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real world into the hyper-real world of the miniature. The small world provides an
opportunity to have, to control and to explore a situation and more importantly share
it with the viewer. A principle fascination with the process involves making a fleeting
moment permanent, allowing it to be analysed and become poetic in a cinematic
sense. The model removes us in scale but pulls us into an intimate jewel-like
situation. In recreating an event we take possession of it, and in combination with
the miniaturisation of it we are distanced from it and as Gaston Bachelard states:
“We possess from afar, and how peacefully.” Recent projects have resulted in short
digital films that borrow heavily from cinema, but often show the model by itself.
“When I show the model I relinquish some of the control that I have over the viewer,
instead of dictating how the viewer approaches and experiences the model, they are
free to discover it for themselves.”
still from DVD
monumental, and became interested in creating artworks by which memory and the present
collide. These works coalesce around certain themes, which articulates a notion of loss: a
sense of displacement; narra¬tives imagined, remembered, or real; the body as an absent
presence; and a domestic disquiet. There is a muted quality, where any sense of mobility is
associated with instability, and the insecurity of history. To this end, the use of materials
combines the weight of concrete with the disposability of the everyday, establishing a
dialogue between their formal presence, and associative past. They are made by either
covering objects in cement, or incorporating cement within an ensemble of found materials.
issues of power surrounding the definition of the public's position towards the
mainstream mass media and other forms of technological control. Anyone who has
witnessed his installation and performance work knows the seriousness with which
this artist launches his critique of the dishonesty and the ethical failure of humanity
in western culture. In the introduction to the exhibition catalogue EAST International
2005, Curator Lynda Morris writes: "In his performance work Holden pushes himself
and his audiences to the extreme edge experienced by the losers who are
marginalized and alienated and pushed to the edge of our cities. The connection of
the abuse of drugs and alcohol, violence and homelessness, poverty and
unemployment and the material celebration of glamour, advertising, speed, success
and winning wars are explored and made visible in Holden's work."
leading writers, musicians and artists who took their own lives,
specifically those who have had a positive effect on the world.
Interested in the process of subtraction rather than addition, and the
transience of cardboard as a material, Mat’s work is a tribute to the
self-destructiveness often associated with creative genius. The work
throws into light the flaw in the notion that fame and success are
answers to the search for happiness.
landscapes, which explore the physicality of painting in
relation to memory, artifice and the photographic
trace. They are neither grounded in reality or fiction,
but are fragmented somewhere between the two.
Whilst the fused nature of the images gives them a
sense of the authenticity of a memory of a place in
time, the artifice of the hand-painted, coupled with the
trace of the photographic, positions the work between
fact and fiction. The painterly surface and heightened
freakish portraits. The various characters develop personalities and traits. Seemingly
demanding of their creator ("make me look beautiful") to the point that Nolan’s seems
bizarrely to have gone easy on his nightmarish subjects. As in so many portraits of
course, true personality cannot help but caustically seep through. His dialogue is
appropriately diverse. The delicate brushwork is at odds with brutally applied splashes,
swathes and scumbles. Despite this contradictory language, the rigorous glazing and
twisted compositional tricks combine to harmonious effect. The paintings are
discordant, disquieting and beautiful.
Not aligned to any particular medium, he works in what ever material is
to hand or which seems the most appropriate. Early interventions in
houses in the East End of London were made illegally breaking into
buildings and just making the work. Terry sees the fact of showing
work as a chance to communicate and show the things that intrigue
and is curious about. For Smith, exhibitions are a set of propositions,
rather than an end game. His practice involves a lot of improvisation,
changes of mind, redirection, the working process is open and fluid
and it as always seemed quite at odds with his practice, that he walked
out of the space just as the audience walked in.
underwater world and the animal kingdom since they are separate
and remote to our own environment and our experience as
humans. The work exhibited in Half-Life presents a series of
miniature portraits of animals mounted in antique frames.
Limnings flourished in Britain for almost 400 years and played an
important role in society. This intimate and intense genre,
traditionally given as symbols of loyalty, love, or power, have almost
always been used to attribute the sitter with some degree of
status, importance, wealth power or authority. Young’s portraits
likewise give her sitters status, and significantly grant them
personhood. The plaques that are exhibited with the miniatures
add a fictional chronicle to each individual and link each sitter to
powerful and often ruthless figures in history. Reference to the
historical use of animals in the human world, and the sometimes
clumsy integration of them into society, is inherent in the work.
They act as memorials to past times and to forgotten individuals
from non-human species. The work in Half-Life continues Young’s
nature so intrinsic to contemporary life. Above all the work seeks to emphasize the importance of animals and to promote an
enriched relationship and communication between humankind and animals.
