Saturday, 18 April 2015

Details from 'Comfort of Strangers' installation

Detail from 'Comfort of Strangers' installation © Kim L Pace
Detail from 'Comfort of Strangers' installation © Kim L Pace


The Artist as Collector

Artists collect things that inspire, fascinate or bewitch them. The Barbican exhibition 'Magnificent Obsessions' has chosen the most obvious artists possible (more or less) to propose the importance of the artist as collector...
The exhibition and book 'Deep Storage' by Ingrid Schaffner & Matthias Winzen has clearly been an important reference point for the curator of the Barbican show.
 'Deep Storage' (1998) looked at collecting, archiving and storage in artists' practice - as a contemporary artistic strategy. The process of storing is always one of mirroring and self-evaluation. Whether that self be a cultural body - like a museum or other public collection or a squirrel-ish individual, or Citizen Kane, ‘you are what you keep.’

Here's some images from the Magnificent Obsessions show:



The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent

'The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent' is a series of over 40 watercolour/mixed media drawings, a selection shown below:
'The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent' © Kim L Pace

'The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent' © Kim L Pace

'The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent' © Kim L Pace

Mannequin fans: From Her Wooden Sleep & Silent Partners

Canadian artist-curator, Ydessa Hendeles has composed a tableau vivant from a collection of 150 wooden artists’ mannequins, which is currently on view at the ICA. The collection has been assembled by Hendeles over twenty years, and the mannequins range from 1520 to 1930, and in scale from palm-size to life-size.



Blurring the line between collector, curator and artist, Ydessa Hendeles has created a palpable atmosphere with the mannequins - or is it just the uncanny sensation of 150 wooden bodies in a room?! An interesting comparative exhibition was the 'Silent Partners' show at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge earlier this year, view the excellent resources on their website: www.silentpartners.org.uk