WEEK TWO - Hussein Chalayan

Hussein Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) andBurka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?

Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?

Hussein Chalayan, Burka, 1996

Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, 2000

2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like TheLevel Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?

3. Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?

Hussein Chalayan, still from Absent Presence, 2005 (motion picture)

4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform(1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?

WEEK ONE - Nathalie Djurberg's 'Claymations'.

Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg's intricately constructed claymation films are both terrifyingly
disturbing and artlessly sweet.

The new works created for the Venice Biennale explore a surrealistic Garden of Eden in which all that is natural goes awry.

She exposes the innate fear of what is not understood and confronts viewers with the complexity of emotions.

Nathalie Djurberg was awarded the silver lion for a promising young artist at the Venice
Art Biennale 09.

(http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/6886/nathalie-djurberg)

Research Djurberg's work in order to answer the following questions;

1. What do you understand by the word 'claymation'?

2. What is meant by the term 'surrealistic Garden of Eden'? and 'all that is natural goes awry'?

3. What are the 'complexity of emotions' that Djurberg confronts us with?

4. How does Djurberg play with the ideas of children's stories, and innocence in some of her work?

5. There is a current fascination by some designers with turning the innocent and sweet into something disturbing. Why do you think this has come about?

6. In your opinion, why do you think Djurberg's work is so interesting that it was chosen for the Venice Biennale?

7. Add some of your own personal comments on her work.

Week 9 - Bunksy

How can we categorize Banksy's work -graffiti or murals?

Research Banksy's work to attempt to answer this question.
What are some of the differing opinions about Banksy's work?
How does his work sit in relation to consumerism? Can his work be sold?
What are some of his attitudes to the sale of Art?
Who is Banksy? Do we know his true identity?
Upload 2-3 images of Banksy's work that you find interesting, and comment
on the ideas behind the

work.

Week 8 - 'Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam' (2001)

'Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam- 'Towards the Complex-For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards', (2001) is a video project by Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba.

Research this project to identify the ideas behind the work. Can you connect some of the concepts and ideas from the renaissance, Enlightenment or Modernism with the work. Discuss your answer.

Discuss how do you think the title of the work reflects

the artists' intentions?

Week 7 - Industrialisation and Art

1.Define the Industrial Revolution and Industrialism.

2.Research Monet's painting 'Impression Sunrise'(1873) to analyze the work in relation to Industrialisation.

'Impression Sunrise' (1873)

3.Olafur Eliasson's 'Weather Project'(2006) is a contemporary work that relates to Monet's

famous landscape.

Research the project to identitify the artist's intentions, as well as the site (space or venue) chosen for the project, to provide depth for your answer.

'Weather Project' (2006)

Olafur Eliasson

Week 6 - Landscape and the Sublime

"Untitled" Richard Misrach 2002

Richard Misrach's photography reflects the concept of the Sublime, from the Enlightenment.

Research Misrach's work by reading about his intentions, and also by looking at the work. Then answer the following questions;

1. What and when was the Enlightenment?

2. Define the concept of the Sublime.

3. How did the concept of the Sublime come out of the Enlightenment thought?

4. Discuss the subject matter, and aesthetic (look) of Misrach's work to identify the Sublime in his work. Add some more images.

5. Identify some other artists or designers that work with ideas around the Sublime, from the Enlightenment era as well as contemporary artists.

6. How does Misrach's photography make you feel? Does it appeal to your imagination?

7. Add a Sublime image of your choice to your blog, which can be Art or just a Sublime photograph.

Monolake 2, California (1999) Richard Misrach

Week 5 - Science and Progress, Tony Oursler

"New York 1996"

"Eyes 1996"

Research Tony Oursler's projection sculpture to identify some of the ideas and methods he uses in his work.

How do you think the Enlightenment concepts of Science, progress, reason, individualism, empiricism, universalism, freedom and secularism can be applied to Oursler's work?

Refer to pages 96 and 97 in the ALVC handbook for the full list of key ideas of the Enlightenment. Also use Youtube, the internet and the library to research Oursler's work.