Installation artist

The first video installation artist that I have chosen is Sam Taylor-Wood. Born in 1967, Taylor-wood is well known for being an actor, photographer and director. She graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1990.

An example of her work would be Beckham Sleeping, a short video of the celebrity David Beckham while he sleeps. This video is meant to show people a different look to what they usually see. Beckham is a massive star and is always shown in the magazines as glamorous and having an amazing, lively life style, but in this video it shows that even though he has an amazing life he still does what everyone else has to do, which is sleep.  Furthermore it shows that because he has an active life style he may need sleep a lot more than other people.

Also Beckham is presented as being a manly character; this video shows his at his most vulnerable time. The only type of people that others usually watch sleep is babies, it kind of contradict his character, presenting his as a baby like person.

Although, in the video Beckham looks like he has been positioned to still look, good in a sense. His tattoo is showing, his hair looks like it has been styled and his arms are in a position to puff out his chest. This may be showing the fact that even though he’s like us; he’s treated like an object, he’s probably told what to do by his advisors a lot of the time so he is used to doing what other people tell him to do.

This certain piece reminds me of an installation first performed by Tilda Swinton in 1995, where she slept in a glass box at the serpentine gallery for random tourists to gaze at her.

It also reminded me of the long film made by Andy Warhol of his friend sleeping for five hours twenty minutes. It showed people what strange things we may get up to while we are sleeping.

Another example of her work would be Prelude. This video is of a man playing a song on the cello, in an empty room, but the cello is missing.  This video shows a man with a sense of loss, even though he has nothing with him, he continues to play his cello because maybe it’s what he loves or all he had. The music that the man is playing adds to the effect of the amount of sadness that the man may be suffering.

This video also gave me a sense of determination; I can relate it to someone who has lost everything, the fact that there is no one else with him could show that no one stood by him but still fights for what they believe in.

This video reminds me of another piece of work that she created called sigh, this included a vast amount of people playing imaginary instruments, directed by a conductor without his baton.

This artist did give me some inspiration for my own work; I like the fact that a lot of her work is very simple but it still created an impact. I’d like to take this aspect and put it into my work somehow.

 

The second artist that I chose was Mark McGowan. He is described in a guardian article as a very odd character, although his pieces are very controversial and have a massive impact.

Most of his art work has to have some sort of reaction by someone in order for it to have an effect. For example he created a piece called The Running Tap, in 2005. He had the idea to leave a tap in the back of a photography studio running for a whole year. The only reason that this “got big” so to speak is because Thames water had threatened to turn off his water supply.  This piece of art was created in order to create consciousness for the environment and to raise awareness of wastage of water. His idea was to ask people why it was okay to waste 100 litres of water to clean their dishes under a running tap. He was comparing the amount of water he was using to the amount that the country was wasting.

This did actually have an effect on some people, a woman that had left her tap running for her cat when she left for work every day had heard about McGowan’s piece of work. It made her realise the amount of water she was wasting and made her change her ways.

Another piece of art that he created was Full English breakfast, where he showcased the UKs eating habits; he sat in a bath of baked beans with chips up his nose and sausages attached to his head for a fortnight.

He created this piece because one of his foreign friends criticized the national fare. This piece showed me that he is so proud of our national dish that he is willing to bathe in it for two weeks. Sarah McIntyre said in an article that because the beans were so cold his body system went funny and he found himself urinating in the water.

This piece also showed me the fact that the English love their food so much that they would even be willing to go and see a man bathing in a dirty bath tub full of filthy baked beans.

This certain piece reminded me of another piece of his work called Dead Soldier, this was where he laid in a foetal position in the middle of Birmingham city centre, dressed in combat gear and a red beret. This installation was raised to questions about the horrifying facts about conflict.

Most of MCGowans work is created to raise questions about subjects that are affecting our country and he wants to make people realise that they are able to do something about it.

Even though I really liked all of Mark McGowans work and the points that he is trying to put forward his work didn’t really inspire me.