Rechard Orjis

Question:Choose 3 terms and relate to the practice of Richard.

This week we had a wonderful lecture given by artist Richard Orjis who made some very attractive photography. I like taking pictures very much and Orjis' work inspired me a lot. Also, I realised that Orjis use other medias to present his idea or relate to his photography works. Like the performance art we saw in the video, portrait drawing by using mud as drawing materials. Orjis contained plenty of visual art elements in his work like symbolism, beauty, surface/substance, nature, juxtaposition, dream/fiction and so on. I'd like to select three elements which are strongly reflect from Orjis' work.

Nature

I think it is obvious to see that some nature facts from his work, the beautiful and colourful plants in the images are very attractive. However, it's not easy to understand why Orjis put some beautiful flowers, especially stems of Orchids in fount of a dirty body. I like the idea of how he use objects in nature to state his idea. In western country, Orchids has been known as the " most sexiest flowers on the earth". It looks like talks about the concept of the sex desire and danergous, which is not quite obvious from surface. In My Empire Of Dirt Orjis states that "Nature can be seen as beautiful and pure, and intrinsically good, but also as dangerous and destructive, a spectacle of the devourers and the devoured."(http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/gallery/2008/orjis/)

Surface/Substance

In my opinion, this term has a close relationship with Nature. I think the colourful flowers Orjis put on the human body with runny mud are so delightful and attractive. And that is about surface, the surface of nature. But the surface is not the real meaning of the work. The substance can be seen by permeate the surface of the flowers. Just like things said in the handout of Orjis' lecture" These bouquets and stems if orchids and other flowers may be a form of eye candy, but it's eye candy with a poisonous tinge"

Beauty

When I just look at those portraits with black dirt and mud, they just remind me of miner who working in coal pit and with black dirt on face every day and night. Commonly, people do not think miners could got some beauty. However, it's great to see that Orjis can let people understand that some improbable materials can also be used for present beauty. The video of Orjis' performance art could prove this point. In the gallery, many naked people with coal on the body, walking around and making some actions in an area with creepy background music. All these things could effectively make a kind of cult, culture atmosphere.

In this week, we also watched a DVD called "Manufactured Landscapes", I think the photography work Edward Burtynsky made can also reflect the point- beauty found from improbable materials. I still remember Ed Burtynsky said that he started his project by taking landscapes pictures. And the pictures about the Manufactured Landscapes are mostly taken in China. The content of those pictures are all about the labours, abandoned materials, recycled materials and scene of factory. If you look at Edward Burtynsky's photography from a long distance, you might feel that the mountains stacked by scrap iron are looked like real natural scene. However, When you look them closer, the details can remind people of the hard life of those poor labours, the circumstance made by the life commodities we throw everyday.

So, in the future, about my own practice, I'd like to try to use more materials to present the beauty which can hardly be found from the surface of the materials.

Steve Rood

Although I didn't have any class with Steve Rood before, but I already heard from other classmates that he is a photographer and a digital designer. After the show of Steve's practice, I really want to say that Steve Rood is very talented, especially the photographic works he took are really inspired me. His photography is quite uncommon from the images we usually see on fashion magazines. His photography is like a kind of making common things uncommon. And also, I can realize his attitude of how he think about the relationship between art and life.

I think to be a good photographer, Steve Rood had a good start. When he was just a kid, he already had a good consciousness of taking photo. At the beginning of the lecture, he showed us a black and white compost picture when he was a child. He said the compost was caught on fire afterwards. This event inspired him to be a photographer in the future and capture life. It is interesting to see and record the process of how a normal life object changed.

I think Steve Rood uses some traditional methods to do his photographic works as I can't find too much post production in his practices, but the contents in the works are pretty special and surprising. The first series of images Steve showed us are some shadow images. He explained that this series of images are over exposed. He also blur the intensity of an object's shadow. However, with the dark shadow and the over exposed background, we can still easily find out what the object is. I think this is a good way of how Steve focus on the most important feature of a subject, make feature stronger and weaken the unnecessary elements at the same time. This idea make me think of my own project of photography. What I made are some pictures about smoking and how smoke make people unhealthy. At that time I didn't strongly emphasized the cigarettes or the smoke come out from people's mouth and people don't understood why I took a picture of a person who is smoking.

Another series of images he showed us are quite cool I think. I especially like the one which shows some crystal liquid are running down from a green stick. People can see some liquid globules are pasted together and look like a sort of 3D pattern. In fact, what Steve Rood do is zoom in some part of an object and show people more details. I like Steve has his own way of looking life object around him and how he displays the special beautiful part of a thing in his art work. And I think artsits' job is just finding beauty from our normal life and make it unusual.

Moreover, I'm so keen on the history of photography Steve told us as well. If people of the past want to capture something, they need to use a mirror device and reflect things onto a paper, and people just drawing picture on the reflection. After that, artists will do some more detailed oil painting on the image and make it more real, looks like a real picture. With the development of camera, the mirror reflection method is sifted out gradually. However, I think each period has their own feature. Back to thousand years ago, a oil painting may not that real but the artistic value is much higher. And right now, with the development of technique, everyone has the chance taking pictures for capturing their own life.