A few of us from the Uni took a trip to see the MIDAS Awards at Newlyn art gallery. This is an event where 5 Artists who have just graduated from Fine Art here are chosen to display their work in the Newlyn gallery. Whilst they are there a panel of people view the work and decide on a winner. It was great to see people from our university showing their work in a gallery like this and somewhat inspirational to know and see what you can go on to do.
Before we went there in the evening we also went to Tate St Ives and Penzance Exchange Gallery. I really didn't enjoy the work in the Penzance Gallery. I thought a great deal of it looked rushed and unfinished. This was due to the seemingly fast and thin brush marks. The pieces there were about growth and science. I really couldn't connect with them. They were more patterns than anything else.
However, the trip to St Ives turned out to be really beneficial. The whole exhibition there was based around photography. Which, normally, would not be what i would want. However, in my practice i have been increasingly looking at photography.
When walking round each room there, there was a piece of writing on each wall explaining who/ what was displayed. There was one piece of writing though which has been stuck in my mind since i had read it.
"In the 1920s, the surrealist movement explored uncanny encounters and the fantastical nature of dreams. Because photography was felt to tap into the unconscious by disrupting the everyday, it played a crucial role in surrealism...Interspersed with images of a block of ice held up to the sun, the work connects to the surrealists' ambition of finding the 'marvellous in the everyday'".
The two photos that i have taken away today and that have been stuck in my mind are these two. 1) Manuel Alvarez Bravo "How small the world is" and 2) Harry Callahan "Chicago Eleanor in studio". I felt that both of these pieces evoked Gregory Crewdson. They are dark and dramatic. There is a feeling that something has or is just about to happen. You want to know what is happening in the moment. However, here it seems to be showing somewhat natural everyday life, unlike Crewdson's alien(ish)scenes.
Quote taken from inside Tate St Ives, was written on the wall. [accessed 27 October 2014].
photographs taken from: http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=52754
http://www.geh.org/ne/str085/htmlsrc9/callahan_sld00001.html
Before we went there in the evening we also went to Tate St Ives and Penzance Exchange Gallery. I really didn't enjoy the work in the Penzance Gallery. I thought a great deal of it looked rushed and unfinished. This was due to the seemingly fast and thin brush marks. The pieces there were about growth and science. I really couldn't connect with them. They were more patterns than anything else.
However, the trip to St Ives turned out to be really beneficial. The whole exhibition there was based around photography. Which, normally, would not be what i would want. However, in my practice i have been increasingly looking at photography.
When walking round each room there, there was a piece of writing on each wall explaining who/ what was displayed. There was one piece of writing though which has been stuck in my mind since i had read it.
"In the 1920s, the surrealist movement explored uncanny encounters and the fantastical nature of dreams. Because photography was felt to tap into the unconscious by disrupting the everyday, it played a crucial role in surrealism...Interspersed with images of a block of ice held up to the sun, the work connects to the surrealists' ambition of finding the 'marvellous in the everyday'".
The two photos that i have taken away today and that have been stuck in my mind are these two. 1) Manuel Alvarez Bravo "How small the world is" and 2) Harry Callahan "Chicago Eleanor in studio". I felt that both of these pieces evoked Gregory Crewdson. They are dark and dramatic. There is a feeling that something has or is just about to happen. You want to know what is happening in the moment. However, here it seems to be showing somewhat natural everyday life, unlike Crewdson's alien(ish)scenes.
Quote taken from inside Tate St Ives, was written on the wall. [accessed 27 October 2014].
photographs taken from: http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=52754
http://www.geh.org/ne/str085/htmlsrc9/callahan_sld00001.html