Primary Research (Specialist Project)

Yesterday me and my pal George went to London to look around some galleries and museums. We wanted some ideas and reserch that was relevant to our projects. We went to the Science Museum, the Saatchi & the Photographers museum. What really stood out for me was the Saatchi. There was a huge variation of art work in there, from sculptures to instillations, paintings and photos.

This is the Saatchi gallery in Chelsea.

We walked inside and were immediately told to take our bags off which I didnt understand. Luckily we were able to take both photos and videos inside.

Here are some of the photos that I took.

This was a painting in the 1st room we went in. It has some psychadelic aspects to it which I like and reminded me of the Liquid Light show examples I have seen.

This was part of a visual Instillation right in the middle of the 1st room.

This was a short video I shot of the full instillation. As you can see there are a number of screens showing various images. Some text flashes up every now and again. There was a real messy feel to this piece which I liked. The grafitti around the Black wooden structures was basic and there were pieces of card board ductaped to the floor around it. There were an assortment of crudely painted toy guns hanging from one side of the piece as well as old work clothes.

The video above was the center piece of the first room. The paintings on the walls surrounding it complemented the sculpture and there was a dystopian, almost apocalyptic feel to the whole room.

The toy guns as described above.

This was amazing. I havn’t seen anything like it before. The bottom half of the room that you can see has an illusion of depth to it. This is made by the artist (Richard Wilson) filling the room with motor oil, the surface of which is highly reflective.

Another shot of Wilson’s instillation, which is permanent to the Saatchi.

Wilson

Some information on Wilson and the idea behind his Instillation.

After looking around these two parts we went on to other rooms.

Now this was like nothing I’d seen befor either. The room was covered in hundereds of hand made ants, each different to the next.

Here’s some video of the instillation.

It’s quite clever in away because although the ants dont have any featues that are obviously different to the others you get the impression that they have different jobs. For example the video above shows a huge nest area, almost as if they are protecting a queen ant.

Here’s a close up of one of the many ants. The legs are made from twigs and there is a type of gauze wrapped around each ant.

My bombaclat mate.

Now this was really cool and is a great example of what can be done with lights. These are items of clothing such as corset type things. Essentially they are a type of recycled lamp shade however the way they were all just hanging from the ceiling in one corner was wierd and almost eerie.

A close up of one of these light. This was definately one of my favourite pieces in the gallery. It was so simple yet efffective just hanging there in one corner of a room. There was a delicate elegance to it that was nice and I feel that it was a nice contrast to the blue light cast by another piece in the room.

Simple, effective and minimalistic.

This floor was particularly interesting to me. As a lot of the artwork was focussed around light and ambience.

This was in the same room as the hanging clothing lights. In all honesty, i’m not too sure I like the piece. I couldnt really see the point of it. However I thought that the blue light it cast around the rest of the room made every other piece stand out more and added a level of ambience to the room.

This was really cool. Although it’s hard to make out in the picture the item of clothing almost had some sort of religious look to it. and the neon strip light was a lot thinner in reality. It looked like something out of a futuristic church. I really liked the minimalistic lighting and the aqua frame around the garment.

This was another favourite of mine which used two U.V. lights on the ceiling. These lights illuminated dpzens of different flowers that were in jars on these shelves. each had been individually painted with U.V. paint to give them their luminos neon glow. Unfortunately this photo really dosnt do this instillation justice. I feel like this piece would have benefited from some sort of music. It was silent and I reckon some carefully selected tracks would have enhanced the piece.

Again, I wasnt quite sure of what to make of this. I erally likeed the neon green bulb that illuminated the complex structure in the background but I couldnt understand why it only lit part of the wood instead of the whole thing.

I saw a load more art than just these pictures and videos that I’ve posted however I feel that these are the most relevant pices to my study. I’ve been thinking about how to learn from what these artists have done with their works. Most of them are simplistic at face value which dosnt make them too distracting. i like the idea of a contrasting colour like the white/orangey glow of the hanging nightwear lights against the Deep blue neon glow of the room it was in.

This has made me think about what colours to use with my Liquid light experiments alongside the L.E.D.’s. The L.E.D’s naturally cast a bright light. So I wouldn’t want them to cycle through to many colours if I also have some psychadelic liquid light projections.

As with the U.V. Flower instillation, the thing that made them stand out was the darkness around them. They were spaced out nicely and not too bunched together. When you stood in the room you could appreciate each jar as an individual piece, not just one big blur of neon colour.

I would like to visit the Saatchi again and see some more exhibits soon. I found it really inspiring and I’m sure it will spark some ideas up in my head. When it does I will be sure to post them on here.