Latest work in my series of stitched/collage/paintings called ‘Hardest of Hearts’.

Bitter Sweet

Blog-based Exhibition of artists Hamish Pettengel, Seraphine Pick, Grayson Perry and Saskia Leek

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‘Cure’
Mixed media on board
Hamish Pettengel

www.coca.org.nz

I chose this image for my exhibition as the method/form applies to some pictoral ideas I have been exploring in my studio work. Hamish Pettengel has used collage and various different media to create this piece, the effect of which makes it a much more interesting image than if it had just been a flat drawing. I like the simplistic shapes and symbols he uses, accented by his use of collage, which together create an easy flow through his work for the eye to follow.

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‘Golden Ghosts’ 2000
Earthenware
65 x 39 x 39 cm
Grayson Perry

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Grayson Perry’s work, although they strictly fall under the category of ceramics, are also stunning drawings, which is why I have included them in this exhibition. His pieces have a strong autobiographical content, reflecting personal struggles of Perry’s unhappy childhood and gender identity issues. For instance, in ‘Golden Ghosts’ the image of the girl outlined in gold is actually Perry’s transvestite alter ego ‘Claire’. His work also references current events/issues, like the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station disaster, which is portrayed by the tragic image of the seated girl, representing a child affected by the disaster. I like the way he has combined personal experiences with global issues that alot of people can recognise and relate to.

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‘Phantom Limb’ 2007
Oil on linen
1520 x 1370mm
Seraphine Pick

© Artist. Private Collection
Reproduced by the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu
on the occasion of the exhibition Seraphine Pick July 2009

Seraphine Pick is one of the artists I looked at alot while doing research for my painting module. In ‘Phantom Limb’, the form of the painting perfectly complements the interesting subject matter to add depth and mystery to the image. The painting itself is large, a 1520 x 1370mm linen canvas with a dark painted background complete with tonal drips. The background almost appears as a frame to the rest of the imagery, which is positioned roughly in the centre in a rectangular shape, a nonsensical snapshot of a garden, with different objects placed inbetween the foliage. These objects, including a baby, various fruit, a bird with Pick’s signature paperbag over it head, and a handbag, have all been scaled up or down to fit in and around the garden like a potential game of ‘I Spy’. To the right of the garden is a ghostly pale women, with one arm reaching into the garden, who starts to fade into the dark background from the waist down. Pick has painted all these images with a tonal quality, creating shadows and playing with dark and light. The majority of the painting is shades of and around black and white, although she has created areas of interest by painting some objects in colour. The whole effect presents to the viewer a mysterious and beautiful image.

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‘Untitled, (The Dress)’ 1995 (detail)
Oil, graphite and crayon on canvas
1525 x 2030mm
Seraphine Pick

Image from booklet Seraphine Pick Unveiled
© City Gallery, Wellington Te Whare Toi and the artist, Seraphine Pick
First published 1995

I chose this image for my exhibition because I like the way Pick has created hidden layers of meaning in such ‘simple’ naive looking black greyscale images. The way she has almost floated the objects in mid air is also similar to some earlier paintings I was working on. However the content of this painting is what stands out to me the most, Pick has used some of her signature images like the bed, and the paperbag mask aswell as new ones, to create a symbolic painting that deals with issues of femininity and childhood dreams and dilemmas. For instance, the bed, which has appeared in many of her works, is the bed of her childhood in which (due to illness) she spent months dreaming up visions. The dress is almost a universal symbol of femininity, while the paperbag mask hints at self esteem issues and schoolyard taunts. The combination of all these highly symbolic elements makes for an interesting exploration.

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‘The Gum Fights’
Oil and ink on vinyl
Saskia Leek

http://www.coca.org.nz

I like this painting ‘The Gum Fights’ by Saskia Leek, because of the haphazard, ‘in your face’, childlike form of the image. I also love the way she has incorporated text and narrative. Leek has used vibrant colours in over exaggerated, vague looking drawings of two girls blowing disproportionately large bubbles of ‘double trouble’ gum, which is also drawn, in the same style, just below the figures. The rest of the picture consists of scrawled sketches and text on a bright purple background. The text at the bottom of the image, which reads as a story to accompany the picture, is written in the typical way of children, running out of space and being forced to turn the corner and create an unfinished frame for the picture.

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‘Untitled’ From the portfolio ‘Underwood’ 2001
Watercolour, acrylic and polyurethane on hardboard
267x205mm
Saskia Leek

http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz

This image of Saskia Leek’s, vastly different to ‘The Gum Fights’, but still possessing a childlike naiviety, is another favourite of mine. I also chose to include it as it has some of the same pictorial elements, colour etc. as some of my later paintings. With this work she has created a dreamlike innocent world, by using light, pure colours and soft forms. It is a small painting, with a background of the cliche blue sky and fluffy white clouds. In the top left hand corner a branch with a single leaf extends from the side – like an offering of hope or a new beginning. The branch forks into two and on the lower fork Leek has painted a bird, singing out a line of musical notations. In the opposite corner of the painting, there is a tiny brown house in the clouds, reminiscent of various fairytales. Leek has painted the picture in a quaint illustrative style, drawing on cliches and symbolism. This effect, paired with the dreamlike colour palette and the uncluttered composition, makes for a soft, vague painting that leaves you wondering if there is a deeper content behind the ‘pretty’ illustration.

typography world

I posted this clip because I have always had an interest in typography, I liked how the artist has made a very emotive piece of art out of such an ‘ordinary’ typeface.

This is a video that i saw at Te Papa along with Francis Upritchard’s ‘Save Yourself’ exhibition. The exhibition consists of three different collections of 3d sculptural works. Little hand sculpted figures in various positions and colours, each with a distinct personality. Upritchard made this exhibition for the Venice Bienalle 2009 where it was shown alongside Judy Millar’s paintings.

an introduction of sorts

Cornelia Parker creates art that is impossible to dissect in the traditional way. Objects, some with colourful histories, others remarkably dull, are put through intricate and often violent processes to be turned into installations and sculptures that question the mortality and fragility of humans and all the ordinary or monumental items that make up our lives. Throughout her work, the context and the method combine and it is these remarkable stories that show us the meaning and the content behind the form we see in the gallery.

Blog assignment2: The Perfect Body.

Body image was about the biggest GLOBAL issue i could think of that didnt put me to sleep, it certainly provides an interesting topic too. I got to thinking about how we view ourselves, our worst ‘bits’ and our best ‘bits’ and how in the eyes of others they could be completely different. When it comes to body image, ‘one mans trash and another mans treasure’ seems to be the reality of the issue. What is beautiful, and what is ugly in one persons eyes, may be the complete opposite in anothers. To explore this further, i sent an email round my facebook contacts asking them to send me two photos of themselves, one of their favourite, ‘best’ feature, and one of their ‘worst’ feature. The results i got were varied and the line between best and worst became quite blurred!
The image below is one I made from collating together the photos i received for ‘best’ features. I hope to do a second one for ‘worst’ features in order to illustrate how little change there is between the two, but i currently dont have enough photos for that category (people were understandably a bit more reluctant to take photos of their ‘worst’ features). however I will keep taking in photos and hopefully be able to post the second image up soon. If you want to contribute with some of your own photos please feel free to post them in a comment or ask and i will give you an email address to send them too. Enjoy!

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1792

Through Different Eyes: How People with Autism Experience the World
Alanna Albano

Many of us have heard of the neurological disorder called autism, and have a general sense of what the term “autism” means and all of the typical behaviors that belong in its category. Yet, I must question how many of us out there who do take an interest in autism really understand how having this disorder can totally distort one’s perception of what one experiences in the world. A person with autism senses things differently then we normally do, and also responds to them in other ways – what we would call “abnormal behaviors”. Why is this so? According to scientists, MRI research studies have shown that the brains of autistic individuals have particular abnormalities in the cerebellum, brain stem, hippocampus, amygdala, the limbic system, and frontal cortex (7). This provides substantial evidence that autistic behaviors must be in some way caused by these abnormalities. The problem is that we do not know exactly how or why these abnormalities cause someone with autism to experience the world differently than we do. This underlying issue of autism has always greatly intrigued me, and yet the topic of sensory integrative dysfunction in autism has been overlooked for many years. Articles and documents addressing this feature of autism have begun to appear only recently. While conducting research for my paper, I found it a challenge to find articles that specifically talked about this topic that I desired so much to learn about. Thus, the ultimate goal of my discussion is to reveal a misunderstood, hidden world – the complicated sensory dysfunctions that underlie autistic spectrum disorder.

What have we found out so far about how people with autism experience the world? All the information that we do know has been pieced together from observations of autistic behaviors, and recently, the personal accounts of high-functioning autistic persons. Dr. Temple Grandin, a professor at Colorado State University who has autism, has been able to provide us with an in-depth look into the sensory world of autism: “I pulled away when people tried to hug me, because being touched sent an overwhelming tidal wave of stimulation through my body…when noise and sensory over-stimulation became too intense, I was able to shut off my hearing and retreat into my own world” (7). Tito Mukhopadhyay, a 14 year old boy from India with severe autism, has also been able to give us a somewhat clearer picture of what he experiences: “I am calming myself. My senses are so disconnected, I lose my body. So I flap [my hands]. If I don’t do this, I feel scattered and anxious…I hardly realized that I had a body…I needed constant movement, which made me get the feeling of my body” (2).

These accounts have provided a special glimpse into the sensory disorders that accompany autism. It is fascinating to see how Dr. Grandin and Tito are living examples of how the autistic person perceives the world. At first glance, the two testimonies seem very much alike to me. Both of these autistic persons’ nervous systems are constantly overwhelmed by the sensory input that their bodies receive. However, a much closer look reveals to me the key differences between the two. Dr. Grandin is a high-functioning autistic person whose nervous system receives too much sensory input. Her brain is painfully overwhelmed by the flood of information, and in response to this she withdraws from the source of input by “shutting off” one or more of her senses in a desperate attempt to find relief. Tito, on the other hand, is a low-functioning autistic person who is amazingly still able to communicate what he is feeling to the rest of the world. According to his testimony, Tito’s nervous system actually receives so little input that he cannot sense a connection with his own body. His hand flapping response is his attempt to calm himself and gain a sense of his body’s existence. The comparison between Tito and Dr. Grandin demonstrates an unmistakable yet perplexing truth: no two autistic people are alike. Although they may share common behaviors, these behaviors will appear in all sorts of combinations and will vary in levels of intensity. It is my opinion that this observed irregular pattern of autistic behaviors is partly what has contributed to its being ignored for so long. I find it unfortunate that researchers in the past had probably cast autism sensory issues aside simply because it was just too baffling.

Observed autistic behaviors such as hand flapping, tapping and /or mouthing objects, toe walking, rocking back and forth, head banging, and vocalizing, along with the testimonies of various autistic individuals, have led researchers to believe that those with autism are either severely over-sensitive, under-sensitive, or both to outside sensory stimuli. Autistic persons have said that they have visual distortions and impaired depth perception of their environment, noxious sensations, and auditory, proprioceptive, tactile, and kinesthetic impairments (1). This is evidence that their nervous systems do not process sensory information correctly, so they feel overwhelmed by the abundance or lack of sensory information that their nervous system is receiving. In response to such confusing input, they exhibit abnormal behaviors in an attempt to either reduce the amount of input their nervous system is receiving or increase it. Such behaviors like tapping or vocalizing allow them to know where their “boundaries” exist in their environment, since they cannot see the world the same way we do (4).

The distortions in sensory perception have been linked to certain brain abnormalities discovered in the brain autopsies and MRI images of different people with autism. Normally, our internal “brain maps” give us a sense of our bodies and involve the regions of the brain that deal with the senses and movement. MRI images depict that autistic persons have scrambled brain maps (2). In other words, the information connections for sensory functions still exist, but they are located in the wrong parts of the brain. For example, face-recognition areas in the brain of autistic persons have actually been found in the frontal lobes, which is quite contrary to the specialized location of face-recognition in the normal brain (2). Autistic brains have been found to be larger than average, and they contain an incredible amount of electrical discharges in the hearing regions. The cortical columns of the brain contain a much higher amount of cells than the norm, and also make extra connections between neurons. This excess circuitry is what is believed to cause problems in sensory function (10). Abnormalities found in the brain stem, cerebellum, hippocampus, amygdala, and the limbic system may also explain many sensory processing problems. For example, the amydala, the emotion center of the brain, is underdeveloped, as well as the hippocampus. The hippocampus controls sensory input as well as learning and memory, so immature growth in this region of the brain would most definitely explain some common autistic behaviors. In the frontal cortex, it has been discovered that there is a significant lack of Purkinje cells. How this abnormality relates to neurodevelopment and mental function is still unclear to researchers (9).

As of today, researchers recognize the common pattern of autistic behaviors, and they have located what and where the abnormalities in the brain are. They have agreed that these abnormalities may be contributing to the behaviors often observed in autism, but exactly how and why is still a widely debated topic. Various researchers have come up with their own specific interpretations of the connections between the autistic brain and autistic behavior. For example, in terms of visual perception, researchers have theorized as to whether autistic persons really do have severe visual distortions of what they see, even though they are by no means blind. Many have debated how and why some autistic persons will rely on touching objects to recognize the identity and location of objects despite their apparent ability to see. We know that parts of the autistic brain that control vision may be under or over-developed, but it is not understood how sometimes autistic persons may be able to see just fine, while at other times they behave as if they were truly blind. From what I have read, it seems that some professionals question if these visual experiences and such are truly caused by physiological problems in the brain, or if they are just mere hallucinations. The second argument seems highly unlikely to me when so many apparent abnormalities in the autistic brain have been detected. It only makes sense that the visual disturbances would be attributed to something physiological, not psychological.

Unfortunately, there has also been an overwhelming reluctance by professionals to rely on the testimonies of autistic persons who are capable of describing their condition. I was rather shocked to come upon this fact while conducting my research. I do not understand why they would refuse to listen to the ones who suffer from the disorder, because they are the only ones who can actually explain what it means to live in the world of autism. Do these researchers believe that the words of a mentally disabled individual are not plausible? Such negative attitudes displayed towards society’s mentally disabled have only delayed in the quest to solve the baffling puzzle of autism.

In conclusion, we are left with more questions than before, and no definite answers. I have explained the complications surrounding sensory integrative dysfunction in autism, hoping to make others aware of how much it affects those living with autistic spectrum disorder. Autistic people will respond to a lack or abundance of sensory input by flapping hands, shutting off certain senses, and doing other abnormal behaviors. Several abnormalities have been found in the autistic brain, but many researchers debate what the connections are between these abnormalities and autistic behavior. These debates, as well as disfavorable attitudes towards the mentally disabled, have only slowed our progress in the search for answers. I can only hope that in the future improved research studies and technology, as well as increased awareness and compassion among society, will have helped to improve our knowledge and understanding of sensory dysfunctions in autism.

Bibliography and Additional Links:
1) Can Foundation Page,A Case Study of Distorted Visual Perception in Autism
2) Autism Today Page, A Boy, a Mother and a Rare Map of Autism’s World
3) Autism Today Page, Different Sensory Experiences/Worlds
4) Autism Today Page, Possible Visual Experiences in Autism
5) Autism Today Page, Reconstruction of the Sensory World of Autism
6) Autism Today Page, Auditory Processing Problems in Autism
7) Autism Info Page, My Experiences with Visual Thinking Sensory Problems and Communication Disorders
8) Autism Today Page, An Inside View of Autism
9) Pub Med Page, Nicotinic Receptor Abnormalities in the Cerebellar Cortex in Autism
10) Pub Med Page,
Stereological Evidence of Abnormal Cortical Organization in Individuals with Autism
11) Autism and Related Conditions Page, Sensory and Motor Disorders
12) National Center for Biotechnology Information Page, Neurofunctional Mechanisms in Autism
13) Autism Today Page, Sensory Disorder

Sigur Ros: Svefngenglar

Stunning video (as Sigur Ros videos always are) but this one particularly relates to the topic im exploring at the moment

Loved this ad, reminded me of the art installation ‘Der Lauf Der Dinge’ or ‘The way things go’ by Peter Fischi and David Weiss.

Also this one, like a giant scale drawing machine!

A few images of my pre-fired, bisque objects made in the ceramics module. And two test glaze strips.