Today I went to see a Thomas Demand exhibition.

Thomas Demand is a German artist who makes models of various rooms and such what out of card. He then photographs the models and presents the photos blown up to giant size. The models are really well made and convincing, you find yourself looking for the details at the edges of things to make sure it is in fact paper. Then looking at the edges of the world to make sure it, in fact is not paper.

Sophie Calle

What I have been doing. Writing longish essays about vaguely crazy french artists. Despite writing it in a night, I'm quite proud. So for your reading pleasure

Sophie Calle is a French Artist, born in October of 1953. She received no formal art education, and fell into her specific brand of practice through an aversion to boredom, when she started following people on the street, documenting her process. She works with a combination of text and image, and deals with the key concepts of absence, exhibitionism and surveillance.(Bois pg 31) Her work frequently relies on the contribution of others, usually from the general public, sometimes in the form of community projects.

An early project of Calle’s was The Hotel (1981). In this work, Calle got a job as a chambermaid and recorded the contents of the rooms she cleaned over the period of the guests’ stay. This work engages with Calle’s key theme of surveillance, and in this case the unwitting participation of others. Calle examines the contents of the room in a categorical way, but her presence as the voyeur is very much active in the textual part of the documentation. She mentions things such as “I am already bored with these guests” in Room 47 (22 February). Calle and her work can be seen as a example of the importance of both the author and the subject in art and literature.(Macel pg. 28). While Calle is the ‘author’ of her work, her material is derived from the experience, actions and memorabilia put into the world by her subjects. Often she herself is the subject, such as in The Shadow (1981) a work in which Calle instructed her mother to hire a private detective to follow her for a day. This work is interesting in examining who is the author and who is the subject. Is Calle, the person being followed, the subject, and the private detective the author, or is it in fact the other way round, with Calle’s setting up of the scenario meaning the detective is actually the subject, and Calle the author. These paradoxes surrounding the author/subject relationship are a common feature of Calle’s work, present in series such as Psychological Assessment (2003), a collaboration with Damien Hirst, and Gotham Handbook (1994), a collaboration with author Paul Auster. An interesting feature of the development of Calle’s practice is the role that coincidence plays in the instigation of new projects. For example, The Hotel came about after she followed a subject to Venice, for the project suite venitienne (1980). For Calle, many artworks are established as a kind of ritual, often to function as a form of therapy for the artist. Either the ritual is inherent in the piece, such as The Sleepers (1979)  and Room with a View (2002) or otherwise are the discarded artifacts from rituals Calle used to have in place to counteract her own neuroses and painful events from her own life, such as The Birthday Ceremony (1980-1993) and Exquisite Pain (1984-2003). These last two works are examples of Calle’s key concept of Exhibitionism, her willingness to share her private experiences, fantasies and quirks with the world at large, which perhaps gives her a certain sense of fairness in her revelations concerning unwitting individuals, such as in The Address Book (1983). (Storr, pg 296) The revelations of her private rituals in artworks usually comes after Calle finds she no longer needs them, rather than when they still play a role in her life.(Merlino pg 24)

Calle commonly appropriates material from other people and artworks. The latter part of her career has moved away from following people in the street, and towards the relationship between what we see, what we think about it, and the actual image, the perceived reality as opposed to what is actually present. She combines fact with fiction to create a new actuality, (Macel pg. 21) as one of the forerunners of the fictionalist trend (Macel pg. 81) A work that deals with these ideas, as well as the key concept of absence  is Ghosts (1989-91) in which Calle gets guards, curators and other museum staff to talk about a work that is missing from the museum walls, Bonnard’s Nude in a Bath. Calle then transposed these recollections onto the gallery wall in the space where Bonnard’s work would normally hang. Another work of Calle’s that operates within the framework of imagined image, transposed to text which is then re-imagined by the audience, creating layers of reinterpretation in the work, is The Blind (1986) where Calle asked blind people to describe to her their idea of beauty. The question of authorship again comes into play in these works, albeit in a slightly different way. In Ghosts, Calle did not create the image that the people are describing for her, neither did she herself write the recollections that form the work on the museum wall. Yet the work is labelled “The Ghost (Bonnard, Nude in the Bath), Sophie Calle” (Macel pg 27) This titling can suggest many things to the viewer about the concept of authorship in a work, and where the artist comes into play in a work she essentially created no original material for, apart from the concept for the piece.

Sophie Calle has developed a fascinating and integrated practice over her years as an artist. Her unusual combination of interactive performance, combined with textual and photographic documentation has provided her with a base that has allowed her to develop and explore her overriding concepts of surveillance, exhibitionism, authorship and absence and other themes in within her practice. She is part of the fictionalist trend, and has collaborated with artists and authors such as Damien Hirst and Paul Auster.

Stress.

I really like being at art school, but it is super stressful. Maybe all degrees are like this, and Elam is just what I have experience with, but anyway.

My first semester at Elam went really well, marks wise. As in, A, A+. I didn't think my work was great, but I did a lot, so it pulled me through or something. This semester I was feeling more confident, I felt like I knew more what I was doing with photography, having done it in school and whatnot. I didn't go that well though. I never really found a hook into what I was doing, something that I was really excited about. In the first half of Sculpture I thought I was going pretty well, but apparently I wasn't quite there. Now in the second half I was having a bit of trouble finding a hook in again. Then I thought I found one this weekend, and I was making some stuff I felt positive about. But I had a chat with my tutor today and he thinks my idea is basically too complex to be dealt with in the time I've got left, and I should leave it for second year maybe. So I have to come up with something new. I've got until next Monday.

Trying not to freak out...

JONAS

I have now watched all of the episodes of JONAS that exsist in the world. 

This concerns me greatly.

Workshops

I decided to 'take it easy' this mid semester break, and am now in the process of semi-regretting it. I have an english essay to write, a review of a show to do, and seriously don't feel like doing any of it. Instead, I have wisely invested my time in watching episodes of the Jonas Brothers show on youtube. Sensible decision.

I complain, but at least today I have decided on what essay question to do, and what exhibition I'm going to write on. Tomorrow I have to go and hang our 'Traces' exhibition which should be interesting. I have seen two of the finished paintings, one of the photographs. It's definitely been a learning experience, for sure there are more sucessful ways to organise this thing, but it's a bit late to change around now. 

I had a workshop yesterday for sculpture. Graham talked nonstop for pretty much an hour, as Jack says, he looks like he belongs in Lord of the Rings, he is somewhat gnome-like. Then Nick, who looks like a lizard (his eyes are set really far back and he does lots of lip-licking) talked. All of the technicians at Elam are a bit quirky, Darren, who is awesome, makes pinhole camera frisbees and has long westie hair. Douglas, who is practically incomprehensible with a hilarious accent. He isn't there anymore though. I hadn't really been round all the workshops before, and there is SO MUCH YOU CAN DO! apart from the more standard wood and metal shops, they have a foundry, kilns for both pottery and glass, places to do resin work and spray painting. Plus people who know what they are doing in all those areas, in a fine art way, as opposed to bog-standard industrial. I'm really enjoying using metal so far in sculpture, so maybe I'll be able to make some cool stuff in the second half of the semester.

Here's to you, Mr Robinson

So, I've almost completed my first week of the sculpture part of my course. To be perfectly honest, it's significantly harder than I thought it would be. Our brief is 'Making Connections'

We are not meant to be

• biographical

• narrative

• conceptual

• surrealist

• political

what does that leave you with? Literally just putting a pile of old junk together. But it is definitely harder than it looks. Anything else is apparently MUCH to complex for us lowly first years.

Anyway, my tutor for sculpture is my favourite I've had this year. His name is Peter Robinson, and he has awesome Cruella de Vil look going on with his hair. He likes me 'cos I talk.

This is true of most teachers. Except perhaps Ms Feist. But she is a bitter feminist who I purposly tried to piss off so I won't worry too much about that. 

Peter Robinson is actually also an awesome artist, he's kind of a big deal. Recently he's been making these chains out of polystyrene

like so. 

The stuff I am doing at the moment involves gladwrap and rusty metal, with the occasional spiderweb. I'll be sure to keep you updated

Gallery Visits

Auckland has ALOT of galleries. I have lived here pretty much my entire life, and not really realised this until this year, when by the advent of starting elam, I got vaguely art aware and whatnot. So today was basically spent traipsing around various galleries. One exhibition that was on consisted of three tents and mounds of bark. As my friend said, I just don't get it. Even with my new art awareness, sometimes it just seems like people make stuff purely to be weird and confusing. Which may of course be the point. Much like around elam, where I frequently have to ask of a mound of stuff/pile of wood etc is a work or just a mound of stuff. stress.

Speaking of, there was a thing on the news the other night about a pile of packing winning a 15, 000 art prize. Some people were on the news complaining about it. It's just a pile of rubbish! the claimed. I must say, I felt very superior in understanding why it was more than just a pile of rubbish. Cos now I'm art aware and all that

Mr Collins reasons for Marrying

I seriously dislike those boxes that ask you to copy out the distorted word. So they can tell you aren't a robot or whatever. I feel like they are insulting/assaulting my intelligence. Probably because I frequently get them wrong. I can, in fact, read. Despite what you choose to tell me, annoying little box.

Now that's all out of the way, I plan, as the lovely Mr Collins put it so eloquently, so state my reasons for marrying. Or blogging. Pretty much the same thing.

1. I always wanted to keep a diary, but was too much of a slack panda. I have a good memory for names, faces and song lyrics, but other stuff not so much. I did quite well in Europe last year, where I filled almost an entire teal notebook with a orange bird on the front. That was more because I used it to talk to myself, as I was alone the vast majority of the time, and being antisocial in general I wasn't really up for chatting to random types on the train

2. I have harboured vague ambitions for some time now of some career form involving writing. Not something so highbrow as the novel, but maybe scriptwriting? the aformented teal notebook was mostly filled with a screenplay that was fairly terrible. However, as with most things in life, practise is needed. A blog seems like a good place for that.

S