tom-isaacs - Tumblr blog

tom-isaacs · 20 days

Text

Black Cross - Holt Quentel

White Cross Patch - Holt Martel

“Quentel’s work alludes to the giants of modernism through her assertive art-making process: she would cut and stitch together variously sized fragments of raw canvas before painting a single, bold motif in saturated primary colors. Her motifs are limited to geometric shapes, letters, and numbers, most often crosses, E’s, and 3’s. Quentel’s distressed unstretched canvases were physically assaulted by electric sanders and put through a commercial washer and dryer before being hung from frail ropes and nailed onto gallery walls. They appear like artifacts from a very distant past, or perhaps weary, worn-out battle flags. The artist’s process consumes the canvas, with the visuals noticeably degraded by the art-making process.”

#art #painting #textiles #abstract art #textile art #fibre art #geometric abstraction #cross #conceptual art

5 notes · View notes

tom-isaacs · 23 days

Text

Descent Into Limbo - Anish Kapoor

“I have always been drawn to a notion of fear, towards a sensation of vertigo, of falling, of being pulled inwards. This is a notion of the sublime which reverses the picture of union with light. This is an inversion, a sort of turning inside-out. This is a vision of darkness. Fear is a darkness of which the eye is uncertain, towards which the hand turns in hope of contact, and in which only the imagination has the possibility of escape.” (source)

#art #installation art #void #hole #black #darkness #circle #sublime #vertigo #fall #descent #limbo #underworld #katabasis #death #portal

7 notes · View notes

tom-isaacs · 25 days

Text

I've been quite busy since my double update in February.

I've attended the launch of the CASE Incubator studios, delivered a presentation as part of Louise Bourgeois: Tides and Currents at the AGNSW, participated in the second leg of the KanCan Laboratory in Kandos, and attended Big Trauma/Big Change: Building Tomorrow Today.

For more details (and more photographs) check out this blog post over at my website.

#art #blog #update #AGNSW #louise bourgeois #Kandos #Canberra art biennial #cementa #cad factory #case incubator #barc #big anxiety research centre #unsw #big trauma big change #Tom Isaacs

0 notes

tom-isaacs · 25 days

Text

vimeo

The Body is a Big Place - Helen Pynor and Peta Clancy

"The Body is a Big Place is a large-scale, immersive installation developed through collaboration between artists and scientists. The work explores organ transplantation and the ambiguous thresholds between life and death, revealing the process of death as an extended durational process, rather than an event that occurs in a single moment in time. The work’s title refers to the capacity for parts of the body to traverse vast geographic, temporal and interpersonal distances during organ transplantation processes. As part of the installation a fully functioning heart perfusion system was used to reanimate to a beating state a pair of fresh pig hearts during 2 live performances. Rather than sensationalising these events, the artists sought to encourage empathic responses from viewers, opening up the possibility of a deeper awareness of viewers’ own interiors. Performers in the work’s projected underwater video sequences were members of the organ transplant community in Melbourne, individuals who have traversed extraordinary experiences in the form of receiving, donating, or standing closely by loved ones as they received or posthumously donated human organs." (source)

#art #art installation #science #heart #death #threshold #performance #performance art #reanimate #reanimation #organ transplantation #organ transplant #collaboration #Vimeo

0 notes

tom-isaacs · 2 months

Text

Blooming - Paul Klee

#art #painting #abstract art #geometric abstraction #abstract painting

5 notes · View notes

tom-isaacs · 2 months

Text

New Year's Resolutions

Hello again friends,

A belated happy new years to you all.

I hope you’ve had a restful and restorative break and that you’re getting on with your new year’s resolutions. I don’t normally make resolutions, but this year I’ve resolved to start.

For my first resolution, I’ve set myself a target to publish a blog post per month. And so far I've held my resolve (maybe next year I will make a resolution to update my social media in a more timely fashion).

In my January update, I did a "quick" recap of my activities from 2023.

In my first February update, I announced that I will be having an exhibition with my good friend Nuno Rodrigues de Sousa at Chrissie Cotter gallery, Camperdown NSW.

In my second February update, I announced that I have been invited to speak at a symposium on Louise Bourgeois at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

If you want to keep up to date with my monthly goings on, you can find these posts (and more) in the newsfeed section of my website. You can also sign up to my mailing list or follow me on any of the various social media platforms: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and here on Tumblr.

#art #tom isaacs #agnsw #art gallery of nsw #louise bourgeois #announcement #nuno rodrigues de sousa #chrissie cotter #into the flat field #tides and currents #exhibition #symposium

0 notes

tom-isaacs · 2 months

Text