Arts Recommend: Gillian Ayres Exhibition, an interesting interpretation of 'Starry Night' and more …

Every week we bring you our special selection of all things arty. From interesting websites to highly anticipated performances for your diary, there is something to spark all kinds of creative interest.

1. Gillian Ayres Exhibition @ RAMM 

Gillian Ayres’ Exhibition, ‘Paintings and Prints 1986 to 2011’ is at the RAMM until 15th September. One of the leading abstract artists of the post-war generation, this is a great opportunity to see her work which has previously been exhibited in the Tate and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. For more information click here.

2. 24 HRS in Photos Installation 

Eric Kessels’ installation consists of printed photographs of all the images uploaded to Flickr in one day. The incredible amount of paper forms a mountain which curves down to the viewer’s feet, portraying how we are constantly upload and are bombarded with images on the web.

Photo credits: http://beautifuldecay.com

3. Dancesport Taster Sessions

Whether you are a Fresher, a second year or even a third year wanting to make the most of your time at Exeter, try something new which is bound to be fun! Come along to the Dancesport Society’s taster sessions in Freshers’ week:

Latin and Ballroom session: Wednesday 18th September 2-4pm Great Hall

Salsa session: Thursday 19th September 2-4pm Great Hall

4. Mosaic of Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ using Hubble Space Telescope images

Astronomy student Alex Parker has recreated what is arguably Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous painting, his 1889 ‘Starry Night’, using the hundred most popular deep space Hubble Telescope images.

Image Credit: Alex Parker

Van Gogh himself said: “I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” Alex’s mosaic embodies this sentiment, adding another dimension of sublime beauty with the miniature telescope photographs which let us peer further into the universe whilst reminding us that these are proportions far beyond human contemplation. 

Click here to have a look at the mosaic in more detail.

5. Human Movement as Sculpture

The Taiwan design house JL Design and KORB created these adverts for a TV company, digitally creating wood, water and other sculptures to look like they were produced by human movement.

Bryony James and Giverny Masso, Online Arts Editors

Click to read last week’s Arts Recommend.

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New Year and the blogosphere

The phenomenon of blogging… it’s like Facebook, but with strangers, and it’s not your social life, it’s your interests. Free websites such as Tumblr, Blogger, and WordPress have become the new platform for amateur artists to display their work freely without any dictation or restriction from higher authority. The varieties of talent levels available on such platforms are exhilarating. From newly starting artists who simply fancy getting ideas out there and some advice, to professionals selling their work on posters and mugs, blogging can serve as inspiration to anyone.

 

Photo by David Berkowitz on Flickr

From a viewer’s point of view, the website provides a new, fresh, and abundant database of art like never before. If you are yourself an artist, it is much easier to find artists that are similar to your work and that you could draw personal inspiration from on Tumblr, for example, than in a gallery. This does have its disadvantages as in a gallery everything is pre-selected for you to be guaranteed good quality, whereas on blogging websites, by typing ‘collage art’ into the search, there will be much sifting to do before finding something that works for you. But the advantage of this is that such works exists and are readily available for you to use. The diversity is exciting and it is amazing how many artists you can explore in little time. It is also easy to print anything of anyone else’s and experiment with it instantaneously, and make some of your own art based on other people just like you.

 

As a user, blogging is very much like personal advertising of your own work, except that you can’t just put it out there and expect people to ‘discover’ you. It is an interaction. You follow and comment on other people’s blog to then receive follows and comments on your own work. It is dedication. In this sense it is truly fantastic the support system you can get from people you don’t know. Blogs will also have the tendency to push an artist to keep creating. If you want to keep your viewers viewing, you need to keep posting and creating. Blogging also provides the possibility of increasing any part-time job you may want as an artist. Many artists use blogs as a more casual surface, with sometimes less professional pieces, to grow a fan base and community and then link this blog to their website.

 

So overall, social media is making art more accessible and is making it easier to self-promote online. Having only recently joined the blogging world I have to say I was surprised at how encouraging it is to see other people at similar levels doing the same things as me. It does serve as a pushing force to keep creating very often, and to keep posting. Blogging with art is something I recommend, if not for the long term, for a month or so.

 

By Naomi Pacific