Tate Modern

This week I visited the Tate Modern for ideas, as I know seeing other people's artwork can be inspiring as Tate has moving images on their exhibitions too, and seeing those might inspire me, as well as non-film based pieces that could help me in figuring out how I would want my film to look, considering colour and negative space in shots. The purpose of my visit was to see Christian Marclay's 24-hour film The Clock, however unfortunately, I was unable to get in. Because of this, I have decided to visit other exhibitions to make use of my visit. 

Exhibitions I visited:

(click photos for full size)

• Jenny Holzer's artist rooms
• Living cities
• Media networks
• Magic Realism
• Materials and objects
• Start displays
• In the studio

This exhibition was one of my favourites as there was a lot of poetic elements in the works on show. I really liked the colours the LED lights created and it inspired me a lot in how I would want my film to look like if I wanted to make something experimental or fiction (which at this point, I haven't decided yet). The works being shown also made me think about composition and framing as even if the lighting is nice, I have to think about how to frame things to make them look enjoyable to be watched in a short film. 

A piece in the first showroom of Living cities

Screening of documentary about Birdhead

Photo taken from the Tate website as my own was not a great quality

The second exhibition that caught my attention was the Living cities one. I thought I would go and look at it as I felt it could give me some ideas and inspiration for if I were to make a documentary. Here I found 6 photos being shown that looked interesting. As I moved on from it, I noticed a smaller, dark room at the corner of the exhibition space where a film was being screened. I stayed for a couple of minutes and I found it very intriguing. It showed the 2 artists who have taken these photos talking about their work. The series of photographs were called Welcome to the Birdhead World Again by Birdhead, which is the name of Ji Weiyu and Song Tao's collaborative photography. I found their photography a great example of documenting something, which in their case is life in Shanghai, the city they grew up in. The 6 photos and the documentary shown were very attentive to detail and documented bits of the environment that I would probably not notice, and it really made me think about how important paying attention to little things is. Overall, I think Birdhead's work was one of the most inspiring pieces on show that I saw at Tate. 

Babel by Cildo Meireles

There were many different types of art pieces and forms of media in this exhibition. I really enjoyed seeing the diverse range of pieces and artists which helped me think about the colours and overall aesthetics of my film. The tower that was made of many different radios from different points in time, is also one of the biggest inspirations to me for my film. I really liked the way it looked and also I thought about the meaning behind it. I thought about how it connected with the starting point of my research of the book extract about Queen's performance at the Live Aid and their influence. It made me think more in depth about music in 1970s to 1990s. Also, it inspired me to have a shot of an old TV in my short film, the camera zooming in on it at the start as it starts playing my actual film. This would connect to the feeling of nostalgia that I would aim to create with the film.

The paintings really attracted my eyes because they were very colourful. It made me think about how colourful I want my film to be, whether I would want it to be dull, or very bright. As I really like colours and they can catch people's eyes and capture their interest, I want my film to be bright. The third painting made me think about the composition of my shots.

The above pieces can be put into one category in terms of how they inspired me. They reminded me of time and space. The first two photos and the exhibited piece shown on them reminded me polaroid photos, which were popular from 1950s to 1970s. I thought once again thought about the feeling of nostalgia, and thought more in depth about why some people, like myself feel a sense of nostalgia for a time we weren't even alive for. Then there are the postcards on the next photo, which helped me come up with the idea that the character in my story would receive a letter from his parents that reminds him of the life he used to live when he was younger, focusing on nostalgia. The next few artworks also made me think further about time, and its concept, and why we feel sentimental longing to the past. Perhaps because we only remember the good things and forget the bad things that had happened as a way of protecting ourselves from emotional harm. 

Overall, visiting the Tate was very useful as I had collected and developed my ideas both visually and in meaning and concept.