Experiments in miniature - early 2016

Kim L Pace: Clay maquette

Kim L Pace: Trying out glaze effects

Kim L Pace: Various poses

The Bees - Laline Paull

'The Bees' invites you into the world of the honey bee from the perspective of a worker bee called Flora 717.
 
In reality and in the book, if you're a worker, you cannot get ahead by pursuing your own reproduction, so you might as well help the queen with her reproduction.
"In a beehive, the workers are happy to help the community, even to die, because the queen carries and passes on their genes."

However, Flora 717 is a rather different bee than her 'sanitation worker' status would imply.

A beautiful book, informative and imaginative, simultaneously... A tale of mother courage, conflict and dystopia among social insects. It is packed with metaphor and an underlying call to recognise the damage to and depletion of our bee populations.

"Facebook is Shit"

"Facebook is Shit" - Gunter Grass, Nobel Prize Winner*

The YoungMinds campaigns director, Lucie Russell, said: "Every day we hear about the unprecedented toxic climate children and young people face in a 24/7 online culture where they can never switch off."

Teens are so emotionally invested in social media that a fifth will wake up at night and log on. 

"Mental health is the biggest unaddressed health challenge of our age, and young people's mental health must be a top priority for Britain."

Girls are likely to experience stress more frequently than boys, and more often than the average adult, with girls feeling stressed an average of twice a week.

June Eric Udorie writes in the Guardian:
"It’s becoming more and more obvious how the pressures of social media disproportionately affect teenage girls. I can see it all around me. Pressure to be perfect. To look perfect, act perfect, have the perfect body, have the perfect group of friends, the perfect amount of likes on Instagram. Perfect, perfect, perfect. And if you don’t meet these ridiculously high standards, then the self-loathing and bullying begins.
What is really worrying is that time and time again, these studies pop up and demonstrate that the mental health of teenagers, especially teenage girls, is on the line. We know this. We need the State to act".

*http://channel.louisiana.dk/video/g%C3%BCnter-grass-facebook-shit

Fine Art research and the tyranny of the scientific model

Fine art is – of course - an activity that is the subject of academic research.

However, it strikes me the idea that science methodology as the only acceptable form of inquiry misses the point.  Perhaps it’s a lack of confidence in qualitative research that undermines art research? 

Prior to the eighteenth century, ‘art’ and ‘science’ were often considered complimentary, rather than opposite, expressions of human culture. They often shared concerns through comparable curiosity, knowledge and observation of the world.

Outside the physical sciences, many subjects now seem to have a hard time establishing themselves as viable for research in their own terms. So what's going on?

Natural science depicted

Alessi Apostrophe Orange Peeler

You might require an orange peeler to help create the designs - Alessi do a super little ergonomic one

The Art of Ornamental Orange Peeling

"It is surprising what can be done with the conventional orange"

Phrenology

Phrenology for you and your loved ones. 

The First Bad Man

The first novel by artist/filmmaker Miranda July entitled 'The First Bad Man' is un-put-downable. It's told from the first person perspective, narrated by the central character 'Cheryl'.
Cheryl works for a woman’s self-defense company that promotes feminine self-­empowerment. But she’s a psychological punch bag.
You can't help but ask "but why does she let him/ her/ them do that to her?"
Having said that, the book is warm, funny and compelling. I recommend it for it's sharp combination of dark/macabre and everyday weirdness.

Crimson Peak

Stylish and extreme sets, amazing costumes and SFX. Sound very evocative. A fairy tale - but without the juxtapositions of harsh reality that worked so well in Pans Labyrinth & the Devil's Backbone. Still, it was enjoyable - especially if you're not worried by the lack of sophistication in the story.

Quiet, please

Silence is a greatly underestimated source of power. In silence, we can hear not only what is being said, but also what is not being said. In silence, it can be easier to reach the truth.

A few more words about words...

Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau

A word about words

What can be shown cannot be said.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein

A word about art school training

Go out and measure puddles and not know why you’re doing it. 

Beat a sheet of metal into a dome because it feels good and is really noisy. 

Pick just one image from 300,000 and wonder why you chose it. 

Pay attention to your curiosity. It matters.

Quote borrowed from http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/

 

Quote of the month/year/decade

Robert Storr -
"I’m puzzled by radicals, men and women, with a stubbornly materialist point of view who decry the commodification of culture as if this were a recent development of 'late capitalism.' As if art was once an economic virgin. We’re not in late capitalism. We’re in late socialism. I don’t celebrate this, I just note it. Art was never pure."

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

New film in progress

Still from a new film in progress...

Film still © Kim L Pace 2104

New 'Tara-sier' Series

Tara-sier No.6  © Kim L Pace 2014

  From a new series of drawings started September 2014