Theory

Silver crafted in Indonesia over a Dimple whiskey bottle.

Essay Topic Proposal - Art & Change - Year 2

My essay topic will discuss Dutch colonisation and the impact of Western influences on art in Indonesia. A silver lined, glass decanter from Indonesia that is now in my family’s possession will be the focus of my essay. As I am currently in the jewellery and metal smithing department the history and use of silver interests me.

In an article by Kevin Murray, Till Death Do Us Part: A Structurationist Approach To Jewellery, he quotes:

Removing the object from its place in the world is like uprooting a plant: it denies the object’s origins and source of sustenance. For precious objects, this is to deny the material and traditional aspects of their production, as well as the structures which cause them to circulate outside of workshops. The object lives by drawing on elements outside of itself: matter, thoughts, bodies, etc. Take those away and you have a sterile and secure environment that is not touched by unstable factors, but you also have a setting which reduces the capacity of the object to find its mode of being. Thus, in the end, art loses its audience. (1)

I would like to explore this comment further in relationship to the silver decanter and its relevance to connections with our lectures on the infiltration of the West to other parts of the world. This article appears in our jewellery and metal smithing course reader for this semester.

(1)“Murray, K. “Till Death Do Us Part: A Structurationist Approach To Jewellery”. In Craft in Society - An Anthology of Perspectives, (ed) Noris Ioannou. Freemantle Art Centre Press. South Fremantle, W.A 1992. 198

Scanned image

This scanned image is a collage of my sound piece for the drawing project. It has an aluminium foil background and I thought it was interesting to see how it reproduced on screen.
The music is titled L'usine desaffectee by Vladimir Cosma and is from a soundtrack to an old movie favourite called Diva. I have really enjoyed listening to an old cassette tape version that a friend left in the art gallery where I work part time. I play it heaps when I'm there. I recorded the sound via my digital camera, downloaded it into Audacity, then into iTunes. From there, it went onto my son's ipod, so I was able to listen to my sound piece when I took the dog for a walk on the beach. That was a wonderful experience! Hope my son allows me to borrow the ipod again... might have to get my own.
L'usine desaffectee is a haunting, eerie sound piece that actually brought back memories of a recurring nightmare that I had as a young child. The collage represents a dark tunnel with metal and water reminiscent of an abandoned urban underground.

Blue Oyster 'Grad Show' review

There were two artists' works that stood out for me. Aroha Novaks work exposed the violence and destruction of war. For Site she used a lovely pink rocket ship which gave some sort of hope or at least escape from war and this was not on show at the Blue Oyster. Still a powerful work though.

The other work that impressed me was by Alissia Holzer. Being in the lower gallery it was like coming into the calm after the storm! Clean and fresh - finely detailed using an air brush technique I believe. Again on show at Site, I thought the lighting she used there gave the work a more delicate purity which enhanced the overall effect.

Space Invaders

Video link

Linking an image

Metal (cropped version)

by tanakawho

Image was downloaded from http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons to avoid any copyright issues. I chose this image as I'm currently in the jewellery dept and I really like the curve and texture of the metal.

Useful categories

I think a category that covers the jewellery and ceramics upcoming end of semester exhibition would be a good idea as a way of communicating ideas amongst our group.
Other categories would include theory, drawing and possibly book reviews.

Delicious or the other

Definitely Delicious as I would like to avoid the other as much as possible as they're too monopolising!!