Gillian Wearing

A feminist agenda sometimes. Revealing random peoples hopes and fears at others. Very interesting female artist who challenges our culture and perceptions at every opportunity.

These are from a series of photographs where Wearing went out on the streets and found people at random and got them to write something personal on the paper and then took portraits of them. 1963

Wearing often dresses up or wears masks and face hair to change her appearance; a comment on our looks obsessed society where we all eventually end up wearing a mask.

This series of 'Pin-up's' is very interesting. A serious comment on the society we live in today. Here is what Wearing wrote about the piece in Artforum;

"THE INSPIRATION FOR my latest project came from a statistic released in the UK last year that said that two-thirds of young females would like a career in glamour modeling. I thought that this sounded unrealistic; one of the catalysts for this increase is a model called Jordan who has become a multimillionaire for selling her image (and also for being very frank about her life). This must seem to many people a quick way to get rich. It got me thinking about the reality and fantasy of being a pinup.
I advertised in newspapers and on the Internet for people who would like to be transformed into a pinup or glamour model. I received hundreds of replies, and by looking at the images I selected around thirty to audition. The audition had a twofold reason: to explain the project and to see how genuine the models’ interest was. I only wanted people who were enthusiastic, who had real aspirations.
I wanted the images to reflect a more Hollywood type of glamour as opposed to a “Page Three” style (as in the UK tabloid The Sun). Perhaps this was because I was also thinking of Regen Projects and about having the exhibition in Los Angeles. I took pictures of the models and then Photoshopped them, but I wanted the final product to be a painting, because with painting there is a seductiveness that enhances the transformations of the models; it looks less manufactured than an overworked photograph. Painting isn’t simply a substitute for Photoshop; in the process of Photoshopping an image, it can become quite dead, and painting, through its physical processes, brings the image back to life."

Lorna Simpson

Waterbearer 1986

Calling upon her position as an African-American woman, Lorna Simpson plays with perception of women and race in her work. Using text and photography, almost like a slogan campaign or a flyer for political change.

Very truthful and brutally honest, her work is about creating her own role and place as she sees fit whilst ackowledging and commenting on the roles of African-American women in the past.

Wigs II 1996

Five day forcast 1998

Untitled (Two Necklines) 1986

Carolee Schneemann

Here is an artist I find particuarly inspirational and intreguing.

Using shapes from the body, themes of the female, menstruation, politics (Marxism and other male dominated aspects of society) and artefact are all things that I relate to strongly. A perfomance and video artist, her work is very physical and strong.

Fresh Blood

Fresh Blood

Meat Joy

"Meat Joy has the character of an erotic rite: excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, rope brushes, paper scrap. It's propulsion is toward the ecstatic-- shifting and turning between tenderness, wilderness, precision, abandon: qualities which could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent."

Vulva's Morphia

Vulva's Morphia

Sally Mann

Some controversial but I think, beautiful photographs.

Fragile yet creepy in an early horror movie type way, these photographs are very sensitive and incredibly well created. They're macabre but ultimately deal with the fragile beauty of life and death.

Candy Cigarette 1989

Hayhook

Christine Borland

Another contemporary female artist that relates a lot to my own work.

I find her interesting due to her medical/bodily approach to her work and the way she uses collection and repetition.

At the moment, I've been thinking about collection and museum presentation and artefact. These pieces feel to me like they're using that same language to communicate. They are cold and presented, collected and kept.

Lynda Benglis

Here's a real feminist artist who makes work that I think connects to my own rather well.

Very bodily, very 'fuck you' to male dominated art.

Come 1964 (I think it should be spelt Cum)

 I love these melted metal shapes. They almost move, they're incredibly sexual and erotic whilst being cold and hard at the same time.

Alina Szapocznikow

This Polish artist is one I look up to and respect a great deal. Having been a child and a Jew during the Houlocaust, and living through it, her relationship with parenthood, feminity and most of all, her own body is so there in her work. She's subtle and shocking and investigates her own form without shame or secrecy. This stuff is incredible. I have been so inspired by her work.

Herbarium XIII

These images are so disturbing, so honest and so utterly powerful that I find myself staring at them for hours.

She seems trapped and yet free at the same time. Her body is her subject.

Dessert III 1970

This dessert series really makes me shiver. The idea of a womans body being served up for male consumption is not something that is alien to any woman living in today's world.

Yayoi Kusama

This crazy Japanese artist has got me thinking recently.

I definatley feel a connection with her and my own work. It's so different, but I feel her obsessiveness, that compulsion to do something again and again and again. Repetative, but for a reason.

Marino Marini

One of my favorite artists, I can hardley begin to explain why I love Marini. There is something so incredible about his work, so free and freeing to see. Sexual yet innocent at the same time. It reminds me of children being naked on the beach; no shame in their exhibitsionism. But then again, the sexual themes that I'm sure Freud would have picked out with ease of the man and horse are so obvious I almost feel stupid saying it. 
But I think there is something deeper in Marini's work than pure sex/beastiality which is so easy to interpret. It's something that makes a man with a massive erection on horseback with his arms spread out beautiful, rather than weird. It makes you smile, and makes you feel liberated rather than sexual or disturbed.

Where I first saw Marini : at the Guggenhiem in Venice

" It is very difficult to explain how exactly a work of art is born. In fact, it is almost inexplicable, but at a certain moment an emotion falls upon an artist and for some artists this feeling arrives in a descriptive form, while for others in a world of color. In my case the emotion arrives in color. For example, I have a color that torments me.. let's take perhaps a red, a blue, a yellow - this color continually invades my mind until I begin to put this color onto paper and imagine this color becoming a drawing. Then, all of the sudden, this drawing begins to take form, the form, and this form becomes true form."

The Angel of the City 1948

Susana 1943

Horse and Rider 1947

Horseman 1947

Juggler 1953

 Marini also had his roots in painting, and prepared for sculptures by drawing, which I respect a lot, and alone they are works of art too;

Horse and Juggler 1953

Juggler and Two Horses, Blue, Yellow and Black 1953

Marini was inspired by Etruscan art (from Nothern Italy between 9th-2nd C BC) and you can see the connection he made with these ancient peoples;

Perhaps he got his very male sexual freedom from Greek images such as these

Here are two from the Marini museum in Florence;

The Great war

Walking Woman