ART JOURNALS

ART REVIEW

i find that art review is rather confusing. the exhibition adverts are scattered amongst the articles making it often difficult to differentiate. i also find that any interesting images aren't captioned properly so its either read the whole article or look around the surrounding 5 pages to see who the image was by.

FRIEZE

frieze is a rather pleasant magazine. i enjoy the layout, where the adverts were in a big block together and the articles are separate, so it was easy to distinguish.i also like the Pop Culture aspect of it with features on other magazines, music reviews and other things than just art. frieze has another nice feature in the "Back" section where it almost just lists artists that you might find interesting with an image that might take your fancy, a easy way to browse artists and discover new things.

  

ART MONTHLY

this magazine is in black and white. an art magazine in black and white? seriously? i am very much a flick-though-and-look-at-the-pictures sort of person so a black and white magazine isnt very good. also it appears to just be exhibition review after exhibition review with editorial some adverts and not much else. hmm... not for me.

ARTFORUM

instantly i like the shape of artforum. its a bit heavy but its different. again, like frieze it's decided to separate the adverts and articles for easier reading, but in this case adverts seem to overpower the articles, as its very thick and mainy ads. it has some really interesting articles in it and as it hits the end there is a lot of great content with better reviews than, say, art monthly.

out of my little selection of magazines tried over the year frieze definitely is my favourite, with artforum close behind. they both feel very contemporary and hitting towards a younger audience, whereas art review seems a bit more wordy and grown up. i think frieze's pop culture and music reviews definitely swing it for me.

FINE ART AND SITE

For our final module we were kicked out of our nice cosy studio and taken 4 miles to here: Thwaites Mill. Site Specific Art is the idea..we have the option of working in a wooded area, a meadow-like grassy area, in the canal that surrounds the mill or in/with the mill itself. to me the mill stood out particularly with its industrial rough look naturally appealing to me. 

after mill tours and hearing other people's ideas i was put off doing an idea about the mill..the history or something seriously reflecting the mill so i decided i wanted to draw people i aspired to large-scale upon the mill. i was drawn to people which the least connection to a watermill in leeds... musicians. here are some quick photoshop examples: 

i wanted to use the roof (above) but its apparently very fragile and cant be used...so i had to look for another space...i considered and did several sketchbook drawings of stretching canvas across the mill of varying sizes. i was shown this space (below) right at the front of the mill. 

after a crit where people were puzzled and not warming to my idea it managed to change to a more relevant image of celebrity..an advert... seeing as the space..if canvas was stretched over it...was similar to a billboard in size. The mill stopped creating its product (putty) in 1975. so i wanted to create an advert based on that that was pretty much the same as my original idea but with a tongue-in-cheek sarcastic ironic take on the mill. i wanted to put a really famous celebrity who would never do an advert for a mill and wasnt around/famous when the mill created the product in the first place.

hand drawn examples:

photoshopped axamples:

i needed a celebrity that was instantly recognisable and also i wanted someone too famous to be advertisin a mill in leeds. i wanted to highlight the worthlessness of "putty" this Horn's brand that was defunct in 1975 and make an ironic statement about it and whichever celebrity i chose. i chose Bono. Bono is the lead singer of U2 a world renound star who only does work for charity and thinks he rules the world. i wanted to brng him down to earth by having him endorse this putty.

 i bought the canvas from richard at uni for £30 and cut it into 2 strips of 6m. i the ngot a guy from fashion to help me sew it together, creating my new 6mx4m canvas. it was huge.

i managed to loan some studio space in university to paint it. i hung it up and it was all looking a bit CHRISTO/JEAN CLAUDE haha. 

then the difficult part was to secure it to the mill. i got 2 mill workers to help me, tied it using rope through about 16 eyelets in the canvas tied to the cast-iron fire escape and to a pole below the fire escape.