Artist References from Session 4
Rebecca Warren
Rebecca Warren is a British contemporary sculptor who was nominated for the Turner Prize 2006 (an award that is like a contemporary art version of a BAFTA).
In some of her work she uses unfired clay (normally clay is fired and glazed in a kiln to make it rock hard and brittle). Traditionally sculptural material is made from more fixed (impermeable) substances such as bronze or marble; because the clay is unfired her work shares a sense of creative potential of something that may be unfinished or still progressing and movable.
Franz West
Franz West is an Austrian artist who, in the early 1970s, began making a series of small, portable sculptures called “Adaptives” (“Paßtücke”). They are awkward-looking plaster objects that were only completed as artworks when the viewer picked them up and carried them around, or performed some other inherently slapstick action with them.
Associating sculpture with an action (using sculpture as a prop from the theatre) can be quite exciting and unexpected and diffuses the divide between art object in a gallery and spectator.
Rachel Harrison
Rachel Harrison is a contemporary American sculptor from New York. Her practice extends the historical legacy of assemblage, (sculpture comprised of found objects). Harrison merges sculpture with painting and positions unlikely objects against one another. This playfully explores systems of classification and the way in which the meaning and reading of an image can be manipulated.
Laura Phillips
Local emerging artist extraordinaire working predominantly with performance, sculpture and film.
Clip from 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'
In the film, protagonist, Roy, sketches and makes various models of the same mountain-like shape. Mashed potato is one of his more experimental choice of mediums.
