Have a peek at some pictures from the awards ceremony and grand prize reveal for this season of Chester Fields:
For a chance to see all the winning submissions don’t forget to check out our Online Exhibit!
The show will be up until JUNE 30TH, 2012 at:
THE PRESCOTT PRESENTATION CENTRE
UPDATE: Check out this great video of our opening reception!
Hi folks,
As a refresher when submitting your digital files they must follow the format:
lastname_firstinitial_01.jpg
So, if my Name is Chester Fields, my jpeg file would be titled:
fields_c_01.jpg
Please send digital jpeg files to chesterfieldscontest@gmail.com
(OR drop off photo quality prints OR digital jpeg files on disk at Presentation House Gallery, 333 Chesterfield Avenue, North Vancouver, BC V7M 3G9 (hours))
Please include the following information:
*** include anything you think might assist someone in understanding your pictures. For example: Who or what is in your photo? Who or what is in the archival photo? Why did you decide to us it as your inspiration? How do you see the two photos relating to each other? What photographers/photos have you seen that might have influenced your process or supercharged your idea machine!?! ETC ETC ETC!
It’s quite possible that Andy Warhol was one of the most prolific, celebrated and thought-provoking artists of the mid-century period in North America. Also possible? He was a pack rat!
Sixteen Jackies, 1964, Andy Warhol
As some of you will already know, the majority of Warhol’s output came from collecting – everything from trashy tabloids, to soup can labels to old photographs – and then reproducing these works to form insightful, an often cutting, remarks on contemporary society. He worked across a wide range of media, but is most well known for his silkscreen repetitions from the 1960s. To create these works he would isolate an individual image and then repeat the image several times over to create a large scale pattern with variations in colour. While the works are often printed with bright garish colours, their subject matter (or the stories behind them) often revealed a much darker picture of America and it’s values.
Little Electric Chair, 1964-1965, Andy Warhol
Little Race Riot, 1963, Andy Warhol
Does “Little Race Riot” remind you of any other pieces we’ve seen in the last few weeks?
While Warhol’s output was constant and vast, his collection of “source” material has far surpassed the yield of his production. Called “Time Capsules“, the artist kept all of his clippings and ephemera in plain cardboard boxes labelled by month and year. After his death in 1987 the collection was moved to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA where it is available to researchers by appointment.
"Time Capsules", The Warhol archives at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA.
While British artist Tacita Dean is most widely known for her work in 16mm film she also persues projects using photo collage and photogravure. Her image “Fernweh” from 2009 is a 2.3 by 5 meter piece created from four 19th century photographs and postcards found at various flea markets in Europe.
Fernweh, 2009, Tacita Dean
According to Dean, the term “Fernweh” is a German term for the antonym of homesickness, “an act for a distant past”. The idea of wanting to leave home, to relocate but maybe not knowing where to go or how to get (back) there.
Tacita’s image is a composition of longing, remembering and honouring.
Study for Fernweh, 2008, Tacita Dean.
“Fernweh is an improbable landscape made of cliffs, forest and dunes. I created it from four small discoloured nineteenth century photographs that I found in flea markets some time ago. The craggy horizon is a famous outcrop, called Sächsische Schweiz – Saxony’s Switzerland, which is near Dresden. The foreground is unknown sand and scrub. Finding a path amongst the vegetation and boulders of the photographic distortions, I imagined Goethe’s voyage to Italy, particularly his parcours south of Rome on his way to Naples. ‘Fernweh’ is discontinued parlance for a longing to travel, an aching to get away. Different, I imagine, from ‘Wanderlust’, which is a more spirited desire to be in the landscape. It is the etymological opposite of the German word, ‘Heimweh’, which means homesickness. We do not have a single word in English for this more considered desire to be gone. This work should be approached through its title.”
I’ve spoken to some of you over the last few weeks of the importance of digitization and conservation of artwork. Here is a great little film from the Art Gallery of Ontario on the conservation of artist Iain Baxter&’s polaroids (And yes, the “&” is legally a part of his name..)
Sort of makes you think, will a jpg always be a jpg?
Have you ever used polaroids to create an image?
Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa uses photographs, pin and thread to create visual maps of places that existed and the (sometimes empty) structures that replace them. Focusing primarily on the changing architecture in his native Havana, Garaicoa chooses building that have fallen into disrepair, or in some cases were never completed, that have been slated for demolition and photographs them before they vanish. Once gone, her reshoots the empty spaces and uses pins inserted into the photograph to trace where the building once stood (or might have stood).
Untitled (L.A.), Carlos Garaicoa, 2004.
Part artistic project, architectural study and archeological excavation, Garaicoa uses architectural photography to contemplate the evolving landscape of his hometown. Specifically, realities and possibilities that are created within, and on, the city.
Untitled, Carlos Garaicoa, 2004.
While the photos used by the artist were not found in an archive, they become archival in nature as time passes, development continues and the sites are revisited by connecting the (non-existent) dots.
