In- Depth Response to Chosen Artists of Photography and Sculpture

Sue Mayo

Sue is a theatre maker, facilitator, teacher and consultant. Working across art forms, often in collaboration with other artists, Sue has created and facilitated a wide range of creative projects in the UK and beyond. Sue lectures at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, where she is Associate tutor on the MA in Applied Drama, and is Associate Artist at Magic Me, the UK’s leading intergenerational arts provider.  Sue works in the professional development of artists who want to work in education and community settings, and acts as a consultant and evaluator for arts and heritage organizations.

Work in Progress:

Settlements is an ongoing exploration of the making of place and the inhabiting of space, through the creation of tiny worlds, using found objects.  Building on a series of structured exercises, Sue continues to explore and develop this way of working, most recently working with young artists to develop the work through film.  In preparation are family workshops with Settlements that lead to collective storytelling, and work with dancers to explore using the body as the site of the installations.

ResearchSue is under Commission from Methuen Drama to write two chapters for a new publication on Theatre and Community. She is writing about Magic Me’s intergenerational performance projects at Queen Mary College, and about the work of artist Mark Storor and Participation Producer Anna Ledgard

In 2012 Sue will be working with Magic Me on their new collaboration with Duckie. She will be researching and documenting the different was in which a variety of art forms support the building or relationships in a group.
http://www.duckie.co.uk/

Background Information

Sue has taught at Rose Bruford, South Bank Theatre School, Queen Mary College, and currently atGoldsmith’s College. Sue taught for three years on Flight Paths, the training programme for artists from refugee communities wanting to work in Schools in the UK. She contributes regularly to the continuing professional development programme run by Magic Me, and has led training at Glyndebourne, for theGeffrye Museum, and for the National Trust.

Sue has mentored artists from many arts organizations, and has been on the Board of Leap Theatre Workshop, and Trestle Theatre Company. She is currently on the Board of Talawa Theatre

I decided to chose Sue Mayo as she currently finds new ways to archive information together, this includes putting information together that has been kept for a long time, as we showcased this at the Goldmsiths. As she is one of my chosen artist who relates to my theme travel and the summer box that we had and how we can make that into a form of art.

Sue Mayo- Sue is our lead artist on the project. Since 2008 she has been developing innovative participatory work for the LIFT Living Archive, exploring ways of bringing to life the collection with educational and community groups. Sue is a theatre maker and community artist with 30 years of experience and endless energy. By bringing together different art forms she enables diverse community groups to create their own work; writing, performance, visual practice or site-specific work What Sue says about the project?"The work that the participants discover through the archive opens their eyes to new ways of working, and making performance. It has been exciting for us as artists to use different shows from the LIFT archive in each school, and to develop completely different pieces in each place."

William Coupon

http://slides.sitewelder.com/users/WilliamCoupon717/images/WilliamCoupon71743536.jpg  His first photographs were photographs that talked – called "audio graphs" – which were photographs that had looped cassettes behind a framed image, and photographs that moved – called "kinetographs" – which were photographs that were attached to moving motors. The "kinetographs" were commissioned for window displays at Bloomingdale’s in the late l970’s. I photographed a documentary on Studio 54, the legendary New York disco, in late summer l978, and they immediately were included in the International Centre of Photography exhibition: "Fleeting Gestures: Treasures of Dance Photography."

He became interested in formal studio portraits in 1979 while observing it’s lower Manhattan youth (my peers) and its present counter-culture, and decided early on to use a single-light source and simple mottled backdrop, and when he needed to, he would set this up as a portable studio, one highly mobile. This was then used to document global sub-cultures. Many of the projects – referred to as "Social Studies" – became documents of indigenous people. These include projects on Haiti, Australian Aboriginals, Native Americans, Scandinavian Laplanders, Israeli Druzim, Moroccan Berbers, Alaskan Yupik, Spanish Gypsies, Turkish Kurds, Central African Pygmy, and Panamanian Cuna and Chocoe. These projects also included Death Row Inmates, Drag Queens, and Cowboys. Stylistically, they were always photographed formally on the backdrop, and contextually, or environmentally, with 2 1/4 Rolleiflex black and white images, which were meant to be companions to the studio portraits.

Phil Borges
http://www.philborges.com/collections.html 

For over twenty five years Phil Borges has lived with and documented indigenous and tribal cultures around the world. Through his work, he strives to create a heightened understanding of the issues faced by people in the developing world.

Through his exhibits and award-winning books, Phil attempts to create a relationship between the audience and his photographic subjects. “I want the viewer to see these people as individuals, to know their names and a bit of their history, not just to view them as an anonymous part of some remote ethnic or tribal group.” 

His book TIBETAN PORTRAIT: The Power of Compassion, introduces individuals from a deeply spiritual culture who have been marginalized and displaced by the occupation of their homeland. In 1998 he joined Amnesty International to present ENDURING SPIRIT, an exhibit and book celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His exhibit and book The Gift highlights the work of medical teams that provide facial reconstructive surgery to children in the developing world.

In 2004 Phil began an ongoing project to highlight the oppression and discrimination women and girls still face in the developing world.  Phil worked with the organization CARE to release the book and exhibition titled Women Empowered in 2006.  Phil's most recent exhibition addressing gender issues is titledStirring The Fire: a global movement toward gender equality.  The exhibition and companion website is designed to bridge the gap between awareness and action. Central to the project is the Call to Actionwith its searchable database of organizations and resources intended to provide specific opportunities for those wanting to help women and girls achieve social and economic justice worldwide.

Phil has hosted three television documentaries for Discovery and National Geographic as a part of a series that investigates indigenous cultures that still maintain a spiritual dialogue with the natural world. 

Phil’s photographs are collected and exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. His award-winning books have been published in four languages and in 1998 he was presented the Photo Media Magazine "Photoperson of the Year" award. In December, 2003 Phil was honored with the Humanitarian Award, receiving the Lucie at the 1st Annual International Photography Awards. In 2005 he was named a Giraffe Hero for his humanitarian work. Phil teaches and lectures internationally and is co-founder of Blue Earth Alliance, a 501c3 that sponsors photographic projects focusing on endangered cultures and threatened environments.

Elinor Carucci

She was born in Jerusalem where she served in the Israeli Army for two years from 1989–1991, and received her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 1995. She lives and works in New York City and is a member of the Faculty in Photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She has also taught at Princeton University and has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University.

Since her gallery debut in 1997, Carucci's has had solo exhibitions in London, Frankfurt, Prague and Jerusalem. Her work has been extensively published and collected by numerous institutions and private collectors. She has been included in group and solo exhibitions at Edwynn Houk Gallery,Fifty One Fine Art Gallery, Gagosian Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, New York and The Photographers' Gallery, London to name a few. Her work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, which included an eight page portfolio of work published in 2005, W, The New Yorker, Aperture,ARTnews, and Details among many others. Collections she has been featured in include, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Jewish Museum, New York, International Center of Photography, the Brooklyn Museum of Arts, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, The Museum of Israeli Art Ramat Gan, Herzlia Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Haifa Museum of Art.

She is currently working on a body of work about her children and motherhood. Other prominent bodies of work include, Closer, which was monographed in 2002 by Chronicle Books and Diary of a Dancer, which was monographed by SteidlMack in 2005, as well as, Pain, Crisis, and Comfort. Closer's second edition was published with a forward by The Museum of Modern Art's curator for photography, Susan Kismaric in 2009.

I have chosen this photography artist as they all have a cohesive theme throughout their pictures, as they all work through themes, I have specifically chosen potrait and people who all work in black and white in conjunction to the cliche verre experiments which would be great onto my background on my installation.

Spices Artist

CHOKRA (Conscious Hoarding Of Kinetic Rage Associated) is an artist from United Arab Emirates, who uses pigment, smoke, scent, spices and powdered chilies to create mesmerizing performances that emphasize ritual and drama.

His pyrotechnic performances use multilingual rhythms set in Arabic, Urdu, Hindi and English. CHOKRA also explores trans-gender identity using sound animation, video and transnational costumes. His work is an incarnation of the cross-cultural and multi-ethnic potpourri feeding the construction boom in UAE, with immigrants bringing cultural contributions from the Indian subcontinent. The surge of art-traffic in connection with the Dubai art fair, and museums sprouting in Abu Dhabi increases the creative dynamic and encourages dialogue for Arab artists in the US.

http://vimeo.com/22540196 This video shows how they used different types of elements into their perfomance/ installation.


Amy Thompson sculpture artist

Amy Thompson is a concept led designer who seeks to explore the unknown, achieve the unexpected, challenge the existing and create the extraordinary. Both her obsessive research and creative experimentation direct and shape each piece she designs, often using sculptural methods to exaggerate and manipulate silhouette and scale in order to discover the overall effect desired. Innovation in her work is also achieved by the fusion of contemporary and traditional techniques, the cross over into non-fashion disciplines and use of unconventional materials. In addition, quirky printed textiles play an important part in her designs and bring a fresh and distinctive individuality to her work.

Collaboration with design duo Talbot Runhof for their A/W 10 showcase at Paris Fashion Week. The collection is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, "The Red Shoes". A fable of relentless obsession, paralyzing danger and unyielding seduction. Plastic accessories designed and made by Amy Thompson, including leg, chest and neck pieces as well as gloves and sculptural shoulder armour.

My first impressions of the artwork is that it is very innovative and new mixing fashion and body amour I loved the idea of creating it to match the outfit. The materials that where used are also malleable and can be moved as the model walks, so aesthetically it joins and moves with the body perfectly.   

After completing a number of test pieces from my modroc which can be viewed at the final evaluation, derived from this.

Finally, coming to the idea molding me and creating a number of pieces that would showcase memories of smell as it was the most prominent aspect of my summer. Also deriving the characteristics of sight looking around at the people I love.