Pop life

Hello. I am in Guildford right now with my girlfriend. We came up to see an exhibition at the Tate Modern yesterday called 'Pop Life'. It was an exhibition about Pop art -  so was interesting for me as i've had a flaking interest in it since I was in school and when asked to research an artist - decided I liked Andy Warhol.

It was interesting, it explored Andy Warhols' vision that 'good business is the best art' by looking at subsequent artists to follow his scheme. The most interesting revelation for me, was half-way concluding my ongoing war with 'what is art..?'

I often find myself looking at things on gallery walls and asking why is that there, does it deserve its pride of place? Is that art? etc. In the exhibition, in the room displayed like the 'Pop Shop' I looked up and saw T shirts on the wall. I looked up at them and asked the questions - why are they there, what's the point and so on; but then I realized that I actually thought they were pretty snazzy t shirts.
So its not good enough to be on a gallery wall  - but it is good enough to be on a t shirt? Well that just tells me that my ongoing problem with art then is not so much with art but with the environment that it's exhibited... I may not like Damien Hurst's cow model... but if a friend had created that I would be bloody marveled.. again the environment constricting my opinion of the art.

There were some questionable things at the exhibit... a pornographic pic of Brooke Shields as a child had been taken down before we went which shoulda told us what to expect. Jeff Coons... forever I will remember you as the smiling face of 80's porno, unfortunately.

There was this other lady whos work was - literally - she would find a gallery owner, have sex with him & record it, then that would be exhibited in the gallery. Now the exhibition didnt have plaques explaining the intentions & motifs of the artists unfortunately because it would of been interesting to dig deeper on this estranged woman. My view is that she's pushing boundaries - sure - but in the direction no one cares to follow. What was her point?

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I don't know what art is - but I dont care to call anything I do art - if I can find a better suited namesake I will. I do drawings, Biro's & HB's. I do animations. Im no artist "I'm just a song and dance man".

Hello, my names Terry and i'm a law abider

'And when the weekends' here, I excersise my right,
to get paraletic and fight.
Good bloke fairly,
but I get well lairy
When Geezers look at me funny,
Bounce 'em round like bunnies.

The thing I mentioned before

Here we go all done. My pal Nick was here earlier and we recorded the guitars for this, now it's done.



The idea behind it is how Che Guevara has now become just an icon.. rather than the iconic bloke i'm sure he was. I say 'am sure', because I myself am one of the ones who bought this work on... I have had his poster on my wall since I was about 13, but have not yet looked into him. So here this is to all the people like myself who need to scratch beneath the painted surface and find out just who this guy was, not just a pretty face.

I don't know what kind of animation you'd class this as... Stop motion? I did it by stenciling out the image and then painting it on my shower wall in acryllic paint. It's the first time i've used acryllic paint outside the secondary school art room (where it was used more for flickin on peoples clothes rather than painting with...) so I didn't know how well it would work, if it would run down the wall etc... well, it didnt run, but it did come off easily, which was perfect for the project because I could spray on a little water to dampen it, scratch a little paint off, then add some below. It didn't take all that long really, about 3 hours to finish the animation, about 20 minutes to put the stencil on in the first place? Cutting it out was the longest part.

Anywho enjoi

"We're just two lost souls swimmin' in a fish bowl" TA RA.  ~

Update

I think i'm repeating myself, but since I bin at uni, i've been drawing alot. One a day atleast. I find whenever I draw a picture, it's usually the best picture i've ever drawn. So I find i'm always getting better which is why I guess I keep going. I wonder when i'll hit the roof n' my drawings will start to become worse than the last...?

Anywho, keep optimistic. There is no roof.

I bin hanging out with my girlfriend in Swansea over the last weekend, and am going up to London to see her in a couple of weeks when she gets back from Cuba. This information means nothin to you i'm sure, but you gotta love your girl!

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Here's some drawings from the last week or two.

Ralph Steadman & Hunter S Thompson. This is the first Ink i've ever done

so I thought it'd be fitting to draw Ralph Steadman.

Answers on a postcard as to who the first and last are please.

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Last night I had this idea when I was in the shower(the place all great ideas come from) to make me a stencil and have a go at trying something out with it. Well, 24 hours later the stencils cut & the animations done. It's a bit of a test really, i've never used acryllic paint before & I've never painted on my shower wall before either... so a learning curve. I'll update tomorrow with the finished work, I'm gunna play some guitar to it & get my flatmate to play violin on it too (Hopefully...).

While talking about ye ole guitar, I got me mate Nick down this weekend for a good ole' jam. My last night before uni me n him stayed up till 5, got drunk and jammed our little socks off. The weekend calls for a repeat. Back to the old 16 hour jam sessions that fly by.... TIME FLIES WHEN.

Ciao ~

Animation test

Ah well, i'm still up so I may aswell upload this. Youtube has made the quality shitty so watch in full screen n' you'll get the jist.



"We watched 'Muto' by Blu last week in class and this is a test based on the method of that, although scaled down quite a bit. It's about two hours of work. The idea if I were to fully finish it would be to relate Darwins 'the origin of species' into an animation that walks it's way through evolution. A grand idea but for now atleast heres a tiny snippet as a test."

Plato's cave

Just bin reading the story of Plato's cave, and I thought, 'what a good story to animate...' BUT, seems someone beat me to it.. Ah well, mine woulda been better i'm sure; I rest assured... for sure..




I've not updated my blog for a while so will do so with some animation work tomorrow. I got a week off next week too because i'm not going to Bradford... so the plan is ~ Get to grips with Maya, Re-read a weekly-reading every other night, watch some films I bin meaning to watch and read some books I bin meaning to read... do some drawing; and just generally relax...

Ta-ra!