Sunday, June 3, 2012

Textures in the Day

All is visually rich. Beautiful. From concrete, to flowers, string, wood, metal  etc. From shop windows, to building sites, to galleries...

There's nothing better than taking time out to look at your environment. Really look: textures, colours, forms, patterns, shades, shadows, everything stimulates.

Today I took a trip from home to the Gallery of Modern art... my reference photos (some below) were taken on the way there, very few come from the gallery itself. In a way, a gallery shows you what is thought provoking or 'attractive', whilst travelling through the streets, past building sites, or shop windows, you have to find the beauty yourself. The thing about urban design today (especially in Brisbane), is that these elements are consciously incorporated, not just with mirrors and glass, but in every metal stud, piece of string, hole in a board or concrete slab. I need to do a photoshoot just of concrete. It's an amazingly creative 


The visual make up of most objects, or the aesthetic often doesn't come from the colour or lack of colour, but from the use of light and shadow, which is reflected up on refracted from it's surface or the way surfaces are incorporated like glass and plastic, to creat something like a moth dance or spinning concrete.

I love shadows and reflections - second hand textures I call them - not in a derived or unoriginal way, but in an artfully 'reusable' way. Even the way colours change in certain lighting, adds to the experience of form and tone.

I'm taking some of these beautiful textures, and I'm going to explore them further...



Friday, March 2, 2012

100th Follower - thanks for your interest and support....

I have just checked back getting ready to do a few more submissions, and I found I have reached my 100th Follower... THANK YOU!

To the Followers who do return, thanks again, I often visit followers sites, and I have come across wonderful artists, writers, poets, conceptual visionaries, radio stations, photographers, digital artists, sculptors.... the list is endless....

I have much work to put up, but have taken on an additional course to broaden my understanding of visual culture - a diploma of commercial arts (graphic design) which incorporates the visual language and cannot be discounted as just 'crappy corporate' mind bending... it's all about how we perceive and communicate our culture and thoughts and views....

Thanks again,
Tanya

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Materiality - Detritus and Decay Final


























































































The Final images for Detritus and Decay... The concept of light/shadow, decay/nature/rebirth, is of interest to me, from a variety of angles:
urban decay/renewal
nature's turn (an area I investigated after the Brisbane floods in 2011. This concept of life always belonging to nature, whatever it's form or gender or purpose...)

I enjoyed the idea of the 'glass coffin', or a 'vulnerable place' place of rest. Nature is delicate, even more so, exposed to urban elements - cars, roads, pollution etc. Another layer to this concept is the form of 'restriction and rest' we allow ourselves and nature in built up environments. Slight juxtaposition. An idea of 'we want nature, but as long as it grows where we direct it to grow'. I guess that would be the simplistic version...

To the point that there isn't just leave and natural objects encased is important. All things degrade, even man made 'ojbects'; in the case you'll find old pattern cuttings, newspaper pieces, string, black bags... they all have experienced the same change - that of decay. They are no longer the up to date article from the daily newspaper or the pattern for a new dress - their identity is lost, and they become detritus. Another form.

The idea of 'coffin' wasn't an area I wanted to explore, but more the concept of an 'exhibit', where even nature has a price, value and expiry date... 1. what will we archeologically/socially or enviromentally determine about our culture in a thousand years when we gather around an exhibit of bones, or papers or crafts in a musuem type arrangement? 2. To a degree, I also want to poke fun at the fact that if I put this on exhibit at a gallery showing, people may pay money to look at it, no matter how well executed, if the 'concept' is right... just a thought.