Category: Painting

Mirko Virius Gallery Visit

Art, Failure, History, Ideas, Painting, Story, Storytelling, Success

In this post I will be talking about The Croatian Association of Naive Artists.

Last summer I had the pleasure of visiting the Mirko Virius Gallery in Zagreb, Croatia. The artist’s exhibited at the gallery are all Naive Artists, in the sense that they have had little or no formal artistic training. They also adopt their own creative style which is normally characterised by its childlike or ‘naive’ quality. Proportion and more importantly, realism is not the focus of these works, yet the simplicity and imagination of these works somehow presents a truer reality.

Sometimes formal training can remove the wonder and true creativity of the practitioner, or it can insert certain ideas and concepts into the artist’s mind and force their hand into a certain discipline or style.Whilst it is great and necessary to learn about what has come before, sometimes creativity needs to come from deep within the artist, without any restraints.

The gallery is named after Mirko Virius, a peasant and self-taught painter who became a forerunner of Croatian Naive Art after participating in the First Exhibition of Peasant Painters. Despite only being an active painter for three years (1936-1939), his paintings captured the politics behind social themes in paintings such as The Beggar, The Plowing and The Overturned Cart. Virius was arrested during World War II due to his political activities and taken to a Nazi concentration camp in Zemun, Serbia, where he died in 1943. His tragic fate was immortalised by his friend Generalić, who painted The Death of Virius, one of his most famous paintings.With these events you can begin to see just how important a role naive art has played in Croatian history.

I feel more of an affinity myself towards Naive Art, or Outsider Art, in the sense that even though I have an arts education background I do not feel that connected to the mainstream art world. I create work purely because I cannot imagine not doing so and I create work primarily for myself.

I am also including a link to a good friend of mine’s blog. Clare Brown is currently living in Split, Croatia (I’m not jealous at all…..) and has written a piece about her visit to the Croatian Museum of Naive Art (which is just up the road from the Mirko Virius Gallery).

Fighting for Words

Art, Fighting, Film, Filmmaking, Hyper Masculinity, Ideas, Painting, Photos, Story, Wrestling

For three days in August I got up close and personal with a group of fellow artists in a DIY workshop organised by performance artist Kira O’Reilly . Part of the Live Art Development Agency’s DIY 10:2013 initiative to enable ‘unusual professional development projects conceived and run BY artists FOR artists’, Kira’s particular workshop was titled ‘Thinking Through the Body. Combative Manifestos’. This appealed to my continuing investigation in to what the body is capable of and specifically I was drawn to the idea of working with my own body. The workshop proved to be physically and mentally challenging.  For the duration of the workshop we wrestled, grappled and circuit trained with the idea of manifestos and words of intention in mind whilst exhausted. The parallel between the urgency of a manifesto and the urgency of trying to think and formulate words whilst exhausted was interesting, in both cases you are left with the pure and necessary. What needed to be said at that moment.

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Me getting my arse kicked by fellow artist Tom.

Towards the end of the workshop we began to think about how the skills we had learnt could be used in a performance. These ideas recently spawned in to an exhibition organised and curated by Anais Lalange at the Resistance Gallery in London. This chance to develop ideas and present them to an audience enabled me to hone in on my feelings around the workshop, namely my attitude towards sweat and not constantly upholding a perfected visage. Traveling from the workshops each day on the tube whilst still sweaty and with no make up on was, at first, an uncomfortable experience for me. It quickly became liberating and highlighted just how ingrained and ridiculous societal pressures for the way we look are, these ideas are reflected in the film, Wordout below.

The exhibition included performances by:

Joseph Mercier and Jordan Lennie – How I remember it, a recounting of  their recent performance piece Rite of Spring, a fight lasting the duration of the 100 year old, controversial piece of music by Stravinsky. They spoke of the oddness of how quickly the audience became accustomed to the violence and took sides, cheering for the men to tear each other a part. They also explained that due to the intensity of the fight they would not be repeating the performance.

Hellen Burrough and Philip Bedwell – Hellen reads The futurist manifesto of lust by Valentine De Saint-Point whilst Philip increases the intensity of a choke hold on her until she can longer breath or speak. The piece is very moving as the words are reflected in the tenderness of the embrace, which although violent is akin to lust in it’s intensity and intimacy. The fulfilment of lust is in itself a violent act ‘We must stop despising Desire, this attraction at once delicate and brutal between two bodies, of whatever sex, two bodies that want each other, striving for unity.’

A group performance combining a minute of repeated excercise with a minute of manifesto creating (completing sentences from a given few words)  dictated by MMA coach James Duncalf (who was our teacher of all things fight-y during the workshop) and carried out by the following artist – Hamish MacPherson, Laura Burns, Anais Lalange, Hellen Burrough, Philip Bedwell and Jungmin Son.

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MMA coach James Duncalf giving an example of one of the exercises, Photo courtesy of Alistair Veryard

Anais and Laura – Anais reads  as Laura restrains her. The exertion of constantly trying to battle and resist is heard in her voice and a further urgency is given to the words.

Finally Hamish and Laura fought out their thoughts around the idea of a manifesto.

The film that I created for the event was a reflection on the words that had gone through my head during the workshop, my attitude to sweat and the idea of words as motivator and catalyst. I used a mixture of words I had written during the workshop and those which had stood out to me since. I particularly liked the idea of words associated with battle, and was drawn to quotes from films such as Conan the Barbarian and 300. These films depicting hyper-masculinty and violent strength bring to mind the feeling of working out, and reflected the feelings conjured up in myself when I was wrestling with the other artists. The film also dealt with my feelings around body image and I feel the quest to achieve ‘the perfect body’ is really an inner voice calling out for warrior days, when humans could hunt and bodily contact was a way to communicate the entire spectrum emotions.

The Sketchbook Project 2013

Art, Collage, Film, Hyper Masculinity, Ideas, Mythology, Painting, Photos, Storytelling

At the beginning of this year I sent my little sketchbook off to New York as part of the sketchbook project.

The Sketchbook Project is a global, crowd-sourced art project and interactive, traveling exhibition of handmade books. Basically you send off for a book and can fill it however you so wish, then return it to The Brooklyn Art Library and they take the books completed each year on a tour around America in their mobile library van!

I started using the sketchbook as an ideas base for the Cubicle Creations project, and really enjoyed playing with collage and my theme of hyper-masculinity without the pressure of it being marked for academic purposes or anything like that. It is also nice to receive emails from different cities along the tour saying someone has viewed your sketchbook. I really like the fact the my little book is travelling to places that I have never been before!

I had also wanted to attach sound modules to the book, like the ones you get in cards that play you a tune, in order to have the pages grunting as you opened them. However I was a bit concerned about the book getting through customs, so that’s another idea to approach at a later date!

The Sketchbook Project 2013 from Jennifer Milarski on Vimeo.

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Jeff Keen Artist’s Sketchbook

Art, Collage, Film, Filmmaking, History, Ideas, Mythology, Painting, Photos, Story, Storytelling

Jeff Keen Dreams of The Archduke Sketchbook from Jennifer Milarski on Vimeo.

A film made for the Jeff Keen retrospective, Shoot The Wrx, Artists and Film Maker Jeff Keen, at Brighton Museum.
The film being shown in the gallery is closer to 20 minutes long but this version has been sped up to give a taste of what is inside.
Copyright belongs to The Jeff Keen Estate and Brighton & Hove Museum and Art Gallery.
The film was produced by Jennifer Milarski, with the help of Anne Nielsen.

Cubicle Creations at Wahoo West Beach Brighton

Art, Hyper Masculinity, Ideas, Painting, Photos

Cubicle-Creations

To explain: below is what was written about the Cubicle Creations project in SQ Magazine  http://sqmagazine.co.uk/

”Wahoo Brighton have scoured the region for 15 local artists to create artistic concepts for each of their toilet cubicles with £500 going to the best one. Want to know more?

Well, for the past few months, a swathe of local artists have applied and been whittled down to just 15 lucky entrants, who have been hand-picked to work throughout November and get their chance to showcase their talents to Brighton’s nightlife.

The project deadline has now hit – and the unveiling and judging will take place at Brighton’s First “Burn Your Dregs”, a night designed for Writers and Artists to get together and make something good.

All this and a live DJ thrown in too, Jakub Machal Mancal. West Street is getting cultured!”

So I saw the flyer for this in Clarkes Stationers in Brighton and decided to apply, and I was lucky enough to be accepted! Wahey/Wahoo!

As I am a digital artist and have a background in fine art, I was excited at the prospect of creating some work which got me away from the computer screen and coding! I was also really looking forward to having the free reign to do what I ever I wanted in that amount of space and without constrictions.

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Here is the first wall done!

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The tiles were made up of two designs I made then photocopied and mirrored to connect to each other.

The themes I am normally drawn to in my work are issues around gender and gender representation. With Polish heritage I often also incorporate folk art traditions, motifs and patterns, this also relates to my experiences of the clear gender roles in Eastern Europe and the folk art motifs are a nod toward this in my work.

For cubicle creations I wanted to create something that addressed the way in which women are used for advertising and on posters in toilets, the fact that these are always visually appealing or model like women. To counter act this bombarding of female ‘perfectionist’ imagery I wanted to give balance to this by having a cubicle with visually appealing, hyper masculine men in. I disembodied the images of the men to de humanize them and make them purely into representations of fleshy supposed attractiveness. The folk art flowers represent the female form and contrast against the harshness of the headless figures.

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I have included the large figure of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the back of the door in a typical body builder pose, I use his form in much of my work as a sort of muse character. To incorporate a digital aspect I projected his form onto the door in order to paint it. I had also planned to have a small projection on the ceiling of my cubicle, a film which fit in with the style and themes of my cubicle, but disappointingly it didn’t come to fruition.

The front of the door is like a book cover hinting at what is inside.

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I found the work space very calming and due to the size of the cubicle felt like I was in my own little world, stepping out to have a chat and enter another cubicle and world!

The comments of The Mayor of Brighton summed up the experience for me as he said that the project represented the diversity and ‘rock n roll’ persona of Brighton, especially as Wahoo is not necessarily the first place one would think of as hosting art, it symbolized the  open mindedness of the city. I am always interested in changing peoples perception of art, and dislike the idea of people having to walk around a white space, silently contemplating the work. I love it when art is out there in the world for people to experience, with none of the elitist notions attached to it.

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Here is a link to photos of all the toilets and the artists in them!

 https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.543750652320673.133998.130487940313615&type=1

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Me in my completed toilet!

Carrieres de Lumieres, Les Baux, France aka The most amazing exhibition I have EVER been to!!!

Architecure, Art, Augmented Reality, Film, Filmmaking, History, Ideas, Painting, Projection Mapping, Story, Storytelling, Travel

I have just got back from Provence and have to say the highlight, apart from the exquisite wine (I will now only drink clairette de die darling!), was by far a visit to the Carrieres de Lumieres in Les Baux. Luckily my mum had spotted an article in The Observer about the caves and so after convincing my partner to drive the two hours from where we were staying, wiggling up and down mountains, we arrived in, or I should probably say on, Les Baux. The video below shows the location and the stunning projections inside: Carrières de Lumières – Spectacle “Gauguin, Van… by culturespaces

As you will see it is a combination of Van Gogh and Gauguin’s work shown in the context of ‘Painters of Colour’. The soundtrack on the video is also the same as was played within the caves and had been perfectly mixed to convey the emotions through each era of the artist’s work.

The only thing the video doesn’t do justice to is the sheer scale and awe that you get from being in the space, it is literally gigantic and even before you enter the setting and the quarried cliff face is an artwork in itself! The fact that the floor and walls were being used and the way in which the paintings came to life nearly made me have a little cry! It was one of those situations where you wish you had thought of this, had been part of it, but also sheer joy that people in the world are out there creating these sorts of events. As I tend to mention a lot, I am interested in the ways in which digital media can enhance and compliment history and tradition and this was literally the most perfect example I have ever seen of this in action. You could see kids and adults alike with their interest sparked, perhaps much more so than would be the case with a static painting in a formal museum environment.

I should also mention that Jon Cocteau’s Le Testament d’Orphee, which was filmed in the caves in 1959 was also displayed within the caves, projected onto a stone wall, which provided an amazing viewing experience as the texture of the wall made the caves in the film almost 3d! And it was amazing to walk around and imagine the scenes being played out.

I shot quite a lot of film whilst I was out there so expect more from Provence to follow!

QR Codes in the Modern British Paintings Gallery

Art, History, Painting, Story

How can the old and the new enhance and compliment each other?

Is there a place for technology at traditional sites such as museums?

Does technology help people to engage with artworks?

These are some of the questions that artist and volunteer Jennifer Milarski has been asking.

Come and help her get closer to the answers in the Modern British Paintings Gallery, on the first floor of the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery from 29 May – 1 June.

‘I have introduced the idea of QR codes into the gallery, as I want to find out how people really feel about the use of technology in traditional spaces such as museums or heritage sites.

The idea is to use the QR codes as a way to bring a new perspective to the artists and their work, to make the artists more accessible by having an image of them and to show their work in the context of other works by them in the museum’s Fine Art collection.

I was drawn to the Modern British Paintings Gallery by the fact that a lot of the artists in this gallery were connected somehow, and not only by painting. The narratives between the artists and between their works is what appealed to me. The little unknown or seemingly insignificant details about people can actually add an interesting dimension to the work .’

It is advisable to download a QR reader onto your smartphone prior to visiting the gallery. Suggested for iphone is Scan which is downloadable from the app store for free or QR Droid for Android, also free of charge.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a smartphone or a QR reader as Jennifer will be present in the gallery with her own mobile device to help with any technical issues and demonstrate the project.

The Hole in Mount Hakone by David Miles

Art, Film, Filmmaking, History, Mythology, Painting

I have been helping out with various stages of the exhibition The Hole in Mount Hakone by David Miles at Brighton Museum, and have just produced a short film to promote the opening of the exhibition in the Prints & Drawings Gallery.

There will also be a second film coming out around the 12th of May, which I also produced, combining a David Miles image and a verse from 1847 called Digging in the Glade, so I will post that up here when it has been released.

I have been particularly excited about this project as it seems to me to be the most true to life way of how an artists creates work. Miles has selected works in the collection at Brighton Museum and created a narrative around them and his own work in response. In my own studio I have a wall of inspirational images, as do the majority of artists, and often my work incapsulates different aspects of them and I always draw upon them for inspiration. Whether you have a pinterest board or collaged wall, a lot of artists will relate to this process, especially as it is important to recognise the old in order to create something new.

A link to info on the exhibition:

http://www.brighton-hove-rpml.org.uk/WhatsOn/Pages/holeinmounthakone1mayto21oct12.aspx

Arnie!

Art, Ideas, Painting, Photos

A few weeks ago I answered a painting call for submissions, with the image below:

Arnie, 2012

(Apologies for poor quality, I really need to invest in a proper camera!)

It was an interesting experience as I crated the piece for the exhibition, continuing my fixation on bodybuilding and hyper-masculinity. Considering that I had done the exhibition at the Phoenix Gallery a couple of weeks prior to this, it was a bizarre opposite in terms of curatorial input and say. At Phoenix I had been involved from start to finish in everything from curatorial decisions to locking up the gallery. In this instance, at Grey Area, I had absolutely no idea what to expect or what the set up would be.

The freeing feeling of letting your work go out into the world was coupled with a slight fear, mainly in terms of how work could be read when put into a certain context, and weather or not that would represent the work and the artists ideas correctly. But ultimately it was exciting to see the way in which the work had been curated and the way in which the works interacted with each other and the connections that appeared from this situation.

For example in the image below you can see how my work interacts with those around it and conjures up ideas of strength, masculinity and perhaps even political themes.

Kinetica Art Fair 2012

Art, Augmented Reality, Film, Painting, Photos, Processing, Science

To explain:

‘Kinetica Art Fair is a yearly event produced by Kinetica Museum. It brings together galleries, art organisations and curatorial groups from around the world who focus on universal concepts and evolutionary processes though the convergence of kinetic, electronic, robotic, sound, light, time-based and multi-disciplinary new media art, science and technology.’

http://www.kinetica-artfair.com/?about_us/art-fair.html

I attended this years Art fair as a volunteer on the Intuition and Ingenuity exhibition stand, which consisted of art inspired by computer pioneer Alan Turing, celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth. The exhibition will shortly be at Lighthouse in Brighton, so I will save mentioning this further until a later date.

There was a vast array of works on display from Tim Lewis’ animatronic works (below), which consisted of freakishly concocted creatures that jolted and strutted around, to moving images, such as Sandra Crisp’s (http://sandracrispart.com/) film Oceanic, which explored 3D layers of the environment (2nd below).

Some of my particular favourites were:

Andras Mengyan http://www.andrasmengyan.com/ who is a Hungarian artist working with concerns around simultaneous perception. He was using lasers and animation, combined with a special liquid that he had developed with chemist to create his desired effect.

Sophie Cullinan’s installation was both provocative and yet innocent. Her sock paintings consisted of used socks that could be pumped up by various pumps, such as bike pumps or balloon pumps that had been painted an pink, udder type colour, to eventually inflate and look rather nipple like. Her blow up doll piece, Worn, again conjures up ideas of blow up sexual aids for me, even though there is something quite frumpy and childish about her patchwork exterior. Cullinan describes Worn as a ‘domestic machine’ on her website, I also agree that the idea of a woman made out of worn fabric who is continuously at work, work which is dictated by the viewer who has to press a button to make her inflate, is deeply symbolic of a woman’s struggle and of having to work under the ‘gaze’ of others. there is also something unnerving about the industrial hoover sound for the inflation.
Another film that enjoyed was a short film by Laura Jean Healey called The Siren described as:
‘The Siren is an exploration of the notion of the Other.  It explores the nature of the feminine mystic within the screen and the seemingly active male gaze. The Siren, both alluring and terrifying, embodies the duel nature of all women throughout time and confronts the audience, asking if  ‘I do not exist in my own right. If I am merely a symptom of male desire, then ‘what am I?’’
Lastly Nichola Rae (http://www.a2arts.co.uk/) had a projection of sonic frequencies that would interact and change pattern when a guitar was strummed or a mic sung into that were connected to it:

                                       

All in all it was a very inspiring day and I would strongly recommend next years fair to anyone interested in art/science/electronics/computing/pretty things etc…….

White Night

Art, Painting, Photos, Processing

http://web.mac.com/annadumitriu/WhiteNight/Home.html

For White Night in Brighton I was invigilating Alex May’s work at the Phoenix Gallery. The exhibition, titled Like Shadows: A Celebration of Shyness, was exploring ideas of participant interactivity and the different levels of participation people are willing to get involved in.

Interestingly enough I agreed to invigilating when slightly tipsy, and when I actually thought about it, I was nervous that I would be expected to force people to interact and generally be a pushy invigilator. Luckily this was not the case. Alex’s work, was a kinect sensor which sensed the persons shape and projected it as a colour onto the wall, with a dripping paint effect, the shape became more solid the longer that the person stood there.

It was a contemplative piece of work, which gave the viewer a chance to stop and and see the work take shape right in front of their eyes. It was quite a romantic piece of work with sad, solo silhouettes being joined by others as time went on, only to drip away and leave a smudge as the only trace that anyone had been there.

As the night went on, and the drinks flowed, it was amusing to see people come in and run in front of the sensor expecting an immediate result. At one point we also spelt out YMCA……..

  

 

I have been thinking of using PIR (Passive Infrared) sensors for a future project, where I plan to project images onto a photo album and have the images change when the pages are turned, this is the photo album:

John Martin – Apocalypse – Tate Britain

Art, Painting

Went to the John Martin exhibition this weekend and loved the way in which they presented The Last Judgement Triptych:

The works were presented so that you sat in front of them on benches. The lights went out and there were voices speaking as though they were from the 1800’s voicing the reactions of people when they first saw the paintings back then.

The lights then went up to reveal the paintings in all their glory. Next they digitally manipulated the paintings, so that they looked like flaming ash was falling from the rocks, or that the water was rippling.

I found the whole experience really brought the paintings alive and was a pleasant difference to quietly viewing the paintings alone.

Purely for how beautiful this painting was, it was my favourite of the show:

Arthur and Aegle in the Happy Valley, 1849

The cinematic quality of the paintings is stunning and I will be looking further into film that has taken inspiration from Martin’s work.

For example Intolerance, 1916, which used the scenery from Belshazzar’s Feast, 1826 needs to be looked into as I imagined all the fantastical works coming to life as films whilst going round the exhibition.

Recent trip to Warsaw

Art, Filmmaking, Painting, Photos, Travel

The Generation in Transition exhibition presents the artworks of a young generation of artists of Indian origin, living and working in India, as well as in America and Europe. It is the first extensive showcase of contemporary art from this region presented in Central Europe in recent years. For about twenty years now, India has been experiencing an enormous economic and technological development, which has had a substantial impact on social structures. This change, with its positive and negative aspects, is frequently reflected in the works of contemporary artists, especially in those of the youngest ones who have grown up in these interesting times of transition.

03.09 – 06.11

I recently attended this exhibition at Zacheta. Particular favourites were this film by Bharat Sikka – The Ceremony.

http://www.mattershow.com/video01.html

On a purely fun level, I enjoyed this piece which was a small house, like a wendy house, but when entered had mirrored walls, floor and ceiling making it seem infinitely large. It was also a great excuse to take some photos.

Also another thing worth mentioning is the epic sculpture/architecture at the back of this building in Old Town.