This might not be local to Ireland and not everyone will see it but I was lucky enough to be able to visit this exhibition of sheer creativity, originality and down right beauty. ‘Sculpture by the Sea’ illuminated an already sun kissed beach in Perth Australia.
The aim of this blog is not intended to make you run to the nearest travel agent and invest in new flip flops but rather demonstrate the theory that artists and designers have been expressing for generations, Art is not restricted to a canvas, nor confined within four wall of a national museum.
The Annual ‘Sculpture by the Sea’ turns iconic Cottesloe Beach into an open-air art gallery and this year exhibited 64 pieces by 60 different artists, each with their own take on what signified beauty to them. Local artist Geoffery Drake-Brockman's sculpture is a solar powered counter. Everyone that walks through its archway will improve the tally. Not to mention the kids who ran through it about twenty times in five minutes. "It's about the individual's choice as to whether they are counted or not," he said. To some this is seen as a statement about surveillance, or they can just see it as light-hearted. Argentinian artist Alejandro Propato is one of these international artists. His piece - Arte de las Playas was easily the largest of the displays, with over 20 coloured flags flying over the sand. His manipulation of the wind as it fought its way through the flags to me represented his respect for nature and how life can be the exhibition itself.
Other pieces on display include a large caterpillar-like creation made entirely of colourful bottle tops, an invisible shed and a pearl necklace made of crayfish floats. A truly remarkable exhibition of space, colour, natures elements and most of undeniable beauty that in my view is a shame to take down.
PS Lee submitted this blog while on extended holidays in Australia. True dedication! Dave.
I'm a big fan of JP Donleavy and his book 'The Ginger Man'. He was interviewed on Off The Ball on Newstalk recently and there's no doubt that he's some character. He's had a varied and colourful career and seems to have been a boxer of some quality. In his youth he was an undefeated amateur welterweight and met with Joe Frazier among others.
One career that I wasn't aware of was his painting and drawing. As he lives in Ireland he has exhibited here several times and he is currently showing work in The Molesworth Gallery. His work is definitely like his writing - unique and quite offbeat at times! It's very interesting stuff though and if you're in Dublin worth dropping into.
And if you have a thousand euro or so lying around the place why not buy a piece or two!
Believe it or not this image is not a product of Photoshop. It is a four-storey sculpture made of welded steel and created by the New Zealand artist Neil Dawson. While it looks like an optical illusion it is very much the real thing and looks equally convincing from any angle.
The giant piece of paper, which is titled 'Horizons', is located in Dawson's native New Zealand and a quick look on the web showed other examples of his work. I particularly liked 'Ferns', a metal ball in Wellington, New Zealand which is 14m above Civic Square by means of steel cables. It looks great in daylight but is even more impressive at night because the cables become almost invisible. I wonder if Dublin City Council have any spare euros to commission a work...?
For this blog entry I'd like to write about something a little different. It's a book recommendation, but this is a bit more than a book. I am talking about the graphic novel 'Maus' by Art Spiegelman. For anybody who isn't really sure what a graphic novel is (I'm not!), it's basically a novel or story told in comic book format. The term graphic novel is most probably used as 'comic' doesn't really encompass the serious and often difficult themes that they frequently explore. So what is 'Maus' about? Art Spiegelman's father was an Auschwitz survivor and Maus tells his story in simple, but beautifully composed, black and white graphics. Ingeniously he uses the visual metaphor of depicting the Jews as mice and the Nazis as sadistic looking cats. This has the effect of focusing the reader's attention on the story without distracting from it's often subtle themes and visual clues.
There is no doubt that Spiegelman would have made an excellent graphic designer as he understands visual iconography and language superbly well. Lots of clever images are found throughout the book - Spiegelman's parents fleeing Poland stand at a crossroads in the shape of a swastika for example.
What really distinguishes Maus from other Holocaust memorials is the clever way that it also documents Spiegelman's frequently difficult relationship with his father. This relationship is interweaved throughout his father's narrative and his father is capable of arousing both sympathy and frustration in Spiegelman as well as the reader. At one stage the graphic novel diverges as Spiegelman discusses his concerns with his wife that he is portraying his father as the racist stereotype of a Jew.
This exploration of their relationship allows the novel to work on several levels and also shows the difficulty that Spiegelman has in dealing with such an overwhelming historical subject. In some sense his documenting of his father's history is an effort to understand their own relationship and the distance between them. All that said, I strongly recommend this book. If you think of the Beano or Spiderman when you hear the word 'comics' this could be the one that changes your mind!
Local artist Geoffery Drake-Brockman's sculpture is a solar powered counter. Everyone that walks through its archway will improve the tally. Not to mention the kids who ran through it about twenty times in five minutes. "It's about the individual's choice as to whether they are counted or not," he said. To some this is seen as a statement about surveillance, or they can just see it as light-hearted.
Argentinian artist Alejandro Propato is one of these international artists. His piece - Arte de las Playas was easily the largest of the displays, with over 20 coloured flags flying over the sand. His manipulation of the wind as it fought its way through the flags to me represented his respect for nature and how life can be the exhibition itself.
I'm a big fan of JP Donleavy and his book 'The Ginger Man'. He was interviewed on Off The Ball on Newstalk recently and there's no doubt that he's some character. He's had a varied and colourful career and seems to have been a boxer of some quality. In his youth he was an undefeated amateur welterweight and met with Joe Frazier among others.
Believe it or not this image is not a product of Photoshop. It is a four-storey sculpture made of welded steel and created by the New Zealand artist Neil Dawson. While it looks like an optical illusion it is very much the real thing and looks equally convincing from any angle.
