studio gateway

sandra gunniga thomson (some posts require you to "open image in new tab" if you want to view the image larger)

[sandra-adad-blog]

Week 11 - Class Activity

To create a wearable artwork based on desire.

Stemming from the word “bubble” that came out of our associated words challenge, we decided to explore the conflicting desires to be seen and understood immediately, but also not wanting to expose or reveal too much of ourselves. Here, we attempted to convey these contradictory urges through a transparent plastic shirt with plastic flowers of varying opacity placed all over it, along with a few bubbles of air. 

designed by @yukamochizukiunsw , @fearoftheabyss, & sandra.

[sandra-adad-blog]

Bacchanal Research

Monday 15 Oct

The bacchanal was an ancient Roman celebration of the Cult of Dionysus (or Bacchus) whose origins are mostly unknown - however it has been evidenced that his worship as a god in was accepted by Mycenaean tradition by 1250 BE. Many activities of Bacchanalia remain a mystery as cult members did not write down and as such cannot be described with certainty.

Although Bacchanalia rituals differed from region to region here are some characteristics that were universal:

Celebrated at night

Led by priestesses (Bacchantes) and priests (Bacchants)

Held outside in wooded areas that were lit by torches

Reeds and pine cones (thyros) were carried by partakers

Thyros were a symbol of fertility in the cult of Dionysus.

Women had larger roles as Bacchantes or Maenads. Initially the rituals were only attended by women.

Maenads were women adorned in ivy and animal skins who wandered mountainous and forest areas. Under the influence of their god they would work themselves into a fervor by dancing and moving wildly, apparently capable of tearing animals apart with their bare hands once in this state.

Sometimes animal sacrifice was practiced - goats were the sacrificial animal of Dionysus.

Poetry or Dithyramb was essential to ritual in praising the god.

Music was used both to sing praises of Dionysus and further mania through loud sounds and rhythm.

Copious amounts of wine was drunk to give the cultists “a sense of divine power”

Believing that when they drank the wine, their god Dionysus was not only all around them, but within them.

Sex was a common element in Bacchanalia - but not necessarily included in the ceremony.

Popular among the disadvantaged as:

Women could participate A temple was not needed It did not require expensive candles (votives)

Scholars believed that the Bacchanal’s popularity amongst the lower classes was the reason for the Roman senate’s banning of the event in 186 BCE- as they could not control it.

The Bacchanalia was intended as a spiritual release through revelry, and also included public affairs such as the Great Dionysia of Athens, a celebration of poetry and drama that the city’s entire population was encouraged to attend - Aristotle stating that the purpose was to release emotions of fear and pity -and was an important moral education for Athenians.

http://ringlingdocents.org/bacchanal.htm

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bacchanalia

[yukamochizukiunsw]

ADAD1002 A3 - Church Service + Synagogue research (PETRA)

PETRA’s research on what they do in Christian church services and Jewish Synagogue. We can base off our event through similar orders/actions within the above religions.

[yukamochizukiunsw]

ADAD1002 A3 - narcissism research

Group: YUKA MOCHIZUKI, SANDRA THOMSON, PETRA WARR

Source:

(2018). Traits of a Narcissist. [online] Bridges to Recover. Available at: https://www.bridgestorecovery.com/narcissistic-personality-disorder/traits-of-a-narcissist/ [Accessed 15 Oct. 2018].

Eddy, B. (2018). How to Spot a Narcissist in 3 Steps. [online] Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/5-types-people-who-can-ruin-your-life/201808/how-spot-narcissist-in-3-steps [Accessed 15 Oct. 2018].

Heitler, S. (2012). Are You a Narcissist? 6 Sure Signs of Narcissism. [online] Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resolution-not-conflict/201210/are-you-narcissist-6-sure-signs-narcissism [Accessed 15 Oct. 2018].

Ni, P. (2017). 6 Common Traits of Narcissists and Gaslighters. [online] Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/communication-success/201707/6-common-traits-narcissists-and-gaslighters [Accessed 15 Oct. 2018].

Nordqvist, C. (2018). All about narcissistic personality disorder. [online] Medical News Today. Available at: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/9741.php [Accessed 15 Oct. 2018].

[yukamochizukiunsw]

ADAD1002 A3 - Modified final idea + topic (VALUE --> DESIRE)

FINAL IDEA: AN EGOISTIC, SELF ABSORBED COMMUNITY WHERE WE WORSHIP OURSELVES. A primal desire of humans are wanting to feel good about ourselves in all that we do - and sometimes we may go over in trying to boost our self esteem and some sort of social recognition. 

After careful consideration, we realised that our idea is closely linked to the event of Bacchanal, which is about desire and not value. ‘DESIRE’ is more focused and so we have changed our topic to be around DESIRE. 

[fearoftheabyss-blog]

Research A3

https://passengerart.com/2013/06/28/putting-the-cult-back-in-culture-marina-abramovics-new-world-order/ → Putting the “Cult” Back in Culture: Power and Performance in Marina Abramović’s New World Order

This article explores the many performance works of Marina Abramović. Here are a few excerpts from the article (link below):

“Powerful appeal of idol worship, the widespread and desperate need for attention, and the ever-expanding cult of celebrity, as present in the art world as in any other entertainment industry.” The Artist is Present, MOMA, 2010

“There was a cultish atmosphere to the whole thing that was generated more by the crowd than by their charismatic leader.” → Winter Garden Theatre as Abramović described the “Marina Abramović Institute” she intended to open in order to educate everyone in the “Marina Abramović Method”, during which participants would “engage in a series of long-durational activities: fasting; sleeping in communal quarters; walking for hours at a time; standing barefoot in the snow; functioning only in slow motion or in hyper-speed;” etc.

“By engaging in these long-durational activities and experiments, she suggests, we can reclaim time from our techno-controlled accelerated society and perhaps transcend the perils and pain of contemporary life. She says she is attempting to build a new form of consciousness, a new form of culture, a new community.”

Marina Abramović’s works reflect ideas of desire for attention, recognition and the value placed in social influence. Her performance work/lecture during which she spoke similarly to that of a person trying to start her own cult, with the building of an institute and minimum 6 hours worth of activities for anyone who visited the site, as well as describing a utopic future based on transcention from the “perils and pain of contemporary life”.

The fact that this might even be considered plausible is due to Marina’s enormous reach in the social world as a successful artist, there’s a powerful market structured around her because she is influential and popular.

[fearoftheabyss-blog]

Research A3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpMVXWGtkVw (video) → Andrea Fraser’s Official Welcome (2001/2003) → In this work Andrea Fraser takes on the persona of the artist and the curator in a performance piece that satirises the conventions of formal art events, emphasising the exaggerated praise given to artist’s work by critics and curators, and the arrogance or false modesty offered by artists in return.

Official Welcome is about “The profound ambivalence that’s haunted so much 20th century art and particularly avant-garde traditions - the kind of love-hate relationship that artists have with art, its institutions, and the people who support them.” - Fraser (2012)

Our event will be a performance work that uses satire and personas that our group will undertake to emphasise the ways in which our desires within a contemporary society is a collective cult of self-obsession.

[fearoftheabyss-blog]

Research A3

Artworks about Religion/Research (Petra):

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/28290/1/the-groundbreaking-artists-challenging-religion-through-art → The groundbreaking artists challenging religion through art - Dazed (source)

Andres Serrano - Piss Christ (1987)

Many people condemned this work as a display of disrespect, but is a work that was created by a Christian man who wished to explore how society has devalued the symbol of the cross and the image of Christ.

“The image aimed to represent how society has cheapened the image of christ and the hypocrisy of followers who twist his words to fit their own purpose.”

For our assessment 3, our work aims to present warped desires through the event of an opening ceremony of a cult. This in no way is supposed to place religion and cult practices on the same level. We are trying to find the balance between using themes of cult practices in a satirical manner which is not misinterpreted as being equated to religion.

Works surrounding religion are vulnerable to being criticised by those who practice that faith. While it is the job of the artist to have good intent, they must also deliver it in a way that does not intentionally cause distress or insult. There will always be people who are offended by or misinterpret a work, but the artist must try to minimize that chance - especially if they are not part of the religion they present in their work - by doing research.

[yukamochizukiunsw]

ADAD1002 A3 - initial research by PETRA

Sun 14 Oct RESEARCH on BAPTISM:

Baptism is practiced in several different ways. Aspersion is the sprinkling of water on the head, and effusion is the pouring of water over the head. Immersion in relation to baptism used to refer to any form of dipping, whether the body is put completely under water or is only partly dipped in water; so it can be total or partial. This term is also used for when water is poured over someone standing in water, without submersion of the person. Submersion

—> maybe we can play on the word or change the word “baptism” or “baptizein”, since there seems to be heavy emphasis on what it means in Greek (dip, plunge).

There’s literally a whole section on wikipedia dedicated to different derived nouns from “baptise”

Meaning: Baptism is considered to be a form of rebirth, with a lot of symbolism involving themes of purification, vulnerability(?), removing the old/sinful self and then replacing it with good/truth/etc.

Text: Baptisms involve some kind of statement by the person doing the baptising and candidate (usually repeating words or responding to what was said)

Apparel: Until the Middle Ages, most baptisms involved the candidates being naked (obviously we’re not doing that), but later changed so that the candidate was either dressed in their normal clothes or in some garment significant to the religion such as robes or a uniform.

Debaptism: It is strongly held that baptism cannot be undone and is a once-in-a-lifetime event that can neither be repeated nor undone.

Other non-christian initiation ceremonies:

Miyamairi - Shinto rite of passage in Japan for newborns involving a shrine priest praying for the health and happiness of babies when they’re one month old.

In Ancient Greek and Egyptian cultures, they had an initiation focused on death and introduction to a new life, the greeks fostering escapism (the body as a prison from which one needs to escape by trying to induce a close-to-death like state) and the Egyptians believing that death brought more life than a “new” life could. (For both life and the afterlife depended on the condition of offerings, either directly to the deities through the Pharaoh or to gods when for the deceased)

Artworks about Religion:

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/28290/1/the-groundbreaking-artists-challenging-religion-through-art → The groundbreaking artists challenging religion through art

https://passengerart.com/2013/06/28/putting-the-cult-back-in-culture-marina-abramovics-new-world-order/ → Putting the “Cult” Back in Culture: Power and Performance in Marina Abramović’s New World Order

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsD638deCto → Black Mass Performance

About the work: Our artwork/performance is inspired by the Bacchanalia, but what is it saying about the event? Is this a parody or a contemporary interpretation of the event? How do we portray it so that it doesn’t offend people who are religious? What is the point?

[yukamochizukiunsw]

ADAD1002 A3 - final idea

Group: YUKA MOCHIZUKI, SANDRA THOMSON, PETRA WARR

Wed 10 Oct - we worked on narrowing down all our ideas into creating our own religion. We aren’t sure what kind of religion but it will be somewhat of a community which shares a similar VALUES. We aren’t sure on what values too.

Our thought process for final idea:

Since we decided on what event we are doing in regards to VALUE, we tried to come up with what our 10 minutes of presentation should be, that is, an act of baptism and a opening ceremony for the class.

We have not yet to decide on the shared value or the method of baptism so we each wrote some personal notes on personal weird values as well as methods of baptism. We did this without discussing with each other since we believe if we come up with ideas on our own, then reading what others has written, new ideas may be stimulated or some sort of development on existing ones.

[yukamochizukiunsw]

ADAD1002 A3 - brainstorm

Group: YUKA MOCHIZUKI, SANDRA THOMSON, PETRA WARR

Brainstorming for a potential event:

[sandra-adad-blog]

Concept Statement

Extending the narrative that I had first established with my poster of a future humanity’s literal oral consumption of planets as a projection of our current exhaustive relationship with non-humans has been the objective of my practice-led research in the formation of this suspended artwork. This time I wanted to convey a more intrusive anxiety of the human greed and intense hubris that would lead to destruction of such vast, beautiful and unattainable planets and stars for the purpose of satiating desire for excess and control over all. This ugly tendency towards exploitation and values of entitlement is a consequence of capitalism - an economic system that has historically encouraged imperialism and genocide, as capitalism as a culture drives people to stomp out competitors so that all resources are owed to them, and as Edward Said states, "The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them."

With the intention of constructing an immersive work, I have moved along the timeline to a secondary stage of eating: digestion. Being a suspended piece that one is able to enter, I intended for the audience to literally be posited within somewhat of a “belly of the beast” experience - a literary device wherein the individual faces a seemingly impossible and unfortunate situation.

In the research I conducted - inspired by the shape and colour of Louise Zhang’s “Pinky”- I found that using colour pencils to draw a fleshy pattern and fine lines on the outside of the artwork would subtly create the visceral sense of tissue and life of an organ, and would intrude into the inner aspect of In the Stomach through the transparency of the tracing paper surface. Additionally, led by the dust jacket from the publication of Jacqueline Rose’s “Traces”, I had chosen tracing paper as a drawing surface as the muffled translucency had the potential for creating variation in depth through physically layering drawings and the manipulation of tones in drawing techniques.

I used a mixture of hatching and smudging in graphite and charcoal to create patterns of the night sky that appear to naturally merge with one another, such as the large form in the bottom left hand of the work that has mimicked that pattern of water through the use of negative space in constructing the linework. I then used the vaguely oblong shapes to break away from the pattern and transition into the cloud-like texture of the charcoal smudges I had created with my fingers. Slowly layering the charcoal through smudging was a simple technique that I discovered in my second experiment to establish depth and a sense of celestial. Contrasting the matt finish of charcoal and the reflective capacity of graphite, I intended for there to be both glimmer and absorption of light in order to mimic the infinitesimal qualities of space. 

In being displayed outdoors, natural elements such as the wind and sun would interact with In the Stomach; the angle of sun transforming what aspects will create glare and what shadows would be formed in the layered drawings; the wind causing the paper to crackle and sway - movements and sounds I hoped would feel organic and living to further convey the sense of being in a functioning stomach. 

Bibliography

Rose, J. (1999). Traces.

Said, E. (1993). Culture and imperialism.

Zhang, L. (2018). Monstrous Masses - Louise Zhang. [online] Available at: https://www.louisezhang.com/Monstrous-Masses [Accessed 10 Sep. 2018].

[sandra-adad-blog]

Major Project (video documentation)

In the Stomach, 2018, graphite, charcoal and colour pencil on tracing paper

Documented in video to help convey the experience of walking around the work and entering it.

[sandra-adad-blog]

Major Project (photo documentation)

In the Stomach, 2018, graphite, charcoal and colour pencil on tracing paper

[sandra-adad-blog]

process for major project

I first drew the colour pencil patterns on the back of the tracing paper as it wouldn’t smudge later! Then I created patterns of the night sky in graphite and charcoal through smudging and hatching. I also had a curved line running through the piece to make it less compositionally repetitive and to act as a vector. After my base drawing was done, I tried out several layouts of the small pieces of tracing paper drawings to be layered over the work. After sticking the final layout together I moved on to ready the work for suspension.

[sandra-adad-blog]

research

Images from “Traces” exhibition at Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne, 1999, by Jacqueline Rose (graduated with a masters of visual arts at the Sydney College of the Arts) inspired me to convey celestial objects through the frame of layering and transparency as well as the contrasting of reflective graphite and matt charcoal. However it was more that the design (design of publication by Michael Donohue) of the booklet (an edition of 400) published along with the exhibition inspired my used of tracing paper, as the cover jacket is made of a semi-translucent paper and looked really interesting with the print of one of her drawings from the collection across it.

The looped lines within included drawings such as Scored inspired me to use a similar line as a vector around other images in my major project.

[sandra-adad-blog]

experiment two

graphite, charcoal and colour pencil on small bits of tracing paper

I was inspired by Jacqueline Rose’s drawings from her “Traces” exhibition of 1999 which had showed me how simple drawings and patterns can convey space and depth through small details and smudged lines.

I wanted to experiment with a semi-translucent drawing or painting surfaces, and tracing paper was appropriate as light would shine through and on it to reveal depth in different areas (and changing overtime if sunlight is used) as well as create glare across the graphite lines. I used a mixture of smudging and hatching. On a small strip I drew on the back of the paper as well with pink and beige colour pencils, and decided to use this technique in my major projects as the  faint circular patterns on the outside would give the sense of fleshiness to the work.

I saved the results of this experiment to layer on top of the final work, as when I saw how they layered over each other in some of the last few pics that an extra sense of depth and variation in opacity would be created.