Confronting Contemporary Perceptions- Level 6 Symposium
This years Level 6 History of Art BA(Hons) Symposium was based around the subject of 'Duality: Confronting Contemporary perceptions', this was a day long event held in The Auditorium inside Tate Liverpool. The theme behind this subject title was to invite people into viewing artwork from a new viewpoint to gain many new perspectives. The day was split into three separate sessions with question and answer sessions at the end of each one, this was helpful as if you had any questions they could be quickly answered without having to wait a long period of time before the could be answered.
Session One was named Hypocrisy and Hope the first speaker, Francesca Pullinger's presentation was called 'The Perceived Hypocrisy of Unilever'. Her work was based around the sexualisation within the advertisement industry speaking about how popular brands such a Dove and Lynx use the female body in order to encourage the public to buy their products. A large portion of her work spoke about how Lynx have been banned in the past due to their offensive language and slogans within advertisement by using women in videos that seem to performing chores that resemble sexual acts. Sexualised slogans have been used by Lynx leading to a large uproar with things such as "How long can you last?" and "Can she make you loose control?" I thought Francesca's presentation was extremely informative, she reached into depths that one would not have thought to reach by backing up every statement made with proof and information.
The second speaker, Helen Leary's work was named 'Art is Hope: The Barrel Homeland of Sokari Douglas Camp' the first noticeable point about this women's presentation was that she was extremely confident within herself, the way she spoke was very powerful and informative indicating she was passionate about this subject. She started out by explaining the background of Sokari Douglas Camp, who moved to Britain as the culture is more accepting and allows her to use informative art to present her thoughts and work to the public. Douglas Camp was originally from Nigeria and it was explained how it had fallen victim to the oil company Shell, this ruined the beautiful landscape and had but many people lives at risk. She produced a piece of art named 'The war of the black gold' (2010) which was the Wiwa memorial bus, presented across the Uk to use the British audience to expose the oil company and give a voice to the people in Nigeria. The response from this work produced a peaceful protest in order to combat these oil companies and get people informed about the horrific conditions in Nigeria. This was one of my favourite works from the symposium as you could feel the passion emitting off of Helen regarding this subject.
Session Two was named Humanity and Hyperrealism the third speaker Clare Todd's presentation was called 'Art using poetry in Museums and Galleries'. She started by pointing out the fact that poetry was restricted to the shelves in the form of words, individuals process poems through thoughts by creating images to intensify imagination. It was mentioned that painting drawing and sculptures were all the primary forms of art now it has advanced into Literature and poetry. David Hockney was one of the first artists who realised poetry in art was in relation to natural inspiration, this was after he discovered the work of Walt Whitman and based a painting around one of his poems. I did enjoy this presentation as I have never thought about poetry in relation to physical art before and this inspired me to look further into this topic and realise that poetry and art are deeply intwined.
The fourth speaker Laura Higgs based her work around 'Ron Mueck: Psychoanalysis and Hyperrealism'. Mueck was an Australian sculpture who began as a puppeteer and wanted to reject this normality of sculpting. His breakthrough piece of work was named 'Dead Dad' (1996) which was presented to the world in the Charles Saatchi Collection, this piece is extremely realistic but only 102cm long making it not realistic to the human body in proportion. He used his own hair on this sculpture as he wished to immortalise himself within his work, when I first saw this piece it shocked me over how realistic the nude body was it seemed as if you were staring at a real dead body. Within all of Mueck's work he wanted to dress fundamental concepts of humanity including life and death. She discussed how there is so much harsh criticism surrounding Ron Mueck's sculptures as many think this cannot pass into the realm of fine art. Laura seemed to be extremely nervous but definitely combatted that anxiety of public speaking in order to deliver an informative piece of work.
The fifth speaker Ruth Bonthron's work was named 'The Politics of Fashion'. I never thought this would be a subject I was particularly interested in but it really sparked an interest with me due to the links to Tudor politics. Her first major point was that clothing reveals status within any environment. Within Tudor court in the 15th and 16th century fashion was extremely important to present hierarchy and a strong public image. An example of this was the famous Portrait of Henry VII by Hans Holbein, the over the top outfit is world famous with Henry covered in jewels, fur and contains an extremely pronounced cod piece in an attempt to present dominance. In present day politics black, grey and navy suits are worn with a colour tie by the general population of politicians, it is considered a uniform. Female politicians are under more scrutiny than male politicians as they are often hounded by the press for their outfit choices. Theresa May has been attacked countless amounts of times in the news for her fashion choices, being criticised for her chosen brand of shoe, colour choices and slight cleavage. This made me think about how highly regarded fashion actually is within politics and how women are greatly criticised about how they are dressed when what actually matters is the political state of the country.
Session Three was named Location and Interaction, the sixth speaker Miriam Parry discussed 'The Use of Language in Welsh Artistic Practise'. To begin she discussed the background of the Welsh Language and how important it is in Wales, in preservation of the language their have been many forms of protest. She explained how graffiti has become a growing epidemic in showing off the Welsh language within public spaces in Wales, popular words have been sprayed onto walls for as long as 50 years ago and have been preserved by the public ever since. Social media has also become a platform for this movement of preservation as powerful illustrations with a contemporary setting have been incorporating the language and spread around the internet through social media platforms. It was explained that discrimination has made Welsh language become less dominant in Wales and art has become a form of protest. When I first read the title of this work, it did not interest me but Miriam's work surprised me greatly as the subject was extremely meaningful to the Welsh people and their struggles with their language which is highly discriminated upon.
The seventh and last speaker of the level 6 symposium on contemporary art was Isabelle Melnik her focus was 'Street Art and Social Media'. Her main focus of her work was Graffiti, it has always had a strong association with vandalism so it is often not considered as art. The generalisation of graffiti art is that it is unpaid and is created by unknown artists. Her inspiration to focus on the subject was after she saw the news of the death of 3 graffiti artists who were killed by a train while trying to create art. Within the news there was a large debate whether these boys were considered 'artists' or not. A large social media uproar was caused after the death of these artists on instagram as their names were spread all over a page that had been dedicated to their previous works of art. Instagram is a large platform for street art as anonymity is a large part of the social media platform.
This day long symposium based around Confronting Contemporary Perceptions of art was extremely interesting, there was a large majority of artworks discussed that I had never thought of before or had ever known about. This was refreshing to learn about subjects that are obviously important to the 3rd year History of Art students and I feel attending this symposium has allowed me to gain an insight into my next few years as a History of Art student and what I should expect within the course.
Session One was named Hypocrisy and Hope the first speaker, Francesca Pullinger's presentation was called 'The Perceived Hypocrisy of Unilever'. Her work was based around the sexualisation within the advertisement industry speaking about how popular brands such a Dove and Lynx use the female body in order to encourage the public to buy their products. A large portion of her work spoke about how Lynx have been banned in the past due to their offensive language and slogans within advertisement by using women in videos that seem to performing chores that resemble sexual acts. Sexualised slogans have been used by Lynx leading to a large uproar with things such as "How long can you last?" and "Can she make you loose control?" I thought Francesca's presentation was extremely informative, she reached into depths that one would not have thought to reach by backing up every statement made with proof and information.
The second speaker, Helen Leary's work was named 'Art is Hope: The Barrel Homeland of Sokari Douglas Camp' the first noticeable point about this women's presentation was that she was extremely confident within herself, the way she spoke was very powerful and informative indicating she was passionate about this subject. She started out by explaining the background of Sokari Douglas Camp, who moved to Britain as the culture is more accepting and allows her to use informative art to present her thoughts and work to the public. Douglas Camp was originally from Nigeria and it was explained how it had fallen victim to the oil company Shell, this ruined the beautiful landscape and had but many people lives at risk. She produced a piece of art named 'The war of the black gold' (2010) which was the Wiwa memorial bus, presented across the Uk to use the British audience to expose the oil company and give a voice to the people in Nigeria. The response from this work produced a peaceful protest in order to combat these oil companies and get people informed about the horrific conditions in Nigeria. This was one of my favourite works from the symposium as you could feel the passion emitting off of Helen regarding this subject.
Session Two was named Humanity and Hyperrealism the third speaker Clare Todd's presentation was called 'Art using poetry in Museums and Galleries'. She started by pointing out the fact that poetry was restricted to the shelves in the form of words, individuals process poems through thoughts by creating images to intensify imagination. It was mentioned that painting drawing and sculptures were all the primary forms of art now it has advanced into Literature and poetry. David Hockney was one of the first artists who realised poetry in art was in relation to natural inspiration, this was after he discovered the work of Walt Whitman and based a painting around one of his poems. I did enjoy this presentation as I have never thought about poetry in relation to physical art before and this inspired me to look further into this topic and realise that poetry and art are deeply intwined.
The fourth speaker Laura Higgs based her work around 'Ron Mueck: Psychoanalysis and Hyperrealism'. Mueck was an Australian sculpture who began as a puppeteer and wanted to reject this normality of sculpting. His breakthrough piece of work was named 'Dead Dad' (1996) which was presented to the world in the Charles Saatchi Collection, this piece is extremely realistic but only 102cm long making it not realistic to the human body in proportion. He used his own hair on this sculpture as he wished to immortalise himself within his work, when I first saw this piece it shocked me over how realistic the nude body was it seemed as if you were staring at a real dead body. Within all of Mueck's work he wanted to dress fundamental concepts of humanity including life and death. She discussed how there is so much harsh criticism surrounding Ron Mueck's sculptures as many think this cannot pass into the realm of fine art. Laura seemed to be extremely nervous but definitely combatted that anxiety of public speaking in order to deliver an informative piece of work.
The fifth speaker Ruth Bonthron's work was named 'The Politics of Fashion'. I never thought this would be a subject I was particularly interested in but it really sparked an interest with me due to the links to Tudor politics. Her first major point was that clothing reveals status within any environment. Within Tudor court in the 15th and 16th century fashion was extremely important to present hierarchy and a strong public image. An example of this was the famous Portrait of Henry VII by Hans Holbein, the over the top outfit is world famous with Henry covered in jewels, fur and contains an extremely pronounced cod piece in an attempt to present dominance. In present day politics black, grey and navy suits are worn with a colour tie by the general population of politicians, it is considered a uniform. Female politicians are under more scrutiny than male politicians as they are often hounded by the press for their outfit choices. Theresa May has been attacked countless amounts of times in the news for her fashion choices, being criticised for her chosen brand of shoe, colour choices and slight cleavage. This made me think about how highly regarded fashion actually is within politics and how women are greatly criticised about how they are dressed when what actually matters is the political state of the country.
Session Three was named Location and Interaction, the sixth speaker Miriam Parry discussed 'The Use of Language in Welsh Artistic Practise'. To begin she discussed the background of the Welsh Language and how important it is in Wales, in preservation of the language their have been many forms of protest. She explained how graffiti has become a growing epidemic in showing off the Welsh language within public spaces in Wales, popular words have been sprayed onto walls for as long as 50 years ago and have been preserved by the public ever since. Social media has also become a platform for this movement of preservation as powerful illustrations with a contemporary setting have been incorporating the language and spread around the internet through social media platforms. It was explained that discrimination has made Welsh language become less dominant in Wales and art has become a form of protest. When I first read the title of this work, it did not interest me but Miriam's work surprised me greatly as the subject was extremely meaningful to the Welsh people and their struggles with their language which is highly discriminated upon.
The seventh and last speaker of the level 6 symposium on contemporary art was Isabelle Melnik her focus was 'Street Art and Social Media'. Her main focus of her work was Graffiti, it has always had a strong association with vandalism so it is often not considered as art. The generalisation of graffiti art is that it is unpaid and is created by unknown artists. Her inspiration to focus on the subject was after she saw the news of the death of 3 graffiti artists who were killed by a train while trying to create art. Within the news there was a large debate whether these boys were considered 'artists' or not. A large social media uproar was caused after the death of these artists on instagram as their names were spread all over a page that had been dedicated to their previous works of art. Instagram is a large platform for street art as anonymity is a large part of the social media platform.
This day long symposium based around Confronting Contemporary Perceptions of art was extremely interesting, there was a large majority of artworks discussed that I had never thought of before or had ever known about. This was refreshing to learn about subjects that are obviously important to the 3rd year History of Art students and I feel attending this symposium has allowed me to gain an insight into my next few years as a History of Art student and what I should expect within the course.
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