3-21-10 Artist Post, Tobias Gundorff Boesen & Kate MccGwire

Tobias Gundorff Boesen

I found this artist and his short film on notcot.org. It's a great site to look on for artists and inspiration.

The video below (Out of a Forest) speaks about the domestication of nature in several ways. The animals have been anthropomorphized and their home (the forest) has been domesticated by household furnishings and decorations. Man has disrupted the 'chain of life' as seen in the end of the video for nothing more than a cheap magic trick.

Out Of A Forest from Tobias Gundorff Boesen.

Questions/thoughts I have been contemplating lately:

What are animals? How are they defined? At what point in man's domestication of nature do animals stop being animals? Are they always animals or do we take away a defining characteristic to claim it as our own? Why do we domesticate nature and animals?

Another artist I looked at recently is Kate MccGwire


Her methods of working seem familiar in the sense of my ever growing collection of animal remnants.

"I gather, collate, re-use, layer, peel, burn, reveal, locate, question, duplicate, play and photograph," is how she describes her work.

"Intrinsic to her method is the collecting and sorting of materials from hundreds of different sources over a period of months, even years. In turn, pieces evolve intuitively as if out of the subconscious, the language evocative rather than purely illustrative. As the work takes shape, a new, playful reality emerges, so that the object itself becomes a sort of prism, refracting the layers of meaning and cultural associations buried within, the quantity of materials used sometimes deliberately overwhelming, as if charged with a power and ambition beyond the reach they possess when seen in isolation."
(an excerpt from her artist statement)

http://www.katemccgwire.com/

Retch, 2007

Vex, 2008

Vice, 2009

Urge, 2009

Not only do I appreciate the materials MccGwire uses and her technique of gathering, but I find her choice of installation locations also very compelling. They suit another side of my art as well- the fashion-esque sharp lighting and moody environment.