The Saatchi Gallery - Contemporary Art in London

Current Exhibition

GCSE THEME: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

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school visit

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school art prize
painting & sculpture

school projects
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ALIKE - COMPARABLE- RELATED-LNKED-VARYING-CONTRASTING-CHANGED
ALTERED- STRANGE-UNFAMILIAR-DISTINCT-UNUSUAL
The Saatchi Gallery has many art works currently being exhibited that can help you think through processes of showing, making, performing and documenting your GCSE theme this year.

The first step is thinking about the substance of an art work of your choice at the gallery. What is the work about? Is it personal/autobiographical or a social commentary? Was the artist thinking about history or politics? Or is the work an exploration of materiality or a capturing of physical performance?

Think you understand what inspired the artist? The second step is to consider how he/she may have explored their subject - what was their framework for understanding it? Compare other works by the same artist or perhaps compare the work to earlier works that may have inspired the artist originally. Think about what things are similar and what things are different in each instance.

Thirdly, what kind of processes were used to explore the subject matter and how were these ways of making relevant to the final meaning? To help you on your way we've selected a few works from the current exhibition that explore these ideas.

PEOPLE - INSPIRED BY THE HUMAN FIGURE?

EXPLORE CLARISSE D'ARCIMOLES IN GALLERY 9

Each of these works by Clarisse d'Arcimoles consists of a photograph from her family album and a picture of the same person taken in 2009 in a scene that's been exactly reproduced. "I called this series Un-possible retour, which means 'a possible impossible return'," D'Arcimoles says. "I grew up partly in French Guyana so in the photos I was re-staging, the location sometimes had changed or become inaccessible and the objects and surroundings could not always be found or re-made. But while the people had grown up, aged and changed, I could feel a certain sense of permanence in them. This photograph on the left is my brother at the carnival; to recreate the image I had to repaint the background and find the same costume. I sometimes make the clothing myself, or when it is too complicated to find a similar fabric I ask a tailor. Even if for my family it has been somewhat tiresome to cooperate for these photos, they really enjoyed it."

"Un-possible retour is a way back to childhood, even if it is just for a short instant. We were all children once, and that is something that is always current within us. My work can be a game as well: you can play with the similarities and differences. By creating these kinds of comparisons, or rather confrontations, I felt like I was exploring time in its oddest form - as if there was a dialogue between the past and the present moment. In South America the school photos are quite festive and look exotic with the beach backgrounds. The preparation for this photo was more difficult than expected: the backdrop is an image I found on the Internet and I couldn't find the same Lego; it took hours to retouch it to get the colours to match. The expression as well was really difficult. I don't have a studio and work in my flat, so it's all done in a small space. I made a film about my process which you can see on the Saatchi Gallery website."

"I understood I would have to be extremely organised, as each photo restaging would take weeks of preparation. I grouped the photographs I wanted to re-shoot according to location. I had to plan my schedule around the availability of my protagonists, to book flights and train tickets between London, Paris and the south of France, to make costumes and props; and most of all, always make sure that nothing would be missing on the day of the shoot. It was a crazy time. For Petit Roi, I used a disposable camera with a flash to get the 'snap shot' aesthetic. The original photo has turned yellow now, and I had to tint my version in Photoshop. Most of the photos I restage were taken in the 90s; my brother, sisters, and I were the last generation photographed with film cameras and to have family albums. Now everyone uses digital, and we don't really print photos anymore. My project will probably have a different meaning and impact in a few years' time because of this."

PLACES - INTERESTED BY SIMILARITIES AND/OR DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ONE PLACE AND ANOTHER?

EXPLORE IDRIS KHAN IN GALLERY 7
Since 1959 Bernd and Hilla Becher began photographing industrial structures that exemplify modernist engineering, such as gas reservoirs and water towers. Their photographs are often presented in groups of similar design; their repeated images make these everyday buildings seem strangely imposing and alien.

Idris Khan's Every... Bernd And Hilla Becher... series appropriates the Bechers' imagery and compiles their collections into single super-images. In this piece, multiple images of American-style gabled houses are digitally layered and super-imposed giving the effect of an impressionistic drawing or blurred film still.

The structures in the Bechers' original photographs are almost identical, though in Khan's hands the images' contrast and opacity is adjusted to ensure each layer can be seen and has presence. Though Khan works in mechanised media and his images are of industrial subjects, their effect is of a soft ethereal energy. They exude a transfixing spiritual quality in their densely compacted details and ghostly outlines. The Bechers took their photos as a means to document a disappearing tradition; by grouping them according to 'typology' the buildings' designs function like archetypal symbols or an architectural language. Through Khan's translucent aggregations, structures such as ...Spherical Type Gasholders lose their commanding simplicity and rigid formalism and descend into fractured and gestural blurs.

NATURAL WORLD - COULD THE WORLD OF NATURE INSPIRE YOU?

EXPLORE TESSA FARMER IN GALLERY 3

Made from desiccated insect remains, dried plant roots, and other organic ephemera, Tessa Farmer's tiny sculptures give a glimpse into the world of fairies. No sugar coated tale of Tinkerbells, Farmer's Swarm envisions these fairies as a hybrid species of human and insect, fearsome skeletal fiends, consuming and torturing the insects swarming around them in an imagined Darwinian battle for survival. They are painstakingly hand crafted and adorned with real insect wings, standing less than 1 cm tall.

The artist describes herself as being similar to a Victorian naturalist bringing a newly discovered species to public attention. Many of her tiny sculptural creatures are presented as though parts of the natural world that have yet to be classified. They're ordinarily too small to view properly without a magnifying glass, forcing us to inspect them at close range. Presenting her 'new' species alongside 'real' flies and wasps blurs the boundaries between the fantastical and the natural, our eye accepts this fictive continuity, and reads the fairies as sensate, animate beings.

OBJECTS - WHY PUT CERTAIN OBJECTS TOGETHER? WHAT IS THE THOUGHT PROCESS BEHIND IT?

EXPLORE ANTHEA HAMILTON IN GALLERY 2

Hamilton creates her Dadaesque installations from impermanent materials such as fruit and more durable media such as wood. Her compositions reference art history and pop culture in diverse ways. She has described her sculptural installations as 'performative spaces' and there is a strong sense of theatricality in the works, which appear like sets inviting the viewer to take 'centre-stage'. An often repeated motif is that of the cut-out leg - modeled on her own - which recalls the provocative playfulness of cabaret, drawing on the leg in its iconographic role as fetish object, whilst serving as a type of 'artist signature' or self-portrait.

"I was remaking film extracts of well-known Hollywood movies," Anthea Hamilton says, "and these pieces, such as The Piano Lesson, started life as props. I wanted to make my own narratives, and the objects had a successful enough sense of movement or animation in themselves to render the need to make the film unnecessary. They suggest sets and characters, the cinematic or theatrical and are always composed to be seen from the front just as you would see a stage set. My work hints at particular eras, it's not old-fashioned, but not contemporary either; they're in their own time. This piece was particularly inspired by Fernand Leger's 1921 painting Le Grand D�jeuner, (shown left) the large feminine wavy form is taken directly from the shape of the women's hair. Borrowing from an artist's palette offers a method for a rich, chromatic display. I was looking at bas-reliefs, architecture or ancient Egyptian cartouche characters and hieroglyphics: they look like pictures, but are conveying specific information."

"I like using things that will perish; it gives a tempo to the work."

ACTIVITIES -DO SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN PERFORMANCE INTEREST YOU?

EXPLORE JULIANA CERQUERIA LEITE IN GALLERY 1

Primarily a sculptor, Juliana uses her body to investigate the ways through which intention can take physical form. Down and Up were both created in 2008 using solid blocks of clay (each 210cm high by 90cm square), which Cerqueira Leite physically dug her way through. For one, Leite digs 'up', shaping the clay with her body as she goes, before making a plaster cast of the negative space; for the other, she digs 'down' - traces of knee, toe, and finger are visible, stretching the clay in apparent attempts to escape. Cerqueira Leite explores the extent to which the human body can become an artistic tool, literally performing her works into being.

"My work is driven by an investigation into physicality and how we interact with the physical world," says Juliana Cerqueira Leite. "For Up, I built a box that was as tall as I could reach, slightly larger than my body, and completely filled it with clay. The box was raised onto a steel platform so I could crawl under it. I dug upwards through the clay until my entire body fit inside the box and I could reach its top with my arms stretched above my head. The final piece is a plaster cast taken from the space I dug out and shows the minimum amount of space I could occupy. The wavy surface is formed by the negative grooves from the tips of my fingers pulling the clay downwards and pushing it out of the bottom of the box. The work is black because when I was inside the clay it was completely dark. I couldn't see anything so this piece was made entirely by touch...The process shows me something about my body or form and the end result is always a surprise.

For Down, I used the same sized box and amount of clay as in Up, but dug downwards from the top. I don't really plan how I'll carry out the tasks that I set myself and I thought I might dig like a dog, but discovered my body doesn't work like that: I had to sit in the hole I was making and scoop around myself, lowering myself feet first into this space. As I got deeper I found myself using rock climbing techniques to suspend myself inside the clay. The spiral formation emerged through the subconscious movement of working in a circular way. You can see all the impressions of my knees, feet, and elbows. I cast this form in plaster, it's one of the most readily available materials, historically so linked to sculpture and it's important to me that it's organic and non-toxic. The object isn't solid but still very heavy; it's installed as if it defies gravity."