Art & Popular Culture/ Quotidian Object/ Representation

Art and Popular Culture – Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst is an installation artist whose work ‘challenges the boundaries between art, science and popular culture.’ He explores the notion of human experiences, such as love, life, death, loyalty and betrayal, in his work. However death seems to be the most common theme explored. A tiger shark, a cow and her calf, pharmacy bottles, cigarette butts, medical instruments, butterflies and tropical fish are just a few of the resources Hirst uses to communicate his views of human experiences. He is best known for his ‘Natural History’ works, which reveal animals in a tank of formaldehyde, such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) and Mother and Child Divided (1993). These works raise the fundamental questions relating to the meaning of life and the vulnerability of biological existence. In many of his works during the 1990’s such as The Acquired Inability to Escape (1991) and The Asthmatic Escaped (1992), a human presence is implied through the addition of certain objects, like clothes, cigarettes, ashtrays, and chairs.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

1991

Tiger shark, glass, steel, 5% formaldehyde solution

213 x 518 x 213 cm

Charles Saatchi

Art and the Quotidian Object – Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg is a British artist who is notable for the exploration of various materials such as found and discarded materials and raw matter. His selection of materials establishes the form of which the sculpture takes on. In the 1980’s many of his works included fragments of furniture, household objects, plastic toys etc., which were often chosen depending on their colour, and once laid out on the floor or fixed up to the wall, created forms from everyday life. Cragg says, “I think that objects have the capability to carry valuable information for us, but most objects are made in ways which are irresponsible and manipulative. Irresponsible because people—the makers of this or that—don’t really consider in any metaphysical way the meanings of the objects that they are making; and manipulative because things are made for commercial and power-based reasons.”

Spectrum

1985

Plastic

28x200x300

Art and Representation – Bernd and Hilla Becher

Bernd and Hilla Becher are an artist couple from Germany who, for the last 40 years, have been photographing industrial architecture. The Becher’s first started in 1959, photographing German industrial buildings which were about to be destroyed. The photos reveal their fascination with the similarity in which some buildings have been designed. Their goal has always been to create images which focus on the industrial structures themselves. The Becher’s photograph these buildings with a large format camera from various angles, but always with an ‘objective’ perspective. The images are placed side by side to invite the viewer to compare each form and design. In Cwmcynon Colliery, Mountain Ash, South Wales, 1966, a mine-head towers over houses in the village. The huge wheels above the steel head-frame are an engineered form. The photographs that these two artists take, document the industrial history. When each structure is demolished, the pictures remain.

Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher

Pitheads 1974

Tate. Purchased 1974© Bernd & Hilla Becher