Sculptures By Zuza Mengham made from jesmonite and mulched lichen. I felt these were in the area of what I wanted to be looking at due to the focus on utilising natural materials.
Mary O’Malley’s work looks at creating ceramics inspired by the styles of pottery of areas and the local ecosystem. I found this incredibly interesting due to how she ties man made films of popular ceramics from an area with the neighbouring marine life adding an interesting view of the psychogeography of an area.
I have looked at danio robleto and I found his use of materials fascinating with how he repurposes items in his work such as records and tapes which have the sentimental link of the music and what this means to people and him as an artist.
“Melancholy Matters Because of You
2012
Hand-ground and powderized vinyl and shellac records, cast and carved melted vinyl records, bone calcium, resin, pigments, dust, Fetal hand bones made from grandmother’s 78 rpm vinyl records, Adolescent hand bones made from mother’s 45 rpm vinyl records, Adult hand bones made from artist’s 33 rpm vinyl records”
Memento mori, meaning “remember you die” in latin and vanitas being a still life piece of artwork featuring objects of mortality such as food, drinks, music, fine objects showing wealth. To remind that earthly pleasures are just that and can only be enjoyed while living.
Historical Memento mori and vanitas objects I went to see in the wellcome collection, a head made of wax, half skull-half living face with common imagery in vanitas work like snails, insects, flowers. Models of bodies and skeletons in coffins and standing silver skeleton figures.
I saw her work at Cardiff museum with her installation “plancha“ where water used to wash dead bodies drops on to heated plates and evaporates. Symbolising the lives cut short and the lost souls within the morgue as each drop falls and evaporates.
Her work heavily features in honouring and memorialising people who have died a violent death, coming from Mexico where poverty in the area makes this an endemic.
video of her installation “en el aire” in which bubbles made from water that has been used to wash bodies in a morgue fall from the ceiling. Bubbles feature in vanitas artworks often as a reminder of the temporary and fleeing nature of life. https://youtu.be/2cRR_pgXw1U
Chiharu Shiota’s work often works around themes of life and death and the boundaries between them. Along with her own personal experiences of surviving ovarian cancer, the loss of her father and a miscarriage. Her installation “Sleeping is like death” features hospital beads with interwoven strands of black yarn with hospital beds being somewhere very often people will be born and die.
Joel Peter Witkin Grotesque, macarbre, taboo imagery, themes of fetishism and erotica and religion. Photographs Featuring dead bodies and outsiders to society such as people with dwarfism, transgender and intersex people, people with physical deformities. http://www.artnet.com/artists/joel-peter-witkin/
My personal collection of Victorian mourning items: a brooch featuring braided hair, a brooch of a hand holding a bouquet of flowers made from an early plastic to resemble jet, a beaded collar to be worn during mourning, a beaded sash and a lace scarf.
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Pieces of memento mori work from the v&a including a few pieces by Alexander McQueen
Alexander McQueen has a fair amount of work featuring imagery around death, the front cover of the book savage beauty has a holographic image of the designers face that morphs into a liquid looking golden skull. His work has featured human hair stitched into clothing, which echoes the use of hair in mourning jewellery but was inspired by Victorian sex workers selling their hair for kits of hair locks, bought by people for their lovers. He made a dress with flowers saying “remember Sam Taylor-Wood’s dying fruit? Things rot… I used flowers because they die. My mood was darkly romantic at the time” his cabinet of curiosities collection featured a piece that is a silver spine than wraps the body like a cage.
Quarries, digging materials from the ground causing change to landscape,Looking at products used in daily life, Proposed name of current geological epoch, Geologists investigating human impact, Formalizing would make a massive impact on how geology is taught and understood, Visited 20 countries in the filming, Marble quarries is Carrera Italy, Where mountains have been used to get marble for thousands of years from the Romans to now, Strangely beautiful, Mechanisation had accelerated this by making it much easier to mine, The design of the extraction, First technique was channelling, drilling and dynamite, Then burning the surface which is visible in the quarry,Film shows various ways humans have used materials. Deforestation in Vancouver and Canada,Russia metallurgy day. Largest mining town,No black and white to the situation. Wasn’t what was expected. People were happy despite difficult living conditions.
Two northern white rhinos left, both female. Filmed in the film. Extinction large part of film. Ethical stance largely considered. 30km of elephant tusks. Tusk burning. 25 super tusker elephants left. Witnessing a tragedy. The unnecessary nature of elephant poaching. The past 400 years going from just 10% humans and their animals on earth up to 90%
Quarries, digging materials from the ground causing change to landscape.
Looking at products used in daily life.
Proposed name of current geological epoch. Geologists investigating human impact.
Formalizing would make a massive impact on how geology is taught and understood.
Visited 20 countries in the filming. Marble quarries is Carrera Italy. Where mountains have been used to get marble for thousands of years from the Romans to now. Strangely beautiful.
Mechanisation had accelerated this by making it much easier to mine. The design of the extraction. First technique was channelling, drilling and dynamite. Then burning the surface which is visible in the quarry.
Film shows various ways humans have used materials. Deforestation in Vancouver and Canada
Russia metallurgy day. Largest mining town
No black and white to the situation. Wasn’t what was expected. People were happy despite difficult living conditions.
Two northern white rhinos left, both female. Filmed in the film. Extinction large part of film. Ethical stance largely considered. 30km of elephant tusks. Tusk burning. 25 super tusker elephants left. Witnessing a tragedy. The unnecessary nature of elephant poaching. The past 400 years going from just 10% humans and their animals on earth up to 90%. The impact this has on the earth and wild life.
Marble quarry images
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National trust page highlighting some of their sites that display the Anthropocene:
Thoughts i have had around the topic prompted by research:
Ways nature and man made aspects intersect both positive and negative, plus what actually is positive or negative, social constructs coming into how the anthropocene is viewed, thinking about the concepts of good and bad and what makes them so – social ideas of morality, false dichotomy between nature and humanity. Surgery on humans and animals, breeding, farming, genetic modification and mutation, medication, prosthetics, deformity caused by nuclear fallout, abandoned places being taken over by nature like chernobyl and othe nuclear fallout zones, other abandoned spaces, the sea side as a liminal space where the vast sea and the land overlap and almost fight each other for dominance, how everything ultimately is a natural thing. Stones forming around plastic, plastic becoming a part of natural landscapes and cultures. Attitudes to nature vs man made things, morality around health, medication, wellness and disability, the idea that nature is less morally corrupt, attitudes towards people who require medication from those who do not. The relationship between the human race and nature. How they’re seen as opposed but are in some ways one and the same with the human race being a facet of nature. What does natural and unnatural actually mean.
I visited the Fashioned from nature exhibition at the V&A which had interesting examples of how natural materials have been used in nature and how science advancements have changed fashion. Pictures from this below. Part of the focus was on how the use of natural and modern materials for fashion impacts the environment. Things such as hunting and overhunting, fumes released, toxic materials.
Mutations in animals caused by nuclear waste in fukushima and Chernobyl.
Alexander McQueen’s Platos Atlantis collection imagined a future where climate change would cause the ice caps to melt, flooding the earth and beings would have to evolve to live underwater. His cabinet of curiosities collection has many natural materials like shells, feathers, taxidermy in quite raw unaltered states saying “it needs to connect with the earth. Things that are processed and reprocessed lose their substance” showing a respect and admiration for nature in his work. I feel he often seamlessly blends nature with unnatural aspects, in body forms through tailoring and in materials used. Looking at the savage beauty book and looking back at the v&a exhibition of his work I visited.
Abandoned and flooded mall in bangkok which has become overrun with fish. An example of a man made structure being reclaimed by nature.
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A photograph I took at Spurn head. Fishing rope washed up on the beach and concrete blocks to prevent coastal erosion by breaking up the waves as they hit the shore. This constant stream of waves against the harsh concrete has begun to wear away the surface smoothing it and making it appear more organic.
Bjork’s album biophilia works with nature and technology, as a companion to her album she created an interactive app. An android version was released as a part of her Biophilia education program.
Bjork’s most recent album Utopia creates a utopian imagination of the future where both nature and technology are working in collaboration. To create the visuals for this album she worked with other creatives. Makeup was done by the drag artist Hungry, Prosthetics and head pieces made by James Merry.
Foundation studies blog 