Teaching Practice 1

First Teaching Practice at Taidekoulu Maa

Time : 1 hour

31.03.2014

I have prepared the one hour presentation on Installation art. My idea was to start with the theoretical understanding of what the meaning of installation is: “In principal, it means taking a large interior (the exterior can be part of an installation, too) and loading it with disparate items that evoke complex and multiple associations and thoughts, longings, and moods. It's a huge three-dimensional painting, sculpture, poem, and prose work”. (1)

I also mentioned artists who were significant such as Bruce Nauman, Doug Aitken, Ann Hamilton.

The students were not familiar with these particular artists but I have also prepared a Power point presentation based on the material I found from online learning materials, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

The presentation focused on two main approaches to Art Installation: objects in space and space and nothing more.

First we looked at the image of a messy child’s bedroom and discussed: What can we learn about the person who lives here just by looking at this environment? How might it feel to be in this environment?

This was just a lead in to the main question: How do artists create environments?

Unlike paintings and sculpture, installations are meant to be experienced in the moment, and then they may cease to exist. Also they may incorporate all of the senses and one can walk in and out of them, and observe them from different points of view.

Why might an artist choose the medium of installation over others?

With examples of objects in space, there were many questions related to particular artists. For example one of the students was intrigued by Claes Oldenburg, brightly painted object a dress (Mumu, 1961) made with chicken wire and plaster-soaked muslin (kind of like papier-mâché). This work questions the consumer culture, Oldenburg created these objects based on the shirts, shoes, pies, chocolates, and ice cream sandwiches you can find in a store. He then sold his sculptures to the public out of the store, pricing his sculptures at the same cost as the objects they were modeled after.

Another interesting installation was Barbara Bloom’s Reign of Narcissism 1988, Bloom plastered her picture on all of the objects in the room—Greek-looking sculptures. The space between the objects recreates a Neoclassical period room in an imaginary museum dedicated to the artist’s self-image. One of the students compared this piece to the bust of Cleopatra that she saw in an exhibition in Berlin.

Installation from the space and nothing more by Ed Ruscha’s Chocolate Room (1970), was quite intriguing. At first the students were asking if the walls were covered in real chocolate blocks. In fact,  The Chocolate Room consists of 360 shingle-like sheets of paper silkscreened with chocolate. The installation represented the United States in an international art exhibition. We thought of the smell of chocolate and what it must have felt like to be in the space that was coated in chocolate.

Also Chris Burden’s, Exposing the Foundations of the Museum, 1986 was quite intriguing as it raises questions: Do the holes and trenches remind you of anything? What and why? Who might have helped Burden create this installation? This work had the feel of an archaeological excavation site although it was not permanent. Most likely the artist had the help from the contraction company to dig out the foundations of the gallery. 

After this discussion the students were ready to do a practical task, which was to make a collection of everyday objects. They were to arrange the objects inside a box or mount them on a cardboard surface. Also to consider lighting to highlight the composition or create interesting shadow patterns. They had to decide on a theme for the work and give it a title.

Here is the hand-out and the description of the task :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hCn_983CnuT05NcEl3M2dxNFk/edit?usp=sharing

We used all the materials that were available around the studio. The examples worked well and here are the photographs of the student installations. The installations  were quite different in the way the objects were arranged. For example the first student to arrange the installation saw pieces as a house. The objects were joined together and had a very strong supportive feel. The next student had an opposite idea where she placed objects in a way that they did not feel connected.There was also a Greek looking head sculpture that one of the students used with the mirror that worked quite well. The reflection of the head in the mirror had an illusion of the painting. Also she placed the glasses in between the object which contributed to the interesting play with the mirror reflections.

I have also contributed with my installation, based on the theme of sea and the shore. I used a plastic blue polythene bag with other plastic objects such as a sun tan lotion and a plastic container resembling a boat. We agreed that it had an environmental theme as a lot of the pollution does come from the objects left in the sea which then can then effect sea life and birds living around the shore. 

Link to the Power Point presentation : 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hCn_983CnuV0U5X3J0TnlQWEE/edit?usp=sharing

References:

(1) Understanding Installation Art. Date of retrieval 3.04.2014.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-installation-art.html

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Education, Classroom Curriculum, Art Media Types, Installation Art. Date of retrieval 3.04.2014.

http://edu.moca.org/education/teachers/curric/media/installation