Aimee Walker

Red, burgundy, blood, maroon, wine, scarlet, firebrick, rose, auburn, ruby, and lust, there is something about red, the consistency of it that draws me in. I want to explore its intensity, and dabble in its rich oeuvre.  It speaks of energy, power, and strength. It raises blood pressures, it take no victims in its hunger.

It’s a colour that makes me feel powerful, gives me strength like no other. It is the red lipstick on your cheek, the tantrums, the tempers that rattle you, it does this, and it wants to evoke you.

I want to make a red room, of velvet, or glossy sticky red tar. I want to entice you into my boudoir, for lets be honest, we all have an underlying desire to investigate, a subconscious lust to play with fire.

Let me describe the scene for you. The bar you are in is dimly lit, it is trying to be hip, and industrial pipes are exposed, giving the underground New York vibe bars are currently sporting at this present period in time. At the back of the room is a lustful red space, inside it is a comfy, slightly sunken red 3 seater sofa, with arm chairs tightly by its side, a chesterfield perhaps; a sofa of sophistication and class. Or deep red plush soft velvet, coupled with deep buttons or a simple womanly curved over the back of the sofa.

The velvet has luminosity, a virtual glow under the lamp light, giving it diving blood red warmth. It may conjure up film scenes or an imaginary confrontation in one of the many red light districts across Europe. This space is meant to be snug, a tight space of imposing walls. These will be padded out with wadding, making voluptuous mounds upon the wall, the more people that enter the space the more claustrophobic the walls will become. I want to suggest the feeling of a sleazy man in a packed bar, he’s too close to comfort. His arm is around you, and you can feel his heavy breath upon your neck in the crowded room. He looked all right from a distance, but now he’s near you, you want nothing more that his sweating forehead to be far away.

Smaller accompaniments to the space would be the use of cups. On arrival to the space there would be a free cup on wine. The wine would be a cheap red. A potent vinegar, a ghastly burn in the back of your thought, delivered to you in a higher than usual quality red cup. It would have a band of velvet around the middle where you would firmly grip the group. Do I make it comfortable, with the smoothness of the velvet in the palm of your hand or make it irritable by doing it the other way round, with the rough raised fabric on you. I imagine the bar to be packed, you are holding onto your drink for longer than usual because it is only slightly bearable, but enough to drink. In this time your palms are sweaty, the room is hot, and the velvet would be more and more uncomfortable in your clammy hand.

My work is about touch. But I feel that it is moving somewhere else, into new territory.

Creating beautiful drawings, site-specific architectural installations and tactile sculptures, Susie Macurray should be a name on everyone’s lips. Her work is a soft whisper of sensual beauty. She is a British, international known artist who creates work that is strong, sensual and solid, yet vulnerable, temporary and fragile. They play on the physical, emotional experience, an art visceral in a sense.

One by one she went through her work, the significance of the work or how the domino effect that lead her to that point. A humble, down to earth speaker, she spoke to us about the journey she’d taken from finishing university to where she was in her career at present, and the importance of communication.

Play/explore/work/experiment.

I’m mesmerized by her practice, breathing the sense of place, affecting the atmosphere with poetic beauty. The experience of musical background has oozed into the art, vibrating the soul and creating tactile art pieces, a very physical experience.

I hope to work more freely with materials and think laterally about them, I was particularly drawn to the use of mussel shells and red velvet, leather, red lipsticks on wine glasses, hair, wax, and latex. Well, all the materials that she has used and how they are all very different and yet link in the idea of aging, mortality, vulnerability, progression and seduction.

To think about:

Working with the history of a site and with non-traditional materials.

Site and materials, how to pushed the materials to new dimensions.

What they could signify. 

Shell

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester  2006/7

mussel shells, red silk velvet

Located just passed the busy cultured streets in Friedrichstrasse, Hamish Morrison is my kind of gallery. It’s everything that I was looking for in terms of an exhibition space; the rawness of the gallery and lovely people, and well as the sculptures that were shown. I would even go as far as saying that this was one of the highlights of my time in Berlin.

 This is the third exhibition by Spanish artist Nuria Fester, an artist that’s become a massive inspiration of mine recently. Her sculptures reclaim everyday, found objects that have been disregarded from a society that obsesses of the latest model. Released from their original responsibilities, the objects are rearranged and reborn, familiar yet translated into a new context, a new relationship, a new story.

 This extract from the website explains it: 

“Within her assemblages, Fuster explores and kneads the small spaces between the separate worlds of brutality and elegance, chaos and order, functionality and dysfunctionality, generating new connections with different “words”. Various dialogues ensue between the pictorial experiences, the physical qualities of the materials she uses and the meaning these objects play in her domestic surroundings and within society.



”To observe the rawness of a surface, its nature, its complexity, an infinity of invisible creases crowded into an apparent smooth and slippery plane, is a metaphor for the vastness of the reality faced by humans.” (N. Fuster) Fuster’s choice of materials is directly related to the knowledge of the material and its ability to change and also its ability to change our perception.
”Beuys’ sculpture opened the concept of the pure construction of human thought. From there it is possible to create sculpture in infinitely different ways. My works explore other ways of practicing sculpture and my love of materiality. The materials are the protagonists and as such, define the result.” (N. Fuster)”

 Thinking over it, Sid wasn’t a horrid child at all in Toy Story, he was just a little misunderstood or portrayed badly. The odd comparison in my mind between the robotic, spider baby and this work may not be one that is often made, but it makes sense in my mind. I’m growing to like Sid’s toys…

http://www.hamishmorrison.com/en/Artists/Nuria-Fuster.html

Can my positivity be infectious or just irritating?