Blog One...Artistic Inspiration

I am really inspired by art work that directly connects or effects the audience. For example, work that the Viewer can be totally submerged in and surrounded by, or works that conveys a powerful emotion or reaction.

I have been so inspired by the following three artists who have become a powerful influence in my work.

Christian Boltanski:

Boltanski is a French artists who works with sculpture, photography, painting , installation and found objects. His work focuses on themes of death memory and identity. In particular themes of "forgotten identity"...

Images from monuments (odessa)- series exploring powerful themes of loss and memory and identity. These particular individuals are Jewish and all remain nameless. The images are lit by lights and often the features of their faces are blurred or obscured by the lights themselves. The images become like a shrine or a tribute to the lives of each individual, who are perhaps victims of the Holocaust.

On seeing these images I questioned the identity of the indiviuals and how they might have died, but i also reflected on my personal life, my family and my relitives and their identity , their life experience and their personal memories. Which caused me to focus on my own identity and my own personal memories.

This beatiful image is from Boltanski's sculpture installation called le Theatre D'Ombres(shaddow play) the viewer enters the room which consists of shaddows created by small paper "shaddow puppets" lit up and projected onto the wall. The heat from the lights and travelling air created by the viewers movement around the room causes the paper "puppets" to move and their shaddows to dance over the walls. I particualrly like this piece as i love the beauty of light and shaddow and its ability to change our perception of things such as space and shape so drastically.

Francessca Woodman:

Woodman is a really interesting American artist.. she creates beutiful black and white photographs focusing on herself and other female models, she often works with long exposure times and blurred images, she rarely ever shows her own face in her photographs and mostly concentrates on the body. she was born in 1958 and comitted suicide in 1981 at the age of 22. Her work is raw and emotion filled, perhaps giving an insight into the reasons behind her self inflicted death.

"Space2"

I am really interested in discarded locations, fallen down buildings and places that people forget about and walk past every day without the aknowledgement of their beauty.

At the time i discovered Woodman i had been trying (without much success) to get access to a beautiful abandoned house, in which, a double murder had taken place . As is a listed building it cannot be knocked down but has been totally abandoned since the murder in 1989. It upset me to see something so beautiful slowly rotting away. I also felt that it was sad to witness this place, that someone once called their home, in which they felt safe and had created memories and in which something so gruesome had taken place being totally forgotten about as if it had never existed as both a home and a crimescene. The Murderer was never brought to justice for his crime, but instead sent to jail for other murders he had commited.

Since seeing this Woodman image I have been even more inspired to go and find my own abandoned space to work in. it reminded me of the "murder house".

Janet Cardiff and George Bures-Miller:

Cardiff and Bures-Miller are collaberative artists both from Canada. They work with an array of media from video and voice recording to found objects and electronic mechanisms. They have a fascination with machinery which they use to give a ghostly mechanical effect to their work. Their work is unsettling and often conveys dark eerie undertones and meanings. There is an unavoidable sense of sicovery and anticipation in all of their works and always has a real impact on the viewer.

They work a lot with sound that forces the viewer to interact with the work. Their work is about being involved and submerged in an invironment which has been carefully created by the artists It is about feeling and hearing and touching and smelling and experiencing their work rather than just viewing.

Images from "The dark pool" installation- My personal favorite of their works.

Check out the video http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/inst/darpool.html to get a proper idea of what this piece involves.

I was overwhelmed by their work when i saw it in the Fruitmarket gallery in Edinburgh. It made me want to create work which came to life when the viewer experienced it- something which i am still working on.

This is a link to their website where you can experience their work more fully. http://www.cardiffmiller.com/