Enrgy and Process Review

The collection that I visited today was called Energy and Process at the Tate Modern, the collection featured work from the 1960's-1970's arte povera movement. The theme was about natural movements of the everyday featuring work from artists such as Susumu Koshimizu, Gilberto Zario, Mario Merz and others from the era.

When walking into the collection my immediate reaction was that the pieces were very interesting as they were all varied featuring different shapes, materials and textures which I found curious. I felt that the work had a nice flow to it, it was very natural and easy to understand. Although whilst looking at it there was a sense of coldness, as well as it feeling hard and industrial. There was one particular piece of work by Mario Merz which was called Lingotto which featured bundles of brush wood behind a block of bees wax raised on a steel framework, I felt that this signified urban and rural societies the difference between wealth, poverty and luxury as the brush wood represented a simple life of poverty where as the raised bees wax suggested luxury and authority as the wax represents a gold bar relating to the title of the piece 'Lingotto' which is Italian for ingot.

 

I chose to review this collection as I felt a connection to it as it interested me, as I liked how it was simple yet clever and the materials used throughout it. I find the work throughout the collection inspiring as the range of materials and shapes used I believe I can feature in my own work, I noticed how the collection had a colour scheme running throughout of greys, browns and blacks and was very textual which could lead me onto using very textured and unusual materials such as wood, clay and metal.