I decided to make a post about all the artists i have looked at thought the WAWWA project to give some context to my work outside of my sketchbook.
Sarah Lucas
Lucas is part of the generation of YBA’s who emerged during the 1990s. Her work centres around themes of feminism, sexuality, gender and identity. In the early 90s she began using furniture as a substitute for the human body, usually with phallic imagery attached. The artist attaches sexual and humorous connotations to every day objects and materials. I like the artists use of materials and how she creates these different forms with sexual undertones.
Her work also included repeated images and symbols relating to the female body and the female experience. This has influenced how i view myself when creating work. Weather thats taking images of myself or making 2D work that represents the female form. As well as this i have used similar materials in my own practice with the intention of creating something that eludes to a human form without being too specific.
Phyllida Barlow
Phyllida Barlow continues to be a big influence o my work as you can probably tell. Her creative process of moving between 2D and 3D work is something I routinely do in my own practice. Her use of colour and materials again influences my work as her sculptural work relies on the space it occupies to communicate scale. I took this into consideration when making 3D models and taking images trying to image them filling a room and how they my be perceived depending on the environment they are placed in.
I also focused a lot on how Barlow creates the illusion of wight and pressure despite the material she is working with, something incredibly light and hollow (fabric) she manages to manipulate in order to appear overwhelming and heavy. I have tried to implement this in my own way of working due to my lack of access to materials an space. So making something appear a-lot heavier and larger than it is has become a new skill for me.
The artists work always achieves this illusion of physical pressure and gravity regardless of material or location.
Bruce Neuman
Again another artist that who’s work continues to influence my own. His work discusses complex themes around the human body, language and space. Specially in this project I researched and focused on his figurative neon light works. These works of his discuss and bring up issues around sex, humour, death and love, as well as politically led events such as racism, war, and torture. Again a clear focus on the figure and underlying pressures people are put under in our day to day lives. Light and colour i think are elements of my work i’m always aware of, as well as communicating this presence of pressure. Its easy to draw connections to his work and my own when looking at the neon wire pants I made and the images that spawned from this.
Anna Sew Hoy
American artist known for Sew Hoy Known for her abstract sculptures and use of clay to create a sense of intimacy within installations and environments. I think my 3D and Photography work too holds this feeling of intimacy and venerability in different ways. The artist often begins with solid blocks of clay and then adds fabrics, such as jean material or velvet flocking, metal elements, wood, rubber, and mirrors to create pieces that are both industrial and organic. Again the use of contrast between soft and hard materials is something i’m interested in exploring in my work and this artist dose it so successfully. She almost creates a safe space that at the same time feels so open and exposed.
“One thing that inspires this work is jamming together opposites and making them exist in the same space. I don’t know if they coexist or if they’re fighting the whole time. Fighting the whole time is good, too. In Blood Moon Breastplate (2019), it’s the textures—the frayed, rough edges of those jean seams, as against the light-sucking dry velvet, as against that super glossy patent leather. I get a lot of energy out of finding things to pile on top of each other, and I want them to be questioning each other while they’re together on the same piece. I suppose one brings the other into focus: the leather scrunchie is a foil for the rust-red velvet and vice versa.”
Ernesto Neto
Neto is a Brazilian Conceptual artist whose installations allow the audience to touch, see, smell, and feel his artworks for a truly sensory experience.
“For me, mind and body are one thing, always together,” “I believe in the sensual body, and it is through the movement of such body-minds that we connect the things in this world, in life—the way we touch, the way we feel, the way we think and the way we deal.”
His work explores the boundaries of physical and social space through interactive, tactile, and biomorphic structures. Again this artists use and understanding of weight and hight and pressure are all things i’m really interested in. Done expertly with the use of materials and lighting and how these forms and objects occupy the environment they are place in. The fact his work is so immersive in interactive i also find really interesting. His uses of scale and space really adds to the interactive element and if outside of the covid circumstances experimenting with audience interaction would have been something i really would have enjoyed in this project in particular. Although often considered minimalist, his works differ from those of artists working in this tradition through their interactive quality.
Rebecca Warren
Warren is a sculptor who works in clay, bronze, and steel along side 2D collages and wall mounted assemblages of objects she has collected. Her ideas, influences and themes are filtered, distorted and often discarded as they find three-dimensional form. Her sculptures can be soft, yet also aggressive in their depiction of the female form. Her work takes influences from Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti and cartoonist R. Crumb, individually and collectively Warren’s works form an entirely modern, complex and distinctive visual language. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2006 and the Vincent Award in 2008.
aThe shapes and forms in her work range from figuration to abstraction and from amorphous to more clearly recognisable, Her work has also been described as “cartoonish and eroticised”. In my work to i like to play abound and abstract forms reflecting the figure as well as making more abstract work, I like the artist understanding of her materials and the way in which she applies it to he artistic process. Allowing the ideas tpo become and exist more naturally and less forcefully with no clear image in mind. I d like to implement this more free and expressive way of working when it comes to 3D work and making models
CHARLEY MILLAR ART 