“Magic Realism is commonly used as a term to describe an aesthetic style of fiction where magic and mythology blends with the real world. Showing in the Gladstone Gallery, the artists in Ethereal Existence use their work to show this concept, usually reserved for fiction, in a visual format. Their drawings, paintings, photographs, illustrations and prints show the darker side of reality, depicting scenes from everyday life to the mythological and where the two meet.”

Showing at the Gladstone Gallery from January 10th to January 22nd, 2012.
Opening Reception: Thursday January 12, 2012 from 7pm to 10pm.

I post the excellent Richard Condie short above for a couple of reasons. First, because people should be aware of the increasing amount of NFB content being made available for free online. This stuff was my bread and butter during days home sick when I was a kid. Don’t ask me how I saw them, but I figured the chances of seeing any of this fantastic material again was lost once our family vault of badly dubbed VHS tapes went the way of the dodo.

Secondly, I was asked to join the roster of folks blogging for XPACE through the XBLOG way back in october sometime, and have quite frankly not contributed until now. Perhaps it was a little stagefright and an unexpectedly busy last semester at OCAD, though I think Condie’s short nails the sentiment quite well.

Why do creative tasks seem to require so much more initiative? I suspect it has to do both with our abilities to visualize creative or expressive content before making, and with the standards to which we hold this type of work. (Whereas arbitrary taskwork really only consists of an action that is fulfilled). Many artists working conceptually run into this trap, because the impetus to create an object is often secondary to the development of the concept. Combine this with the impossibly high standards most creative people hold themselves to and its a wonder anybody gets anything done at all.

That being said, the new year is a time for resolutions, and with that I am happy to announce I will be a regular contributor to this blog. You may expect from me discussion and resources surrounding: the state of the object, readymade, function and abstraction in contemporary sculpture and installation work, as well as hopefully a good deal of art history crate digging and the occasional non-sequitur.

To get a better idea of where I am coming from, I use a Tumblr blog for my portfolio, and it can be found here: liamcrockard.tumblr.com

Later this week – predicted art trends for 2010!