Olafur Eliasson ‘The Weather Project’

‘The Weather Project’

In this installation, The Weather Project, representations of the sun and sky dominate the expanse of the Turbine Hall. A fine mist permeates the space, as if creeping in from the environment outside. Throughout the day, the mist accumulates into faint, cloud-like formations, before dissipating across the space. A glance overhead, to see where the mist might escape, reveals that the ceiling of the Turbine Hall has disappeared, replaced by a reflection of the space below. At the far end of the hall is a giant semi-circular form made up of hundreds of mono-frequency lamps. The arc repeated in the mirror overhead produces a sphere of dazzling radiance linking the real space with the reflection. Generally used in street lighting, mono-frequency lamps emit light at such a narrow frequency that colours other than yellow and black are invisible, thus transforming the visual field around the sun into a vast duotone landscape.

From the Tate’s website article on the installation.

I remember my parents saying they had been to see this exhibition back in 2004, and I decided to research it towards my installation project because they said it really captured your imagination and made you want to sit down and look at it for a while. I want my installation to capture the imagination of the viewers that see it, I want it to bring back memories in their mind. I do like looking at other artists installations because I can see how they used the space they had to get viewers looking at their work. I will only have a small space in the Coventry Lanchester Gallery so I must make my work stand out even though there will be 20 other people exhibiting their work, and each piece of work showcases a different subject and all have their own merits.

I found a really good video showing the installation, it really manages to capture the atmosphere the installation created in the place. All thanks for the video go to its creator, farnishk.

Cristina Iglesias

Cristina Iglesias has participated in a number of international exhibitions and represented Spain at the 1986 and 1993 Venice Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Berne (1991); the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1993); and the Guggenheim Bilbao (1997). She has exhibited in various international art shows including the exhibition Metropolis at the Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin (1991); the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (1995); and SITE Santa Fe’s 2006 Biennial.

‘Pavillion Suspended in a Room’

This installation could be used by me for inspiration towards my final project. I like how the light spills through the room, illuminating the piece. It would really draw your attention as soon as you saw it in the gallery. I want my installation to instill the same reaction in people, I want them to get close to it and want to look at it.

‘Jealousy VI’

Victor Grippo

Victor Grippo is often lauded as the father of Argentinean conceptual art he started life as a chemist before trying his luck as a painter. In the 1970s he began to experiment with art installations in which he attempted to show how the dormant energy of everyday materials could be transformed through the power of alchemy.

An example of this type of work is Man Naturalization, Nature Humanization (1977) in which he measures the electrical charge of potatoes through a series of electrodes. This highlights his fascination with the potential energy objects hold within them, more especially potatoes, which Grippo constantly used in his artworks.

To him the electrical energy of potatoes was analogous to its power as the staple food of the world’s poor. One has to look no further than the Irish potato famine of 1845-1849 to see how the failure of a crop can have grave social and political repercussions for poorer countries.

‘Tables of Work and Reflection’

I saw this installation at the bottom of the Tate’s website page when I was researching Jannis Kounellis, and I was taken by his usage of light and how he installed the entire show. The one thing I dislike about the entire installation is the extra length of wire from the lightbulbs hanging dow. I think there could have been a few better ways for him to install the piece. This helps me with my installation because I will be hanging my photographs with ribbon and wire from the ceiling and I need to think of ways to achieve this and keep it looking neat.

‘Energy of a Potato’

‘Todo en Marche’

I like how clean the aesthetic of his work is, some have a medical feel which I think he did on purpose. One thing I have noticed about all of the installation artists I’ve been looking at is that they know how to effectively use the space they have been given, to make sure viewers are interested in their work. I do not have much space in the Lanchester gallery so I need to use my space well, to make sure people want to walk over to see my installation.

Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker is a London-based sculptor and installation artist. She was born during the year 1956 in Cheshire, England.

Cornelia Parker’s work is regarded internationally for its complex, darkly humorous, ironic style. Cornelia Parker’s work is highly allusive and patterned with cultural references to cartoons, a style which she adapts to her need to capture things in the moment before they slip away and are lost beyond human perception. When examining her entire work one can see the following themes driving her work forward consumerism, globalization, and the role of the mass media in contemporary life.

Many of Cornelia Parker’s artworks are ephemeral or ‘site-specific’, created for a single time and place. Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) was such a work, in which Cornelia Parker had the British Army explode a garden shed, and the fragments were suspended in the air around a single source of illumination casting shadows of the shattered pieces on the walls. This work was displayed at the Tate Modern Gallery.

‘Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View’

Cold Dark Matter began life as a garden shed filled with objects from her own and friends’ sheds and things bought at a car boot sale. She then asked the army to blow up the shed under very controlled conditions. The objects, along with the fragments of the shed, were collected and suspended in a closed room in an attempt to recreate the moment just after the explosion. The installation is lit with a single light-bulb at the very centre of the arrangement, casting shadows on the walls. The title gives us a whole new way of understanding the artwork, making us think of other dramatic moments of destruction and creation in the much wider universe.

                                                                            – Quote from the Tate

When I first saw a photograph of this piece of artwork it made me want to go and walk through the shadows of the objects myself. I was surprised to learn that the light was just from one suspended light bulb in the centre. Using this really showcases the different shapes of the wood and objects within the explosion, and the light coming from within the structure has an intimate feel. I would like to achieve an intimate feel for my installation, so I now know I must think about how to light the piece, I do not want too harsh lighting as that would take away some of the intimacy from my piece. Cornelia Parker wants us to stop and think, to walk through her work and experience it as if we were there at the time the shed exploded. It’s a really nice piece to take inspiration from for my presentation.

The striking style of the suspended sculpture, which challenges the limitations of time and space, is typical of Cornelia Parker’s work. Hanging Fire (Suspected Arson) (1999) is another example of this type of sculpture, in which charred fragments of a building supposedly destroyed by arson are suspended by wires and pins in a pattern which is both geometrical and chaotic. The work captures the identity of the two states by a retroactive positioning, much in the manner of a forensic scientist might reconstruct the scene of a crime.

‘Hanging Fire ( Suspected Arson)’

I really like how Cornelia Parker has set out her installation, once again it really takes control of the entire room it is in. I don’t want to take up the entire gallery because it is a degree show with all of my classmates, but I would like some people to want to go see my work as it will take a long time to produce. My work cannot be as neat as Cornelia Parker’s work, as I will be sewing onto it, but im hoping the homemade feel will enhance the installation.

‘Perpetual Canon’

This installation piece struck me as inspiration on how to suspend my ribbon and images from the ceiling of the gallery. I will  be using patterned ribbon and thin fishing wire to suspend my photographs and pieces of text. I am hoping that my work can look as neat as Cornelia’s.

Some of her most noted exhibitions and works include Chomskian Abstract (2008), Never Endings (2007, 2008), Brontëan Abstracts (2006), The Distance (A Kiss with String Attached) (2003), Subconscious of a Monument (2002), Blue Shift (2001), Edge of England (1999), and The Maybe, in collaboration with Tilda Swinton (1995).

Jannis Kounellis

Greek painter, performance artist and sculptor, active in Italy. He studied in art college in Athens until 1956 and then went to Italy. From 1958 to 1960 he produced Alphabets, expanses of colour with letters, numbers, typographical symbols and road markings superimposed. Such works clearly demonstrated his aim of transcending the poetics of Art informeland pursuing a line of study characterised by contradictory concerns with, on the one hand, the symbols of mass urban and industrial civilisation, and on the other, primitive, fundamental, individual values. These were frequently expressed by the artist’s physical participation from 1960 in his own exhibitions at La Tartaruga, thus transforming them into performances.

Kounellis’s work developed as a spectacular mixture of painting, collages and the staging of installations, ‘environments’, performances and theatrical shows, designed to express the tensions and alienation of contemporary society, and the multiplicity, obscurity and fragmentation of its language. From 1967 he became associated with Arte povera, and his work was characterised by the juxtaposition of objects, materials and actions that were both physically and culturally antithetical to one another. These included raw materials such as stone, cotton, wool and coal, and objets trouvés such as bed-frames, doors and, since 1969, shelves. He also used fire, soot and smoke in his installations and in 1969 brought live horses into the Galleria L’Attico in Rome, stressing the fragmentation of modern society by also introducing elements of traditional culture. His experimentation with unorthodox combinations of materials continued into the 1980s.

‘Untitled’

I went to see this artwork in person at the Tate in their surrealism exhibition. This photograph doesn’t really showcase how the installation really takes over the space. But then most photographs and artwork must be seen in person to be truly appreciated. It has one whole wall of the first room in the exhibition so as soon as you walk in you are captivated by it. I wanted to see how Kounellis created his installation and used the space he had been given to hold the audience’s attention. I will be creating an art/photography installation for my final major project and any help in deciding how to set out my installation in the gallery is very useful to me.

‘Untitled’

‘Untitled’

‘Untitled (Knife and Train)’

Jannis Kounellis’s work to me always seems to take over a space, be that in a photograph or a gallery. It is big and bold and really captures my gaze as I wonder what it is about. This is certainly helped by the fact he has left most of his artwork untitled, this leaves the viewer to imagine what it is about and they would maybe stare longer at the piece wondering what it is about. For my installation I think I will be suspending ribbon from the ceiling with my photographs on, and I want it to be the piece that everyone moves to in the gallery. I want them to stand looking at all the floating images wondering what my installation means as a whole.

A lot of his work is currently owned by the Tate Gallery.