Bryan Eccleshall
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'What Are You Looking At?' - Tsang Kin-Wah
'Identifying Time And Place' - Andrew Tebbs and Cynthia Harrison
'The Circles They Desire' - Patricia Townsend
'Art Cast' by rednile/Kangaroo Kourt
'Protest Is Beautiful' - Freee
'The Life and Music of Nick Cave - An Illustrated Biography' by Maximillian Dax and Johannes Beck
On occasion I have been asked to contribute reviews for publication or to write an article for something.
This modest archive is where they are kept.
Many of the reviews below have been published in Artist's Newsletter and/or on their website. I have linked to each one individually, but they are collected here.
"House Of Bling"
Tattershall Castle
8th - 26th August 2009
Tattershall Castle is a National Trust property that has become a venue for six contemporary artists to present new works to the visiting public. First, a little context. Tattershall Castle is what remains of a castle: essentially a six-storey 15th Century brick tower surrounded by a moat and a garden in the Lincolnshire countryside. After the Civil War it fell into disrepair for about 200 years, before, to cut a long story short, it was rescued and restored in 1911. It opened to visitors in 1914 and has been in the stewardship of the Trust since 1925.
The pieces included in this show - House Of Bling - reflect on the building’s history and on some of the more romantic and mythic qualities that surround towers. Each work gets a space to itself, with the ground floor given over to support material that aims to inform the public of the inspiration behind, and the work that went into, the installation of the pieces. All very interesting and mercifully jargon free, it seems to have hit the right balance between education and enlightenment whilst not entirely giving the game away. House of Bling seems a provocative title for such a show, but as curators Jane Greenfield and Sue Crabtree remark in their short introduction, this was always a venue of opulence and grandeur.
In the Castle’s basement KMA (Kit Monkman and Tom Wexler), have placed a blank mannequin into a small dark anteroom, onto which is projected a figure who addresses us as the eponymous ‘Tour Guide’. He is, however, unreliable. Facts are mangled and the plot is lost now and again, moving from opinion to fact and back again. Visually, this digital/oral presentation is slick - the face turns to brick at times and there are costume changes - but at times glitchy (think Max Headroom, if you’re old enough). It creates a sort of interrupted fluency, cleverly echoing the sly and subversive text.
Catherine Bertola has two works on display - ‘Unseen By All But Me Alone’ and ‘The Visitors’ Book’. The former consists of exquisite golden cobwebs placed in high corners and on window frames. Each has been hand made in situ by the artist and hark back to the tradition of women spinning in these rooms. Their appearance - golden and authentic looking - wedge together ideas of value and neglect, activating the space effectively. ‘The Visitors’ Book’ consists of the 1914 visitors book placed open in a vitrine while a voice recites the names and addresses of those within it. It’s a measured memorial to those who came and saw the Castle when it was first opened and, trust me, more moving than it sounds.
The most intrusive piece of work - ‘Let Sleeping Dogs Lie…’ by Geraldine Pilgrim is probably the hardest to grasp. It’s made up of large packing cases in two spaces in the tower’s third floor. Inspired by photographs of the castle’s original fireplaces being returned in triumph prior to re-installation, Pilgrim populates these sculptural, half-open cases with the paraphernalia of myth. Furniture and mirrors evoke the lives of the towers occupants; long tresses of hair bring Rapunzel to mind. It’s a bold move by the artist, to marry myth and modernism (the cases look like post-Judd constructions, to these eyes). The cases are aesthetically brutal, dominating their contents and possibly overwhelming Pilgrim’s idea. Curatorially, it’s a bold move as the other works are decorative and/or discrete, which allows the general public to ignore or at least engage superficially if they choose.
Two pieces are situated outside the castle building, though one is really only visible from the battlements. Linda Florence has created a design, cut into the lawn that aprons the tower. It’s based on designs she found on discarded, but archived, tiles from the castle’s restoration. Much of this material has never been shown. From the top floor of the castle the design comes together, whereas at ground level it is, to all intents and purposes, invisible. That sense of theatrical reveal is its trump card. Although decorative and relevant, Florence’s ‘Reinstated Carpet’ is less symbolic or allusive than, say, Bertola’s pieces.
Also outside is Sarah Price’s ‘Reframing The Picturesque’. Consisting of several camera obscuras directed towards artificially created flower beds that evoke the history of neglect the Tattershall has at times endured. These magical images, at once remote and engaged, conjure up a time of Claude Glasses and early photography (the viewer needs to place a cloth over their head and the tripod-supported wooden boxes in order to see the images created).
As you can gather, it’s a varied show but centred around a couple of strong curatorial ideas. Each piece would succeed as a stand-alone work, but as a suite of artworks in a vibrant and novel space they come alive. Not exactly talking to one another, but revealing facets of a narrative that never really existed. Some of the work is documentary and some speculative, but that doesn’t seem to matter. We’re used to seeing art in public places, but to see one historical space, interesting in its own right, given over to entirely new works is rarer than one might think. Non-art spaces, when imaginatively and sensitively used by artists can provide, to paraphrase Duchamp, new thoughts for the building or perhaps uncovering some very old ones.
My one reservation would be to note a reliance on decoration and conventional concepts of beauty and good design to sweeten the pill of contemporary art. That’s a niggle though as, encouragingly, the whole project seems to have been a hit with the public, apparently doubling visitor numbers and allowing the Trust to extend the show beyond the original two-week slot.
"What Are You Looking At?"
Tsang Kin-Wah
Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester
26th June - 28th September 2008
Basing a piece of art, however flimsily, on another cultural product is not uncommon and fraught with problems. Sure, the artist can use the other piece as a hook to pull in people and provides grist for the PR mill, but it can invite unhelpful comparisons. One of Tsang Kin-Wah’s pair of installations at the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester references Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”, while the second piece - in the toilets - stands alone. The two pieces are linked to one another, but the large “Shining” installation has the upper hand, being as it is in the main gallery and likely to be seen by more people. In the gallery piece transparent vinyl has been stuck to the walls and then cut to shape letters which crawl up and down the wall, which makes it hard to read. The dim lighting means that the only way the text can be read is by moving the head until the vinyl catches the light. The text is revealed slowly, intriguingly. What we do read when we crane our necks is what I take to be part of Nicholson’s dialogue; stuff like “I would never do anything to hurt you” and “I love you more than anything else in the whole world”. Having seen the film, we know how hollow these reassurances are. There is also an audio element to the installation. The sound is a close cousin the film’s soundtrack which is electronic, slow and, in a very real sense, dreadful. Without it the words could be read as bland or, in the case of the more obscene texts, bawdy black humour, but by having tonal noise accompany the words means that this interpretation is closed off, forcing the viewer to read the text in a particular way.
Downstairs in the toilets is a piece called “I Love U”: the walls have been papered with a decorative pink floral pattern. On closer inspection the graphic flowers are made up of sentences such as “I Love Your Face” and, more cynically “I Love Your Credit Card”. The play of design against meaning is effective. The sentiment may not be the most revelatory, but coupled with the more sinister text in the main gallery the works begin to spark off one another.
Of course art can engage with or be about anything - why restrict it? - but by allying one’s own work with someone else’s is a dangerous game. This piece pulls details from a complex and satisfying piece of film-making and holds one element up for scrutiny. On the whole it works, but I suspect I would be less convinced if the piece in the main gallery had to stand or fail on its own merits. Coupled with “I Love U” in the toilets the installation begins to intrigue. One of the sad parts of the main installation is that the noise from the street is quite loud which doesn’t help the show. “The Shining” is, after all, a claustrophobic film and the ease of escape onto Thomas Street counts against the visceral effect of the installation. Perhaps if the pieces had been reversed a more disturbing effect may have been achieved.
"Identifying Time and Place"
Andrew Tebbs and Cynthia Harrison
Surface Gallery, Nottingham
20th May - 28th May 2008
What are you? Where do you come from? What happens if where you come from changes, do you change too? What happens if they close where you come from? Does it matter?
A modest but thoughtful exhibition at the Surface Gallery, Nottingham pushes at these fundamental questions. Andrew Tebbs and Cynthia Hamilton have both used cameras to explore some of the issues around identity and its relationship with the nature of place.
Andrew Tebbs’ large brooding photographs of redundant pit workings - often in light conditions caused by black weather fronts moving into a sunny day - reflect and memorialise the communities that served them. Newstead, in particular, is a pit village - though it resembles nothing more than a housing estate in the middle of nowhere that happens to be near a coal seam. Clipstone has the tallest headstocks in Europe and there is a move to preserve them. They stand like sentinels over a village that once manned them, a constant reminder of what no longer happens. A hole in the heart, if you like. With the closing of these pits the communities entered a twilight life, off the main road and away from our gaze, but a life nonetheless. More plural, less rigid, which might seem to be a good thing but for a community founded on surety it must have been and continue to be hard. In one picture we see three people on a bench looking towards the pit workings. We are, in this image only, an audience looking at another set of viewers who look onto a community, probably theirs. It looks like we’re viewing from a landscaped slag heap - evidence of a dynamism and brute force, overcome by softer influences - which speaks of a place in retirement.
All this is not say that the pieces here are overtly political or even angry - that horse bolted a long time ago - rather they display in their detail (a conservatory on a house near the pit, the walkers on the slag heap), a quiet resignation to make the best of what there is. It’s not easy to move on from these places, so they have to make do. Tebbs has created in these large brooding pictures a telling mediation on what it means to live in the shadow of one’s past.
Cynthia Harrison’s work is, in the word of Alice, curiouser. Four unnamed and similar collages deal with the idea of the home. Each follows a simple format - a photograph of a flat agricultural landscape, which is then overlaid with the image of a house, mounted on card to stand slightly proud of the background, and flanked by two black and white blow ups of women’s heads, again mounted on card. Each picture has the same elements, but each element is a variation - a different background, house or woman. These three elements combine to create a strange blend of longing or memory. It’s not clear if the women are from the houses or desire them. There is a dislocation in form and content - the collages are obviously hand made rather than Photoshopped, the house would never be built in the settings shown here - that throws up a kind of gap. It’s through this gap that the viewer begins to project their own agenda. These contingent responses are where the story begins to unfold. We are invite to impose our own experiences of home and, I suppose, motherhood on these familiar and yet unsettling pictures.
When you grow up your life, however odd, seems normal. It’s the yardstick by which you measure stuff. Often it’s only when you meet someone from outside your family or neighborhood that it begins to dawn in you that not everyone’s life is like yours. Tebbs and Harrison have created works that invite contemplation. Our gaze is re-drawn to familiar territory, but on closer inspection that territory may not be ours. It speaks of a longing or, in Tebbs’ case, a resignation that may be stoic or practical. Life goes on and we take our past with us, whether we like it or not.
"Unheimlich"
Leeds Met Gallery, Leeds
18th April - 17th May 2008
Unheimlich is usually translated as Uncanny. Freud wrote an essay on the subject during one of his rare forays into aesthetics. His basic thesis was that something that disturbs, or even horrifies us, is not the opposite of something safe and comfortable, rather a subset of it. In short shock and/or horror has no power over us unless we can see it as part of our life. Unheimlich can be more accurately translated as “unhomely”. The reason for using the German word for this five artist show - at Leeds Met Gallery curated in association with Matt Roberts Art - is to emphasize the relationship that the strange has with the normal, safe and homely.
Of the five artists the most approachable work seems to be that of Rachel Goodyear. Her small, exquisite, drawings with some splashes of colour seem to be awaiting a fairy tale as yet unwritten. Figures - naked, mostly - are at the mercy of some peculiar agency. They stand on their own hair or have a buttercup taped under their chin which reflects yellow to prove an affinity with butter. Forever. The pictures - nine in all - are arranged on a wall in such a way that hints at narratives, but allows the viewer to skip images that don’t fit. We seem to be drawn to look at a world that is isolated and yet parallel to our own. Not so approachable, after all.
Matt Lippiat also uses a form of narrative to move us through his ideas. His two pieces - a noticeboard and a diving board - seem like cousins under the skin. They address the phenomena of missing people. On the noticeboard are dozens of handmade missing posters. All those pictured are handsome, buff, young men, stripped to the waist showing gym-scultped bodies. Surely these are the least likely to be abducted - strong and in the prime of life. The black diving board looms over the gallery and is a road to nowhere. At its foot is a pile of clothes - trainers, socks, jeans and boxers - probably left by one of the Adonis’s from the noticeboard. There’s nowhere to go from the top of the board and there’s no evidence of a jumper landing on the floor. We’re filling in a narrative that is sadly familiar but in this case populated by the wrong cast.
In the same space as Lippiat’s work is a collection of noisy, jerking, machine-assisted mattresses. Pete Smith’s family group - ‘Lot’ - of four squalid upright mattress is probably the most outwardly disturbing of all the exhibits on display here. Vagina like orifices have been cut and hemmed in the bedding and machinery protrudes from three of the four mattresses. The piece is based on the Biblical story of Lot who, while drunk, slept with his daughters. Did I mention Freud had something to do with the idea behind the show? Two partial figures rock against the mattresses in a sexually exhausted but relentless way. It’s the bride and the bachelors came to life in a skip. It’s unpleasant and unending. Smith is the only artist with only one piece in the show. The other artists’ work benefits from the companionship of second pieces and it would have been good to see more of Smith’s work.
Aesthetically Stephen Bishop’s two sculptures occupy a completely different realm from the the Pete Smith construction. Where ‘Lot’ is dirty, his two pieces are clean and smart. One - ‘Suspension of Disbelief ‘ - is a taxidermied fox supported by flourescent tubes. ‘Run through with flourescent tubes’ would be a closer description. The poor fox hangs in mid air, curled and dead, at climax of a series of events that make no sense. The second piece is a conflation of two fish tanks, one behind the other. The front one, half filled, has two small goldfish swimming in it. So far, so normal. The rear tank has a black and white screen butted right up to the front one and Charlie Parker silently blows. The goldfish now seem to swim the sinuous lines of Parker’s playing. These two pieces are more conventionally sculptural, to my eyes at least, and echo the Surrealist notion of the “beautiful chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella”. The Unheimlich-ness of these pieces appears to be bound up in the elegance and absurdity of the re-purposing of the objects.
Upstairs is the work by Clara Arsitti. A large projection is accompanied by a commentary. The images - sharks, coral, jellyfish amongst other, non-aquatic, things - flash up in rhythmic bursts while the soundtrack accompanies with a looping and patient narrative. After a while it becomes apparent that we are being hoaxed. The two elements - pictures and sound - are only related by virtue of being shown together. A forced marriage, if you like. As the reel progresses an absurdity creeps in, along with a feeling that life is a bit like this. Stuff gets wedged together and we have to deal with it. Ursitti’s second piece - Selection From The Dolphin Girl Porcelain Collection - is an impossibly beautiful wall piece. It’s a mirror, cut to resemble a wave, jutting shelf-like from the wall. On this ledge are small porcelain figures of a girl and a dolphin in various forms of congress. Some sexual, some not necessarily sexual. It’s based on a real story too elaborate to cover here, but the protagonists were marked for like (and I’m including the dolphin in that). The piece’s assured appearance draws us in, the figures repel and fascinate.
So it’s a varied show, which is no mean feat when only five artists are included. How Unheimlich are the works? Well, that depends on your own home and your sense of the unnerving. It’s good to see a show that addresses this subject head on and in such a measured and smart way. So much contemporary art would like to shock and only does so by shouting and swearing at its audience, rather than drawing that audience to itself before showing its hand. Seduction, it seems, is part of the process.
Read this on the Artist's Newsletter website
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"The Circles They Desire"
Patricia Townsend
The Dock Museum, Barrow-in-Furness
28th November 2007 - 3rd February 2008
It’s reassuring that artists can still find ways of re-imagining the world in which they live. Patricia Townsend’s “The Circles They Desire” show at The Dock Museum in Barrow-in-Furness works in an unfashionable realm which is routinely dealt with in hackneyed and shallow ways. Her show re-works the iconography of Cumbria’s stone circles. Typically, I’d expect work dealing with standing stones to look at through New Age tinted spectacles but Townsend, to her great credit, resists this.
There are four sets of work on display, including two installations. The first installation consists of eight monitors, facing outwards and on the floor, each playing a video loop of fire. In the centre of the ring is a small cairn. Behind all this is a display of five square images that together appear to describe the transit of a planet. On closer inspection the planet is made up of a disc from a photograph of a lichen covered rock. The second installation is of rectangular banners hanging in a circle that move and shimmer with any breeze. Printed on the banner is - you guessed it - lichen and rock, filling the field. By inverting the solidity of the rock they evoke the outside and the winds that blow on the fells nearby, where these circles are sited. The gallery in which the the work is shown is actually part of a converted dry dock. This means that beyond the works themselves are the walls of the dock and the ferns growing on them. A wonderful conjunction, especially with the banners.
The fourth set of work is simple but extremely effective. Townsend has used a segment from close up photographs of the stones, repeated that segment in the style of a kaleidoscope; the result being a circle (there’s that shape again). The resulting images echo rose windows in cathedrals and the view you get looking up into the domes of those same cathedrals. These pieces - and there are 12 on display - are beautiful and poised. They hint at links between belief systems that echo one another more than we ordinarily realise.
As I explained at the head of the review, it’s refreshing to find an artist working in an original way with a subject that typically attracts artists keen to gabble on about ill-researched mystical rubbish and a side order of hobbits, to be honest. Patricia Townsend’s smart and contemporary suite of work pushes around ideas relating to prehistory and, yes, mysticism, in a new way. Complimenting the work itself is the venue itself which reinforces the material qualities of the work and literally grounds the more ephemeral nature of the subject matter.
"Vital 07 - The Essence Of Performance"
Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester
20th - 24th November 2007
I attended the first day at the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester. It continues here for another day before decamping to Liverpool John Moores University for another two days. The programme is different in each city. I watched:
Jason Lim make a pyramid of glasses on the edge of a table, which didn't fall down when the table moved slightly.
Lee Wen set fire to a small boat made from the Daily Telegraph, which had a fish in it.
Lee Wen paint the character for 'China' in honey on a sheet of A4. He then tried to lick it off.
Two audience members standing on chairs. One took a photograph of us.
Hao Lang march and exercise on a large mirror while wearing what looked like a swimming cap covered in flowers.
Rosa Mei dance with swords.
A man in a suit, acting like an Asian Brer Rabbit, covered in tissue paper with a whip.
A roll of sellotape stretched around trees to map the path of Jason Lim.
Hao Lang limbering up in a small room while I typed this.
He Chengyao walk around Manchester in a halting and curious fashion, followed by people copying her. Well, mostly copying her.
Light reflected onto the gallery ceiling from shards of mirror broken by Hao Lang.
Lee Wen throw a cabbage back and forth to audience members and then turned into a ball and chain with the judicious use of sellotape.
I heard:
A whistle and the crack of a whip.
Glasses smashing and running water.
“He looked gutted when that tape broke.”
Two people whisper “I appear” in my ear. One of them twice.
A pedestrian say “What's going on here, then?” and “Cheers, mate”, when encountering He Chengyao's followers in the street.
Applause.
Hao Lang explain that in China, children are described as “the flowers of the nation”, which sort of explained his hat.
A gong and a bell.
No announcements.
A mirror get smashed into hundreds of pieces under the determined feet of Hao Lang.
A dead fish described as 'profound'.
Someone say they didn't want to read their fortune.
I read:
My fortune.
Three postcards by Brendan Fan that informed me that an artist may “secretly involve you in a performance without your knowledge”, “ secretly observe and document your reactions to the performances” and “engage you in conversation to divert your attention from something you will regret missing”.
The phrases “Socialism”, “Harmonious Society”, “One Party Rule”, “One Country Two Systems”, “3 Represents”, “Eight Honours Eight Disgraces”, “Scientific Development Concept”, “Freedom”, “Democracy”, “Rule Of Law” and “Peaceful Development”, before they were chewed a bit and spat into the paper boat mentioned above on the 'I saw' list.
Three letters to Des O'Connor.
I wrote:
“Glass = Tension”.
“It's difficult to know when Chinese Dance, kung fu and body-popping start and end”.
“There is a controlled randomness”.
“If art is, as I believe, a cracked and broken language through which otherwise inexpressible ideas can be played out, or a at least rehearsed, then a language barrier, then a further fracture can occur when real language barriers are introduced. Conventions can act as a salve”.
“Assimilation and aspiration”.
“Wedding Reception Tent”.
“Brinkmanship”.
“Adding ideas together doesn't make them better”.
I missed:
Yingmei Duan's performance. Sorry.
The end of Jason Lim's piece, but I did see some glasses break.
The repeat of Rosa Mei's performance.
Leung Po-Shan's performance. Sorry.
I took part in:
A round table discussion about Live Art and documentation.
According to the fortune I read out during Rosa Mei's performance, I will not get my wish.
Commissioned for publication on Interface website, managed by Artist's Newsletter, November 2007
"YoMü"
Guildhall and other venues, York
3rd - 10th August 2007
For a week in August, artists from the twin towns of York and Münster worked side by side and amongst finished work by other artists in York’s beautiful Guildhall. Each afternoon the public were invited in to meet artists, to discuss works in progress and to share a little in the creative process. ‘YoMü’ Festival Director Graham Martin hoped that this interaction with the public, coupled with the reflective practice it would encourage, would give ‘YoMü’ a distinctive character.
During the week the workspaces (aligned down one side of the room) encroached slowly towards the static displays opposite, providing tangible evidence of the artists’ need to create elbow room for their work. The work itself was varied, ranging from Ruppe Koselleck’s ongoing project to buy BP shares one at a time, funded by selling small multiples made of tar found on beaches, to the beautiful wax flowers made by Kate Sleight.
One display was placed centrally in the room – Karen Babayan’s selection of large format photographs alluding to her family’s Iranian/Armenian heritage. By placing Karen’s work centrally the space seems to have been both divided and bridged. Her work is complete, yes, but also remains in flux. By the end of the week she had created a completely new suite of photographs encouraged by encounters with the public and other artists.
Other work was placed around the city centre. Kirsten and Peter Kaiser placed medieval looking fruit pickers – long handled red bags with gold coloured prongs around the gape – in a circle around a small, immature fruit tree gifted to the city. The simple sense of waiting and potential created a contemplative feel in this space. Elsewhere, Peter Baker’s stack of bricks, faced with objects appeared in several shop windows around the town offering a strange sense of déjà vu to those who saw it more than once.
‘YoMü’ also had the festival’s photographer (Kippa Matthews) and a researcher (Martell Linsdell) visible within the workspaces throughout, thus creating a running archive of the week. A series of talks by artists for the public and on professional practice for artists reinforced the themes of interaction and development.
A danger of having such a strongly curated event is that its process can overshadow the work produced. By asking artists to interact with the public invited into the space, ‘YoMü’ pushed the process of creativity to the forefront of practice rather than hiding it in favour of finished, definitive work. However, by including displays of finished work by others – Jake Attree’s re-drawing of Brueghel’s paintings were a joy – a kind of balance was restored.
A selection of the works from ‘YoMü’ in York will be on show in Münster later this year.
Commissioned for publication in Artist's Newsletter, October 2007
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"ARTCAST"
rednile Projects/ Kangaroo Kourt
rednile Projects, Nile Street, Sunderland
7th July - 14th July 2007
Three artists from Kangaroo Kourt, Bristol, and the three that make up rednile Projects, from Sunderland have collaborated on a two site project called ARTCAST. Each group visited the other's city and worked in the space there. The spaces were open to the public and short videos of activity were posted daily on YouTube. I saw the work of Kangaroo Kourt in the rednile space prior to the finishing touches of the documentary video which is being edited, publicly, as I write this. It all goes on display on July 7th.
Some of the work on display is tentative and unfinished. That's part of the point, though. The artists wanted the public to feel they were watching creativity happen, with all its blind alleys, absurdity and speculation. Along with showing artist's work in progress, a theme of hidden spaces is explored. This response to this is less obvious, but on closer inspection some of the work does interrogate the idea of no-go areas, the unspoken or the hitherto unrecorded.
The Kangaroo Kourt pieces on show in Sunderland are three diverse works, reflecting the extremely loose nature of the Kangaroo Kourt set up.
Rebecca Swindell produced a series of nervous line drawings in a postcard format that drew a link between rednile's light industrial building (an old button factory, it turns out), and the place on Spike Island, Bristol where she normally works. Swindell appealed in the local press for ex-employees of the factory to get in touch and one – Shauna – did. Swindell then interviewed her about work and redundancy in the building. The stories, edited as a sound file, are comic and touching. It's easy to forget that not long ago all these art spaces were populated by dozens of people of all ages working together in family atmospheres – sometimes literally. Swindell mourns the passing of these communities in a humble and thoughtful way.
Hazel Hammond on the other hand interacts with her audience in a very different way. She is publicly knitting herself into a cocoon. This is adorned with large beads made from dough on which she asks people to write “something they want rid of”. The beads are then knitted into the cocoon making it rattle when it moves. When the piece is finished she will hang it up and it will all eventually rot away, troubles and all. I just hope the person who wanted to lose the collaboration between East 17 and Gabrielle is happy. Hammond continues this piece on a UK tour that runs until September. Visit her myspace at hazelcocoon for more information.
The third Bristolian piece was more in the way of a performance to open the space, which prior to this show has only been a studio and not a gallery. Hal Camplin, dressed as a badger, performed a song that drew on his walks around Sunderland (in the suit, I believe). Inscriptions from benches, signs and things overheard seemed to make up the lyrics. The badger suit didn't stop him being offered a job as a motor mechanic apparently. He also jumped into a paddling pool of polystyrene and gold petals. I don't really know why, but it seemed an important moment.
"Protest Is Beautiful"
Freee
1000000mph Project Space, Bethnal Green
2nd June - 1st July 2007
There is much to protest about these days, but how to go about it in an era when The Who's “Won't Get Fooled Again” rattles around the brain at the (non) election of a new Prime Minister, whilst doubling as the title music for the very shiny CSI: Miami?
Freee – Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan – hope to place a kind of honest protest at the centre of cultural activity with their show at 1000000mph in Bethnal Green. Outside the gallery is a shop sign overhead, in which the three artists hold up the name of the show made as a funereal wreath in letters of yellow flowers. It's seems like a memorial to protest and its potential while embracing a need to sweeten the pill of sloganeering. Freee make works that amuse rather than alienate. You might not agree with everything they say, but you'll probably smile at the work and acknowledge that they probably have a point, unlike the ranting nutter flogging political platitudes that you cross the road to avoid.
There's a smartness in the work that doesn't overstep itself. In the 2006 video piece, “How To Talk To Public Art”, they ask simple questions of statues and sculpture throughout Manchester. A film of these small interventions runs on a loop. Highlights include: “Is it me, or do monarchs have an unfair advantage when being seen or heard?”; “Insurgents, criminals and terrorists banded together to place obstacles on the street as barricades to prevent the forces of law and order from reaching their city centre strongholds” and “One day scientific progress, digital technology, social engineering and genetic manipulation will allow us all to be astronauts”. The last slogan is delivered as three speech bubbles as Dave, Andy and Mel vacantly chew gum (it makes them look like they might be talking, but can't be bothered really). To me it imparts a naïve hope coupled with a kind of agnosticism. In short, there are probably more important things to do.
This could all be ironic postmodern guff, but I don't think so. Freee talk about encouraging a rounded, questioning, free(e) thinking citizenry that are awkward and searching, rather than blindly towing any party line, which is an encouraging idea in an era beset with false gurus, celebrity endorsements and plug-in air fresheners.
A large photograph – hinting at the iconic Ramones LP – carries the slogan “Don't let the media have a monopoly on the freedom of speech” on three white t-shirts. It's a striking image, one that uses a retro touchstone, but comes from people who have heard the LP, rather than simply thinking the photo cool. It's this happiness to engage in real issues rather than posture over a pair of Converse All Stars that makes me warm to Freee.
Of course, at the heart of this work (and it is in the heart, at least as much as the head), is the one irony they can't escape: Don't follow leaders, and that includes us. Think for yourself.
Protest Is Beautiful is beautiful.
Read this on the Artist's Newsletter site
1000000mph doesn't appear to have website
"Degree Show"
Janet Manogue
UCLAN, Preston
11 Jun 2007 — 14 Jun 2007
Though the Great War may almost be beyond living memory, Janet Manogue seeks to record and remember its effect on lives and landscape through her poised and accomplished artwork. This elegantly hung work (way above the standard of her peers), uses the calm iconography of trench maps to demonstrate how a meaningless chaos grew up and out from the Paschendale mud in the service of what now seems a pointless and remote conflict. Simple series of images form the core of the show, and although most of the work is framed and wall based the logic of these works seems to be best expressed on a small concertina book mounted on a small ledge.
Manogue overlays prints of different line maps of a battlefield (we are always blue, the enemy always red), until the images move from sense to a very real non-sense. The final image of one sequence is as dense and hard to pick apart as any Jackson Pollock. Each line nominally represents a trench or border, but in fact shows how little was gained for such a high cost, only to be lost and reclaimed for further loss of life.
By not including the human figure in all but a very few drawings, Manogue has created a restriction similar to that imposed by the War Office on the Official War Artists of the time. No dead bodies were to be depicted.
In three delicately coloured, modestly sized lithographs a more detailed battle map takes shape. The final piece (of three), is annotated to show how many men fell or are buried across the landscape, whether officially or still unfound.
The use of maps is not uncommon in art these days, but by using the decorative and functional elements of charts that were both in flux and speculative whilst being designed to serve a very clear, albeit temporary, purpose, Manogue throws the narrative they imply forward to our own troubled times. All areas, this works implies, are up for grabs, if men in power decide to fight for it or for what lies beneath.
The irony of course is there were times during the slaughter of the Western Front that the land was unmappable due to the rain and the shelling. It may be a kind of artistic archeology that drives Manogie forward. Her great grandfather survived the Great War but was gassed, and according to her family was “never the same” and never spoke of his experiences.
Perhaps the interior is as difficult to chart as any Belgian field-cum-crater. Manogue hints at this, but perhaps her next suite of work will explore it further. I hope so.
"Plot"
by Judith Dean
3°W Gallery, Grasmere
11th Dec 2006 - 31st Mar 2007
Best known for winning the Jerwood Sculpture Prize (for Field, in 2005), Judith Dean has just completed a residency at The Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere. A solo show has opened to present the work completed during her time there.
The three room space, which is small and oddly configured, is full of interventions and objects, many of which have their origins in the allotment Dean worked in throughout the summer as a way of contemplating how her work might proceed. Roots of plants are presented as wall pieces; a molehill is transplanted into the space, on which a monitor shows a short loop of the molehill itself being made, and moulds of other molehills (complete with grass and bits of soil still impressed into the white plaster). These Moleds are then flipped and displayed on similarly upturned carpet tiles. A hose is coiled on two non-matching brackets in front of a blue ink stain dripped down the white wall (Water Feature). Next to that is a low boxy construction surrounding a part of the gallery floor denuded of its carpet and sprinkled with compost and sequins. A sheep skull – something of a Cumbrian icon – surmounted with a butterfly sits next to it all. It is called Plot (lost).
A drive to pare away is evident in various forms throughout the gallery. An understairs cupboard is open, showing the usual detritus, but there is also a large “rubbish kebab” made from trash collected locally. Parts of the walls have been skinned to reveal shelves on which small pieces made from coloured thread are displayed. Dean was probably the kind of kid who continually looked under rocks to see what was there.
Outside Egde (Grasmere Version) is made up of two windowless frames, one on the floor leaning against the wall and the other on the wall itself. If indeed there was a window it would show a view back towards Grasmere village, taking in Helm Crag and other peaks. On either side of this non-window are twenty odd postcards of Grasmere. These postcards present a glossy, ideal version of the village. Again, we're invited to consider the surface and the assumptions that surface presents, only this time we are not shown what is behind. Of course it's there when we leave the gallery.
In the accompanying book – which is rather gorgeous by the way – Dean talks of some pieces being “elements” rather than works that could have a life away from this exhibition. In that sense the show hovers between installation and exhibition and is all the more intriguing for it. The works/elements feed off one another and a sense of purpose and enquiry gently gathers momentum as one moves around.
Dean is concerned with both the surface of her surroundings and also in finding out what lurks beneath that same skin, including the gloss that language can give to art. The titles like the works themselves are, witty and smart, adding to the pieces without sledgehammering some “meaning” into place. But any meaning is probably hiding just under the surface anyway.
"Fred"
Cumbria
30st September - 15th October 2006
Covering the whole of Cumbria for the first two weeks in October with all sorts of non-gallery work (it was on hills, in business centres, restaurants, fields and by lakes and pathways), FRED is marketed as an Art Invasion, but it's a benign, entertaining kind of assault, bring smiles to the faces of those who stumble across it.
This is the third annual FRED and it goes from strength to strength. There may not have been anyone with a reputation like Jenny Holzer (who was included last year), but the work shown reached out to the public in all sorts of ways.
With 60 or so artists showing over 40 locations it's difficult to single out particular pieces in such a diverse event but Graham Martin's “View” - made up of exquisitely produced medical cabinets containing bottles with distillations of views and viewpoints into capsules and tonics, coupled with well-written and witty prescriptions - “may induce feelings of the sublime” - stands out as ambitious and original in its approach to the issue of land use and our attitude towards that use. On a lighter note Kate Brundrett replaced part of a dry stone wall with kitchen utensils and accessories, providing a new take on the readymade.
In Ambleside, Margaret James-Barber's scented suitcases evoked memories of holidays and times past and a gold leaf covered shed (Russell Mills and Ian Walton), drew on the spirit of Schwitters who died in Ambleside just after receiving British citizenship. On the backs of local buses Sally Barker's recreation of the iconic view up Wasdale in roast lamb from sheep that grazed within that same view turned heads and asked questions about where we get what we eat. Very FRED.
Richard Box's “Shake Pole” was the highest profile piece, attracting media attention from all over the north of England. Consisting of hundreds of fluorescent strip lights planted under pylons on Hardendale Fell, it attracted a fascinated audience who waited each evening as dusk fell and as the electricity leaked from the wires overhead it caused the lights to glow, creating a work that seemed to come alive as you watched it.
The last piece I saw was at the Stainmore Cafe above Brough. Artist Jana had handed out cameras to truck drivers and encouraged them to take pictures on their journeys around the country. The pick of these were then shown back at the cafe on a wall converted onto a gallery. It all looked pretty good with a big mug of tea on a Sunday morning.
So that's FRED for 2006. Reaching out by being out there, not afraid to have some fun, but happy to be serious.
“When We Were Here”
Art Gene, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria
19th August - 19th September 2006
Barrow-in-Furness is a town with economic and social problems, but with Art Gene it also has a forward thinking, professional and original centre for contemporary art providing a commentary and engagement in its regeneration. “When We Were Here” looks back over six artists' work, all of whom have completed residencies over the past year. The initial impression of the show is that of a reigned in cornucopia. There's a variety here, to be sure, but it's a measured kind of variety.
Milena Bonilla's “any place like this” postcards show the scar tissue left when urban areas undergo neglect or change. It's the in-between, boarded up and budlea'd that grabs her attention, though she moves onto the potential of the screened off buildings cocooned and waiting for a bright new future.
The slightness of the cards is offset by John Dummett's exuberant piece “Thought For All”. It's a large assemblage of brightly coloured balloons, bunting and other party ephemera. There are words here too, worked into the decoration indicating a territorial claiming or reverie for territory lost. There's an irony in the way he's built a frame for the material and placed it on a set up for musical chairs so that the seats are acting as a plinth, not as places to sit. It speaks volumes about colonization of spaces people are led to believe would be theirs, but get taken from them to suit, well, to suit people in suits.
A metaphorical take on the re-ordering of urban space is offered by Minna Kantonen. Civic workers are arranged, within their workspaces, in order of height. Chains of Office and other clues (people in jeans, rather than suits), hint at the real power structures. It's a subversive take on power and influence, though amusingly the three people in the Mayor's Office reflect exactly the real hierarchy. The detritus and ephemera of office life is included too and the more you look, the more you see. My favourite is the Quiz Book stashed under a desk, possibly for when the boss is away.
Reunions and blind dates can be tricky, and “When We Were Here” is a mixture of both. Paul Moss has curated the work well and there is a dialogue, though stuttering at times, between some of the pieces. Like an ensemble movie, a lot of the work is done in the casting. The six artists were originally selected for the residencies partly for an interest in, or an engagement with regeneration in some way and the work was left to look after itself. Because of this some pieces, while fine in their own right, seem a little out of context, but it shows an ongoing vibrancy and unpredictability at the heart of Art Gene's programme.
Commissioned for publication in Artist's Newsletter, November 2006
"DOODAH"
Carl Von Weiler
Storey Gallery, Lancaster
15th July - 26th August 2006
On entering the gallery I am confronted by pretty much nothing, except for a cage around the statue of Victoria and Albert at one end of the space. In this visual desert a small tear in the coving above seems important until I'm jolted by a loud thwack of a ball on the wall behind me. I flinch, but there is no ball, just a recording of a ball being hit with a racket; hard and repeatedly against the wall. It's like being in a haunted squash court. Simply put, we're hearing the memory of an event that took place in here. At times the noise is so convincing I feel I should duck and my stomach tenses as it moves towards me. It's like the reverse of that scene in 'Apocalypse Now' when Willard and the Chef go looking for mangoes in the jungle. There is silence there but it's oppressive and pregnant until a tiger appears. Sadly, there's no tiger here, but that feeling of oppression and threat is present.
As the phantom ball ricochets around the hidden multi-speaker set up, I am aware of there being other, more human sounds, existing below the loudness of the primary noises. These are voices saying “in”, “out” and reciting numbers, but only in nearly numerical order, like a flawed way of measuring. The artist is scoping out the space – testing it's very real boundaries - at the same time as recording and memorializing it, in the same way Centre Court is measured and scored with human movement and interaction. This space is normally host to quiet contemplation and this show blows all that away with it's racket (and ball).
DOODAH was specifically commissioned in order to draw attention to the bare fabric of the gallery as after this show the Storey Gallery is closing for a full scale refurbishment, though the gallery's activities will continue. Consequently the acoustics of the space will almost certainly change, so the memorialization inherent here seems appropriate. It also provides the first echo of past shows.
Unlike other time-based installations there's no pay-off or punchline, no single moment I feel I have to wait for to “get” the piece, but I like that. I don't feel like I need to stay until an artist-sanctioned “end”. A refreshing act of humility on the part of Von Weiler.
Outside the main gallery there is a counterpart piece to the sound installation ('DAH', to the other gallery's 'DOO'). It's a large white pillar covered in charcoal dust that was applied during what can only be described as a frenzied attack, every bit as intense as the sounds next door. What we're left with here is, I suppose, a negative of the sound piece. This is a silent record of an activity. For my money, the sound piece is where it's at and no counterweight is needed. If anything the water is muddied by something so arbitrary (why a pillar, especially one installed especially?), though I can see how it would appeal to a sense of balance.
'Doodah' is a word that indicates something not quite remembered correctly, like thingummy or oojit. It's ephemeral too, as if an idea can't quite be concretized properly. In these ways Von Weiler chose just the right name for the piece, as there's nothing much more ephemeral than sound. Even the picture used to illustrate this article/review is simply a picture of the empty gallery. It may be a stock photo, or maybe it was taken during the exhibition, or it's installation. You'll never know.
On the whole it's a visceral experience and one I urge you to try it for yourself.
"The Life and Music of Nick Cave - An Illustrated Biography"
Maximillian Dax and Johannes Beck
Die Gestallen Verlag
ISBN: 3 931126 27 7
Nick Cave has grown from a slightly behind the curve Australian Punk rocker to one of the best singer-songwriters. I was going to write ...of his generation, but that seems superfluous. This book documents his career from school up until The Boatman's Call (1997).
The book is (by the authors' own admission), not a typical biography. The pictures are full page and beautifully put together. On flicking through they don't seem to make much sense and seemed to resemble those terrible annuals you used to see, but having read the text the pictures buffer between chapters and act as counterpoint to that text. Very clever.
On the downside, the text is borderline hagiography. It's informative enough, though the authors pull back from going into the kind of depth that some fans enjoy. The analysis of Cave as an artist is fairly superficial, though his novel (And The Ass Saw The Angel), is treated well. Sadly the fact that this book was critically mauled on it's publication and barely read since is mentioned only briefly, despite Cave's labouring on it being a recurrent theme over the previous pages. The effect of this project's reception on him would have made an interesting piece.
Interestingly his career appears to have been more focussed since then. His heroin habit is similarly tracked without criticism. Whilst I applaud the unsensational nature of the text, a little more edge would have been welcome. There are no quotes from Cave himself and only a few from others, so all the characters remain enigmas which is curious as Cave's work has of late become confessional, though he cloaks his work in storytelling and character driven songs.
The book, therefore, is neither fish nor fowl. Stick to the collage of pictures and you get a strong impression of the scuffling nature of being band and of the not-very-glamourous-at-all world they live in until they get to the point that Cave is at now. It's beautfully composed and well worth a look if you're a fan. The definitve biography of a fascinating artist remains to be written.
Oh and see Page 82 for the best footwear that any rock star has ever worn.
Reviewed for Neo's Bookshop, an online art bookstore attached to a local coffee shop / gallery.
"Not Afraid: The Rubell Family Collection"
Mark Coetzee
Phaidon Press
ISBN: 0714843938 (hardback)
This large format book documents what, to me, was an unknown collection. In a former DEA Warehouse in Miami is a major private collection of contemporary art. It has been gathered together by the Rubell family over 40 years and features some of the most important and notorious visual artists of our times.
The great thing about private collections is that they can be as politically incorrect and quixotic as the collectors like. In the short essay and interview that precedes the main body of the book (200+ pages of illustrations), the notion of collecting rather than curating is discussed.
Mera Rubell: When the collection first opened (1996), we were completely paralyzed. We suddenly felt like we had gone from having the freedom to make totally personal choices to having the responsibility of a public facility. We bought work we thought was significant or important inside the context of our collection instead of work we just responded to instinctively.
Don Rubell: It's like a rock group making their second album, all fear and no instinct. And then one day we looked at each other and realized we were being completely crazy. We decided we would go back to the way we had always collected art, come what may.
So what we have here is a document recording the collection, but there is a wonderful difference. Most of the photographs are taken in situ. Consequently the warehouse itself becomes a crucial part of the display, as it must be for those who visit it. The captions reflect this and highlight the juxtaposition of works which otherwise exist in different universes. In how many books or catalogues, or even galleries, have you looked across a Richard Long stone circle to see a Jeff Koons inflatable flower? Not many, Benny. It's also a lovely touch to see the any viewers caught in the pictures are blurred. Semiologists may have a field day with this publication.
The art itself may not be to everyone's taste, but that's part of the point. Key artists include Francisco Clemente, Wilhelm Sasnal, Zhang Huan, Robert Gober, Cindy Sherman. The list really does go on and on. The Rubells' taste is eclectic, but centres (or at least it seems to me), around painting that is now faintly out of fashion, but still packs a punch when seen close up. The sculptural pieces (that is anything not 2D), are more conceptual and the space they inhabit lends a solemn air to much of it.
Over the 200 pages one gets a feeling that the art here has room to breathe. The walls are white, but the environment is more like a warehouse than a gallery. Consequently the grotesque and beautiful seem more connected to the world and to each other.
It is refreshing to leaf through a book that is a genuine record of a collection and it's concrete nature and the inter-relationships within itself, rather than a flat collection of images that make up such a collection. This, for once, is what a collection actually looks like.
Reviewed for Neo's Bookshop, an online art bookstore attached to a local coffee shop / gallery.
"Conceptual Art"
Tony Godfrey
Phaidon Press
ISBN: 0714833886
Conceptual Art is at once the most problematic and simple of late modern art genres. Problematic because it dealt with complicated subjects – the nature of seeing and of thinking coupled with a hard-nosed criticism of galleries (public and commercial) and, often, of the capitalist system that supported those galleries. Framed in an era of political turmoil (Viet Nam, Paris riots, feminism etc.), the artists attempted to reflect those struggles. And simple because often the work would be ephemeral, even to the point of not really exiting outside the artist's head. The paintbrush was discarded for a cheap camera, some Basildon Bond and an Underwood typewriter. Twenty years ago it was seen as a failed dead end – the price of being a self-critical art form with a phobia for galleries. All the major artists were supported by jobs in education or criticism (which was a hallmark of the genre anyway) or had sold out and produced gallery friendly versions of their work. Some had even found a way to justify a way back into painting.
In this beautifully illustrated book Tony Godfrey explores the roots of Conceptual Art (basically Duchamp's 'Fountain') and clearly traces it forward through movements like Fluxus and Minimalism to the high water mark years (1968-74), and then charts it's decline and change. He also looks, in separate chapters at 'Artists Using Photography', 'Women Conceptual Artists' and 'Artists Using Words Since 1980' which is a convenient way to shine a light on the later generations that have taken something (style or substance) from Conceptual Art. Jeff Koons' Rabbit and Damian Hirst's Sheep are cousins under the skin and have Duchamp and Warhol as ancestors. Art and Language are probably some kind of wicked uncle.
By constantly referring to pieces of work – many of which I had not heard of, such was the transient nature of Conceptual Art – Godfrey shows that contrary to received wisdom this art was diverse and even, gulp, fun. His arguments are simple and thought through. This sumptuous book is a fascinating read for anyone in an interest in how the ugly duckling of modernism became, if not a swan, then a rather fetching duck.
Reviewed for Neo's Bookshop, an online art bookstore attached to a local coffee shop / gallery
