “Mundane Explosionists,” Cramm believes in the power of the artist to bestow ordinary objects with a heightened importance, placing them on a pedestal.

Brandon Cramm, “Nobody Better…” (n.d)

 

                                                                                 Brandon Cramm, “Pool,” (n.d)

 

  - After writing and exploring the art practices of these three artists there are a number of ideas that I am interested in, which can possibly push the development of the use of everyday objects and elements in my works.

 

 

 

 

Current work trials/ critique:

• In this work I am trying to generate an image that is a deconstruction of a selection of found garments that have been completely separated form their original function. I have personally taken these items through the deconstruction process and reoriented them to form an image where these everyday, humble materials aspire to make connections beyond their mundane nature. I don't necessarily want to make direct connections to anything in particular, I want the viewer to have their own experience with the works and make their own individual connections, these are dependant on their own past experiences. 

Critique:

Particular work: Floor work (orange and purple wool)

• one colour overtaking the other
• solid compared to flimsy
• smothering it
• the purple is claiming the orange
• power struggle
• containment

• other suggestions for further exploration:
• Including other objects
• this can create a strange relationship between the material engulfing it
• material relationships
• this is another way that an object may also lose its original use..

Points mentioned that i am not particularly interested in/ want to eliminate referencing them too directly:

• ethnicity - each one acting as a separate ethnicity
•  each one working on their own as a separate piece  - I want to consider this more, whether I want to link my materials together more? an installation of many? separate works? or one simple or more complex work on its own?

Other ideas:

Dematerialisation:

• questioning what it was before?
• remnants....how much of the original I want to leave for the viewer to be able to reference its previous purpose/use
• Why is this idea of dematerialisation interesting????

• The world is there to be re engaged with!
• rehabilitation
• process - mindless, labour, time
• creates a conversation between the two - the original constructor and me the de-constructor and then reconstructor. 
• investment of labour into something adds value...something grander than it is in the sense of value...
• it adds value when it makes connections with something else beyond it..

• Art can be about questioning and making statements
• reorientated
• de-functioning, re-functioning
• anabolic/catabolic shift

Other decisions to make about presentation choices:

• hard when there is too much to look at - too much visual clutter
• we were better at finding the signal in the noise...sometimes we can and other times people don't bother/visual over load
• what is excess?
• colour tone can help when it comes to presenting an excess - eases the eye..if thats what I want
• or...too much colour can be exhausting!

This critique was very helpful in allowing em to see that my current ideas of reorienting mundane materials are showing through but i have some further decisions to make about how I can make this more conceptually interesting and structured so that my works have more purpose for myself and for the viewer to work with...keep them interesting.

Finding my reasons (why I gather these materials, and what am I wanting to achieve when bringing them together in my own creations)

Talk with Ian (lecturer)

 Exhibition works:

•  my wall works, especially the larger one, generated a spinning movement
• may have referenced stars in the sky (see below)
• a force is created that draws he viewer's to the centre and hen outwards...creating a sensation that these mundane materials are referencing something more than their original purpose/meaning.
• for example : you can be sitting on a bus amongst a group of other people and you have no idea what they are thinking....in an internal world one can be thinking about anything/ reaching out so much further into their imagination/ how they are feeling/ what they are experiencing 
• I like to take these mundane materials , picking them using my intuition and then bringing them all together to create my own display of colours and patterns to create movement and rhythm in the works that references something beyond these materials.  - a whole other world of connections can be made and it can be up to the viewer to decide where those connections lead them to. 
• I feel more of a personal connection to these mundane materials, gathering them and reorienting them / rehabilitating materials. 
• these materials are very numb;e and honest - but then take us to a more profound connection of time and space. ..larger and deeper connections..
• 
  

 

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), The Starry Night, oil on canvas

• Similarly in Van Gogh's works there is dynamics and a swirling movement. 

• ASPIRATION: something mundane wanting/ becoming something grander than it is.
• releasing these materials from something which was locked into place/limited - the materials are liberated 
• bringing together different materials - allowing them to encounter one another, rehabilitating colour combinations
• creating combinations - difficult, interesting, haven't been worked out yet.., disgraceful works/materials (making a series of works based around feelings/words)
• it is more interesting when there is a slight hint of chaos.

• getting these materials involved with other materials e.g.. wax
• transforming a certain material - different forms, adding things
• playing with qualities, boredom, aesthetics, feelings and words

Notion ideas: (helping me open up my ideas in studio aswell)

when you try to control something, it can be so dead”.

Mundane, humble materials aspiring to be something grander than they are

We can only know the world through our senses – aliveness

Working in excess – Beyond

elements that are not necessary

too much, intensity, rhythm

emotional charge

decoration

losing your inhibitions

need an attitude, what is the point/ tension in it?

Excitement of putting something out there

Shocking

Testing boundaries

Ashamed, but a thrill

Daring/idiocy?

VALUES

Status – having the status that allows you to stand outside the norm  - embracing social agency

Studio ideas and artist inspiration:

Op shopping and searhing around for materials has become a big part of my art practice. I am continuously searching for things that catch my eye, to reinvent these items, sometimes adding to them, combinging materials, or completely stripping the item of its origional purpose and simply pulling it apart to create somthing new of my own.
I am really interested in combinging items/changing their function, to make somthing that is new to me, and a twist on the origional itemt hat enables the viewer to experience them another way. I like deciding whether I want to completely strip the item of its previous function, where the viewer may never know the history of that item, or to keep the items tied to their origional state.

wool circles (K rd op shop scarf), yr 3 pilot installation

 

 

 

 

 Combining found materials  (adding, altering, reinventing)

 

 

Artist inspiration:

A few weeks back I came across an intersting documentary on Euromaxx which talked about an artist named, Bernard Pras.

http://www.inspirationgreen.com/the-art-of-bernard-pras.html - Photographs of Pras's installations

"Pras was born (1952) in the south-west of France in a toy shop.
After more than 20 years as a painter, and also a sculptor of recovered objects, Pras conceived in 1997, an astonishing form of expression, using photography as a basis for the creation of what amounts to a form of installation art."


Euromaxx:

http://www.dw.de/euromaxx-lifestyle-europe-2013-05-08/e-16751472-9798
(This documentary talks about Pras from 1min- 5:50)

I am very interested in how he has recycled these objects simply for their colour contribution, and brings them all together to construct an overall image. The objects all still remain in their found form with their same purpose, but when placed into Pras's installations their purpose loses its importance and they are simply there to fill in a colour gap, he makes use of anything that has the right colour.

“An impressionist painting consists of many small dobs of colour, and that’s the function of the objects, they are like the pixels that provide the dots of colour” – Bernard Pras

This technique he uses it called animaphosis
He travels and finds his items on site
Many of the objects have some connection to the person beign portrayed
The installation is then destroyed after the photo is taken
Usually hunts down items at flea markets

Yr3 Pilot Show, No.2

                                        

"The continual pulse. The extending arm of confluence, merging, pacing, staring into rhythms, tempo, structure and time, you are lost. Engage. Trust. In cyclic rhythm we extend the space between us. Bridge the field. Find your footing, get a grasp but make sure you let go; I'm out there somewhere if you look."...small piece of writing handed aorund with the exhibition layout.

Finally finished my first group exhibition!
I found the whole experience of working with a group of people very exciting, interesting and challenging. At first we all foudn it difficult to funnel all of our conversations into a specific/concrete concept for the show, but after numerous meetings we decided we need to take some action and set out to find inspiration. We all found that we had a connection to the city centre/universtiy life so we kept this exhibition local, tieing together, Symonds st, K rd, and Queen st. Our plan of action was to find something from this local area that we found interesting/ intriguing/ part of our perosnal relationship to the area...this could be an object (found or bought), a smell, a colour, a word, a photo/documentation, a sound etc.
After eachb bringing back our "thing," we collectively selected 3 of them which we found the strongest link between and based our exhibition around these items...

At first I found it quite difficult to relate to these objects in relation to my works, but through thinking about my studio work and reflecting on my preactice and the way I go about making work, I found myself exploring the town for materials, colours, patterns, and shapes.
Words I think of in relation to our exhibition:
pulse, rhythm, flow, speed, energy, poetic, movement, awarness, experience, exposure, engagement, subtlty, presence/absence, elegance, colour..etc

Progress photos:

 

Trial installations for the Exhibition:

 

Final Installation for the exhibition:

I was really happy with my final installation.
I am glad that I decided to make the large work, for both impact and to act as a main focus in the space, a point of intensity compared to the delicate dispersal of works on the floor. I liked the contrast betweent the permanence and colour of the wool circles on the wall, compared to the delicacy of the temporary pieces disperced across the floor.
The intensity of my coloured circles relates to the lively, vibrant lights and little elements of colour found in town, during the day and night. I am also satisfied with how the viewer moved around the space and were often too focused on the bold circles to notice the easily destroyed circles on the floor made from a scarf form one of town's op shops. their dull colours and soft presence meant that they often wen by unnoticed, until omeone accidently trampled one or knocked it with their shoe. I enjoyed watching the viewer notice their impact on the work..sometimes feeling bad for knocking them out of place..but that was all part of it for me. I wanted to activate both the floor and the wall experiment with the level of awarness that viewer's would have in the space, relating to how aware people are in town with so much going on, it's easy to miss something less eye catching or interesting....

Overall I thought our exhibition was very interesting and came together well, now I can talk to the lecturers and discuss what they thought was/wasn't successful, and how we could ahve exectured it better.

Current project:

                                                      Untitled, woven blanket, 2013

 - This work is looking at the simple make up of an item constructed for a purpose and to to appear aesthetically appealing.
- I am simply pulling it apart to explore the colour and material make up of the item and to change the appearanc eof the item..give it another purpose/ take away its purpose all together.
 - I am still contemplating how to present these works...
1) like in the photo
2) fully pull it apart and have just the piles
3) have the remnants of the matt hanging up - taking on another form..
4) constructing a pattern of my own using the material I have removed from the item.