Girl From The North Country

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Installation shot ofSalix cinerea, Salix alba. Apologies for the messy studio!

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Salix cinerea

Mixed media, 2012. Dimensions variable.

Installation photographs coming soon.

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Sneak peek # 2

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Here’s a sneak peak of what I’ve been working on, and the reason I haven’t been keeping on top of my huge “to blog” list (many apologies, patient followers!). My show opens on the 18th June in Camberwell College of Arts, London, and runs until the 22nd. Come along to see the final work, alongside the work of my very talented class mates.

I’ll be back with more photos and a deep, pretentious statement for your amusement.

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Let’s talk about Damien Hirst. Once the bad boy figure of the YBA movement, years later, Hirst’s name is still a household brand. The darling child of Jay Jopling (founder of the White Cube Gallery) and of Charles Saatchi, Hirst’s impressive career and blinding financial value are a far-cry from the working class upbringing he had in Leeds.

Hirst has somehow surpassed artist and has become a mega-brand, with his own company licensing his imagery, selling his prints and producing his t-shirts. In fact, it’s increasingly difficult to find discussion of Hirst’s art, and not simply articles reeling off sums of figures attributed to him. It seems his work has gone beyond discussion - indeed, everyone now either loves or hates Damien Hirst. We no longer discuss the artistic value of what he creates, but instead, how much it cost, how much it will sell for and how many assistants painted it for him.

But how much of this is by Hirst’s own engineering?

The artist has had his finger in many financial pies over the years, such as a popular London restaurant, and the jewellery he designed as an off-shoot of his pharmaceutical work. In 2007, Hirst launched a line of clothing forming a label from Levi Strauss & Company. Some items feature miniature crystal skulls on the black denim, an allusion to For the Love of God.

And it’s not by accident either. Hirst is a savvy businessman. His London restaurant, Pharmacy, opened in 1998 and was an all-emersive installation experience. After it closed in 2003, the contents - sole ownership of which was retained by Hirst - were auctioned at Sotheby’s. The mania took over: prices soared and demand went through the roof, all for a little bit of Hirst. A pair of martini glasses, with an estimated worth of £50 to £70, sold for £4000.

Hirst knows how to bolster his own stock too; having made one of his boldest business decisions in 2003, when he bought back twelve pieces of his early work from Charles Saatchi, his biggest collector. While it has been framed as a “simmering feud” that exists between the men, another possible likelihood is that his move was in part motivated by eventual financial gain. Much like a public company buying its own stock back, Hirst’s move no doubt resulted in a dramatic increase in the value of those pieces.

He didn’t do all of this alone. In fact, Hirst employs over 120 people who make his art for him, and he rubs shoulders with some of the most respected figures in the world of art. He’s also well aware of the legend of his own name. One anecdote tells of how, when one of his many assistants left, she asked the artist for one of his spot paintings. “Make one of your own,” he said bluntly. When she insisted that she wanted a “Hirst” spot painting, he replied, “The only difference between one painted by you and one of mine is the money.”

Perhaps it is sheer volume that has allowed Hirst to conquer the art world. He is certainly a prolific artist, having made an estimated 1,400 spot paintings since 1986 (of which, he himself has painted five and describes them as “shit”). Indeed, Hirst seems to do it all with a grand sense of scale. His operation to churn out art is massive, with nothing left half done. For the Love of God, the platimum skull encrusted with over 8,601 diamonds, used so many of the precious stones that it actually became difficult to source them without impacting on the price of diamonds on the open market.

While critics, especially those writing about his current retrospective at the Tate Modern, may see Hirst’s work as increasingly crass and self-involved, there is no denying that he has achieved superstar levels of fame which few artists are able to, even after their deaths. The artist has not yet turned fifty, yet he is already the most famous living artist today. While it may not be easy to enjoy his often gruesome work, and it may not be easy to respect his artistic talent, there is no denying that Damien Hirst has well and truly worked the art world like the brilliant businessman that he is.

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Molitor and Kuzmin have practised together since 1996 and form an interesting collaborative effort. Light is central to their practise, in particular the white fluorescent tube lighting found in sterile environments and no stranger to the gallery space. Whilst other artists working with fluorescents have dipped into colour, the collaboration sticks to white, giving their work an industrial edge. The interaction of light and space is crucial to the work, and Molitor and Kuzmin use the tube lights to create three dimensional installations in which the glare of the light seems to consume the form itself, resulting in undefined edges and a feeling that the sculpture extends far beyond its physical reach.

Click through on the image for a link to the duo’s website.

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Miina Äkkijyrkkäis obsessed with cows. Alongside raising them, she’s made them the focus of her art for the last forty years. Her giant metal cows are made of recycled cars which have been reconstructed into these huge structures which imply an odd but undeniable sort of grace and elegance in their suggested movement. There’s an interesting paradox in using such a contemporary media to suggest a domesticated animal which has been a staple of farming for centuries, and the cars come to represent not just the form they suggest, but also the flows and currents of our societies. As more and more people flood to the cities, away from the countryside and farming life, our relationship with cattle - an animal which symbolises the ancient relationship of humans and the Earth, as well as the way in which our species has developed and spread through agriculture - has also changed, and has become a creature that those of us from the inner cities are perhaps rather unfamiliar with.

Click through on the image for a link to Äkkijyrkkä’s website (Finnish).

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Slyvie Fleury is a Swiss artist who works mainly with the aesthetic and concepts of pop art. Her work has been called “post-appropriation” (which I think is nonsense) and deals primarily with the themes of shopping and the new paradigms we live in. Her work is full of brand names and designer labels, although sometimes these were hidden. In her series of shopping bags, where designer bags were arranged in such a way that the content was not visible, Fleury deliberately tried to buy objects which somehow referenced art history, but left these concealed within the bags. Fleury is obsessed with the power and importance we assign something as soon we are shown the markers of quality and expense.

Click through on the image for a link to Fleury’s website.