13/11/2020
The object artist presentation was the first group assignment in the course. I’ve always felt obligated to speak up and give suggestions when discussions are quiet even though I am quite a reserved person for the sake of the project progressing.
I introduced to my group an artist I thought would fit the criteria which was the Czech film maker Jan Švankmajer, more specifically a section from his 1992 film Food. I had found the film last year during my foundation course, and was very glad that my group agreed to make the presentation about him.
There were instances where I was quite nervous about the presentation, as one of my peers didn’t have any social media accounts and could only communicate via another person. Fortunately, everything came together at the end and everyone worked on their parts of the presentation incredibly well. I couldn’t be more thankful that everyone turned up for the presentation.
The presentation can be found here.
The artists presented by other groups in class were all very interesting, notably Tanaka Tatsuya, Hans-Peter Feldmann, and Christopher Marley had caught my interest.
TANAKA TATSUYA created miniature worlds using everyday objects and food. I found the piece with the rice as clouds really interesting and made me think of my own culture and the food my family would make.
HANS-PETER FELDMANN photographed cross-sections of bread and exhibited them as such, showing a variety of different shapes textures. There was something comforting about this, I felt. Bread is a part of everyday life. Foods like rice and bread feel like the basis for any meal, and to exhibit framed photographs of them seem to show their significance to our lives, as subtle as they may be.
CHRISTOPHER MARLEY had a phobia of insects, but eventually went on to create artworks with the insects’ entire organisms preserved and arranging them in aesthetically pleasing well as if to ease that fear or to show how he had become fascinated by them. It made me think that the parts of our identities are not the be-all end-all of who we are. We are constantly changing and evolving as individuals, and what we know about ourselves now may not be the same for who we are in the past or the future. What we are so certain about now may be completely false after, much like how Marley had a phobia of bugs before going on to create beautiful artworks with them.