Cathy De Monchaux

 

Cathy De Monchaux is an English sculpture who creates exquisite and intricate sculptures which can be seductive and grotesquely threatening at the same time. There is a sexual threat of her objects, she uses hard materials, often spikey or in some way appearing to constrain the softer parts, which results in her work being both sensual and threatening. There is always an element of opposites in her work, such as rough and soft, achieving something like this by placing brass and steel against leather and velvet.

Cathy De Monchaux, Wound Painting No.9
 (Thin Scar), 2002, Paper, brass, wood, paint,
nails, 92x71.5x9.5cm

While her work is fascinating and I loved looking at all her instillations and sculptures, the reason that I started looking at her was when I came across a piece of her work named 'Wound Drawing No. 8'. It's a painting created with watercolour with wire and nails around the outside. It's a lot more subtle and understated than her other work, but I really like it and I'm amazed at how similar it is to some of my scar pieces created on wooden boards. I hasn't heard of Cathy De Monchaux before I created them so I found it amazing that they were so similar. Monchaux's piece is purposely rough looking, similar to how my pieces were. However there are a lot of differences as the ideas behind the pieces and the aterials used. But either way I find the piece amazing and really catches your attention, which is what I would like to hopefully achieve with my work.

Numen/For Use

Numen/For Use are a Croatian and Austrian collaborative who blend architecture and public instillation art. The sculpture like pieces are large in scale and take over whole public spaces while also reinventing them, changing the way that we look at the spaces. There work is spectacular but also encourages you to interact with the work.

The pieces which caught my attention were there huge web like structures made out of just tape. From a distance you can't tell what the webs are made of, but the closer you look it becomes more evident what it is and takes your breath away even more. The structures the design of the webs have greatly influenced my work and the way I present my web.

Dryden Goodwin

Dryden Goodwin s a British artist who is know for his intricate drawings, and often combines mixed media such as photography, film, screen based installations and soundtracks.

He has a fascination with drawing but doesn't execute it in a conventional, traditional way. His approach is more contemporary and he looks at the sculptural potential of two-dimensional images. The reason Goodwin caught my attention was his unique way of drawing faces. He uses lines and scribbles in an intricate way to create a face. For my drawing project I'm trying to create a face with only the use of straight lines. His work is not entirely exactly what I'm producing, but I think the way he tried to create portraits in a unique way, links his and my work together.

Skin web- second experiment

The next step I wanted to take in my work was to create more three dimensional pieces and move away from the 2-D pieces that I've been doing. This was an experiment I did with flesh toned tights and thread. The end result looks like some sort of web structure, There were even comments that it looks like muscle structure. I want this web to be a representation of skin. It's an exploration of how we as humans strive for perfection.

I really like the end result of this. And now tat I've successfully finished this experiment, it would be good to try something on a much larger scale.

Skin web-first experiment

This is a continuation of what I was doing but without the limitations and restrictions of a frame. It looks like it was just created out of nowhere. similar to a spider web. The delicacy and neutral colour of the tights is a stark contrast to the black harsh looking thread which is holding the tights together.

Skin in a Frame

This piece was the result of a further exploration of my skin board samples. This is on a larger scale and doesn't it have the background, which is what I wanted to try out. I really liked the result but I'm also worried it's too 2-dimensional, I want to try to find a way to expand out of the frame so it looks more free and less restricted.

Christo

'Wrapped Reichstag' 1971-95

Christo was a married couple which consisted of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. They are best known for creating environmental works of art and togther created some of the most spectacular large-scale artworks of the 20th century. Their work is visually impressive and often controversial as a result of its scale. Yet the artists have denied that their work contains a deeper meaning, they want to purpose of their art to be bringing joy and creating beauty and give the viewer new ways of seeing familiar landscapes.

'Valley Curtain' 1972

Their work consisted of enormous packaging projects. They wraps places such as parks, buildings and all sorts of outdoor landscapes. An example of this work is 'Valley Curtain'. This was a project which consisted of stretching a 400 meter long cloth across a valley in the Rocky Mountains. The project cost so much that it caused Christo additional problems with financing. The project experienced many problems and finally the second attempt of hanging it was a success. Unfortunately it was only there for 28 hours as it was destroyed by a storm gale. The sheer scale of these projects is breathtaking, the way in which they incorporate the environment around them is something which I would like to explore in my self directed project.