This website is built using the powerful Thesis Theme for Wordpress. Read more about how Thesis will be the last Wordpress theme you'll use in my Thesis theme review. Find out how you can build landing pages that convert with no code knowledge in my Premise review
|
|
|||||
|
An introduction to ephemeral art
Ephemeral art is one of my favourite forms of art simply because it runs parallel to my perception on life and the world. Ephemeral art does not last and many pieces of art lasts only for a moment. In an interview Richard Shilling describes ephemeral art well.
The ephemeral nature of land art really appeals to me. There is a point a sculpture reaches where it is at its most vibrant and it is then that I take the pictures and it is often just before it completely falls apart. There is a tension and vividness revealed through their delicateness. The process is a parallel of life. Life creates order and beauty from raw materials and then nature returns everything back to dust once again. Just as I seek to learn about natural places, natural materials I also want to learn about the cycles and processes too and the ephemeral nature of land art helps me do that through learning how things degrade and change.
Ephemeral art teaches you about your environment. The art you create will depend on the season at the time. Eventually the art will decay back into the natural environment echoing the one truth of life that everything changes.
Richard Shilling
Richard Shilling’s land art is made from natural materials which he gathers near to where each sculpture is made. Every sculpture is photographed in natural light, using normal camera equipment and without any photoshop trickery. Each photo accurately depicts how each sculpture appeared, at its most vibrant moment, before the elements reclaim the materials back to nature.
Through his ongoing relationship with nature he explores themes to do with time, ecology and the constant flux of the seasons and expresses these ideas through his unique land art images.
You can see much more of his work and read all about what he gets up to on the photo sharing site Flickr and on his blog with updates every week and many new sculptures.
Andy Goldsworthy
“I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and “found” tools–a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn.
“I find some of my new works disturbing, just as I find nature as a whole disturbing. The landscape is often perceived as pastoral, pretty, beautiful – something to be enjoyed as a backdrop to your weekend before going back to the nitty-gritty of urban life. But anybody who works the land knows it’s not like that. Nature can be harsh – difficult and brutal, as well as beautiful. You couldn’t walk five minutes from here without coming across something that is dead or decaying.”
“Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature.”
You might also like:
If you have found this page helpful, please click on the ‘LIKE’ button below. Thanks!
{ 1 trackback }