shannonsfineart

[shannonsfineart]

Second Year - End of Year Exhibition

[shannonsfineart]

My pieces during the Second Year End of Year Exhibition

[shannonsfineart]

The Walker Art Gallery

Unfortunately upon visiting the Walker again this year, I found even less of the works interesting to me. I was less intrigued in the traditional 18th century paintings, more the slightly more modern impressionist-like paintings and the winners of the John Moores Painting Prize.

Given my usual indecisive nature these new-found preferences I regard as positive developments in what intrigues me as an artist and how this can be reflected in my work. One work that I particularly related to in terms of the method of how it was made was Alexis Harding’s Slump/Fear (orange/black). It combines control with change, manipulating paint with their fingers and experimenting with how the layers interacted with each other. I feel this gives a nod to the abstract expressionists that I derive most of my inspiration from.

[shannonsfineart]

The Leonardo Da Vinci Drawing exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery

This exhibition highlighted the importance of art throughout all fields. Da Vinci was known as a polymath, having a hand in invention, drawing, painting, sculpting, engineering, mathematics, anatomy and has been known as a ‘universal genius’.

I was reminded that I should not limit myself in any way or form. Art can be made in any way, be about anything and have any reason to exist. Art always has a place in history.

[shannonsfineart]

Yorkshire Sculpture Park Trip

This was a wonderful, refreshing gallery experience. It’s an enormous open-air display of monumental, larger-than-life sculptures with a beautiful countryside backdrop fo 500 acres. It describes itself as displaying ‘Art without walls’.

During my visit the park featured the exhibition A Tree in the Wood showcasing the extensive artwork of Giuseppe Penone in both their Underground Gallery and Open Air. His work, overwhelming in the nature of its size, I found inspiring and a celebration of the natural forms of nature - specifically with Penone’s obsession/admiration of trees in mind. His work contains a level of poeticise regarding ‘humanity’s intimate relationship with the natural world’, with references to the themes of time and memory.

One of the highlights of this visit was most definitely seeing the work of Ai Weiwei - his Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2010), a playful commentary on cultural history, ownership and authenticity and his Iron Tree (2013), the most complex and largest sculpture in his tree series to date. I have long since admired Ai Weiwei and his work and finally seeing these two pieces in the flesh was absolutely amazing.

The YSP is an innovative gallery space, embracing the use of nature as an art context and creating a juxtaposition by placing large metal sculptures in such a context.

[shannonsfineart]

Blind-Eyed or Unaware?

Curated and featuring works by LJMU second year students. The theme of the exhibition was the use of social media and how compliant we have become as consumers, often giving up our privacy in exchange for posting a picture of our ‘fancy dinner’ on Instagram/Snapchat/Facebook. One of the pieces that really encapsulated this ideas was 3 large scrolls of prints of Facebook’s, Snapchat’s and Instagram’s terms and conditions in 3 block colours. We never fully understand what we’re ‘signing away’ when we skip this information so we can get online faster.

I felt that the artists used their limited one room very effectively, or more the curator in this aspect. An eye-opening show, highlighting our compliance in the negative aspects of social media

[shannonsfineart]

“The world rewards specialisation but specialisation comes at a cost. You learn more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing.”

“You have to be willing to be wrong. You also have to be willing to be right and everyone think you’re wrong.”

- The Creative Brain documentary on human creativity

[shannonsfineart]

Ideas of involving my personal emotions into my works - I felt they should be documented

[shannonsfineart]

Some works that fascinated me during the first years’ St. George’s Hall Exhibition

[shannonsfineart]

3/4/19 VL James Gardner

[shannonsfineart]

14/3/19 AH A Museum without Walls: Environmental Art

[shannonsfineart]

13/3/19 Helen Legg

The current Director of Tate Liverpool gave a talk at the university discussing the future of the Tate and her embrace of including more younger, contemporary artists in the Tate collections.

I feel that there is a bright future for the Tate and artists in Liverpool as well as artists of my generation.

Notes:

- the taxi comment - taxi drivers always know what’s going on in the city, they’re aware of the art scene - Legg admires this and wants to celebrate those in Liverpool

[shannonsfineart]

Bridewell Exhibtion - Territory: The Collective

It was a wonderful experience to display my work with such a talented group of artists. The building was once a police station/prison and has been left to naturally decay - giving a reminder of the ‘curse’ of time and a sense of decay. I used a particular colour palette to create paintings to reflect this theme.

There is also the juxtaposition of the white cube gallery space in one of the areas - it simply doesn’t ‘fit’ and neither does my paintings in this space.

[shannonsfineart]

20/3/19 VL Bee Hughes

Hughes is currently finishing her PhD at LJMU and focuses her work around feminism, specifically the issue of period poverty both at home and abroad. Hughes showed the progression of her printing work, slowly delving into curatorial practices. She displayed how her work was celebrating periods and our anatomy, normalising them to remove the idea of vaginas being ‘unclean’ or should be hidden and not spoken about. A work in which reflected this was her 240 prints of her own vulva, printed every morning for 8 months. I truly admire Hughes’ unabashed body positivity, her endeavours to celebrate the ‘female’ body and bringing this positivity to as many people as possible.

While her work did not relate to my practice in any way I thoroughly enjoyed this lecture and found it hopeful that there are artists like Hughes in the world, inciting a positive change to prejudice societal attitudes.

- Won a prize for helping SU with period poverty, now there are free sanitary products in every LJMU building. It’s inspiring to see someone’s vision come to life, especially when it’s helping others

- Menstruating and shitting on the ISIS flag

- Biological existentialism and reinforcing gender norms - talk about periods correctly, without transphobia

[shannonsfineart]

21/2/19 AH Art and Political Powerplays

[shannonsfineart]

14/2/19 AH Race and Identity

[shannonsfineart]

27/3/19 VL Mike Pratt

Most of Pratt’s lecture was him skipping through his works since his final year of university until now. Unfortunately I didn’t find many of his pieces particularly interesting, mainly due to its childlike-look and anticlimactic feel to them - none of the works felt complete nor did Pratt seem happy with them. I feel that I did have similarities to him in terms of my practice and his. He treats his paintings more like sculptures than flat images. I could also personally relate to his constant mental battle with himself feeling like he’s never dealt with any actual subject matter.

Notes:

- Love songs to the back of your head