Steve Lovett

Blog Question: How has Steve Lovett's practice evolved over the period of his professional career, ie. from political, social/historical concerns to issues of colour and form.

I have been expecting Steve's lecture in since I saw the lecture list. Because I like Steve's class very much. To myself, I'm very keen on making 2D work instead of 3D. And Steve is the very accomplished artist who like making 2D print works. Fortunately, my first 4week studio class is with Steve. So, by having his class help me have a better understanding about the content of Steve's lecture.

Basically, most of Steve's earlier projects are interactive works, which he worked with friends and other fellows, and the things behind the collaborative works are people's personal history and story. Steve's idea is like to identity the relationship between the objects he printed and the personal story behind the objects.

In the beginning of the lecture, Steve introduced us what is his work exactly talk about. He told us his work are concern with historical narrative and story telling which are quite personal and private. And this idea makes Steve's work very individual and creative.Obviously, in some of Steve's work, I saw lot's of portraits prints. Like the "Bamb\Darren", "Speaking Parts". And the stories behind the portrait prints can usually reflect some social issues or flexible notions of community.

I select one work from Steve's portrait prints called "Mother and Daughter What can we say?" which I consider can relate to some social issues. I like the idea of how this work speaks about notions of community and attachment. As we can clearly see that Steve uses different layers with different colours to print the female portrait. It looks like the portrait is separated from one to two. This work can make us think of how can we know ourselves through our interaction and conversation with the people around us everyday. And how can interaction and dialogues identity ourselves from other person.

Steve's work generally changed after 2000. His works are more relate to using space to present ideas. Political and historical are still the main orientation of his work. During this period, I found most of his work are more about film sequence.

For example, the "Intersection" 2007, Steve explained that "Each of the works in this show featured observation of a single location at different times of the week, looking a different usage of a single site." It is talk about the connection between time and space. At different time, the things happened in same space will be different. It is like some people individually participate in a public space, and their personal discourse then become part of the public narrative in the space.

I'm deeply inspired by Steve's lecture and his class. He taught me how to come up with a good idea and how can I push my original idea to something new. I like the way how Steve expresses his ideas in a visual form. Most of his works are in print form. And I like print because I think print work have a nobility and a humanity about them, something you can not achieve solely by computer or electronic printer. I like to see something with hand-made feeling.