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Ann Jones – Art and Writing

Bronzed beauties

Posted on 12/01/2014 by Ann Jones

Sarah Lucas, in The Encyclopaedic Palace, Central Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, 2013

I’m a firm believer in the idea that art can come from anywhere and be made of anything. And that means that just as an artist can turn everyday materials into art, so they can also choose to materials that have been the stuff of high art for centuries. But, to state the obvious, there’s a bit of a difference between nylon tights stuffed with kapok and bronze. Sarah Lucas has been working with tights for nearly two decades now. Her Bunny sculptures of the late 1990s and the more recent Nuds – often oddly sexual abstract forms – can be both funny and a bit disturbing. Either way, I like them a lot.

Bunny Gets Snookered #10, 1997

So what happens when Nuds meet bronze?

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A perfect match

Posted on 17/05/2012 by Ann Jones

Vija Celmins, To Fix the Image in Memory I-XII (detail), 1977-82

Vija Celmins, who also makes extraordinary prints and drawings of the night sky, oceans and spiders’ webs which I’m sure I’ll write about at some point, has taken the idea of the copy to an almost neurotic extreme. To Fix the Image in Memory is a collection of stones each with its own identical twin in the form of a painted bronze copy.

Displayed together it’s difficult – okay, pretty much impossible – to tell which is which.

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