Who The Hell Is Renae Burton?

Back in the Saddle...

2008-02-04T16:11:00.000-08:00

Its now 2008, I have finally graduated with destinction from an ever evolving six years of full time study and after some time to reflect on my practice instead of constantly creating, I am finally back in the saddle. Currently, I am working on a large scale (150x180cm) canvas, using acrylic, ink, flow medium and paper collage as the ground work for the expanded field repetitive pattern of previous works. The work differs from recently produced workby utilising older techniques to compliment the nature of canvas over paper. Also working back on a larger scale with repetition is very challenging and arduous.

I am also working on lino block prints in the same vain (expanded field patterning), which will accompany the painting mentioned above with a number of 3D sculptural formations in an installation. This I suppose is the start of the physical work that I spent such a long time researching. The concept of expanded field painting/installation, encompassing the audience in an ongoing ever evolving/expanding environment. I hope to also develop/investigate sound works that may compliment this concept.

As well, I am researching the area of the grotesque and sublime and developing ways of utilising this theme in installation/expanded field display. The ARI (artist run initiative), Platform I am interested to exhibit this work is in Melbourne and consists of window boxes situated in an underground passage that apparently 30,000 people pass through a day to travel by train.(http://platformartistsgroup.blogspot.com/ ) I think the concept and the space would work well together especially when you consider the current exibition of Alice Lang at Rawspace Galleries in Brisbane where she has utilised the window space at the front of the building to exhibit her current work. http://www.rawspace.org/exhib_detail.php?id=64

I will post images shortly of work in progress!

Missing In Action...

2007-10-15T02:11:00.000-07:00

It has been sometime since I have visited my blog and at last I have some time to expand on my practice and research. So to fill in the blanks since June... I travelled to Laos for 12 amazing days and had a fantastic time, returning home to continue on with the Gone To Earth production, which was a complete success. I then started working at Access Arts Inc. in New Farm in their Brisbane Outsider Artist studio and continue to work their to date!

Apart from the members and staff of Access Arts being extremely motivating and inspiring me to get back to my practice, what really set me on fire, was today we visited GOMA and QAG to see the Katharina Grosse, Picture Park exhibition. This work is fantastic and it has inspired me to continue on the path of developing a body of work with Expanded Field Painting/Installation as the background for this work.

Its the last days for this exhibition but if anyone gets the chance, please go and see it! Her website is: http://www.katharinagrosse.com/index.php

Allowing It To Unfold...

2007-06-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

" You should have a practice in art that actually looks forward to a moment that will be different. I think that's the point that we haven't actually grasped. Critics look at a work and they say, 'That's only a negative deconstructive understanding of personal experience', without seeing what the work as a whole represents in terms of a positive view of social change and what art could be in the future." Mary Kelly interviewed by Monika Gagnon, C Magazine 1986 (10), 24 (Pollock, Griselda (1994). Vision and Difference, p. 155)

In reference to previous posts it is still very much a patriarchal world, now filled with many voices but still the struggle for change. I can honestly say I myself am struggling with feminism and my place within it as a practicing female artist. Instead of producing what I want to produce I still tend to fight myself and listen to those nasty little voices that tell you that what your doing 'sucks', or 'this is going to be crap', etc, etc before the work even has a chance to take shape. The way I have found to quieten this issue is to listen to very loud and heavy music or to watch trashy TV while making. This way my attention isn't so enveloped in what I am doing and I tend to 'just do it' (NIKE ADD) and tune into the noise, instead of the 'mental noise', that is.

This is what has been great while working with the Gone To Earth production, because I am no longer the 'genius' sitting in my ivory tower creating! Collaborating is a wonderful thing in terms of letting go of the pressure of having to be the sole creator of something fantastic. It can also be a really interesting time to relinquish control, as well as to rein in ideas that your mind is running off on a tangent about! At present I am working with a lighting team, a design team (myself and Bev), music design, the director and the cast themselves, so I can only say that this experience will certainly teach me many new skills (like patience for one) and will enrich my solo practice and give me the foundation to consider other collaborative artistic ventures. I think it will bring many new ways of looking at what and how I create (in a solo situation) after returning from theatre. I believe this will expand my practice into new areas and might help to create some of the many performative ideas I have conceptualised.

Since my last post on Gone To Earth many new concepts for stage design have developed. I have recently been looking at Russian Avant-Garde theatre design and went to Margi with what I thought she might have in mind. It is very hard to imagine what someone is thinking so its easier for me to find images or draw what I think is unfolding.

Fig 1. The Man Who Was Thursday, 1923
Fig 2. The Magnanimous Cuckold, 1922

Margi really liked fig 2. and the idea of using scaffolding as part of the set design. In rehearsals in the Woodward Theatre on Monday night we put the scaffolding on stage and let the cast utilise it during perceptual practice and it worked beautifully. Definitely a keeper! The imagery and shadow work that was created by them climbing on it and with lighting projecting onto the back screen was very rich and layered and again with more layers created by platforms and ladders was a truly stunning effect. A little like collaging but instead of my usual material of paper on a vertical surface your creating both vertical shadow imagery with horizontal 3D structures.

Other ideas that have come from the Woodward rehearsals are using sand on the floor to create patterns like the rice used in the Songs of the Wanderers performed by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan. This is also a way to map the path of the cast, each night the end result would be a different pattern.

Songs of the Wanderers: "The dancers work with and in the field of rice, moving slowly as if nature had begun to reflect on its own seasons and its cyclical memories. The dancers, carrying branches, become a landscape, transform into an oratorio of slow gestures that sometimes, as in a storm, erupt into sudden tempests of emotion, while all through the evening, one dancer stands still on stage left, entranced in private meditation, a steady trickle of rice falling on his shaven head and forming a small mountain at his feet. At the end, the dancers leave, but one man remains at work, a cosmic farmer tilling the earth and plowing, slowly, very slowly, the golden rice field. A spiral emerges as if a mandala was built to our quiet comprehension of eternity." (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~orpheus/events.html)

Song of the Wanderers

Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan:

Wild Cursive/Final Chapter of Cursive: A Trilogy

"This astonishing new work is influenced by kuang chao (wild calligraphy), considered the pinnacle of Chinese cursive aesthetics, in which all rules are broken and the characters freed from any set form. Giant cascading scrolls of rice paper are the sole set decoration, as black ink seeps slowly onto the paper creating wild abstract patterns. The subtle slow motions and dynamite attacks of the dancers, whose training includes modern dance, classical ballet, meditation, martial arts, and tai chi tao yin, echo the serpentine lines creating spellbinding movements and lyrical flows within a forest of ink." (http://web3.colum.edu/eventoftheday/archives/2006_10.php)

Wild Cursive

Moon Water also by Cloud Gate:

"To the Chinese, Moon Water, or Shui Yue, is reminiscent of two things. One is a Buddhish proverb: "Flowers in a mirror and moon on the water are both illusory." The other describes the ideal state of Taiji (t'ai-chi) practitioners: "Energy flows like water, while the spirit shines like the moon." This transcendent new work departs from these famous quotes in a poetic rendering of the Daoist philosophy. "Moon Water" is a study of real vs. unreal, effort vs effortlessness, yin and yang, and, in the end, a study of time." (http://www.international.ucla.edu/china/events/showevent.asp?eventid=1061)

Moon Water

These productions are very minimalist in stage design but intensely stunning in appearance. Completely unlike the Russian Avant-gardes sets whose designs seem somewhat clumsy in comparison yet still revolutionary for its time. These are however two very different theatre styles to interpret and appreciate and I think a combination of these elements could be a really interesting concept but am sure many other ideas will unfold before the final set is complete!

Further developments will be documented in my next post...

Female Influence...

2007-05-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

After talking about feminism and feminist art I have just relised that not one of my posts has listed any of my female influences. Got caught up in the hype of new research. So this post is dedicated to the amazing women who have influenced my practice...

Yayoi Kusama has created some absolutely amazing and obsessive immersive environments and was probably the first to influence the mulitple/repetitive nature of my work.

The example here, My Flower Bed (1965-66) is made of painted, covered mattress springs and stuffed gloves. This piece shows her frequent use of repetition and every day objects. The work suggests, as do the sculptures pictured in the background, a fragmented biomorphism and a lush and out of control bloom.

What I enjoy about this work is the use of every day objects to create a visually illusive and seductive installation, with rich colours that screams feminism. Many of her works utilise the dot along with other repetitive patterns to suggest a multiplying disease, which is obviously a daily consideration for Kusama.

Yayoi, Kusama, 'Dots Obsession', 2004.

This has been prevelant in my recent work from end of 2006 and is suggestive of this same concept as well as 'chaos'. Amongst this repetitive choas is always a small 'clearing', a patch of quiet and for me this is my piece of serenity, the peace and quiet I crave for in a chaotic world. In considering this concept it also relates back to my child hood and the confusion that I felt living with a parent with mental health issues. There were times when you just wanted to 'escape' and other times when you wanted to become the parent to comfort and console the distress, to try and make things right again.

Omnipotent By Nature, 2006. Mixed Media on Paper, 83 x 110cm

There is also often this ordering system for the 'choas', an ordering of both the past and an ordering or mapping system for the present and future. A motivator for my work comes from the past 30 years of living with an illness that requires daily rituals to control. I have heard from the medical profession so many statistics, about life expectancy, related complications, percentages, images, test results etc etc, which from the age of five has deep rooted the predictions for my future. So to clarify the concept of mapping system, it is mapping my eternity, my past, my present and future. Each dot, each repetitive pattern, each collage of the smaller works is a map of my time here so far and my time to come. Each pattern is sometimes representative of a cell, multiplying, expanding and continuing on forever. With this in mind, it is the crux of the concept behind the immersive environments. What I want from these installations is the viewer to be completely immersed in my world and though no other person can experience my experiences, it is an emotion or feeling that I am trying to create. Sometimes completely absorb and other times very sterile and empty.

But back to my influences.... next is Eva Hesse and her sculptural forms, with there organic sometimes phallic structure, her sense of materiality, as well as the diversity of her materials.

Untitled. 1970. Figerglass ovver polyethylene over aluminium wire. 7 units each 78 in. x 40 in. each. Berkeley: University Art Museum

I find this particular work of Hesse's very phallic and organic and I believe I read somewhere that this work was in reaction to Pollocks 'Blue Poles'.

Because this post could turn into something huge I will leave it at two per post. So stay tuned for the next addition of amazing female artists and the continuing story of my influences...

The Gender Divide Continues!

2007-05-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have just been reading Militant Art Bitch's blog, which is headed: Anonymous Female Artist (a.k.a. Militant Art Bitch)
Greetings. I'm Edna, the Anonymous Female Artist. I'm opinionated and angry at the current state of the male-dominated art world. I'm here to bring attention to the evil-doings of artists, critics, gallerists, and anyone else who's making it hard for us. I'm a MILITANT ART BITCH who is dedicated to JUSTICE for all!
What a refreshing and honest take on feminist art, theory and the still existing patriarchal art industry. I recently had this conversation regarding the attitute towards 'female', not only in the art scene but also socially. Society has such deep rooted attitudes that have been passed down from our predecessors since, well the time when Eve apparently led Adam into the garden and convinced him to eat the apple. We've been seen as the spawn of saturn, forced to cover ourselves from head to toe so as not to make the opposite sex desire us (not like the opposite sex has a choice or self control, is it?), forced to be imprisioned if we become widowed, and expected to follow our mans dreams, goals and choices in life like a good little girl, and in relation to art, never be taken seriously only if a man has chosen to give you the opportunity (so on and so on). And though I would like to think that times have changed many of these oppressive situations still occur today. Feminism in the 60's to womens liberation have incurred many changes, for example we now have the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Though I see this as a good thing for post, present and future female artists, it still doesn't mean that we are seen as equal or as valued in the art scene as the monumental work of male artists. After discussing feminism, with two colleagues, in context to my work, I mentioned that regardless whether my work is trying to express a feminist statement or not, because I am female there will always be some form of critical analysis of the feminist content in my work. Edna (a.k.a Militant Art Bitch) wrote in her post Not A Fucking Thing Has Changed that "anytime a woman picks up a paintbrush, it is indeed a feminist act, and by this fact alone, every piece of art made by a woman is revolutionary." This statement confirms that many female artists struggle with this concept. I used to sign my work with just my initials and last name for that exact reason, so I wouldn't be recognised as a female artist and therefore may be taken more seriously but in time (and with research in to feminism) I considered this as a step back in time, not unlike being inprisoned or made to wear a veil.
I think change will only start to occur if our attitudes stop dividing genders and we start seeing everyone as a human being and therefore every person requiring the same respect, value and consideration regardless of their gender. I know, very utopian and generalising but great concept in theory!

Vena Cava - 'Gone To Earth' by Mary Webb

2007-05-15T04:42:00.000-07:00

I have recently joined Vena Cava productions at QUT Kelvin Grove, as their Production Designer for 'Gone to Earth', by Mary Webb. Margi Brown-Ash is directing the play, which will open on the 7th August 2007 at the Woodward Theatre at QUT. I have included this in my journal of expanded field painting and installation, because in discussing the concept, Margi was very interested in creating an installation/immersive environment for the stage and set design. Projections and light have become important idea's and the work of Christian Boltanski has been considered.

Christian Boltanski, Monument:

The Children of Dijon, installation, Paris, Salpetriere Chapel, 1986

Christian Boltanski. Les Ombres (Shadows), 1986. Installation view. Electric fan, light bulb, mixed media

Margi has also considered my practice and the concept of 'mapping systems' which could be utilised as a way of 'mapping' some of the characters journeys throughout the play. For example, using paint or pigment for them to walk through and track their events on canvas on the floor or painting text (emotions/parts of the script) with brush and paint on to backdrop. It will be a very experiential production and many of the stage and set elements will be utilised by the characters/actors.

I will add more info and images as the time goes on and idea's further develop.

New Work In Progress

2007-05-09T01:29:00.000-07:00

Recently I have developed the idea of expanding visual field painting into installation by creating immersive environments. The original idea started with producing multiple smaller works on different paper and textile surfaces, then collaging them together. These original works were collaged directly to the gallery wall using pins. For this new work instead of pinning them on the wall I have pinned them to canvas. The 'pinning' has always been a deliberate act since creating "Mapping Eternity 2006". For me the pinning exists not only as a joining device but to give the illusion that the work is capable of changing as well as continuing to expand. The pins are also in consideration of the 'feminine' or 'female' in relation to sewing, craft (womens work) which exposes the work as a form of 'low' art. To juxtaposed this concept, the repeated pattern has been painfully hand painted on paper then assembled/collaged onto a canvas stretched with linen.
Once the collage has covered the canvas surface I plan to extend the pattern on to the walls, or use other smaller canvas's, or projections, or maybe a combination of these ideas. In a previous post I have suggested that I had been developing this concept for some time and have also recently been influenced by Ryan McGinness and Michel Majerus, who both create immersive or expanded field environments.

Work in early progress (31/05/07)

Installationview: Ryan McGinness

2007-05-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

In my last post I mentioned the idea of my work moving towards 'expanded field installation' and so when I happened to literally stumble upon the book: Installationview Ryan McGinness it confirmed my concepts and theories I was considering in my own work. McGinness is an American artist who has joined his two passions of graphic design, utilising digital technology with semiotics (signs/logos/symbols etc) with painting to create visual worlds that are completely immersive with work from wall to canvas, to floor, and to skate board, which brings the element of skate and underground culture to his work.

"MULTIVERSE,” 2004-2005, INSTALLATION VIEW, MIXED MEDIA, DIMENSIONS VARIABLE,GALERIE DU JOUR, PARIS

“WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS,” 2003, MIRROR MAZE INSTALLATION, DIMENSIONS VARIABLE, DEITCH PROJECTS, NEW YORK

A quote from Installationview by Jeffrey Deitch, "Worlds within Worlds featured a walk-in, mirrored image. These reproductions of reproductions reflected the concept of McGiness' infinitely reproducible digitally based visual information. Like his maze, McGinness' confounding universe seems infinitely expandable." (2005, p. 015)

Mark Pennings also discussed another artist in his lecture in Contemporary Art Issues on Rebirth of Painting (03/05/07) who was creating 'expanded field paintings' in an installation/sculptural environment or as Mark put it an "expanded field visual environment". The artist was Michel Majerus (1967-2002) who died at the early age of 35. The e-flux article below is a précis description of his influences, concepts and image from the exhibition at Kunsthaus Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum in 2005.

http://www.e-flux.com/displayshow.php?file=message_1108158401.txt

(viewed 05/05/07)

What is Expanded Field?

2007-04-29T05:19:00.000-07:00

I was asked at the end of 2006, when I mentioned artists like James Sienna, (Sagging Grid, 2006Reduction linocut Image Size: 28 1/16 x 21 11/16 inches)

Richmond Burton, (Eyes in the Heat, 1992oil on linen84 x 108 inches)

Ross Bleckner, (Selection, 1999. Spitbite aquatint etching with softground & chine colleSomerset soft white paperImage size 30" x 22" -- Paper size 40" x 31")

and the Abstract Expressionists, along with my own work, why I didn't mention 'Expanded or Visual Field'? At that point and this often happens in my practice, my brain didn't keep up with my hands. In other words, I made work that I didn't yet understanding or capable of discussing until sometime later. I hadn't yet given myself time to contemplate the work and its relationship to the bigger picture. So at that stage my answer was that I didn't really understand the concept of 'Visual Field'. My understanding of 'Expanded Field' has now broadened, which exists in this way: 'Expanded Field' to me is covering a particular space or given surface with a repetitive pattern. I also see it (within where I see my work heading) like an installation, where the viewer is totally immersed (vt to plunge into a liquid, to absorb or engross; to baptise by total submergence-) where the eye could imagine the image or pattern continuing on "forever".

Traces of Art: Post from Fallon and Rosof blogspot

2007-04-20T04:33:00.000-07:00

I thought this was an interesting review of an exhibition of artworks that relate to my own practice and the idea of size relating to the obsessive, repetitive density of the works. Coming from experience, the idea of creating a large-scale repetitive work is a very daunting experience, but I have overcome this emotion by continuing the repetitive process over multiple smaller works and then assembling the works together in an 'expanded field installation', (Mapping Eternity, 2006).

Aslo Libby's idea that grandiose gestures of macho art (large-scale art) may not be so 'in-style' anymore maybe valid but it still very much exists: Ross Bleckner and Richmond Burton for example. With the quality and quantity of work that was represented in this show it would have been worthwhile seeing.

www.fallonandrosof.blogspot.com

Sunday, July 25, 2004
Traces of art
Post by libby rosof
That Roberta just wrote about megaprints made me think about the tiny size of most of the pieces at "Traces," an exhibit at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery and the University of the Arts. Seems to me I've been seeing a lot of tiny work. Can it be the gradiose gestures of macho art have fallen out of style? Or is it just a function of the market. Small pieces come at affordable prices. And then there's the function of the sort of work this is for the most part--the obsessive process pieces that are so dense in effort and concentration that larger would be unthinkable. Which is not a slam. I liked so many of the pieces I saw in this show that I hardly know where to begin, what to include, what not to include. So I'll start out by saying that just because I haven't written about a piece in this show doesn't mean I didn't like it. But the number of pieces--nearly 50--and the number of artists--about 30--means it's a tough show to wrap your arms around. For density of quality, I'd go to the lobby area, where I was happy to revisit some blackboard work by Jennie Shanker, happy to meet the block of wood from Roger Ackling, happy to find a Joseph Beuys that made me laugh and happy to see a Stuart Netsky up to his old tricks about skin (human existence?) and gay-itude. Shanker's blackboard-painted stack of little vellum rectangles brought me back to the way my teacher used to hang a layered stack of student work on the bulletin board. The density of the paint, grayed to chalkiness, on the skin-like paper evoked the touch of the wooden desks, the powdery erasers, the permanent marks on boards that were washed daily but rarely came fully clean. The little stack was a tear-off tablet or a notebook, its layers the years spent as a student, the size an evocation of small children. Ackling's block of wood, "Sunlight on Wood" was created with a magnifying glass training a pinpoint of sunlight on the block to brand in the lines, said Sid Sachs, gallery director there and the show curator. The process becomes all the more reason for looking at this tiny block. It evoked in me a kinetic response to the steadiness of hand and mind required. I was in awe. The Beuys piece, "Intuition," on the other hand, was the only Joseph Beuys piece I have ever liked--a box with lines indicating the width but bearing no relationship to the box's real width. And Netsky's "Pansy Nosegay" a nosegay image made with self-tanning lotion on vellum is about a whole bunch of things, from vanity to gay culture to Victorian culture to sickness and health. In the main room. Gabrielle Kanter's jig-saw puzzle of wood knots pieced together had the element of surprise. At first, before the pieces become visible, "288 ft/ft" looks like a piece of wood with more knots than nature could possible offer. Then the how-she-did-it becomes visible close up. And then the craftsmanship and the amount of labor come into focus. Next to it, Sharyn O'Mara's cut paper web throwing its shadow on the paper behind it is another labor-intensive piece that wows with the energy and craftsmanship that went into the making. Which brings me to the subject of the show, traces of process. The show, said Sachs, which is part of the Big Nothing extravaganza of exhibits around the city, originally was supposed to happen back in September, but he flip-flipped it with Jack Pierson's show because this one was such a nice fit with Big Nothing. Changing pace from the small and obsessive, I got a kick out of Perry Steindel's soy sauce drawings (one of four shown left)and Janet Passehl's dirt, a white piece of cloth with a small stain, displayed in an enormous vitrine as if it were precious. What a good commentary on painting and the art world and the business of art and reliqueries. I'm going to pretty much stop here, because I know that Roberta will weigh in and also just because I feel I'm going to get repetitive about the small and the obsessive. I'm hard-pressed to say who did the work that was the most obsessive. So many candidates, like Jacob El Hanani, Kim Jones, Mark Lombardi, Paolo Columbo, Tom Chimes, Ellen Torpey, Amy Podmore's hair drawings etc. etc. etc. Much to love. The smallest work was Romy Scheroder's "Kalipods," which I couldn't find without Sachs' help. On the other hand, Anne Seidman's wallscape, "Smart move" was by no means little although it still bore the intensity of her mark-making practice in bits of tape bearing the traces of previous line installations she's made. Yes, she actually saved the bits of tape. And then with these obsessive traces of her past work, she's allowed in a dose of airiness, enormous blocks of space, the antithesis of the dense markings. Voila. I saw land and sky.