Rosallie Gascoigne Analysis

Many artists explore their personal journeys within their artworks, as a way of understanding their emotions and the world around them, as well as discovering their identity. Sarah Fordham’s art is inspired by her experiences including her travels around the world, and also as a way to make sense of her thoughts, ideas and emotions. These elements are displayed in bright colours, incorporating symbols and patterns in her work. Her two artworks being analysed are called “The Big Call” and “Pokeepskie”.

Michelle Lougee is a very famous environmental artist, sculptor, and ceramist. She is a member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery, and her artwork has been shown in many New England museum exhibits. She also teaches sculpture, ceramics, pottery, and drawing to adults and children at various local museums. She holds an M.F.A and a B.F.A. from Boston University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her work focuses on the delicate balance between nature versus human society and technology. The contrast of this relationship is explored in both materials and subject matter. The combination of the two factions produce mysterious yet familiar forms. Michelle Lougee strives to replicate the animated quality that all living things possess. She believes that her job as an environmental artist is “to capture that beauty in my work while instilling a message into it.” Michelle Lougee uses a wide variety of naturally found materials from the environment. These materials are very banal. They include clay, papyrus, paper, cloth, plastic, post-consumer grocery bags, and plastic bags. Michelle Lougee’s signature material is the plastic bags as they are symbolic of the harmfulness brought to our environment. You can see her thorough incorporation of plastic bags in her Gyre

Judy Chicago’s feminist artistic career ironically began with minimalist styled art. Minimalist art is defined by the Tate (a highly respected institution in London that runs 4 separate museums) as “an extreme form of abstract art developed in the USA in the 1960s and typified by artworks composed of simple geometric shapes based on the square and the rectangle”. Its essence is best condensed by artist Frank Stella when he describes his minimalist paintings as “What you see is what you see”. Judy Chicago was trained as a minimalist artist and she explains in a lecture she gave at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, California that “during the first decade of my career I experienced two forms of censorship the first was self-censorship

The Vogel’s are best known as the postal worker and librarian who on their civil service salaries collected what is considered the greatest personal collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures. Over the past 50 years the Vogel’s have acquired over 4,500 works of art. The Vogel’s primarily was interested in abstract expressionism, minimalist, post minimalist and conceptual art. The scope of the Vogel’s collection is remarkable; however, their unique approach to collecting has caught the eye of the art world.

Fiona Hall and Barbara Kruger are both female post-modern artists. While their works both reflect the world and contemporary issues, Hall’s work focused more on the themes of sexuality, colonialism and society’s relationship with nature, while Kruger’s work is more political and mainly centred around the theme of feminism. As post-modern contemporary artists, their work is all about challenging the idea of the

Ruth Asawa’s, Untitled (S.114, Hanging, Six-Lobed Continuous Form within a Form with One Suspended and Two Tied Spheres), ca. 1958, is displayed at The Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. Asawa’s work follows the methodology of structuralism, which implies that artists use elements of human culture in relationships to a larger, overarching system or structure. Asawa is also influenced by abstract expressionism by incorporating it into her art by allowing nature to create her forms. Asawa’s specific background, technique, and material allows her to create beautiful sculptures that manipulate form and space, while also sharing similar characteristics as artists we have studied in class.

Martin's late 20th century minimalist work is not the culmination of the process, but a product of a progression, which seems to have inexorably led to this point. Throughout the ages visitors to museums have benefited from the artist’s eye; viewing the world through ever fresher lenses. What I believe I am experiencing with Agnes Martin's work is not a window on the world, but a conduit into my own thoughts as I experience a dialogue with her through her

Paul Wood is an art historian based in Scotland whose main interest in research is in the history of the modern movement. With this small insight, it is no wonder that his essay “Inside the whale: an introduction to postmodernist art” starts with the statement “’Postmodernism’ is a convenient yet confusing term” (1) giving the indication that his words should not be taken as gospel. The main points of this essay are to critically review “Inside the whale” such that I could elaborate on Wood’s message regarding the change in art through postmodernism, to what extent do I agree on those claims and touch on the points that could’ve been elaborated further.

the way that the pattern of the melody is structured. For example, if the composer

The three works that will be compared are Marcel Duchamp’s Bottlerack, Barnett Newman’s Eve and Ana Mendieta’s Silueta. Placed together the pieces show us three varying genres, each from different periods in the twentieth century. Between the artists we also see obvious connections in how they have challenged the spectator, and the art world alike, in viewing their art. All artists removed ‘something’, be it a body in Silueta or the ‘purpose’ of the Bottlerack and Eve’s figurative form or vanishing point. All were met with a critique of the processes in which their work were produced and likewise they also received admiration for their forward thinking, progressive art.

When I first came upon the work of outsider French artist Jephan de Villiers, it immediately brought to mind a strange rush of associations and recollections. It somehow felt like I had seen this work before. By itself, this nagging sense of déjà vu felt like sufficient motive to research the artist. A quick glance at the images however made connections that resonated with me. First and foremost, the artist’s secret world of organic matter shows a deep concern and passion for the environment. At the same time, his well-crafted dramatic scenes interact with the viewers on an emotional level and evoked fond memories of my circus days. Although de Villiers’ work carries the naïveté seen in many other outsider art, some its characteristics nonetheless

The exhibition acknowledges the uncertainties surrounding their original purpose. Presenting them in an artistic context, it demonstrates that our definitions of what constitutes ‘art’ are also problematical. Even the all-encompassing definition recently proposed by Brian Eno – art is ‘everything you don’t have to do’ (Eno, 2015, 14m. 30s.) - fails in the face of artefacts which would appear to have been an intrinsic

Conventionally, artist Anne Zahalka is one of Australia's most recognised artists working in photo media, questioning the conventional ways in which gender has been depicted throughout the history of European Art. Through appropriation and the utilisation of irony Zahalka highlights contemporary issue associating gender as well as questioning traditional artistic representations of women. Her use of photography allows Zahalka to explore how culture can be identified through images. She highlights photography’s ability to demand, disfigure or deny the truth. Zahalka challenges stereotypes in previous artworks by re-staging historical art scenes in ways that address the representation of gender and various cultural issues in order to reflect modern concerns. Throughout her career, Zahalka has examined the relationship between the place and the objects placed within it. Whether those objects are people, animals or objects, they often sit uncomfortably in it.

Rhythm is how music flows through time. Specifically, rhythm is defined as, “the particular arrangement of note lengths in a piece of music”1. An interesting aspect of rhythm is that it has the ability to flow freely, and it can match the beat at some time or not at all. Rhythm of a melody is important to a music piece, because it is what gives the music personality.

Using thick, vintage books as his medium, he creates landscapes from the pages ever since 1999, carving and shaping them with a circular saw. These intricate and unique sculptures are in high demand and have sold for up to $20,000. “His work originates from the concept that one gains true knowledge through erosion, not accretion. The work sparks such questions as: Is there too much data? Are we drowning in a sea of answers? Why are we obsessed with knowing so many things? Could you know more about the world by knowing less? Are we losing ourselves?” (Guy Laramée). In his work, mountains, hills, or waves of disused and misused knowledge return to what they really are - simple landscapes. They erode a bit more and they become smaller, not as intimidating, then they flatten slowly and become not near as important. Piles of obsolete and heavy encyclopedias, inevitably, do not need to say anything. They are used to show us, not tell us, of the secrets that lie within the carven pages. Laramée’s work is about making us feel alive, about transforming and being given new opportunities in the world. It is about losing yourself in the landscapes that he creates and finding yourself in the center of