"Something different usually happens during the summertime"
2015 - What I did this summer
Having just completed my first year on the Diploma of HE Fine Art in June, I travelled to Ireland on July 3rd and stayed in our holiday cottage in Galway for ten weeks.
My time there was spent going for drives and walks to explore the countryside, going to private views and exhibitions, reading, conversing with friends and neighbors and meeting local artists.
Our cottage is situated on the south side of Galway bay and about 3 miles from the nearest village which is called Kinvara. The front elevation is facing west and has stunning views of a tidal lake and Abbey Hill which is part of the famous and magical Burren landscape. I spent several days exploring the Burren and its exquisite features including the many dry stone walls which I find of particular interest.
Holiday Reading
Some of the books I read during the summer:
The Daily Practice of Painting by Gerhard Richter. I found Richter's writings very interesting and in particular his views on how photography and painting relate to each other..
Nothing if not Critical, by Robert Hughes. I really enjoyed reading Hughes' essays as it has helped me in my research into the work of various artists including some of my favorites: Matisse, Picasso, Hockney and Hodgkin.
Painter as Critic, Patrick Heron: Selected Writings. In his lecture at Leeds University in 1949 on the subject of The Necessity of Distortion in Painting, Heron said: "I believe the function of painting at its highest level is the perpetual creation of a new fusion, a new marriage between the purely formal abstract entities on one side and the everyday world of commonplace but nevertheless magical realities on the other. A purely abstract shape is easy to invent. What is difficult, so difficult that only genius can fully accomplish it, is the forging of a new formal image out of familiar, well-known forms". Reading Herons' writings has given me a better understanding of why so many artists (including Heron himself) have progressed from figurative work into non-figurative or purely abstract work.
Exhibitions
Galway Arts Festival
The annual Galway International Arts Festival took place in the city from the 13th to the 16th of July this year and is a major event featuring Theatre and Dance, Music, Comedy and the Visual Arts. As the city is only about half an hours drive from our cottage, a day spent at the festival was a must. I have always found Galway city an exciting place to wander around and with the festival in full swing my visit on 24th July was a day filled with new and extraordinary experiences.
The exhibitions were shown in various locations around the city and I stopped first at the University Gallery to see the work of Sioban Piercy. Sioban Piercy's work combines drawing, printmaking, photography and text in a three-dimensional form. In the festival catalogue the work is described as follows: "These are books in the broadest sense. Instead of pages of words, the artist has cut, folded and bound her drawings and photographs to create three-dimensional forms and fragile, ink-covered paper structures. While pushing the notion of a book to its limits, these works still reference all that books might connote - tools for comprehension, carriers of knowledge, maps to guide or offer explanations."The objects that Piercy has created are fragile, unstable and delicately balanced and have the effect of making us question our own self-understanding and self-perception."
My next stop was Galway City Museum to see an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois' drawings and prints. As I understand it, Bourgeois' work has always maintained strongly autobiographical themes, expressing her own range of emotions. The well known critic Robert Hughes in his essay published in Time magazine in 1982 said: "The field to which Bourgeois's work constantly returns is female experience, located in the body, sensed from within."
It was really interesting to see some of her work in its original form as opposed to reproductions. In the collection was one of my favorites: (see image below).
My next and final visit that day was to The Festival Gallery to see the work of Patricia Piccinini. Piccinini is one of Australia's most acclaimed artists and she is recognized worldwide for her startling sculptures and digital environments. Her work examines the connections between science, nature, art and the environment. She creates an imaginative world peopled with families of charming but somewhat unsettling creatures, mutants who are half-human and half-beast, baby trucks and humanised scooters who fall in love with one another! Many of the sculptures in the exhibition were made from silicone, human hair and clothing. This this gives some of the figures the appearance of being living, breathing creatures which some people find quite disturbing. Piccinini herself has said: "The creatures literally appeal to the audiences empathy, they entreat the viewer to look beyond their strangeness and see the connections. Modern understanding of genetics and biology has shown us how deeply interconnected all life on earth is. There is more similarity between creatures than there is difference.
The Observer
Yet much of how we understand the world and its creatures is based on the idea of a fundamental difference between us and them. Every new thing we learn - whether it is about language, behaviour or biology - points to the basic wrongness of this presumption. The other creatures in this world are more related to us than not".Although I don't agree with Piccininis' theory I found her work interesting and thought provoking. My favorite piece of work in the show was called The Observer.
At first glance the boy in this sculpture looks very real! (See image on the left)
I had mixed feelings about one or two other pieces of sculpture including one called The Welcome Guest and another called The Strength of One Arm as I think a lot of people might find these images disturbing. (See images below)
The Welcome Guest The Strength of One Arm
