13:30 – Arrive at Tate Liverpool.

As one of four galleries within the Tate collection, Tate Liverpool features international, modern and contemporary artworks. This visit, combined with our visit to the Walker Art Gallery, fuelled imagination with regards to our future project subjecting a sense of place. Many of Tate Liverpool’s artworks were created locally, where a true link between the city and the creative outcomes can be easily noticed.

Presented through unconventional digital medium, these images captured by professional photographer Bruce Davidson captivate an essence of reality, where true emotive attributes and atmospheric sense is portrayed.

Shining light on less-desirable scenes, this particular group of images provide strong links with modern society and new ideologies, especially those emerging within younger generations and youth culture. A key aspect here is expressive rebellion and emotive stance.

Framing, lighting, perspective, angle and content are each aspects chosen specifically by Davidson to inflict deliberate effect. He must additionally make sure that when brought together, the images collaborate to present a shared ideology. This strengthens the message interpreted by the audience, while improving aesthetic strength overall. Davidson executed this successfully.

Orthodox Boys, 1948, Bernard Perlin

Through experimental obscurity, Bernard Perlin expresses message through great depth, constructed within background media. A scene which otherwise looks ordinary, is created intentionally with subtle layering to alter image portrayal for any audience. Based upon the era within which this was created, it can be clearly noted that Perlin was trialling collaborative use of abstract expressionism with magic realism, subtly.

After reading up, it appears that Perlin was inspired by the ever-shifting world and society within which he lived, therefore inflicting an ever-changing focus throughout his works. For this reason, each of his works were individual, with different intent of message. Within the post-war period when he constructed Orthodox boys, it appears his frustration with increasing hierarchy fuelled underlying message. He later moves away ““to escape the artificial, ego-pressured world of artists in New York, competing with each other to make the most money”, which arguably was why his work portrayed such individual message, and never necessarily ‘fit in’.

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10676426/Bernard-Perlin-obituary.html

The works of Lee Bontecou present themes unknown to the art world in the 1960s, constructed through an awareness of negative space surrounding physical presence. Lee Bontecou was known for her intricate sculptural works, giving her a certain familiarity to depth, tone, shape and fluidity, portrayed clearly through her drawing abilities.

Being difficult to categorise, Bontecou’s work shares aesthetic prospects taken from both minimalism and abstract expressionism art movements. A key theme seen within her work surrounds contrasting elements, frequently critiqued to be vulnerability and exposure, “empathising the tension between the industrial and the organic: the latter, the natural environment, is susceptible to damage or even destruction by the former.”

source: https://www.theartstory.org/artist-bontecou-lee.htm

Kora, 1963, John Chamberlain

Known for creating sculptures from automotive sources, Chamberlain is known for his unconventional use of mediums. He creates his works as three dimensional paintings, applying conventional aesthetic qualities derived through previous art movements and recent, contemporary successes.

Reflecting upon the meaning behind his works, Chamberlain states “Even if I knew, I could only know what I thought it meant.”

Each completely individual, his sculptures present both memories, as well as physical advancements through material and matter. Each true and raw forms of technological history, a strong, direct sense of nostalgia can be easily interpreted here through such subjective physicality’s. Strong, adhered through both physical and artistically statical forces, Chamberlains works have withstood the pressures of the creative timeline, inspiring more recent contemporary artists to be experimental with their use of mediums.

“Medium is the message” a statement by Marshall McLuhan is directly associable with such work, despite Chamberlain’s lack of realisation into why the sculptures inflicted such long-lasting success.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chamberlain_(sculptor)

Documenting advanced social message, Rusty Mirage, created by Kiluanji Kia Henda, portrays a superior sense of construction and community. Analytically, the work formulates a strong sense of irony, where constructed, figurative form echoes that of building construction – an aspect usually both damaging and deconstructive to our shared  physical environment.

“Kia Henda deals with the absence of dividing lines between the real city and its 3D model” in a uncategorised format, combining elements of photography, sculpture,performance art, animation, film, and historical constructive records all in one. Her collaboration of expression and content blurry, where it can not be clearly noted how the work identifies as an interpretation.

Kia Henda’s work formulates traces of historical truths with personal ideas surrounding futuristic movements. Therefore the artist creates a perfectly un-characterisable outcome, saturated with intriguing ideas, fuelling her personal stance within the creative industry.

Source: http://www.buala.org/en/city/a-city-called-mirage-by-kiluanji-kia-henda

A personal favourite, the artwork documented above, created by Nigel Henderson and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, presents a collaboration of visual components. These components have been composed in a well sought out fashion, to intentionally and deliberately unify a series of memories and stories.

The work is incredibly narrative, documenting memories through a series of events in time, while maintaining strong aesthetic quality; critical for long-lasting, external interpretation. Due to such success, the work can be evaluated to provide the viewer with a glimpse into both historical times and the personal lives of both collaborating artists.

Projected through careful construction, artefacts have been assembled with a strong conscience of negative space, tone, texture and contrast, ensuring the image reads accordingly to the intent of the artists while projecting a bold aesthetic stance.

A vivid graphic solution, ‘Make Art Not War’ provides clear message to any audience, Formulated predominantly through typographic content, the work withholds simple, yet effective stylistic qualities.

The artist commonly addresses both political and cultural issues supporting his own mindset and personal ideas, selecting bright colours to construct his conventionally typographic outcomes.

 

Other works within TATE Liverpool that I enjoyed and sought inspiration from are documented below.

Deluxe, 2004-5, Ellen Gallagher

Double Life, 1975, Sanja Ivekovic

Continual Mobile, Continual Light, 1963, Julio Le Parc

Fragments, 1965, Bridget Riley

Wall Composition in Bimbird and Reckitt’s Blue, 2018, Dale Harding