Last Saturday, I headed to the Tate Modern to look for inspiration for my research module. I found that going to the Tate Modern was very helpful for my project when discovering new artist to inspire me and my work. I knew the areas that’s i was keen to explore but wasn’t sure which ways that I could explore them, meaning that I went to the Tate Modern with a completely open mind.
One of the first artist that I discovered as i entered the museum was Romanian Artist, Geta Brătescu. Her 8mm film, black and white video ‘Hands (For the Eye, the Hand of my Body Draws My Portrait) 1977’ was one of the first pieces of art that i came across. The film shows a pair of the artist own hands, moving restlessly around her studio desk. The video was so simple but yet showed an artistic way of showing perspective and an artists point of view. I liked how Geta relies on the black and white film to create tone and texture for the audience to view. In relation to my project, I have a keen interest in film and moving image, I have expressed how I would like to explore on both areas. When thinking about camera shots, tone and texture, Geta is perfect as inspiration and I would be interested in looking into more of her work.
The next artist that drew my attention was artist, Naufus Ramirez-Figueora and his work “Blue Abstraction, 2012”, The work features a high definition video of a man being painted with blue paint in memory of the artists uncle. Inspired by early black and white films, blue often appeared ghostly white in these, making objects look like they had disappeared.
In relation to the artist uncle, he was an activist and experimental theatre maker who was murdered when Naufus was only six years old. He states “Trauma is something that doesn’t fit
into the narrative of your life, it stands out and how the thing stands out, I expressed it through the neon blue.” Naufus’s work stood out to me as his representation of colours a big responsibility within his video. I love the personal and pepper meaning of the colour and how it is used to represent something so personal to him whilst still referring to old black and white films. In relation to my research and thoughts when thinking about moving image, using colour as a representation in a moving image could make it more personal and meaningful to me.
Liz Johnson Artur was another artist which stood out to me for her documentary style photography which documents the lives of black people from the African Diaspora, celebrating the normal. I was drawn to her work for her realism images that are captured on film photography, I love how each image is naturally composed, showing themes of celebration,
class and identity through series of images, some in colour and some in black and white. I love the way that she captures the subjects identity through a photograph. Liz inspires me as a photographer because I have decided that I enjoy capturing and documenting photographs rather than creating studio based and posed photographs. I love how much identity you can capture within an image. I also loved how Liz’s work was presented. She showcased her images through not only neatly hung picture frames but scrapbooks fill of her images. Which I believe added a more personal touch to the images rather then just presenting them all in photo frames which is something i would love to add into my future work.
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