SCA Last Meeting of the year

Here are a couple of photos from our last studio meeting of the year. It is a very busy time for everyone - hence the need to eat lunch while listening!

L-R Katie-Ann, Kayo, Jane, Sue, Erica,Karen and half of Nadine.

L-R Erica, Karen (seated), Spike, Wayne, Nadine and Rob.

Mutant Materials 10

Just found an article on the facebook page for New Glass Art and Photography Berlin featuring one of my favourite images - the daguerrotype that is credited with being the worlds first proper photograph.
We looked at this image in our art theory class earlier this year and I think it is just beautiful so it was nice to see it pop up on this link from their page.

The story is that the exposure time for this image was ten minutes so all the people that were passing by in the street didn't stay still long enough to register on the photo - all except for the guy who was standing having his shoes shined. This is what makes the image look quite strange - it seems like this normally busy city street is totally deserted in the middle of the day except for the one guy having his shoes shined seemingly oblivious to the fact that the city is deserted.

This last image brings me back to the beginning of my work on Mutant Materials for the moment - to where I started in post one with a Daguerrotype photograph and the history of photographic images on glass. 

For my own work I am very interested in the power of these old images, in the history, stories and memories contained in them. For next year I am very much looking forward to exploring the ideas that these images bring up and to exploring how they might cross over into glass and light.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130754296&sc=fb&cc=fp

Mutant Materials 9

Another artist I have been looking at for Mutant Materials is Canadian Jeff Wall.


Wall's illuminated images aren't technically Duratrans, they are actually silver bleach transparencies which are also called Cibachrome (Ilfochrome since 1989) I have had a look at the Ilford website for more information, but it looks like even the ilfochrome has been superceded and photographic paper is not something I wan't to get into at this time, so I'm not pursuing that one. Having said that, I do know that Cibachrome is kind of the forerunner of Duratrans in that it was the most common way of producing large format photographic images before the development of Duratrans. I haven't been able to find out exactly how Wall used the Cibachrome - the image can be transfered from a slide to large format paper/film or the image can be exposed directly onto the paper with a special camera to produce a one-off image, but the effect he has achieved is that of large format lightboxes.
I included Wall in the presentation for a couple of reasons -
1. His images are very much an early version of the Duratrans idea and must have been a great inspiration to artists such as Brown and Green in their methods
2. I love his images and feel that the way they are illuminated gives them such a powerful aura that is quite different to those of Brown and Green or Janet Laurence.
At the time that he made these images, Wall was very interested in Romanticism and the cultural history of the 19th century. He talks about using his works as a crystal and of passing his ideas through a historical prism that has been inspired by other works.
Works in particular that I looked at are -


Destroyed Room 1978. This work was inspired by Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus a work which to wall signified the end of a grand political era that was quickly replaced by an era of introvered domesticity that seemed to him to simmer with unresolved violence.

Picture for Women 1979. This image is a detailed study of Manet's The Bar , a painting which fascinated Wall for it's revelations of the social structures prevalent at the end of the 19th century.

Restoration 1993. This picture is not directly inspired by another work but is an example of Wall working with his ideas on how we connect with our history.

tp://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/image/roomguide/rm1_destroyed_room_lrg.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/rooms/room1.shtm&usg=__utM1EQBy77dF076PEkW16V1fQRs=&h=505&w=750&sz=93&hl=en&start=0&sig2=xAttXT3a5UOH8UIsSICQcw&zoom=1&tbnid=QNRnW98djYZ0FM:&tbnh=131&tbnw=167&ei=VY_HTPqFHNSVcfO2rbIF&prev=/images%3Fq%3DDestroyed%2BRoom%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1589%26bih%3D1233%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=121&vpy=81&dur=669&hovh=184&hovw=274&tx=136&ty=96&oei=VY_HTPqFHNSVcfO2rbIF&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=70&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0




http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.eugenedelacroix.org/The-Death-of-Sardanapalus-1827.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.eugenedelacroix.org/The-Death-of-Sardanapalus-1827.html&usg=__AGc8GeAKUi1gHdxzI_-6dBxrbhQ=&h=402&w=470&sz=48&hl=en&start=0&sig2=cqvoyYi4vJsXH5SdvSVusQ&zoom=1&tbnid=0_auMQdmtzPMkM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=172&ei=8I7HTLPDCcS8cZCujbIF&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddeath%2Bof%2Bsardanapalus%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1589%26bih%3D1233%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=508&vpy=74&dur=380&hovh=147&hovw=172&tx=116&ty=127&oei=8I7HTLPDCcS8cZCujbIF&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=69&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0


http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://courses.washington.edu/hypertxt/cgi-bin/12.228.185.206/html/viewer/jeffbar2_400.jpg&imgrefurl=http://viewoncanadianart.com/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-jeff-wallfrom-the-ft/&h=294&w=400&sz=28&tbnid=Xrv9AdfzuPTNvM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3DPicture%2Bfor%2BWomen%2BJeff%2BWall&zoom=1&q=Picture+for+Women+Jeff+Wall&usg=__5NK27uC63rNpSWarVnjgtBB2rYw=&sa=X&ei=tI_HTKWYBYyycY6l4LEF&ved=0CBkQ9QEwAA


http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.daverobinson.id.au/manet_bar_folies_bergere.jpg&imgrefurl=http://warmwarmerdisco.wordpress.com/tag/rull-gud-dj/&h=461&w=615&sz=73&tbnid=QmYYljYdeowXYM:&tbnh=102&tbnw=136&prev=/images%3Fq%3DManet%2Bthe%2Bbar&zoom=1&q=Manet+the+bar&usg=__kJGWShYy1bxMa_NjGa-q8MW2QNg=&sa=X&ei=-o_HTJvsEIWwcfSt-IUO&ved=0CB4Q9QEwAQ


http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A7826&page_number=3&template_id=1&sort_order=1

Mutant Materials 8

Presentation is done now, so here's a bit about the other artists I was talking about in the presentation.


Janet Laurence.


Janet Laurence's work is primarily concerned with our interaction with the environment and the consequences of that interaction.
Her meticulous explorations have seen her bringing together all manner of natural materials - plant matter, wood, ash, metals, wax and chemicals into works more akin to scientific experiments than just art.
Further to this, Laurence uses systems of classifications - boxes, rows and grids to emphasise the scientific connotations of her materials and her role as alchemist in the creation of her works.
In tandem with her use of natural materials Laurence also employs the use of photographic images taken from nature, which are then reproduced as transparencies and layered over each other to create ghostly vistas of the natural world.
As with Brown and Green it is the intersection of different worlds that give her work it's vigour - the contrast of the tactile "realness" of the natural materials she uses, whether it be a tray of seedings, spray-painted plant stock shrouded in tulle, a stuffed owl in a perspex cloche or a pile of charcoal from a wood fire - these textures are balanced against the subliminal beauty of her photographic images.
It is for these photographic images that Laurence uses Duraclear and Duratrans to great effect. She uses Duraclear mostly to produce images of luminous transparency that layer together to create works with a ghostly aura - in her work Selva Veils 2005 Laurence has had the images printed onto long, large strips of acetate that curl at the edges like a roll of film negatives, these strips have been installed to hang loose and overlapped on the gallery wall as if they are hanging to dry in a darkroom. The imagery seems a soft and subtle memory of a landscape lost. In other works, photographs of ornamental gardens are reproduced on Duraclear to document the effects of human intervention in the landscape, here too, the medium suggests something that is not sustainable and that is of a fundamentally ephemeral nature.

Selva Veils 2005

Duratrans is used by Laurence to make translucent lightboxes such as those in Forensic 1991, where these lightboxes are used to highlight images in her classification works, illuminating her notions on order and disorder in the natural world.

Forensic 1991

In recent times Laurence has started to use Digiglass to construct public works that are of a more durable nature than if they were made of Duratrans - I will look at Digiglass in another blog.
Here are a couple of works using Digiglass.

                                   The Breath We Share 2003

                                              Ghost 2009






More to follow.

Mutant Materials 7

I've been looking at artists who use Duraclear and Duratrans in their work. 

I really love Melbourne artists Lyndall Brown and Charles Green.

They started working together as a collaboration in the late 1980's. in their work they create illusory worlds that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, past and present. They have a shared interest in history and the concept of "memory as archive" - meaning I think, that they use visual records such as old photos, documentation of historical events, etc. as this archive from which they make constructed scenarios that are like strange dreamlike memories. They began by putting together montages in which different views of cultural, social and historical information could be layered to make a new history (or memory). This technique soon led them to rediscover painting - they began to faithfully reproduce these montages as actual paintings and this in turn led them on to start photographing the finished paintings and turn them into the large Duratrans lightboxes that they are now well known for.

The lightboxes have the effect of turning their paintings into huge, magical lantern slides that have a very nostalgic feel to them.

The strange juxtaposition of images, gathered together from such disparate sources as illustrations from old anatomy books, early French and Japanese photography, through to images of earth from space and photographs of beautiful evening skies, combines with the intersection of traditional painting and digital technology to give these works a surreal, ghostly other-worldly effect that is quite sublime. 

Using the back-lit Duratrans lightboxes lends these works a transcendental quality that is very like that of traditional stained glass windows, they are beautiful and powerful in a way that is almost spiritual even though they are constructed out of materials that are in everyday commercial use.

They are represented by Arc One Gallery in Melbourne.

http://arcone.com.au/index.php?navi=Artists&navj=Profile&aid=1&navk=LYNDELL%20BROWN%20&%20CHARLES%20GREEN