Emma (Unit 35): Task One

Unit 35 - Task 1.

Marina Abramovic:

Marina Abramovic is a performance artist who was born in Serbia but is now based in New York. Her work often explores the limits of the body and the relation between artist and performer.

Some of Marina’s most famous work is with, Ulay, her boyfriend at that time. These works show absolute trust between the two, for example, Rest Energy, where they both balance on each side of a bow and arrow with the arrow pointed at Abramovic’s heart, pushing their bodies to the absolute limit and doing things that not many people who dare to do but this is not anything new to Abramovic. One of her first pieces, titled ‘Rhythm 2’, Marina wanted to explore whether unconsciousness could be incorporated into a performance so she ingested a pill prescribed for catatonia which caused Abramovic to experience seizures and uncontrollable movements for the first half of this performance.

In Marina’s work ‘The Artist is Present’ they used the space to get the best effect. They used multiple rooms to show recreations of her past work and videos of the work that she has done previously so that the public could see what her art is about, these rooms were sparse and did not overwhelm the public with all of her work crammed into one room. For the main piece, the space was simple. It featured a table and two chairs in the middle of the space to really show that Marina wanted to be as vulnerable as she could.

I think, through her work, Marina is trying to communicate that the only limits that can hold us back are the ones we set ourselves. We and our body can achieve anything that we allow ourselves to and this is shown through every piece of her art.

I believe that the target audience for The Artist is Present is everyone. Everyone who is willing to leave themselves as open as Marina is leaving herself. Men, Women, Adults, Children from all backgrounds can connect to this piece as long as they are able to let themselves which is what Marina’s art is all about.

Bill Viola:

Bill Viola is one of today’s leading artists. He’s been creating video installations, sound environments and works for television for over 40 years. His works often focus on the ideas of human experiences like birth, death and consciousness.

Bill Viola works a lot using water in his work. One piece of work, The Dreamers, shows people from different backgrounds, different ages, race etc, being submerged under water. And The Raft which shows a group of people, seemingly waiting for something, being attacked with something that looks like a tsunami tide.

I’ve noticed while researching Viola’s work that he often uses multiple screens around a room for installations like The Dreamers but he uses just a single screen for installations like Tristan’s Ascension. The space is always pretty simple with the focus on the work itself and the room will be dark so that the audience find it more immersive.

Bill Viola is trying to show people the beauty in not only video but also sound. He uses sound in his work to amp up the experience for the audience but also show what these things might sound like. It’s all to convey a message about life, death and everything inbetween through the use of sound.                   

I’ve interpreted Viola’s work (The Raft - as pictured above) as exploring humanity in a way that shows no matter who we are or where we come from, we are all human and we can all experience the same things. Death, birth, heartbreak etc is a universal thing and this is something that he often shows through his use of a variety of different people. Bill Viola, however, says that The Raft is meant to be an image of both destruction and survival.

The target audience for Bill Viola’s work is anyone and everyone who wants to look at art through the medium of a video. Not everyone will understand these pieces, but they are up for complete interpretation which means that his work can have an effect on anyone who sees it.

Gillian Wearing:

Gillian Wearing was born in Birmingham and has gone on to be a well known conceptual artist. She often bases her work around the study of human behaviour and the idea of not keeping secrets, well, secrets. In the 80s, Gillian started by photographing anonymous strangers in the street holding up a piece of paper with a confession on it.

Wearing has done a lot of work in keeping with the idea of anonymity such as her piece ‘Confessions’ which features people in hyper-realistic masks confessing things on video that they might never confess to if their identity wasn’t hidden. Other works include Broad Street which documents british teenagers as they go out and night and drink alcohol, showing them at various stages of the night and partying in different clubs and bars on a street in Birmingham.

As you can see in the picture above, Gillian Wearing often uses the exhibition space by having more than one screen playing at a time. Especially for pieces like Broad Street which follows and explores the behaviour of a teenager when drunk. This is because it will provide more of a messy and intense idea of what the audience is seeing which is likely to stick with the audience for a while.

I think that Gillian Wearing is trying to communicate the message that no matter how many times we study human behaviour, their actions will always shock us because it is not something that can be predicted. Wearing has also brought up the point that britain is a secretive society and she wanted to get people to open up to a strangers knowing that they will be anonymous.

Wearing has a piece of work called ‘60 minutes silence’ which features 26 police officers in standing in their uniform. Many people who saw the piece thought that it was actually a photograph at first. Wearing says that this piece of work was exploring ‘authority, restraint and control’ which many people did not understand.

The target audience for Wearing’s work, I think, would be people who appreciate art that is not necessarily ‘normal’ and who are capable of pushing their boundaries as many pieces of her work tends to make people uncomfortable i.e. the masks. However, Wearing’s work would also be appealing to anyone who is willing to open up their mind.