Guest lecture with artist Gina Czarnecki
Wednesday 4th November 2020, Willow Fisher
I found that I really favoured this Wednesday lecture compared to the previous ones, because of Gina Czarnecki’s really obscure subject matter, materials and artistic revelations. She is most commonly acknowledged for her interesting relationship with art and science, and the majority of her artwork consists of working with social engagement. Gina’s most recent work is in Germany. Two years ago she was invited to submit an idea for the architectural development of a building, this building was a Contemporary Art Building. Her and others were invited to create unique and astonishing columns to support the building. She found herself referencing a lot of her past work for inspiration for her individual architectural column.
In the lecture Gina provided us with photos of the development process of the work which allure me. In particular I really admire the initial drawing and planning out of her concept. It's so suggestive incorporating her traditional familiarity with figures in motion which I think look beautiful in the sketch. From the starting point of the drawing you can see it progress into the planning stages for the 3D print. I’m really unfamiliar with 3D print and favour drawing a lot so to see something so admirable in the drawing being gradually transformed into a physical object I find really fascinating. I can relate this to my own practice and experience at LJMU because I hope to explore more with media and directions I'm new to. So to see a drawing progress into something three dimensional is really influential for me and I hope to relate to this artist in future work at my time at the university. Gina created the 3D print out of plastic, this way it lasts longer and is less likely to be stolen for its materials. The only disadvantage of her creation is that it's not as strong and durable as other entries, others columns took the more conventional approach working with metal and concrete. I noticed that throughout this lecture and her presentation of work that there is a common theme of Gina taking into consideration the environment and working with materials that will benefit nature and help to restore it. A lot of her work is Eco friendly and open minded to the healthy restoration of the land. She commented that it was a nice experience taking part in this work because it brought people together during lock down and in her eyes united artists all over embracing all the artistic differences and work. The column was approximately three and a half metres tall, in order for Gina to really exploit the human body and its forms she decided that she would create three dimensional true to life forms. Working with four or five core poses.
Her column captured a dance movement and was interpreted as being a form of celebrating the body according to her and its viewers. In order to achieve this dense composition of the figure she caught the dancer in motion with a 360 degree camera view which then enabled her to produce it with realistic proportions into a solid form. Because of the multiple cameras Gina was able to collect shots from angles all around the body. She stated in order for the piece to work as a whole she and Matt Smith the digital artist who worked with her had to go with the flow of the possibilities and the people on board. I also learnt that Gina’s focal point as well as the people involved was interested in the inside out of the body and its complex anatomical form through its ghosted movement.
Although this was only the first piece of artwork Gina presented to us I already found myself genuinely illuminated by her style. This sculpture alone in a gallery would be in my eyes just as beautiful and effective as it was for the demanded requirements for the construction of the building. I would describe it as being a complex structure because of its realistic elements with the 3D printing, but also how dense the subject matter is. She has managed to capture the dancer in motion intrinsically documenting her that heightens our perception of her body. It's bold and retrieves the attention of us because of everything that is occurring in the sculpture. I describe it as being dense because it's busy and it allows our eyes to wander over every individual body part and detail. It's truly entrancing. It's certainly a representational piece of architecture thoroughly depicting the female model. The movement of the dancer is graceful and I believe it resembles classic sculptures depicting gods and goddesses. It is poetic in its introduction of the female body accurately defining its features and delicate details, its organic in the volumes in which it was produced. Another factor I believe supports how I interpret the sculpture is its colour, its white. Conveying with the simplicity and beauty of it, it's pure and a real depiction of dance in motion. The piece as a whole explores the error of movement over time with capturing the body in motion.
As I stated before this artist is particularly interested in creating interactive artwork incorporating social engagement from its audiences. She prominently works with video and work. She created a piece called “Nascent” in 2002 that was in development up until 2005. She stated that the complex abstracted figurative work can only be made with the technology she has at that given time. For this piece the technology she used is over ten years old and is an outdated PC. She managed to repair it and retrieve the video work from it and exhibit in February of this year in Poland, where she was born. She moved to Australia where her curiosity of Asia and Asian viruses formed. She collaborated with the Director of Health and through joint research realised that information spreads just like a virus spreading, she made this unconscious link and worked to involve this intuition into her work. This work “Contagion” is influenced by the Sars virus. To explore the context in her piece she created an interactive platform which invited the audience to walk in and pick a colour, hidden within the scene would be an infectant. Gina described this work as being a beautifully playful relationship between time and space actively engaging with the viewers and encouraging them to play the game.
This work is called Nascent. The piece elegantly exploits the complex motion of the body thoroughly depicting its form throughout the gestural dance routine. Gina instructed her dancer to roll around on the floor with her tripod positioned above her, in order to capture her every move. You can see the ghostly appearance of the figure challenging the conventional structure of motion with the repetitive nature, making the piece densely populated with the human form. The rhythm captured is so beautiful and manipulated that it manages to visualise the explicit aspects of the body, not only focusing on the exterior of the body but also the interior. Enhancing the internal artistic nature of the human body.
I feel really entranced by this piece of artwork by Gina because of its sheer simplicity in idea, but through its depiction and contextualisation it has broadened itself as well as our overall perceptions of it. There is a substantial essence of time explored in this piece, imagining it and visualising it in forms we are unfamiliar with. I interpret it as accessing our minds in a more complex manner in order to notice more of what is occurring. With the naked eye we would just stand witness to the female dancer rolling on the floor, with her body in its traditional appearance with no technicality involved at all. But here Gina has managed to dominate this context and re imagine it into the space that will allow ourselves to expand our ideologies and participate in the abstraction of the human body. Throughout the practice manipulating time and space is prominent. I describe the subject matter of the video production as being abstract because it gestural predicts its movements, leaving its impression creating a speculative repetitive language for the viewer to participate in and follow. This artwork won the Best Dance Film award, Australian Dance Awards in 2005 which surprised Gina immensely.
This artwork is called “Spine”. Gina described this piece of work as being a complex installation to create. This is similar to looking at individual building blocks like biological forms .She also explained to us that her focal point for this work was centred around the historic manipulation of images. The twin tower’s devastation influenced her contextual definition of the installation, featuring bodies falling from the sky. She informed us of her primary thoughts and attitudes towards images, that they are in the backs of all our minds hidden away within our memories. Featuring relative imagery of that time, place and environment, secluded away in our subconscious. A programmer that she collaborated with at the time called Tim revealed she still works with him and talks almost everyday. Both conceive the same desires to preserve the installation piece for future use. She exhibited this installation piece on a building twenty metres in the air which for her was an immensely empowering moment in her career. I feel the context appealing exploring the relationship between the enormous height of the building which it was presented on and the falling bodies. I would describe it as being moving and quite emotive in its presentation.
During the lecture we were informed of Gina’s varied responses of her artwork from medical professionals. In particular Stephen Corbett, Public Health in Sydney. He had quite negative views of her artistic practice. Corbett was the first scientist to go to China during the Avian Flu outbreak when it first broke out (bird flu) According to many officials and Gina there was no stopping that virus at the time because everyone victim to it and tackling it had no idea what to do or how to challenge it. I learnt today from Gina that pigs act as an incubator and are able to catch both human and bird viruses. Also, a lot of diseases originate from China due to factors it is still battling with, like poverty, poor living conditions, and in particular the proximity of the pigs to the birds and then the birds to the people. It was a widespread realisation that cockfighting was predominantly related to the virus, because owners of the competitive birds sucked the snot out of the cocks before their fights, in order to try and restore their health and offer them a better chance of winning. However the media did not inform the public about this crucial revelation because their dealings of the matter would lead to hysterics and a quite dangerous public outcry. This media negative stance on informing the public fascinated Gina and related to her interests in image manipulation because the people in power tend to manipulate significant information to the public, controlling what we know and untruthfully exploiting the facts.
Around the time of 1998 Gina’s interest in video installations began. We were informed that she came from a painting background and as she aged her experiences enabled her to broaden her artistic views, through space, time, imagery, sound, perception, anticipation and context. She discovered that she could experiment with all of these factors in order to provide for herself a larger metaphorical palette to work with. At the time she was actively involved with art electronics, considering staged elements of human installations. We learnt that Photoshop, which is so dominant in the art world today, at the time was quite new, and that Gina wasn't alone in her fascinations. According to her experiences a lot of other artists were also interested in image manipulation as well as her. A conceptual link was made by Gina between pixels and genes. Together with the image manipulation she was intrigued with the idea of representing something that can pass as the real thing. Relating this ideology to the media in particular and along with it its accompaniment of public paranoia. The media has a very different understanding of what scientists are doing back then and today which is being considered as dangerous and harmful to not only our knowledge but also public understanding.
She involved herself with a three year project relating to epidemiology, studying the patterns, causes and effects of disease. Gina produced her artwork physically bringing with it all the physical aspects of the experience. The film she created felt to her like a painting on screen it time, introducing with it a large amount of painterly aspects. She revealed to us that she is interested in art and biology and in her spare time dance, which is why she was so drawn to creating dance like video works. In 2001 Gina collaborated with a contortionist, who was also an artist and a dancer. The performance of the dance became a dance film called “infected”. Throughout this and many other of her artworks she is able to relate to biological matter. For her eight minute film she received funding from Australia, which won an Australian dance award and was broadcast all over the world. She revealed to us that as an artist she doesn't find the like the format of narrative, featuring a start, middle and end. She finds this conventional formulation unappealing and finds herself more intrigued by the middle bit. Gina’s personal preferences for her own creations went unappreciated. She wanted to work with nude bodies, to reinforce that raw and real nature of her work, but that wasn't allowed. So she was instructed that her dancers had to wear thongs. She went on to reveal that she believes clothes are dated, and that the naked body is timeless and classless.
Although Gina enjoyed the work she was making and acknowledged it for its beauty, she wanted to redirect her focus and strip it down to the basics. She longed for capturing pure dance. Wanting to film something that wasn't so preoccupied with the theatrics and staged personas. So in 2000 she travelled to Ghana and there she described that she experienced a lot, in particular an overwhelming astonishing experience of dance. She discovered that people there release themselves through dance. When she returned to England at the birth of the millennium she fell ill and shortly after became pregnant. Focused her attention on infection and contamination. She later went back to Ghana and filmed dance on her tiny Sony camera at outdoor nightclubs in night vision. She exclaimed that she didn't want to use a big expensive camera, preferring to work with familiarity and comfort ability. During this documentation period she was interested in capturing the relationship between the people and the camera.
Gina then worked with the Liverpool School of Medicine looking at health and well being. Here she felt particularly attracted to mosquito proboscis, the mouth of the mosquito, and became fascinated with the structure of its body. This project was for the Garston Hospital in Liverpool, in order for her to engage with the city's culture and life she attended community groups and read local blogs to get to know the community more and on a more personal level. During this time she recalled that she engaged with the people which led to the production of the tropical garden at the hospital, which was open for the public. The area was acknowledged for its underlying beauty which enabled visitors to reminisce about the birth of that place.
The garden has been described as a calming place for all, built up with food plants like banana trees. Gina’s fascination with the structure of the mosquito’s body led to the creation of a mosquito sculpture. The piece had glass enveloping it protecting it. She informed us that she worked alongside architects, and also a man called Chris Watson who happily created natural sounds to fulfil the garden. (Watson was also the sound man for David Attenborough) so his presence and input was thoroughly welcomed and appreciated. Gina commented that the botanical garden is growing well and is being accompanied by the exquisite natural sounds. She described this project as being a very favourable part of her artistic career stating that she thoroughly enjoyed creating it. In particular she appreciates how the garden has independently transformed, and the fact that no one is responsible for it.
After this architectural piece of work Gina produced her “Wasted” artwork. She found the concept of consent admirable and fascinating as well as permission and the underlying value of it. During this period she collaborated with the DaDa Fest, the Disability and Deaf Arts to create work. It was also during this time that her interest in regrowth and adaptation to the human body came into practice. Her project “Wasted” consisted of discarded body parts, with permission of course. Comparing the subject matter to human waste because in reality it is a collection of our human waste from our own bodies. She accepted and retrieved her materials from live donors again to ensure that concept of permission and consent. Through doing this she opened herself up to more social standards approaching issues with ethics and the belief of abusing patients' consent and trust.
In order for her to have easier accessibility to using human tissue in art she had to inquire on how to approach it and how to introduce it to her work. She learnt that she had to basically pressure cook the bones because that was the only ethically correct and manageable action to do of successfully cleaning them. However the Natural History Museum absolutely despised what Gina was doing completely rejecting her work and artistic ideologies for the project. Gina retrieved red art decor armchairs which she personalised by creating her human discard cushions. She filled the inside of the cushion with human fat, designed to be sat on. The piece invited visitors to engage in the piece sitting on it and experiencing Gina’s desired ideas. It actually turned out that the cushion was exceptionally comfortable with the fat warming up when seated on. It's important to acknowledge the social issues that impacted the context of when these pieces were produced. During this time the public were still recovering and in a vulnerable state from the silicone scandal and the Alder Hey organs scandal.
Gina also collected dental casts from dental workshops because they were unable to dispose of them in landfill, so she retrieved them to make better use of them. Whilst they were in Gina’s care it was discovered that all of the casts were different and that they came accompanied with labels which transformed them into items of a more personal value. Relating it to the concept of permission and ownership which thoroughly fascinated Gina. During the creation process of this work Gina was faced with internal questions about what she was doing, allowing her to wonder what was ethically good and bad, and was what she was producing morally wrong or right. The dental cast which were produced from plaster were then introduced to Gina’s installation piece, focusing and introducing the viewers to that idea of patient request rather than consent. One of her friends named Terry was due an operation to remove his hip bone which he offered to Gina to take. She ended up accepting and coating the bone in resin, she described it as resembling a trophy.
“Palaces” was the next artwork Gina exhibited, it was also commonly acknowledged as the tooth palace. This delicate sculpture features hundreds of children's milk teeth that have been donated. During this she had to deal with other beliefs, this time of a more naive nature. The concept of the tooth fairy. When a tooth was donated to her it was often accompanied with a drawing or story depicting how the tooth came about in her possession. This piece encouraged engagement with the audience with Gina allowing viewers to interact with the sculpture inviting them to touch it with its smooth texture from the resin. The sculpture stands at three metres high, two metres wide and one metre deep.
I find this piece of architecture truly mesmerising and elegant. What I find most interesting about the piece is the gradual nature in which it was produced. I went away and researched more on Gina as an artist and watched videos and came across one with her talking about the palace, but it was at a stage of beginning with only a few teeth being embedded into the resin sculpture. This appeals to me because it just emphasises how much time it takes to produce something like this, it can't be rushed and even as it is in the process of being made Gina doesn't really have full control over the development of it. In order for this piece to be completed she needs to have gained the trust of the audience in order to retrieve donations, so I interpret this as purely being a creation from the public and their decisions. I admire Gina’s unique approach to representing the teeth, submerging them into the substance so that they physically become a part of the architectural form. The work’s most predominant theme is the concept of belief, as well as maturity and innocence.
The crystal resin sculpture captured a complexity and conveyed a deeper meaning for Gina, for a more personal contextualisation. Her father survived the concentration camps. So for Gina to work with human materials brings a certain reminiscent atmosphere for her. The collection of baby teeth to the aggravated collection of Jewish prisoners belongings at the camp, like their glasses, hair etc. The piece definitely captured an emotive language from Gina which may have been incidental or intended, either way its beautiful presentation and architectural structure captures the minds of its audience challenging the negative assumptions associated with it from Gina’s mind. Again relating to that idea of transforming something ugly into something beautiful. This piece and a lot of her other artwork most definitely creates ethnic debates. With individuals left questioning should we use human tissue in art? Where do we draw the line? And furthermore, who decides?
Another series of work Gina worked on consisted of the resources of her daughters. She produced portraits of her daughters faces using face casts, and growing skin cells from swaps into the casts. The piece is called “Heirloom”, the purpose of this work was to reincarnate the human face growing physical skin portraits from the collected skin cells. She worked alongside LJMU to create 3D printed casts of her daughters' faces for the development of the portraits, growing three dimensional sculptures from cells. This exhibition was deemed complex with its unimaginable materials and execution. A recurring comment about the show and art practice was considering how helpful it would be for children burn victims.
Her current and most recent project requires the knowledge of the dead, recreating and re imaging the traditions put in place when someone passes away. She created coffins.
This art series consisted of a combination of ethics and humanity, democracy and climate. This concept came about when her father died and her mother fell into the repetitive pattern of wasting far too much money on a coffin, which are priced stupidly expensive. She revealed in the lecture that ordinary coffins that we all invoice ourselves with actually are built from toxic materials that are really harmful for the environment when in the ground. With this thought she created a coffin for a close friend out of paper mache. Her sole reasoning and purpose for this work is to enable all to grief easily, she wants everyone to have the privilege to be able to afford a coffin for their loved ones. The revelation that her coffins she was producing were not dangerous to the land and were affordable pleased Gina immensely. She also encouraged mourners to express themselves helping them with their grief by decorating the coffins. During this a variety of local artists were employed to create different designs.