Grant Stevens

Throughout the lecture, Stevens’ showcased a series of works, which predominantly focused on our use of words and language. Stevens explains the reason for predominantly using words for his works is based on the idea of how he believes imagery has become too powerful and straight forward in directing what the audience thinks and feels. Therefore, Stevens explores the effects of words and language by the removal of all imagery in this series of works.

During the lecture, Stevens introduces the work ‘Really Really’ and ‘Crushing’. Both these works I realized have deeply affected my understanding and feelings towards his work as they both seemed to be greatly unfavorable to my personal taste of art. Both works features Stevens’ feelings toward his then girlfriend, where he meets in Los Angles, which continues into a long distance relationship when he returns to Australia. Stevens uses words to conduct a series of sentences which sums up his feelings towards this girl. However, whilst viewing these artworks it did not challenge or question my understanding for this work, nor did it affect me deeply, but instead became quite offended as I could not believe that a piece that looked as if it was made by a hormonal adolescence was displayed in a museum.

Also, as Stevens’ were discussing these works, it was becoming evident to me that he may have contradicted his earlier point of how imagery has become too powerful. Yes it is understandable that the point of these works is for Stevens to highlight the lack of sincerity and authenticity in what we say in this generation due the excessive use of ‘Like’ and ‘LOL’. However, I felt as if Stevens work was becoming too powerful as it was clearly telling what the audience to think or feel. Imagery allows one to create their own interpretation, even with the presence of dialect, there is still space for the audience to make sense of. However, in Stevens’ work we are told what to feel, think, as well as making our own imagery of the scene as there are sentences to create a story present.

In my opinion, Stevens’ could have used the use of language and words in a different light. ‘In the Beyond (2008)’ is a good example of Stevens’ exploring the world of language and words as a series of text collected from people’s MySpace pages are rotating to highlight the profound and banal nature of what people used on the profiles. This use of rotating text allows the audience to make sense of the context themselves are there is no evident source of where these text were collected from. Whereas ‘Really Really’ and ‘Crushing’ has become to straightforward to the point where the audience does not feel challenged to make meaning of.

Reference:

Grant Stevens wins QANTAS Spirit of Youth Award for the Visual Arts | GBK. 2013. Grant Stevens wins QANTAS Spirit of Youth Award for the Visual Arts | GBK. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.gbk.com.au/news/2008/11/grant-stevens-wins-qantas-spirit-of-youth-award-for-the-visual-arts. [Accessed 25 March 2013].

Tranquility Falls, Art Month pop up exhibition | Grant Stevens | GBK. 2013.Tranquility Falls, Art Month pop up exhibition | Grant Stevens | GBK. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.gbk.com.au/artists/grant-stevens. [Accessed 22 March 2013].