Research - The Ordinary

When it comes to the ordinary in art, any artwork can be considered the first authentic example of an artist's piece. An original artwork would be the first version of a painting an artist creates, not any subsequent prints, reproductions, or imitations of the artwork.

But ordinary art can also mean that ordinary everyday objects (found objects), such as things found around the house, such as a chair, can be used for composition to rearrange the ordinary to the extraordinary so that a viewer would look at the art and think that they could potentially replicate it, as art can be anything, such as a painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, decorative arts, photography, and installation.


"A work of art in the visual arts is a physical two- or three-dimensional object that is professionally determined or otherwise considered to fulfil a primarily independent aesthetic function."

- Wikipedia.



An artist who uses everyday objects, or found objects, for their artwork is Liz West (b. 1885), a British artist known for her wide-ranging works, from the intimate to the monumental. Using a variety of materials and exploring the use of light, she blurs the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, design and painting to create works that are both playful and immersive.

"West creates vivid environments that mix luminous colour and radiant light. West aims to provoke a heightened sensory awareness in the viewer through her works. She is interested in exploring how sensory phenomena can invoke psychological and physical responses that tap into our own deeply entrenched relationships with colour. West's investigation into the relationship between colour and light is often realised through an engagement between materiality and a given site. Our understanding of colour can only be realised through the presence of light. By playing and adjusting colour, West brings out the intensity and composition of her spatial arrangements."

- the About section on her website.




(Tempo, 2013)

Tempo is a simple installation of fluorescent LED lights that are in the order of the rainbow, but in a spectrum so that each colour blends into each other, and it can create other art as it casts shadows of what is around it.

"The fluorescent stick light, a key material in West's new installations, is perhaps one of the most effective visual spatial devices. Aside from its obvious exuberant colours, its most striking feature is its stripped-back materiality. West has modified each stick light with a particular colour. This colour palette is reminiscent of the neon lights that were so prominent in the 1960s coinciding with the emergence of installation art. Through methodically mixing each tube in relationship to each other, West cultivates our perceptions, drawing on Albers' practice-based theory that colour can only be truly understood in relation to other colours and, crucially, our own knowledge of the colour spectrum. The raw exuberance of the stick lights becomes a catalyst to trigger a response: the viewer is needed to activate the work." - Jack Welsh, 2013




Another artist is Martin Parr, who uses photography to set the scene and capture what is going on in the moment so that it will be encapsulated for future viewers to see. 

"At first glance, his photographs seem exaggerated or even grotesque. The motifs he chooses are strange, the colours are garish and the perspectives are unusual. Parr’s term for the overwhelming power of published images is “propaganda”. He counters this propaganda with his own chosen weapons: criticism, seduction and humour. As a result, his photographs are original and entertaining, accessible and understandable. But at the same time, they show us in a penetrating way how we live, how we present ourselves to others, and what we value."

- Introduction, Parr's website.


He takes images of people on their day-to-day routine, to make his art seem more natural and less composed.



(Fotofestival Knokke-Heist, Belgium, 2014)





(Signs of the Times, London Underground and Bus Stops, UK, 1992)

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