The Baltic/Laing Art Gallery Trip

On Monday 2nd July the art department went on a trip to the Baltic Mill as well as The Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle to enhance our research skills as well as gain some knowledge on new artists that we could be interested in for our Unit 3 project. We first went to the Baltic Mill and looked round at the different artists that they were showcasing.

Mark Wallinger

One of the first artists we saw was Mark Wallinger who had the perception of turning everything that is random into and organized system and something that is organized into a random mess. For example, he took pebbles from a beach (which in reality would be a random mess) and place each individual pebble of a checked board square to make them appear organized. As well, with doing the complete opposite, a bricked wall which appears to be in a particular pattern gets turned into a series of numbers as Mark Wallinger puts a random number on each brick turning this organized patter into something random. Twice nominated for the Turner Prize, once in 1995 and again in 2007 when he won, Mark Wallinger is one of the best known figures in the art world. In 1999 his Ecce Homo occupied Trafalgar square's fourth plinth and to great acclaim and in 2001 he represented Britain at the Vehicle Biennale. For his project 'SITE', his largest exhibition in over a decade,  Wallinger will realize three major new commissions and give the UK premiere of his new film 'Construction Site'2011. Mark turns everyday moments in life into transcendent possibilities by attempting top systematize nature, the mundane and the abstract. His art work the 10,000,000,000,000,000 2012 catalogs and compares 65, 536 stones, each occupying its own square on a gargantuan checkerboard. to me i felt that the purpose of Mark Walligner's work, especially the construction site video, is that in many cases in life we keep things in order or organize our property with no actual benefit out of it or any sense of achievement. Our urge to be organized most times have no purpose to it, for example women or men organizing a shoes collection into color or type of shoes, by doing this it does not earn us more money, make us better people or even make us feel like we have achieved something, it is simply for the sake of organization.

Janet Cardiff

then in another part of the exhibition we saw the work of Janet Cardiff, i didn't understand the purpose of her work as much however it didn't stop me from finding it intriguing. It was a set of speakers placed around a room with the sound of a choir, however when you move closer to each speaker you slowly realized that each speaker was set up to one voice, making each speaker one person. Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet has delighted and moved audiences around the world over the last decade. It has returned to the North East for the first time since its original showing at Newcastle Castle Keep and for the fist time ever at BALTIC.  

A reworking of the renaissance choral work for forty voices Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui 1573 by Thomas Tallis, The Forty Part Motet consists of forty separately recorded voices played back through forty individual speakers grouped in eight choirs of five singers. The work allows the audience to get inside the music and experience it almost tangibly as the voices weave in and out of each other.