This week, from Tuesday 18th - Saturday 22nd I visited Amsterdam. I had previously been before on two occasions, once with family when I was a lot younger and once last year with a group of friends for someones 18th birthday. The culture still strikes me as amazing even though I have visited on a number of occasions. The vibrancy and creativity of the city is just extraordinary. It seemed that everywhere you looked, there was something visually interesting. Publicly there was so much artistic culture around including snowman installations (well past the christmas season) huge sculptures, incredibly skillful graffitti and endless amounts of posters, flyers and leaflets for art displays, events and gigs within the city. The city was full of colour! They even had street lamps that had been customized with illustrations and posters. The city has a real authentic European vibe. I loved the cobbled streets, quirky canals, the unique bridges, the large framed windows and, although they became very annoying at times due to their sheer dominance within Amsterdam, the bicycles are a massive part of the Dutch culture.
Although this was actually a college organised trip, I was too late to book a place on the coaches they were travelling with. I was gutted at first, but after some research I decided it may actually be cheaper to travel myself and perhaps meet during the days to visit some galleries and museums. I managed to gather together a group of 8 friends to travel there and stay in a hotel for 4 nights at a really cheap price! 3 of the group were from my course so it gave me an opportunity to collect some interesting imagery from the city and visit some exhibitions.
The first night we arrived, we perhaps got a bit too excited to be away and did not feel too great the following morning. We therefore decided it would best to visit some galleries in our own time. I found that this way was actually very successful as we would only visit the galleries that were of interest to us. I have heard alot of students from the college group mention how it may have been a more educational experience if they had visited more private galleries that they could perhaps relate to better, which is exactly what I did.
Our hotel was behind a massive concert hall on the very edge of the 'Museumplein', which converted to English is museum square. Within this square you had the Van Gogh Museum (which was too expensive considering I am not particularly interested in his work), the Modern Art Museum (which was actually closed for refurbishment) and the Rijksmuseum (the equivalent to a national gallery). All of these buildings were architecturally very fascinating from the exterior, but I wasn't too intrigued by going into these are they are very large scale tourist attractions. My interests lay more within discovering works of a smaller scale popularity from new and upcoming, exciting artists.
I visited the FOAM Photography Museum whilst in Amsterdam, which included exhibitions from W.Eugene Smith's 'More real than reality' and Joan Fontcuberta's 'Landscapes without memory'. W.Eugene Smith has been hailed as the founder of the photographic essay through his extensive pictorial narratives accompanied by small captions and comments. I found this exhibition rather dull to be honest as it is not the kind of art that intrigues me. However, some of the content within the photography was interesting in terms of meaning and I was very appreciative of the work. I was beginning to feel slightly ripped off of 6 euors whilst I was walking around John Fontcuberta's exhibition. It was initially very confusing. The photography seemed to be lacking in authenticity, but I couldn't figure out why. Also the large photographs (datascapes - distorted landscape images) were being paired with a small caption image of various paintings and classic photographs. I decided it may be a good idea to walk around the exhibition again, as I must have been missing something, everyone else in the gallery seemed really indulged into the work! Second time I noticed a large board on the wall with text which could only be read by wearing 3D glasses provided in a small box. This board gave information of the relevance of the small images to the photographs and also how Fontcuberta had created this work and the process. The artist co-opted a piece of computer software - scene-renderer orginally concieved for military and scientific purposes. The idea was to build convincing photo-realistic places out of cartographic data. The computer would be fed with reproductions of masterpieces from history of landscape art, both in painting and photography through artists such as Van Gogh, Dali and Edward Weston. It then became apparent to me that this was what the small images to the side of Fontcuberta's photographs were. Each photograph I looked at I could now see traits, through the colours and some aspects of juxtaposition, related to the commonly famous images next to them.
I found the concept behind Fontcuberta's work very interesting. I therefore decided to research the artist in more depth to see what other works they had produced. In a book named 'Twilight Zones' I found a series of work known as 'Haemograms'. I found this series extremely interesting. These simple, but detailed, marks created reminded me of some sort of forensics. I found it very interesting to discover Fontcuberta had created a series of identity images based on individuals' blood. Therefore creating identity, not only through their DNA, but the visual image of their actual blood.
I also visited some private galleries whilst I was in Amsterdam that I believed looked interesting. One gallery I visited was the 'Gallery Delaive' which I just so happened to past whilst walking to the City centre. The expressive, vibrant flashes of paint displayed in the window drew me in.
The work within the exhibition, by Sam Francis, really reflected the Cities vibrancy accurately for me. Before I visited Amsterdam I could see my project going in a direction of 'colour' based. Now i can see the potential even further. I really like the idea of invading public space with bright colours. I now intend to do some more research into artists that have worked with colour in public spaces before to try and gain some ideas for my own practice.
Although this was actually a college organised trip, I was too late to book a place on the coaches they were travelling with. I was gutted at first, but after some research I decided it may actually be cheaper to travel myself and perhaps meet during the days to visit some galleries and museums. I managed to gather together a group of 8 friends to travel there and stay in a hotel for 4 nights at a really cheap price! 3 of the group were from my course so it gave me an opportunity to collect some interesting imagery from the city and visit some exhibitions.
The first night we arrived, we perhaps got a bit too excited to be away and did not feel too great the following morning. We therefore decided it would best to visit some galleries in our own time. I found that this way was actually very successful as we would only visit the galleries that were of interest to us. I have heard alot of students from the college group mention how it may have been a more educational experience if they had visited more private galleries that they could perhaps relate to better, which is exactly what I did.
Concert Hall - Our hotel was just to behind this, on a road to the side.
Rijksmuseum.
Our hotel was behind a massive concert hall on the very edge of the 'Museumplein', which converted to English is museum square. Within this square you had the Van Gogh Museum (which was too expensive considering I am not particularly interested in his work), the Modern Art Museum (which was actually closed for refurbishment) and the Rijksmuseum (the equivalent to a national gallery). All of these buildings were architecturally very fascinating from the exterior, but I wasn't too intrigued by going into these are they are very large scale tourist attractions. My interests lay more within discovering works of a smaller scale popularity from new and upcoming, exciting artists.
I visited the FOAM Photography Museum whilst in Amsterdam, which included exhibitions from W.Eugene Smith's 'More real than reality' and Joan Fontcuberta's 'Landscapes without memory'. W.Eugene Smith has been hailed as the founder of the photographic essay through his extensive pictorial narratives accompanied by small captions and comments. I found this exhibition rather dull to be honest as it is not the kind of art that intrigues me. However, some of the content within the photography was interesting in terms of meaning and I was very appreciative of the work. I was beginning to feel slightly ripped off of 6 euors whilst I was walking around John Fontcuberta's exhibition. It was initially very confusing. The photography seemed to be lacking in authenticity, but I couldn't figure out why. Also the large photographs (datascapes - distorted landscape images) were being paired with a small caption image of various paintings and classic photographs. I decided it may be a good idea to walk around the exhibition again, as I must have been missing something, everyone else in the gallery seemed really indulged into the work! Second time I noticed a large board on the wall with text which could only be read by wearing 3D glasses provided in a small box. This board gave information of the relevance of the small images to the photographs and also how Fontcuberta had created this work and the process. The artist co-opted a piece of computer software - scene-renderer orginally concieved for military and scientific purposes. The idea was to build convincing photo-realistic places out of cartographic data. The computer would be fed with reproductions of masterpieces from history of landscape art, both in painting and photography through artists such as Van Gogh, Dali and Edward Weston. It then became apparent to me that this was what the small images to the side of Fontcuberta's photographs were. Each photograph I looked at I could now see traits, through the colours and some aspects of juxtaposition, related to the commonly famous images next to them.
I found the concept behind Fontcuberta's work very interesting. I therefore decided to research the artist in more depth to see what other works they had produced. In a book named 'Twilight Zones' I found a series of work known as 'Haemograms'. I found this series extremely interesting. These simple, but detailed, marks created reminded me of some sort of forensics. I found it very interesting to discover Fontcuberta had created a series of identity images based on individuals' blood. Therefore creating identity, not only through their DNA, but the visual image of their actual blood.
I also visited some private galleries whilst I was in Amsterdam that I believed looked interesting. One gallery I visited was the 'Gallery Delaive' which I just so happened to past whilst walking to the City centre. The expressive, vibrant flashes of paint displayed in the window drew me in.
The work within the exhibition, by Sam Francis, really reflected the Cities vibrancy accurately for me. Before I visited Amsterdam I could see my project going in a direction of 'colour' based. Now i can see the potential even further. I really like the idea of invading public space with bright colours. I now intend to do some more research into artists that have worked with colour in public spaces before to try and gain some ideas for my own practice.
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