Sunday 25 March 2012

CERAMICS 2. - Garth Clark, Cork

The second week we had this great opportunity to visit a speach by Garth Clarke, leading writer on contemporary ceramic art and outspoken critic of the crafts movement. The talk, following by interesting discussion, took place on 24th March 2012 at CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery Cork.


Gart Clark was talking about Ai Weiwei's exhibition of 100 million ceramic sunflower seeds in Tate Gallery. Here is a short video about the actual exhibition:


The following video shows Garth Clark and his business partner Mark DelVecchio. They are talking about their galleries in Los Angeles and New York. Very inspirational talk:


On the following picture we can see Garth Clark in lively discussion with Mike Byrne taken at the actual talk in Cork:


I took this small image which shows close up of a projected image on Garth Clark's jacket. Wouldn't it be an interesting piece of ceramics? Maybe a vessel with a print?

CERAMICS 1. - Problem based learning project

On Monday of the first week we all were given to solve the same problem, which was named 'Explore the breath of Ceramics in 2012' We were divided into smaller groups, our group had four members: Jessie, Mary, Ciara and me, Zuzana. The first day we had brainstorming trying to solve the basic problem of defying terms 'pot', 'vessel' and 'object' in ceramics. Though we did not establish what these terms exactly mean, we had a good fun when brainstorming.


After the 'brainstorming' we determined the main areas that we had to explore and assigned different tasks for each member of our group:


Then I made a chart which demonstrated the three main ears of contemporary ceramics:


Jessie made research on a history of ceramics:



I made research on ceramics in different cultures. I focused on contemporary practice with reference to the history and how they differ from each other:





Then Jessie made a very interesting research on practice of contemporary artist and focused on similarities between their artwork and some other work made in past.

She explores similarities between Chinese Terracotta Army and Anthony Gormley...


... antic Greek vases and Grayson Perry, traditional chinese pots and Ai Weiwei:


Claire Curneen and the reference to Renaissance paintings...



Mary had a look at contemporary artists and their personal approach at their practice:



The last day of the first week we demonstrated our research with a 20 minutes long presentation with panels showing sheets that each of us made for our own smaller projects:


We have found this week very interesting and all of us were quite amazed how much can one learn just in few days.

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Elective Project: PAINTING - III.

The second week we started with the 'real painting'. We made few thumbnails (small drawings of selection of the installation) and choose one of them to paint it in three shades of grey. For the first painting I used flat brush. The images below show the thumbnail, the line painting of the selection and the final piece:





The second painting was done the same way, using a flat brush and three shades of grey. The following images show the thumbnail, painting in process and the final piece:





Similar process was used for the following painting, except I used palette knives instead of brush:





The final painting also started with a thumbnail. This time we had to use shades of two colours: orange and blue. The green colour on the painting was caused by mixing these two colours. Quite interesting result!


Elective Project: PAINTING - II. Lucian Freud

These two weeks were promised to be very busy and indeed we even got a homework for weekend! The task was to make a copy of one of the paintings made by Lucian Freud. I choose the painting below, which is called 'Man in sports shirt":



First I made a detailed drawing to get more familiar with the painting. Then I started to paint the background and continued from the back to the front. On the right side you an see a copy of the painting made by me. Can you see any difference between the original and my painting? ... :-)

Elective Project: PAINTING - I.

At the beginning of our two week elective painting project we started with an exercise which I would call 'linear painting'. On the image below you can see the installation made of easels and desks which served as a composition for still life painting:



The following image shows my painting made with a mix of three primary colours. For this painting I used plastic card:


The following painting was made by plastic card as well, but in this case the task was to cover the paper with a thick layer of paint and 'scrape' paint from empty areas. We had to do this in rapid pace because the paint was drying very fast. This is visible in scraped areas, which unfortunately makes the painting a bit messy:



For the following project we created an installation in our painting studio. This installation served as a composition for our exercises:



Below is a painting made with brush and the task was to paint negative spaces, which simply are the areas where there is 'nothing':



The following painting was done with a plastic card and the task was to 'draw' the actual installation: