Stina Wirfelt...

After a long break from using this blog for research, i have come back to it but have moved on from knitting. Now I am looking at wallpaper, Glasgow, regeneration in Glasgow, regeneration in the Gorbals, art in the Gorbals, community work, community arts, demolitions, failure of high-rise flats, families being displaced to new homes, leaving the lived in cells of high-rise living... more to come.

First, i'm looking at Stina Wirfelt's films, some are Glasgow based, 'Shelter From The Storm' is especially poignant to my work at the moment.

The Village Wash from Stina Wirfelt on Vimeo.

....use of colour, cross-narrative techniques, humour, romantic notions...

Shelter From the Storm from Stina Wirfelt on Vimeo.

Vija Celmins...

American artist Vija Celmins makes paintings, drawings and prints. Using charcoal, graphite and erasers she produces delicate monochromatic images based on photographs of the sea, deserts, the night sky and other natural phenomena. Through her slow rigorous approach, the meticulous precision of her technique, and serial exploration of her subjects, Celmins seems to question the nature of representation.

Aurélien Froment

Memory, word games and puzzles; knots, conjuring tricks and cinemaMemory is an inexhaustible cultural goldmine. Sigmund Freud, W.G. Sebald, Barbra Streisand and Plato, amongst others, have offered words of wisdom about this elusive, intractable topic and its connections to knowledge, trauma, exile and love. Countless writers and artists use representations of memories – memoirs, souvenirs, photographs, memorials, albums, archives – as inspiration, material or form. By virtue of its omnipresence, memory is also as banal as it is universally resonant. So, to remark that French artist Aurélien Froment’s work traffics in memory is perhaps predictable. However, Froment approaches memory from the somewhat less conventional angle of its mechanics, which is both a refreshing and challenging aspect of his work. Memory runs through his cultivated maze of installations, photographs, videos, performances and publications like Ariadne’s red thread – which could also be a red herring, a diversion that provides a false sense of interpretative security in the midst of shifting associations, repetitions and slippages....rest of article - http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/aurelien_froment/

Walid raad/The Atlas Group

FACT, LIVERPOOL, UK

Violently displaced from its body, a car engine lies in a pool of leaked oil. In case it should suddenly leap into life again, a military official levels an automatic rifle at the inert lump. Presented as a group of framed inkjet prints, My Neck Is Thinner than a Hair: Engines (2000–3) is the first in a series of works in ‘Funny, How Thin the Line Is: Documents from The Atlas Group Archive’ that examine the spate of car bombs detonated in Lebanon between 1975 and 1991. A wall text informs us that the engine is ‘the only part that remains intact after a car bomb explodes’, and that ‘during the wars photojournalists competed to be the first to find and photograph the engines’.... http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/walid_raad_the_atlas_group/

Judith Baca

Judith (Judy) Baca (b. 1946), a Mexican-American artist and activist working primarily in Los Angeles, has dedicated her career to demonstrating the ways in which public art, created in partnership with community members, can be a force for social change. One of her first undertakings after college was a collaborative mural project aimed at tempering gang violence (1969). In 1976 she co-founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), which has been a source of inspiration, support, and sponsorship for projects that address the identities and concerns of underrepresented populations such as women, immigrants, and the economically disadvantaged. Because these murals and related public art installations are located in the neighborhoods in which the participants live, a strong sense of joint ownership accompanies the works’ creation.

Baca’s most celebrated work is The Great Wall of Los Angeles, a mural project begun in 1973 in the Tujunga Flood Control Channel of the San Fernando Valley. Completed over the course of five years, The Great Wall acts as a visual narrative of centuries of California history—especially of that history which has consistently been underrepresented in “official” documents and textbooks. It, and Baca’s mural projects in general, find their stylistic precedents in the works of the Mexican muralists and the W.P.A., yet the social activism and specific themes that they espouse are decidedly contemporary.