Iris, Messenger of the Gods, also known as Another Voice, Called Iris,
modeled ca. 1895, this bronze cast 1965
-Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917)
froghunting:
RRAP Julie
For over twenty-five years, the Sydney-based artist Julie Rrap has sought to disclose and unravel the ways in which the human body has been defined throughout western history and culture. She does so with a seductive wit, an outward display of pleasure, and a determination to match the gaze of her audiences. Deeply based in the story of the body, Rrap’s art is always a surprise, resulting from an individual ingenuity that aligns with a feminist strategy to continuously seek and present the unpredictable and unanticipated. This exhibition surveys Rrap’s work over three decades and focuses on three key themes in her work: the trickster, the body double and the ways in which her work represents the body as a fragmented entity. Often playing the role of thief, vixen or mischievous impostor, Rrap has worked as a kind of ‘trickster’, literally ‘occupying’ the work of some of western art’s most famous paintings or pop-cultural images. During the 1980s, artists such as Edvard Munch provided vehicles for Rrap’s exploration of the ways in which the female nude had been represented through the history of art, as in her 1984 series Persona and Shadow. ‘The historical paintings’, she explains, ‘were really stepping-off points for me to do a performance’. By mobilising these well-known images, Rrap unravels the condition of woman as ‘other’ and this strategy has persisted in her work through to the A-R-MOUR series (2000). Throughout the 1990s until the present day, Rrap has used her own body in various postures through shadow play, masquerade, mirror and mime. She performs as a ‘body double’ for the still and moving camera. Drawing on the notion that gender is in itself a performance, Rrap has forged the theme of the stand-in, a prosthetic body double, and her works often invite viewers to imagine themselves in such a role. This is evident in sculptural installations such as Vital Statistics (1997) and Hard Core/Soft Core (2006) through to the most recent work in this exhibition, Body Double (2007). Increasingly, Rrap represents a body in pieces, inevitably raising ethical and aesthetic issues inrelation to how we depict, interpret and understand the human form. Such issues have been discussed both in broad social terms (for example in relation to the Abu Ghraib photographs or in connection with genetic engineering), as well as in the field of art. For Rrap, the body and its representation is porous, excessive and oozing with a sense of tease and trickery. In works such as Hairline Crack (1992), Porous Bodies (1999) and Overstepping (2001), this body oversteps the margins of comfort, taking us into the zone of transgression. It is, however, always in the company of a foil that more often than not, allows us to laugh out loud with the artist.
(Source: froghunting)
Put a Fish Up Your Nose, 1975 by Mike Parr
Mike Parr (born 1945) is an Australian performance artist and printmaker. Parr’s works have been exhibited in Australia and internationally, including in Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States.
(Source: gallowhill)
Amanda Millis has been getting away with art making since the age of four when she decided to draw a mural on her parents’ freshly painted wall right after one of her many childhood homes was redecorated. Amanda is a native Texan and now lives in London by way of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and NYC. Millis has a BFA in sculpture from California College of the Arts and she is undergoing an MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has shown her work at various galleries and also has an undying commitment to accessible art with all-inclusive publics. Some of these showings include: Long Beach Art Walk, 2005; Tremé Public Art Installation (New Orleans, LA), 2006; California College of the Arts (Oakland, CA) 2006-7; Magnet Gallery (San Francisco), 2007; The Eagle New York (New York), 2009; The Suffolk (New York), 2010; a couple street corners; a cemetery; a church; an abandoned frat house; and a lot of bathroom walls along the way.
Amanda was a 2011 grantee of the Brooklyn Arts Council, NY Department of Cultural Affairs Grant for her project Women’s Work – a collaborative textiles sculpture created by female identified rape survivors (exhibited at Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn, in 2011-2012). She has been reviewed and published in The Bay Times (San Francisco, CA), The Body: The Complete HIV/AIDS Resource (New York, NY), The New York Daily News (New York, NY) and The Kinsey Institute’s Website: Kinsey Confidential (Bloomington, IN). www.m-amandamillis.com
Hide the dolls, here come the thieves by Àngels Ribé, 1977
Seiji Shimoda / On the Table / Lower Ossington Theatre, New York / Saturday March 22, 2008 / / Photography: Miklos Legrady ©
Interview and more images from the performance click here —> http://artaktivist.org/121212/
Say Hello!
Are you an artist? Do you use your body as a form of expression through your art? Send us your work, we would love to share it with others and learn more about you.
You are awesome.x
(Source: bodyincontemporaryart, via intzieyianni)
Chris Burden- ‘Shoot’ (1971)
“The physicality of Shoot was very real. The piece exists as a photographic image, but it exists as a mental image in people’s imaginations too, even for those who didn’t necessarily see the piece: ‘Did you hear about the artist who shot himself?’”
(Source: marvelous-tiraaaah)