30.09.20 - CRITICAL STUDIES - Blurring art and design

‘Tree of Life’ Fair Trade wine bottle rack from ‘Iguazu’, Beeston.


Though the artist is unknown, this piece was handcrafted in Thailand out of acacia wood. I think it blurs design and art because it is very aesthetically pleasing, with smooth curves and allusions to forms in nature, while it is also designed to be good at its job of holding wine bottles. This gives you the freedom to display it as an ornamental art piece in the house or use it as a practical storage facility. The finish of the carved wood mirrors the refined character associated with wine drinking, and it complements the smooth glass bottles. The name of the product, ‘Tree of Life’ made me wonder about the relationship we have with alcohol, as the title implies we depend on it in our lives. However, the physical appearance of the wine holder gives the impression that it is a good relationship because the curves carry the wine in a very careful and beautiful way, portraying wine in a positive light as something that we should cherish and display. I think if we put wine in a different context, for example photographing empty bottles on the street, it would give a much more negative portrayal of our relationship with alcohol, so I think the design of this piece is very important in changing our perception of drinking, and in terms of my own work, I'm interested in the idea of how we interpret things differently depending on variables like context and media.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

29.1.21 - Objects in the Bath and Shower

Image
One of the first things that came to mind when I got the re-arrangement brief was to do something with my collection of beanies. Because they are so colourful, I decided they should go against a plain background, so I cleaned the bath out and started filling it with the animals.  The first set of photos shows the animals in a random arrangement where I photographed them from different angles... For these close up images I placed the camera in the bath with the animals and blindly took the photographs, not knowing what the results would be. The flash came on for these pictures which makes the in-focus areas appear very sharp with a clear representation of the animals' surface textures. They also remind me of claw machines in arcades, which gives the images a nostalgic feel - all of these beanies were manufactured in the 1990's and early 2000's. This is the thing that opens and closes the plughole in the bath, and it created some strange reflections of the beanies which look
Read more

'Shades of Green' exhibition at St Mary's Church

Image
'Shades of Green' is a Nottingham city artists studio group exhibition, with various works about the longing to be in green spaces during lockdown and the artists reactions to isolation. My favourite was Karl Wilby's 3D piece with the whales and flowers. I think it's really clever how they seem to be floating in the air and are feeding from the flowers like humming birds, it's also really interesting to see whales represented in such a small scale, it's quite surreal and endearing. I like the contrast between the reflective coppery metal flowers and the matt turquoise whales which suggest the colour of oxidised copper, showing a transition from new to old - shiny to rusty - maybe also alluding to the endangerment of the species. There seems to be quite a strong connection between this piece and our fabricated nature project because of how naturalistic the whales are, when in fact they have been made through 3D printing which is as artificial as it gets. The meta
Read more

Mike Kelley Style Photoshoot

Image
  Mike Kelley's 'Ahh... Youth' piece inspired me to make my own version using old teddies from home, including some from my parent's childhood and some from my own - plus a recently acquired 90's troll doll from a car boot sale. I set up the studio lighting in a way that would reduce shadows behind the objects and used a white background like Kelley's image, which gives a professional atmosphere that  elevates them from being worn-out old creatures to something special and celebrity-like. I used a tripod so that they are all to scale with each other, and I like the empty space around them, it's like they have room to breathe and think. I also had to adjust the ISO, white balance and shutter speed on the camera to suit the light and conditions of the space, then I used manual focus to get the sharpness that allows you to see all the details and textures. After uploading the photos to the computer, I cropped them on photoshop and classified them into two separ
Read more