Arte Povera

Arte Povera had an increasing influence on this Unit, as I viewed a 5-part lecture series covering topics of ‘Materiality’, ‘Ecology’, ‘Media and Surface’ and ‘Ecological Thinking’. This free-spirited, inclusive but non-conformist movement’s appreciation for the beauty in humble materials, nature, daily life and process, fitted well with my personal ethos for life and the direction of contemporary art.

Notable works of Jannis Kounellis, Luciano Fabro and Giovanni Anselmo to my practice are showcased below.

In addition Mario Merz, an artist often brought up in discussion with Danny Lane and I, was associated with this movement.

Jannis Kounellis

Kounellis aimed to work directly and freely in real space and to use materials taken from everyday life such as, stones, ropes, cupboards and chairs, as well as living things such as animals and plants.

Frequently unorthodox components create bare, stark industrious installations. Balance also seems visually key, a factor I strongly consider in my creative process.

His engagement with coffee as an art material alongside Luciano Fabro’s work ‘Sisphus’ , 1994 with flour, propelled me to continue considering the possibility of using grain, a local farming produce, in my installation work.

Installation view of ‘*Jannis Kounellis*’, 2018

Jannis Kounellis, ‘*Untitled (Cavalli)*’, 1967, 12 horses

Kounellis’s work ‘Senza Titolo’ 2005 led me to think of the significance of other metals of cultural significance and material potential. Lead is a heavy metal, denser than most common materials. This density of weight alongside it’s soft and malleable properties intrigued me, as it moulds easily around forms. Lead's widely recognized toxicity became of additional artistic value, as this is of contrasting state to other materials I have explored, wheat and barley for instance. Lead is also associated with death through its use as lead shot shot in war or hunting.

This ability to mould has gives it a smothering quality with its dark grey colouring ,which has anthropocentric, political and religious connotations. In contrast, lead also has a protective quality as a roof building material and is used to shield radiation. This latter point however is of apocalyptic significance, death and survival. I would like to explore this further with respect to current affairs and future ecological events.

Refer to ‘Confined’, 2022 and ‘Shield’ Series, 2022.

Kounellis,The Negev Museum of Art, 2017

Wooden chairs and blocks of stone materials tied this exhibition to Negev and to its people. Visitors would have recognised this art works personalised cultural context, the exhibition’s art works involvement part of their life and context.

Thus for Kounellis every exhibition became a wonderful and unpredictable adventure, impossible to be planned in advance.

To build understanding of my own life through exploring materials that where ever present growing up. Revisiting and rediscovering what their presence means to me.

This freedom in installation was interesting to me as I wanted to see how I responded to cumulate circumstances, so materials of relivance to me will be bought to site and configured and amalgamated into a work with minimal forethought.

Exhibition view at the Negev Museum of Art, 2017

Luciano Fabro

Fabro is an artist with intense awareness of suffering and psychological pain based in his life experiences as a child of war in Italy. His use of modest materials, in contrast to more sophisticated and expensive, is a rebellion and exercise in contradiction to better represent the everyday experience of the masses.

Material Research - Grain

My engagement with grain was further enhanced by Fabro’s ‘Sisyphus’ and is with my understanding that grain is one of the bedrocks for human nourishment and sustenance of life ; Cereal being a named commodity in world trade and politics and bread has heavy religious connotations with the body of Christ, repentance and famine.

Wheat is one of the most ‘agronomically adaptable’ crops. It is therefore more widely grown than any other staple food crop and can be found on all continents and barley is one of our oldest farmed grains, the earliest cultivation of barley dates 10,000 years ago to Eurasia.

Russia is by far the biggest producer of barley and wheat followed by Ukraine, France and Germany.

‘Demetra’, 1987 is another work by Fabro but, it aims to suggest we have become too alienated from modern life and for us to hope for such intimacy with our natural world is almost inaccessible. These lips which one would want to kiss are now are stoney and disembodied.

Giovanni Anselmo

A self-taught Italian artist who developed a relationship with the post-war Arte Povera movement. His ‘Untitled' works represented nature, time, infinity and invisibility, with demonstrations of tension or opposing forces. He created work that took on an energy or life of their own and had the potential for transformation by itself or through newer versions.

I aimed to portray similar emotives, attached to stationary objects as Aselmo achieves in ‘Toward the Ultramarine’ , 1984 and ‘Torsion’ , 1968.

In ‘Iron Curtain’, 2022 I wanted to evoke a sense of uncertainty and unease surrounding the potential energy of the grain flowing endlessly through the cavity. I like the idea at play, that one small action can have a catastrophic effect. Whereas, in ‘Confined’ , 2022 I chose to challenge the restrictions of suspended weight.

‘Toward the Ultramarine’, 1984

‘Invisibile’ , projector and slide, 1971