Serendipity

I love that word, one of my all time favourites. Maybe I need to do a whole series of posts based on others.

Anyway - the serendipitousness of this post is this. I was all set to write about my niece and some of her work, two photographs of which I have just shamelessly stolen from a website -and don't you just love that name? This isn't hers - this is. I have posted this link before, but have to give full credits, no? Then Interweave Knits arrives, and opening it up, there is an article about someone knitting a US flag with steel poles held by cherrypickers. Can't give you a link to that specifically, there's nothing about it on their website.

OK - so where am I going with this? I am not particularly a huge fan of much contemporary art. Do not get me started on Britart, Rachel Whiteread, Tracy thing, whoever. I do quite like Antony Gormley, and I am sure there would be more if I were not so ignorant of their existence, which is not exactly my fault because there is rarely much in the press. But I am rambling, just by way of a change.

What I like about the piece in Knits, and what I like about some of Alice's work, especially these two, is an underlying dry humour, and a clever capacity for making you look at things in a very fresh way. For me, art can be about that as well as being something so beautiful, or technically clever, or whatever it is that makes you look at it and go - yessss. And no, you don't have to understand it.



This piece of work was exhibited with the instruction that if the piece should completely deflate during the show then the gallery was to contact the artist, and she would come and change the Lightbulb for them. You have just got to love that.



I must get to see this one in the flesh. Looking at the photograph alone makes me laugh, but I can see such a lot in it. If I want to sound really loopy - it makes me think of the sellotape rolling itself up in to a ball and peering out at us is fear and disbelief. I think it's great. It occurs to me as I am writing that I have always enjoyed the theatre of the Absurd, and that maybe my penchant for works like this is an extension of that, I don't know. I need to give it all more thought, along with that perennial questions that dogs all our heels.

What is Art?

I was just making soup, chopping up butternut squash, onions, red peppers, tomatoes. I liked the way my hands moved and looked as I chopped, and wished I had my camera at hand. The diced veggies looked equally fine heaped up on my chopping board, and again simmering in the pan. I think - I know - that is art and one that I practice more than competently.

Now I am going to spin. At what point does the art of that burst in to life? If I follow my soup theory logically, then it must be as I take the raw fibre/ingredients and start to change them.

Now, there's food for thought......