Ann Voelke

"Take a nap" 2005

Just discovered the work of this German artist,

"who creates mixed-media paintings with a penchant for bright colors, geometric shapes, and street-art forms. My work explores the relationship between cultural plurality and a recycling of pop-culture, by layering different motifs from Science Fiction film stills and quotations from an art historical background, like Symbolism and color-field paintings"

from an online interview.

The composition of her paintings are testing the dimensions of the stretched canvas in a way that really interests me. The perspective created by the spray paint over well rendered oil gives me the feeling of distortion in memory that I'm trying to convey in my work.

Family dinner today....

became a heated debate about contemporary art when everyone began disregarding Tracy Emin's work as "crap".

Tracy Emin: Love is what you want

Went to see this exhibition today. It was perhaps the most crowded exhibition I've ever been to, especially considering the show has been open for three months.

Her famous embroidered blankets were the first pieces on display and it made me feel like they were items to be "gotten out of the way", as if people should see her most known work and not be distracted by the thought of wanting to see it later.
I suppose I think about retrospective type exhibitions in the same way as I regard the back of dvd cases for films you have never seen before. You see the screenshots and then you're filled with the anticipation of recognising the shots within the film. I think the same of knowing that famous pieces of artwork is in a show. Of course you want to see them, even if you know in general what they look like and have an idea of their meaning, because you need to confirm that they exist in some way.

My favorite pieces were some small paintings. I have always regarded Tracy Emins work as something great and insightful but the grace of her paintings surprised me a lot. They didn't have the hard visceral elements that her other work does. One painting looked to me like a woman lying with the back of a cat in the foreground. If I were very rich I would inquire about purchasing it so that I could look at it all day. It probably wasn't even a cat but that's why I liked it.

Although Tracy Emin is one of the most well respected contemporary artists in the world, a large portion of the general public seem to really disregard her work. I really hope that a lot of people who don't like her well known work went to see this show and maybe they would understand a bit more like I did.

I looked at a lot of the exhibition before watching the film she made about her traumatic abortion. Then all of the work was different and it wouldn't be the same again. It did horrify me and I was still horrified on the train.

The Age of Reason being the book I'm currently reading is a strange coincidence.

Running a creative workshop....

......is a bit different from what I imagined. Possibly because my vision of failure was that I would be inundated with people (inundated meaning dealing with more than 4 people that I never before met in my life). That my direction in the activities would be weak and HORDES of people would be bored and leave.
The reality of the failure (if it was a failure) is that no people (well there were 2) turned up for me to be scared of disappointing. But I'm not sure it was a failure entirely, of course it wasn't the kind of exciting energetic experience that changes people's entire outlook on life, which was obviously what every artist/teacher hopes to achieve by collaborating with people. However I did learn that I have quite a narrow view on what will be a successful art activity, which is possibly fed from the years spent in art institutions hanging around with other artists.
I've come to the conclusion that we artists are actually really easily entertained. I mean being presented with a huge room with a few plug sockets that is entirely devoid of furniture is pretty much birthday/christmas/new year in one for artists.
It was pretty stupid to assume that people would be as easily interested in creative workshops without persuading.

Some friends helping with setup

My extremely popular (NOT) workshop. Oh well live and learn I guess!

Curating experience

Some of my paintings hanging in the space

Before

After

This week I've been working on something called "The Big Empty Shop Experiment" with a group of people in Cardiff.
We've taken a space that's used as a halloween/christmas decoration shop in the winter and turned it into a gallery space running art cinema screenings, a swapshop and creative workshops.

Its involved a LOT of cleaning and just general tidying to make the space hospitable for artwork and the general public but my main job has been curating and hanging the work of local artists, most of whom are students.

I've never really enjoyed the actual hanging of an exhibition as much as I have this week, its been busy but not frantic which is what setting up in past exhibitions has been like. I think it's a combination of
1. Having to make decisions without consultation.
2. Being part of a REALLY good team.

It's strange though, because while I've been in curatorial mode I'm constantly looking at pieces of work but I'm not seeing them as I would normally. I'm surveying them more, I'm seeing them as dimensions and colour. I'm looking intently for relationship of form between the pieces and between the environment. Never thought I would say this but I love curating and hanging!

Memory painting

Painting from November 2010

Painting from May 2011

My memory painting has improved a great deal. I've found a more coherent way to compose images using the geological structures and diagrams that have ingrained themselves in my mind and form the foundation of my theories on archiving.
I have increased the scale of my work considerably which has presented me with ideas in paint I never thought possible.

New paintings

Landscapes of the area I grew up in