Object installation
•Surreal style, drawing inspiration from dream life rather than deep
meanings.
• Not all objects will be surreal to avoid overwhelm in audience.
• Are objects are intended as an installation or individual pieces?
• In an installation the objects may have changing relationships and
changing meaning, but that the objects are related to each other is fixed.
Surrealism and your objects
• Consider not constructing objects to be absurd, but allow them to
become absurd through chance, and encounter with other objects and
stories.
• Freedom to not be restricted by material.
• Consider the story as a "ready made," like an object. Considered
borrowed phrases as readymades
• The story changes because of the object it's situated within or alongside.
• Don't worry about the audience; let them do the work of engaging with
your work.
• The audience brings their own understanding to the work.
• Challenge the audience's presumptions and understanding of
relationships between words and objects.
• Don't spoon-feed the audience; let them question their presumptions.
• What do you want when you want strangeness? What are you looking to
do or undo: for eg. Merete Oppenheim, Dali were looking to upend
notions of function, Duchamp challenged notions of art and authorship
with the fountain.
• Do your dreamlike scenarios tap into your subconscious or the
subconscious of society? Do you want it to?
• What does impossible things constitute in today’s socio-political
climate? cauliflower clouds versus mushroom clouds. I acknowledge
your work isn't overtly political but there’s room to include subtle hints
to geopolitical issues - that is what stories are about?
• Formal vs conceptual exercise. Identify if the lizard’s tail is a formal or
conceptual intervention with the telephone. Could you consider
exploring the connection between objects, like a telephone and its cord,
and think about what carries things from one place to another (e.g.,
intestines, roadways, courier systems).
• Reflecting, remembering stories, and reading to gather material instead
of immediately creating images. Use this reflections and notes as
tangible objects on the desk to create connections and build new stories
or mythologies.
• The the strength of your work lies in its non-realistic, illustrative and
anatomically incorrect nature. Can you use the informality to create the
bizarre.
• Exploring various ideas and observing how the object changes with each
idea. For example, using a telephone with different attachments like a
lizard, intestines, or something that prevents picking up the receiver. Or
using the museum object vase with different handle forms to make new
mythologies
Object Stories in Installations
• Every object in an installation, regardless of its simplicity, contributes to
the overall story and has its own backstory.
• For example in the Mahabharata, or in Shakespeare's plays even minor
characters have significant backstories.
• Explore backstories of each object in depth.
• Being mindful of and allowing interesting things to emerge rather than
trying to force them, could lead to breakthroughs in the creative process.
• Trust that the audience brings their own stories and understandings to the
artwork, allowing for reconfiguration of ideas
Feedback on Artist Statement
• artist statement is very well-written.
• everyday objects in illustrative form placed in surrealistic settings.
• Could you include drawing as an important part of the practice.
• emphasize on the idea of being a stories teller. How are stories
important.
Looking at the work of Adrian Arleo, Katie McDowell
• The realism in Adrian Arleo’s work is what makes the absurd elements
stand out, prompting viewers to question the nature of the objects.
Adrian Areleo makes the oneness of human beings with nature very
literal, prompting questions about the body and its connection to the
world.
• In Katie MacDowell’s work the human element feels more like a site or
location rather than something with agency. Work feels like specimens
or dissections
• Your work looks at the continuity between human and non-human
organisms, as well as living and non-living beings. (Porosity + objects
and sentience)
