Steve Lovett

"A place or collection containing records, documents, or other materials of historical interest. Often used in the plural" http://www.thefreedictionary.com/archiving

I understand archiving to be preservation of History. Whether it be documents, objects or memories. Archiving is something people subconsciously do on a daily basis.

I see Steve Lovetts work as an archive, because of what i think Lovetts work is about. His work is mainly based around culture, identity, people and heritage. Which all relates back to himself, his life and how he was brought up.

Raised by his mother, a single parent in Ponsonby in the 1960's. Lovett is the first in his family to go to University, let alone art school.

These factors among others come through in his work.

Being a gay man, Lovett feels he needs to translate things. Being told one thing, but feeling another. An example of this in his work was the piece 'Holding the Man'. When first viewed the pieced was praised and love by many, however, once people began to read the work and realised the true meaning, the work was discarded into a sculpture storage room. I find this hard to understand. 'Holding the Man' visually appealed so so many but because of what the meaning was, the piece was removed. the politics in art come to the foreground, and you notice that art is not just accepted for what it looks like in an environment, but also the information the piece is giving to the people viewing the piece. the Social information becomes important. I think this is important to Lovett. To create conflicts in his work, to make people think and identify their own meanings for the pieces. Not to let whats is 'politically correct' be his boundaries.

I think that there is always an autobiographical element in work of all artist and designers. Whenever someone makes a work it has to stem from somewhere. Whether it be a thought, emotion or object, the artist or designer has felt or seen. The ideas behind work all have personal connections to the maker, as they are all decisions made by them. Therefore all work has been personally influenced by the maker.

Making a work that could be seen as a documentary of my life appeals to me as I feel I have a lot of interesting things I could express through art, and that people of my age or older could easily relate to. Eating psychologist, parental cancer and moving to another city away from everything your ever known. However I feel that if you want to make work of an autobiographical element you need to be able to release all information and emotions behind the piece, which can be difficult. However, making a piece like this appeals to me, because it would allow me to talk through art, rather than verbally expressing the information and emotions out loud.