Melanie Counsell

Last updated

Melanie Counsell
Born (1964-01-25) 25 January 1964 (age 60)
Cardiff, Wales
Alma mater
Occupations
  • Filmmaker
  • Installation artist
  • Sculptor
Years active1989–present

Melanie Counsell (born 25 January 1964) is a Welsh filmmaker, installation artist and sculptor. She works with a multitude of media such as 16 mm film, drawing, printed matter, sculpture and sound for context. Counsell has been resident at a range of art institutions, has undertaken roles in teaching and has won multiple awards for her works.

Contents

Early life and education

Counsell was born in Cardiff, Wales, and from 1983 to 1986, studied for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Fine Art at the South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education. [1] [2] [3] [4] Counsell subsequently studied for a Master of Fine Arts degree in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art part of the University College London between 1986 and 1988. [2] [4]

Career

In 1987, Counsell won the Mary Rischgitz Prize, then the Boise Travel Scholarship in 1988 and the Whitechapel Artists Award in 1989. [4] In November 1989, she modified Matt's Gallery existing space to convey the effect of a prior experience of desolation with water dripping and oozing from a rolled carpet to the floor. [3] At Counsell's post-graduate exhibition in 1990, her work attracted attention with an installation with water dripping and seeping through lockers air vents in the Slade's corridor. Using the water was used in the smaller 12 Filing Cabinets, 12 Rolled Carpets and Water that revealed soaking rolls of carpets in the bottom drawers. [1] In 1991, she was resident of the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Jouy-en-Josas, France and then of the L'Ecole National des Beaux-Arts, Bourges the following year. [4]

On a commission from the organisation Artangel Trust, [5] [6] Counsell installed a black-and-white film showing glass contents slowly evaporating obscured by a opaque plastic screen making it solely watchable at the back making one aware of the process of observation and place at the Coronet Theatre, London in 1993. [1] She won The Arts Foundation Award in Sculpture in 1994, [7] and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award to Individual Artists: Sculpture & Installation two years later. [4] In 1996, Counsell's work 110 Euston Road featured a film installed in a tower block basement recording the sight atop a building and then the descent as the camera was broken from being thrown down it. [1] She moved to France and began teaching at the École Supérieur d’Art de Bordeaux in 1997 before moving to the École Supérieur d’Art de Bordeaux in 1998. [8] Four years later, Counsell received the London Arts Individual Artist Award. [4] In 2004, she created the 2-minute, 48-second black-and-white 16 mm silent water film Untitled mounted on scaffolding plates forming a triangular shape showing a rubbish lorry being driven by a duo of rubbish collectors who pick up bags of rubbish down a one-way street. [9]

In 2006, Counsell became a resident of the Ateliers Internationaux du Frac des Pays de la Loire, [4] and then of the British School at Rome by earning the Sargant Fellowship in 2007. [7] She was resident at the Frac Corsica, Ajaccio in 2008 and of the Visual Arts Creative Development Programme, Cove Park, Scotland, in 2009. [4] In 2011, Counsell made Lutecia depicting details of a headless bondaged-clothed female mannequin in the window of a London sex store close to her residence. [10] She was appointed external examiner of the Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh and held the same position at the University of Gloucestershire for students sitting a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art in 2013. [8] Counsell has gone on group or solo exhibitions all over the world to showcase her works which have also been covered in the press. [2] [4] [8] Her works are featured in corporate and private collections in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. [4]

Analysis

Counsell uses a multitude of media such as 16mm film, drawing, printed matter, sculpture and sound for context. [7] [8] She created works in disused buildings and gallery installations creating "new psychological environments through intense manipulation of time and space, architecture and object." [11] Counsell's recent works were on "new psychological environments through intense manipulation of time and space, architecture and object." [11] Caroline Smith of Women's Art Magazine wrote that Counsell's works "has a maturity which surpasses much contemporary installation work, where concepts become lost in the environment and meanings are muddled or over-worked, sledgehammer-style." [5] Smith also noted that the artist "opened herself to the increase of fast, shiny media language, art which addresses a mish-mash of cultures, signs and symbols, out of which have been born more global codes of understanding." [5] Artforum 's Michael Corris noted her appeal was "in its capacity to debunk a viewer's preconceived expectations of art" and the success was down to the "possibility of constructing a convincing rebuttal to our art-perceiving expectations." [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maya Lin</span> American designer and artist (born 1959)

Maya Ying Lin is an American architect, designer and sculptor. Born in Athens, Ohio to Chinese immigrants, she attended Yale University to study architecture. In 1981, while still an undergraduate at Yale she achieved national recognition when she won a national design competition for the planned Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The memorial was designed in the minimalist architectural style, and it attracted controversy upon its release but went on to become influential. Lin has since designed numerous memorials, public and private buildings, landscapes, and sculptures. In 1989, she designed the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. She has an older brother, the poet Tan Lin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isa Genzken</span> German contemporary artist (born 1948)

Isa Genzken is a German artist who lives and works in Berlin. Her primary media are sculpture and installation, using a wide variety of materials, including concrete, plaster, wood and textile. She also works with photography, video, film and collage.

Sarah Sze is an American artist and professor of visual arts at Columbia University. Sze's work explores the role of technology, information, and memory with objects in contemporary life utilizing everyday materials. Her work often represents objects caught in suspension. Drawing from Modernist traditions, Sze confronts the relationship between low-value mass-produced objects in high-value institutions, creating the sense that everyday life objects can be art. She has exhibited internationally and her works are in the collections of several major museums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roni Horn</span> American visual artist and writer (born 1955)

Roni Horn is an American visual artist and writer. The granddaughter of Eastern European immigrants, she was born in New York City, where she lives and works. She is currently represented by Xavier Hufkens in Brussels and Hauser & Wirth. She is openly gay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diana al-Hadid</span> American artist

Diana al-Hadid is a Syrian-born American contemporary artist who creates sculptures, installations, and drawings using various media. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is represented by Kasmin Gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grimanesa Amorós</span> Peruvian-American artist

Grimanesa Amorós is a Peruvian-American artist known for large-scale light sculpture installations, where she draws inspiration from Peruvian cultural legacies and the communities surrounding her sculptures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Han Sai Por</span> Singaporean sculptor (born 1943)

Han Sai Por is a Singaporean sculptor. A graduate of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), East Ham College of Art, Wolverhampton College of Art, and Lincoln University, New Zealand, she worked as a teacher and later as a part-time lecturer at NAFA, the LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, and the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, before becoming a full-time artist in 1997.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie Hewitt</span> American artist (born 1977)

Leslie Hewitt is an American contemporary visual artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Cogswell</span> American artist (born 1947)

Margaret Cogswell is a mixed-media installation artist and sculptor based in New York. She emerged in late 1980s as a sculptor, gaining attention for abstract constructions exploring tensions between natural and human-made materials, roughness and sophistication. Since 2003, Cogswell's work has focused on a series of site-specific installations called "River Fugues": individually unique, multimedia projects involving detailed geographical, historical and social research that explore the intertwining of rivers, industry, people's lives, and the increasingly politicized role of water. The series' title invokes the contrapuntal musical form of the fugue to indicate the weaving of disparate voices, layers and media into a harmonious, composite whole. Critic Lilly Wei described the "River Fugues" as a hybrid form based on musical composition that "expresses the complex beauty of rivers … and sounds an alarm over the sweeping environmental changes that have endangered our natural resources."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corrina Sephora Mensoff</span> Musical artist

Corrina Sephora Mensoff is a visual artist who specializes in metal work, sculpture, painting, installation, and mixed media in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States. Corrina works with universal and personal themes of loss and transformation, within the context of contemporary society. In Corrina’s most recent bodies of work she is exploring lunar images, cells, and the universe as “a meditation in the making.” In a concurrent body of work she has delved into the physical transformation of guns, altering their molecular structure into flowers and garden tools through hot forging the materials. Her work has led her to community involvement with the conversation of guns in our society.

Monique Péan is an American artist whose practice is focused on fine jewelry, sculpture, painting and furniture. Her studio is based in New York City. Her work explores themes of space, temporality, identity, and origins, and makes use of materials such as fossils, meteorites, and sustainable recycled metals.

Houria Niati is an Algerian contemporary artist living in London. Niati specializes in mixed media installations that criticize Western representations and objectification of north African and Middle Eastern women. Her installations notably have live performances most commonly traditional Algerian music such as Raï, as a key visual representation of Niati's homeland and culture. Salah M. Hassan further details her performances, "She uses synthesizers, sound recordings, and special light effects to create a theatrical atmosphere and a vibrant magical environment of sound, body movement, and color." The installations and exhibitions join together paintings, sculptures, drawings, photos, soundtracks, and performances.

Marion Wilson is an American artist whose mixed media installations have gained critical attention.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nadia Kaabi-Linke</span> Tunisian artist (born 1978)

Nadia Kaabi-Linke is a Tunis-born, Berlin-based visual artist best known for her conceptual art and 2011 sculpture Flying Carpets. Her work has explored themes of geopolitics, immigration, and transnational identities. Raised between Tunis, Kyiv, Dubai and Paris, she studied at the Tunis Institute of Fine Arts and received a Ph.D. in philosophy of art from the Sorbonne. Kaabi-Linke won the 2011 Abraaj Group Art Prize, which commissioned Flying Carpets, a hanging cage-like sculpture that casts geometric shadows onto the floor akin to the carpets of Venetian street vendors. The piece was acquired by the New York Guggenheim in 2016 as part of their Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. Kaabi-Linke also won the Discoveries Prize for emerging art at the 2014 Art Basel Hong Kong. Her works have been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Burger Collection, and Samdani Art Foundation, and exhibited in multiple solo and group shows.

Tiffany Singh is a New Zealand artist.

Katinka Bock is a German sculptor and visual artist. She lives and works in Paris and Berlin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elana Herzog</span> American artist

Elana Herzog is an American installation artist and sculptor based in New York City. She is most known for abstract, tactile works in which she disassembles, reconfigures and embeds second-hand textiles in walls, modular panels and architectural spaces with industrial-grade metal staples. Herzog has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, among others. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), Tang Museum, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Sharjah Art Museum, and Reykjavik Art Museum.

Lucy Gunning is an English filmmaker, installation artist, sculptor, video artist and lecturer in fine art at the Chelsea College of Arts. Her works cross various media such as archival investigation, book-making, installation, performance, photography and video and her works are included in various public collections. Gunning was resident at various art institutions and won multiple awards for her works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Rothwell</span> British-Australian sculptor

Caroline Rothwell is an artist who works mainly within sculpture. She currently lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Rothwell's works have been exhibited, collected, commissioned and publicly installed widely across Australia and internationally.

Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk is an Inupiaq scholar of ethnomusicology and a musician. She is the daughter of Ronald Senungetuk and Turid Senungetuk and granddaughter of Helen and Willie Senungetuk, and her family roots originate from Wales (Kiŋigin), Alaska. Senungetuk spent her childhood in Fairbanks, where her father founded the Native Art Center and acted as head of the Department of Art at the University of Alaska.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Grant, Catherine M. (27 March 2001). "Counsell, Melanie". Grove Art Online . doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T097239. ISBN   978-1-884446-05-4 . Retrieved 13 December 2020.(subscription or UK public library membership required)
  2. 1 2 3 "Melanie Counsell". Matt's Gallery. Archived from the original on 20 August 2017. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  3. 1 2 "Melanie Counsell". Liverpool Biennial. Archived from the original on 11 August 2020. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Melanie Counsell" (PDF). Works/Projects. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 October 2015. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  5. 1 2 3 Smith, Caroline (May–June 1993). "History's collapse: Melanie Counsell produces articulate psychodramas reports Caroline Smith" . Women's Art Magazine (52): 24. Archived from the original on 20 December 2020. Retrieved 19 December 2020– via Gale Academic OneFile.
  6. 1 2 Corris, Michael (October 1993). "Melanie Counsell" . Artforum International . 32 (2): 110. Archived from the original on 20 December 2020. Retrieved 13 December 2020– via Gale In Context: Biography.
  7. 1 2 3 "Counsell, Melanie". Arts Foundation. Archived from the original on 30 September 2020. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  8. 1 2 3 4 "Ms Melanie Counsell". University College London. Archived from the original on 3 January 2018. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  9. ↑ Walsh, Maria (May 2005). "Melanie Counsell" . Art Monthly (286): 32–33. Retrieved 13 December 2020– via EBSCO.
  10. ↑ Trigg, David (April 2011). "Melanie Counsell: Lutecia" . Art Monthly (345): 29–30. Archived from the original on 20 December 2020. Retrieved 13 December 2020– via Gale In Context: Biography.
  11. 1 2 "Melanie Counsell". Foreground. Archived from the original on 4 December 2018. Retrieved 19 December 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.