Sunday Morning Musings. Turning into day, into night, into the dead of night. Term 1 : Year 3

© Susan Hiller 2012

" ... Death belongs in our society to the darkness of night, to the repressions of sleep, and dream. Hiller's tape partakes of the language of dream, where the identity of the speaker is inconstant, lost and retrieved... The installation itself with its pale blue and brown tablets and its economy of placements is very beautiful. The connection between the mute, somber images and the elusive, allusive wanderings of the text is fascinating in its provocations: the atmosphere of the piece and the ruminations it engenders stay in one's head for a long while."

Tony Godfrey, Artscribe, 1981

Monument (1980-81) is an installation that inhabits a site, everything within this ‘site’ is defined by the relationships formed between these objects, space, light, distance and sound. Nothing means anything except in relationship. It is not that the park bench and tape recording mean one thing and the photos another. Its that the park bench in relationship to the tape recording, in relationship to the photos, in relationship to the viewer mean something. (Hiller, 2008 p186)

REFERENCE :

Johnstone,.S (2008) Essay by Hiller,.S: Collaborative Meaning: Art as Experience//1982 : The Everyday : Documents of Contemporary Art. London. White chapel Gallery.

What happens if I no longer produce an art object? 

Is the object I create a vehicle through which I explore internal manifestations of external observations, OR is it more than that?

Does my art object act as a camouflage, a prop, a crutch or is it a route, a rite of passage, I explore in order to get closer to my truth?

What is it I am trying to say through the object?

If I take away the object what 'language' am I left with?

Something is bothering me about the 'object' and I want to put it down so I can understand the systemic root back to the core where the seed of thought began. To un clutter the vision by releasing layers of material.

In order de-materialize I have to materialize and this is the beginning of my process.

"You have to wrestle the object to the ground in order to make it de-materialize!. Breath life into it before you burn it"

Methodology

1. Think and use the world in which I live, breath, see and experience as a question and answer spring board into enquiry, exploration and definitive process based creation.

"Making Art" Check List :

Explore an idea and translate the mind into matter through the use of signifiers.

Research, question, enquiry, think, make and do.

Consider materials.

Start in order to see, feel and evaluate what is right and wrong aesthetically.

Experiment.

Question : "When placed together do these objects create a narrative, does it work, if not why not?

Communicate.

Collaborate, test ideas and learn so that the final reiteration will be the best it can be.  

Reflect.

Evidence.

6 months of development.

Process: Out of the process comes the rational which in turn creates a mirror, which in turn creates a platform from which a conversation can begin...

The objects I choose are already powerfully charged with meaning and my goal is to convey this, MY meaning.

My ultimate challenge which is maybe at Masters Degree level is about - 

HOW I convey those meanings. 

HOW I convey MY meaning.

HOW I effectively engage my audience, my viewer to "get" my meaning  while sifting through their own interpretations until they find mine.

  

Zen master challenge is to understand myself and then through the process of creative elimination get the viewer, the audience to understand me. 

My reading, my statement, my intention.

I have to create a pathway between what I think my idea is and what I want to convey clearly. Stepping beyond the 100 % is making it clear to me and then my viewer.

The objects are charged with meaning and maybe there is a way of manipulating their power, their essential powers and this could be a direction in my practice.

Investigate how  other artists create their work. What template, methodology do they use? This approach will not dilute my own practice it will strengthen it. 

Being an artist is about finding a language and talking to other artists and people. The problem is being a Contemporary Artist. If we were working in just materials or just processes it would be so much easier.

Objects : 

1. Platform Scaffold tower.

2. 6287 Steel Corr.Galv.8/3"x24 Gx10'

3. Redwood Standard 5ths PSE 50x50mm 180008 6 pieces 2/2.3 4/2.00 = 12.60 metre. 17.33kgs.

4. No 2 2x2 wooden frames

4. Water pump

5. Static trapeze artist

Sound:  

1. Raindrops hitting a tin roof.

2. Etta James "It's a mans World"

Moving Image:

1. Water

Collaboration:

Exploring the potential for a collaboration. A trio of artistic practice which is intrinsically different but scratch the surface and you find a very strong connecting thread. 

How do the differences between the male and female manifest when when they oscillate and collide "in a mans world" where almost anything is possible in sculptural, artistic, material form. 

What is it to be a man in a mans world and what is to be female in a mans world?

What is it to be a woman in a mans world and what is it to be male in a mans world?

Is there a meeting place? What does it look, feel and sound like to experience the nature of both within the walls of one body. What happens when these internal walls are being dismantled and how does this manifest externally.   

How does the feminine deal with fluctuations and surges in testosterone and estrogen and in the male, vice versa.

David is recording the idea of masculinity through exercise and exploring the similarities between drag queens and American wrestlers.

Lance is exploring his masculinity through the extreme medium of female fashion, the deconstruction of the rainbow flag and a sound recording.

I will be creating a large industrial size sculpture using materials  associated with the masculine world of building. The new narrative will explore the simple fact  that underneath the male, female divide there is a constantly evolving power struggle between our differences and communication is the key to freedom. The issuing work will create an alliance which will celebrate and expose the queer diversity hidden in a dominant heterosexual hegemony.

Globalisation - Recipient Not at Home

Globalisation is the preparation of goods for export. 

It is  vision of total unfettered mobility; of free unbounded space. It is ALL powerful by which all else is defined (Gibson-Graham 1996). 

Sinopticon Review June 2012

SINOPTICON - 

{contemporary Chinoiserie in contemporary art}

A Review by Didge Dowley & Ami Lee

Authenticity, Culture Commodity, Consumer, Exoticism; words from Tsang Kin-Wah's Chinoiserie wallpaper describing just some of the issues raised in the current Plymouth City wide exhibition, Sinopticon.

This exhibition, the culmination of six years of dedicated labour by the curator Eliza Gluckman, is not for abstract art aficionados. Spread across four venues; Saltram House, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth Arts Centre and Plymouth College of Art, Sinopticon serves up a feast of vibrant colour, sensuality and political comment with something to please even the most general of public.

Chinoiserie, meaning Chinese-esque, refers to a wholly European aesthetic style developed in the 17th century based on a fictitious, utopian image of a China that was in fact hardly known. The European demand for the exotic created in turn a Chinese market for the production of these 'esque' artefacts and added to a complex cultural relationship between East and West.

The exhibition’s name comes from Sino-meaning Chinese and opticon-seeing from all around. The website states that the aim is to look at Chinoiserie "afresh, incorporating design, display, desire and frippery alongside politics and trade, authorship, interpretation and cultural misunderstanding, fantasy, escapism and fiction." 

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this exhibition is the diversity of mediums and contributors, which include 13 international artists including the inimitable British Artist, Grayson Perry. Alongside the main exhibition are responses to the theme by students from Falmouth Art College, The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, and various local community groups. The curation of the exhibition has been no easy task but with the help and dedication of all of the people involved it has prompted the very best use of all the venues.

The North Gallery of the Museum can be described as the exhibition’s beating heart. As you enter the room your breath is taken away. The soap vases of the Ghost Series by Meekyoung Shin reflect and dance colours back into the room and onto the shiny wall-hungry triptych, Green Screen Goddess  by Isaac Julien. Just beyond, you are drawn through a winding road of coral like, temple shaped edifices of Laura White’s The Esque Collection,  set in front of the impressive pink and white wallpaper that covers the entire back wall.

The Esque collection, perhaps the piece that sums up the exhibition most is delightfully humorous, resourceful and irreverent. Trinkets, plastic toys and modern mass produced icons crest or sandwich between traditional chinaware. A straw waste-bin is the foundation for one delicate Temple-esque. My Little Pony crowns another while a third is draped in tartan with badges depicting William and Kate at their wedding. When we look at the sculptures, at first glance we can't help but smile at the apparent contrast between the modern plastic toys and the delicate Chinoiserie, however, White is challenging us with a more serious question: is there a difference in the intrinsic value of these equally mass-produced domestic items? In her website she suggests of the sculptures, “their identities are in crisis but each are bound by an intuitive formal logic and configuration.” There is something playful yet ominous about this work. It at once elicits feelings of attraction and revulsion, feelings that Emile de Brujin, the National Trust expert on Chinoiserie associates with the earliest Western interest in China. 

Chinoiserie is about imitating or creating the illusion of Chinese-ness, so authenticity or illusion is a theme that has captured the Artists’ imagination. Shin’s beautiful vases appear to be period pieces cast in glass and porcelain but are in-fact contemporary works made of soap, Kin Wah’s wallpaper designs seem to be white flowers but on approaching becomes strings of challenging and sometimes provocative text, Julien’s flying Green Goddess is clearly an actress held up by strings, Grayson Perry’s exquisite High Priestess Cape, 2007 in Saltram House is embroidered with the traditional Chinese Phoenix which on closer inspection is revealed as something rather more penile. 

Into the display cases of the second exhibition room housing the museum’s permanent Chinese collection and complementing the main exhibition has been cleverly integrated works by Falmouth Art students. Among them, Laura Beer, Rhiannon Palmer and Mayumi Yamashita have met the challenge with equally affecting work addressing political themes such as the continuing dialogue of animal welfare in China and population control.

There are a few pieces in the Exhibition that it may be easy to overlook, potentially overshadowed by their more colourful compardres or in Saltram house by the splendour of some of the real McCoy of the permanent collection. In the museums North Gallery Blueprint, 2012 by Gayle Chong Kwan is a series of blue architectural c - type photographic prints. They seem inconspicuous but what they depict is the expanding influence of Chinese building projects in Africa, an important contemporary issue.

Another issue still pertinent in modern China is the role and rights of women so it is empowering to see a refreshing number of female Artists involved in Sinopticon. As you drive into Plymouth you can see Wessieling’s National Flag, 2011, on the distant horizon. The flags have been transformed to resemble Cheongsam dresses steeped in narratives about gender and sexual identity. Her Fashion Chess, 2011 is brilliantly stylish with the lacquered main pieces represented by buildings from the great cities of fashion and power, Shanghai’s Pudong Tower is the King and the frontline of pawns dress makers female dummies.

In Erica Tan’s film Sensing Obscurity, 20I2, showing at The Viewpoint Gallery in PCA we have the 180 degree perspective of the Sinopticon. In this film, national trust workers are replaced by Chinese housekeepers who restore and mend fake chinaware in the grandiose surroundings of Plymouth’s quintessentially English Saltram house. Many of the poses of the women in the film emulate those of the figures in the stunning Chinese Wallpaper found in several of Saltram’s rooms.  A replica painted carpet used in the shooting of the quintessentially English film Sense and Sensibility (directed by Chinese born Ang Lee) is carried around, then unfolded, stored and left in the stillness of a house captured in a historical time capsule. 

It is exciting that the National trust have opened their doors and set up their ‘Trust New Art’ programme which means that a wider audience will get to experience Contemporary Art.  Seeing the modern works such as the soap vases and the intricate paper cut wall-hanging by Ed Pien in a setting which is home to original Eighteenth Century Artefacts and witnessing the relationship between past and present makes the exhibition a unique and rich experience. 

The work in the Arts Centre however is a bit more problematic. Covering the entire wall space of the cafe is Tsang Kin - Wah’s provocative work You Are Extremely Terrified of Them but You Are Definitely Not a Racist, 2012. Like his other two exhibits, the wallpaper is designed to imitate the traditional flower print used by the native Hakka people in South East China but is made up of text .The Arts Centre exhibit uses racist insults, stereotypes and expletives. The close proximity of the work to the comfortable leather loungers makes it easily readable. The question is raised as to the effect this piece will have on the unsuspecting coffee drinker. 

In his work is Kin Wah trying to affect us in the way he feels racism itself operates; sometimes in your face, hard to escape, within the very walls themselves, raising its head in unexpected places? Is he trying to bring to the surface what he feels lies beneath our modern day political correctness? Will it provoke thought, offence or numbness for those who visit only this venue in isolation? While the North Gallery may be the heart of the exhibition, the Arts Centre cafe is perhaps it’s guts and its bold decision to present this controversial work highlights the importance of supporting our small independent organisations, able to take risks, communicate with and challenge us.

In order to respond to Chinoiserie, the contributors have created art that must "appear to be" something we recognise. This invites playfulness and wit and makes it necessarily accessible so an excellent exhibition to draw the attention of a wider audience. Gluckman certainly successfully achieves her objectives. While this exhibition is one of the most enjoyable I have seen in this area, raising regular smiles with its fripperies and poking fun at imitation, it also peeks behind the curtain at some of the harsher realities of a country at once belittled by Western racism and political mistrust but growing increasingly powerful with the help of Western desire.

Sinopticon is showing until 7th July at the following venues: 

Plymouth City Museum and Art gallery, Drake Circus 10am-5.30pm Tues-Fri/10am-5pm Sat

Free admission

Saltram House, Plympton, 12pm-4.30pm, Mon-Thurs & Weekends, £10.40 adult / £5.10 child / £25.90 family (2 adults) / £15.60 (1 adult), National Trust members  free

Plymouth Arts Centre, Looe Street 10am-8.30pm Tues-Sat/ 4pm-8.30pm Sunday, Free admission

Plymouth college of Art, Tavistock Place 9am-5pm Mon-Fri,  Free admission

Sinopticon Private View

(My photographic record of the event )

Wessieling takes a photograph of her work, National Flag, 2011, hanging in the foyer at Plymouth City Museum.  A Cheongsam shaped dress/ flag, associated with Chinese female identity adapted and absorbed into Western Culture. 

 Grayson Perry's High Priestess Cape, 2007. The phoenix icon as seen on popular embroidered 18th century silk exports is replaced with Grayson's subversive double take ejaculating penis.   

Meekyoung Shin's Ghost Series, 2009- 2011.

Replica ceramics that are made out of soap, copied from museum collections

.

 Ami introduces herself to one of Laura Whites, Esque Collection, 2012. 

Fantastical little beings that teeter on the brink that divides the consumption of taste plastic and commodity capitalism.

Behind another Esque sculpture is the backdrop of Tsang Kin-Wah's Re- presenting Hakka/Taiwan/Oriental/ Michaels Image in Various Ways, 2011, Vinyl on painted wall. 

Sinopticon Install at PCA

Photographs of the Installation Sinopticon art works at the Viewpoint Gallery, Plymouth College of Art :

1. Re -presenting Hakka/ Taiwan/ Oriental/ Michael's Image in Various ways, 2011

Vinyl on painted wall by Tsang Kin-Wah.

2. Moving Image Films Sensing Obscurity I, II, III by Fine Artist Erica Tan.


3.  A sample of my camera work in the film Sensing Obscurity captured on the two screen installation set up during the preparation for the exhibition.  


Equipment used on set 3/01/2012: Canon 5d Mark II, camera rig and torch.

The Gallery set up :  Multi screen Installation showing Sensing Obscurity by Erica Tan. 

A sample of my camera work in low light conditions on the  "Women and Objects" set, Day 3, Saltram House .

(Canon 5d Mark II)

Sinopticon : Film Shoot 4/01/2012

Location: Saltram House, Plymouth, Devon.

Behind the scenes : Sensing Obscurity I, II, III by Fine Artist Erica Tan

DAY 4