Through My Eyes…

This project has been inspired by my passion for travel, photography and charity work.

This coming February 2016, I will be flying 5,293 miles to Myanmar (Burma) and Amarapura (pronounced amuRA-puRA); to visit Saung a seven year-old girl (pictured, below) who I have sponsored through the charity World Vision. Their motto – Every child, free from fear.

Saung

The area Amarapura is in the suburbs of Mandalay. Saung’s community is in a large semi-rural township, very close to the Irrawaddy river. The river regularly floods during the rainy monsoon season. The area itself was once prosperous, and famous for its weaving, plantations and vineyards. However, due the modernisation of the weaving industry, high inflation and forced resettlement of slum dwellers to farmland, has brought social and economic problems. Which has resulted in many skilled weavers moving to India to search for work. Some of the population make a living by fishing. Others commute to the city to work in the factories or to sell goods on the street.

Although World Vision, are working in partnership with the communities to encourage significant improvements in the areas of healthcare, sanitation, water and education; children like Saung still live in poverty. With my sponsorship, she is able to attend school and continue recieving an education while still enjoying being a child.

With my project, I want to raise awareness of the plight of children like Saung in under-developed and Third World countries. I will be working alongside World Vision, whom have given me permission to photograph and document the project where Saung lives. The photographs I take will be edited and with assistance from the charity, will feature in the upcoming exhibitions in London’s Beaconsfield and Truman Brewery galleries.

I will start my journey in the state capital Yangon, home to the Shwedagon Paya; before heading to the plains of Bagan with its 3,000 Buddhist temples. I will then take the 12 hour journey by riverboat up to Mandalay (Myanmar’s cultural capital), and Amarapura; where I will meet with Saung and her caregivers. The last leg of my journey, will involve a detour via the East and Inle Lake for some respite; before heading back to Yangon, and the long trip home.

I am hoping my visit to this extraordinary land, which seems all but  world apart right now; will inspire my photography and creativity, while allowing me to make a connection with the world outside.

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Ai Wei Wei – The Royal Academy

Ai Wei Wei is one of China’s most influential artists. This exhibition showcased two decades of the artist’s career, from the time he returned to China from the US in 1993 right up to the present day. It was also his first solo exhibition in the UK since his sunflower seeds installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2010.

Among the works created specifically for the RA and the courtyard, were a number of large-scale installations; as well as more provacative and visionary works made out of everything from marble and steel, to tea and glass. The chosen works explore a multitude of themes; drawing on Ai Wei Wei’s personal experience to comment on creative freedom, censorship and human rights, as well as examining contemporary Chinese art and society.

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Above are a collection of slides, showing some of the works that were displayed at the exhibition.

For me, the larger scale works made the most impact. For example, Straight which was a commemoration of the 5,000 children who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that shattered their jerry-built schools. Ai Wei Wei collected the 90 tonnes of twisted metal from the ruins of the schools, and straightened each piece by hand to make up the floor installation; which looks like a landscape of undulating hills and troughs.

The artist poignantly used his blog to attempt to name the children, and officials responsible for the deadly construction that brought the schools to instant collapse. However, the blog was shutdown and Ai Wei Wei was later illegally incarcerated for 81 days. The incarceration was recreated in the form of six rusting tanks, and forms S.A.C.R.E.D. – an installation of six half life-sized dioramas, with effigies of the artist and two guards. As visitors peer through the grilles; they are able to witness the intimate scrutiny Ai Wei Wei endured during his incarceration. The conditions cramped and claustrophobic. The guards always watchful and silent – menacing.

 

 

 

The EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop

This exhibition, I viewed at the Tate Modern back in September 2015.

Now as I recall, I had the preconception that this would be a Pop Art exhibition with your usual suspects: Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein,  Richard Hamilton, David Hockney et al. However the exhibition that ensued revealed more of how artists around the world, during the 1960’s and 1970’s responded to the Pop Art movement; which emerging from Britain in the early-1950’s had taken the western world by storm.

Richard Hamilton in 1957 listed the “characteristics of pop art” in a letter to his friends, architects Richard and Alison Smithson:

Pop Art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business.

These characteristics could also be applied to The World Goes Pop. Through its eye-popping Tecnicolor creations, the exhibition is celebrating western consumer culture; while demonstrating a language that is universal, and becoming more and more relevant in society – The language of protest.

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Above are a selection of works by some of the 65 artists that featured in the exhibition, exploring and in some cases explicitly the subjects of: politics, the body, domestic revolution, consumption, public protest and folk. Interestingly some of the works were produced in countries that, in opposition to the Iconography of the American Dream, advertising and mass media; were under Communist rule and yet to experience the consumerist boom.

One of the other things I noticed about the exhibition, was the presentation of women. Because, while some of the most famous works of Pop Art have made use of the female image; female artistic visibility has always been underwhelming, and dominated by white Western men. By the inclusion of works by 25 female artists I think it helped to put to sleep once and for all, the idea of Pop Art being a realm of men.

 

 

Women: New Portraits – Annie Leibovitz

Today, I made the journey to the east of London and Wapping; to see the latest in a series of portraits by the award-winning photographer Annie Leibovitz.

The setting for this exhibition was the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, and is a follow-up to the series Women; which began in 1999 involving Leibovitz’s collaboration with writer and essayist Susan Sontag. The original work featured more than 100 portraits of women at the end of the Twentieth Century, from public figures to farmers, scientists and dancers – a collection of women, both known and unknown, but the keyword is real.

Now, 20 new portraits have been added to the collection; and will be shown in 10 cities over the next 12 months. They include Caitlyn Jenner, Taylor Swift, Adele, Aung Sun Suu Kyi,  and ballerina Misty Copeland – perhaps, a reminder as to how the world has changed since the original Women in 1999.

Annie Leibovitz, portrait photographer, poses with her photographs on display at the launch of WOMEN: New Portraits exhibition at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station.

I found the exhibition really fascinating, and realised I had took for granted the magnitude of work Leibovitz has accumulated over the span of her career. Not only portraiture, but also landscape and still-life photography. I left wanting to find out more about her life, her work as a photographer, and her inspirations.

I later discovered these were photographers Robert Frank, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Leibovitz had originally studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, but it was their style of personal reportage – “taken in a  graphic way” – that she wanted to emulate. Richard Avedon has also been cited, as being an important and powerful example in her life.

The Feminist writer, journalist and activist Gloria Steinem who also features in the exhibition and as a collaborator; has cited Leibovitz’s “strength” in showing women not as objects, but as humans who each have a story. Of it she says, “Taking these photographs to 10 cities is going to make such a difference. It’s important to show women as full of humanity, and it’s especially important because at this moment in time, there’s a lot of violence towards women in the world.”

Some might say Leibovitz is flaunting her accessibilty to the most celebrated, powerful and glamourous women of our time; or that this is a glorification of women to ad nauseum. However, it is hard not to notice the intimacy and frankness of the portraits. Maybe it is down to the parred down scenery – high ceilings, and industrial surroundings?  Leibovitz’s portraits show vulnerability and simultaneously power, while still being human. She manages to catch the true nature of her subjects, and shows us this through her eyes.

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Works to Know by Heart – Tate Liverpool

On 16th January 2016, I visited the Tate Liverpool. Among the displays was the ticketed exhibition Works to Know by Heart: An Imagined Museum, and Matisse: In Focus.

An Imagined Museum

This exhibition shows visitors the Tate Liverpool of the future, and bodes the question for observers: All of the works of art on display are about to disappear, forever. Which works of art do you want to know by heart, committing them to memory so that your favourite piece lives on? It featured over 60 major works from the Centre Pompidou, Tate and MMK collections, from artists such as: Marcel Duchamp; Claes Oldenburg, Bridget Reilly, Dorothea Tanning, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Whiterhead among others.

The concept for the exhibition came from the sci-fi novel Fahrenheit 451 by the author Ray Bradbury, which was very progressive for the period it was written in – the early 1950’s. It is set in a future, where works of literature are banned and the only way to save them is knowing them by heart.

I found the exhibition to be extremely insightful, in terms of the way I viewed the displayed works and art in general. It made me think of the accessibility of art and perhaps sub-consciously,  how we take art for granted. Two questions that came to mind, and which I will address in a separate posts were: 1) Is our memory of the artwork sufficient for its preservation?;  and 2) Are we the ones responsible for its conservation, or is it down to the owner?

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Matisse: In Focus

This exhibition was programmed to run parallel to An Imagined Museum. The main focus of this exhibition was Henri Matisse’s seminal masterpiece, The Snail (1953), pictured below. This piece had been cited as one of his most iconic, and due to its delicate nature had never been exhibited outside of London (ironically) until its appearance at the Tate Liverpool.

It is one of Matisse’s largest and most significant of paper cut-out works, measuring almost three metres squared. This method had originally been adopted by Matisse in the 1930’s, but remained a long staple of the artist’s career because his ill-health prevented him from painting.

Other works that were exhibited alongside this, came from the Tate’s large collection and spanned from 1899-onwards, the genres of: portraiture, landscape and still-life, sculpture, painting and works on paper.

I found this exhibition interesting but left disappointed. While any opportunity to view the artist’s work is worthwhile; in terms of the work that was displayed I felt the genres were under-represented considering it was spanning FIFTY YEARS of Matisse’s career! With regards to the preservation of an image; my most memorable is the Draped Nude (1936), pictured above. For me it represents, the classical tradition that Matisse upheld over career as a painter and his mastery of expressive colour and drawing.

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Lee Miller: A Woman’s War

Back in November 2015, I visited the Imperial War Museum for the day to see Lee Miller: A Woman’s War. This was an exhibition presented in collaboration with the Lee Miller Archive, and it examined the experience of women in Britain and Europe during WWII.

Lee Miller was one of a handful of female war photographers (accredited to British Vogue)to go to the frontline along with the Allies, to document the attrocities of Europe at war; covering events such as the Blitz in London, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration  camps of Buchenwald and Dachau.

The exhibition was the first to address her vision of gender and featured many photographs, objects, art and personal items, many of which had not been displayed before.

I first discovered Miller’s work while studying Art Photography in Hong Kong, and she has inspired me so much I decided to write about her in my extended essay.

Lee Miller led as colourful a life in front of the camera, as well as behind. She was an actress, and model, and became most well-known as the muse and lover of Man Ray, collaborating with him on much of his work and also in the rediscovery of the solarization technique.

Of the many images that were exhibited at the IWM, the most iconic image was that taken of Miller in Adolf Hitler’s bathtub at his apartment in Munich, by photographer and fellow traveling companion David E. Scherman. It was one I feel sums up the life of a woman that overcame being immersed in an overwhelmingly male arena, with a very unique  career and did not waste a minute of her life.

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Gathered Leaves: Photography by Alec Soth

On the 30th of December 2015, I visited the Science Museum to see a collection of photographer Alec Soth’s photography. The exhibition was called Gathered Leaves, and is the first major exhibition that Soth has had in the UK.

Alec Soth is an American photographer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He makes “large-scale American projects” featuring  the mid-western United States. Past projects have included books of his work, which he has had published by major publishers as well as his own label, Little Brown Mushroom. The exhibition, featured a mixture of works from these publications. Notably, Sleeping by the Mississippi, Niagara, Broken Manual and Songbook.

What interested me about his work, is the “off-beat” nature of his photography, and haunting imagery of American modern life through  his fascination with the open road.

Soth would travel huge distances to create contemporary images of the country’s diverse landscape and population; and often would find chemistry with the strangers he met and photographed. The end result culminated in very candid depictions of a cross-section of communities, from fervent superstore shoppers to runaways and hermits.

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Titian to Caneletto: Drawing in Venice

On the 12th of December 2015, I drove to Oxford and The Ashmoleum Museum, for the Titian to Caneletto: Drawing in Venice Exhibition.

The exhibition displayed sensitive drawings and portraits inspired by the atmospheric landscapes and beauty of Venice. However unlike most exhibitions which exude colourful brilliant palettes of colour, and free brush strokes; this exhibition was based solely on the role and importance of drawing in Venetian art.

I found the exhibition itself enthralling in terms of its historical context, and its significance to the practice of drawing as a concept, as well as the insight that viewers were given into the artists motivation to turn to pencil and paper.

The parallel exhibition by British artist Jenny Saville also proved profound, as it showed new works produced as a response to her engagement with the history that stemmed from works spanning over three centuries. My only disappointment was that there was not enough of her work available.

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Giacometti -Pure Presence

On the 22nd December 2015, I went to the Giacometti Pure Presence Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It was one of the first ever exhibitions to focus on Giacometti’s portraiture; featuring over sixty paintings, sculptures and sketches.

Giacometti’s distinctive style was bore from a labour of love, fascinated by recreating and evoking the sensation of human presence. Regular sitters were often familial – his brother Diego, and also his wife Annette. But also included friends writers Louis Aragon and Jean Genet.

However, his most notable works are statues with elongated limbs which came after his marriage to Annette Arm; and an obsession with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned them through his unique sense of reality, which was influenced by the writings of Sartre, and Existentialism.

While I only knew of Giacometti through his sculptural works, my discovery of his paintings and sketches left me in awe. As an artist myself, I have often felt the same sense of consternation when attempting to recreate exact likeness. This is something that Giacometti himself struggled with and became a life-long preoccupation to the point subjects would be frequently revisited and reworked in a fervent and aggressive behaviour.

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