"Please Stay Off The Tracks"

For the present time the Barbican Curve gallery is a dark, dimly lit bunker space, scattered with dust, reminiscent of a Snd World War or Cold War past with the various remnants of an industrial and military installation. A historical space of discarded machinery, tools, furniture, workshops and small offices. Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski's re-imagined installation slots into the existing brutal concrete of the Barbican's interior with references of films, the fictions of Harry Palmer's world in “The Ipcress File” or “Funeral in Berlin”, but also a seemingly real post-miltary reality emptied of people, abandoned, like the day after an atomic or nuclear attack. Dripping memories, a place of power stripped as history moved on.

This is an Art in which the viewer immerses themselves in an environment. The conceit of the work, constructed to alter perception, taking part in a visual theatre or cinema, one suspends belief and steps from the outside rational world of a dispassionate art viewer into the theatre of this experience. In this space denuded of its military personnel we are viewers of a seemingly real post conflict military installation, voyeurs of an exciting but ultimately doomed history.

Just as I explore further into this absorbing and unsettling space a voice comes out of the darkness “Please stay off train tracks”, not a shout from a unseen participant in this theatrical space but a jolt back into the real world, heading towards me is a black shirted Barbican employee. Chastened and with all enjoyment removed my thoughts move from the unsettling beauty of Kusmirowski's work to a failure of art to be allowed to truly and honestly communicate.

I fail to believe that the artist would wish that the full exploration of his constructed space be restricted but now in the hands of an unimaginative host one sees an inability for a true experience to be gained. Is art is not to be explored but just viewed from a knowing distance? Surely to curtail the exploring of a viewer is missing the point of such an installation, this implies a lack of honesty, integrity or true respect of the artist, the work or the viewer to determine for themselves what the work should be. What would have been a beautiful, poetic and thought provoking immersive experience is denied.

This artwork should be poked, prodded, scratched and explored, reality suspended and recreated so that one might believe that only the space we have found ourselves in exists until we once more re-enter the real world outside of the gallery, but unfortunately for this viewer and in a manner that does not best serve the ambition of the artist this opportunity was denied me.

Hold on a minute.....

Forgive me for such a blatant rant, not my usual forum for such things, but......

Is the British government really intending to asset strip publicly owned assets to bail themselves out of a debt incurred by subsidising with public money private companies who f***ed up? To torture a metaphor it seems Capitalism has truly eaten itself, vomited itself back up and sold us the remnants!.

Life in Progress

It is a site of contradictions, dereliction and construction, pathways and obstructions, despair and hope. Amongst the reconstructed detritus of Paul Carter’s installation “Hotel” at Matts Gallery one feels unease but also strangely connected to the impromptu structures and elements that make up the re-imagined interior architecture of the gallery. In the corner of the gallery sits a disused lift with the cables cut and the door partially open, Carter’s recognisable large sofas and chairs have been made from discarded and reconstructed frames and placed around the edges of the gallery space. In the central space a labyrinth of wooden boxes, blocks and batons are screwed and nailed together to demarcate small rooms, alcoves and pathways. The light of bulbs hanging at irregular intervals from the ceiling cast shadows around the space from panels of wood used to create the walls. Glass panels, some intact others cracked in places allow the lights glow to illuminate some areas and others to glare and momentarily obstruct your sight. Within some of these constructions are small alcoves, tiny boxes and shelves. Wedged behind glass panels we can see small insignificant collections of objects, dust, dirt, wood shavings and other detritus.

It is some time before the realisation that this constructed interior is in no way connected to the existing interior of the gallery, one assumes that some columns and walls must have been present prior to Carter’s period in residency in which the installation has been assembled, however this is a completely false assumption. All the sculptural elements of the installation were transported to the gallery space and assembled from the collection of reclaimed materials that Carter uses in his studio and hybridised from previous works stored around his workspace. This is a shanty town construction in the gallery space and unlike the elevated trinkets of much contemporary art Carter’s works are assembled and constructed from the lowest, most overlooked materials into something more powerful and engaging. Amongst the protruding nails, the smell of rotting masonry, dust, dirt and splinters of wood is an honesty. An honesty of materials, honesty of construction and honesty where Carter as an artist shows us traces in these reclaimed materials of histories seeping out, traces of human activity, of life with all its contradictions, that these materials have absorbed.

Before & After

"Before and After"

Mixed Media

2009

TangentProjects at HTAP

in/flux

80 Kingsland Rd, E2 8DP (next to Flowers East)
3-13 September 2009
Private view 6-9 pm on 2 September
Tues - Sat 12-8 pm, Sun 2-8 pm, Thurs open late ‘til 9 pm

Hackney Transients Art Project (HTAP) is pleased announce 2 forums accompanying in/flux, an exhibition of new works of art and design exploring everyday experience as a catalyst for critical/creative practice.

A combination of formal presentations with relaxed discussion, these forums will explore characteristics distinguishing Hackney’s cultural terrain. Everyone welcome; divergent opinions encouraged. Refreshments will be served at the intermission. Please bring a blanket or cushion to sit on.

Forum One: Hackney’s Cultural Hybridity: Past, Present and Future
Thursday, 10 September: 6 - 8:30pm
Part A: ‘in/flux - Reflections and Process’6 - 7pm
Part A of this forum will sketch HTAP’s engagement with themes of transience, mapping, individual narratives and everyday experience. It will focus on the project’s interest in Hackney as a complex of communities that weaves together the cultures and imaginaries of people from all over the world. Contributors to HTAP’s oral history archive will recount specific experiences through which they recognised Hackney as “home”. These retellings will be followed by a round table among artists and designers featured in in/flux. This discussion will consider Hackney’s cultural hybridity as manifest in the exhibition.

Part B: ‘The Cultural Terrain of Contemporary Hackney in 2020’7.30 - 8.30 pmImagine yourself 11 years into the future. What does Hackney look like today, in 2020, and why? This group thought experiment will speculate about the impact of Hackney’s current development on its future. Come and share your imaginings as we contemplate Hackney’s present as it’s past.

Forum Two: Aesthetics and Ethics: Models of Socially Engaged Practice
Saturday, 12 September: 3 – 5:30
Part A: ‘Collaborations, Collectives and Everyone Else: Hackney-based Art and Design Groups’3 - 4 pm Profiling the work of five Hackney-based art, design and curatorial groups, this forum highlights dynamic and self-organised initiatives impacting the borough’s culture. Each group will share its practice through a short presentation followed by a brief Q&A.

Part B: ‘Beyond “Happy Clappy Interactivity”: Some Challenges of Socially Engaged Practice’
4:30 – 5:30 pmBuilding on Part A, Part B of this forum considers challenges characterising socially engaged practice as well as specific strategies and tactics that artists, designers and curators are using to work around them. Questions/comments/concerns submitted in advance will propel this informal discussion. Please email your contribution to info.htap@gmail.com by 10 September for inclusion.

Curated by Marsha Bradfield and Miriam Kings and produced by Lucy Tomlins, in/flux presents works by Alison Barnes, Marnie Baumer, Matt Blackler, Clemmie James, Matthew Krishanu, Tamara Lesniewska and Kim Alexander, Christine Mitrentse, Barry Gene Murphy, Lucy Tomlins and Charlotte Young.

Heart Lands

" Heart Lands"

Chalk, London Brick Company Brick and London Stock Brick from the banks of the River Thames. Mud from the source of the River Fleet, Mud from the banks of the River Rother. Mud from the Mouth of Beverley Brook

2009

When Words Fail Me...

We all draw, whether we think it or not beyond speech and writing drawing is the fundamental human means of communication. Many of us tell ourselves as adults that we cannot draw but every time we write corrections on a handwritten note, a shopping list, a quick scrappy map of our travels or place a quick rudimentary sign on a door or wall that says “back in 5 mins”, “gone to lunch” or “wet paint” we are drawing.

The Campaign for Drawing have been encouraging us to use this valuable skill for ten years and despite their successes the importance in continuing their efforts. Their current Now We Are 10 exhibition at the Idea Generation gallery collects a number of works from their supporters and patrons that are to be auctioned to raise funds for their future activities, however as well as the importance that these extra funds will make to the campaign it is worth reflecting on the sheer variety and forms of drawing that are on display, amongst the usual suspects of Quentin Blake, Steve Bell, Gerald Scarfe and Sir Norman Foster are many younger artists and illustrators. The diversity of the works on show are evident and as a viewer it would be easy to indulge ourselves by heading straight to our favourite artists works. The Campaign shows its ability to continue to enthuse and encourage us to the practice of drawing by showing the multitude of possibilities that drawing can provide. This multitude of styles and possibilities need not necessarily encourage us to draw well or better but to just pick up a pen, pencil, crayon or inky finger and communicate through drawing. It is when we see architectural sketches or elevations, satirical cartoons, life drawings and botanical studies sat side by side in this display that the endless possibilities for all of us to use even the most rudimentary forms of drawing as simple, instant and accessible means of communicating to others present themselves.

The works in this exhibition are many and varied but the quality is high considering the over one hundred works available in the auction taking place on the 17th September, with works by the likes of Adam Dant, Paula Rego and Martin Rowson and with lesser known artists donating some extremely unique and high quality works one hopes that the auction will be a success for the Campaign. As importantly though is that with the campaign’s Big Draw events continuing through October that we are encouraged to think about using the opportunities drawing provides, when speech, language and the written word fail to communicate our thoughts clearly drawing will always be the one activity that we can rely on to explain our thoughts and ideas in the widest and most accessible way.

Big Deal "Botoxed 69"

Kitchen Sink

Unfinished Business

In recent times we have been made aware that society as we perceived it was not entirely as it seemed, the global financial crisis has made us question whether not just our economies but our lifestyles and activities are sustainable. A look along the streets we live can throw up interesting contemporary artefacts that show progress or growth as we imagined it stalled and inert. But amongst the remnants of failed development is traces of human activity, unfinished and unpolished edges and surfaces abound within derleict or abandoned sites, vacated businesses and unfinished developments which appear between construction and dereliction. With these conditions around us Oscar Tuazon’s art seems even more poignant when we see his work in the context of our present economic woes, Tuazon’s work in most cases takes the simple materials of the built environment and constructs sculptures which appear with scratches, drips, cracks, gouges and traces of dereliction within the sculptural language of minimalism. In the David Roberts foundation Tuazon’s specially commissioned series of works appear bold and attractive in all their grungy beauty. The first piece you see when entering the gallery is titled “Glassed Slab” in a steel frame sheets of different materials are vertically layered at intervals, a smashed pane of security glass, plexiglass, fibreglass, wire mesh and bubblewrap all held in place with short scraps of wire and oozing smudges of silicone. A brutal scavenged object manufactured from disordered urban detritus appears as a beautiful but ordered post-minimalist structure.

Loose contextual glimpses of our modern world through everyday materials become even more poignant in the sculptural piece in the middle of the main gallery, “Wall” is similarly constructed but in this case plexiglass sheets are pushed into place and held by oozing bursts of smeared silicone. On the surface of the sheets are irregular slicks of oily black paint, in places thick and glossy, others sparse and matt. At its sparsest spreading as if disturbed by a chemical reaction similar to detergent on a slick of oil on water, at these moments of scarcity views accross the gallery and the window to the street outside are glimpsed as moving people outside cross our line of sight and our thoughts are dragged to the outside world. “Wall” becomes not so much a barrier that screens us from sight but a screen in which we view the passing of immediate time, the solidity of a wall becomes something more fluid and fragile.

The balance between one state and another appears solidly in Tuazon’s work. The references of beauty and ugliness appear as two faces of the same coin in the piece “The Moon” as we see the irregular and ill formed spontaneity of sheets of cast concerete juxtaposed with slick and clean marble. One cant help the minds thoughts turning to modern architecture and the dialogue between form and function.
In Tuazon’s only wall based piece the papercrete aggregation of grey mushed paper sits within the confines of an oak frame, on first glance this mushy aggreagtion seems to be an irregular and unreadable of mush of grey tones but amongst this collective visual scream are glimpses of a clear noticible word, we see the occasional burst of discernible language shouting loud and clear like voices heard clearly in a mass of white noise.

At the back of the gallery a Steel girder punches through a wooden block and a plexigalss screen, at the intersection where these materials meet and the screen and block are punctured we see a square cut in both materials that appears functional but with irregularities that the process of penetrating the materials has created. The hole in the Plexiglass is slightly cracked under the pressure of the creation of the hole and the wood is frayed and torn at some edges, at its manufacture this sculpture which is designed and controlled in its execution allows the flaws of the material to remain evident not hidden. The human hands creative control gives way to the forces and abilities of the material to react to the artists touch in its own unique and idiosyncratic way.

Two further works in the gallery downstairs appropriate more found materials, blocks of wood with frayed, split edges and gouged cuts, glowing flourescent lights that emanate a flat slightly disturbing light into the darkened gallery, oozing and smeared traces of silicone. Functional steel bolts, residues of paint, cracked and scratched surfaces of plexiglass and protruding nails. The forms and processes of manufacturing and construction of Tuazon’s sculptures are not superior or subordinate to each other but collect together as materialised physical poems of our present times.

Minimalism often seemed to deny the existence of humanity in the appearance of its clean scupltural forms but in Oscar Tuazon’s modern interpretation of the minimalist language we see a world in which we need not deny the effect our actions have caused and the traces of degradation and destruction that are left at the scenes of our failures can give us hope to reclaim from the wreckage of our mistakes a renewed and reformed future.

The Trash Vortex at Hackney Wicked

TangentProjects presents

The Trash Vortex

Friday 31st July, Saturday 1st August & Sunday 2nd 2009
at various sites across Hackney Wick & Fish Island
(Installation Performance by Danny Pockets & The Universal Racket Press, Fri 31st 6-9pm)

Curated by Steve Smith

Featured Artists:
Karen Ay
Claire Blundell Jones
Forge & Cutter
Russell Herron
Helene Kazan
Georgie Manly
Stuart Murray
Danny Pockets

In the central areas of the Pacific sea circulating currents deposit and contain an increasing collection of sea-bound detritus, a massive floating island of discarded plastic collects in the eye of these currents, this phenomenon is known as “The Trash Vortex”. It is from ripples of insignificant and complacent individual actions to its eventual collective global significance during the Hackney Wicked Festival and at various sites across Hackney Wick and Fish Island that the artists in the exhibition “The Trash Vortex” explore where the insignificant, throwaway and complacent may foretell massive events and actions.

Ripples become currents and currents have the power to drag the small and insignificant into their orbit and create a mass of great power and significance.

Hackney Wicked

Terroir

"Terroir"

Cabinet, Perspex Sheets, PVA and traces of cork and wine

2008-2009

Big Deal 2

Explorations Into The Known World

image by Malcolm Hazleton