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Gilbert and George in their "working clothes"

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Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore are a couple of artists who work under the name (or brand) of "Gilbert and George".
They both met while studying sculpture at St. Martin’s School of Art, London, in 1967.

Their main inspiration is life itself, everything is art.

While the art world around them in the late 1960s and early 1970s was largely characterized by Pop, Minimal, and Conceptual art, Gilbert & George developed a wholly unique vision. Although they created their art in a variety of mediums, they considered everything they did to be sculpture: Postal Sculptures, Magazine Sculptures, Charcoal on Paper Sculptures, Drinking Sculptures, and Video Sculptures.

What I like about these two artists, aside from the artwork, is how they conceive their art to be received by the spectator. They viewer, and the viewers ideas and feelings always come first. Their work has no meaning. It is you, the spectator, the one to decide what it is.

“Art and life became one, and we were the messengers of a new vision. At that moment that we decided we are art and life, every conversation with people became art, and still is.”

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Is an American contemporary artist that focuses on art mediums such as painting, silhouetist, printmaking, installation artist and filmmaking. Walker was born in Stockton, California where she had lived early on her life, together with her parents. Her dad being a artist and a professor and her mum being an administrative assistant. During her formative years Walker, had move from California to Georgia where her father accepted a teaching position. This is where she experience a ‘culture shock’, coming from a multi-cultural environment to a close minded non-accepting environment. This is where she had experience being treated unfairly and be shunned upon based on her identity. Through these experiences she had experience it is where she takes her inspiration from, which had a great influence on how she expresses her art. Walker is best known for her piece that was a room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouets. She was also awarded a MacArthur fellowship at 28 years old which made her the youngest recipient of the award. At this present time, Walker is considered as the most prominent and most acclaimed Black American artist of her generation.

Her artworks tackles topics regarding race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity. These topics that she as an artist depicts her pieces can be considered by many as being controversial. In conjunction to her childhood experiences she shows through her art a different approach on how she can express her feelings towards a subject that might be considered as taboo by many. As fierce as she is she was not spared from scrutiny by spectators as her artworks were constantly questioned and had been taken down from exhibits as not many audiences were receptive to her art.

What captured my attention within her interview is that i have felt the genuineness of herself. She as an artist divuldges herself from her own true feelings regardless if people or her audiences would be receptive towards her art. Being raw and true is what she had made me feel during her interview as she expresses through her art what others think but do not have the courage to express. Through her artworks she conveys the message of power, pleasure and pain and how these things are connected and intertwined with each other.

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Sample of Spread 1

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The weather project, 2003

Tate Modern, London, 2003

"The weather project" was an installation that was exhibited at the Tate Modern in London in 2003. The installation consisted of a semi-circular screen and a mirror on the ceiling, which caused the screen to reflect and create a sun. Eliasson also sent out a questionnaire to the employees at Tate Modern with questions such as 'Has a weather phenomenon ever changed the course of your life dramatically?' 'Do you think tolerance to other individuals is proportional to the weather?' are you aware of the weather outside your workplace?'. Based on its questions, Eliasson created a brochure that was distributed at the exhibition.

What fascinates me about this installation is how the people who visit the exhibition can affect the final result of the art. People began to lie down on the ground to explore the artwork, proving that the meaning of the artwork can have a completely different effect than the artist had originally thought.

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How does Keith Haring work?

Haring has fun when coming up with new ideas which reflects the content of his work. He regularly likes to listen to hip-hop whilst working and painted rhythmic lines to express his movements and energy, he finds it easier to show these expressions when music is playing.

What is his work about?

Haring spent a lot of time on public works throughout his career, which frequently contained social messages. Between 1982 and 1989, he created more than 50 public works of art in dozens of places around the globe, many of them were made for charities, hospitals, daycare centres for children, and orphanages.

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Sample of Spread 2

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Sample of Spread 3

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- Marina Abramović for the Royal Academy in London.

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Marina Abramović is a Serbian artist specialized in performances. Self-described as the “Godmother of performance art”, she has been active for more than 30 years, offering the public works that explore the relationship between the artist and the public.

Abramović was born November 30, 1946 in Belgrade, Serbia. Within the regime of Tito's autocratic rule of Yugoslavia. Her interest in the arts arose from a young age, "I really think that I was born an artist. I do n’t remember anything else as a child other than having a pencil and drawing." says Abramović in the interview at the Royal Academy in London.

It was not until 1965 when she began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. In 1972 she completed her graduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia. A year later, while she was preparing her first performance as a soloist called Ritmo 10—the first in a series of four performances—she was teaching at the NoviSad Academy of Fine Arts.

She was always a very innovative artist. She was criticized from the beginning for being controversial and now she herself is one of the most proclaimed living artists in the world.

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Kara Walker -

Kara almost became a cartoonist, or went that direction, but has ended up doing more ‘serious’ art. Growing up with her father Larry being a university lecturer Kara sat in lectures, the art department and even accidentally seeing ‘life-drawing’ classes.

Also said to have been doing abstract styles of art since she was only a few years old.

Now she has even curated her fathers own works at 80 now.

I believe this upbringing is very evident in her works, not afraid to push boundaries that feel heavy to her own heritage and important social or historical subject matters.

Overall much of her work has a very abstract feel, or to me even if not very personal, much of her water colours for instance just have a very intimate feel due to the emotion in the characters (so very aware subjects or subject matters) likely inherited from her father having been a university lecturer of the arts. There is a general class and tastefulness to her work.

Tracey Emin -

Bit of a polarising figure Emin has solidified an image as ‘brit arts’ “bad girl”.

Emin is very well known for incredibly intimate works from “everyone I have ever slept with” to her incredibly poignant paintings after her cancer surgery.

Personally I am not a fan of all her art, some of her paintings for instance not being the most skillful or not being a massive fan of the installations it is almost impossible to go to one of her exhibitions and not be somewhat touched by the vulnerability.

Louise Bourgeois  -

Could be a very interesting character to view as her artistic journey as a run away from France to New York and the progression her career/reception over the decades (50\60s contrast for instance). Could be a nice narrative across the spreads.

Her themes range from more psychological to domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the unconscious.

Her mixed arts background from print to painting and her sculptures she has such a wide array of work that there's plenty to examine.

Although even her more personal works, saw the spider inspired by her mother, seem a bit more abstract at a first glance.

Richard Serra  -

One of the largest things that stands out to me about Richard Serra is his consciousness of space as a sculpture, how it fits to the surroundings, a site's architecture, etc.

His awareness of the art world's climate is also very important, particularly how he links it to the general state of America as a whole. The awareness of art being a reflection of current society is one thing but the direct analysis of how the markets and celebrities are influencing the landscape and beginning to link industries of art and Hollywood for instance to see how these people affect the markets, demand and so fourth isn’t new but it does allow for one to stay conscious and keep a line of integrity to keep producing art important to themselves amongst all the noise.

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Sir Grayson Perry is a writer, a broadcaster as well as an English contemporary artist. He was born on the 29th March 1960 in a Chelmsford, England. After his father left the family he decided to move to Bicknacre. Some of his work are very classically formed however are decorated in bright and bold colours.

In his work, there is a very strong autobiographical element due to the fact that some of his work includes 'Alan Measles', his teddy bear during his childhood, as well as 'Claire' his female alter-ego. His work consists of fun and mind-bobbling ceramics primarily, however he does do tapestries as well. During the dull and miserable days of lockdown, his show on Channel 5 called 'Grayson's Art Club' was a super highlight. It was also presented with his wife called Philippa Perry.

After his fathers departure in the family, his mother remarried to a violent man. He abused little Perry and as a result of this, he would hid in this fathers old shed and let his imagination run wild. A little later on, he became interested in building model aeroplanes but soon later was kicked out of the house by his mother as he dressed up as a women.

In 2003, Sir Grayson Perry won the Turner Prize as his alter-ego 'Claire' and become more well known all around the world after that. He actually states in an interview that he produced some of this best work after receiving the awards that day.

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George Condo is a contemporary American artist known for his peculiar and often provocative artwork. Condo's work spans various mediums, including painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking. His unique and imaginative visual language pays tribute to a vast array of art - historical traditions and genres, drawing together elements of Old master portraiture with allusions to contemporary American culture. Populated by a cast of characters whose bulging eyes, bulbous cheeks, proliferating limbs an hideous over- or under-bites mark them apart as a singular species, which makes Condo's art very original.

Condo's work is influenced by Cubism & Surrealism, which are evident in the way he distorts and reassembles the human figure and incorporates dreamlike or hallucinatory elements. George Condo's work has been exhibited in major art institutions and galleries around the world. Hid exhibitions often Draw attention for their bold and unconventional approach to traditional portraiture.

Condo has described his portraits as composites of various psychological states painted in different ways, reflecting the madness of everyday life; he calls  this, 'Artificial Realism,' defined as 'the realistic representation of that which artificial.' Condo's paintings are inspired by Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne & Willem de Kooning.

George Cando's art is known for pushing boundaries and challenging traditional artistic norms.

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David Shrigley was born in 1968 in Macclesfield, UK. He lives and works in Brighton and Devon, UK. In January 2020 he was awarded the decoration of Officer of the most excellent Order of the British Empire or OBE.

David Shrigely's work is typically deadpan in his humour and reveal chance uttering like snippets of over-heard conversations.

Recurring themes and thoughts pervade his storytelling, capturing deliberately two-dimensional views of the world, the perspective of aliens and monsters or the compulsive habits of an eavesdropper shouting out loud.

While drawing is at the centre of his practice, Shrigley also works across an extensive range of media including sculpture, large-scale installation, animation, painting, photography and music.

After his significant mid-career retrospective, "Brain Activity," at the Hayward Gallery in London, Shrigley was nominated for the Turner Prize that year. For the Fourth Plinth Commission, his enormous sculpture "Really Good" was exhibited in London's Trafalgar Square in September 2016. As part of a long-term plan of restaurants designed by artists, the artist was hired to alter the Gallery at Sketch, London in 2018. Lose Your Mind, a travelling exhibition organised by the British Council, visited six locations between 2015 and 2018, including the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, China; Storage by Hyundai Card in Seoul, Korea; and Instituto-Cultural-Cabaas in Guadalajara, Mexico.

What I like about his work is the simplicity, the childlike drawing and the dark humour.

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Condo has a life-long love of drawing and music. He uses the terms 'rhythm' and 'tempo' to describe the process of drawing and freedom it brings, comparing the process to jazz music in which there is a core order and yet possibility for improvisation.

Condo first choose challenging colour combinations to draw the figures and forms, followed by layers go paint, that only allows certain elements of the original forms to survive. Condo likes to make it complicated for himself in terms of colour and tonality which makes it interesting to find way through it all and to give it a shape, a form ,and a balance.

I felt personally connected to his approach and how he explores the complex human emotion, and certain pieces may mirror our own emotional experiences or perspectives.

Main Themes in George Condo's work :

- Art History
Condo combines past pictorial languages and pattern to create original images that merge canonical art history with contemporary culture. Often the presence of multiple historical moments can be felt in a single work.

- Chaos
Condo sees the chaos that is present in the world as a driving force for creation and he regards his works as 'harmonic resolutions' to radical divide elements in society. The process of making art is a way for Condo to resolve these tensions.

- Dismantling Art Historical Notions of Hierarchy
The process a subject of Condo's work collapse traditional hierarchies, between painting and drawing, the beautiful and the grotesque, and the comic and the tragic.

- Psychological States
Most of Condo's paintings are portraits depicting different and yet simultaneous states of mind. Artificial Realism is the term used by Condo to describe some of his paintings. 'Picasso painted a violin from four different perspective at one time,' Condo said that he can do the same with psychological states.

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The living lighthouse, 2023

National Museum of Qatar, Doha – 2023

”The living lighthouse is a light” installation that was exhibited at the National Museum of Qatar in Doha in 2023. The artwork is installed in a circular room where different kinds of light move in the room. The light is created so that the color looks different from different angles.

What I think is unique about this work of art is that the visitors get to be part of and influence the exhibition. I also find it exciting how he plays with light and its movement and color changes.

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David Shrigley's work consist of dark humour, innocent simplicity and a great sense of the absurd. His art work in my opinion is very funny, what I have realised though is that he uses satire in his work to show the absurdities that permeate us daily.

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In one of his interviews he said that humour in work can come from stem of anger.

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‘I know a lot of people still don’t see my work as serious, because it’s funny. But then again, I’ve come to realise that the opposite of seriousness is not humour. The opposite of seriousness is incompetence. It’s somebody who isn’t really engaged with what they’re doing. And

the opposite of humour is maybe sadness.’

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The Rainbow has a Beard, 1988, oil on canvas, 59 × 47¼ inches.

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George Condo by Anne Bonney ( Interview )

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George Condo by Anne Bonney ( Interview )

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“Everything enchants him and his incontestible talent seems to be at the service of a fantasy that is a balanced combination of the delicious and the horrible, the abject and the delicate.”
— Apollinaire on Picasso, 1912

The same can be said of the mercurial George Condo whose revelatory paintings span the centuries between Madness and Beauty.

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Acrylic, charcoal and pastel on linen     Unframed: 152.4 x 127 cm (60 x 50 in

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George Condo - The Laughing Cavalier, 2013

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George Condo - The Laughing Cavalier, 2013

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In the interview to The Guardian , George Condo stated that he challenged the primacy of painting over drawing : most are in charcoal, with pastel and acrylic paint. That painting to usually conceived as fulfilment of drawing's promise and he wants to reverse that and to stand up for drawing.

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Muholi's work focuses on race, gender and sexuality with a body of work that dates back to the early 2000's, documenting and celebrating the lives of South Africa's Black lesbian, gay, transgender, and intersex communities. Muholi is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, explaining that "I'm just human".

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I needed it to be my own portraiture. I didn’t want to expose another person to this pain. I was also thinking about how acts of violence are intimately connected to our faces. Remember that when a person is violated, it frequently starts with the face: it’s the face that disturbs the perpetrator, which then leads to something else. Hence the face is the focal point in the series: facing myself and facing the viewer, the camera, directly.

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"Nobody has the right to undermine you—because of your being, because of your race, because of your gender expression, because of your sexuality, because of all that you are.”

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how do her images offer a repertoire of resistance both them and to empower others ...

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how do her images offer a repertoire of resistance both them and to empower others ...

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My practice as a visual activist looks at black resistance—existence as well as insistence. Most of the work I have done over the years focuses exclusively on black LGBTQIA and gender-nonconforming individuals making sure we exist in the visual archive. (In Faces and Phases, I focused exclusively on LBTQ individuals, for instance, bearing in mind that gender politics are complex, and fluid; the acronyms are always shifting and changing.) The key question that I take to bed with me is: what is my responsibility as a living being—as a South African citizen reading continually about racism, xenophobia, and hate crimes in the mainstream media? This is what keeps me awake at night. Thus Somnyama is not only about beautiful photographs, as such, but also about bringing forth political statements. The series touches on beauty and relates to historical incidents, giving affirmation to those who doubt whenever they speak to themselves, whenever they look in the mirror, to say, “You are worthy. You count. Nobody has the right to undermine you—because of your being, because of your race, because of your gender expression, because of your sexuality, because of all that you are.”

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- Yoshitomo Nara is a Japanese artist
- Nara has had nearly 40 solo exhibitions since 1984
- Yoshitomo Nara is a pioneering figure in contemporary art whose signature style is one of which expresses children in a range of emotional complexities
- He is best known for his paintings appearing simultaneously sweet and sinister
- Originally never aspired to be an artist but applied to an art university as he thought it would be easier to get into than a regular university
- Nara has been influenced by popular culture in both Eastern and Western society
- Early on, he developed a deep affection for music that would become influential in his art practice as an adult. Not able to translate the English song lyrics, he turned to visuals on the album covers for inspiration. Through his obsessive listening, Nara began to internalize the anti-establishment sentiment of Western rock music of the era. Eventually, he would go on to bring this air of rebellion to his own art.

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Haring received notoriety on a global scale and took part in a lot of group and solo exhibitions between 1980 and 1989. The Westbeth Painters Space hosted his first solo exhibition in New York in 1981.  He opened his first Soho gallery in 1982 with a hugely successful and well-regarded one-man show at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery. In the first half of the 1980s, Haring also completed a number of public projects, including an animation for the Spectacolor billboard in Times Square, designing backdrops and sets for theatres and clubs, creating watch designs for Swatch and an advertising campaign for Absolut vodka, as well as murals all over the world.

Over the course of a brief but productive career that spanned the 1980s, Haring's artwork was featured in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions. In 1986 alone, he was the subject of more than 40 newspaper and magazine pieces. Along with many other musicians and artists, he worked on projects with Madonna, Grace Jones, Bill T. Jones, William Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Jenny Holzer, Yoko Ono, and Andy Warhol, among others. By depicting universal notions of birth, death, love, sex, and war utilising a primacy of line and directness of message, Haring was able to attract a huge audience and ensure the accessibility and tenacity of his imagery, which has become a universally understood visual language of the 20th century.

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Who is the designer?

Olafur Eliasson is a Danish artist born in 1967. He has studied art at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts for 6 years. In 1995, he founded Studio Olafur Eliasson after moving to Berlin. Today, the studio has 90 employees made up of, for example, architects, craftsmen and art historians.

During his career, he has made many exhibitions with installations, films, paintings, and sculptures all over the world. He has also chosen to get involved in sustainability and the climate, through various projects.

What is their design style like?

Eliasson has many different works with varying purposes. The consistent theme I notice when looking at his work is how he uses light and space to create art. He uses large installations and entire rooms to present his works. In many of the cases, the visitors are also allowed to be part of the exhibitions. He also talks about art being much more than what the world sees it as, which he shows by pushing the boundaries of art.

What do I like/dislike about it?

I like how his art pushes the boundaries and is innovative. His way of using color, light, shapes, and nature in his works of art gives them a unique feeling and captures one's interest. I also like how many of his exhibits allow visitors to be a part of it.

Sometimes, however, I feel that many of his works can be a bit too complex and difficult to understand. I am a person who appreciates simple and entertaining art, which many of his works are. But sometimes I can feel that his work loses purpose along with its complexity.

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Room for one colour and windy corner, 1997

"Room for one color and windy corner" is a light and windy installation that has been exhibited both in Stockholm (1997) and in Tokyo (2005-1997). In the middle of the room, a wall was installed that reflected the yellow lamps on the ceiling. At the same time, a row of fans was installed in one of the corners of the room, which created wind in the middle of the room.

What caught my interest about this installation is how Eliasson is not afraid to challenge all the body's senses. Here, sight and touch are combined, which I think is very interesting and makes this installation unique.

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Today leaning into tomorrow, yesterday leaning into today, 2023

"Today leaning into tomorrow, yesterday leaning into today" is a wall artwork created by Eliasson in the year 2023. It consists of two lines of different sizes on circular glasses. The two lines of glass go in different color scales.

What caught my interest about this piece of art was the name of the piece. "Today leaning into tomorrow, yesterday leaning into today" I interpret it as the work referring to how life flows and has different phases. It almost feels like the wall installation moves in a circle pattern due to the color transitions and the placement of the glass circles. I interpret the artwork as a representation of life and its different phases, which I think the name proves together with the artwork.

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Nara sometimes creates pieces of children with knifes which would be an insight of a child's innocence in a corrupted world, or the potentiality of a child's imagination to disturb accepted views of reality

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One of his work is called "The Existential Void" created in 2012. It is basically about his fairly troubled childhood and the experiences he has been through. This piece of work shows through art the issues of gender and sexuality, as well as class and identity, all issues he dealt with when growing up. He definitely agrees that one can do some form of art to help trauma experiences.

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The Living Sculptures are a series of performances where the duo painted all over themselves in metallic makeup and started roaming around the streets of London, mimicking sculptures.

The Singing Sculpture is one of their most remarkable performances. Instead of wandering through the streets, Gilbert and George performed on top of the table inside Nigel Greenwood Gallery, making robotic moves and dancing to Underneath the Arches, a song about homeless people in the Great Depression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsuHpi2gcGY

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Nowadays, the Gilbert and George work can be found in the Gilbert and George Centre in East-London, where the couple live.

https://gilbertandgeorgecentre.org/

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The missing left brain, 2022

Galería Elvira González – 2022

"The missing left brain" is a light show that was shown in Galería Elvira González in Madrid in 2022. The light show consists of regularly changing light that changes color and shape, which is created by the refraction of light. The screen is a semi-circle with a mirror, which allows the light displayed to be symmetrical to the visitor.

I really appreciate how Eliasson plays with light, and I think this work is a perfect example of such a work. I am inspired by how you can use and change light to different advantages and it creates a unique and fascinating work of art.

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His ceramics are created through a traditional method called coiling and many of his surfaces are finished in a complex manor. Many of these include embossing, glazing as well as incision.

His other work also reflects on traditional ceramics, such as folk art and Greek pottery, He stated in an interview "I like the whole iconography of pottery. It hasn't got any big pretensions to being great public works of art, and no matter how brash a statement I make on a pot, it will always have certain humility."

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxq4pmHysT0

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In one of Abramović performances she remained immobile for 6 hours and clarified that she would not move no matter what they did to her. On a table she placed 72 object, some were for pleasure, others for destruction, flowers, feathers, perfumes, a knife, a loaded firearm. She invited people to use whatever objects they wanted in any way they wanted.

Abramovic said: "At first they were peaceful and shy, but it quickly escalated into violence. "What I learned was that if you leave the decision to the public, they can kill you. I felt really violated, they took off my clothes, they stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one pointed the gun at my head, another pushed it away. They created an atmosphere of aggressiveness. After 6 hours I got up and started walking through the audience. People were leaving, they couldn't look at my face. They were escaping the confrontation.”

This work reveals something terrible about humanity. Show how quickly a person can hurt you under favourable circumstances. It shows how easy it is to dehumanise a person who does not fight, who does not defend herself. It shows that, if the scenario is provided, the majority of apparently normal people will not be aware of the cruelty perpetrated by a few others also appear normal.

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Seu corpo da obra (Your body of work), 2011

SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil, 2011

Seu corpo da obra (Your body of work) is an installation that was exhibited at SESC Pompeia in São Paulo in 2011. The installation consists of a large labyrinth of colored panels. When the visitors then go through the labyrinth, the colors change and you see different things with different color combinations.

What fascinates me about this installation is how you can see the world in different ways depending on where in the room you stand and what color combination of panels you have in front of you. I interpret it as reflecting how different people see the world and that we can still be there for each other even though we have different circumstances.