Inspiration: The Great Gatsby and Jack White.

The Great Gatsby is one of my favourite books. It left me with such a feeling of haunting emptiness for the newly rich Jay Gatsby, the title character, who had given his entire life over for the love of someone ultimately unworthy. Baz Luhrmann has just remade the movie of the novel with Leo Dicaprio as The Great Gatsby and if the trailer is anything to go by I have hopes this will be more Romeo + Juliet and less Moulin Rouge ( a sad disappointment of a film, not to mention a colossal waste of sequins). 

Most inspiring of all though is Jack White's cover of U2's Love Is Blindness which Luhrmann has included in the soundtrack and you can catch in part on the trailer. This song seems like the ideal choice for the empty hedonism and hollowed out alienation Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy symbolises. I have to admit I've become a little obsessed with this song. It's one of those which has the power to rip through any number of thick muscled layers of defence, uncovering in the process the heart of pure, raw emotion. 

I've posted in from You Tube the whole song below so you can hear it without any visual cues. See what you think!

                                       

Advanced Diploma: Inspiration.

Four weeks holiday down the track and here we are ready to tackle a new brief. This semester promises to be exciting as it it culminates not just in a body of work of our own choosing but also a group exhibition - focusing on the creative and logistical skills needed for putting an exhibition together. As usual I am excited but daunted.....

So a fun start - gathering pieces of inspiration. Thinking about what inspires us and how we use that to spring board to a new work. This is pretty much my hobby - gathering inspiration. I wish someone would pay me to do it. Here's just a fraction of what I gathered from the web.

Starting with  this crochet anatomical piece by Cecile Dachery which works for my interest in textile based art and another interest - anatomical subjects.  I love this contrast of the cosy comfort of crochet and knitting with something which is essentially (to me at least) grissly. Grissly in a good way.

More fron Cecile Dachery....

And more...

I can't get enough of all this subverting of traditional craft. The above is a far cry from traditional knitting and crochet (they don't call them granny squares for nothing). Something really feminist about these two above. What do you think?

Next inspiration: text based art. I like this from Mike Monteiro which seems to me to be about power dynamics and manipulation. Or what? It's stayed with me quite a bit today anyways.

Then how to go past Banksy? He just gets it so right. 

I'm also constantly inspired by Egon Schiele's drawing style. Strong unsentimental linework. They make me want to grab a sharpened pencil and get drawing asap.

As I say this is just a mere fraction of what I gathered but had fun doing it. Look forward to seeing what others are getting into.