Melbourne Now - Part IV [1]Art ExhibitionMarie-Therese Wisniowski

Preamble [1]
'Melbourne Now' was an art exhibition mounted by the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) in 2014. It takes as its premise the idea that a city is significantly shaped by the artists, designers, architects, choreographers, intellectuals and community groups that live and work in its midsts. The aim is to explore how Melbourne's visual artists and creative practitioners contribute to the dynamic cultural identity of this city. The result is an exhibition that celebrates what is unique about Melbourne's art, design, and architecture communities.

The intention of this exhibition is to encourage and inspire everyone to discover some of the best of Melbourne's culture. To help achieve this, family-friendly activities, dance and music performances, inspiring talks from creative practitioner's, city walks and ephemeral installations and events made up the public program.

This and other posts in this series will concentrate on the participating artists rather than on other features of the exhibition event (e.g., family-friendly commisions developed especially for children and young audiences that aimed to encourage participatory learning for kids and families etc.)

For your convenience I have listed below other posts on thie blogspot that features Melbourne Now exhibitions:
Melbourne Now - Part I
Melbourne Now - Part II
Melbourne Now - Part III
Melbourne Now - Part IV
Melbourne Now - Part V

Melbourne Now - Part IV[1]
Boris Cipusev
Boris Cipusev was born in 1988 and has been working at Arts Project Australia, Melbourne, since 2007. A prolific and dedicated practitioner, Cipusev has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney since 2007. The artist's beautifully concise and considered drawings present text as images. Often employing two words or a word and number in combination. Cipusev's works yield both enigmatic juxapositions and poetic resonances. For the artist these words - sometimes names of people he knows or figures from popular culture - have specific meaning. Cipusev also draws inspiration from advertising and signage observed on his way to and from the studio, and from everyday printed material. His works are often conceived in a series of four parts, that are completed in a single session.

Cipusev's works included in 'Melbourne Now' display the striking and sophisticated use of contrast between figure and ground characteristic of his practice, with letters and words carefully placed and spaced against a plain white background. Drawn with a felt-tipped pen, the works are highly colored and precisely delineated, and their clarity and directness produced an effect both playful and emphatic.

Who Next? (2010)

Community Hall
Melbourne (Australia) is renowned as being complex, multicultural and multilayered - qualities that the city embraces through its arts, design, fashion, food, sport, and cultural events. As a purpose-built space dedicated to Melbourne's diverse communities, 'Community Hall' strives to reach beyond the walls of the National Gallery of Victoria to all corners of Melbourne, encouraging conversation and exchange with visitors young and old. For more than one hundred days, its circular design, reminiscent of an amphi-theatre, will accommodate a wide range of community groups, artist-run initiatives, art and design collectives, students, specialists, performers collectors, mentors, makers and hobbyists.

Community Hall's rich programming streams will draw out different facets of Melbourne's cultural fabric. Visitors will be treated to a variety of weekly public programs, including Masterclass, Talking Now, Show and Tell, The Menu, MN Project, Show-Off, DIY, Guess Who's Next, Melbourne Music and MN screenings, all celebrating the diversity of this dynamic city through a schedule of events co-created by you.

McBride Charles Ryan. Community Hall (2013).

Lorraine Connelly-Northey
Lorraine Connelly-Northey was born and grew up in Wadi Wadi and Wamba Wamba terrain south of her mother's Waradgerie Country, disconnected from mainsprings of her culture, language and ceremony as a consequence of colonization. Rather than practicing her people's customary art of coil weaving with sedge grasses, Connelly-Northey has forged a dramatic sculptural practice that suits her personal history and hybrid cultural identity. She re-fashions discarded post-industrial materials - the detritus of colonization - into objects and installations resonant with cultural meaning.

For 'Melbourne Now' Connelly-Northey has constructed two collosal installations, both of which heighten the gulf between pre-contact and post-contact colonial society. The first, 'An O'possum-skin cloak: Blackfella Road (2011-2013) refers to an unsealed road near Swan Hill (Victoria, Australia) made from soil taken from culturally sensitive areas containing middens and Aboriginal human remains. This road is boycotted by Connelly-Northey and her family and continues to haunt the artist, as does her memory of visiting, and witnessing, such decimated sites with her father. Connelly-Northey's second installation, 'Vessels' (2013), a commanding assemblage of giant rusted narbongs (collecting bags) made from incongruous materials, celebrates and memorializes such cultural objects.

Lorraine Connelly-Northey. An O'possum-skin cloak: Blackfella Road (2011).

Alan Constantable
Alan Constable is a Melbourne-based (Australia) artist who has been actively practising since 1985. Working principally from Northcote studios of Arts Project Australia, he has had wider ranging critical success in a diversity of media, including pastel on paper, ink on paper, oil on canvass, and more recently, ceramics, and is represented in many national and international collections. Of Constable's diverse works, it is his unique ceramic cameras that stand out as the most significant aspect of his recent practice.

A camera's ability to act as an extension of our eyes and to capture and preserve images renders it a potent instrument. In the case of Constable, this power has particular resonance and added poignancy. The artist lives with profound vision impairment and his compelling hand-modeled ceramic reinterpretations of the camera - itself sometimes referred to as the 'inventive eye' - posssess an altogether more moving presence. For Melbourne Now, Constable has created a special group of his very personal cameras.

Untitled (2013). Teal SRL with flash.

Ross Coulter
Ross Coulter's practice encompasses photography, film-making, sculpture, painting and dance, and is as interesting as it is diverse. Coulter is prolific and his work has been exhibited extensively around Melbourne (Australia), from the smallest artist-run initiatives to the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia). He has received numerous awards, grants and residencies both locally and internationally.

With '10,000 Paper Planes - Aftermath' (2011), Coulter encountered Melbourne's intellectual heart, the State Library of Victoria (SLV). Being awarded the Georges Mora Foundation Fellowship in 2010, allowed Coulter to realize a concept he had been developing since he worked at the SLV in the late 1990s. The result is a playful intervention into what is usually a serious place of contemplation. Coulter's paper planes, launched by 165 volunteers into the volume of the La Trobe Reading Room, give physical form to the notion of ideas flying through the building and the mind. This astute work investigates the striking contrast between strict discipline of the library space and its categorization system and the free flow of creativity that its holdings inspire in the vistor.

Ross Coulter, 10,000 Paper Planes - Aftermath (2011) in the State Library of Victoria.

Zoë Groggon. Fonteyn (2012).
Born in 1989, Zoë Croggon completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2011, where she received the prestigious ACACIA Art Award. She currently lives and works in Melbourne (Australia). Recent group and solo exhibitions in the city include: Pool (2013), Dodecahedron (2012) and Liquid Archive at Monash University Museum of Art (2012).

Combining interests in video, sculpture, architecture, dance and drawing, as well as the open-ended possibilities afforded by reclaiming archival images, Croggon revels in unexpected juxtapositions of forms and textures. Her recent practice has culminated in merging disparate images, found and gathered, into deft and delicate collages. Drawing in personal experiences of studying ballet and dance, Croggon's photo-collages see human forms forced into visual dialogue with images of architecture and natural sites sourced from magazines, newspapers and books. She invests the images with new currency through the creation of dynamic visual and graphic synergies that have a profound sense of movement, energy and poetry.

Fonteyn (2012). National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne).

Reference
[1] T. Ellwood, Director, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).

Fourth International Textile Competition '94 Kyoto [1]Part ITextile ArtMarie-Therese Wisniowski

Preamble:
For your convenience, I have listed below posts in this series:
Fourth International Textile Competition '94 Kyoto - Part I
Fourth International Textile Competition '94 Kyoto - Part II

Introduction [1]
Throughout history, human beings have discovered various fibers in the environment. Use of them sustained human life as they protected them from harsh environments. As time passed, human beings created a system of weaving fibers. This was a significant breakthrough in sustaining life. The basis of weaving is a combination of warp and welt. The weaving of wool, flax, hemp amd silk, cotton and diverse materials became a universal technological development, which prevails to this day.

Human beings wanted to embue fabric with color and so invented dyeing. Body clothing was transformed and so decorated the person and gradually distinguished sexes and the roles they played within their local community. Today's fashion still reflects some of these directions.

Kyoto was the capital of Japan for a thousand years and flourished as the principle center of extremely high quality textiles. In Kyoto there is a desire to show, understand and acknowledge the actual situation of textiles in the world of the 90s and to create images of civilization that human beings will help shape the world of tomorrow.

Fourth International Textile Competition '94 Kyoto - Part I [1]
(i) Naomi Ota (Australian/Japanese).

Background: Born in 1963. Finished the graduate school of Kyoto City University of Arts in 1988. Graduated from the Royal Institute of Technology University (Melbourne, Australia).
Judge's Comment: Grappling with the theme, 'The Aesthetics of Textiles - A Message for the 21st Century,' this work is frank in its expression of the relationship between Nature and Man. As we approach the next century, and attempt to surpass the history that we have worked so hard to achieve, we are faced with the problem of how we should live, and where we are heading. This problem has in particular caused us to redirect our vision, and this work has delicately given us an answer in an original and creative way.
A work which exudes character and grace, its message is born not from 'technique' nor 'idea,' but of harmony developed from an earnest awareness while living with nature. Above all, the story related by this work gives one the impression of life, and awakens the awareness concerning current problems with the environment. It is a demonstration of exceptional technique and vision, precisely what one would hope to find in a competition such as this.

Artist: Naomi Ota.
Title: One Day I Found.
Materials: Jute, wood, paper.
Technique: Free technique.
Size: 70 (H) x 190 (W) x 50 (D) cm.

Detail Image.

(ii) Excellence Award: Keisuke Miyamoto, Kyoto (Japan).

Background: Born in 1963, he graduated from Kyoto College of Art in 1991. Exhibited at Paper Works of Contemporary Art (Japan, 1992), and the 22nd Annual Works on Paper Exhibition (USA, 1993).
Judge's Comment: In selecting empty cartons as the material for this work, the artist has developed an expression while using the most common materials and techniques. He has not limited himself, however, to only the theme of recycling problems faced by society, but has touched upon a deep harmony with the environments in his depiction of the circulatory system of our world, also called the water planet.
"It is not so fantastic to conceive that the water circulating at the bottom of the ocean billions of years ago may now circulate within my body..."
This notion of the artist is well-described in his use of the recycling of empty milk cartons, and indeed, through recycling he has demonstrated in this work his awareness of the circulation of water as an integral part of the chain of life.
There is a definite feeling of strength and existence in this work, upon which the artist has portrayed a firm personal experience, which supports this work and its message.

Artist: Keisuke Miyamoto.
Title: Mother Seas Has Memories of Ancient Times.
Materials: Milk package, dye.
Technique: Free technique.
Size: 40 (H) x 250 (W) x 250 (D) cm.

Detailed View.

(iii) Masakazu Kobayashi, Kyoto (Japan).

Background: Born in 1944, he graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts. He exhibited at the 6th International Tapestry Biennial (Switzerland, 1973), the Ist International Textile Triennial (Poland, 1975), the New Movements of Textiles (Japan, 1980), Fabric in Space (Japan, 1987), and International Textile Competition (Kyoto '87 & '92).
Judge's Comment: This work is a fine example of the orthodox beauty of textile art, whereby technique has been masterfully applied to create a work of art. It is reserved and elegant, but the contrast and stability it exudes combine to enhance its overall appeal.
Though diametric in feeling when compared with the work which received the ITF Grand Prize, both works have their own, individual and unique styles of expression, creation and technique, that will pave the way to the next generation of textiles and textile art. in this sense, a close examination of the messages contained in both works will reveal the true concept upon which this ITF competition has been based.

Artist: Masakazu Kobayashi.
Title: Sound-Collage 1-93.
Materials: Silk yarn, aluminium.
Technique: Figured brocade, wrapping etc.
Size: 272 (H) x 546 (W) x 60 (D) cm.

Detailed View.

(iv) Marie-Rose Lortet (France).

Background: Born in Strasbourg, she has lived and worked in Normandy since 1967. Her two tendencies are: one is "Territory of wool" and the other is "Structures of rigidified yarn" which she has simultaneously developed since 1984.
Judge's Comment: Within the various European cultures there are numerous traditions of lace, each rich in history of its place of origin. A highly developed art in itself, lace is now considered to be the most intricate and delicate of textiles, and has been used for centuries in Europe to elegantly decorate the beautiful costumes and apparel of traditional dress.
Taking an architectural approach to a textile which one would expect to be soft and delicate, the artist has succeeded in creating space by moving away from the normal, two-dimensional world that lace normally occupies, and changing it into something completely different. The artist has not merely tranformed it by using it in a three-dimensional way, but instead has recreated and redefined the intrinsic significance of the material itself. While maintaining the classical expressions of European lace, she has re-evaluated the position of lace as a medium tradition, while creating at the same time a work powerful enough to give one a feeling of rebellion in its expression of a new challenge for the next generation of lace and textile art.

Artist: Marie-Rose Lortet.
Title: La Mesure Du Vide.
Materials: Cotton and linen thread.
Technique: Tied and organized together with a solidifying agent.
Size: 50 (H) x 63 (W) x 50 (D) cm.

Detailed View.

Reference
[1] Edited by: International Textile Fair Executive Committee.
Published by: International Textile Fair Executive Committee (Nishijin-ori-Kiakan, Horikawa Imadegawa, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto 602,Japan.
Printed by: New Color Photographic Printing Co. Ltd. © 1994 International Textile Fair Executive Committe.

A Mystery Modifier in the Louvre [1]Art EssayMarie-Therese Wisniowski

Preamble
For your convenience I have listed below another post on the Louvre.
The Louvre

A Mystery Modifier in the Louvre [1]
Modern museums are high security areas, thanks to the imagination shown by technicians behind the scenes. They have to prevent art thieves and/or art lovers from taking works of art, lunatics from defacing them, and the criminal fraternity in general from helping itself to the stock of an establishment, such as the Louvre.

Mona Lisa smeared with cake in a climate change protest.

On 21 August 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris.

Before all the modern aids were introduced, documentary evidence showed that there existed a modifier whose name is now forgotton and of whom there remains no longer a trace. The modifier in question lived in the era before photographic records were made of all the paintings, when artistic and forensic science were in their infancy - in short, when it was possible to do things that protestors or criminals can only dream about in this day and age.

The deserted 'Hieroglyph Gallery' in the Louvre.

Attendant in the Louvre courtyard (ca. 1910).

The realization that something was amiss in the Louvre dawned gradually, for the clever machinations of our anonymous hero ensured that there was no empty space previously occupied by a picture. At first, when experts studied certain still-life paintings, they thought they were hallucinating. Surely the Flemish style had been imitated, leading to similar abundance of the robust fare in French paintings? Suddenly, all the rich and sumptuous food seemed to have vanished. One old master, who had always been overshadowed by de Heem, among others, and whose unusual name was rarely noted - Lubin Baugin - was particularly affected, having apparently embarked on a sudden diet after all the feasting. In one of his paintings there remained little more than a half-full glass, a bottle, and a light snack. It looked like someone had cleared the table.

Once alerted, the curators in charge were constantly coming across other unexplained modifications. This much was known: the paintings were only defaced at night. Secondly, the thief seemed concerned exclusively with food, for one or two items to do with food went missing from the Egyptian collection; as a result, reliefs from the Old Kingdom, and the New Kingdom wall paintings assumed an increasingly tidy appearance. Thirdly, it was obvious that the modifier had style, was probably pedantic, and wanted to change the history of art, by restorng hierogylphics to the Egyptians, and by making a very sharp distinction between the French and their northern neighbors.

Artist and Title: Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606 - 1683/84). Still-life Showpiece (1640).
Material: Oil on canvas.
Size: 149 x 203 cm.

The police initially disclaimed responsibility for this matter, but they were later ordered to take action by higher authority. There followed some very lonely and eerie nights for officials, lit only by moonlight, since they were obliged to keep their flashlights switched off. In the end, however, the modifier gave himself away. He had then pared down all the French still lives, but when, as a true connoisseur, he moved to Jan Davidsz de Heem's 'Still-Life Showpiece' of 1640 (see above) he stumbled against a lute, creating sounds that led to his instant capture. Our suspect confessed what he had done.

Handling works of art has become much more complex today. The prospect of a museum employee examining a picture in such an intimate manner (as above) is now unthinkable.

One of those employees, with what is now termed a service contract, worked all his life for the Louvre and was now being threatened with retirement without receiving a pension - a fate that his parents had long since warned him about. As a true art lover, the idea of art leaving him penniless was unthinkable to him, and so he decided to test whether art might relent. It did: he lived off the pictures for a while, and was at last able to do what no official museum curator would be allowed to do, namely to create some order and impose his own standards in the museum. He turned out to be quite important, because without him, Lubin Baugin would have remained a mere imitator of the flemish style.

The ultimate fate of our modifier is open to to dispute. To the poor policeman who saved de Heem's painting for us in its presnt form, all the works and their creators were nothing more than a passing shadow, and so he too was unable to say what had really happened. The modifier evaded the police, stepped into a landscape painting, and disappeared for ever. It was said by some to be a painting by Watteau, but they were too far away to see. However, if you look at the unkempt, 'Landscape at Sunset' by Adrian Brouwer, you will see that unidentified thief still had unfinished business with the Flemish artist.

Artist and Title: Adrian Brouwer (1605 - 1638). Landscape at Sunset (ca. 1635).
Material: Oil on wood.
Size: 17 x 26 cm.

Reference:
G. Bartz and E. König, The Louvre, Könemann, Tandem Verlag GmbH (2005).

Japanese Pigments [1]Art ResourceMarie-Therese Wisniowski

Preamble
This is the thirty-second post in a new Art Resource series that specifically focuses on techniques used in creating artworks. For your convenience I have listed all the posts in this new series below:
Drawing Art
Painting Art - Part I
Painting Art - Part II
Painting Art - Part III
Painting Art - Part IV
Painting Art - Part V
Painting Art - Part VI
Home-Made Painting Art Materials
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part I
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part II
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part III
Historical Notes on Art - Part I
Historical Notes on Art - Part II
Historical Notes on Art - Part III
Historical Notes on Art - Part IV
Historical Notes on Art - Part V
Tempera Painting
Oil Painting - Part I
Oil Painting - Part II
Oil Painting - Part III
Oil Painting - Part IV
Oil Painting - Part V
Oil Painting - Part VI
Pigments
Classification of Pigments - Part I
Classification of Pigments - Part II
Classification of Pigments - Part III
Pigments for Oil Painting
Pigments for Water Color
Pigments for Tempera Painting
Pigments for Pastel
Japanese Pigments
Pigments for Fresco Painting - Part I
Pigments for Fresco Painting - Part II
Selected Fresco Palette for Permanent Frescoes
Properties of Pigments in Common Use
Blue Pigments - Part I
Blue Pigments - Part II
Blue Pigments - Part III

There have been another one hundred and thirteen posts in a previous Art Resource series that have focused on the following topics:
(i) Units used in dyeing and printing of fabrics;
(ii) Occupational, health & safety issues in an art studio;
(iii) Color theories and color schemes;
(iv) Optical properties of fiber materials;
(v) General properties of fiber polymers and fibers - Part I to Part V;
(vi) Protein fibers;
(vii) Natural and man-made cellulosic fibers;
(viii) Fiber blends and melt spun fibers;
(ix) Fabric construction;
(x) Techniques and woven fibers;
(xi) Basic and figured weaves;
(xii) Pile, woven and knot pile fabrics;
(xiii) Durable press and wash-and-wear finishes;
(xvi) Classification of dyes and dye blends;
(xv) The general theory of printing.

To access any of the above resources, please click on the following link - Units Used in Dyeing and Printing of Fabrics. This link will highlight all of the one hundred and thirteen posts in the previous a are eight data bases on this blogspot, namely, the Glossary of Cultural and Architectural Terms, Timelines of Fabrics, Dyes and Other Stuff, A Fashion Data Base, the Glossary of Colors, Dyes, Inks, Pigments and Resins, the Glossary of Fabrics, Fibers, Finishes, Garments and Yarns, Glossary of Art, Artists, Art Motifs and Art Movements, Glossary of Paper, Photography, Printing, Prints and Publication Terms and the Glossary of Scientific Terms. All data bases in the future will be updated from time-to-time.

If you find any post on this blog site useful, you can save it or copy and paste it into your own "Word" document for your future reference. For example, Safari allows you to save a post (e.g. click on "File", click on "Print" and release, click on "PDF" and then click on "Save As" and release - and a PDF should appear where you have stored it). Safari also allows you to mail a post to a friend (click on "File", and then point cursor to "Mail Contents On This Page" and release). Either way, this or other posts on this site may be a useful Art Resource for you.

The new Art Resource series will be the first post in each calendar month. Remember - these Art Resource posts span information that will be useful for a home hobbyist to that required by a final year University Fine-Art student and so undoubtedly, some parts of any Art Resource post may appear far too technical for your needs (skip those mind boggling parts) and in other parts, it may be too simplistic with respect to your level of knowledge (ditto the skip). The trade-off between these two extremes will mean that Art Resource posts will be hopefully useful in parts to most, but unfortunately may not be satisfying to all!

Japanese Pigments[1]
As with the earliest European painters, permanence was regarded by the Japanese as an essential requirement in a work of art. The Japanese have carried on this tradition and today they use the same list of twenty or so pigments they used centuries ago (see below). Although most colors in the list are of natural mineral origin, one (indigo) is derived from a plant and another (cochineal) from an insect.

Picking indigofera leaves to extract a dye.

Cochineal.

These Japanese pastel pigments have been unchanged for many centuries. The finely powdered minerals differ in shade from the same minerals more coarsely powdered.

White
Note: The whites have various textural and reflective characteristics.
(i) Ground quartz crystal (Japanese: Sui sho matsu).

Clear Quartz Raw Chunks.

(ii) Ground Calcite (Japanese: Hokai matsu).

Marble Dust.

(iii) Shell White (Japanese: Go fun).

(iv) Mica (Japanese: Unmo).

Blue
(i) Powdered azurite (Japanese: Gunjo).

(ii) Japanese Indigo (Japanese: Ai).

Floral Japanese printed fabric using indigo dye to produce a range of blue tones, from the 18th and 19th century.

Green
(i) Malachite (Japanese: Byaku roku).

Bluish Green: Azurite and Malachite Mixture

(ii) Malachite Rich (Japanese: Shin sha).

(iii) Azurite Rich (Japanese: Yakigunroku).

Red
(i) Red (Japanese: Hon shu goku akakuchi).

(ii)Cochineal Red (Japanese: Enji).

(iii) Red Lead (Japanese: Tan).

(iv) Red Earth Color (Japanese: Benigara).

(v) Yellow Earth (Japanese: Odo).

Reference:
[1] The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques, R. Mayer (ed. E. Smith) 4th Edition, Faber and Faber, London (1981).