Saatchi Gallery - Post Pop: East Meets West

The 'Post Pop: East Meets West' exhibition brings together 250 works celebrating Pop Art's legacy. Post Pop: East Meets West examines why of all the twentieth century's art movements, Pop Art has had such a powerful influence over artists from world regions that have had very different and sometimes opposing ideologies. The exhibition celebrates the art being produced in these four distinct regions since the heyday of Pop, and presents them in relation to each other through the framework of six themes: Habitat; Advertising and Consumerism; Celebrity and Mass Media; Art History; Religion and Ideology; Sex and the Body. Pop Art exploited identifiable imagery from mass media and everyday life to reflect on the nature of the world we live in. This exhibition examines the relationship between western Pop Art and its lesser-known eastern counterparts including "Sots Art" in the Soviet Union and "Political-Pop" or "Cynical Realism" which has flourished in Greater China since the turn of the twenty-first century. 

Using humour and borrowing freely from popular culture, Pop Art gave subsequent generations of artists the licence to exploit popular visual imagery and to connect with the public through the familiarity of the images being referenced. In the Former Soviet Union the abundance of imagery comparable to mass produced commodities and advertising in the West was propaganda images and text, and in Greater China visual iconography of Socialist Realism. 

The artists in this exhibition play with imagery from commercial advertising, propaganda posters, pictures of the famous as well as monetary and patriotic motifs in wry and provocative works that unmistakably reference the Pop Art movement which emerged in America and Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. In the Soviet Union region these works draw attention to state control, conformity, ceremony, pomp and the façade of unanimity amongst the people; in America and the UK they serve as the cult of celebrity and our mass-produced, status-driven man-made world. Given the global energy being enjoyed by contemporary art, this exhibition aims to make audiences more aware of Pop Art as a major influence on current art practice. 

Advertising & Consumerism

Advertising is a form of marketing communication used to persuade an audience to take or continue some action, usually with respect to a commercial offering, or political or ideological support.

Consumerism as a social and economic order and ideology encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-greater amounts.

I think this work really acknowledges the idea of advertising and consumerism working together with a set ideology to take advertising to an extreme level which will help gain large amounts of money. This Pop Art work has been taken from currently advertising and pictures of famous people and has been expanded on an extreme scale to show to what extent advertisement and consumerism could reach. in the exhibition every individual piece had a large space so that you could view each work individually as well as a collective group, this shows how each Pop Artist has taken this idea or theme to create a work of art.

Ideology & Religion

Ideology, in the Althusserian sense, is "the imaginary relation to the real conditions of existence."

A religion is an organised collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence

With this section within the exhibition the artist show  the ideologies of what we believe some religions or religious icons to look like for example, they have small motors that moved and was covered to look like a group of veiled women praying. Again at looking at the 3 grouped icons Lenin, Mickey Mouse and Jesus who are seen as icons amongst many Russians as well as other religious and non religious people. Each one of these icons have created money and power which is the ideology of real existence. I found this work really interesting as it is exactly what i imagine a lot of religions and ideologies to be like. The artists have made art works out of almost anything from small motors to even sculptures to deliver such a strong message about the eastern and western cultural development of Pop Art in the 21st century. 

This large art work is made of felts and cotton and it shows what is currently happening around the world, anything from terrorism, war and even the government. The images do not depict reality and do come across slightly humorous but show how the world continues in our imagination. 

I really liked this art work even though I didn't understand what it was about but I liked the fact the audience could interact with the piece putting their head inside a cows bottom. For my final piece for the degree show I am looking at creating away for my audience to have to interact with something in order to view my photographs rather than it being just standard pictures in frames hung on a white wall, instead i want to create something I haven't seen before.

The Silverprint Gallery - Deep Sleep - Ben Smith, 'A Tale Of Two Cities'

DEEP SLEEP
Deep Sleep is an online photography magazine founded by and featuring work from a small group of London based collaborators and showcasing a diverse range of contemporary photography from emerging young talents in search of an outlet for their work to experienced award winning and exhibited contributors. 

This project is a portrait of the London borough of Tower Hamlets. It is a vibrant, ever changing place with an ethnically diverse, multi-cultural population comprising everyone from several generations of ‘cockneys’ to a large immigrant Bangladeshi community. It also plays host to a striking dichotomy in which the average annual salary of those who work there is £58,000 which is the second highest in the U.K. after the City of London, one of the world’s main financial hubs, yet over 48% of the Borough’s children live in poverty. How can both of these statistics be true? The figures are skewed by Canary Wharf, a small patch of land at the northern tip of the Isle of Dogs, otherwise one of London’s most deprived regions. This mirage of gleaming steel and glass skyscrapers created from scratch in the 1980’s on what was then a run-down industrial wasteland is London’s other financial centre, home to some of the world’s biggest financial institutions to which 100,000 workers commute every day. The resulting discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots, from bespoke-suited young alpha males with six figure salaries on the trading floors of investment banks to impoverished pensioners on run-down council estates, is a story of stark contrasts which creates a tale of two cities.

I really like these photographs as they show the changes of issues of this current time in the UK, covering immigration, multicultural society, even from showing the working wealthy class to the poor children on the streets of London. This series covers the genre of documentary photography, almost like snapshots of the everyday real life.

These photographs seem like snapshots however I believe that the photographer has taken into account exactly what he shows in each shot and frame, from show a couple next in front of a flash car to show wealth and money to then show one child playing in the street near a boarded up house to show the poorer side of the city. Again addressing multicultural issues as well as religion, with a large Muslim family in one shot and in the next is some British flag bunting hanging outside another house.  

I really liked this series of work however I didn't feel much effort went into how it was displayed, they just seemed like standard prints pined to the wall with small pins in each corner of the image. I fill maybe if there was a way we could of interacted with the images such as having to appear through a window to see whats outside would have been an interesting way of looking at the work. They could have even put the work in frames to take away from the photographs just feeling like snapshots.

Siobhan Davis Dance - Positions - Eva Stenram

Eva Stenram presents the UK premiere of her ongoing series 'Parts', as well as new artworks specially produced for this exhibition. Parts uses 1960s pin-up photographs as its main material. Each of the 1960s pin-up pictures are digitally altered, editing out most of the model and leaving only one leg intact. The resultant mood is disturbing, the severed limb takes away the attraction and the photograph's original erotic effect is turned on its head. When just one leg of the model remains, this leg calls attention to the rest of the scene. Viewers may try to piece together the original position of the model, or perhaps accept the leg as an absurd interior decoration or prop.

The new works use fragments of positions from pin-up images to describe potential movement, for example a photographic score made from a sequence of poses repeated in modulating patterns. Longer or shorter exposure times while printing the pictures introduce the temporal element of the sequence. Another new work utilises three risqué photographs taken by Irving Klaw in the 1950s of Bettie Page and other pin-up models. The purchased photographs are reframed, so that you can't see most of the photographs, leaving only an isolated section of each picture available for the viewer to see.

The photographs themselves I don't find particularly interesting as I feel they are almost just pictures of a leg. However without knowing they are the edited versions of 1960 pin-up models you could think they are photographs of prosthetic legs placed in a particular area, making an audience think about who may have this leg and why is it in this particular location or even position.

I think the way the artist used the exhibition space was amazing, using the whole building to display her images, the sheet at the entrance of the exhibition gives you the title of the image and a description of where you will find that particular image, even having one image displayed in the down stairs disabled toilet, also shows the artist has a sense of humour and is daring. The space itself is a dance studio so displaying images of legs links well with its location as dancers use their whole body to dance mostly their legs, which with no doubt the artist thought about when choosing her location. I also like how Stenren displayed her work in multiple different ways from simply putting a picture in a frame and hanging it, to hanging multiple images in a grid and also showing a sequence of images in a slideshow on a old projector like little T.V screen. This has made me realise with my own work that if you want you work to stand out and really be shown exactly how you want it to be viewed by your audience, then it is key that you display it in a certain way, instead of just walking into a gallery space with white walls and just see standard prints in frames hung on a wall.

Daniel Blau Gallery - Andi Schmied's - Jing Jin City

Andi Schmied's 'Jing Jin City' is a series of photographs of Jing Jan, which is an area an hour away from Beijing. The city is home to a development of 3,000 luxury villas, alongside a Hyatt Regency hotel, golf courses, entertainment complexes a huge display of a wealthy suburban town. The "new city" was built to show ideals of environmental sustainability as well as material comfort.

While many of these buildings were still under construction Andi occupied the empty buildings, creating sculptural and architectural installations in the spaces, which she then went on to photograph. Using objects in the "new city" she created these sculptural pieces of art, such as balancing the window panes against each other in a pyramid like structures in a concrete space. Also adding cut grass to one of the cold concrete rooms to make it seem like living carpet.

In the exhibition itself displayed was a selection of Andi's photographs alongside a glossy catalogue produced by the district government, which portrays lavishly furnished family homes and a thriving community. In think that in the exhibition the photographs themselves should have been printed really large almost life size to really draw on the cold concrete settings of these large lavish newly built homes.

In the exhibition you walk through the door seeing first Sofia Valiente's 'Miracle Village' series which shows a small community of Miracle Village which is located outside a rural area of Palm Beach County, Florida. It is home to over 100 sex offenders, who haven't found housing anywhere else. By showing these two series next two one another they make each other strong. First seeing the poorer area and small homes, for people who are classed as monsters and criminals pushed to the outskirts of an area  in the 'Miracle Village  to then walk further into the exhibition to see the lavish large villas created for the government and rich families in the 'Jing Jin City'. However there is some contradictions the miracle village is home to many and full of life and character, even though not viewed very positively, the Jing Jan City, is amazing, large and luxurious should be viewed as amazing however through Andi's photographs depict that cold concrete building site empty feel to this new city. Even though Andi is concerned with architectural and urban spaces, and Sofia's work depicts human faces and relations, both series of photographs, work well alongside one another.

Sofia Valiente, "Mike", 2013

Andi Schmied, "Glass House", 2014

I really like how Andi uses found objects and parts of the structure to create these sculptural architectural art works that distracts the viewer from the cold constructions but instead allows us to look closely at the whole image. By individually looking at each sculpture she has made spaced around the particular location she has chosen builds character allowing this empty home to create a life of their own. Construction of this city began in 2002, however the majority of the properties remain uninhabited, leaving this "new city" abandoned and lifeless.

Daniel Blau Gallery: Sofia Valiente - Miracle Village

Sofia Valiente, a photographer came across the community living in Miracle Village when she was photographing the small towns of south Florida. She started visiting the community and began documenting this enclosed world in portraits, landscapes and still lives. Comprising the observed pictures and often painful testimonies, Miracle Village is a beautifully made book. Valiente also includes found photographs and censored letters, personal belongings, religious icons. It is not just a documentary record of a shunned community, but an argument for understanding, rehabilitation, even forgiveness. The Miracle Village community was founded in 2009 by an evangelical Christian pastor, Dick Witherow. Who refers to sex offenders as “modern-day lepers” and sees it as his Christian duty to help rehabilitate them.

Valiente’s book begins with a version of a Biblical quote from Paul 103: “There is no judging, for we who are here have the same name.” There are quite a range of offenders in Miracle Village, from guys who looked at child pornography to an 18-year-old man who had sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend. She wanted the book to reflect all those aspects, but also touch on the wider issues, what society thinks, what the victims think, what the offenders think and what she thinks. Florida has some of the strictest laws governing the sentencing and subsequent monitoring of sex offenders. Many residents of Miracle Village are tagged with ankle monitors, must obey a 7pm curfew and cannot own a laptop or mobile phone. The community is geographically isolated because it has to be: paroled sex offenders are not allowed within 1,000 feet of any building where children gather. It is hard, too, to align the words with the portraits of the men and woman who wrote them but that is another of the tensions at play in this project. Miracle Village is ultimately a document of a profoundly Christian place, where the shunned are offered some chance of belonging, if only among their own. It forces us to ask questions of ourselves: can we, should we, forgive these people.

I find this series of work really interesting, as Valeiente is trying to make people see sex offenders as a group of rehabilitating individuals rather than evil monsters. Her work is really powerful as it's a really hard subject to approach as many people will get really angry about these photographs. Viewers might not want to forgive these sex offenders, especially if they have been victims, you would want them to be punished and have to live with what they had done for the rest of their lives. This like my own work will cause a lot of controversy as it will divide the audience, with my work some people will see it as I'm covering particular religions, compared to what I'm actually trying to cover which is to show how people are effected by the current issues in the news, or if they are at all.

Jeff Wall - Dead Troops Talk

During the 1980s, Soviet Russia invaded Afghanistan, attempting to suppress the Mujahadeen Resistance and occupy the country. The Resistance responded with guerilla tactics, sabotage, and land mines. After 9 years, the Soviets withdrew, leaving the country war torn and shattered, with no one a winner. Jeff Wall is recognised for his gigantic colour photographs combining actors, sets, crews, and digital manipulation into one cinematic productions. In 1992, Wall decided to create a tableaux of the horror of a single moment of the Soviet-Afghan conflict. He staged 13 Army soldiers are shown as they've just been ambushed. They soldiers display different reactions to their wounds and fate such as surprise, shock, despair, and humour. The soldiers wounds are graphic and disturbing. "Dead Troops Talk" exists as a giant Cibachrome backlit transparency, measuring 2290 x 4170 mm (7.5 ft tall by 14 ft wide), and was exhibited at the Tate Modern from October 2005 to January 2006.

Wall’s works are typified by two approaches, which he characterises as either cinematographic or documentary. At first glance they often appear to be snapshots but, on closer inspection, the multi-layered content sometimes seems too bizarre or complex to be real. Wall also draws upon cinematic techniques by using actors as protagonists, artificial lighting, staged compositions, and a narrative technique which leads you to contemplate the unseen events leading to the moment depicted. With my own work I want to try work and make big scenes and take control of a full scene and look at using various cinematic techniques. I want to look at how we are so used to seeing pictures of war and dead people that we are almost becoming desensitised to the real thing, however the staged scenes and becoming more powerful because Susan Sontag also mentions in her book 'On Photography', such that with the repeated viewing of war photographs it shrivels the sympathy that the audience should feel. Photography is a medium capable of portraying multiple realities. With photographs of war and death we usually tend to forget them or they all mould into one after seeing the first few, however with photographers like Jeff Wall he is making the made-up realities to make sure we never forget what has happened in reality. Like Jeff Wall I want to create cinematic realities, staging scenarios that have happened in reality to see how the audience feels about these images compared to the photographs of the original event. 

Nick Waplington - Living Room

British photographer Nick Waplington spent four years documenting the daily lives of two working-class families on a council estate in Nottingham, England. Rather than accepting the contemporary photographic conventions of social realism, Waplington recorded the lives of these families, capturing an intimate narrative with both sadness and unexpected humour.  These photographs taken in the late 1980s in England, where the people had already gone through ten years of Conservative government, the collapse of industry, the rise in poverty and unemployment. The two families that Waplington had photographed had been living witnesses of this difficult time.

As the viewer we are seeing the rare unseen side of the family unit, showing the viewer to every intimate moment from cleaning the home to a family relaxing. It is in the living room that is where most of the daily scenes of these families take place, which links to the title Living Room, which was also used as a background for the ongoings within these homes.

With these images we are shown somethings intimate made public, we are shown somethings about these families that we would not usually know as we do not know personally the two families photographed. Nick Waplington makes no dramatic social statements, but instead shows a quite touching record of the daily struggle of the working-class in their homes. 'Living Room' is documenting the dysfunctional families bearing the difficulty of economic problems.

Within my own work I am staging different scenarios within a small living room and at first I found it really challenging with trying to fit in everything in the shot. However looking at Waplington's series of work I have noticed that as I am staging my images I have full control, I can remove and add into a scene as much as I want but only things that have some significance. Again with working in small spaces it is ok for things to be cropped out as it may even help with making the image have oxygen, showing movement and life.