Francis Hansen (Collections)

Francis Hansen

In my opinion, an artist is a person who collects and utilizes, in Francis Hansen's case she practices this very effectively. Hansen uses found items and assembles them into unique installations, her "Home and contents" project revealed her use of normal household items to create art. One piece I really enjoyed was "Favourable Aspects", Hansen informed the class of her childhood, being raised learning the language of real estate from her parents. The piece consisted of face towels alligned next to each other, each towel had words stitched into them, words that she learned and that relate to real estate. Perhaps the words are not to express her knowledge of real estate, but rather to express her acknowedgement of her parents. Another piece that interested me was "Spare room", this piece was an installation of household items like chairs, tables, benches, cupboards etc. There really isn't any organised installation methods of these items, the composition is very complex, but I realise that this is effective if you see this as a depiction of the human mind. People think constantly and the mind is overloaded with information, Hansen's "Spare room" is so crowded that you can't help but to think heavily about the items stacked on top of each other.

My collection methods

In my art practice, collection is one of the main processes which generates my pieces. My favourite practices are moving image and photography and I feel that collecting information about other artists plays a major role in how my work turns out. If I study an artist like Hype Williams, a music video producer who uses a wide variety of colours in his clips, my work would turn out to be similar to Williams or, my method would be inspired by his techniques. The more information I collect on an artist (or artists), the more solid my method of art making would be. I studied Hype Williams in my moving image piece for "Media and Manipulation" (3rd Studio Rotation). I took note in his tendancy in rapid cuts between scenes and the syncronization of video and audio, I applied those techniques to my moving image piece. I also collected information from dance videos, searching for a simple but rapid dance that would suit Hype Williams method. I found "Finger Tutting", an intricate but rapid dance involving the hands and fingers to create shapes. Combining these two collected techniques, I created a video to express my hyperactive behavior; it consisted of rapid cuts between scenes of finger tutting segments (all segments syncronized with the music).

Rosaline Gascoigne

An artist who is a PRIME example of collection is Rosaline Gascoigne. Gascoigne's method of art making is actually very similar to Francis Hansen's method, however, Gascoigne collects found items and alters them to create her piece. She tends to incorporate text in her work, taking road signs, cutting them up into single letters and then re-arranging them to form words or sentences. This is a very unique way of making art, it shows that she thinks in depth before making work and it reveals her ingenuity.

Overall

Collecting is essential for art making, it determines how your work looks and it shows your thinking process as well. Personally I feel that collecting is ubiquitous, we are contstantly doing it, if we're not collecting items, then we're collecting information instead.