What's New and What's Next
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- Category: Uncategorised
- Published on Saturday, 14 January 2012 15:45
- Written by Loz
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I'm continuing to work with Bentley & Skinner (Bond Street Jewellers) Ltd, for whom I did some of the work on Damien Hirst's diamond skull "For the Love of God", designing jewellery and also they carry some of my own jewellery. I don't make much jewellery these days - the detail is getting rather too small to see, but I'm thinking about sculptures that are as well mounts for jewellery. Jewelled Sculptures. I'm working on small sculptures made by electroforming in copper.
The way I work is to circulate round three or four areas, the others being at present stereoscopic photography and drawing. I've just started doing stereoscopic drawings, and will make a separate gallery about these soon.
In a way all these explorations are an attempt to find a way back: loss of the jewellery amounts to becoming disillusioned with my own fantasy, as if washed up in the "real" art world. The solution to becoming cynical involves the study of how and why the arts have become as they have, which leads to some important questions: I've noticed that whenever there's a recession, art changes. People need to find and assert new values. The arts reveal not just who and where we are, but also the images various powers would like us to have for their benefit (eg, to sell cosmetics you need in a subtle way to make people feel ugly). How much has the present fashion for childish drivel and stylish incompetence in the arts been engineered? Whose money is there in the art world food chain?
The present state of the economy etc happened perhaps to a degree because of our general level of childlike trust in the authorities. Which the art world has been parodying for ages... So what now? No doubt we need a renewed emphasis in the arts on skill, intelligence and quality of judgement.
The '30s, the time of Great Depression in the USA, was the time of Art Deco and industrial design for speed. Streamlining served as a philosophical representation of how to survive the times. What we need now are images of ourselves as similarly able to get through this. It's up to those working in the arts, cultural performers, to devise how this might be...(it would be interesting to know other people's ideas about this?)
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For this erotic art exhibiton I entered three pictures which were shortlisted but then I unfortunately needed to withdraw two of them. I took part more in order to try to get something going with my fascination with drawing than because I think my work is erotic, so this is encouraging.
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And finally, I have decided to offer reproductions of some of my drawings. Done in limited editions as "Giclee" prints, which is an extremely high definition and stable digital process, see Prints for sale.