Wen Wu

This is Wen Wu's "venus as a boy", a painting that, by all standards, is massive.

It seems to deal with alot of issues in itself, maybe moreso the concept of sexuality and identity, the idea that everyone can be this beautiful figure, an easily changeable figure, and fit it perfectly is something that isn't always explored that far in art, or at the very least, it wasn't.

I believe the flowers around the body shows alot about who you're supposed to be rather than the person you really are, but how we can completely break that, and stand in front of it with such a stance, it's fairly obvious that we just don't care, or at least, venus doesn't, which is a fairly anthony micallef sort of thing. Wen Wu and Anthony Micallef both look into what society finds acceptable, but who we are in comparison to that, which, as you may be able to tell, is something I'm interested in.

In all events, thats all i really have to say about 'Venus as a boy' but there may be more on her work, if I find a sudden new context to me. lets hope I do.

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Anthony Micallef

Anthony micallef's 'The ascent' is possibly my favourite out of all of his work (the "in heels I feel closer to God" painting), but that's probably just because it was the first one I saw, I found it in a little unknown art book called "the outsiders" that I found lying around in a charity shop. I suppose it speaks to me in a sense too, I mean, just how can we justify our actions when we act how we do? we can say we're good people, religious, charitable, anything else, but really, we're nasty. We drink, smoke, have sex with little reason, for a few minutes we feel it's what we want, but really we know it's wrong, but as a society, we pretend to frown upon it, but continue to to do so... maybe that's what the work is about... showing up society.

I love micallef's work for two main reasons, 1. it actually says something, has a message and can be understood, 2. it's made so beautifully. It's something I want to do throughout my course, but it's hard to recreate, or restyle while still leaving a resemblance to his work, but I wholly believe it would look amazing if instead of painted, it was sown, sort of like tilleke schwarz work, but with more meaning to it.

(tilleke schwarz)

literally, the work is so versatile that you can basically transform it to any media; a 3d version could easily be achieved from some of the work, same as a photographical or graphical version, maybe even using a Gillian wearing's 'signs' or 'postsecret' style you could achieve a similar result, some bit of art with context and meaning, something that shows society how it is, not how it wants to be, shows peoples fears, hopes, dreams, emotions, something strangely beautiful in some horrifying way.

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