Tension

January 26, 2014 //

The main focus at school has been preparing for the Fine Art Work In Progress Show. There is a nice tension of activity in the studios and workshops with everyone busy for the deadlines.

I have been working on my ‘Paradise on Earth’ series.

Paradise Road SW4 test print

I wasn’t happy with the screen prints I had done on paper using grayscale and then a strip of colour added by mono-printing. For this to be successful it will need a separate screen making for the strip, using paper to block off the strip means the lines aren’t that clean. Also the colours needed more attention.

However I was happy with the screen prints I did onto polyester. Using opaque matt grey textile ink through a fine mesh screen meant I had to wash the screen after every print and the image did disintegrate on the screen but I was able to get a few copies to work with.

Screen print over sublimation on polyester

Printing the grey ink heavily over the high saturation colour on polyester blocked areas off leaving jewel like glimpses between the grey. I lost some detail with the heavy ink but ran another layer over with print room ink in a darker colour which brought it back a bit. The clash of the dot matrix pattern on the screen mesh and the fabric weave created a moire effect which gives the image a sort of 3D effect and also looks a bit like driving rain.

Screen print on polyester

I printed grey straight onto white polyester leaving a blank strip for the colour sublimation print. Working with the polyester spray-mounted onto thin card to keep the image square I used the heat-press to add the strip of colour.

Big relief once I had managed to mount these prints onto aluminium. I used 3M positionable adhesive on a roll. It was a tricky process to get it straight with no creases and took most of a weekend to get both done and the edges cut and sealed off.

Both pieces work with the idea of a glimpse of colour through the grey – a space for the imagination to flourish within even a grim urban landscape. The idea of the plastic palm trees as a symbol for paradise. How fulfilling is this idea of association.

I enjoyed the film Gravity at the IMAX and have tried to hold in my head the backdrop of space – drop upon drop of light. The effects were amazing, really vertiginous and the relentless tension was exhausting. I am planning a new piece of work where I aim to create the feeling of the universe, some vast space. I am going to try this with acquatint on a large steel plate. I spent a whole day sanding the plate which is almost a metre square. I was in so much pain at then end but hopefully it will be worth it if I can get a good range of tone and depth.

Gravity

Floating in space will be an image derived from a photograph of Paradise Forum, Birmingham and added as a photo-etching. I was inspired by the two girls sitting on the steps, they look like they are ready to leave this grey version of paradise. It’s easy to forget the magnitude of where we are.

Paradise Forum

Some time ago…

A series of 8 short films were screened at the BFI London film festival under the heading Bizarre Ride.
They came under the thrill section of the programme, a new way of labeling the films rather than by country that has been adopted by the London Film Festival in the last couple of years. Since the nice lady with the boots was replaced by someone who thought a trailer featuring pop corn consumption was appropriate.
I’m not sure any labels should be applied. Alphabetical would be fine and leave people to decide for themselves if the film was a thrill or a dare. The Spanish film ‘That wasn’t me’ was terrifying rather than thrilling in the knowledge that it reflected the reality of child soldiers and the horrors they are forced to commit and endure.

‘That wasn’t me’ directed by Esteban Crespo

The beautiful French entry ‘5 metres 80’ was an entrancing spectacle of gawky giraffes performing elegant acrobatic dives into a deserted swimming pool.

‘5 Metres 80’ directed by Nicolas Devereaux

Maxine Peake gave a wonderful strong performance in ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ which swerved from comedy to gore while trying to reveal the undercurrent of repressed emotions.

‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ directed by Michael Pearce

‘The Slaughter’ saw a father and son bonding through a harsh lesson in how to kill and butcher a pig. Vegetarians look away now. Some people did walk out -so was this more upsetting than the rape and bludgeoning we had seen in ‘It wasn’t me’ or was it just a coincidence they had to leave.

‘The Slaughter’ directed by Jason B. Kohl

‘The Double’ Richard Ayoade’s second film turned out to be a decidedly grey comedy.

Set in an indeterminate period a sickly light pervaded the film, along with a musty stench of deprivation and humiliation.

The Double

It was I suppose a story of self discovery, facing your true self. The horror of subjugation went on so long and the final denouement was so brief that we were still left with the grey feeling at the end.

I am however glad I saw it, I might even watch it again.

I visited Daniel Silver’s ‘Dig’ on Halloween. It was suitably other worldly.

Daniel Silver ‘Dig’

Set in the Old Odeon Site just off Tottenham Court Road was quite extraordinary to move between two such different locations in such a short journey.

Daniel Silver ‘Dig’

Visiting at dusk seemed to be a good time to go.

Daniel Silver ‘Dig’

Unearthly shadows added to the aura of mystery.

Daniel Silver ‘Dig’

The raw bones of the building above revealed a brutal concrete structure which seemed fitting with the atmosphere created below.

It was the sort of building we associate with hot dusty countries where it is uncertain whether the building is in a state of construction or destruction and history is ancient and full of mythology.

Daniel Silver ‘Dig’

At the entrance to the site multiples of artefacts were displayed.

Mass produced and slightly alien in appearance.

Daniel Silver ‘Dig’

These collections in the brightly lit arena do not possess the magic of the lower excavations. Like any object removed from its archeological source something is lost.

Like mass produced souvenirs.

Daniel Silver ‘Dig’

It was interesting to hear what Mark Leckey had to say about his exhibition The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things during his talk at the RCA.

The exhibition promised a kind of ‘techno-animism’, where the inanimate comes to life, returning us to ‘an archaic state of being, to aboriginal landscapes of fabulous hybrid creatures, where images are endowed with divine powers, and even rocks and trees have names’

In his lecture, In the Long Tail (2008), Leckey describes the ways in which the ‘entire vastness’ of the internet caters for the desires of an infinitely long tail of consumers with minority interests. As modern technology becomes ever more pervasive and sophisticated, objects begin to communicate with us: phones speak back, refrigerators suggest recipes, and websites seem to predict what we want. While this takes us into the realms of science fiction, it also boomerangs us back into the past and a more animistic relationship to the things around us.

Mark Leckey The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things

‘The status of objects’, Leckey argues, ‘is changing, and we are once again in thrall to an enchanted world full of transformations and correspondences, a wonderful instability between things animate and inanimate, animal and human, mental and material’. Our hyper-rationalism of modern technology has paradoxically produced its opposite, an ‘irrational’ magical realm – or as Marshall McLuhan, communication theorist, described “a resonating world akin to the old tribal echo chamber where magic will live again”.

For the exhibition he was able to request all sorts of objects that he had only previously seen on his computer screen. He chose items that possessed some quality or aura that made them in some way magical. Once the objects were delivered to the gallery though he seemed a bit disappointed when he finally came face to face with them. He seemed to be saying that he preferred them as images on his computer screen where he had the possibility to transform them though software wizardry. To make them vibrate with digital life.

He was fascinated by the digital animation Viral Vacuum.

Viral Vacuum

Particularly the ability of the cat to pass through glass. The rules of the solid world do not entirely apply.

Viral Vacuum cat

He should check out Dynamo magician impossible.

Dynamo Magician Impossible

Tags Bizarre Ride, Dig, Gravity, Mark Leckey, Paradise Forum, Paradise Road SW4, The Double, Work in Progress

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wonder

January 19, 2014 //

‘For everyone who has philosophized, now or in the past, has been motivated only by wonder. Now, wonder is defined as a constriction and suspension of the heart caused by amazement at the sensible appearance of something so portentous, great, and unusual, that the heart suffers a systole. Hence wonder is something like fear in its effect on the heart. This effect of wonder, then, this constriction and systole of the heart, springs from an unfulfilled but felt desire to know the cause of that which appears portentous and unusual…’ Albertus Magnus (1200-1280) Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle.

This quote is from ‘The Artificial Kingdom’ by Celeste Olalquiaga a book recommended to me by artist Bridgette Ashton who I met when she led a walking tour of Hackney all about the Loddiges’ Nursery 1785 – 1852.

Bridget Ashton leading Loddiges’ Miscellanea Walk

We looked out for clues left behind from the Loddiges hothouses and exotic gardens that once were here.

History in Hackney

Trees like this have been in the area for 200 years yet still they remain other.

Hackney Town Hall

Bridget has a fascination with the Monkey Puzzle Tree.

Bridget Ashton Monkey Puzzle
papier mache, glitter, soap, found object

Bridget Ashton
Monkey Puzzle Tree Presentation Case

The Loddiges’ Miscellanea walk was part of ‘Wintergarden’ a collaboration between Sutton House and Transition Gallery.

Sutton House

Sutton house was an elegant backdrop to work that references the public pleasure houses of the mid 19th Century where tropical flora and fauna were displayed often for the first time in Europe.

Alison Stolwood
Dark Green Fritillary on Wildlife Attracting Mix
photomontage, digital c-type print

Focussing on contemporary artificiality and fake environments, the artists embrace the notion of a self conscious spectacle in the remaking of nature.

Rachael Adams

Mimei Thompson
Rhododendron Screen

Jo Wilmot
Neon Lights

Jackie Chettur
Ivor’s Chrysanthemums’

Jackie Chettur
I set out to pick a yellow bunch to place as a lamp on my table
white modelling wax, wax colour pigment, silk, wire, copper jug

International Lawns with Rebecca Eastland
Joppatowne (The Gunpowder Falls)
water clear casting resin

Darius Lambert

Cathy Lomax
Aloha from Hawaii
oil on card, mirrors on rotating mirror turntable

Cathy Lomax
Aloha from Hawaii

Annabel Dover
Holy Mountain
cut paper, glass dome, papier mache

Annabel Dover
Phantasm
cut paper, orchid cloche , peat

Annabel Dover
Lux
dressing table mirrors, cocktail glasses, cut out hothouse flowers

Went to two very interesting talks at the RCA , Peter Kennard whose photo-collage work has a political agenda and David Rayson who dreams of escaping suburbia aboard a galleon bound for some exotic island of the imagination.

Peter Kennard is concerned with getting a message across so admits his work may sometimes appear unsubtle, but then he has created some iconic images that are globally recognisable.

Peter Kennard

David Rayson makes drawings that originate in his own back yard but often offer a way out to sail to distant shores.

There were so many of his ideas that I relate to.

David Rayson

Listening to these speakers helped me think about ideas for my dissertation – to clarify the difference between utopia (Peter Kennard – social ideology) and paradise (David Rayson – fantasy landscape).

I thought these painting by Caleb Taylor look interesting. Showing in NYC though – only saw this via the re-title.com newsletter.

I like what they have to say about the idea of access open/denied. Looking through.

Caleb Taylor
Space Gate I – Pull
2012
Oil and acrylic on canvas

Bands of dark grey and black paint, like bars of a gate, sweep across the surface in broad gestures – vertically, horizontally, or crisscrossing – blocking or revealing the more luminous bright colors underneath. Gates serve a dual purpose: they deny entry, but they also allow it. This tension and duality carries on in Taylor’s work with investigations into what is near/far, foreground/background, concealed/revealed. According to Taylor, his paintings “create non-specific places where modes of looking are as much the content as material, subject or presentation strategy”.

Fascinating to read about how Gina Soden creates her atmospheric photographs on Rise Art website

Mine:Changing Room Gina Soden

‘I like to shoot at the best time of day if possible, the ‘Golden Hour’. The light is thick and takes over the scene, picking up a lot of texture. In high contrast scenes such as these, many cameras find it hard to depict all of the tonal range in one single exposure, so I blend around 5-9 shots, painting in different layers of exposures, (depending on the scene) to gain the best possible dynamic range in one shot. This is otherwise known as HDR. The process brings out the shadow detail and gives a painterly feel to the image. I chose this aesthetic as I like to breathe life into the scenes, in certain light the colours can look dull and flat in camera and I like to be able to depict what my eyes can see, with a bit of extra pop. I also like to shoot the ceiling, middle and floor of the image (5 shots each sometimes with the HDR process, so the image can made out of 15-18 images) If it is a wide angle scene with lots of verticals, this tilt shift lens gives me little to no distortion, and I have a HUGE file at the end of the process which can be printed at a very large size.’

Tags Albertus Magnus, Alison Stolwood, Annabel Dover, Bridgette Ashton, Caleb Taylor, Cathy Lomax, Darius Lambert, David Rayson, Gina Soden, Hackney, International Lawns, Jackie Chettur, Jo Wilmot, Loddiges Nursey, Mimei Thompson, Monkey Puzzle Tree, Peter Kennard, Rachael Adams, Sutton House, Transition Gallery, Wintergarden, wonder

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The Gardener

January 13, 2014 //

‘Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden’

So it’s been a while since I last made a post on this blog.

It’s hard to keep up a diary sometimes when so much is happening.

I am going to try and keep it more current so that when I write about something it is still fairly fresh in my mind. I often feel I don’t have time to reflect on things so this space is a good discipline for that purpose.

Back to school after the Christmas break. It’s been a surreal time as my Father, a passionate gardener while he was able, passed away just before Christmas and this has meant my thoughts have been scattered in all sorts of directions.

Normality mostly, then tears. So my work is about ideas of paradise, still it is an abstract thought for me.

I have been working with a photograph taken in Paradise Road in Stockwell. The children’s playground there has plastic palm trees. The palm trees look like oversized Playmobil with added bolts.

Somehow I want to convey that even with a scene so far removed from an idyllic idea of paradise there is a space for imagination, for a glimpse to something else. There must always be an escape route.

I made some images for sublimation prints using greyscale but leaving a thin strip of highly saturated colour and put these onto polyester.

I also screen printed the image in dark grey onto paper and then used monoprint directly onto the screen to add a thin strip of bright colours.

Art Lacuna Gallery near Clapham Junction are running a series of FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY exhibitions. The first of which was paintings by Ralph Anderson.

I found these really interesting in the use of colour and how he works with greyscale and then adds the colour afterwards in a swirling spectrum of refracted light.

Now a catch up from November – a quick run through of some of the exhibits I visited in The Giardini at the Venice Biennale.

The Giardini

Still lush in November.

Switzerland Pavilion

We were blessed with amazing sunshine to add an extra dimension to the Swiss Pavilion.

The pile of husks in the Russian Pavilion had accumulated over the summer

Russian Pavilion

The need for umbrellas was not quite so crucial this visit as there was no longer a torrential downpour of gold coins from above but a stuttering trickle.

The coins have been circulated across the globe as each participant kept their souvenir

Russian Pavilion

Only a few coins remain in the system.

Korean Pavilion

The Korean Pavilion looks enticing with its kaleidoscopic lights and ritual shoe removal. Maybe it would better to only suppose what was inside

Somehow missed the Canadian Pavilion last visit

Shary Boyle ‘Ophiodea’

Using projections onto a stage set in a very dark setting the mood shifted

Shary Boyle

between dreamscapes

Shary Boyle

and stark illumination

Shary Boyle

As intended the elements had been at work in the Australian Pavilion spattering mud, releasing paper and rusting metal.

I was invited to look in the books stacked in the corner- the ageing pages had been cut into, hurrying their disintegration while creating new readings.

Simryn Gill – Australian Pavilion

Enjoyed another blast of Sarah Sze in the American Pavilion.

Sarah Sze

Fresh green moss.

Sarah Sze

American Pavilion – Sarah Sze

I was interested to look at the Shaker Gift Drawings. These drawings were believed to be created by sixteen shakers possessed by heavenly beings who offered a portal to view heaven itself.

Shaker Gift Drawing

Superfluous decoration was forbidden in the sect but these depictions inspired from heaven were exceptions and used to reflect life on earth in the shaker community.

The idea of The Encyclopaedic Palace which was the thinking behind the Central Pavilion this year was as a repository for all knowledge. With this all encompassing idea in mind the curator has included lots of outsider art.

There were many collections shown here which were never intended for such a setting, some quite private images on public display, all these manifestations of endeavour showing what a curious bunch we are.

The collection of houses made by an insurance clerk from Vienna are exhibited under the names of the artist and architect who found them in a junk shop.

They create a kind of suburbia to the destruction of Manhattan.

Jack Whitten ‘9-11-01’
The Houses of Peter Fritz

Jack Whitten’s huge memorial to 9/11 has a heavily textured surface.

It looks like it could be made of the very debris from the site.

Jack Whitten ’09-11-01′

The Netherlands – ‘Room with Broken Sentence’ shows a series of work by Mark Manders.

Mark Manders

The windows are covered with newspaper giving an under construction look to the pavilion and inside too the theme of under construction continues with a casual studio in progress setting, polythene wrappings pushed aside, work propped or submissively sited which somehow emphasizes the power and scale of the big work

Mark Manders

Couldn’t resist another trip into the undulating wombworld of Joana Vasconcelas

Portuguese Pavilion

Joana Vasconcelas

Tags Art Lacuna, Garden, Giardini, Jack Whitten, Joana Vasconcelas, Mark Manders, Paradise, Ralph Anderson, Sarah Sze, Shaker Gift Drawings, Shary Boyle, Simryn Gill, Stockwell

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Singing to a different tune

November 28, 2013 //

Artists experimenting in new mediums, or changing the speed of the record.

Lutz Bacher ‘Black Beauty’ at the ICA

Lutz Bacher

A shattered mirror set on a slag heap. Or is it obsidian which is altogether more magical.

Lutz Bacher

The space is sparsely populated, it is the crunching underfoot that is the joy. And no doormat.

Lutz Bacher

Upstairs it is all glitz and showbiz, a strange game of chess to one side and the eerie mechanical rotations of a deserted fairground to the other.

Lutz Bacher

All the while the slowed down lullaby of an Elvis Presley classic weevils soporifically into the brain.

Lutz Bacher

It made me smile but there was something sinister about its clean cut image.

One of the spaces often used for performance at the ICA had been painted by the Shanghai artist Zhang Enil.

Zhang Enlli

I wonder if the finished result ‘space painting’ fulfilled the artists expectations. I could appreciate the task undertaken here but think I would maybe like to see his other work that encompasses tangled wires and cardboard boxes. The room itself felt temporary with its flimsy walls and therefore any sense of transformation was lost.

Glasstress – White Light/ White Heat was a collateral event at the Venice Biennale.

Missed it first visit so on my second trip to Venice, this time with my RCA fellow students I wanted to have a look at this show with so many of the artists I admire in it.

The artists were invited to respond to the theme of light and heat using the medium of glass in some way. Being in Venice.

Some of these transgressions into an unfamiliar medium worked better than others.

Glasstress White Light/ White Heat

The setting once again was palatial.

Lucy and Jorge Orta ‘Amazonia: Tree of Life’

Matt Collishaw ‘East of Eden’

A very gothic and theatrical almost pantomime piece from Matt Collishaw. The mirror darkens and a swirling serpent appears. Impossible to photograph in the darkened setting, illusive like the snake.

Joana Vasconcelos ‘Babylon’

Rather than go with the glass itself Joana Vasconcelos has used her signature crochet work to create the mother of all chandeliers.

Not the tampons this time.

Hew Locke ‘Mummy’s Little Soldier’

There were stark contrasts in Hew Locke’s work, high end opalescent glass with all the little brown rubber arms reaching out – the fragile and the malleable. The child at play, the child at war.

Cornelia Parker ‘Decoy’

A tantalizing glass drum from Cornelia Parker.

Recycle Group

The Recycle Group aka artists Andrey Blokhin and Georgiy Kuznetsov created a dramatic clash of the natural spliced with science fiction.

Ron Arad ‘Last Train’

“Last Train” was inspired by a late night romantic episode experienced by Ron Arad as he witnessed a man with a large diamond ring graffiti on a train window. He was so mesmerized by watching the man draw onto the glass that he missed his last train. To recreate this experience he has invited artists such as Anthony Gormley and David Shrigley to use a specially created iPad programme to manipulate a virtual hand that scratches their drawings into a large piece of plate glass.

My own excursion into new mediums was to print a lithograph onto polyester.

I wanted to layer images of Avondale and Rialto over the image of the Avondale Rialto caravan. Dreams of grand excursions. Places this caravan will never visit.

The zinc plate was hand drawn with waxy pencils and printed over the sublimation images.

I also tried to make the polyester more translucent by applying extender the lithography press. I did several coats each side of the fabric and then hung it to dry in the paper dryers. This was not very successful.

The fabric dried in the shape it was hanging and it wasn’t very translucent in the dark areas.

The extender has given the fabric a strange quality though.

I have not quite given up on this image yet.

Tags Glasstress, ICA, Joana Vasconcelos, Lutz Bacher

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Mellow Fruitfulness

November 19, 2013 //

I am a little behind, as always, with my blogs and the days are so full at the RCA I wonder if I can keep up. I do want to keep this record of my thoughts and visits going if I can manage it.

The fruits are ripened, the harvest begins. How can we possibly reap all that autumn has to offer in one week of abundance.
I have avoided Frieze since the daddy longlegs incident. But there is so much else on offer, all at the same time.
I do enjoy New Sensations and went again this year despite my feelings that Saatchi should be made a pariah of the art world.
No chance that’s going to happen though. Has anyone made a comment on his behaviour to Nigella?

New Sensations

Anyway I did enjoy quite a lot of the work on show.
My favourite piece was a film by Philippa Kuligowski – ‘Dido’s Aeneid & Penelope’s Odyssey.

Philippa Kugliowski still from ‘Dido’s Aeneid & Penelope’s Odyssey’

An epic journey, captivating and magical.

Philippa Kugliowski still from 'Dido's Aenid & Penelope's Odyssey'

Philippa Kugliowski still from ‘Dido’s Aeneid & Penelope’s Odyssey’

I love the theatrical.
Other work I liked was by Bryn Lloyd-Evans and Simon Martin.

Bryn Lloyd Evans ‘Shuffle on Six O’Clock’

I wasn’t sure how to read this work, but I liked the components and the blocking off of nature to one square. I would have liked the chance to shuffle the pieces.

Simon Martin

Constructed nature, something I relate my work to.

Simon Martin

In the Future Can Wait section there were a lot of the familiar Charlie Smith artists. I always like Tom Ormond’s paintings.

Tom Ormond

I waited to see if Lee Holden’s construction came to life at all. It looked like it should.

Lee Holden

Gasping. ‘Figures of Speech’ the extraordinary underwater photographs of Emma Critchley.

Emma Critchley

I was impressed by the heavy texture of Chris Jones work. I feel I am hovering above the earth.

Chris Jones

The picture plane subverted. Could this be an example to help me understand the text for our seminar ‘The Flatbed Picture Plane’.

Chris Jones

I was surprised that I also enjoyed a visit to Christies Mulitplied event. It’s not something I would have visited before. I guess I have had bad experiences of visiting print shows on The Mall. Well, I went to one and the acres of framed glass was very off-putting. There was an interesting discussion at the first critical and historical studies lecture ‘Medium Post Medium’ about the taxonomies of the art world. The labels of painter, printmaker, photographer etc and how we each feel about these labels and the preconceptions they invoke. Whether the emphasis is on a craft/skill or the translation of an idea. Jack of all trades master of none. The craft/art/design sort of debate is supposed to be over. Barriers ought to have been crossed and in certain circles they have but mostly I still have to qualify any discussion about my work by saying it was fine art textiles or yes I’m studying printmaking – it’s in the fine art department. I am very clear, I am an artist not a printmaker (or a textile artist). I want my ideas to be paramount to the medium used.

Tags Bryn Lloyd-Evans, Chris Jones, Emma Critchley, Lee Holden, Multipled, New Sensations, Philippa Kuligowski, Simon Martin. The Future Can Wait, Tom Ormond

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To dream

November 13, 2013 //

‘The Rocket’ was my favourite film of the London Film Festival this year.

The Rocket

It is a tender story of a struggle to achieve your potential for a better life when all odds are against you. We see a family torn apart by superstition and helpless against state authority.
Displaced from their roots by the building of a damn whose vast brick edifice echoes the unfeeling power of the company men involved, the local people are treated like trees to be cleared from the forest, cut from their roots.

The Rocket

Promised paradise they are given infertile soil and poverty. Filmed in Laos with 20 government officials on set at any one time it is amazing that this film has been made.
The logistics and years of building trust and relationships have been worth the delicate negotiations involved. The director Kim Mordaunt and producer Sylvia Wilczynski needed to be sensitive to the politics and so were unable to be overtly critical and not allowed to film any scenes of conflict. Explosions (and there are many) often had to be filmed in Thailand and edited in later.
This is a film about the harsh beliefs of tradition versus the harsh reality of modernity. It shows the failure of trying to transplant a community.
The incredible natural performances of the two lead children who were only 8 and 10 at the time make this film a treasure as well as a tribute to self belief despite constant undermining and disaster.

The Rocket

The beautiful landscape of Laos is still littered with unexploded bombs and grenades designed to look like fruit.

Another film at the festival where the protagonist breaks from mundane reality to follow his dreams was ‘Sniffer’.

Anwar Ka Ajab Kissa

Disillusioned by the squalid dealings of humanity he witnesses through of his work as sleuth he gradually enters a surreal world where love is pure and true.

Anwar Ka Ajab Kissa

As the director Buddhadeb Dasgupta explained ‘Without magic, without dreams we do not live.’

There are dreams, there is the surreal and then there is The Chase. A highly improbable 1946 romp. Maybe pre Dallas the resurrection of a murdered heroine can be explained away as a medicated post traumatic stress induced dream. It was entertaining though, the baddies were bad, true love reigned and the dresses were fabulous.

The Chase

‘Babelling’ a collaborative installation from Terrace Gallery, Birmingham at Sluice Art Fair created a dramatic reception point to the upper floor.

Terrace Gallery at Sluice Art Fair ‘Babelling’

The idea of babbling is of creating confusion and the story of the tower of Babel is one of a harsh god who creates discord amongst people who had come together in a common purpose.

For this work three artists (Ian Andrews, David Millar, Paul Newman) had come together with the different languages of their individual practises to forge links and find harmony in creating a work centred on ideas of dislocation and chaos. The result was a visual orgy of matter that demonstrated a thoughtful balance. I really enjoyed it.

Teerace Gallery at Sluice Art Fair 'Babelling'

Terrace Gallery at Sluice Art Fair ‘Babelling’

It looked like the scattered peoples of the earth had returned with all their stuff.

I liked Sluice, it was chaotic, friendly and rambling. It had a village fete quality which was manageable and approachable though maybe some artists hoping their work would be seen might be disappointed to find it lost in the visual noise. Canvas and Cream Gallery made their debut at Sluice looking quite orderly and showing work from Chris Hawtin amongst others.

Emily and Joanna Gore from C&C Gallery at Sluice

The work I am thinking about at the moment is very much about the dream of a better place but maybe I am looking back too much with this idea. A lot of the reading I have been doing is about the nostalgia for when things were better, a time when we were still in harmony with nature but maybe I should try thinking about the future. The past is coloured by nostalgia, the future is uncertain. I feel I have three main threads that I am exploring. The intention to photograph places called Paradise. I’m not quite sure what I will do with these images yet, words like erase, space and misty come to mind. Then there is the work looking at everyday urban scenes, like roundabouts – with an added escape route, a tear, a break in time, a glimpse of paradise. Then there is the history, the layers to excavate to find the first human consciousness the time when the break with nature took place and the birth of civilisation began, humanity and it’s desires took shape.

Paradise Walk

Tags Babelling, Canvas and Cream, David Millar, Ian Andrews, Laos, Paradise, Paul Newman, Sluice Art Fair, Sniffer, Terrace, The Chase, The Rocket

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Untold/Told

November 11, 2013 //

Leon Chew and Andrew Curtis

New neighbours to the RCA, Dark Matter Studios is a workshop and gallery space opened by Zoe Dorelli and Dan Faine that both shows, edits and produces prints.

The opening show in this new space featured Leon Chew and Andrew Curtis (an alumni from RCA Printmaking) collaborating in ‘post industrial aesthetics’.

Concrete and discarded objects are given a wonderfully light touch in photographs which celebrate the surface textures, and architectural lines creating beautiful sculptures and narratives from things that might usually be overlooked.

Leon Chew and Andrew Curtis

Left over printing inks are poured and allowed to spread across the image giving a glow of warmth and new life.

Leon Chew and Andrew Curtis

The large scale monochrome photographs shown were taken at Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation of the rough cast concrete surfaces employed in this modernist utopia.

Leon Chew and Andrew Curtis

There is a dramatic blood red line that runs horizontally through each monochromatic image.

( the colour for a reason and the line for a reason I have forgotten.)

A laser level was used to mark a line around the gallery walls once the work had been hung and then the line was hand painted on so that it slices through each photograph at precisely the same height.

Leon Chew and Andrew Curtis

It’s looking close up at the materials that go into the structure that create the spectacle.

Twenty Feet From Stardom directed by Morgan Neville is a film with a similar principle. The backing singers that were the backbone of the Motown revolution have never been acknowledged for their talents until now.

The voices we thought we were hearing on the most famous popular songs were very often not the big stars but the unnamed session singer.

Finally their story (well a few of them) is told in this really moving film and it is astonishing how they were treated. Their soulful voices were used yet the soul of the person inside was ignored.

Twenty Feet From Stardom

The good news is they are back on stage, there is going to be a soundtrack album released and next year possibly even a tour which would be amazing.

These ladies took their treatment on the chin but in another festival release the unsung hero took his revenge when he felt undervalued. The film 11.6 tells the true story of security van driver Tony Musulin who executed an 11.6 million euro heist to humiliate his boss. This story isn’t over yet.

These people working behind the scenes make me think about ownership and authenticity.

Ideas explored in the exhibition at the British Museum earlier this year ‘The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman’

‘… a memorial to all the anonymous craftsmen that over the centuries have fashioned the manmade wonders of the world… The craftsman’s anonymity I find especially resonant in an age of the celebrity artist.” Grayson Perry

Tags 11.6, Andrew Curtis, Dark Matter Studio, Leon Chew, Twenty Feet from Stardom

Categories Uncategorized

Translation and transference

October 31, 2013 //

Incidence

Delighted to have my work ‘Incidence’ selected for the ArtLacuna Prize.

The selection panel included Julia Alvarez, Sonia Boyce and Jamie Shovlin so that made it even more special to be included.

ArtLacuna is an artist collective space set up by Wimbledon College of Art MA alumni.

The lacuna, or lexical gap, represents a gap in translation, a place where multiple meanings are applied, where meanings shift and new interpretations can be made.

: ArtLacuna Prize Exhibition

Great spot by the window. Also next to Jess Littlewood’s work which I am a big fan of.

ArtLacuna Prize Exhibition

Nice to meet up with old friends from previous exhibitions together – one of Euan G, Stewart’ s giant skulls here and also one of Hannah Williamson’s delicious tiny paintings.

ArtLacuna Prize exhibition

The photograph ‘Moss’ is by Gina Soden who I recently saw in Natural Selection at the Fine Art Contemporary Society.

Hannah Williamson Pieta

Loved this static projection by Laura Marker.

Laura Marker ‘The Order of Things’

Another favourite was the installation of 16 postcards by Holly Stevenson.

Holly Stevenson ‘Naturally We Are All Going To Have A Palmy Time’

Tracey Payne’s installation in the back yard caused a lot of interest as it inflated and deflated (in the rain).

Tracey Payne ‘Wishful Thinking (Falcon Road)’

A familiar face from SHOW 2013 – Nicola Thomas had a couple of her black on black etched prints here.

A new graduate from the RCA Printmaking course, was really nice to meet her.

Nicola Thomas – Carole #3
etched print

The Private View was really busy despite the awful weather and hidden gallery location.

ArtLacuna Private View

After a couple of hours the announcement was finally made for the winner of the residency and solo show.

Congratulations to Noemi Niederhauser who’s work appeared quite a quiet participant of the show, looking at her website I think she will put on a really interesting exhibition.

Prize Winner Noemi Niederhauser ‘A sense of place’

I have had a fabulous three weeks of inductions at the RCA. This was all about learning processes, getting to know the technicians and finding our way around the workshops.

First week was screenprinting.

Screenprinting

Then a week of etching.

Etching

Followed by a week of lithography.

Lithography

The technicians are amazing, approachable and enthusiastic, we couldn’t have asked for a better team to support us.

As the indomitable Alan Smith summed up – it was all about the transference of knowledge.

There was a lot of knowledge to transfer.

So we have had a feast laid out before us and now we must eat as much as we can before it is all taken away again.

Tags ArtLacuna, Etching, Incidence, lacuna, Lithography, RCA Printmaking, Screenprinting

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Moving

October 30, 2013 //

Moving into my new space at the RCA. There was some swapping and shuffling around. The second years had had first dibs at the studio spaces and then the tutors stuck post it notes with our first year names over the remaining desks. Like wedding guests we searched for our place and eyed up our immediate neighbours. Had we been placed in proximity for a reason?

Our little walking tour around the Tate Modern area ended up with a visit to see the ‘New Graduates’ exhibition at the Embassy Tea Gallery.

Victoria Arney and Marianne Keating are the winners of the Bainbridge Print Award 2013 for the excellence of work they displayed at their University post-graduate shows.

They both gave a talk.

Victoria Arney is interested in ruins.

Victoria Arney ‘Boundary’

She photographs emotionally moving images of natural disasters on the TV news. She then uses these images of destruction for her hand drawn etchings.

Victoria Arney ‘200,000’

Victoria Arney ‘Lacuna’

She achieves a 3D effect in her work using chine colle over her etching which is slightly offset. This mis-registration gives the impression of movement – that the dust is still settling on the final judders of collapse.

Victoria Arney

Marianne Keating also deals with moving emotions, asking the public to confess their secrets, these moving words are then projected, physically moving around the gallery walls.

Marianne Keating

She collects anonymous responses to questions like ‘What do you do that causes you to blame yourself?’

‘What have you confided to a friend that you haven’t confided to your lover?’

There is a lot of regret in the responses she has obtained.

Marianne Keating

While at Tate Modern I had a look at the Saloua Raouda Choucair exhibition.

I watched the short video about her life and work on the Tate website and admired her focus and passion for her art, to keep making work despite the political upheaval and destruction going on around her in Beirut during the 1980’s. Like the lines she explored in her work she kept to her path and followed her own trajectory.

I like her architecturally inspired sculpture and the rich wooden interlocking pieces.

Saloua Raouda Choucair

Some of the surfaces could be woodblocks and make interesting prints.

They look good together here, better than in the gallery space where they are placed in a clinical row along a shelf.

Saloua Raouda Choucair

Her use of monofilament as a support mechanism was interesting in her metal, plastic and fibreglass pieces.

When I was last in Crayford picking up my sublimation prints from Promptside I noticed an incongruous sign I hadn’t seen or maybe paid attention to before.

Sparkling Holidays were offered – though the building was less than sparkling, it was boarded up.

It was intriguing because it had no contact details. A bit Bob & Roberta Smith. Was this an art installation?

Well it just took a google when I got home to discover the company Sparkling Holidays based in Crayford do seem to offer a holiday experience.

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In search of aspirational landscapes.

Tags Marianne Keating, RCA, Salouda Raouda Choucair, sparkling holidays, Victoria Arney

Categories Uncategorized

routes/roots

October 29, 2013 //

Danson House – an amazing setting for ‘Couriers of Taste’ curated by Day + Gluckman.

Danson House

‘Couriers of Taste’ explores trade routes, global consumerism and cross-cultural influences. Danson House was built for leisure and decadence but that lifestyle was supported by a dark history in colonial exploitation.

The works shown are by artists who are interested in how the history of trade and cultural appropriation influences our understanding of the world today.

The fascination with the East dates back to the days of the China export trade and Silk Road. Even at the height of chinoiserie, as the Western market was being flooded with Chinese products the Chinese people themselves were unwelcome aliens and were targeted overseas by racist laws.

Karen Tam’s work looks at the infiltration of chinoiserie, and the continuing, conflicted relationships between “East” and “West”.

Karen Tam’s recreation of an opium den

Karen Tam believes the fear of China’s rising status as a superpower, its economic strength, position as the world’s manufacturer, and host of the 2008 Olympics is causing a current recurrence of racist attitudes towards Chinese people today.

Karen Tam’s recreation of an opium den

I think she is right that there is a lot of uncertainty around and this can fuel fears that might result in negative attitudes. The balance of economic power has shifted entirely since the term Oriental was first coined but China remains a mystery to most westerners. The fears we have are a lot to do with the messages we receive about life in China and its political system such as the treatment of Ai Wei Wei.

Vivien Qu

The film Trap Street an independent film directed by Vivien Qu showing at the London Film Festival about the authorities detaining and torturing innocent/naive people who’s lives can be suddenly destroyed with no recourse, not that this doesn’t happen in every other country up to a point, but Qu says these detentions in China are on the increase and the possibility to make independent films about such matters is declining. The reasons for this seem to be economic to some degree as Qu explained that investors now have the opportunity to make big money in commercial films so there is less for the small independent companies. As to the increase in detentions could this be down to more technology, more surveillance, more paranoia.

Trap Street

Meekyoung Shin copies Chinese porcelain vases. She transplants a foreign cultural tradition not only geographically from east to west but also in terms of media (from marble or porcelain to soap).

Meekyoung Shin Translation

Shin’s use of soap, a transient and unstable material, questions the authority and originality that the original vases demand. Presenting the vases on the packing crates in which they are shipped from location to location, further emphasizes the sense of dislocation and transformation.

Like most 18^th century houses Danson House would have housed ceramics and possibly wall papers from China, and would almost certainly have housed furniture and collectible items which borrowed chinoiserie elements.

Meekyoung Shin Translation

In the 18^th century new goods from around the world were influencing consumption, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, spices, cottons and silks, changing the habits and fashions of society.

Stephanie Douet is interested in chinoiserie as the birth of leisure in Europe.

Stephanie Douet

The fractured, fictional, idyllic life of the aristocracy in Europe imitating China is explored in Douet’s sculptures. She sees a similar distance in Europe’s understanding of the country today and a continuation of trade and misunderstanding from that of the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

Rapid growth in contemporary hi-tech consumerism and global manufacture is epitomised by Susan Stockwell’s installation of computer cables tumbling down through an antique Western fireplace.

Susan Stockwell ‘Firewire’

Our reliance on technology and the huge impact that online shopping has had on production and global trade creeps into the imaginary trader’s bedroom at Danson House and begins to encroach on every aspect of his world.

The spectacle of Laura White’s ‘Esque Collection’ of sculptures pulls together ideas of hybridity, the pagoda dotted landscape, porcelain ware, shop display stands and the seduction of opulence.

Laura White

These look magnificent highly prized items but close up it is apparent they are constructed from the back self of a charity shop and held together with plasticine.

Laura White

They are confections.

Laura White

Little towers to consumerism.

Laura White

I found them joyful. They have a happy Frankenstein quality.

Laura White

A tangle of origins melded together to create something new.

Ray Richardson is an artist whose roots in East London are very important to him. His work features his local landscape, his friends and family and a lot of dogs.

Ray Richardson

English bull terrier dogs who he sees as representing himself.

Ray Richardson Irish Frank

At his talk at Ochre Print Studio he told us about the local characters in his life and how his love of soul music and football influences his work.

It was hard to imagine him teaching at a public school but he spent a year in residency at Eton College.

He had a very philosophical attitude to his experience and as he said he was paid.

As he was to do this commission.

Ray Richardson

A another clash of cultures.

I have just started reading A History of the World in Twelve Maps by Jerry Brotton.

Came across this wonderful quote in it from Oscar Wilde –

‘a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail’.

Tags chinoiserie, colonialism, Couriers of Taste, Danson House, Jerry Brotton, Karen Tam, Laura White, Maps, Meekyoung Shin, Ray Richardson, Stephanie Douet, Susan Stockwell, trade, Trap Street, Vivien Qu

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Tension

wonder

The Gardener

Singing to a different tune

Mellow Fruitfulness

To dream

Untold/Told

Translation and transference

Moving

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