In the Field of the Visible is the Gaze

One of the things I love about working in a University is the amount of creativity I see around me on a daily basis.  At the moment we have a student art exhibition showing in the foyer of the college my office is based in.

Chloe McKeown

Chloe McKeown

The art work is the graduate show by students from Canterbury College entitled 'In the Field of the Visible is the Gaze' and includes pieces as diverse as installation art and sculpture, design from print, branding, promotional and screen-based graphic art.

Craig Gordan

Craig Gordan

Craig Gordan

As mentioned previously, I know very little about art but I really love this exhibition and it is clear that there are some incredibly talented students out there.

Sophie Westwater

Sophie Westwater

Lucie Boudeux

This piece particularly caught my eye.  It is inspired by African and tribal art and by a student called Aimee Lawrence.   She describes her work as focusing on African and westernised 'mask' culture using recycled industrial materials.

 The below pieces are inspired by the Butterfly Effect of Chaos Theory

Raymond Grinney

Raymond Grinney

It is impossible to capture on camera the way the light is reflected through this piece by Jasmine Al-Aidi.  It is made of glass and shimmers light and colour.

Ekaterina Borisova Dyakovo's piece on the impact of illustrating, branding and print media on modern life should ring particularly true to bloggers!

Upstairs in the foyer are branding pieces of art for different ad campaigns.  Being a bit of a Disney addict I especially loved the two for Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.

Alexander Hartop

Some of the pieces had strong social messages.   Reza Davoudian designed this anti-bullying campaign,  Karl Swithenbank wanted to celebrate conservation work in Africa and Emily Stephens drew attention to the prevalence of HIV that exists within the UK.

Others got into the student spirit, designing briefs for alcoholic drinks (Barcardi Breezers that appeal to men) and London Fashion Week.

Liam Sawyer

Liam Sawyer

Leanne Toomey

Aimee Partridge

This final piece I found particularly moving.  The artist Heidi Kemp suffers from a hoarding disorder and as her project photographed every item in her room and catalogued them in this book.  She invited people to remove a photograph from the book.  In doing so she was able to discard all of the items she had hoarded over the years.  I chose this photograph to take.

Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art - Part 6

The Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, located in the Museumplein was easily my favourite museum in Amsterdam.

The Dutch have a refreshing attitude towards the sharing of art - photography is welcomed (as long as the flash is off) so that art can be uploaded and shared around the world.  In fact the only museum where photography wasn't allowed, ironically, was the Foam Photography museum!

The Museum is large and airy, with high wall spaces covered with posters showcasing previous exhibitions.  While a museum has been here since the 1850's, it was recently renovated (again) and only reopened in September of last year.

I don't pretend to know much about art.  I knows what I likes and I can't really tell the difference between good and bad technique for the most part.  Steve and I just enjoy modern art more than traditional art - MOMA in New York is easily top of our best museums to visit list!

The museum does not feature just traditional art work.  Jewellery, furniture and household equipment with novel (and not always practical) designs are also showcased.  I particularly like the necklace below.  Steve thought it was quite tribal!

I liked the pretty colours!

This piece by Marc Chagall is from 1912 and called very simply 'The Fiddler'. 

If you don't want to spend time in an entire museum devoted to Van Gough you can see a few of his pieces here

This shows how little I know about art.  I had no idea that the below pictures were Picasso's until I read the labels!  The first is from 1946 and called 'The Aubergine' and the second is from 1943 and called 'Heads'.

When Steve and I were in New York a few years ago we fell in love with the gigantic Jackson Pollock paintings that covered the walls in the MOMA.  Some of them were about 10 feet high!  This piece below is significantly smaller and felt less frenzied as it didn't have the same amount of layer on layer of paint on it.  It's from 1946 and called 'The Water Bull'.

I have no idea who painted this, but I quite liked it.  You can see how large some of the pieces of work are from Steve's head!

My grandfather works in bronze a lot when he sculpts and I have always loved bronze sculpture as a result.  These were made by Willem de Koonig and are called 'Clamdigger'.  They reminded me of the rock man in The Neverending Story while Steve thought they looked like Grendel from the 2007 Beowulf film!

Some of the art was a bit more abstract than others.  I'm not sure I 'get' what the artist (Martial Raysse) was trying to do with the below!

One room just had a floor to ceiling wall covered in rainbow stripes.  A couple of rooms down and the effect was rather cool through a couple of doors.

I just wanted to climb all over this.

This wasn't actually the point of the display - there was a stop motion animation playing, but when you get to project yourself onto a wall I turn into a big kid and had to muck around.

This was one of my favourite pictures.  There was an entire room devoted to guinea pigs and this just made me smile!

There was a lot of film and video art you could sit and watch, all subtitled in English.  This was the cinema room that reminded me more of laser quest than anything else!

We spent hours wandering around this Museum.  You won't like every piece but I guarantee there will be something there that makes you stop and take a second look.