2015 A Permanent Mark Education Kit

PLANNING A VISIT

Free guided tours are available, and for further information, or to give feedback on education and public programs provided by the Gallery contact Pinnacles Gallery on (07) 4773 8871 or email pinnacles@townsville.qld.gov.au

THE GALLERIES

Townsville City Council owns and operates two premier regional galleries, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery in the city’s CBD, and Pinnacles Gallery located within the Riverway Arts Centre in Thuringowa Central.

A PERMANENT MARK

A Permanent Mark: the impact of tattoo culture on contemporary art is an exhibition that looks at how the contemporary art world and tattoo culture overlap. It examines how artists, some of whom are tattoo artists, have used tattoos as inspiration in their art or have used tattoos as an art form.

FREE SECONDARY EDUCATION RESOURCE

A free Secondary Education Resource designed in response to this exhibition and targeted at secondary school students is available at Pinnacles Gallery.

the impact of tattoo culture on contemporary art

With the dramatic rise in the popularity of tattooing, the practice has shifted from a ‘fringe’ activity to a broadly accepted body adornment in Western cultures. Getting ‘inked’ has ceased to be a visual marker for bikies, criminals and alternate types; with people young and old now sporting tattoos in ever-increasing varieties and complexities. Tattoos have crossed over into a mass-consumer-level of acceptance and with this have also begun to appear in contemporary art.

A Permanent Mark: the impact of tattoo culture on contemporary art is an exhibition that looks at how the contemporary art world and tattoo culture overlap, and how artists, some of whom are tattoo artists, have used tattoos as inspiration in their art or have used tattoos as an art form. The exhibition contains the following local, Australian and international artists: Ah Xian, Amanda Wachob, Don Ed Hardy, Dr Lakra, eX de Medici, Holly Grech, Leslie Rice, Lisa Reihana, Matt Elwin, Qin Ga, Regan ‘HAHA’ Tamanui, Richard Dunlop, Rob Douma, Ron McBurnie, The Run Collective and Shawn Barber.

The A Permanent Mark: the impact of tattoo culture on contemporary Education Kit is designed to complement the Secondary Education Resource and assist educators to explore some themes and techniques contained within the exhibition. The Education Kit provides a brief overview of the exhibition, key terms, short essays and worksheets on the following topics: tattoos and art, stencil art and still life as well as some selected artists. For further reading or for specific information on each of the artists and their artworks in the exhibition, A Permanent Mark: the impact of tattoo culture on contemporary art, please refer to the Exhibition Catalogue.

Image: Shawn Barber

Courtesy of the Artist, Shawn Barber

Key Terms

Inked: being tattooed or having a tattoo

Contemporary art: art that is happening now

Visual language: communicating using imagery or symbols

Stencil art: a form of art that uses stencils to create a reproducible image

Device: a visual language in artwork to construct meaning such as humour, repetition, juxtaposition and appropriation, etc.

Appropriate: take (something) for one’s own use, typically without the owner’s permission. Deliberately re-using and changing the context of existing (or past) ideas, words, sounds or images to creating new meanings

Repetition: a device used in art. Repeating something to give new meaning

Still life: an artwork that features only inanimate objects like clocks, skulls and food

Vanitas: a still life painting that tells an allegory (story)

Moniker: another name that a person goes by

Consumerism: a sociological concept about the acquisition of consumer goods

Commercialism: the act of making profit through the marketing and consumption of goods to/by people

Gigantism: in art terms, enlarging something to give new meaning. Commonly used as a Pop Art device

Memento mori: (Latin - “remember (that you have) to die’). In art, memento mori are artistic or symbolic reminders of mortality

Tā moko: a Maori tattoo that communicates about the cultural identity and status of an individual

Pochoir: a refined stencil-based technique employed to create prints or to add colour to pre-existing prints

Popular culture: ideas, perspectives, attitudes, images, and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture

Subculture: a cultural group within a larger culture

Subvert: to undermine the moral principles of a person, system of law or authority

Inanimate: describes a non-living thing

Transience: passing with time or is the state of being brief and short-lived

Tattoos & Art

The art of tattooing has been around for a long time. The oldest known example of tattooing is found on famous mummy Otzi the Iceman. He is Europe’s oldest known mummy, believed to be 5300 years old! Otzi was found preserved in a glacier on the border of the Austrian and Italian Alps. Scientists have found 61 different tattoo style markings on his body. However, there is evidence to suggest that the practice of tattooing has been around even prior to Otzi’s time. Artefacts such as bowls holding dried pigmented ink believed to have been used for the practice of ‘marking skin’ have been found that are nearly 12 000 years old!

Historically, many different religious and cultural groups have practiced ‘tattooing’; the Celts, Vikings, Japanese, Maori, and even early Roman soldiers all practiced this style of permanent mark making on their bodies. The term tattoo can be traced back to the Tahitian word ta-tu which means ‘to strike’ or ‘to mark’. This term is believed to have been assimilated into Western terminology by returning sailors after one of Captain Cook’s expeditions to the island.

Image top right: Tattoo style markings found on Otzi the Iceman. Image courtesy of The South Tyrol Museum of Archeology

Image above: An example of Japanese woodblock printing from the early 19th century. Tengan Isobyôe and Yajin Ran Utagawa Kuniyoshi [detail] 1830-1845 Color woodcut, paper 37 x 25 cm © Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Image bottom right: Kamariera, a Maori presented to Queen Victoria in England. Kamariera Te Hau Takiri Wharepapa 1895, oil on canvas, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Gift of Mr H E Partridge, 1915 1915/2/43

Between the early twentieth century and the 1960s tattooing declined in popularity as the art form became seen as a practice of the ‘lower’ or deviant classes. Circuses often touted highly tattooed people as ‘freaks’ and tattoos slowly became more and more synonymous with gangs and the criminal element.

However, in the 1960s tattooing experienced a kind of Renaissance period. With the boom of anti-establishment subcultures such as punk, hippy, new age and women’s and gay liberation movements people came to think of their bodies in a different light. Today the prevalence and acceptance of tattooing as a legitimate art form can be witnessed in the quality and quantity of work in the public gallery (the street). Tattooists are celebrated; no longer confined to ‘back-door’ establishments. The trade is more commonly being acknowledged as a highly recognised profession, with people traveling far and wide to get inked by famous tattoo artists. Contemporary art practice has also embraced tattooing as both a medium and a subject. Tattoo is powerful as an art form in that it expresses both the permanent and impermanent aspects of the human condition.

Image bottom: Miss Creola and Miss Alwanda circus poster, Tattoo archive 2000

Image top: Japanese traditional, modern, underground tattoo and irezumi. From the book: Tattoo in Japan: Traditional and Modern Styles

Author: Manami Okazaki (2008)

Image above: Ed Hardy tattoo poster. Courtesy of popartuk.com

Dr Lakra

Jerónimo López Ramirez, more commonly known by his moniker Dr Lakra, was born in Mexico in 1972. Lakra is the eldest son of the anthropologist and poet Elisa Ramírez Castañeda and the painter Francisco Toledo. Lakra followed in his father’s footsteps by studying under famous Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco before eventually moving into the area of tattooing.

Dr Lakra later moved away from tattooing to pursue his interest in painting, citing the ‘McDonalds’ nature of pumping out tattoo designs as his reason for changing career paths.

Dr Lakra rose to prominence in the 1990s as a tattooist, and has since gained an international following for his alteration and appropriation of 1940s and 1950s magazine covers, pin-ups, wrestling posters and medical lithographs – paving the way for artists such as Belgian practitioner Jean-Luc Moerman and Spanish selfproclaimed ‘dandy delinquent’ Ramon Maiden.

These works fully exploit Dr Lakra’s talents as a supremely skilled draughtsman and transform those depicted from clean-skinned, ‘pure’ figures of community adoration, to ‘grotesque’ and marginalised embodiments of the tattoo subculture. Covered from head to toe in Dr Lakra’s drawings of recognisable tattoo icons – such as bats, spiders, Chicano, Maori, Thai, and Philippine cultural markings, snakes, skulls, crosses, the devil, the Virgin Mary, and roses – the figures are covered in what amounts to a form of human graffiti, undermining the air of innocence that was so readily portrayed through the media of the era.

Simultaneously playful and provocative (both politically and sexually), it comes as no surprise that Dr Lakra relishes the opportunity to subvert such sanitised images, with his namesake Lakra roughly translating from a Spanish colloquialism meaning ‘delinquent’. His penchant for carrying his tattoo equipment in a black bag would also see the term ‘Dr’ become part of his artist moniker. Ergo, ‘Dr Delinquent’ was born. Lakra can also, fittingly in the context of his work and the way in which sections of society may view those he depicts, mean ‘scar’ or ‘scum’.

He quickly became one of the most sought after tattoo artists in Mexico, however the popularity of his tattoos would eventually lead him back to painting. And while he seldom tattoos anymore, save for the occasional firing up of his machine in his Oaxaca home studio, his practice remains invariably marked by his interest in the medium.

Dr Lakra Worksheet

Create an artwork like Dr Lakra’s. Use the hand provided and subvert the image. You can do this by drawing tattoos over the image as Dr Lakra does, using recognisable tattoo icons such as bats, spiders, snakes, skulls and crosses.

Appropriation Worksheet

Josias Murer was an artist who practiced in the late 16th century. He is best known for his images depicting the speech and throat organs of various mammals. The engraving on the left is titled Anatomy of a man’s throat from Giulio Cesare Casserio’s book De vocis auditusque organis historia anatomia (Anatomical History of the Organs of Speech and Hearing). Dr Lakra has appropriated (borrowed) this imagery used by early anatomical artists.

Find the artwork by Dr Lakra that has been appropriated from the much older Murer artwork. Compare (look for similarities) and contrast (look for differences) in the artworks.

Murer is studying the organs of the throat and speech in his image. What other areas of the body does Dr Lakra examine in his artworks?

Why do you think that Dr Lakra has chosen this particular style of imagery to appropriate?

Image: Josias Murer Anatomy of a man’a throat [detail] From the publication: Art and anatomy in Renaissance Italy (2012).

Qin Ga

Qin Ga was born in Inner Mongolia in 1971. He originally trained as a sculptor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Later, in the 1990s, Qin Ga became known as a key figure of Beijing’s thriving underground art scene. His developing interest in performance art was underpinned by an eagerness to utilise the human form, to examine the relationship between the body and nature. Early works such as Drug Bath, Freeze, and Disinfect present morbid scenes where the human body is in itself the artwork.

Qin Ga’s landmark performance art project, The miniature long march (2002-2005), calls on the power of tattoo as a permanent tool of remembrance, and one through which the artist can explore the relationship between private and collective memory.

Through his use of tattoo as a mark making tool in the project, Qin Ga is utilising the human body as both the artwork itself in a performative sense, and as a moving canvas for the artwork. This duality is emphasised by the still and moving footage documentation produced throughout the project.

His participation in the Long March Project’s Walking Visual Display began with the donation of his skin as a canvas in 2002. The project recreated the famous route of the Long March (1934-1935), a pivotal moment in Chinese history when the Red Army of the Communist Part of China retreated to skirt the advances of Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). Qin Ga remained in his Beijing studio, communicating with the project’s participants and marking their progress on a miniature map of China tattooed across his back.

The project prematurely ended at Luding Bridge in Sichuan province, leaving Qin Ga’s tattoo of the Long March incomplete. In 2005, he resolved to complete the journey from Luding Bridge, a commitment that would see him endure extreme physical hardship due to the harsh elements. Setting out with his tattooist and three cameramen, the artist completed the journey, having the journey etched into his skin on location.

There could be no more appropriate medium for Qin Ga to have documented his journey with than tattoo; in doing so he demonstrates the connection between body and nature; the individual and our shared culture, customs and history; and, as with many great tattoos, forever commemorates a defining personal experience.

Qin Ga Worksheet

Look at this photograph of Qin Ga’s The miniature long march.

In Qin Ga’s performance piece he is documenting a public and private journey. How have you documented a journey before? Was it private or public?

Qin Ga has used an unusual canvas for his artwork, his skin! What unusual mediums have you used to create an artwork?

Qin Ga’s tattoo commemorates a defining personal experience. Think about a defining personal experience of your own. If you were to mark it upon your skin what visual imagery would you use? Use the box below to sketch your answers. Include yourself in the image.

Image: Qin Ga

Purchased 2007. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Aquisitions Fund Collection: Queensland Art Gallery.

Stencil Art

Stencil art has long been associated with graffiti and vandalism. Though stenciled work can be used as a type of rebellious “street art”, stencils are an under-appreciated medium for artists. They provide finished work with clean lines and the ability to exactly replicate their design multiple times.

In visual arts, stencilling is also known as pochoir. The first stencils could well be the hand and arm ‘prints’ discovered on rock walls from over 35 000 years ago, where pigment was blown over a solid (the hand or arm) leaving a silhouetted image. The hands and arms that were discovered on rock wall 35 000 years ago used a stencil technique blowing pigment was blown over a hand or arm. The technique has been employed throughout history in many forms in many cultures for example Japanese textile printing, miniature shadow masks and screen printing.

Image bottom left: Cave paintings on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi. From BBC news article Cave paintings change ideas about the origin of art by Palleb Ghosh

Image bottom right: Japanese Ise-katagami stencil for printing textiles. Kata-gami: Bamboo leaves, late 19th century, 43.3 x 29.1 cm Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Image top: Statement street art. Flower Thrower by English graffiti artist, Banksy appeared on a wall in Jerusalem in 2005. Street ART London © BANKSY

Ha Ha

The work of Regan Tamanui (aka HAHA) explores the power of mass media within Australian popular culture. The reality TV phenomena, the religion of sport, criminal lifestyles, get rich quick and instant fame becomes the obsessions, the new virtues of the 21st century.

By using up to 40 multi-layered stencils HAHA’s work is a reflection of popular culture. He gets his images direct from the newspaper or from photographing the subject to tell a story of the here and now. Without the aid of a computer, his cutting technique produces lifelike imagery.

He explores his Maori and Samoan heritage in his referencing and use of traditional Maori tattoo iconography known as Tā moko in his stencilled portraits of Maori men and women. These works also refer to colonial history and the lithographs and sketches of the late 1800s. Tā moko is an example of the tattoo as a specific visual language communicating a wealth of meaning about the cultural identity and status of an individual.

HAHA describes the images and subjects of his own tattoos as depicting, “a journey: images I like with a story”. A tattoo he personally identifies with is that of the infamous and legendary character Ned Kelly; “I believe that street art is like the 21st century bushranger if done illegally”. HAHA is a self-taught artist who started off by spray painting stencils on the street and has since then graduated to the gallery. He has been exhibiting for over 8 years he has held 10 solo shows in Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart and Sydney. He is represented by 3 commercial galleries across Australia. His work can be found in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, BHP Billiton, State Library of Victoria, City of Melbourne, Artbank and private collections across Australia, NZ, UK and USA.

Suggested topics for discussion and research:

Discuss the implications of people adopting tattoo designs and symbols that belong to and refer to cultures other than their own.

Research and present examples that describe the history of stencil making as a technique and art form.

Consider the effects when the art/music/activities of a subculture become main stream and commercialised. Is it still credible? Has it lost what it has been communicating? If it becomes a popular rather than ‘fringe’ activity has it successfully involved more people to think new ideas and experience the world differently?

Image: Regan ‘HAHA’ Tamanui Untitled - Tā moko man #3 - King Tāwhiao 2014

Aerosol on 300gsm printmaking paper 70.2 x 54.6 cm

Courtesy of the Artist, Regan ‘HAHA’ Tamanui

Photograph: Shane Fitzgerald

How to Make a Stencil

Create a multi-layered stencil artwork!

Materials:

• 2 sheets of flexible, hard, clear plastic card

• 1 retractable cutting knife (Stanley knife) with a new, sharp blade

• 1 cutting mat

• 1 picture, photo or drawing of your choice –the larger the details in the picture are, the easier it will be to cut

• 1 canvas, wall, or surface to apply stencil

• 1 can acrylic spraypaint in a light colour

• 1 can acrylic spraypaint in a different dark colour

• Optional: 1 light and 1 dark tube of acrylic paint and a stencil brush if no spraypaint

Preparation:

Make two copies of the photograph or drawing of your choice. It will be easier to find lighter and darker values if you make the copies black and white (grayscale)

Dark Stencil

Using the first copy of the photo or drawing of your choice, find the darkest values in your drawing or picture

Outline the shadows and fill them in with the black marker, making sure to connect any shadows that seem to join in the photo or drawing

Tape a plastic sheet over the copy and place these on top of a cutting mat

How to Make a Stencil continued

Use your Stanley knife to trace over the dark shapes you have picked out and remove these cut pieces from the plastic sheet

Un-tape the copy of the photo or drawing from the plastic sheet. Label this plastic sheet

DARK

Medium Stencil

Using the second copy of the photo or drawing of your choice, find the medium (gray-ish) values in your drawing or picture

Repeat steps 2 - 6 using a pencil instead of a black marker, and a second plastic sheet, ensuring you do these for the medium values instead of the dark values. Label this sheet MEDIUM

Final Product

Place the MEDIUM stencil on your desired surface. (A piece of paper, a wall or a canvas)

Select the lighter shade of acrylic spray paint. Practise on a spare sheet of paper to make sure you get the right distance, usually far away from your canvas

Spray the colour over the stencil until you get the desired pigment. Some artists prefer dark, dripping stencils while others prefer a lightly misted imprint

If you use tubes of paint instead of spray paint, use the stencil brush to apply as much colour as you would like to the cutout areas of the stencil. Wait for the paint to dry before removing the MEDIUM stencil

Place the DARK stencil on your desired surface. Match it up to the same position the last stencil was placed

Except for a small amount of possible overlap, the colour you applied before should not be present where your cut-outs are for this stencil

Select the darker shade of acrylic paint and spray or paint this colour over the stencil

Wait for the paint to dry (very important) before removing your DARK stencil

You are now done!

Still Life

Still life is a genre of the visual arts which involves the representation of inanimate objects. Historically, still life is referred to in French as ‘nature morte’ or ‘dead nature’. A ‘still life’ art work could be an arrangement of manmade, everyday objects (or together with) natural objects like flowers, stuffed dead animals and food. Objects depicted in early still life paintings were often used as symbols referring to religious ideas about good and bad, and life and death.

Still lifes developed from detailed studies included within the compositions of large scale paintings or frescoes which depicted religious or mythological subject matters. Representations of objects and food were painted in Egyptian tombs in the belief that they would become real for use in the afterlife. The skull was used as a symbol of mortality and earthly remains in Roman times, sometimes accompanied with the words Omnia mors aequat (Death makes all equal). This use of objects to symbolise meanings – particularly as reminders of the transitory nature of life – become associated with still life painting in northern Europe between 1500 and 1600 and is referred to as vanitas. Another word associated with ideas of mortality and the afterlife also symbolised in the image of a skull is Memento mori (Latin - “remember (that you have) to die’). The preoccupation with this message affirms ideas (predominately Christian) of their being an eternal afterlife.

The symbolic use of flowers in still life evolved since early Christian days. For example, the rose symbolises the Virgin Mary, transience; the tulip symbolises showiness, nobility; the sunflower symbolises faithfulness, divine love or devotion. As for insects, the butterfly represents transformation and resurrection; the dragonfly represents transience; and the ant equates to hard work and attention to the harvest.

Image: Adriaen van Utrecht, Vanitas Still Life with Bouquet and a Skull, c. 1642. Private Collection

Artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer used watercolour and drawing to study and accurately depict their observations of nature. Devoid of any symbolism or moral narrative, these still life works lay the foundations for the next century’s Western European colonisation policies and the scientific illustrations that documented and classified the findings of unknown flora and fauna.

Contemporary artists have developed and expanded the still life genre using three-dimensions, mixed media, photography, video and sound.

Suggested topics for discussion and research:

Find examples of contemporary artists who have developed or appropriated the still life genre in their work, such as Marian Drew. Consider the different techniques and media that the artist has used. For example:

Three dimensional:

• Ricky Swallow, Damien Hirst (For the love of God, 2007),

• Fiona Hall (Cash Crop, 1998 Paradisus terestris entitled, 1996 and 1999)

Photography:

• Destiny Deacon, Wolfgang Tillmans

Video:

• Sam Taylor Wood (Still Life 2001)

Painting/drawing:

• Fiona Hall (Leaf Litter 1999-2003)

Image above: Albrecht Dürer Stag Beetle 1505. Watercolor on paper. Getty Museum

Image left: Leonardo da Vinci Oak Leaves with Acorns and Dyers’ Greenwood [detail] 1505. The Royal Library, Windsor, England

e de Medici

The subject of many of eX de Medici’s works is the precarious balance between life and death as seen in the recurring use of the human skull – a symbol of mortality used in the genre of still life painting. Based in Canberra, eX de Medici works as an artist, and as a tattooist. She completed an undergraduate degree in visual arts at the Canberra School of Art, and since the early 1980s her art practice has incorporated performance, installation art, tattooing, photography, painting and drawing.

Her work brings a contemporary perspective to the vanitas tradition contrasting botanical watercolour studies of flowers and animals with images of conflict weapons, bullets, skulls and swastikas. Her interest in the tattoo industry grew from the Punk scene and its ethos of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture, combined with a questioning of conservative /traditional values, particularly in the art world.

She was awarded a grant from the Australia Council in 1989 and moved to USA to study tattooing. A year later she returned to Australia and focused on tattooing, researching its history and opening her own studio. In 1999, she was an artist-in-residence at the CSIRO Entomology Division, working with the Australian National Insect Collection, developing her synonymous style of overlaying moths onto weapons.

eX de Medici has exhibited extensively in Australia and her work is represented in major collections. Recent solo exhibitions include eX de Medici@MPRG, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria, 2004; and Soft Steel, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2003. eX de Medici is represented by Boutwell Draper Gallery, Sydney. She lives and works in Canberra.

Suggested topics for discussion and research:

Compare and contrast with examples from Flemish/Dutch still life painting (1400-1500) and Natural History scientific drawing and illustration (John Gould, Ernst Haekel).

Describe the similarities between the techniques and processes involved in tattooing and water colour in eX de Medici’s work.

Still Life Worksheet

Assemble a selection of objects that represent you. Think about the objects as having a story (that maybe only you know!) and how they might describe your likes, and dislikes, and your aspirations. Carefully arrange the objects into a ‘still life’ using the space and table below.

Contact

We hope you enjoyed the exhibition and learned lots about contemporary art.

Feedback and Tours

Free guided tours are available. For further information, or to give feedback on education and public programs provided by the Gallery, contact: (07) 4773 8871

pinnacles@townsville.qld.gov.au

Pinnacles Gallery and Perc Tucker Regional Gallery

Townsville City Council owns and operates two premier regional galleries, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery in the city’s CBD, and Pinnacles Gallery located within the Riverway Arts Centre in Thuringowa Central.

Image: Regan ‘HAHA’ Tamanui

Untitled - Tā moko woman #3 2014 Aerosol on 300gsm printmaking paper, 65.1 x 58.6 cm Courtesy of the Artist, Regan ‘HAHA’ Tamanui

Photo: Shane Fitzgerald