OCR GCSE Art and Design Themes 2014

Resource Pack

Spill, drop or break – Fall, leak, splatter, escape, split, fracture, shatter, pieces, splash, smash, damage, liquids/solids, fragile, chaos, disorder, gravity

Written Starting Points:

Present – Gift, souvenir, reward, wrapping, bow and ribbon, packaging, labels, surprise, unusual, personal, special occasions, reveal/unrevealed, 3D structures

Chrome – Shine, reflective, mirror, polish, trim, machine, vehicle, electroplate, man- made, architecture, industrial machinery

Headdress – Fascinator, hat, hood, helmet, turban, scarf, crown, tiara, veil, bonnet, boater, panama, carnival, tribal headdresses, traditions related to clothing, class differences between clothing, religious headwear

Dental care – Teeth, mouth, clean, floss, brush, paste, wash, pick, hygiene, dentist, orthodontist, false teeth, medicine through history, medical technology and advances

Mobile – Moving, swinging, changing, fluid, flexible, travelling, movement, dance, speed

Profile – composition, layout, space

Visual Starting points

Montage – materials, techniques, processes, experimentation

Geometric patterns – shapes, repetition, rotation, minimalism

Critical and contextual studies

Couples – relationships – love, families, history, stories, grouping of objects

Trees – landscape, figurative, abstract, topographical, experience of landscape

When collecting research and contextual influences:

• Consider how the artist has made the work.

• Look at what materials have they used.

• Why do you think they used these materials?

• Do you think the medium effectively portrays the concept/ theme of the work?

• Do you think there is more than one theme in the work?

• Do you see inspiration/ influences from other artists, art movements or events in the work?

It is usually the case that Artists and Designers use materials specific to the theme of their work, so they can illustrate a specific meaning,

mood or story. They may also consider composition, scale, colour, text and style. They will develop their ideas, refine them though testing,

reflect and record their work in writing and practical outcomes and present their work to reflect the theme running through it.

Contextual studies framework

Describe – What do you see? Imagine you are describing this artwork to someone over the phone.

Analyse - What is the mood of the piece? Can you see a theme within the piece? What is it the artist’s concept (their overall idea)?

Interpret - How has the artist created the mood/themes of the piece? Discuss the composition, scale, form, materials, techniques, colours, tone, texture

Judge – You can discuss your personal opinion here. Support

your opinions with what you have previously written about in describe, analyse, interpret and judge. Do you think this artwork is effective? Does it engage you? Does it capture your imagination? Are you intrigued? Do you want to find more about the artist? Support these opinions with discussing the composition, line, tone, colours, materials and techniques.

The following artists particularly illustrate some of the themes listed above within their work:

Spill, drop or break: Dana Schutz, Eddie Martinez, Virgile Ittah, Pure Evil

Written Starting Points:

Present: Finbar Ward, Francis Upritchard Chrome: Richard Wilson, Justin Matherly, Sara Barker Headdress: Eddie Martinez Dental care: Alexander Tinei Mobile: Makiko Kudo, Andra Ursuta Profile: Tanyth Berkley, Martin Poppe, Tom Gidley Geometric Patterns: Dominic Beattie, George Little Couples: Nathan Mabry Trees: Makiko Kudo, Marianne Vitale

Dana Schutz Gallery 4

Spill, drop or break

In Dana Schutz’s painting, Reformers, we see a scene of chaos, a moment in time where objects fall from the central figure’s feet through the break in the table and drop onto the ground. This composition of chaos makes the viewer intrigued and question - what is happening here? Is something being created or destroyed?

Dana Schutz proves that painting can both represent reality and destroy it at the same time. She sets up scenarios that the viewer can easily recognise whilst depicting sinister disruptions to ordinary scenes. Schutz takes the order of humanity and creates scenes of disorder and hopelessness.

The Brooklyn-based artist exposes a dark humour in scenes which describe both everyday social settings and implausible events. One painting takes an ordinary family picnic and transforms the figures and food so that they are cut into by zig-zagging black lines, that seem to be memories disappearing of cut out figures being burned (Singed Picnic).

Her vivid paintings mix reality with fiction to create chaos or discordance. She manages to simultaneously describe an event and the experience itself. In doing so she turns emotional states such as embarrassment, fear, tension, etc, into literal descriptions.

Schutz has cited 20th century German painters such as Otto Dix and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner as early influences on her own work, something which is evident in her bold, expressive mark making, bright colours and attention to detail. She applies a European style of painting, historically attached to artists commenting on politics and society, to humorous depictions of contemporary American life.

Eddie Martinez Gallery 3

Splatter, fracture, pieces, splash, smash, chaos, abundance, rule breaking, confusion, unrestrained,

Eddie Martinez’s techniques and processes can be related to the theme of Spill, Drop or break. The sheer volume of marks, colours, materials, objects and characters in his paintings suggest chaos and confusion. Eddie Martinez breaks traditional rules and juxtaposes the past and the present within his paintings.

Headdresses

Eddie Martinez’s paintings epitomise restless energy; collage, oil paint, spray paint, paint splatters and drips are applied with frantic immediacy guided, but not restrained, by technique. Drawing on the tradition of the gestural mark, Martinez seems to hint at his forebears (de Kooning, Picasso, even Da Vinci’s The Last Supper) and popular culture (Donald Duck appears at the dinner table in The Feast), but the result is his own, disentangled from the past. The overabundance of food in The Feast runs parallel to the visual feast of Martinez’s paintings, in which no surface is left alone.

Characters are created with lively mark making, allowing them to evolve during the process like thinking aloud, eventually uniting as recognisable forms. This method of layering and effacing the surface is transferred from his practice as a graffiti artist in New York and creates figures which suggest contemporary hieroglyphics. There is a compulsion to enliven every area, giving his work its relentless dynamism, while retaining a somewhat surrealist sense of mysterious event.

Virgile Ittah New Order II

Fall, leak, escape, split, fracture, pieces, damage, liquids/solids, fragile, gravity

Virgile Ittah’s sculptures are constructed from wax mixed with white spirit, which allows the material to maintain its flexibility. The figure gradually succumbs to gravity, slumping towards the floor. The material shifts and drops during the process of sculpting. This creates a distorted representation of the human figure.

The title of Virgile Ittah’s sculpture Untitled (for man would remember each murmur) seems to reference the presence of the past in daily life, through the echo chamber of memory and nostalgia. Time – its passing, its wounds and residues – is built in to Ittah’s process as a sculptor.

The use of wax recalls its early usage when it was mixed with pigment in Roman Egyptian tomb portraits, as well as its association with candles. Elegy, transience and mortality seem embedded in the material itself. Ittah also adds a mixture of white pigment and marble dust, which is a reference to classical sculpture. However, the distorted form and fludity of the sculptures contrasts to the techniques of classical sculpture.

Ittah has spoken of her interest in ‘fake whiteness’, such as that found in the Venetian Ghetto, where Jews, forbidden by the city to use of real marble to decorate their synagogues, used painted marble instead (‘marmorino’). Through this, the artist refers to Jewish history and her own Jewish cultural heritage.

Pure Evil Edition & Print Gallery

Fall, leak, escape, splash, liquids/solids, gravity

Pure Evil’s work extends beyond the canvas. A paint strip runs down the face, outside the frame, dropping down the wall ending in a blob of paint on the floor. Pure Evil draws upon his background in street art, he uses spray paint, stencils and sharpies to create the original painting. Screen printing is used to produce copies to be exhibited and sold.

The paint dripping down the face appears to be tears. However, the falling tears contrast with the facial expressions of the famous figures. The artist intends to explore celebrity culture, Pure Evil says ‘I am making a kind of ‘copy village’ celebrating the dark side of celebrity workshop.’

The artist is fascinated by modern society’s access and exposure to multiple media sources and images. His work explores the idea of copying and reproducing art and the impact that it has on the value of the original.

From his base in east London Pure Evil continues to make a significant contribution to the increasing influence of street art upon mainstream culture. With the Nightmare Series Pure Evil has exploited the power of iconic images, added his unique twist and sent them back out into the world refreshed and renewed. This exhibition includes recent original work, hand-finished unique prints and limited edition prints.

Finbar Ward New Order II

Present

Wrapping, packaging, labels, surprise, unusual, reveal/unrevealed, 3D structures,

Ward combines both painting and sculpture within his work. He places painted canvases within minimalistic sculptures. In Chamber, a canvas of rich dark blue is placed on layered wooden structures. Through combining both traditional canvas and minimalistic sculptures, Ward poses the question of what is a painting? How should it be hung? Is it still a painting if it is lying horizontally?

When the viewer looks at Chamber, we are intrigued as it appears to be a box slightly open. The position of the top layer which is out of line with the wooden structures below create this sense of mystery and intrigue for the viewer. The viewer may want to peer into the box, walk around it and crouch down to inspect it. Therefore, the viewer is physically engaged with the piece.

Francis Uprichard Gallery 7

wrapping, surprise, unusual, personal, special occasions, reveal/unrevealed

Francis Upritchard is a New Zealand born, London- based sculptor who makes small-scale work ranging from displays of found objects to rainbow-coloured corpses. The Misanthrope is hunched over, feeble and fragile, hiding beneath a lurid cloak; he appears to be protecting himself from something in the world, but at the same time provokes a sense of curiosity, bringing into question his scale, the bright colour of his skin and clothing, and the totemic relevance of the small chain dangling from his pocket. There is strong evidence, as with much of Upritchard’s work, of a very handmade quality – combining hints of various cultural and historical references - the result of which borders on a faked antiquity. The tie-dyed colours and ephemera we associate with 1960s counterculture is re-imagined in human form, to the point where this figure becomes the embodiment of embellished versions of history merging with commercialised spirituality.

Justin Matherly Gallery 4

Chrome

Shine, machine, vehicle, electroplate, man- made, architecture, industrial machinery, medical instrument

Brooklyn-based Justin Matherly is best known for his large scale sculptures inspired by Ancient Greek and Roman statues, reinterpreted with contemporary materials. In these smaller works distorted forms are contorted around, and supported by ambulatory frames which at first glance appear to be clinical and severe. The walking frames offer a substitute for the traditional plinth and also reference the affects of age and deterioration on the human body. Matherly permits the surface of the concrete to be rough and scratchy, allowing the unpredictable casting methods to take effect, deliberately unlike the smooth contours of classical sculpture and statues. Instead of presenting incomplete body parts he manipulates lumpy limbs into abstract forms and lets the concrete become cracked and brittle, while the metal walkers suggest enforced assistance and support, calling for the viewer’s sympathy rather than adoration. In doing this, he pays homage to the origins of technical sculpture, but allows failure, and addresses the problems inherent in looking to the past for inspiration and direction.

Richard Wilson Shine, machine, vehicle, man- made, architecture, industrial machinery, reflective, mirror, polish

20:50

Site Specific Oil Installation: 1987, used sump oil and steel, dimensions variable

Richard Wilson is one of Britain's most celebrated sculptors. He is known for his interventions in architectural space which draw heavily for their inspiration from the worlds of engineering and construction and are characterised by concerns with size and structural daring.

20:50 has been exhibited in a number of different sites (see image below). The oil fills and consumes the architectural space. An illusion is created with the highly reflective surface of the oil. On first impression, the viewer questions their perception of space; it takes time to adjust our understanding to the architectural space. The viewer also questions whether the surface is solid or liquid; it plays with our perception of form and materials.

Sara Barker New Order I (see Saatchi website)

Shine, machine, man- made, architecture, industrial machinery, reflective, mirror, polish

Sara Barker’s works don’t simply breach the boundaries between painting and sculpture, they are that boundary. Skeletal structures in aluminium and steel describe wonky rectangular shapes in the air in hesitant lines, as though uncertain of themselves; their forms are those of sketches, not sculptures. Their surfaces are then coated with layers of oil paint, gouache and watercolour in the blanched and airy palette of a landscape painting.

Barker draws her inspiration from the lines, shapes and forms of paintings. One work is named after Matisse’s 1916 painting ‘The Piano Lesson’. The work of other artists feed into Barker’s process as she reinterprets 2D into 3D.

Alexander Tinei Gallery 8

Dental care

A grinning woman with a beehive hairdo and 60s spectacles plays an accordion. Alexander Tinei’s painting is based on a photograph– note the slight blurring of the instrument.

Tinei’s work frequently draws on his childhood in Soviet Moldova, where Russian language and culture blotted out local identity; his mining of the past seems a rooting out of personal truth.

Here, the beaming accordionist of Music Teacher is streaked with blue lines like tattoos. The contrast is both a comic one – a child’s revenge on an adult, maybe – and an indication of a deeper presence beyond the self-evident. Tinei employs the blue lines in many of his works: they act as markers of inner life. Whether this is a spiritual, emotional or historical truth is never obvious to the viewer.

Makiko Kudo Gallery 2

Mobile

Moving, swinging, changing, fluid, flexible, travelling, movement,

Makiko Kudo’s lonely figures float and tumble through landscapes of lush, brightly coloured plant life like lost children in fairy tales. Unlike real scenes, Kudo’s imagined places draw on her own dreams and memories, freely reconstructing and organising them through painting. Like memory, canvases are patchy, with areas left barely painted. Allusions to a tradition of escape, from Monet to Gauguin, are referenced here; running away from contemporary woes into childlike fantasy, and, with her specific Japanese cultural context, into the immersive world of computer games and Manga comics. Kudo’s childhood within the socially conservative and economically depressed environment of late twentieth-century Japan, led her and many of her generation into a detached existence. In this way, the figure, lying across a swan in Floating Island or sitting alone amidst the twisted limbs of trees in Invisible, might become the artist’s alter-ego, like a character in a game. What might first appear purely sentimental, acquires a resonant force due to the value of escape for artist and viewer alike.

Andra Ursuta Gallery 10

Moving, swinging, changing, fluid, flexible, travelling, movement, speed

Andra Ursuta’s installation, Vandal Lust, consists of a catapult, damage to the gallery wall and a flattened figure. It is the still aftermath of a violent act.

Ursuta references the work of Russian artist, Ilya Kabakov’s The Man Who Flew Into Space from his Apartment in 1984. It reflects a similar theme of wishing to escape to Soviet Union. Ursuta explores her cultural and personal identity within Vandal Lust. Yet it is darkly comic too, the artist expressed the influence of slap stick comedy.

Ursuta is Romanian; she currently lives and works in New York. Her work often explores the contrast of her childhood of Soviet Romania to her current environment. She says, ‘I’m from a very different place. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to ignore that. [USA] starkly contrasts the environment in Eastern Europe.’

Tanyth Berkeley Gallery 8

Profile

composition, layout, space

These photographs portray both biological and transgendered women. These subjects come from a cross-section of inner-city societies, who have been outcast and suffered hardships, but who have survived. Traditional values of beauty are discarded. This work can be intended as a study of femininity, of bodily curves, dress, make-up and flowers that invites the viewer to ponder their own response questioning traditional notions of beauty. The process of selection of the models, met in subways and streets, links the practice of documentary and art photography. In Berkeley’s work, whether shot on the street or in mysterious interiors, there is both a sense of theatrical staging and spontaneity. Her photographs simultaneously recall the Renaissance portrait and the contemporary street-style snap, which both share a love of exhibitionism and selective self-expression.

Martin Poppe Gallery 13 (New Order II)

composition, layout, space

In Martine Poppe’s paintings, something has happened to the image. It is as though you are seeing it from behind veils of gauze, or that it has been reproduced so many times it has lost its colour. Painted onto restoration fabric, a support the artist chose specifically for its translucency, Poppe’s paintings seem illuminated from behind, like images laid on a light table waiting to be copied. An investigation of the copying of images is in fact a central part of Poppe’s practice. She selects images notable for their ambiguity and translates them with deliberate vagueness, as though willing herself not to see the source image clearly. The collective title of this group of works, Analogical Change, underscores the strange transformation of original to copy: it is a term used in linguistics to describe an invented word based on learned principles of language (‘goose’ becomes ‘geeses’, ‘sheep’ becomes ‘sheeps’). Poppe’s altered copies play out analogical change in visual terms. Her copies, though recognisable, aren’t quite the same as the originals from which they derive, something’s off.

Tom Gidley Gallery 14

composition, layout, space

Tom Gidley’s work recast the gallery space as crime scene, obliging the viewer to unpick and find meaning in his startling combinations of two and three-dimensional objects. These different fragments drag the wrong footed viewer into play, and oblige him to situate the objects in a narrative, which slithers away when lunged for. The ceramic sculptures and the painting establish a dialogue between two different textures, and express the uncertainty about the artist’s authentic voice. In Pacifist, a monochrome painted portrait is surmounted by a glazed ceramic form like an oyster shell, which seems to have dribbled down the painting’s surface, part erasing the young man’s features. Meaning is gathered through a process of both creating and curating.

Geometric Patterns

Dominic Beattie Gallery 12

shapes, repetition, rotation, minimalism

Dominic Beattie’s work plays with the composition of geometrical forms in an original way: forms are pure and abstract, whereas materials are deliberately perishable and wonky. Different fragments of different textures are juxtaposed, and every material displays its own eccentric qualities. The homemade quality of these arrangements creates a tension with the high minded formalism of the tradition of abstraction and homespun crafts.

George Little

The composition of Unsettled life, Henri’s, is a re-imagined interpretation of Henri Matisse’s style. The fruit is similar to Matisse’s experimental paintings made around World War I. However, the composition breaks up the form of the fruit and distorts it. In the background of the composition, Modernist wallpaper gathers in rolls on the floor, as if mid-way through decorating yet the development of a repeated pattern is clear. It is evident that Little is inspired and refers to the modernist avant-garde within his work.

Couples

Nathan Mabry Gallery 3

LA based Nathan Mabry’s sculptures present the viewer with a visual shock before revealing their more subtle meanings. The sculptures bring together two uniquely different styles from the history of western and ancient art: Minimalist sculpture and ancient Peruvian Moche sculptures. Mabry uses enduring materials such as bronze and steel to create monumental pieces with lasting power. Mabry combines the clear order and organisation of geometric minimalism with ancient figures that are frozen in an emotional moment. The incongruent features of these sculptures are brought together by the materials they are cast in; the metal binds the ideas together literally and symbolically.

Established concepts of what separates sculpture from plinth are abandoned as both elements are carefully crafted from the same material, creating a link which is humorously disrespectful of traditional ideas in the history of art.

Mabry takes the history and order of visual culture and cheekily subverts it, by wilfully ignoring traditional rules. He is in fact using the visual order and organisation of a modernist style to create disorder and disruption.

This yin and yang approach is juxtaposed with Surrealist mischief; in A Very Touching Moment (Pitching A Tent), we are presented with two deathly looking figures embracing in an unorthodox kiss, and embedded in their grinning teeth is a jewel like totem that glints at the viewer. Mabry’s desire for transformation presents a cross-cultural clash which fuses the history of western art with the ethnographic associations of ancient work from another time and culture, questioning western aesthetic values.

Trees

(see Makiko Kudo on page 13)

Marianne Vitale Gallery 5

Marianne Vitatle’s series Markers consists of reclaimed wood carved into the shape of tombstones. Each stands at the same height and is of the same design, yet remains individual, literally carrying the burns, scrapes and cuts of their previous existence, whether they were once part of a factory floor or a beam from an old barn house. We are presented with a natural material that has been bruised and abused before being remodelled then arranged into a uniform display. The graves stand formally ordered in the gallery like proud soldiers on parade, wearing their scars like war wounds. This installation references the theatricality and geometry of minimalist sculpture by the likes of Carl Andre and Donald Judd, but retains an emotional content allowing the materials to reveal past histories. In Markers, Vitale achieves an anthropomorphic transformation as these gravestones become stand-ins for human bodies; they are both a tribute to the deceased and the deceased themselves.