Meredith Allen: garbage banality

Meredith Allen, Untitled 0538, 2008

Meredith Allen, Untitled 0460, 2008

Original artical from jameswagner.com

Thinking about banality

In their simplest form, art objects like Duchamp’s “Fountain” transform banality into otherness somewhere in the communication of themselves, when repositioned in context. Although “Fountain” spoke mainly just of its own transformancefrom the banal to the attention worthy, such an act, in itself, can also produce tangents and posibilities of meaning.Objects created by grouping or altering ordinary items, relocating them into other contexts, or those created to appear banal can be powerful agents of thought or imagination, given their pre-existant structure of meaning. This is an instant key in for the viewer.

The semiotic system of meanings inherent to all objects can be manipulated in lots of ways, and is one of the most important tools used when recreating, representing, presenting any image or object for consideration as something other than itself, in this case, art. Whether a painting of a bowl of over ripe fruit iscrafted to put you in mind of the brevity of existance or everyday objects (such as lobsters and telephones) juxtaposed to evoke a particular absurdity of the human psyche, transformation is integral to the processes of art.

Does banality happen after this fact, or because of it? Can banal exist within an object before its meaning is attached to it; after the meaning is asociated but before it has been deciphered and its status assigned; or even after this, once ithas been tranformed through such a process as art?

The power of the tranformed banal object lies within its familiarity. Initially as a means to make the tranformation easy to engage in. Secondly because the

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TV screen: window, mirror

Sam Kelly, Blue TV Screen, 2oo8

Sam Kelly, TV, 2008

Super flat fruit

Sam Kelly, Fruit Still Life Flattenned (after unknown), 2008

Sam Kelly, Fruit Still Life (after Caravaggio), 2008

A System of Mirrors

I met a man in the pub over the summer. He told me the story of a Parisian man, a pimp, a dangerous character, who wouldn’t think twice about cutting you if you crossed him. He had many lives and personas which fit whatever dodgy deal he was making with a numerous variety of criminals. His lifestyle was relentless and he constanly had to avoid the authorities. One day it all caught up with him and he was being chased by the police through Montmatre and into a freakshow. He attempted to hide in the hall of mirrors where, in his state of flight, the police about to sniff him out, he was suddenly confronted with so many images of himself. He was completely overwhelmed to point that he colapsed and died befor the police got to him.

The man in the pub who told me this was apparently repeting a french author’s story and attempting to explain an earlier phrase he had used to describe human existence as “a system of mirrors”. I did not find the story explanatory in any way. But after he explained in a non metaphorical way I quite enjoyed his theory.

What I would find it easiest to describe as ’scientific reality’ (meaning the physical universe and all the laws that define it) is imposible to comprehend in a any kind of fully realised way, given a humans limited and very specific set of senses (modes of experiencing), plus the relative minuteness of our capacity to process such information, plus inadequate, construced methods of comprehension and comunication (such as language). Therefore all individual human experience of this reality is filtered and reduced even before it comes into contact with our constructed methods of understanding. Once the raw sensory information encounters this system of comprehension, from then on it is bounced off mirror after mirror of perception (it will most likely be asigned an instinctual reaction, an emotion, a name and will be merged with a barrage of similar memories), until it can only be understood as an image of original source. If that idea or perception were then to be communicated from the first human to the next,the system of mirrors only becomes more convoluted. And so on, into the realm of societies, etcetera.

Later on, thinking about this theory in cojunction with art, I

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A Conical Intersect

Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect, 1975

I saw video footage of the making of ‘A Conical Intersect’ at the Psycho Buildings exhibition at the Hayward over the summer. The aesthetic and geometrical simplicity of the cone shaped hollow sliced out of the side of a Parisian appartment building, in comparison to the complicated logistics of carrying out such an opperation is obviously one of the main attractions of a work like this. As well as the insight of such an idea. Although, the thirty minute, silent document of Matta-Clark and whoever his several helpers were, figuring out what tool to use in order to make a considered destruction, when confronted with the next apparent layer of the floor or wall, is such a gorgeous example of the balances and . Between …

Times artical about Ryan Gander

Always nice to read one liners, Ryan Gander’s statement of intent…

I want to give people catalysts to use their imagination rather than giving them something that is beautiful, or clever, or horrific

Artical is here.

Shapes in photographs

Sam Kelly, Orange bag & bush study, 2008

Sam Kelly, Wall & bush study, 2008

Geometric blocks

Sam Kelly, Geometric blocks, 2008

Negative, digital, Greek

Sam Kelly, Negative space Greek Heads 1, 2008

Sam Kelly, Negative space Greek Heads 2, 2008

Sam Kelly, Negative space Greek Heads 3, 2008