Recently on TV

There has lately been so much on for the sake of art that I couldn't resist noting ideas down. Below are some discoveries I've made as a result.

During Where is Modern Art Now?, Dr Gus Casely-Hayford introduced the artist Grayson Perry as "everyone's favourite transvestite potter". After such a comment I surely had to had to check his work out, and I must say, I'm now quite a fan. He uses more than one technique to transfer the often brutal imagery onto surfaces, immitating collage. On clay!

so far my favourite, Hot Afternoon in 75, 1999

In Ugly Beauty, Waldemar Januszczak mentioned the British sculptor Rachel Whiteread, who apparently is the first woman to have won the Turner Prize back in 1993.

I've long considered the idea of negative space intriguing. For instance, imagine that it's never you moving, but the space around you moving you.. Well, most of Rachel's work focuses on exploring negative space. Take Untitled (One Hundred Spaces), 1997, below, which is a collection of resin casts of the empty space underneath one hundred chairs!


In a more recent project she made casts of packaging objects. In his review (worth reading for more about Rachel), David Row recalls:

"When I saw Whiteread's exhibit, it was still being unpacked, so there were actual packing materials beside Whiteread's sculptures of packing materials. Talk about life imitating art."

So let the Stuckists stick to their figures, but I think this is all brilliant. Towards the end of Ugly Beauty, Waldemar Januszczak concluded with the following idea about conceptual art:

"In an over-explained world, what could be more precious than the inexplicable?"