Showing posts with label eroticism and religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eroticism and religion. Show all posts

Postcard from Birriwa


This is the best work of art I have seen for some time. Not that it was intended to be a work of art by it's creator. I am not sure what their motivation was and I wasn't prepared to stop and ask lest I became one of the exhibits as we drove through the tiny 6 house settlement of Birriwa in the New South Wales central west district. It's unusual to say the least but on closer inspection the tableaux has a distinctly menacing feel to it, and so I appropriate it as a surrealist work. Photo taken by Joy Georgeson.

The Illusion of Freedom



Arguably my most ambitious project to date I return to my surrealist roots homaging Joseph Cornell and Luis Bunuel. Eroticism, religion, sex and death interspersed with industrial decay and wastelands combine in a mashup that underpins the futility of decadent desire, religious ecstasy and the conflict with the reality of our mundane lives.

I am (again) indebted (and indeed honoured) to be working with the soundscape Ayesha (She Who Must Be Obeyed) (the muse perhaps?) from the album Rosa de lobo by Hyaena Fierling Reich (aka Ana Cordeiro Reis). Her website can be found here...

The album Rosa de lobo can be downloaded from Bandcamp here...

The video files can be downloaded from the Internet Archive here..

Bride of Christ

Bob Georgeson, Bride of Christ, 2009, Photomontage

Let's kick off the festive season with appropriate cynicism...

The Hand of Isis

Bob Georgeson, The Hand of Isis, 2009, Photomontage

O Come, All Ye Faithful

Bob Georgeson, O Come, All Ye Faithful, 2012, Photomontage

One of the last (I can hear the sighs of relief!) from The Brides of Christ series...

The Holy Fear

Bob Georgeson, The Holy Fear, 2009, Photomontage

Another one from The Brides of Christ series...

The Holy Fear

Bob Georgeson, The Holy Fear, 2009, Photomontage

Another one from The Brides of Christ series...

The Hedonist

Bob Georgeson, The Hedonist, 2010, photomontage

Ecstasy

Bob Georgeson, Ecstasy, 2010, photomontage

The Lord does indeed move in mysterious waves. Waves? I must be stark waving mad! I should have said ways! No mystery in this one from 'The Brides of Christ' series...faith takes second place to desire...at least she's over 18...

Realization

Bob Georgeson, Realization, 2011, Photomontage

Now really, you weren't expecting a female Pieta with lesbian overtones were you? No, this subject's far too serious for a cheap shot at the church. Forget the resurrection and join me in a loud guttural primal roar at the stupidity of mankind...we really are slow learners. Easter Sunday 2013...

Magdalena

Bob Georgeson, Magdalena, 2013, Photomontage

Can't wait for the Resurrection! And after around 3000 kilometers I am back in the studio...all I can say is "Jesus! It's a big country..."

Lot and his daughters

Bob Georgeson, Lot and his daughters, 2010, Photomontage

One from the current show that sold today! Yay! Halfway to getting a HD camcorder I hope? And an interesting day with a lovely, and very pious lady who has had more than her fair share of troubles with a sick husband and two mentally ill sons in tears over my 'And all this shall be yours...'

We had a long and very fruitful conversation about what I was trying to achieve and her 'faith' and the strength it gave her as an individual in what is a very difficult situation. A little moment where the love of humanity overshadowed differences of opinion. Honoured, then humbled...

Humility

Bob Georgeson, Humility, 2010, Photomontage

With papal succession in the air what more appropriate time to bring this one out of the closet (sic). It will be part of the forthcoming exhibition mentioned last post, and will be for sale at a ridiculously cheap discount price considering the years of research that went into it's creation. You really have no idea of how many girlie magazines I had to look through to find that pair of legs! Brothers and sisters save my sole...a new Pope is coming! I might have to give up all this online crap and get out the scalpel and cutting mat again...

Exhibition coming up...


The exhibition is called anonymous waves: bob georgeson - past & present. Runs from Saturday 2nd March - Monday 11th March as part of the 2013 Sculpture on the Edge event. The venue is Shop 7 Art Space upstairs at the Fishermen's Cooperative Bermagui Wharf. Hours 10am til the Horse & Camel Wine Bar closes...

Here's the blurb: Firmly committed to the surrealist aesthetic Bob Georgeson uses subversive, sometimes controversial, and often humorous ideas, images and themes to explore the intersection between reality and desire. From working mainly in photomontage in the past he is now increasingly exploring new technologies, in particular video art, and working primarily and collaboratively online in the public domain.

There will be a floor talk on Wednesday 6th March at 11am called: Art in the digital domain 

 
Adult themes and nudity

Renunciation

Lets kick off the new year with piety! Why? Am I feeling guilty about too much indulgence over the silly season? Of course not! Don't be silly in even starting to think so. It is simply because it all gets more depraved from here on in...

Postcard c.1920's?

Philip Hermogenes Calderon, St Elizabeth of Hungary's Great Act of Renunciation, 1891, Oil on canvas, Tate, London

An interesting comparison between the gravures interpretation against the subtlety of the original painting. If you don't know the story here is the Tate's description: 

"Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231) was the wife of Lewis, Landgrave of Thuringia. After his death in 1227 during one of the Crusades, she entered a convent and devoted herself to good works. Before becoming a nun, she passed through a spiritual crisis, torn by the need to renounce the world, and therefore her children, in order to fulfill her desire to serve God. Pressed by a domineering monk, Conrad, whose natural affections had been starved by celibacy, Elizabeth finally vowed that 'naked and barefoot' she would follow her 'naked Lord'. Calderon's picture shows this moment of self-abasement.  
Calderon took his subject from a play by Charles Kingsley, 'The Saint's Tragedy', first published in 1848. It was based on fact."

Poor Elizabeth...dead at 24, sanctified sure, but ending up the salacious subject matter of late 19th Century 'Salon Art', where the plethora of nude women in subservient poses is as much of a crime as her very brief life. More details about Elizabeth from Wikipedia...

...and on that note I am off to listen to the latest emptywhale release 'That Grey Place We Go'. Happy New Year...

Immaculate Deception

Fra Angelico, The Annunciation, c.1430-32, Tempera on wood, Prado Museum, Madrid

Regular readers might be a little surprised to find Fra Angelico adorning the pages of this blog, but don't worry folks...I am not about to change my wicked ways and find God! I suppose technically I should have posted it around 8 months and 3 weeks ago on the basis that despite divine conception the little bastard would have gestated full term before landing in the manger. 

I used this image in a talk I gave a few years back at the local regional gallery on 'Eroticism in Art'. I began the talk with it not because it is in anyway erotic, but it is very revealing. Why? Because I believe that without religion (or at least Christianity) eroticism would not exist, or at least in the form it does today. Call it simplistic if you like, but the churches effort to suppress human desire has created the 'forbidden' nature of eroticism that makes it so interesting.

Above, we see the Archangel Gabriel do the 'Ave Maria' bit while in the top left hand corner Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden. Take home message: Mary good, Eve bad, and it is this 'evilness' of Eve as temptress that led to Christ and his disciples adopting chastity as a desirable quality. And what a wonderful little chain of events and attitudes that has left us with for the past 2000 odd years.

So, while I will certainly be enjoying the company of family and friends this Christmas I won't be celebrating the birth of Christ. I will be thinking about an increasingly fragmented world that sadly appears on a collision course with itself, and on that cheery note I am shutting down the system for a couple of weeks and going fishing...

The Doors of Perversion

Bob Georgeson, The Doors of Perversion, 2012, Photomontage

Just to get into the festive spirit...time to hang out the stockings!