Book Review | Mysite 3

Ghada Amer.

I found this book on Ghada Amer in the library, Amer is a contemporary artist who uses issues such as gender and sexuality to create her work. Her work involves pornographic images which she layers with acrylic paint and embroidery. This is one of the main artists that I have been looking at during this project. I have found this book very interesting and very helpful. It has been interesting to look at Amers processes during the creation of her work. I also found it very interesting to see the timeline of her work how the artist has progressed and developed her art practice over time. my favourite piece of work I have found in this book is the image to the left, I really like the colours of this pieces and think I could create some pieces similar using the riso printer.

Brice Marden

I found these two books on Brice Marden in the library. I first noticed the books because of the beautiful front covers. I initially thought that maybe the artist worked with line drawings but after reading the books I found that the artist works with paint, I learnt that Marden is a contemporary painter who works primarily with colour and lines. What stood out for me was the fact that Brice Marden uses his work to experiment with abstract to figurative which links to my own work practice. So although I don't enjoy painting, and and didn't find bits of the books which explained about the creation process useful, I did find the examples of Marden's work very interesting. I found that I quite enjoyed his work because how abstract it was. I found that I could look at the piece for an extended period of time and not get bored due to the fact that the longer I looked the more i saw which kept his work interesting. my favourite thing about this artists work is the subtle use of colour, as an artist who adores colourful pieces I found the subtle colour against the black lines quite refreshing. It isn't overpowering yet stood out very dramatically. I am very happy that I just happened to pick up these two books because of the very beautiful colour as I may never have found such an interesting artist.

Bruce Nauman works with light.

I really liked this book as it gave me a new idea for the progression of my work. I hadn't previously thought of using lights in my practice until I saw this book. I loved the artwork displayed even though the pieces in the book were simple and nothing special, I just loved the bright colours and neon lights. I thought they were very aesthetically pleasing and would look very striking in person. This book did have a down side I didn't find the writing interesting as I found the text to be very autobiographical telling me about every aspect of the artists life instead of about the pieces of work themselves. it would have been a very interesting book if it told me more about the creation process or about the meanings behind the pieces. My favourite piece that I found was the end piece of artwork above, I found the use of text very intriguing due to the fact that the light is very bright so the text almost disappears and is hard to read which kind of links to my theme of making people look a little bit harder. After seeing this book I initially wanted to get neon lights to create my own work in this style. I found a neon wire which was battery packed and it turned out very well I found It was easy to mould and it looked very aesthetically pleasing. However, I found the battery pack quite restricting as I couldn't easily move the piece without being conscious of the battery pack so I had the idea to use neon string with a black light to get the same results with a little more freedom. I really liked this book as it has given me a lot of good ideas which has lead to the creation of my installation.