Teaching Resource
CLAIRE BARCLAY www.glasgowinternational.org Page / 1
For Teachers
Getting Started
These teaching resources have been aimed at S2 students, though much of the content could apply to years: P7, S1, S3, S4 and S5.
Please use the cursor keys to navigate. Page / 2
Contents
Introduction About the Artist The Project Discussion Activities Art Term Glossary Contacts and Links
05 07 08 14 21 35 41
Page / 3
CLAIRE BARCLAY
Page / 4
For Teachers
Introduction
Visual art happens all year round in Glasgow but for two weeks every two years, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art puts it firmly in the spotlight. From artists’ studios through to major museums, by way of a vast range of venues new and old, the Festival is the perfect moment to get to know more about contemporary art and how and where it takes place in Glasgow. Packed with events, talks and tours as well as major world-class exhibitions some by artists living in the city and others by leading international figures, the Festival is Glasgow’s art scene at its liveliest and best.
Claire Barclay Overlap Fri 16th April 2010 — Sun 9th May 2010 Glasgow Print Studio: Trongate 103, Glasgow, G1 5HD
“The UK’s best visual art festival” The Guardian, December 2009 ‘Barclay’s been making some prints at GPS and will be exploring the relationship between her 2D and better-known 3D work. Expect to see pristine, shiny work that you’ll want to touch. But don’t’ -
The List, 15-29 April 2010
For GI 2010, Claire Barclay was invited to present a solo show at the Glasgow Print Studio (GPS). The show included prints that had been made within the workshops at GPS, as well as a tapestry piece that had been produced in collaboration with the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh. The show was curated by Siobhan Carroll and Kitty Anderson. www.gpsart.co.uk Clare Barclay is represented by www.doggerfisher.com Themes: craft, materials, opposites, sculpture, print, textiles, surface, multiples, scale, installation, process, everyday objects Page / 5
Overlap Glasgow Print Studio, 2010. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 6
For Teachers
Claire Barclay was born in Paisley in 1968. She lives and works in Glasgow. Claire Barclay is a Scottish artist known for large-scale installations consisting of collections of sculptural objects brought together into considered relationships. Combining craft and machine-finished processes, she uses both everyday and precious materials. Her practice wilfully blurs the lines between visual art and craft opening up a metaphorical space that refers to both a traditional and contemporary society. Barclay’s art is unsteadily balanced between function and dysfunction, understanding and bewilderment. Barclay is an artist who works primarily in sculpture, but whose work deals with ideas and issues that are also relevant to printmaking, such as surface, materials and process.
About the Artist
Claire Barclay was one of the first Scottish artist’s to exhibit at the Venice Biennale in 2003. Barclay has exhibited widely with recent solo presentations in the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and Camden Art Centre, London. She was the recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Visual Artist Award in 2007.
(2009, ‘Openwide’, at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; in 2008 exhibited at the Camden Arts Centre, London; In 2007 ‘Fault on the Right Side, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany; 2006 Ill Gotten Gains, The Station, Bristol (commissioned for the British Art Show 6, Bristol) 2005 British Art Show 6, Baltic, Gateshead (touring: Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol) 2004 Half-Light, Art Now, Tate Britain 2003 Ideal Pursuits, Dundee Contemporary Arts2003 Zenomap, Palazzo Guistinian-Lolin, 50th Venice Biennale 2002 Early One Morning, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London)
Page / 7
For Teachers
“I’m used to thinking about the site of the exhibition as a starting point for making work. So the function and character of the print workshop, with its propped squeegees, ink spillages, the rawness of that active environment, is definitely influencing this work. Not just to acknowledge the context of this building, but also because I’m attracted to the objects and raw materials I’m surrounded by and see a potential for them to communicate something as sculpture.” Claire Barclay
The Project
The GI show was a direct result of the time she’d spent as artist in residence at the Glasgow Print Studio. This residency provided her with an opportunity to explore the relationships between her printmaking and the more familiar territory of her sculpture, challenging her own practice and visual language. The exhibition reflected and animated the Glasgow Print Studios versatility as a production facility and exhibition space. The show offered the viewer an opportunity to consider the relationship between the different media in Claire’s work, and the use of two and three dimensional media in contemporary art practice. Screen printing was a new medium for Barclay and her challenge was to hang on to the freshness that came from experimenting with an unfamiliar medium. The more printing she did, the more she became aware of the parallels in her approach to sculpture. Perhaps this was to do with the method by which she’d chosen to make her screen prints.
This involved creating large numbers of paper stencils that were cut quickly by hand. Barclay wanted to work only with sequences of simple shapes, refusing to allow them to become formally complex images. These stencils were paired, overlapped, inverted, repeated and often printed in black ink. Barclay wanted the process of ‘making’ to lead the development of the work, in the same way that she worked with materials to create her sculptural forms. As she developed the prints, she became aware of her resistance to making individual images that stood alone. Barclay produced in excess of 100 prints through her experimentations and selecting the final exhibition prints required a lot of editing. The images that had a sense of body, (whether human or non-human), were chosen above those that didn’t, and this selection happened sometimes consciously and sometimes accidentally.
Page / 8
For Teachers
Barclay decided to show prints and sculpture side by side, whilst incorporating printed elements within 3 dimensional artworks, making a conscious decision to move get from the normal way of framing works. During her time printmaking, she had seen prints presented in a very dynamic way, in multiple where repeated images were layered in stacks or in metal drying racks. She was keen not to detach the printed elements in the show from the experience of them in the printmaking workshop. Barclay incorporated many of those elements into her show, making reference to the objects that are common place within the printmaking studio, e.g. the metal gridded print drying racks, glass printing surfaces, the rubber gloves used by printmakers, tubes of ink and multiples of prints.
The Project
As an artist, Barclay has always been resistant to predictable ways of presentation, partly because she doesn’t want her work to be viewed as a perfect artwork. The artwork is finished only because the exhibition needs to be on view, but there always remain other possibilities for adapting or reinventing the work. Within her exhibition she instils a sense of change or instability by propping, balancing or spilling things, which helps link the sculptures to the world out with the gallery.
The textile pieces that were part of this show embodied Barclay’s themes of craft and making. The tapestry piece was made in collaboration with the Dovecot studios in Edinburgh and was realised through a series of discussions between the artist and the Dovecot Studios. This particular piece is entitled ‘Quick Slow’, there are two pieces of textile, the tapestry and a piece of silk printed with a digital version of the tapestry design. The title refers to the duration spent creating these textile pieces, and questions whether we place more value on something that has been longer in the making opposed to that which has been produced quickly. Barclay abstracted the forms within the textile prints to create a further series of screen prints.
Page / 9
Overlap Glasgow Print Studio, 2010. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 10
Overlap Glasgow Print Studio, 2010. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher.
Page / 11
Overlap Glasgow Print Studio, 2010. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher.
Page / 12
Overlap Glasgow Print Studio, 2010. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Overlap Glasgow Print Studio, 2010. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 13
DISCUSSION
Page / 14
Overlap Glasgow Print Studio, 2010. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Overlap Glasgow Print Studio, 2010. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 15
FOR STUDENTS
S—
G L AS G
INTERN A
A ON L TI
W O
Discussion Questions 01/02/03
F —
OF RE S LT EN TTU DA IV
s Claire Barclays practice intentionally blurs the lines between visual art and craft opening up a literal space that refers to both a traditional and contemporary society. Can you describe the differences and similarities between craft and visual art?
s Can you name some of the mediums and methods that fall into each category?
s Can you think of artworks that incorporate both visual art and hand-made crafts?
Discuss some of the ways in which we distinguish Visual Art from Craft.
Page / 16
Openwide The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2009. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 17
FOR STUDENTS
S—
G L AS G
INTERN A
A ON L TI
W O
Discussion Questions 04/05/06
F —
OF RE S LT EN TTU DA IV
s Discuss the term interdisciplinary. How does Barclay’s practise with incorporates a combination of sculpture, installation, printmaking and drawing compare to the work of an artist who chooses to work in one discipline, such as painting or drawing? Do you think it’s beneficial, interesting or counterproductive for an artist to incorporate different disciplines and processes into their practise?
s Describe the term ‘hand-made’ and discuss the relationship that the ‘maker’ has with that ‘handmade’ object. If you got someone else to make your idea from sketch or discussion, can you still claim ownership of the work?
s In what ways has the artist incorporated the skills and techniques traditionally associated with the past into her practice, can you name them? What messages do you think the artist might be trying to articulate about the society that we live in?
Do you think that that the art in the idea, in the making or in the final outcome?
Page / 18
FOR STUDENTS
S—
G L AS G
INTERN A
A ON L TI
W O
Discussion Questions 07/08
F —
OF RE S LT EN TTU DA IV
s Can you describe of the role s Can you describe how some of the skilled crafts people within art, can work of this artist might have been you give examples? made? Do you place more value on something that has been laboured over and is of good craftsmanship?
Can you name some of the techniques that the artist has used?
Is the value in the quality of the idea or in the quality of the workmanship or both, explain why.
Page / 19
FOR STUDENTS
S—
G L AS G
INTERN A
A ON L TI
W O
Discussion Questions 09/10
F —
OF RE S LT EN TTU DA IV
s Do the materials that the artist has used have any wider meaning or associations? Do they give you any information or clues about the meaning of the work? Can you describe the effect of the material on the senses, e.g. is it only visual
s How has modern technology changed the ways in which we can make art? Can you describe some of the modern equipment and technology that artists might use today?
Do any of the materials have a scent? Do you want to touch them? Describe how these materials relate to one another, e.g. are they in harmony with one another? Page / 20
ACTIVITIES
Page / 21
W O
INTERN A
S—
FOR STUDENTS
A ON L TI
G L AS G
Activity 01
F —
OF RE S LT EN TTU DA IV
Can you think of a family member or friends who have a particular skill or craft that they use at home or at work? You may have to do some investigating, as there may be people close to you that have skills you are unaware of. Ask family and friends if they are in possession of a certain skill or craft, or could they suggest someone who does.
Once you have identified the relevant individuals, select a couple to work with on this activity. Try to ensure that those you have selected are different to one another, e.g. in that particular skill or craft, in age, gender and social background. Set up conversations with the individuals you’ve selected. Try to find as much information as you can in relation to their particular skill or craft, e.g. how and where did they learn this particular skill or craft? What happens to the things they make? How do they feel about having this particular skill or craft? Record these investigations in a notebook or sketchbook. Where possible document any outcomes from that particular skill or craft photographically.
Expand on your research by investigating the history of that person’s particular skill or craft, e.g. go on-line and find descriptions via Wikipedia and use the Google Search engine for further information. Where possible print out or write down theses findings, and place them in your sketchbook for reference. Based on your research could you plan and create a piece of visual art work that could loosely incorporate some of the skills or crafts you have been researching?
Page / 22
W O
INTERN A
S—
FOR STUDENTS
A ON L TI
G L AS G
Activity 02
F —
OF RE S LT EN TTU DA IV
Within Claire Barclays GI show, rather than placing all her 2D works on the wall in a conventional way, she looks at alternative methods of presentation, e.g. she incorporates prints within her sculptures, she rests them in stacks and propped against the wall.
Take a pile of blank A4 paper and play around with the positioning of the paper on a wall, be inventive, play with the height and positioning of groupings, play with spacing and form, play with over-laps and numbers. Record and document as you go.
Expand on this activity by taking an artwork that you have created, re-invent it and present it in a new way, e.g. take a drawing, a print, a painting and turn it into an installation or sculpture, using simple joining or slotting techniques. Alternately you could break down a sculpture and make it into a flat wall piece. Don’t restrict yourself to the wall, work Create a series of small with the floor too. experiments based on the above suggestions. Document the process along with your thoughts; include sketches and photographs if possible.
Page / 23
W O
INTERN A
S—
FOR STUDENTS
A ON L TI
G L AS G
Activity 03
F —
OF RE S LT EN TTU DA IV
In Claire Barclay’s sculptural installations she instinctively combines opposing materials together.
Create a series of small scale involuntary sculptures that combine found natural and manufactured materials that you have access to in your immediate surroundings, e.g. wood, plastic, synthetic material, natural material, rubber, metal staples, metal pins, elastic bands, feathers. Be playful and think of simple joining methods that use both these natural and man-made materials. Document these small scale works through drawing and photography if you have access to a camera. Collate all your experiments within your sketchbook.
Produce a collection of large scale quick, decisive drawings from each small involuntary sculpture, be big and bold, and don’t be afraid! No shading or toning required. Make sketches from various viewpoints, e.g. birds eye view, each side, the top, the bottom, from a child’s viewpoint. Fold up your drawings and place them in your sketchbook.
Page / 24
Openwide Fruitmarket Gallery. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 25
Openwide Fruitmarket Gallery. Photo: Ruth Clark. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 26
W O
INTERN A
S—
FOR STUDENTS
A ON L TI
G L AS G
Activity 04
F —
OF RE S LT EN TTU DA IV
As a group, collect examples of as many different materials as you can, e.g. metal, paper, wood, plastic, glass, fabric, card, rubber, leather. Place them within a clear section of floor or table. As a class discuss the integral properties of each material and list them on a flip-chart, blackboard or note book, e.g. heavy, soft, hard, light and cold.
Within your selection of materials make pairings of opposites, e.g. Shiny vs. matte; soft vs. hard; organic vs. synthetic; textured vs. smooth. Lay these pairings side by side on your section of floor or table space. As you go through this process, consider as many emotive and subjective opposites as you can, e.g. chaos and order, openness against confinement. Continue to record your thoughts and observations in written form.
Based on your research make a list of words that have double meanings, e.g. warm, cool, bright, and soft. Using photography, collage or found imagery, create a 2D or 3D artwork that plays around with those double meanings.
Page / 27
Pale Heights, Mudum, Luxembourg 2009 Photo: Andres Lejona. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 28
W O
INTERN A
S—
FOR STUDENTS
A ON L TI
G L AS G
Activity 05
F —
OF RE S LT EN TTU DA IV
Using A3 paper in 3 complimentary colours, draw boldly around a wide variety of objects with a thick pen or pencil, producing a selection of abstract shapes. Create multiples of these shapes, somewhere between 5 and 8 in each colour. Cut out the drawn shapes carefully with precision.
Create a series of ‘drawings’ placing these cut paper shapes onto white card or a complimentary coloured background, within each cut paper drawing play with the layout of the pieces. Use an approximation of 3-5 different coloured shapes in each ‘drawing’.
If possible try placing these coloured pieces in different ways on a black and white photocopier and compare the results? Another option is to explore this process via computer using the same abstract shapes, playing around with composition. Select the works that appeal to you most and where possible, print out and place within your sketchbook.
Page / 29
Pale Heights, Mudum, Luxembourg 2009. Photo: Andres Lejona. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 30
W O
INTERN A
S—
FOR STUDENTS
A ON L TI
G L AS G
Activity 06
F —
OF RE S LT EN TTU DA IV
Claire Barclays GI show reflects her residency within the Glasgow Print Studio, e.g. sculptural works that reference the metal drying racks, printing ink splodges, rubber gloves, glass, multiple ‘editions’ of prints that are sold by the printmakers in the GPS shop.
Look around your classroom and take a few minutes to write down some of objects and materials that are specific to your classroom environment, what are there lots of, e.g. school jotters, blackboard, rulers, desks, and paper towels. Based on those observations, as a group, or individually create a small sculpture or installation that reflects this particular environment.
Page / 31
Pale Heights, Mudum, Luxembourg 2009. Photo: Andres Lejona. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 32
Pale Heights, Mudum, Luxembourg 2009. Photo: Andres Lejona. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 33
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Page / 34
Art Term Glossary
Matter/Materials –
Monochrome: Monochrome means one colour. For centuries artists used different shades of brown or black Installation: ink to create monochrome pictures on paper. Term used to describe mixed-media art works The ink would simply be more or less diluted to which occupy an entire room or gallery space and into which usually the spectator can enter. achieve the required shades. Shades of grey Some installations, however, are designed simply oil paint were used to create monochrome to be walked around and contemplated, or are paintings, a technique known as grisaille, from the French word gris meaning grey. In such so fragile that they can only be viewed from work the play of light and dark enabled the a doorway, or one end of a room. artist to define formand create a picture. In the twentieth century, with the rise of abstract Mackintosh: art many artists experimented with making Charles Rennie Mackintosh (June 7, 1868 – monochrome painting. December 10, 1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, watercolourist and sculptor. He was Minimalism: a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement Minimalism or Minimal art is an extreme form and also the main exponent of Art Nouveau of abstract art that developed in the USA in in the United Kingdom. He had a considerable the second half of the 1960s. It can be seen influence on European design. as extending the abstract idea that art should have its own reality and not be an imitation of some other thing. Minimal artists typically made works in very simple geometric shapes based on the square and the rectangle. Many Minimal works explore the properties of their materials. There are strong links between Minimal and Conceptual art. Aesthetically, Minimal art offers a highly purified form of beauty. It can also be seen as representing such qualities as truth (because it does not pretend to be anything other than what it is), order, simplicity, harmony.
Media/Medium – White cube: Refers to a certain gallery aesthetic that was introduced in the early twentieth century in response to the increasing abstraction of modern art. With an emphasis on colour and light, artists from groups like De Stijl and the Bauhaus preferred to exhibit their works against white walls in order to minimise distraction. The white walls were also thought to act as a frame, rather like the borders of a photograph. A parallel evolution in architecture and design provided the right environment for the art. The white cube was characterised by its square or oblong shape, white walls and a light source usually from the ceiling.
Page / 35
Art Term Glossary
Deconstruction: A form of criticism, which involves discovering, recognising and understanding the underlying and unspoken and implicit - assumptions, ideas and frameworks of cultural forms such as works of art. First used by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the 1970s, deconstruction asserts that there is not one single intrinsic meaning to be found in a work, but rather many, and often they can be conflicting. Since Derrida’s assertions in the 1970s, the notion of deconstruction has been a dominating influence on many writers and conceptual artists.
Techniques – Conceptual Art: This term came into use in the late 1960s to describe a wide range of types of art that no longer took the form of a conventional art object. In 1973 a pioneering record of the early years of the movement appeared in the form of a book, Six Years, by the American critic Lucy Lippard. The six years were 1966-72. The long subtitle of the book referred to socalled conceptual or information or idea art. Conceptual artists do not set out to make a painting or a sculpture and then fit their ideas to that existing form. Instead they think beyond the limits of those traditional media, and then work out their concept or idea in whatever
materials and whatever form is appropriate. They were thus giving the concept priority over the traditional media. Hence Conceptual art. From this it follows that conceptual art can be almost anything, but from the late 1960s certain prominent trends appeared such as Performance (or Action) art, Land art, and the Italian movement Arte Povera (poor art). Poor here meant using low-value materials such as twigs, cloth, fat, and all kinds of found objects and scrap. Some Conceptual art consisted simply of written statements or instructions. Many artists began to use photography, film and video. Conceptual art was initially a movement of the 1960s and 1970s but has been hugely influential since. Artists include Art & Language, Beuys, Broodthaers, Burgin, Craig-Martin, Gilbert and George, Klein, Kosuth, Latham, Long, Manzoni, Smithson. Site Specific: Refers to a work of art designed specifically for a particular location and that has an interrelationship with the location. If removed from the location it would lose all or a substantial part of its meaning. Site-specific is often used of installation works, as in sitespecific installation, and Land art is site-specific almost by definition.
Materialism: Contemporary Visual Art – Term loosely used to denote art of the present day and of the relatively recent past, of an innovatory or avant-garde nature. In relation to contemporary art museums, the date of origin for the term contemporary art varies. The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, founded in 1947, champions art from that year onwards. Whereas The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York chooses the later date of 1977. In the 1980s, Tate planned a Museum of Contemporary Art in which contemporary art was defined as art of the past ten years on a rolling basis.
Visual Language – Found Objects: A natural or man-made object (or fragment of an object) found (or sometimes bought) by an artist and kept because of some intrinsic interest the artist sees in it. Found objects may be put on a shelf and treated as works of art in themselves, as well as providing inspiration for the artist. The sculptor Henry Moore for example collected bones and flints which he seems to have treated as natural sculptures as well as sources for his own work. Found objects may also be modified by the artist and presented as art, either more or less intact as in the Dada and Surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp’s Page / 36
Art Term Glossary
readymades, or as part of an assemblage. As so often, Picasso was an originator, from 1912, when he began to incorporate newspapers and such things as matchboxes into his Cubist collages, and to make his Cubist constructions from various scavenged materials. Extensive use of found objects was made by Dada, Surrealist and Pop artists, and by later artists such as Carl Andre, Tony Cragg, Bill Woodrow, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Michael Landy among many others. Ready Made: ‘Ready mades’ is the term used by the French artist Marcel Duchamp to describe works of art he made from manufactured objects. His earliest readymades included Bicycle Wheel of 1913, a wheel mounted on a wooden stool, and In Advance of the Broken Arm of 1915, a snow shovel inscribed with that title. In 1917 in New York, Duchamp made his most notorious readymade, Fountain, a men’s urinal signed by the artist with a false name and exhibited placed on its back. Later readymades could be more elaborate and were referred to by Duchamp as assisted readymades. The theory behind the readymade was explained in an article, anonymous but almost certainly by Duchamp himself, in the May 1917 issue of the avant-garde magazine The Blind Man run by Duchamp and two friends: ‘Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not
has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, and placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view created a new thought for that object.’ There are three important points here: first, that the choice of object is itself a creative act. Secondly, that by cancelling the ‘useful’ function of an object it becomes art. Thirdly, that the presentation and addition of a title to the object have given it ‘a new thought’, a new meaning. Duchamp’s readymades also asserted the principle that what is art is defined by the artist. Duchamp was an influential figure in Dada and Surrealism, an important influence on Pop art, environments, assemblage, installation art, Conceptual art and much art of the 1990s such as YBA. (See also Postmodernism.) Narrative: A narrative is simply a story. Narrative art is art that tells a story. Much of Western art has been narrative, depicting stories from religion, myth and legend, history and literature (see History painting). Audiences were assumed to be familiar with the stories in question. From about the seventeenth century genre painting showed scenes and narratives of everyday life. In the Victorian age, narrative painting of everyday life subjects became hugely popular and is often considered as a category in itself (i.e. Victorian narrative painting). In modern art,
formalist ideas have resulted in narrative being frowned upon. However, coded references to political or social issues, or to events in the artist’s life are commonplace. Such works are effectively modern allegories, and generally require information from the artist to be fully understood. The most famous example of this is Picasso’s Guernica. Op Art: A major development in the 1960s of painting that created optical effects for the spectator. These effects ranged from the subtle, to the disturbing and disorienting. Op painting used a framework of purely geometric forms as the basis for its effects and also drew on colour theory and the physiology and psychology of perception. Leading figures were Bridget Riley, Jesus Raphael Soto, and Victor Vasarely. Vasarely was one of the originators of Op art. Soto’s work often involves mobile elements and points up the close connection between Kinetic and Op art. Multiples: Casting sculpture in bronze, and the various techniques of printmaking, have for many centuries made it possible to make multiple examples of a work of art. Each example of an edition of a print or a bronze is an authentic work of the artist, although there may be technical variations which might affect the Page / 37
Art Term Glossary
value. The number produced is usually strictly limited, mainly for commercial reasons but, in the case of etchings in particular, also for technical reasons etching plates wear very rapidly, so later impressions are inferior. About 1955, the artists Jean Tinguely and Agam, wanting to make their work more widely available, put forward the idea of very large, effectively unlimited, editions of works which could be sold very cheaply. It is they who seem to have invented the term multiple for such works, which would be made by industrial processes. The first multiples were eventually produced by the Denise René Gallery in Paris in 1962, and since then large numbers of artists have created multiples.
Interdisciplinary –
musical score of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence (four minutes thirty three seconds is 273 seconds. The temperature minus 273 celsius is absolute zero). By the 1950s and 1960s visual artists and composers like were using kinetic sculptures and electronic media, overlapping live and pre-recorded sound, in order to explore the space around them. Since the introduction of digital technology sound art has undergone a radical transformation. Artists can now create visual images in response to sounds, allow the audience to control the art through pressure pads, sensors and voice activation, and in examples like Jem Finer’s ‘Longplayer’, extend a sound so that it resonates for a thousand years.
Public Art: Artwork that is in the public realm, regardless of whether it is situated on public or private property or whether it has been purchased with public or private money. Usually, but not always, the art has been commissioned specifically for the site in which it is situated. Monuments, memorials and civic statues and sculptures are the most established forms of public art, but public art can also be transitory, in the form of performances, dance, theatre, poetry, graffiti, posters and installations. Public art can often be used as a political tool, like the propaganda posters and statues of the Soviet Union or the murals painted by the Ulster Unionists in Northern Ireland. Public art can also be a form of civic protest, as in the graffiti sprayed on the side of the New York subway in the 1980s.
Sound Scape: Art about sound, using sound both as its medium and as its subject. It dates back to the early inventions of Futurist Luigi Russolo who, between 1913 and 1930, built noise machines that replicated the clatter of the industrial age and the boom of warfare, and subsequent experiments in the Dada and Surrealist movements. Marcel Duchamp’s composition Erratum Musical featured three voices singing notes pulled from a hat, a seemingly arbitrary act that had an impact on the compositions of John Cage, who in 1952 composed 4’ 33” a Page / 38
Shifting Ground, Camden Art Centre, London 2008. All images courtesy of the artist and Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.
Page / 39
CONTACTS & LINKS Page / 40
Contacts & Links
Get involved! The next edition of the festival is in 2012. Stay in touch, we’d love to hear from you! www.glasgowinternational.org www.glasgowinternational.org/index.php/events/learn www.glasgowinternational.org/index.php/about/view/Goodbye_to_the_2010_Festival/
Contact Lesley Hepburn - Creative Learning and Education Officer lesley@glasgowinternational.org GI Office +44 (0)141 276 8382 Page / 41
THE END Š Copyright of Culture and Sport Glasgow Page / 42