Perfection, 2011. Cotton, fabric acrylic paint, and cotton thread on canvas, 250 mm H x 250 mm W
These two art works were created for a show I am currently in at Gatakers Artspace in Maryborough, QLD.
About a year ago I started doing stitched work just for something different; to keep myself entertained and motivated.
I've decided to continue on this theme of random square print advertising cuttings stitched in thread, as part of the annual art swap that is part of the forum I belong to.
The curator proclaimed them "...very ZAM." which I take to be a good thing because it means I have developed some kind of individual style that people can attach to my name. I always think from observing others that one has to be careful not to get stuck on that though. There's a tipping point between having a known style and suddenly being old news.
Anyway, back to the pictures. At first I really didn't think too much about the images, I keep a folder of potential stock so that I don't have to go through my entire database of tens of thousands every time I need to make a decision on something to make for a project.
Superficiality, 2011. Cotton sateen fabric, acrylic paint, and cotton thread on canvas, 250 mm H x 250 mm W
So I was just seeing them as two I picked out randomly from dozens - the only prerequisite was they were ones I'm currently most obsessed with and find the most appealing. There wasn't much more to it than that. I was more focussed on just getting it done during a very busy period where I had several things going on at once.
However once I had finished that I realised that there was actually a connection between the two - and that is they both stem from the work I have been doing on my longwhitekid project over the last 12 months - which is researching and recreating artwork from vintage NZ advertising brands from scratch. As it turns out this is where both the images came to me from - trawling through old newspaper archives.
The first one in blue and white is from an old Hallenstein Brothers ad of the mid-late 1920s. It was a men's clothing if company that was quite popular - even when I was a child. I named it "Perfection" because for some reason I thought I had cut a piece from the packaging of an old New Zealand ice cream brand named as such. As it turns out this is incorrect but it kind of fitted with the text on this piece so all is good with it.
The second piece was originally an advertisement for Wolfe's Schnapps which I found in an old Bay of Plenty Times from 1897. I remove the original text and added my own slogan in.
I always think it's interesting how, whatever else is going on in one's life at the time - separate as it may seem - somehow insidiously sneaks its way into other things we are passionate about, whether it's cooking or landscape gardening, or art.
After it was all done I stood back and realised it seemed so obvious. So this is how my grocery anthropology has come out in my work quite unexpectedly!
I can't say whether I'm happy with them or not. I suppose I am, reason being that they had turned out looking exactly how I imagined and how they were supposed to. Really, so expected I didn't really give them a second look in the end and of course there went straight up to Queensland, probably never to be seen again.
I'm one of those creatives that just doesn't have a problem with saying goodbye to something once I'm finished with it. I always have a whole list of ideas that need to be done and that's what I am focused on, thinking about what's coming next while I am in the middle of whatever I am currently doing.
0 comments:
Post a Comment