In this Research Report I will be discussing Julie Rrap and Ricky Swallow, in relation to my own art work. In this project I will be working with wood and developing the idea of furniture being a body with internal organs. I am going to looking at the idea of the ear. I want to show the speaker as having the internal working of an ear a draw attention to the idea of the frustration of not being able to hear and not being heard, the material of wood is solid and emphases the idea of not being heard. The reason I have chosen these artist is because Julie Rrap works with the body and Ricky Swallow works with wood the combination of these artist are a relevant mix for my art work.
The project I am doing is inspired by my own experiences of not being able to hear and that often felt as if I couldn’t be heard even at the loudest of times. I have chosen to incorporate a speaker into this work because the speaker makes sound which is about being heard and it in some ways has similar features that a human ear has. In my work I am going to be constructing a speaker out of wood and carving the ear as well as all the features inside the ear which enable it to hear. I am going to be referencing the proverb “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” (Berkeley 1982), the materials is wood and it plays on the idea of if that tree feel would it hear it’s self.
A contemporary artist who works with wood is Ricky Swallow. Swallows work is intriguing in the way that he combines his concepts and his technique to develop his works. One of his works that court my eye in relation to my own work is The Multistylus Programme 1999. Swallow is an artist who is less interested in how loud his artwork can speak than how closely it can make you listen (Paton 2004, p.64). The Multistylus Programme is an odd example that supports this statement because the artwork is one of the only artworks in which he produces noise with. The Speakers are represented by polystyrene cups. Another sculpture of Swallows that I can relate to my work is The Bricoleur, 2006 seen in figure 3. Swallows sculptures address fundamental issues that lie at the core of who we are (National Gallery of Victoria 2010) his works represent the idea that objects have lives and that We are our things, We are things, Swallow also attempts to represent the idea that we can be defined by the objects we collect overtime and that we are ultimately objects ourselves (National Gallery of Victoria 2010).
Julia Rrap is another great artist who I often refer back to when researching for my own person works. Rrap is a contemporary Australian artist and has been a major Figure in as a Australian contemporary art for over twenty years (Roslyn Oxley Gallery 9 Gallery 2004). Rrap has worked with many different mediums including sculptures and photography in an ongoing project with the focus of representation of the body, which is similar to what I am trying to do in relation to my own project I plan to develop on a particular body part,the ear and the organs linked to the ear and hope to eventually incorporate photography into the finished work. Julie Rrap is an artist who flaunts her femininity like a weapon (Alexander 1998, p.8) something that I feel is important to remember when discussing Rrap’s works; her works are almost always related to the female body. Vitual Statistics, 1997 is an example of Rraps use of the body in her art making, as well as an example of her use of radical reworking’s of the relationship between the body and the image (Alexander 1998, p14).
Everything I have talked about in my research report I feel is significant when discussing my project. Julie Rrap and Ricky Swallow are artists who I both greatly appreciate and admire, they are two artists that I feel have a significant impact on me in relation to my project because they both have done things within their own works that help me to develop my own project Rrap for years has been creating a series of works using negative impressions of the body (National Gallery of Australia 2002) to an extent I feel that this is what I too am trying to do within my own project. I am trying to represent a negative side of the ear which is a body part, and the frustration of a body part not working. Ricky Swallows relevance to my project is that he uses wood and he’s ideas that objects have lives is important in relation to my project because that is similar to what I am trying to display, the idea that a speaker has the internal working of the Ear, the speaker can hear. Although with both artist express their idea differently to how I am each have done thing or do thing that are relevant to my own project as seen throughout my report. Significantly the use of wood and representation of an object as having feeling and an object having a bodily function.
Reference List:
- Alexander, G 1998, Julie Rrap, Piper Press, Sydney, Australia.
- Berkeley, G 1982, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis/Cambridge.
- National Gallery of Australia 2002, Rrap, Julie, Artist Statement, accessed 19/03/2012, http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/SculpturePrize03/Detail.cfm?IRN=122552
- National Gallery of Victoria 2010, Ricky Swallow: The Bricoleur, accessed 20/03/2012,http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/exhibitions/ricky-swallow
- Paton, J 2004, Ricky Swallow: Filed recordings, Craft House, Australia.
- Roslyn Oxley Gallery 9 Gallery 2004, Julie Rrap-Soft Targets, accessed 20/03/2012, http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/news/releases/2004/10/14/82/
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