Dustin Yellin, American artist.
Images from the 'Dust in the basement' exhibition
Painting on multiple layers of perspex to for three dimensional images
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Monday, 15 April 2013
Friday, 12 April 2013
Nina Saunders
Nina Saunders. UK artist.
She uses recognisable second-hand furniture, and deforms them so that they are dysfunctional, stripped of comfort, melting, harbouring tumours.
The work is all the more disturbing as the furniture is iconic, recognisable; it could be a chair that has been in your family for generations.
Where is the owner of this chair? Is it mirroring their condition?
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| Any day now |
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Muriel Gallan: Positive images of old age
Muriel Gallan, Photo journalist
Commision for Swansea Singleton Hospital care of the eldely ward. Photos of older people enjoying an active life. To highlight that aging and medical conditions do not have to stop patients enjoying activities that they enjoy.
Elderly care consultant Wyn Harris, who thought up the idea, said: "It is recognised there is an important crossover between the arts and medicine which is mutually beneficial.
"With regards to the pictures on elderly care wards, I think they are important for a number of reasons. They enliven and add interest to the ward environment.
''However, more import- antly, they remind patients, staff and visitors that being elderly is not just about illness and frailty — many elderly people have active and rewarding lives.
"It also helps us to see inpatients' illness episodes in the context of their life outside hospital."
Monday, 8 April 2013
Judy Somerville: Another generation
Judy Somerville. American artist.
"As generation after generation of the elderly remain "unseen"and youngness becomes the mode; I say let's change this image . Let's forget the calendar girls and bring on the elderly as images of old people suddenly appear over every mantle place in America. Visions of old people are the autobiography to be of every person on earth. The elderly are a beautiful part of the natural world, after all what is beauty? Like rivers flowing through the forest each wrinkle defines The infinite quality of life's textures and experiences. An idealistic monumental vision mysteriously transforms reality in surprising ways. In these portraits I hope to portray another kind of beauty,sensuality and a nouveau eroticism. This is truely a new generation,the elderly through my eyes."
Monday, 18 March 2013
Damien Hirst: The Last Supper
Hirst has replaced the name of the drug with the name of a food traditional to working class British café culture, for example 'corned beef' and 'sausages', transforming the food into a brand by the addition of the insignia ®, TM or decorative typescript.
Such variations on the artist's name as Hirst, HirstDamien, Damien, Damien & Hirst, Hirst Products Limited, also set in a range of typescripts, have taken the place of the usual drug manufacturer's logo.
Hirst has compared medical packaging to the formats of minimalism, saying:
'a lot of the actual boxes of medicines are all very minimal and could be taken directly from minimalism, in the way that … minimalism implies confidence.'
For Hirst medicine, like religion and art, provides a belief system which is both seductive and illusory.
He has said:
'I can't understand why some people believe completely in medicine and not in art, without questioning either'
The Last Supper refers to the way in which medicinal drugs are becoming a regular part of everyday life, as common as the food Hirst has chosen to represent. Like pharmaceuticals, the side effects of which are not always pleasant or harmless, these common British foods often contain an unappetising and potentially dangerous cocktail of drugs, including whatever chemicals the industrially farmed animals have been fed, and notoriously large amounts of heart disease-inducing saturated fat.
Medicines, prescribed by doctors to alleviate and cure illness, are commodities manufactured and sold by large corporations. Like the Brillo boxes, Coke bottles and Campbell's Soup packaging imitated by American artist Andy Warhol (1928-87) in the 1960s, Hirst's version of The Last Supper refers to the everyday dependence on reliable panaceas which medical and fast food industries feed off (Warhol also submitted this subject to the manufacturing process of screenprinting).
Hirst has commented,
'I like the idea of an artist as a scientist. A painter as a machine. The packages in The Last Supper and in the medicine cabinets are … trying to sell the product … in a very clinical way. Which starts to become very funny.'
All of Hirst's thirteen components in his version of The Last Supper are potential betrayers, providing a humorously cynical comment on self-destructive aspects of British society.
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Gemma Anderson
[Words by Gemma Anderson, http://wellcometrust.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/guest-post-portraits-patients-and-psychiatrists/]
Portraits; Patients and Psychiatrists began in 2007 when the forensic psychiatrist Dr Tim McInerny saw my etchings at the Royal College of Art’s Great Exhibition. I had made a series of portraits referring to pseudo-scientific theories: comparative physiognomy, phrenology and the Doctrine of Signatures.
I was especially interested in working on portraits of psychiatric patients. My grandmother had spent a period in a psychiatric hospital in 2004. Deeply aware of how her identity was diminished by the language of medicine. I witnessed how medical vocabulary failed to express the history and story of the individual I loved and knew so well.
Tim and I decided to work together on a project creating psychiatric portraits for the 2008 arts exhibition An Experiment in Collaboration, held at Jerwood Space in London. The positive response to this encouraged us to apply for a Wellcome Trust Arts Award so we could develop the concept further.
The project began in earnest in August 2009. Before we started, Tim recruited willing psychiatrists who could identify patients enthusiastic to take part; doctor and patient needed to have a significant working relationship. Although we were based at Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham, I also made drawings at individuals’ homes in Hammersmith, Hampstead and Homerton, at a boys’ school in Brentford and at other NHS units – Kentish Town Community Mental Health Centre and the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill.
Such drawing from life requires trusting relationships with individuals and institutions, and it has been a wonderful experience of learning and discovery. Each individual led me on a search, as I wanted to draw not only the people but also the components in the portraits from life. Sometimes I used their personal possessions, but I found most of the animals, plants and other objects at the Royal College of Physicians, Kew Gardens and University College London’s Grant Museum of Zoology, Rock Room and Human Anatomy Room.
Through drawing, I have tried to represent the people involved in this project – their histories, medicines, interests and emotional worlds. The greatest privilege for me was being able to meet each person, hear their story, see their environment. Essential to this was learning about the perspective of both patient and psychiatrist, which was possible as I was granted permission to enter wards, sit in on meetings and ward rounds, and meet everyone involved first hand.
For more information about the project...
Monday, 4 March 2013
Hugh Turvey
Hugh Turvey
Trained as a designer / art director but on discovering photography he retrained under iconic photographer Gered Mankowitz. During 1996/1997 he started experimenting with x-ray/shadow photography after being asked to create an alternative ‘revealing’ image for an album cover. With the encouragement of the Science Photo Library he went on to produce an extensive series of coloured x-rays of everyday objects, which were first published on the 4 April 1999 in The Observer Magazine, LIFE, UK. In the same year Credit Suisse discovered Hughs x-ray vision and commissioned 6 ground breaking ‘motion x-ray’ European TV commercials
"The hands on approach and the manipulation of technique: overexposure, multiple exposure, chemical processing, filtering, rigs, mechanics, physics, happy accidents, trial and error and hand colouring.
I do not work exclusively with one set of x-ray equipment rather I tailor the equipment to requirement: for example to capture a small insect of low density is very different to that of capturing the high densities of a sports motorbike.
There is a technique to produce a photographic image without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a photo-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. These are called photograms (or as Man Ray called the "rayographs" ) and is one of the first photographic imaging techniques ever used by William Fox Talbot (and he called them “photogenic drawings”).
Simply put, the only difference between my x-ray images and the photograms produced by the early photographic pioneers is the frequency of the ‘light’ used to expose the ‘paper’. I have created (unlike the 'Roentgenogram' which is pertaining to the originators name) a more generic term ' XOGRAM ' to define my x-ray images within the context of my photographic background and the cross over of my visible light and x-ray images.
I have also created the term ' XOGRAFIA ' to define the act of producing xograms"
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Sunday, 3 March 2013
Medicine Unboxed posters to date
I have been lucky enough to have been asked to produce the artwork for Medicine Unboxed since 2010.
Medicine Unboxed 2010: Stories, Language and Medicine
Acrylics on board
Medicine Unboxed 2011: Medicine and Values
Screen print and hand embroidery on fabric
Medicine Unboxed 2012: Medicine and Belief
Acrylics and Gesso on Canvas
2013 poster to follow!
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
Festival of Britain 1951 pattern group
A note about the patterned background I've pinched!-
In 1951 the Festival of Britain at the Southbank in London aimed to celebrate the exciting new advances in art and science happening in a nation rebuilding itself after the war.
A pattern group of established artists was especially commisioned for this event to produce prints for textiles and interiors. Their inspiration was the xray crystallography images of atoms. This was a relatively new technology, and it was a leading crytallographer, Dr Helen Megaw, who wanted to bring these beautiful inticate patterns to the attention of the public.
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| Helen Megaw |
I love these images, and how the patterns were used in all sorts of random accessories for the home, including kitchen ware, wall paper, carpets, and fabric for furniture.
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| Lace with Haemoglobin pattern |
The images of the insulin and haemoglobin molecules are my favourite patterns. They are such important molecules physiologically and yet in day to day life rarely thought about. The patterns are so simple and beautiful, I like the idea of them being a celebration of their function!
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| Insulin |
I think this work is pretty inspiring, makes me want to start a textile project about histology...
Video from the Wellcome Collection about the pattern group:-
Images from the Wellcome Collection website:
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