Staff talk -Andrea Medjesi Jones, 28.10.20
From a country that no longer exists, Yugoslavia, and the old continent, Europe…..
Schizophrenic – Eastern bloc Avant Garde, related to modernism
Recent project – abstraction:
Eg She curated The inhuman, 2019, Thames side Gallery
Pluralism, with 11 painters, cultural and methodological, some representational, some abstract
How do we shift from the realities of modernism?
The book by Giorgio Agamen, The () poverty made her think about the relation of the painting to the ground in terms of economies.
Painting on a bench with a pole….with echoes of paint on the pole, also carved.
Influenced by Fra Angelica, can be implied but doesn’t have to be shown.
Abstraction is like a vehicle which can be informed by ideologies
Craft eg wood, national symbolism, through the war in Yugoslavia, German Fascism eg the work ‘SS’ carved in wood, it holds history and meaning. These sculptures are linked to the measurements in her painting.
Thought processes: images of avant garde performances, socialism vs fascism like a religious depictions. Exploring links between iconography of religion, ritual etc
Some of her paintings are knitted.
Does abstraction lead to totalitarianism?
Sculpture: eg ‘Batons’: wood, canvas, fringed canvas, each has a narrative related to Tito’s ‘brotherhood and unity’ celebrating socialist holidays including Tito’s birthday. The young people were given a baton to run across the country as a relay, taking good wishes to the president.
Uses stitch, not just aesthetic, appropriated to the automated work, not the hand of the individual.
She also cuts up the canvas and mixes it with the paint. The painting is never stable.
Appropriate Varvara Stepanova, textile design in the 1920s
El Lissitzky, Stanislav Misic…. Socialism vs fascism Similar symbolism for very different meanings
Eg Dudik War memorial Park, Croatia, architect Bogdan Bogdanovic, informed by social realism of Russia
Lockdown – More inward, spirtitual eg The Ark
How do you visualise heaven?
Triptych –
The Ark,
The Shining- spirituality
Midsummer – pagan between the ideological and the spiritual 170x 170
Ground, uses mica, from the ground. Drawings can inform the paintings. Gouache and colour pencils.
Links between Arts and Crafts movement and Bauhaus, the line is functional, social, curvy line is associated with expressiveness.
The history of form… eg a triangle can be used for many reasons with many different meanings.
Q&A
Theosophy – beginning to research theosophist artists eg Mondrian, symbolism related to Fascism.
Novelty: part of a philosophy of modernism, created troubling social relations. What is novelty? Utopia of Constructionism and the Western Avant Garde. Wary of ‘the new’. Find a working tradition that suits your own interests which responds to current situation. For her the connection between traditions is most important.
No subject in her paintings, instead enquiry, analysis and propositions. Trying to debunk the notion of painting as narrative. So she uses texture, form, abstracted idea, or the representation of the figure. Loaded with ‘who is to be represented in the painting?’ Who do you choose? Christ? Trump? She concentrates on method.
Links with mathematics: geometry etc, She’s more interested in symbolism rather than geometry. But its factitious, borrowed from rational thinking.
Place is important, limited by the use of the space. Infinite measure of god?
Masculine and feminine aesthetics: legacies of post Yugoslavia, use of shapes not linked to gender, unlike in the Western aesthetic
Kunst’s lines in line with 4th generation feminism
Cathy ? describes 21st century visualisation of gender
My reflections:
I'm inevitably interested in the way Andrea uses knitting and stitch in her work. Knitting as a painting, as the grid of modernism; stitch as automated work not as the mark of her hand. Mixing cut up canvas (threads) in the paint to give texture, surface.
Gender perspectives in the East and the West
Symbolism, geometry and mathematics -
From a country that no longer exists, Yugoslavia, and the old continent, Europe…..
Schizophrenic – Eastern bloc Avant Garde, related to modernism
Recent project – abstraction:
Eg She curated The inhuman, 2019, Thames side Gallery
Pluralism, with 11 painters, cultural and methodological, some representational, some abstract
How do we shift from the realities of modernism?
The book by Giorgio Agamen, The () poverty made her think about the relation of the painting to the ground in terms of economies.
Painting on a bench with a pole….with echoes of paint on the pole, also carved.
Influenced by Fra Angelica, can be implied but doesn’t have to be shown.
Abstraction is like a vehicle which can be informed by ideologies
Craft eg wood, national symbolism, through the war in Yugoslavia, German Fascism eg the work ‘SS’ carved in wood, it holds history and meaning. These sculptures are linked to the measurements in her painting.
Thought processes: images of avant garde performances, socialism vs fascism like a religious depictions. Exploring links between iconography of religion, ritual etc
Some of her paintings are knitted.
Does abstraction lead to totalitarianism?
Sculpture: eg ‘Batons’: wood, canvas, fringed canvas, each has a narrative related to Tito’s ‘brotherhood and unity’ celebrating socialist holidays including Tito’s birthday. The young people were given a baton to run across the country as a relay, taking good wishes to the president.
Uses stitch, not just aesthetic, appropriated to the automated work, not the hand of the individual.
She also cuts up the canvas and mixes it with the paint. The painting is never stable.
Appropriate Varvara Stepanova, textile design in the 1920s
El Lissitzky, Stanislav Misic…. Socialism vs fascism Similar symbolism for very different meanings
Eg Dudik War memorial Park, Croatia, architect Bogdan Bogdanovic, informed by social realism of Russia
Lockdown – More inward, spirtitual eg The Ark
How do you visualise heaven?
Triptych –
The Ark,
The Shining- spirituality
Midsummer – pagan between the ideological and the spiritual 170x 170
Ground, uses mica, from the ground. Drawings can inform the paintings. Gouache and colour pencils.
Links between Arts and Crafts movement and Bauhaus, the line is functional, social, curvy line is associated with expressiveness.
The history of form… eg a triangle can be used for many reasons with many different meanings.
Q&A
Theosophy – beginning to research theosophist artists eg Mondrian, symbolism related to Fascism.
Novelty: part of a philosophy of modernism, created troubling social relations. What is novelty? Utopia of Constructionism and the Western Avant Garde. Wary of ‘the new’. Find a working tradition that suits your own interests which responds to current situation. For her the connection between traditions is most important.
No subject in her paintings, instead enquiry, analysis and propositions. Trying to debunk the notion of painting as narrative. So she uses texture, form, abstracted idea, or the representation of the figure. Loaded with ‘who is to be represented in the painting?’ Who do you choose? Christ? Trump? She concentrates on method.
Links with mathematics: geometry etc, She’s more interested in symbolism rather than geometry. But its factitious, borrowed from rational thinking.
Place is important, limited by the use of the space. Infinite measure of god?
Masculine and feminine aesthetics: legacies of post Yugoslavia, use of shapes not linked to gender, unlike in the Western aesthetic
Kunst’s lines in line with 4th generation feminism
Cathy ? describes 21st century visualisation of gender
My reflections:
I'm inevitably interested in the way Andrea uses knitting and stitch in her work. Knitting as a painting, as the grid of modernism; stitch as automated work not as the mark of her hand. Mixing cut up canvas (threads) in the paint to give texture, surface.
Gender perspectives in the East and the West
Symbolism, geometry and mathematics -