Sophie Douglas and The Arts School
East Sussex based artist, photographer and art teacher. Inspiration, Education, Wellbeing
This work is created by Sophie Mayer
©www.sophiemayer.com
I grew up in the village of Compton. This chapel is part of my memories. Growing up with spaces like this on your door step, create a visual and spatial understanding and appreciation of the style that was part of the arts and crafts movement. I love that these works were about society and the arts working together for a better world. The idea that through art everyone is linked.
Aesthetically, I love the red of the chapel, that even on a grey rain day like today, it stands out.
I love the text in the chapel “Their hope is full of immorality but the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God.”
And I love that the space feels timeless. I could be here and now, or years ago, there is a feeling that others have walked the meandering path to experience the power of the light spilling through the tall glass windows, lightening the vibrant images and Celtic symbols within the chapel.
If you are driving up the A3, take the turn off and have an experience!
What do you think?
More information?
Here are some Links:
Today’s addition again comes from the Paper exhibition at Saatchi, although it is now ended.
Today we look at a Dawn Clements work “Movie”. Dawm Celement creates large scale drawings of scenes, this one a movie. This work makes me think about our fascination with others, with living vicariously through films, and TV, through magazines and watching others. I love eavesdropping, knowing what others are doing, I think it is part of human nature, to not feel alone, or different.
This work makes me think about what we take, or rather what we understand, as we never get the whole picture, it is only our interpretation. Between the drawings of scenes and the little bits of text, there is no clear picture or narrative, but the idea of what is being observed by the artist and passed to the viewer. Like Descartes “I think therefore I am” I understand this as: I know from what I have experienced before and can make things relate to each other to gain an understanding I can except. Someone might know this “movie” and understand every detail, whilst others will not.
The three reasons for selecting this work are skills, inspiration and because. Firstly I admire the skills in both the drawing, and the concept of creating a narrative from narrative. For me this is about art, as an artists I am reshowing something, whether a story, or an emotion. Secondly, I love work that when you are somewhere else, it pops into your head and inspires you to create something, and this is the work that inspired me to create my commute blogart earlier in the week. It is the idea of capturing little moments, remembering, retelling a story. And lastly, because, I just like it, and sometimes that is enough of a reason.
What do you think?
What Saatchi says: (Text by Ben Street)
“Dawn Clements’ works use drawing as a way to document and describe durational experiences: watching a film, for instance. Employing a painstaking precision of description and often writing notes directly onto the paper, Clements uses the act of drawing as a parallel to remembering: these are aides-memoires, attempts to hold transient things in the mind. Like the tracking shots of cinema, they sweep through interiors, gathering visual information, but by eliding the human presence, abstract place and setting from their narrative contexts.”
What others have said:
From The Whitney museum Of American Art
Dawn Clements’s large-scale drawings depict interior domestic spaces, either her own surroundings or those in classic 1940s and 1950s Hollywood melodramas. She is especially interested in the idea of the home as a place of both comfort and confinement: “They are places, no matter how beautiful and wonderful they may appear, that are incarcerating of all these characters. The doors may be unlocked, but somehow the women can’t walk out the door.”
©www.sophiemayer.com
College friends meet and greet with monosyllabic noises
Sleepy eyes and tired feet
Young and old,
office workers and Builders, different languages, all off to something
They shuffle in lines on either side, somehow someone always in the way stopping allowing the passengers off the train first.
“Is there a John Baxon someone is at the Brighton yard exit waiting for you”
The noise of the trains,
and the chatter of the people,
and the muted reminders from the auto announcer
All Interrupted by the booming voice
“Lost child at the St. Johns barriers
Please make your way to St Johns barrier to collect her”
The unanswered questions
Today I am talking about “Paper” at the Saatchi Gallery, Sloane Square, London.
“Paper” showcases works on paper from around the world. The work ranges from political, to surreal, to architectural, drawings, paintings, installations and more! It is colourful, and dull, detailed and base. It is all about paper and as an artists that has used paper in my work, the exhibition is both inspiring and motivating. I will be looking at a few of the artists over the next few weeks but the first is the one that I most enjoyed.
The work I enjoyed the most is Han Feng’s “Floating City”.
This piece of work is made of little tracing paper buildings, floating above the ground. There is something playful and dreamy, like a cloud of structures. It reminds me of stories, and exploring, of seeing a new place for the first time, hence the chose of word “enjoy”!
I found the muted pallet, and translucent elements of the paper, the little bits of detail with other empty areas, gave me this feeling that I was experiencing a space for the first time. It reminded me of a ghost tour I did in London last winter, and the guide pointed out that the lamp post have the Coco Chanel Logo, along with the Duke of Westminster’s, and he the story that this was a love symbol, now this may or may not be true, the point I am making is that I never noticed before it was pointed out, and now I see the symbols on every lamp post in Westminster. The way this work is constructed with some details of architectural or urban spaces printed onto some parts, and others left natural makes me think of how we only see part of the world at a time, usually the part that is pointed out to us. Here are a few more pictures (thank you Saatchi for having a photographing policy that allows us to take pictures!)
What do you think?
What the gallery says:
“Han Feng’s Floating City plays with deliberate contradictions from its title on down. Neither sculpture nor drawing, Feng’s piece is composed of hundreds of tracing paper buildings of various sizes, their laser- printed details deriving from images of city architecture, which are grouped in dense clusters and hung from the ceiling with transparent fish tackle thread. Hovering a couple of inches off the gallery floor, Floating City has an ethereal, almost spectral quality; it shivers and sways with the movement of visitors. Depicting a city – something we associate, especially in recent times, with population density, atmospheric pollution, architectural diversity and multicultural vibrancy – as something weightless, depopulated, semi-transparent and fragile, Feng’s work asks us to consider the city as something imagined, an idea as much as a place. This might be what a utopia looks like – a notion expressed in language, impossible to realise in reality.
The city’s pale palette certainly appears drained of life, as though emptied of occupants; the use of tracing paper implies preparation, a stage before completion. Looking down on this ghostly apparition, we’re separated from it both physically and conceptually: it’s perpetually distant, a mirage.Text by Ben Street”
Exhibition reviews:
The Londonist: 19 JUNE 2013 | ART & PHOTOGRAPHY | BY: SARAH STEWART New Exhibition Shows The World Manifested Through Paper
The only thing I am upset about is I didn’t see it sooner! Recently I have not been hugely inspired to go back to exhibitions and because of this I didn’t go to see this exhibition before, note to self, go to exhibitions as they open, not as they close!
Thanks for reading, comments always appreciate and content is © http://www.sophiemayer.com
Sophie Douglas and The Arts School 
