Kent Monkman

 Kent Monkman is a multidisciplinary artist who works in a variety of media, including  film/video, performance, painting and installation. Monkman has exhibited widely within Canada, and is well represented in numerous private and public collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. 

His paintings have a lot of focus on the view, always seeming to have big skies and clouds, filled with nature and a rather peaceful setting. They are rather relaxing to to look at, showing a lot of bright primative colours, and with such a big and open piece of scenery it all connotes freedom and peace.

 

 

 

 

His installation art is in some ways like his paintings, they are one again filled with nature and big open views, only they tend to focus more on the character within the piece. The sculpture created in this has the opposite effect to the paintings, it has an expressionless face, and with it being all white it once again shows how lacks emotion, reflecting a negative feeling without any peacful colours.

 "Group of Seven Inches is a naughty and playful musing on the relationship between artist and model"

    The films Monkman creates are a little like his paintings, and partially like his installation pieces. They show the same peace and focus, but with a figure involved at the same time. The film has been made sepia to state it's old fashioned style, and with it including a Native American it suggests freedom and peace once again, quite the opposite to the figure in the installation art. I think it is a very appealing piece, it makes me feel positive to look at it, it's a powerful image that expresses freedom, power and peace, a lot like the painting.

    The disciplines that Monkman works with seem to flow into each other, they all have similaries that roll off into the next piece he creates, some however are represented diffrently, they can show either a negative or positive effect but they still have something that connects each of them together.

Sarah Turner

Sarah Turner is a Nottingham based award winning ECO artist, originally from sussex, who studied art and design at university and when she graduated in 2008, she began doing a lot of eco work - using recycled materials. she works with a variety of recycled materials such as metallic cans and plastic, but her most well known pieces are her beautifully hand created sculptures made from plastic bottles alone.


Sarah originally got her idea for her artistic sculptures when she was at university, she had to do a dissertation on recycling and after learning a lot about it, she wanted to explore it further. Her inspiration for these stem from setting herself challenges, she wanted to use something different, and she really liked the idea of using organic forms. The only tool she uses to make these delicate sculptures are a pair of scissors, a lot of work for one person to create alone, but that's the challenge that motivates her to do so. All the bottles are collected locally from cafes and households, they are cleaned and sandblasted to give the opaque look then hand cut and sculpted into decorative forms.  The waste bottles are totally transformed, looking nothing like their original state. 

Sarah designed a range of centre pieces and lighting for the Olympic Park, and after successfully taking off, Coca Cola then commissioned Sarah to create centre pieces for the tables at the Ballroom of the Langham Hotel. Coca Cola have taken over this prestigious hotel for their guests to stay in for the duration of the Olympics. The centres pieces are made in the Olympic Rings colours to suit the rest of the ballrooms Olympic decor. Each flower in the centre piece is made using two or three plastic bottles. The bottles are then sandblasted to turn them opaque and then dyed the vibrant colours.

Sarah's eco lights have been exhibited at shows in London, Milan, Paris, LA and locally in Nottingham, her original hand crafted sculptures are finally starting to take off - even world wide!