Invisible Light

I know – it seems almost implausibly oxymoronic, doesn’t it? It’s the falling tree in a deserted forest conundrum kind of thing. What is light if you can’t see it?

Australian artist/photographer Brendan Fitzpatrick has the answer: X-rays.

Invisible Light showcases unique X-ray art by Australian photographer Brendan Fitzpatrick.
Using both chest X-ray and mammogram machines Brendan explores the extraordinary visual potential of radiography.

Brendan has kindly given me permission to share a couple of his images here at 6000 miles…

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You can see many more X-ray images of flowers, creatures and toys at the Invisible Light gallery.

The flowers are fascinating, the toys are wonderful, but it’s the creatures gallery which I think is the most spectacular: the internal geology of the shells is particularly amazing.

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For all that these things may be visually appealing from the outside (even the toys, at a stretch), it’s something very different to this otherwise hidden side to them.

And different is good.

Pseuds Corner

Pseuds Corner is a regular feature in Private Eye magazine, described as:

Listing pretentious, pseudo-intellectual quotations from the media.

Events online yesterday led me meanderingly to these paragraphs, which would fit right in:

Through our own individual and collective identities as artists, critics and curators, we situate ourselves as both outside and inside the art world, and it is from this position that we choose to comment on structures within the artworld as well as navigating broader frameworks, such as identity, history and locality.

Our work has thus developed into a form of critical practice, a kind of site-specific ‘rugged conceptualism’, which almost always engages with the parameters of the event we find ourselves a part of.

In a tongue in cheek way we explore our own complicity in the art and socio-political spectra, as well as the often-hidden mechanisms involved in constructing meaning, identity and history, seeking always a balance between the politically engaged and the seriously playful.

Yes folks! It’s arty-farty bullshit!

Quite how this sort of thing (see also the second part of this post) can draw any kind of funding while so many people in this country are still hungry and homeless is completely beyond me.

Glass bugs

Ah. Microbiology. Dontcha just love it?

Yeah – me too. And so does artist Luke Jerram – he’s made some amazing glass sculptures of protozoa, bacteria and viruses:

Made to contemplate the global impact of each disease, the artworks were created as alternative representations of viruses to the artificially coloured imagery we receive through the media. In fact, viruses have no colour as they are smaller than the wavelength of light. By extracting the colour from the imagery and creating jewel like beautiful sculptures in glass, a complex tension has arisen between the artworks’ beauty and what they represent.

Personally, I couldn’t see the “complex tension” – that sounds a bit unnecessarily arty-farty to me. But they are pretty special to look at:

T4Phage-Phage_artwork

Ecoli_sculptureThat’s a T4 Bacteriophage at the top, and my old friend E.coli on the bottom – check out those flagellae – hello big boy! But of course, they’re (thankfully) not actual size. The real things are far smaller then this, hence “micro”biology. I know you knew that.

There are a whole lot more images to look at on Luke’s website too: SARS, HIV, Smallpox, Malaria etc etc.

The beautifully detailed collection has now been bought for permanent exhibition at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Art v Jobs

New from Northamptonshire County Council – which just last year cut 900 jobs as part of a £69,000,000 package of budget savings comes “STITCH – A new art installation”.

As part of the countywide GLOBAL FOOTPRINT project, artist Jo Fairfax and the FLOW team will deliver a new laser art installation – STITCH – in Northamptonshire. A new art installation that binds together the historic villages of Earls Barton and Wollaston with a 3 miles long laser beam.

This path of light skims across the beautiful Nene valley pinpointing two prestigious boot and shoe-making factories, Barker Shoes and Griggs, home of Dr Martens.

Glorious – and surely worth every single penny.

We’ve mentioned before that art projects and installations could be considered as a complete waste of money. For example, Cape Town insists on funding the annual Infecting the City arts festival, during which:

City “treasures”, including King Edward’s statue on the Grand Parade, were covered in clingwrap and trees on the station forecourt were draped in toilet paper.

despite having a housing backlog of around 500,000 people.

One can only wonder what those individuals made redundant by Northamptonshire County Council think of this:

ambitious countywide programme of contemporary ‘living heritage’ events and exhibitions, using visual and digital arts to showcase and celebrate Northamptonshire’s defining cultural heritage and identity.

What a load of cobblers.

Get Real, V&A

Oh dear. Someone is unhappy. And it’s about this:

Do you, like me, see a smiling sculpture made up of several thousand plastic crates, constantly updated to represent the Cape Town Zeitgeist? Or, maybe like Chris Andrews of University Estate (via today’s Cape Times’ letters page), you see a

…crass assemblage of Coca-Cola crates at the V&A Waterfront… a monument to mediocrity, global exploitation and humankind’s dysfunctional health and disregard for our treasured eco-heritage.

Wow. Steady on, Chris Andrews. I recognise that this could be classed as “art”, and therefore there are no right and wrong answers here. And I also completely respect your right to express your opinion.

But seriously? I’m really not sure how you managed to get from a friendly looking heap of red plastic to blaming the V&A Waterfront for all of mankind’s worst traits. A stretch of note.

I sense that you don’t like the crate man. Does his Olympic gold medal really scream “mediocrity” to you? Does the way he sits so jauntily between the fishing port and the dry dock make you honestly make you wonder about how we’re collectively not looking after our bodies? Or is it perhaps his smile that invokes a sharp sense of injustice regarding our alleged lack of respect for the planet?

Look, I know where you’re coming from. Art is emotive. It is meant to challenge. Why, the first time I saw Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in 1988, I was immediately hit with intense and disconcerting feelings over society’s treatment of the poor, the exploitation of dogs working at Singapore Airport, the appalling lack of praise afforded to Kylie Minogue and extreme disappointment at the average life span of a standard 60W incandescent light bulb.

And yet, when I voiced these feelings, I was shouted down. People said I was reading too much into 0.4081 square metres of oil on canvas. Looking back, I don’t really blame them. They were right.
I guess some people are saying the same to you about your views on the crate man. And I don’t really blame them either.

Your letter continues:

So not cool. Away with this eyesore, V&A – in the Design Capital of the World, what were you thinking?

I hate people that begin sentences like that with “So”. So unnecessary.

For your information, Chris Andrews, Crateman was revealed just ahead of the World Cup in 2010. South Korean capital Seoul was the World Design Capital in 2010. Additionally, a quick check of any sort of reasonable fact book or interweb site (I suggest www.google.com or www.worlddesigncapital.com) would indicate that the Finnish city of Helsinki is the current (2012) World Design Capital.

From your statement, am I to therefore understand that the V&A have installed an equally hideous (in your view) monstrosity somewhere in Finland? What on earth would prompt them to do that? Is that where my car parking cash is going?

Suddenly I can understand your anger.

But no, Chris Andrews. Cape Town will become World Design Capital in 2014, when sculptures made of Coke crates and the like will surely be de rigour.

I know. So not cool.

UPDATE: See anib’s comment below and look at her Helsinki pics.