art theory - S2 week 3 - 22/07/2019

Issues in art

Touria El Glaoui

Founding director of 1:54 Contemporary African art fair

 Touria El Glaoui. Photograph: Max Lakne/BFA/Rex/Shutterstock

It’s a question of security in your career: how to be true to yourself while surviving in a commercial market. There is pressure on artists to be activists, with a message to society, to think about how their work will influence certain political changes. So for them the question is: how can my work transmit some sort of social, political message? How will I fit into the future? In Africa, the market is still finding its ground, so the future has a bigger space and that affects the way artists think about their work. When I hear artists discussing their practice in Africa or as part of a diaspora, a lot of what they’re talking about is how to become part of a gallery or a particular show.

My thoughts

I think that it is very curricula to think about, being true to yourself as an artist while also serving in a commercial market with expectations. As you find yourself doing things others want to copying things someone else does because they are big and successful and you think its what the people want and don't stay true to yourself as an artist.  As you do art because you enjoy are and it's a voice or a reaction to something, it's important to remember to put yourself into the art as it's not going to be proud or happy while doing it and that's the important thing about art, as it is you and it is a reflection of you as an person, and people can tell when you show art that you didn't enjoy making as it is not up to your highest potential. 

it is also interesting that she talks about transmitting a message, and how it will fit into the future because it relates to the argument of isn't all art political or social message? As art its a response or reaction to something. As it is also important to be able to use your voice for others when they can't and you can. Though not everyone has to do that. 

Findings about her

"her job required a lot of travelling, and at a gallery in Dakar, Senegal, she encountered the work of the Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté, known for his large-scale textile installations, which explore gradations of colour in the context of musical tonalities. This was a sort of epiphan"

"Touria El Glaoui is the founding director of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, which takes place in London and New York every year and, in 2018, launches in Marrakech. The fair highlights work from artists and galleries across Africa and the diaspora, bringing visibility in global art markets to vital upcoming visions"

"El Glaoui began her career in the banking industry before founding 1-54 in 2013. Parallel to her career, she has organized and co-curated exhibitions of the work of her father, the Moroccan artist Hassan El Glaoui, in London and Morocco."

https://www.ted.com/speakers/touria_el_glaoui (has a ted talk about Africa's thriving art) 

Kim Yong-ik

Artist

The “surplus” of production and consumption has become an imposing threat to us. As an artist, I am not so keen on the idea of excessive production and circulation of the visual image.

My thoughts

This is quite interesting as materialism and  consumption is a big problem in today's society as it increases waste and threatens the planet and it's well being. As high consumption of products and fast production increases waste and devalues items such as art. As artist have to keep up with high demands of trends and the recycling of fashion. As in society to have the upper hand you must be in with all trends and the newest of everything which is a high demand because of fast fashion and trends. An an artist can not keep up with fast fashion and consumption, and it also devalues their items once the trend is over and because they are following trends. 

I think this is important to discuses as high consumption rate is a problem and damaging our planet. 

Findings 

"Kim Yong-Ik is the understated rebel of the Korean art world. Over his 40-year career as an artist, writer, and curator, Kim has resisted categorical affiliation with dominant art movements in Korea, from the monochromatic and minimalist paintings associated with Dansaekhwa, to the sociopolitically concerned Minjung or 'people's art' in the 1980s. Declining an offer to align with the latter group in 1985, Kim committed himself to challenging the principles of modernism and the avantgarde by embracing an 'anti-art' aesthetic and concealing his political gestures in subtlety."

"Over the years, Kim often addressed, repeated, and modified his own earlier projects, asserting that art history has reached a point in which nothing new can be produced. In such a state, he says, artists are mere editors of theirs and others' work. On multiple occasions, Kim has left his works enclosed in their packaging with only their labels left to indicate their titles, materials, and dimensions. The first example of this was in 1981 when the artist was invited to participate in the 1st Young Artists Exhibition held at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul; whereby Kim left his works enclosed in opposition towards the increasingly repressive military dictatorship in South Korea at the time. This act is closely linked to his entombing of old works in more recent years, in which the artist encloses earlier works in 'coffins' and re-exhibits them. For his 2016 solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery in Seoul (22 November–30 December 2016), Kim transferred images from past sketches and prints to canvases and deemed them new pieces. In the same year, he staged his retrospective Closer... Come Closer... at Ilmin Museum of Art in Seoul that year (1 September–6 November 2016). In 2018, Kim presented approximately 40 works—including crated works, polka dot paintings, and conceptual drawings—for his solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery, Endless Drawing (20 March–22 April 2018)." 

Oreet Ashery

Artist

 Oreet Ashery. Photograph: Christa Holka

For me, there are a lot of questions around the ethics of funding and the politics of representation. Who are we representing, who are we taking pictures of or filming, what is the work about? I also have a lot of ecological concerns. I think for a lot of artists, trying to negotiate their position around funding and sponsorship is a minefield. If your work is around climate change, to work with or be sponsored by certain oil companies would be very weird. We can’t fight all the wars, but, if your practice has particular areas that it deals with, then the funding around that has to make sense. Saying that, I don’t think anyone should be working with money that comes from arms dealing.

A lot of responsibility is put on to artists rather than structures. There’s a lot more demand to find private funding but that can put artists in positions where they’re forced into corporate strategies. There’s quite a finger-pointing culture among artists. That pressure to say the right thing can distract from the battles we actually need to fight.

I have had to negotiate an identity around being queer, around being non-binary, from a working-class background, not having children, being single; all these things that in an institutional context are a lot more difficult. But for me, now, there are more categories for identity. It has a way to go but it feels like there is more official recognition for different types of identity, by those institutions. A lot of the young people I teach identify as non-binary and that has to be accounted for. The whole debate around identity is more subtle now. And, of course, that identity affects the kind of work you want to make.

Oreet is shortlisted for the 2017 Film London Jarman award announced 20 November.

Catherine Opie

Artist

 Catherine Opie. Photograph: John Salangsang/BFA/Rex/Shutterstock

For me, it is the question of morality. I think it’s not enough for artists to make work, and to show that to the public. We also have to see ourselves as human beings; to ask what can we do in the world, which is really in the biggest crisis it has ever been in. As a human being, how can you help on a human level? It’s a crisis in every possible form. Human beings suffer everywhere in the world. It’s the increasing natural disasters, which have never been so frequent; hunger; the movement of large populations of people; the people who run the government. Just doing art, being in the studio, is not enough. You have to think about what you can do as a human