Best Art Resources On-line

Often 'clever', usually entertaining and accessible, always informative, the Artchive is a huge virtual 'museum' with multiple galleries and an extensive arts library. Mark Harden has collected a list of most of the most important critical theory in one section and in another section you will find good quality images of most of the most important works from art history in a well-organized set of galleries with accompanying notes that often qualify as essays. In the 'Juxtapositions' section you will find reviews and some thoughts expressed in various modes of post-modern cross-referencing...

ArtLex is a dictionary of art for everyone interested in art production, collection, or history. You will find articles on thousands of art terms, along with images, pronunciation notes, great quotations, and links to other resources on the Web. Michael Delahunt is at the hub of this extensive resource and has woven a web of meaning that spills beyond the pages he administrates, making ArtLex a portal to the arts on the internet.

Both of these inspiring websites have headed the reading lists I have been handing out to students for years now. They are well designed and the writing is clear. Both sites are run by people who know what they are talking about and the content is well-validated. I suggest these as 'first-ports-of-call' for any web-based research into art and artists.

Another really useful on-line resource is Olga's abc Gallery. Here you will find basic biographies of many important artists along with many good quality scans of their keyworks. The best thing about Olga's is the layout of the galleries: thumbnails arranged in chronological order. So what you get, 'at-a-glance', is a visual history of an artist's work and its development through their careers. They claim to have more than 10,000 images on-line...

The blog to accompany my history of art textbook, Evolution of Western Art, is also a good 'stand-alone' resource that provides a visual chronology of the major developments in western art over several millennia from pre-historic to the twenty-first century!

EVOLUTION OF WESTERN 

ART

To keep up with contemporary art as it happens I like to visit MocoLoco - a lively and continually up-dated blog-style resource that covers contemporary arts, crafts, design, architecture and media. Most of the features are image-based, making this a feast for the eye, but when you see something you like, there are ready made connections to other articles for you to follow along with links to relevant web-sites and resources. There are also well-selected international exhibitions listings with sample pictures.  The MocoLoco layout can be unorthodox - hint: scroll sideways, get lost, enjoy

...and if that is not enough, there is plenty of current arts content at 

 The Guardian | Culture ...

Night / Light - On-line Catalog

The slideshow displays some of the images from Night / Light by Remy Dean, exhibited at Oriel Maenofferen Gallery, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Summer 2011. There were 45 images in total, all photographs except for two sketches from the 360 series. This was Dean's first solo show.

1. Postcards From The Ghosts Of 1513 (18 images) [£135 series / £16 per pair]
2. Moelwyn, Night Won’t Fit In My Camera [postcards £1 each]
3. Culture Jam Caerdydd [postcards £1 each]
4. Dim Distance [£450]
5. Soluna, Storm Clears Over Llan Ffestiniog [£40]
6. Penygwndwn Mood [£55]
7. Moelwyn, Impending Snowstorm [£66]
8. Early Morning Rain [£75]
9. From The 360 Series (drawing, 2010) [£108]
10. From The 360 Series (drawing, 2010) [£108]
11. Tanysgringlas [£75]
12. Fire Calligraphs (diptych) [£125]
13. London, Above Below [£75]
14. Welcome Home [£55]
15. Direction Of Light # 1 [£145]
16. Direction Of Light # 2 [£145]
17. I Am, You Are, We Are (triptych - after Malevich) [£450]
18. Creased Composition: Shining Through [£98]
19. Nightscape: Cloud Cross [£40]
20. Emotional Systems [£75] / West-East
21. Nightscape: Sky Portal [£350]
22. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Mae West and Cary Grant [£350]
23. Elevate Me [£75]
24. Speed Of Life [£75]
25. Without Limits [£75]
26. Self Noir: Women ‘n’ Whisky [£1,600]
27. Moelwyn, In A Misty Morning [£145]
28. Moelwyn, Weather Changes [£145]

I would like to thank all of those who visited Oriel Maenofferen Gallery to take a look at my work, and all those who helped organise and publicise the exhibition.

Selected photographs from this exhibition are now featured in this on-line gallery (Pinterest)

Postcards From The Ghosts Of 1513

The Past: Five Centuries Ago…

During one of his voyages of discovery, the Conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon, sighted a peninsula of land, initially thought to be an island. He claimed the land in the names of Ferdinand and Isabella. As it was during the Spanish Festival of Flowers, in the Spring of 1513, he named the land ‘Florida’. He had already heard tales amongst natives of Puerto Rico, of the lands of Benimy to the north, where there sprang an ancient and sacred Fountain of Life…

Juan hoped that he had finally found those mythical mystical lands.

Five Hundred Years Later: The Present…

Within a time span of months, Remy Dean was able to visit Spain and Florida, documenting that journey from the EU to the US by capturing light from two continents. The photographs were presented as paired images, each pair comprising one image made in Spain and one image made in Florida. Whilst visiting the Kennedy Space Centre, Dean was mindful of the arduous journeys undertaken by the voyagers of five centuries ago and thought of the voyages of discovery as yet unmade.

This series of 18 images was displayed as part of the NIGHT / LIGHT exhibition in the form of paired, postcard-sized pictures. They are also available in a small bound edition, part of the 'Pocket & Purse Gallery' from Questing Beast Books, which will not be reproduced after 2013.

NIGHT / LIGHT - recent photography by Remy Dean

Night / Light - an exhibition of recent photography by Remy Dean will be on show this summer until 10 September 2011, at Oriel Maenofferen Gallery, Llyfrgell Blaenau Ffestiniog Library, Canolfan Maenofferen, Blaenau Ffestiniog, LL41 3DL. Telephone: 01766 830415.

Apart from the Ghosts of 1513 series, which spans the Atlantic from Spain to Florida, most of the images have been made in and around the Blaenau Ffestiniog area and deal with light and movement. There are 45 pictures in total. Alongside my photographs, I am pleased to say, there will be an opportunity to see some small-scale sculpture work and a hand-pressed book by Mark Eaglen.

Here, by way of an 'artists statement' relating to the exhibition, is an extract from an interview with Remy Dean conducted by Kim Vertue:

Why did you choose photography as your medium?

Photography attracts me for many reasons. Almost by definition, it is representational because it mimics our own visual interaction with the world we share. I am interested in the relationship of subject, technology, human action and a time constraint of a few seconds. The resulting images range from fairly traditional landscapes to pictures that are closer to abstract expressionism. The aesthetic of light set in darkness also appeals to me. Many Magicians and religious orders wear dark cloths to represent the void, where creative and spiritual powers are born. The light from stars has travelled vast distances through the void of space to inspire both the poet and the scientist. I am interested in images where captured light can give the impression of being a solid construct, or where light can transform a solid structure, such as a building, into an insubstantial ghost-form.

What or who are the main influences and inspiration for your work?

Compositionally, I look at Joan Miro, Kazimir Malevich, Cy Twombly, Franz Marc, Kandinsky and Klee. Conceptually, I look to Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Beuys. Poetically, I think my work is under the influence of many… William Blake, Richard Long, Scott Walker, Andrei Tarkovsky, David Lynch, David McComb, John Foxx… the Gothick Romantics…

How do you see your work developing?

The weather, natural light effects and moods of the mountains can change in a moment and I would like to attempt to capture more of the transient conditions that only people who are lucky enough to live here, in Snowdonia, really get to know. I will also continue exploring technological and human interfaces and possibly become more interventionist, to the point of staging visual fictions…

(An image from the Ghosts of 1513 also appears as the cover image for the book Evolution of Western Art...)

Selected photographs from this exhibition are also featured in this on-line gallery (Pinterest)

Only born once...

NB: Since uploading this review, borndigital seems to have been wiped from the web! I feel like I've lost touch with an old friend, and the www community has lost a great resource... but why? (The conspiracy theories can start here.)

The website http://www.borndigital.com/ is the definition of a cool.com... It has been around since the 'ancient times' of world-wide-web weaving, with its first uploads in 1994. Since its birth, the site has been often imitated - accept no substitutes! For the 'retro-cyber-chique' design alone it is well worth a visit. It retains the internet aesthetics of the 'hacker ethic', from a time when information and the internet was still striving to be free and to champion freedom - of information, speech, thought, expression...

Broken down into sections that look like fragments from the conscious and subconscious of Timothy Leary, the content is indexed into loose categories such as: Spirit/Consciousness/Magic, Politics/Sacred Cows, 'Sampledelic Meltomedia', Art and 'LSD' (contains flashing imagery, and then some!).

Browsing the site is like going to a dinner party with fellow boffins, artists, acid-heads, philosophers, techno-geeks, 'flaming liberals' and well-read nerds. The content is abundant and the essays and texts will inform, incite, excite and challenge. So have a look for yourself, but be warned, the mind that does not bend snaps sooner.