Another week gone by and now another week to look forward to. I look forward to the lectures in contextual studies, we get to hear about the practices of our lecturers...And lucky lecturer number two was Frances Hanson, a life drawing lecturer. I was surprised actually to see that none of her work was about life drawing, I assumed it would have been, but stupid me thought I would be seeing life drawing. However I was surprised to see a totally different body of work.
Frances first introduced us to a very familiar piece of work [it was familiar because it was hanging up in the library]. This work was a visual play, it played around with images, shilouttes and collaging. This work and many other works by Frances involve the idea of domesticity. Her work would often see a shilouette's of or a link to objects used in the household, such as, bleach bottles, milk bottles, dishwashing soap etc. Hanson often responded and made work as a response to her imediate environment. At the time of the domesticity objects involved in her work, Frances Hanson was looking after her young children.
In her later works, Frances Hanson sourced materials, which included alot of photography. Particularly photography that caught her eye. She compiled material to make her work, such as objects, pictures and things from the 50's and 60's era, her daughters kindy art work and often collected packaging materials. Frances often shopped in flea markets, thrift stores and supermarkets of Auckland. She eventually took a liking to packaging as well as a strange liking to second hand wicker trays. Yes, quirky it might seem, but there is quite an interesting thing about packaging. Most of us consumers would just eat the cake and throw the box away, or buy the plant and throw the tag away. But not Frances, she collected any sorts of packaging she could find, even notes and bits of paper that she found on the ground. 'One man's rubbish is anothers treasure' and Frances Hanson has taken this saying literally. Hanson likes the idea of trace or remains, you see, to Hanson rubbish and bits of paper is a visual trance of someone it once belonged to.
Due to Frances Hanson's liking of collecting and sourcing materials we were shown a video about gleaning. Gleaning is defined as: 'Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. Some ancient cultures promoted gleaning as an early form of a welfare system. For example, ancient Jewish communities required that farmers not reap all the way to the edges of a field so as to leave some for the poor and for strangers'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GleaningThis video was very interesting for me as I work at a supermarket in the produce area. It still astounds me that so much fruit is thrown away on a daily basis. As an employee I have to concentrate on quality, so any unsuitable peice of fruit is to be thrown away. Most of the time it is still edible, its hard to throw away the fruit especially for me. Because coming from a third world country really makes one realise the worth of food and not wasting something. Most of the time it is perfectly safe. I once saw this short video where at the end of the day at a KFC resturant in Berlin a man would come and pick up the scraps of KFC that had been thrown away and take it to the slums and feed it to his family.
Hanson has a strong sense of recycling, re branding, creating and transforming. Her materials are sourced from everyday life. In my art practice materials sometimes have an importance. It really depends on what sort of work I'm doing and how I want the audience to react to it. I believe that material is very important and can make or break something.
