Today, the weekly visiting artist was Mike Pratt. His work spread across sculpture and painting, and involved his personal interest into literature and the idea of the everyday life. His first few pieces I found a little confusing, but was soon interested in one particular series of artworks. He issued the premise of evolving from past expectations and creating new works from original ideas; he wanted to create sculptures of twelve instruments and successfully did so. He had a set of panpipes, weird and distorted, alongside three guitars forged together in resin, heavily worked to distort them. I enjoyed this distortion of ordinary objects as it is a subject I have delved into previously on an old art course. He created these objects whilst living in Amsterdam, where he was encouraged to experiment with whacky and sometimes incomprehensible ideas in order to suit the city and its exhibits.
Moving on to his paintings, I was pleasantly surprised to find them abstract and still as bold and bright as his sculptures. They reminded me of a close friend’s style of work, using a selection of set background abstractions and covering them with simplistic, yet effective, writing and images (Instagram: madeline_gjart). Pratt described this work as an almost “fetished style of painting” in which you encourage the drips and imperfections in order to finish the image. One of my particular favourites in this series was ‘Hubba Hubba’ 2009. Despite the graphic depiction of words, I find the colour palette calming and realistic to the process (like the confused artist losing patience).
Pratt, M. 2009. Hubba Hubba. [Acrylic on canvas] London, England.
Later in his artistic career, Pratt took part in an exhibition in Rome in which he sent out the doodled, rough paintings without the completed format of the writing, and insisted that this allowed him to become less controlling over his work. This idea can be reiterated too through his constant creation of series’, which immediately takes the pressure off individual pieces.
Another of his exhibitions clearly shows his influences from everyday life, as it is taken from an experience of simply waiting in traffic next to a biker with a single dreadlock and wearing an old leather jacket. An image in itself. With this he went on to create a whole group of jackets suspended with various other distinctive features (such as the dreadlock from the original), which were stuffed with a motor providing the realistic feel of being on/alongside a motorbike. Apparently it was so accurate that noise complaints were made and the motors were often shut off.
I found myself appreciating Pratt’s work more and more as his lecture went on, mostly due to his influences being easy to follow and relatable. Something that you could see in the everyday, particularly as a creative.
HXLLISON ART HISTORY 