Ant’s world.

Ant series

ahh, so this is the 故宫！

bit uneven in here eh?

*raises head up*

ahh a rare clear sky!!

this was taken at the museum too. a group of little kiddies happened to pass by. they looked REALLY CUTE so i decided to snap a shot at them. well there’s a lot of motion in the picture, but this boy in the centre just happened to be staring curiously at the camera, so bingo! haha.

our 山水画.

Autumn in Beijing

my favourite shot during the Beijing immersion programme last year. it was taken at 牛栏山第一中学, our host school. we were preparing for our little performance and it was around evening. i just love how the rays of the setting sun fall on the flowered curtains. it looks exactly like autumn. ^^

taken at the foot of the 八达岭 Great Wall. i like the mixture of the reds and greens coated with a layer of mist. just mistical and mystical!

another shot at 圆明园! for some reason i just love autumn.

Essay on Sculptures.

Describe one of Han Sai Por’s Sculpture

“Floral Inspiration” by Han Sai Por is a set of carved and polished marble sculptures done in 2007. They are currently located in Changi Airport Terminal 3. The 2 sculptures, standing side by side, consist of 1 tall and lean sculpture and the other being slightly more spherical in shape. Other than their shape, the 2 sculptures share similar characteristics. They resemble enlarged cylindrical/ spherical peach seeds, with an entwined coral-like network encasing the seed body, which eventually fuses into a smooth pointed tip. The seemingly endless twining of the coral like network results in the white marble having shadows in various shades of grey, and adds to the interest factor. The 2 sculptures are organic in shape, and the white medium is enhanced by the lighting set at the base of the sculpture, which also places emphasis on the coral patterns. The sculptures are well balanced and look the same all aroundl. Like the “Seed Series”, Han Sai Por probably takes her inspiration from Nature.

[ picture from http://placesinsingapore.blogspot.com/2008/03/changi-international-airport-terminal-3.html ]

Describe one of Antony Gormley’s installation

well we were supposed to describe an installation in relation to the concept of Land Art, but i made a BooBoo.

“Domain Field” by Antony Gormley done in 2003 is a set of sculpture consisting of 287human figures, each known as a “domain”, is constructed using stainless steel bars of various lengths. The individual sculptures resemble human forms in different but natural positions, varying from standing  relaxedly to lying down, giving the domains a sense of life and moment, yet simultaneously seem to be frozen by time.

Human volunteers are moulded in plaster to construct individual sculptures, (so the sculptures are life-size, ranging from children to elderly,) by welding steel elements together inside each mould. The recognisable human forms are suggested by the sparse criss crossing of the steel bars.

At a glance, the figures in “Domain Field” appear almost mist like and seem to fade into the background, giving them a sense of weightlessness, despite chosen medium. The use of lines, steel bars to sketch, or cross hatch the drawing of the sculpture, reveals the construction process, like steel structures are to a building.

And here’s a quote which wraps up the installation nicely

“The body becomes an open matrix, where the viewer is completely aware of the human presense, yet also simutaneously its absense“–Philips dePury and Company

 

[ picture from http://www.hants.gov.uk/antonygormley/domainfield.html ]

Compare and contrast the works by the artist, paying attention to their concerns in art.

Similarities:

Both Han Sai Por and Antony Gormley make use of the colours of the raw materials, Han Sai Por with her polished marble in “Growth” and Antony Gormley in his “Time Horizon”.

The use of repetition also occurs in the works of both artists, though in different ways. Han Sai Por’s series  shows similar sculptures, yet each is unique as each of them is hand made, while Antony Gormley’s sculptures may be mass produced industrially, as seen in “Time Horizon”, where the same figure appears, buried in varying depth.

Differences:

Han Sai Por is concerned with nature, as seen “Floral Inspiration”, as well as the sense of timelessness and permanence, while Antony Gormley is more concerned with human figures, and human psychic, as well as playing with “presence and absence”, such as in “Domain Field”, “Time Horizon”, and “Another Place” just to name a few.

In terms of medium, Han Sai Por likes to use stone, marble as her medium to carve, which is closer to nature. Antony Gormley commonly uses metal, such as steel and bronze to cast his sculptures.

Han Sai Por works with positive spaces, carving out of materials, while Antony Gormley works with negative spaces, uses cat to cast bronze, stell, metal and sometimes the reversal of it.

Lastly, Han Sai Por works with relatively small, minimal sculptures, such as “Growth”, and her largest sculpture being “Shimmering Pearls”. Antony Gormley works with increasingly large scale commisions, eg, Angel of the North.

Visit to Singapore Art Museum-Xu Bei Hong Exhibition

I went to SAM with Xinyan and Leny after national day to see Xu Bei Hong’s works. 

 

This is the only decent sketch of of Xu Bei Hong’s works, entitled “Flying Eagle, 1939, done in ink.

I went to SAM thinking that a camera, a pen and foolscap would suffice and that I would leave SAM with loads and loads of nice photographs which I can post here. 

well, no photography allowed, so me, who did not bring decent paper for sketching, had to sketch the eagle using a blue pen on foolscap in the increasingly cold museum. I did a few other sketches but well, they are really unsightly.

SAM-other works

see the irony in this? it shows an axe upon which a tree-ling grows. well sorry for not noting down the name of the artist and work, but we were in a rush to follow the guided tour! in the next post!

Beijing 798 Art District

had a hard time getting this one (i cropped it! so it’s kind of pixelated) . this is one of the artworks found in Beijing at the 708 Art District. i had a lovely time there with huikin and mr gan (though the others were bored out of their minds.) Sadly, photography is restricted. we took this outside the warehouse (yes it’s a warehouse-turned-gallery; the entire district is). more infor at http://www.798space.com/index_en.asp

prints on canvas depicting the 100人民币note, though ironically with organised prints of stars. if i remembered correctly it was a combination of the American flag and the money note. political message? idk.

there was another one beside this one. it was black. prints again, this time depicting the Hiroshima bombing during WWII. you know, the mushroom cloud. and it also had the “stars”. hehe. sadly we weren’t able to get a pic of it.

when i visited the place again a few weeks later, the canvas had been removed!! ):

another rare picture :D. these posters are a few of the terracottas in the gallery. they sure caught our eye! there are alot alot alot of miniature ones inside! and they’re painted in some sort of artform, like popart, marilyn monroe the icon, and so on. so it was really interesting, like a combination of something eastern and traditional, with the western and modern.

and the cheeky sculptures.

more photos refer to Huikin’s wordpress.

Portrait

I stole the picture from leny when i got too bored drawing furniture for coursework. Sadly, it’s incomplete once again due to the lack of time (and the fact that i had to do so discreetly under the nose of the teachers), so Leny has white hair!

Banner for Youthday 08

by now you’d seen this on the other blogs. the banner was done by huikin, leny, and i together with the help of 2 other classmates yiling and bernice, for our stall “BLOONS”, where you basically shoot darts at balloons. (it’s an idea from facebook^^)…and it’s not easy…

the shadow on the balloon was an accidental smudge by some clumsy person >.>, which turned out to be highly artistic. but nevertheless, our classmates thought that the banner looked really balloon like.