Category: Art

Combining the elements of street photography and found imagery, artist Kalen Hollomon assembles real time collage constructions in and around New York City.

Hollomon’s images preserve fleeting moments, whilst providing a new contextual setting for readymade visual material. His series ‘Realtime Collages’ presents a take on photomontage that evolves the frequently-revisited modern art technique, “I am always concerned with what lies beneath the surface.”with the artist taking to the streets to construct visual interactions with unsuspecting people and places. Cut-outs of found imagery and clippings from retro magazines have been carefully prepared to confuse the overall perception of his final frame. Hollomon toys with rough edges and carefully cut lines–often, the layers of the image can only be identified when a viewer notices the thumb and forefinger of the artist, holding up the printed image in front of a new background. By preserving this performative exploration of collage, Hollomon challenges the way a viewer might take for granted what they perceive in a photographed image. The artist explains, “I am always concerned with what lies beneath the surface–I hope to create conversation that is rooted in questions related to learned social rules, identity, the subtext of everyday situations and perception.”

Originally from Northern Ireland, artist Kevin Francis Gray subverts classic sculptural conventions of the human form, exploring a process of distortion that renders his pieces somewhere between figuration and abstraction.

Now living and working in London, Gray evolves our understanding of sculpture’s possibilities by manipulating a classic vision of the reclining figure, the bust and the nude female. His contemporary interpretations of these subjects toy with the concealing and revealing of his models–figures that emerge from and hide underneath thick marble, which appears to hold the consistency of whipped cream. The perceivable malleability of the solid stone undermines a viewer’s understanding of traditional sculptural conventions and materiality. This also acts to further satirise his subjects, who appear to hold positions of unabashed self-confidence and playful coyness. By maintaining these positions and the choice of material whilst distorting the usual Neoclassical hyperrealism, Gray presents a refreshing contemporary interpretation of traditional textbook imagery.

&’ Architects (Emmi Keskisarja & Janne Teräsvirta & Company) have created the installation as an exploration of temporality and the provocative use of wood. The title was borrowed from the mathematical symbol of the unknown, as the temporary structure is designed to stir conversation about what the future holds, whilst referencing traditional Finnish building methods. ‘Y’ was constructed from cross laminated timber, and appears pixelated in form, providing a contemporary site for meditation in a historical courtyard. In an official statement about the piece, the architects explain: “The installation seeks to encourage the visitors stay longer in the Niemelä by altering the familiar and permanent museum environment. Y provides a hypnotic meditation spot from where to reflect on the changing state of time.”

Taking inspiration from properties and interiors located on Google maps, Australian artist Anna Carey constructs miniature models of imagined spaces. For her series ‘In Search Of Rainbows’, Carey has created seven architectural studies of the colour spectrum.

Carey works across the media of photography, model-making, film and drawing. By presenting these small sculptural pieces in a photographic format, the artist magnifies the works and reminds the viewer of their architecturally deceptive nature. Blurring the line between real and imagined space also allows Carey to make a statement about memory and nostalgia, enhanced by her styling of the models as dream-like retro rooms. On a closer look at the images, indicators of their illusory creation have been playfully left in the frame, assembled as off-cuts of model-building materials and Pantone colour swatches pinned to the walls like paintings. The pieces, respectively titled ‘Pink Flamingo’, ‘Purple Sage’, ‘Blue Pearl’, ‘Green Paradise’, ‘Yellow Moon’, ‘Orange Sun’ and ‘Red Rose’, will be included in the group exhibition ‘Contemporary Female Photographers’ at Artereal Gallery in Rozelle, Australia during August 2017.

After a first glance at the figures present in Tim Eitel’s oil paintings and lithographs, it is probable that they would be met with a classical art historian’s seal of approval. However, by composing them in settings often void of naturalistic detail, Eitel comments on the physical and psychological experience of modern life.

This manipulation of context plays a great role in Eitel’s artistic process. His method begins with lifting a visual element from a photograph of an urban space, often imagery of solitary journeys, homelessness or a quiet moment amongst a crowd. Photos operate as preliminary sketches for the Berlin-based artist, and the final image often materialises as an ambiguously collated selection of figures and motifs. Eitel confuses a viewer’s understandings of place and narrative, translating found imagery into a reduced, fictional framework of block colour and sparse surroundings. By presenting these images in ambiguous settings, Eitel questions the meaning a viewer can predict to interpret in his work, which relates to his sensitive beliefs towards the artistic exploitation of misery in society. As his paintings offer more objective studies of modern life scenarios, Eitel leaves a viewer aware of their own understanding of such physical and psychological experiences.

Eitel is originally from Leonberg in Southern Germany and is currently based in Berlin. Here, he is represented by Galerie EIGEN + ART, as well as Pace Gallery in New York.

In her site-specific installations, Tara Donovan assembles man-made materials into large sculptural constructions. Originally from New York, the artist is renowned for her commitment to repetitive but transformative processes, bringing new life to objects recognised as mundane.

Here, ‘Untitled (Plastic Cups)’ is photographed at Jupiter Artland, a sculptural garden and art gallery close to Edinburgh. The piece is comprised of over 500,000 drinking cups, methodically prepared in a formula of varying stacked heights, presenting the appearance of flowing water or a cloud formation as viewed from above. Donovan’s repetitive assembly of a singular mass-produced material into a new visceral form questions our perceptions of its transience. An easily disregarded commonplace item now presents itself in a geomorphic arena. Through this, Donovan considers the beauty in everyday objects, but also the permanence of such materials in our world.

Artist and filmmaker Joseph Ernst is concerned with our inability to switch off. Habitual scrolling through mobile devices leaves us inundated with information. In a world that recognises ‘fake news’ as a legitimate phenomenon, how much of what we read is even valuable?

Responding to this absurdity, Ernst has reimagined tabloids and broadsheets, all void of any actual news. He explains that he is offeringThe one thing you need more than anything else: “Nothing”“the one thing you need more than anything else: “Nothing”. Absolutely nothing. Today, and today only, there is Nothing in the News. Enjoy it whilst you can.” Ernst has ultimately presented us with pages of pure censorship, reducing his papers to their respective titles and pale grey boxes marking vague graphic layouts. The project presents itself as almost utopian–especially when compared to recurring headlines of incessant worldwide trauma and conflict–and through this, Ernst makes a statement about questioning the information we read on a daily basis and the people who put it there.