Monday 7 June 2010
Saturday 20 February 2010
Chris Ofili at the Tate Britain
But the upper room was not all there was on offer. Other paintings with wide influences from Zimbabwean cave paintings to funk and hip hop icons to vaginas stuck onto his paintings cut from porn magazines. It was interesting to see how as an artist he has developed, but for me his innovative use of materials excited me the most. Glitter, poo, resin, map pins.... a little bit of everything. With the use of weird materials and rather graphic painting, some of the paintings like 1997's Blossom below still looks pretty, with fresh colours and a flirty expression in the ladies eyes. Its this healthy mixture not necassarily in every painting, but in the collection over all at least of shocking dung with vivid lady bits and admornment and flowers that make this exhibition so glorious.
Despite my obsession with bumpy lovely bits, my favourite paintings are infact a collection of rather flat water colour paintings. They are lyrical and mesmirizing and really beautiful. I have two of them on my wall. I think these are more subtle but have alot of character.
Monday 1 February 2010
Essay - The Messengers
Blythe House
In the viewing room there were plenty of huge books, some covered in plastic sheeting, some just falling apart slowly. We were given an introducation to what Blythe house is, how to use the facility and about the bits and bobs we were about to look at. Alot of them were more fascinating in a general sense rather than something i could see actually helping along my work. Alot of records of big stores fabrics they had stocked throughout the years, and trend forecasting from the 60's to the 80's. The only book that i would have wanted to grab and take home was an odd, small in comparison book on the wall next to the door. It had tiny bits of every type of fabric imaginable, stuck in by glue which now looks more like dark wood varnish. It had no order, and i couldn't really understand what it was for. It had pages empty with just the horrible glue marks. It had pages so full of random materials it took me a good while to sufficently stroke them. I loved the velvets, i want to make velvets! This led to a very interesting conversatin about how to make velvets and how it is possible at college. Oh yes! From another book i learnt about how the blurry floral prints ive seen are made. It is by printing on the warp.