|
누리.널리.알림 |
| 1998/06/19(14:11) from gumnuri.kookmin.ac.kr | |
| 작성자 : mike press (hazel1@hotmail.com) | 조회수 : 7748 , 줄수 : 32 |
| 회신: WhitetihW |
|---|
 내려받기 :
nuriwhitezi.JPG
(16 Kbytes)
|
|
지 금 지 백 지 금누리 님이 작성했던 글:> 담> 담> 담> 담> 담> 담 > ZLzlizi DT UNNATURAL ACTS hazel white Hazel White has always known when it was time to leave. Her career is mapped by a succession of radical departures. From a quiet Scottish coastal town to Edinburgh University, reading English, History and Politics. From there to a career in restaurant management. From paying waiters to paying her own way through another degree, this time in jewellery and metalwork. From Scotland to the Royal College of Art. From London to a full time lecturing post in Sheffield. From Sheffield to Seoul. From student to teacher. From castings to computers. From craft to art. From object to image. From decoration to communication. Such departures, frankly, are unnatural. Too much contemporary craft either has nothing to say or labours at expressing banalities, resulting in many makers finding a refuge in technique, tradition or "witty observations on the vessel form". In the midst of all these amusing but empty vessels, one hungers for passion, content and feeling - for something that will slam your head against the wall, rather than just dangle off your ear. Hazel White is in the business of slamming people's heads. It's not British. It's not craft. Frankly, it's unnatural. Unnatural Acts is an exhibition of work that reflects on personal experience - of being a woman, of the varied influences and environments that Hazel has worked in, and of her experience and response to 'craft'. But going beyond the personal, it is equally significant as a show which captures a new vitality in the crafts as makers use craft thinking to step outside the accepted 'frame' of craft, to engage with new technology, popular culture and (if you will excuse the term) 'the postmodern condition'. Like some others in the new generation of today's makers, Hazel White's work is reflexive, provocative and fluid. Fluidity is evident in the continually developing techniques that Hazel explores and creates with. There is also a fluid edge between the maker, the work and the issues with which it deals. Disentangling the person from the work is not possible. There is craft in her work, but it is not of craft. Her work draws on her personal experience, on her departures: "I even get mileage out of the breakup of relationships." It is autobiographical, it is didactic, it crosses boundaries, and it is political. It is about her feelings. This exhibition captures two significant departures in her current work - from objects to images, and from technique to content. These departures are related: "The reason for moving into digital images is because the issues I deal with - of gender and sexuality - were second place to technique and material value when trying to work within the parameters of craft." Hazel has continually explored technique in her work, often very eclectically outside the boundaries of her 'craft'. At the Royal College of Art she used surgical glue to attach jewellery to the body. This developed into the idea of using surgical screws to permanently attach wedding rings into the bone: "Once inserted, it is there for life. Of course there are side-effects, of infection and tissue trauma, but then marriage isn't easy." Photography and the use of photographic imagery on objects also recurs in her work. Her undergraduate dissertation on the war photographer Don McCullin was a critical stage in this, and led to her own self-definition as a maker: "I slowly came to the realisation that what I wanted to do with my work was not decorate, but communicate." This new work reflects an explicit sense of feminism which had seemingly been denied until recently. This new consciousness arises from recent experiences: "In Britain I laboured under the misapprehension that I was treated equal to men. But having spent a year in Korea I realise that British society is actually not so different. Without adequate support, women who wish to pursue a career have to forego relationships and children, then they are perceived as being less 'feminine'. I am faced with the choice of losing either my femininity or my independence." She wishes us to view her work as metaphors for this condition; to see the female body - her body - as communicating something other than a male sexual fantasy. The personal is the political. Digital photography allows her to combine hand made, found and digitally created objects with images of her own body. This new medium has more parallels with painting than conventional photography, and is suited to Hazel's creative methods that are rooted in drawing, making and the need to communicate. It also allows her to 'remix' her work. In art, craft and popular music, digital technology allows us to use 'finished art works' as components in new works, to continually re-use, re-apply and re-think. In using images of work completed over the last few years, Hazel is re-thinking, and re-contextualising. This represents another fluidity, between our notions of the finished and the unfinished. Brian Eno recently observed the significance of this creative practice: "We stop regarding things as fixed and unchangeable, as preordained, and we increasingly find ourselves practising the idea that we have some control. Most importantly, perhaps, we might start to think the same way about ourselves: that we are unfinished (and unfinishable) beings whose task is constantly to re-examine and remix our ideas and our identities." Control and the re-examining of identity lie at the heart of Hazel White's work. In digital imagery she has found a highly appropriate medium to explore and express her experiences, responses and ideas. The potter Alison Britton describes the main mission of craft as "the skilful achievement of relevance". This expresses perfectly the development of Hazel's work - using skill, craft, a sensibility for processes, objects and images in a unique and personal way to express ideas relevant to the maker and the world in which she lives. After many seemingly unnatural departures, Hazel White has now arrived in a medium best suited to her creative mission. The digital arts provide fluidity and opportunities for reflexive practise that were denied to her in the crafts. Unnatural Acts marks a new starting point for this exciting and challenging artist. Professor Mike Press Sheffield Hallam University, UK |
|
|