Did you see the Netflix special, Abstract? I’ve been absorbed, its an inside look at art professions and how this dances with our culture as a society. In season 2, episode 1, Olafur Eliasson’s art is highlighted, for good reason. It’s clever, questioning, proposing & amazingly beautiful. My favourite are the waterfalls. Structure, grace & wild.
Firstly the exhibition, Water is on in Brisbane at QAGOMA in the South Bank Precinct.
His discussion begins with examples of work with Olafur quickly showing his innate understanding of art and its place in our culture. Watching his on the spot working through the discussion is marvellous. He is very generous, humble and very inquisitive.
Looking at Ice Watch, large glacial ice pieces from Greenland, hand captured and placed at The Tate, for us to have a spacial, tactile and immediate perspective based response, is piercing in its brilliance and clarity of thought through to execution. Eloquent.
With The Weather Project, 2003, the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern gallery. A micro climate created sepia toned silhouettes causing an array of responses from the audience interactions, from yoga, lying down flat, talking with strangers in the mist and all participants in the miracle of art, becoming part of it. Olafur is considerate in his approach to making us part of the pieces, bringing them and us to life, creating a conversation around the pieces as well as part of completing the work, by engaging through tactile aspects from splashing water, to ice melting under our touch.
I found the image below so charming, it is Olafur’s first installation if you will. He flooded the space on purpose. I adore that this image is black and white. No extraneous noise, play and creativity surprising an opportunity to interact with our life force, water.
This is the Glacier Melt Series. Photographic series around melting ice with drastic differences in nature. All the work centres around our perceptions, that these are individual & our interaction with our spaces and nature.
This is a photo capturing workings in progress in the studio.
Overall, I was totally captivated throughout the discussion, I love that he plays with shapes and light, has an affinity with nature and our position as caretakers. Leading into how as artists we are a valuable part of all cultures and it is part of our due diligence to keep creating, thoughtfully.
Check out the exhibition, in Brisbane till April 2020.
#arteveryday #888 #olafur eliasson #goma