Painting for the show

This is the painting i did specially for the winter first year show. It is about connections. Like connections in the human body between cells, connections with other people, about all sorts of connection we have in life. First, i wanted to make this painting in lots of different colours, but then re- considered after i worked out it would probably look more effective in monochrome. I like how it came out and am happy to present it at the show, hope all goes well!

Gimpel Fils gallery

Recently i have been to Gimpel Fils gallery to see an exhibition by Niki de Saint Phalle, which i have enjoyed a lot since i love a lot of colour. Her paintings and sculptures are all eye- catching and sexual. She uses a lot of colour everywhere, mostly very bright colours and fluorescent as well. Her work is impossible not to notice!

There, at the gallery, there was as well a show by Lucy Stein and Andrew Gilbert. I did like some paintings in the show, they were quite political and almost comical. But generally, i did not enjoy the show as the sculptures there, to me, looked a bit freaky.

My new painting this term.

This is the first painting i did just before we started this year in order to get me going. This one does not really have an idea - i just wanted to try and show how would doing something magical with your hands look. So, i called her a witch.

The second one i did is about my experience with people, especially in London, where people are very restricted with their emotins. Especially this happens in social situations, somewhere outside their home. So, you can say that every person has a sort of a mask that they wear in front of other people - the side of their personality that everyone sees. But, everybody does have another side of them too which is a self that we rarely or don't at all show to others, sometimes we even do not see it ourselves. This is like the two sides of the moon, with the mysterious dark or back side.

Then, i did the paintings below, one of which is an abstracted portrait of my cat, and the other one using peels of the palette i have used when making the painting with two people on it earlier on. I am planning to put the painting of my cat, and another one i am still working on in the winter show which will be happening in the next 2 weeks at Chelsea for my year.

Self - made by Gillian Wearing.

After i had a presentation of my work to my tutor group in class, i was advised to go and see a feature film by Gillian Wearing, called self- made.Although it is a very strange film, i liked it a lot.

In the film she uses normal people as actors, teaching them an acting method that makes you engage with your inner self, and then, with everyone who did the acting training she did a short film. Where the people who acted could themselves choose who they wanted to play and in what kind of a scenario will be in the short film unless the person did not know.

I thought that this was a deeply psychological film. And slightly voyeuristic as we were watching very intimate moments of the training that were documented and on the other hand, we would also see a slightly more glamorous version of usually same emotion when we saw the short film.

Although i liked it, this film left some strange feeling in me and i still cannot completely get what it is.

Gerard Richter at TATE Modern and The Whitechapel Gallery

I went to see some shows recently - Gerard Richter at TATE Modern and Wilhelm Sasnal at The Whitechapel Galley. I thought that they were both really good, but i prefer Gerard Richter.


This is mainly because of his photorealist paintings. I thought that they were amazing as they didi not seem to be paintings at all. I also thought that the layout that the exhibition had was good, as in the same room there were different styles of works by him, so it was easier to intake the show.


But the wilhelm Sasnal show was good as well, i really liked the colours that he used in his works - they are mostly pastel and quite subtle.


At the Whitechapel gallery there also was a work by Rothko that i really liked as well. The colours of his works are amazing, but the feeling that you get when you look at the painting is something different. I think that Rothko's paintings are quite agressive in a way that you really feel diminished looking at them or, at least, that is my feeling.


Another work that i really liked in the gallery was an installation using lights and mirrors by Josiah McElheny. It was really beautiful and soothing, as you walked past the mirrors that would show you some shapes that would come alive as the coloured projectors hit them. Also i thought that this work goes really well alongside the lecture that we had the other week - "Conceptualism and Context". I thought that in a sense, The work was conceptualist as it was made so, the experience would be different for every person and it depended on the way you look at the work as well.

Art and Design London

This weekend i went to see Art and Design London, which turned out to be really great - there was a lot of art from 20th century as well as some very interesting contemporary design pieces. I mostly enjoyed seeng a lot of works by Miro, i think they are great, ecpesially i like his very early stuff, which is not as much abstracted.

Frieze art fair

Last week i have been to the Frieze, which is now a yearly tradition for me. I like going there to be able to understand what is going on in the art world at the moment.
this year was particularly good as i saw some works there that i saw in Lyon or Venice this summer which interlinks these experiences. Also i thought that there were many more works that were positive than last year. Its actually great to think that a positive change is happening, art to me s something nice to look at, i don't really like dark stuff.
My favourite work there was by one of my favourit artists - Yayoi Kusama (on the picture below). It was even more appealing that the work was made this year, as i know that she is now leaving in a house on the grounds of a clinic, it great news!

Summer 2011

During this summer i have been travelling a lot.

The trips very useful to my studies would be a trip to the Lyon biennale and the Venice biennale.

I thought that the biennale in Lyon was somehow depressing for me as i like bright colours in the works and there were almost none colourful works although Lyon is a beautiful city and i have enjoyed the experience altogether as there were a couple of other exhibitions i went to, like ht exhibition "Les enfants terribles" that was of lowbrow and pop-surreallist art that i actually adore! Especially i have enjoyed works by Caia Coopman and Jeff Soto. There i have also met Nicholas Thomas, one of the artists in the show, and the main curator too. It is useful to talk to people already in the industry i think, you get to fid out a lot of interesting things.

The Venice biennale was absolutely great! I did not like my country's exhibit but most of the others were good. The main pavilions curated by the biennale team were the best though, there were mainly works of already well known artists. I think that one of my favourite works was a work by Urs Fisher.

He did a sculpture out of wax (copy of a really old venetian statue) and actually lit it up as a candle. To his calculations, it has to burn until the end of the biennale. You should have seen it - the contradiction between the classic sculpture and its beautiful form to how it melts and chaotically drips down slowly disappearing... Also there was a show "a thousand ways to defeat entropy" where a frien of our family artist Alexander Ponomarev was exhibiting, they had a great opening with some opera singing, very inspiring experience!

Last few months

Last few months were as much fun as work, as after the holidays i had to go straight back into work to get my portfolio ready for all the interviews.
I have done some sculptures for the fear project that i think worked out quite well.

So, being quite content with myself at the moment i am still a bit nervous about the interviews, as i generally do not do well in any stressful situation, but work wise i am calm.

Film review - " A woman is a woman".

A woman is a woman is a film by Jean – Luc Godard that I saw during the CCW Foundation film program that took place every Wednesday morning in Odeon.

I have to begin saying that the place chosen for the screenings, for me, already made me like each film a little and appreciate each one more.

I want to write about this film though, because for me it stood out, it was the one I thought about most. Perhaps, even because the genre of this film is debatable – if it is a comedy or a tragedy, or maybe because of the time that the film was shot in – 1961, those times women’s fashions were much more feminine and, to be honest, I absolutely adore fashion of 50s and 60s so it was a great experience just visually, too.

This film was a great inspiration for me, as a couple of weeks after seeing the film I have made a skirt in Anna Karina’s style, or “The New Look” style which was invented by the great artist Christian Dior in the 50s as a response to depression times, trying to make women happier by making them look ultra feminine and elegant, which I think worked, as up to these days a lot of women still love  “The New Look” style and pay enormous money trying to buy an authentic garment of that time.

I also adore the femininity of Anna Karina in the movie. Although she for her time if quite feministic and rebellious, I still think that she is very different to women now. The way she dresses, speaks, behaves all makes her a romantic character. Now women in cinema are all spies and fighters, you don’t get to see women the way I think they should be – feminine.

In one of the reviews of the film on the web I found this one  - “''A Woman Is a Woman'' (''Une Femme Est une Femme'') from 1961, Jean-Luc Godard's whimsical celebration of romance, sentiment, musical comedy, color film, the city of Paris and the abundant charms of Ms. Karina herself, who at the time was also Madame Godard”, which I think is a great description of the film in my eyes.

I think I loved the film so much also because it is set in France and the whole film I heard French language, which I find very appealing and romantic. It set out the whole mood for the film, alongside with the main problem posed in the film – the difficulties of human relationships and how they are caused by differences in each one of us.

I would give this film a 5 out 0f 5 rating, to me this film had everything I want in good film:  deeper meaning, great setting and therefore sound, beautiful picture and most importantly I think it is one of those films that leaves you with this special inspirational feeling, it makes you think about it. I would honestly recommend this film as a great experience.

(Link to the article: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D01E5DA163EF935A25756C0A9659C8B63)