Nicholas Harding

Nicholas Harding is another artist whose work was in the National Portrait Prize, I really like the realism and the highly textural nature of his work.

Yoshihiro Suda

Another artist whose work really impressed me was the subtle sculptural work of Japanese artist Yoshihiro Suda. The rose shown is sculpted out of wood.

Del Kathryn Barton

I have recently been in Sydney, a city which has a thriving arts scene. One of my favourite places to visit whilst there was the Sydney Art Gallery which houses a very clever changing set of collections. I particularly liked the modern art on the lower floor of the gallery and the work of Del Kathryn Barton really stood out to me. Her pieces are highly labour intensive and detailed and due to this they are wonderful to look at. I really liked the multi layered style in which she works.

Michael Landy

Michael Landy is an artist that has interested me for some time as he concentrates on possessions and the material worth of objects. In 2001 for example he gathered together literally every single thing that he owned and set up a production line to systematically destroy everything. This included photos, his passport and his car. Most recently Landy has collaborated with the city of Sydney in order to collect random acts of kindness. He is collecting stories of kindness between the 20th of July and 20th of August.

Update

Apologies for the long delay in posting to those who read the blog on a regular basis, not sure how many just stumble in from Miss Van! Just thought I would update to say that I am now in Sydney living in a place called Darlington which is right by a very cool suburb called Newtown. I think in the past Newtown was a bit run down (much like Stokes Croft in Bristol for example) but is now an area which reeks of redevelopment and promise. Australian people by nature are very friendly and curious and seemingly in Newtown this is even more so. Today for example I went with my new housemate to a free life drawing class in The Sando (Sandringham Hotel) it was packed to the rafters and some of the work produced was amazing so despite a man standing on my piece of paper and me accidentally spilling half my pint of cider on another unfortunate mans sketchpad I will be going again next week but this time with my own paper and drawing equipment so I don't have what appears to be a fully joined up 10 breasted woman! I will hopefully put some photos up soon too as the area I live in is very cool!

The Glue Society

I saw this image (or one like it) in Creative Review a couple of years ago and it became one of my favourite ideas ever. It was created by The Glue Society based in Sydney and New York and made up of collaborators in various disciplines. The website is very engaging to use and their work is always intriguing and original. They also received a lot of press for their 'satellite google maps' of what some well known biblical scenes might have looked like.