November 22, 2012

Exhibition Visit

Jochem Hendricks

John Hansard Gallery, Southampton

On Tuesday 6th November we visited the John Hansard Gallery to view the works of Jochem Hendricks. Exhibits featured 'Part-time Sculpture' a piece that would easily go unnoticed as being part of the exhibition, a Mazda MX5 parked outside the gallery. We then entered a room that appeared to be completely empty until you went up close to the wall and followed a long line of black human hair that traced all around the room, attached to an alluminium spool. Other exhibits included a series of aluminium and brass canvases shot with bullets, three synthetic diamonds in seperated cases, initially beautiful to look at but on later knowledge revealed to be made from the remains of canaries, budgarigars, a hen and a crow and even more grusome, a human leg. There were also viles and glass containers supposedly containing one million grains of sand and one thousand tears, a series of collapsed casts of Luxus Avatar's head, Eye Drawings and photographs from an old police archive. At a first glance, much of Hendricks work is aesthetically pleasing, but when you learn the back story behind the pieces of artwork, you immediately see them in a different and perhaps not so beautiful light. There is also a sense of believing and trust required with Hendricks work, the audience is being expected to trust what Hendricks has put in front of them as being true, such as the diamonds, even Hendricks himself wasn't present when the diamonds themselves were made, he can only trust what he has been told by their creators is true.
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Bibliography

JOURNALS:

1)
British Journal of Photography
November 2012
Volume 159: issue no. 7806
The Portrait Issue
Page: 31-36
Images from the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize:
Article by: BJP editor Simon Bainbridge
Extract: "...Alma Haser (who BJP named as one of the most promising graduates of 2010) provides the most unusual approach, capturing two of her housemates, and the clever title of 'The Ventriloquist' adds to the mystery. "I asked them to sit on a tiny wobbly coffee table, forcing them to almost cling onto each other" she explains. "Ultimately, I want to turn their verbal banter into a visual image. The title is designed to help viewers make up their own stories about what is going on."

2)
Source
The Photographic Review
Issue 40
Autumn 2004
Page: 8
8 Hours: Martin Newth
Extract: "The series of images was made during my honeymoon- a road trip to the United States in 2001. The photographs show an entire nights sleep in budget motels in California... Exposure time is 8 hours. The night long shots record the movement of the sleeping figures, my wife and I, as vapour trails over the bed. The photographs were made using a custom build large format (10" x 8") camera which was placed on top of the TV each evening. The following morning the negative was developed in the motel bathroom."

3)
British Journal of Photography
July 2012
Volume 159: Issue no. 7802
Stephen Gill
Article By: Sue Steward
Extract: "Ants, birds and microscopic wriggly creatures in pond water, poppy seeds and pressed flowers that partly describes the elements in Stephen Gill's repertoire, which he calls 'descriptive' and which ranges from the early series Hackney Flowers to his recent project Co-Existence, shot in Luxemburg." "...Piles of boxes labelled as dried flowers, seeds and crumpled betting slips sat alongside negatives and contact prints- reminders of his analogue life."

4)
British Journal of Photography
June 2011
Volume 158: Issue 7789
High Velocity (freeze motion)
Extract: "The effect is achieved by freezing the action of a rapid moving subject, using either very fast shutter speeds or very fast flash lighting."
Examples: Marcel Christ for Coca-Cola, Martin Klimas- flowers series, Vincent Skoglund for Nixon watches


BOOKS:

1)
Architecture of Absence
Aperture
Page: 21

Candida Höfer

Extract: "Whether the aura of absence is signalled by the physical dominance of white, the exclusion of man's physical presence, or references to the social activity- without personalisation- that would be consonant with the classification of the interior, Höfer leaves us with uniquely evocative spaces that are not empty. They are devoid of any diversions that would disrupt her transcendental rooms- where nothing is staged, but where, as the architect of order, Höfer leaves nothing to chance."

2)

Andreas Gursky

The Museum of Modern Art (New York)

Author: Peter Galassi

Publisher: MOMA: Thames & Hudson

3)

Eadweard Muybridge 55

Author: Paul Hill

Publisher: Phaidon

Extract: "Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) is a key name in early photographic history. His pioneering locomotion studies of the 1870s + 1880s which produced over 20,000 photographs, radically changed the way in which people understood animal and human movement."

4)

Mouthpiece

Justin Quinnell

Publisher: Dewi Lewis Publishing

Extract: "The earliest reference to pinhole was in 5 century BC when the Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti compared light forming an image through a hole to 'an arrow being fired'."

"My own journey started in the early 1990s. Many of my students couldn't afford cameras, but could afford several cans of fizz a day."

5)

Photographs 1978-2004

Jeff Wall

Written by: Sheena Wagstaff

Publisher: Tate Publishing

Extract: "Weaving together the narrative and compositional potential of all three media to create a sympathitc celebration of quotidian life, Wall also spins subtle enigmas within his scenarios, which- if we are prepared to look closely- sharpen our awareness about their subjects without ever leading us to conclude a 'moral to the story'."

6)

The Genius of Photography

How Photography Has Changed Our Lives
By: Gerry Badger

Gregory Crewdson

Work: Ophelia - Digital (Type C) Coloue Print, from series: Twilight

Extract: "Here Crewdson's protagonist floats in her flooded living room, dressed in her lingerie. Her eyes are open, and her slippers are on the stairs above the flood. She may be dead, but there is a ecstatic look on her face and she is floating above the water rather than in it."

(Book also contains the work of Rineka Dijkstra)