David Shrigley
I think that Shrigley has displayed his ‘Brain Activity’ work at the just right time, the obvious humour in his artwork might not have been seen as funny about 10 years ago as it is today, a lot more is accepted now than has been in the past.“He had been wrongly overlooked for a long time because his work suggested itself as being just funny and therefore marginal,” said Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain and chair of the jury. “Just because it’s funny, doesn't mean it’s not good.”
He’s been doing solo exhibitions for nearly 20 years but his comical suggestions in his photographs, drawings and sculpture meant that he wasn't taken seriously and was disregarded as an attentive artist. I think that the way Shrigley uses black humour in his work is his way of expressing his take on death, so he can look upon death without the fear – almost laughing at it. It’s a simplistic, and slightly creepy-looking, way of seeing the lighter side of our unavoidable end. I also think that the way in which Shrigley has positioned the animals, so that they are standing on their back legs - like humans, was a way to make us relate to them – we are all animals, and we will all die eventually.
Shrigley’s animals holding the signs remind me of Gillian Wearing’s ‘Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say’. Wearing walked around the streets of London asking people to write what they really thought on a piece of card, and the obvious difference in the two artists being that the animals didn't have a choice about what was written on their sign, the artist is more in control and displays the understandable wit.
Press release: http://www.cherwell.org/culture/features/2013/05/09/shrigley-and-the-turner-prize-shortlist
Sarah Jones
I find Jones’ photographs of tangled, nearly decaying, rose bushes unnaturally still and cold. Roses are known as the symbol of love and beauty and are normally photographed or painted like that, in a more colourful brighter surrounding. But Jones’ photos have a certain chill to them, making the plants seem brittle and fragile. The darkness is drowning on the colours of the normally bright summertime flowers, it’s almost as if the dark is alive and is closing in on the flowers. The dark background also helps to draw you eye towards the vivid flowers and illuminates them giving them a raw and isolated look. There’s a haunting element about this series of photographs, and, I presume, that because they are displayed on a much larger scale that the effect is even more spine-tingling when looking at them in a gallery. These images leave wondering – they seem to ask a lot of question without really giving any answers. What is nature hiding? Why did the artist chose to capture flowers in a way that doesn't compliment them? Why are they so dark?
"Sarah Jones' photographs of rose bushes seen from wrong angle, or decaying were also of particular note. There is a crispy quality of this aesthetic challenge that reminds us of painterly surfaces, whilst the difficult point of view the artist adopts makes us wonder what we really know nature and what lies behind the surface"
Vincent Van Gogh
Known for his mental health problems, lack of success as an artist whilst alive and for cutting off his own ear, Van Gogh is easily the most famous artist of the post-impressionism movement.
Ironically, Van Gogh’s opinion of his two most famous paintings, sunflowers (right) and starry night, were the complete opposite of each other. Sunflowers was the painting he was most proud of and he didn't believe that Starry Night went as well as he hoped.
I saw these two paintings of Van Gogh’s over the summer in the National Gallery in London, the texture and vividness of them in amazing – not to mention the size. I think the huge canvases that Van Gogh chose for these pieces adds to their extraordinary beauty.
In the case of sunflowers, Van Gogh painted them to impress fellow artist Paul Gauguin for when he came to stay in October of 1888. He experimented with the flowers on a blue background first, but the yellow flowers on a yellow wall and yellow table in a yellow vase seemed to show off the hope and happiness that Van Gogh wanted to express. The composition and stage of the flowers is just as important to the success of the piece as the chosen colours. They range from buds to blooming to wilting – presenting the circle of life.
The sky in A Wheatfield, with cypresses (left) is, to me, the most interesting part of the image; the swirling white clouds mingling with the array of blues brightens the scene below it and makes the cypresses seem an even darker shade of green. The fluid, wavy brush strokes of the sky also contrasts strongly with the brief and choppy lines that make the wheatfield.
Bibliography
David Shrigley:
Gallery image: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/david-shrigleys-fine-line-between-art-and-fun-nominated-for-turner-prize-8587267.html?action=gallery&ino=11 (accessed on 19/09/13)
Dog image: http://www.theweek.co.uk/pictures/52694/turner-prize-shortlist-2013-pictures/page/1/0 (accessed on 19/09/13)
Cat and mouse drawing: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/david-shrigleys-fine-line-between-art-and-fun-nominated-for-turner-prize-8587267.html?action=gallery&ino=11 (accessed on 19/09/13)
Gillian Wearing’s I’m desperate image: http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/venues/images/116973 (accessed on 19/09/13)
Quote found at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/david-shrigleys-fine-line-between-art-and-fun-nominated-for-turner-prize-8587267.html (accessed on 19/09/13)
Sarah Jones:
Images of the Rose Garden series (Accessed on 20/09/2013) :
Vincent Van Gogh:
Image of Sunflowers: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincent-van-gogh-sunflowers (accessed on 21/09/2013)
Image of A Wheatfield, with cypresses: http://museumsbrandon.blogspot.co.uk/ (accessed on 21/09/2013)
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