Londn

After being in london today i found my mind expanding with different idea and am now needing to focus in more detail what i have found. So to begin i will evaluate a piece i saw in the Saatchii Gallery by the artist Richard Wilson titled 20/50 pictured below.

This piece comprises of a room filled with used sump oil. it is the only permanent installation at the Saatchi Gallery and has been installed in each of the gallery’s venues since 1991. It is Currently on display in Gallery 13 which is a room that was custom built for the piece. Saatchi brought this piece off Wilson after viewing it at Matt's Gallery nearly 16 years ago and feel in love with it.

The inspiration for this work came to wilson during a holiday in the algarve, after staring at a swimming pool he decided for his new piece at Matt's Gallery he wanted to flood the place. The reason he used oil was for it reflective qualities and which gives this piece its name 20/50, after the type of oil used. The work has a walk way running through into it as to allowing the viewer to be surrounded by most sides by the oil to add to its suffocating effects. This was closed when i visited but this did not change the intoxicating (from the fumes) and disorientating experience for me. 

The reason i first fell in love with this peice was because on first inpression you believe you are walking into a empty room or that this peice is about a raised floor, But when the realisation kicks in about it being oil, you gain this wonderful stunned feeling causing you a jaw dropping moment. 

I find the fact wilson has worked with used oil ties in with this idea of recyling materials which i have incorporated with in my own practice. another similarity is the interest of causing the audience a sence of disorientation which he has done so well in this piece. I am also interested how he worked with material to amplify the surrounding architecture. Every time this peice is installed the viewer is drawn into looking closer at their souroundings which i find mesorising.

Richard Wilson him self is a british artist born in islington in 1953 and finds himself draw to the decay of materials. In previous work his is known for cutting wholes into buildings and creating contraptions that make the wall move in a rotating motion, for example image below

He appears to have challenging attitude about the rules of our society and had once said he would roll two  oil drums, on fire, though the windows of a gallery filled with hay. this gives me the impression he is very much into creating chaos and in his own dystopian way.