golgonooza

Out of the corner of my eye.

2010-08-10T14:33:00.002Z

The latest exhibition at the David Roberts Foundation is a huge opportunity for the curators selected from the Goldsmiths MFA Curating course to create a group exhibition with resources that would normally be beyond that of most students at this stage of their careers. The exhibition, titled The Moon is an Arrant Thief, brings together work from the 1960’s to the present day and in the hands of curators Thom O’Nions, Luiza Teixeira de Freitas and Oliver Martinez-Kandt is a wonderfully balanced collection of works that flows around the gallery spaces of the David Roberts Foundation. One might expect in the hands of young curators a riot of bold, brash statements but this exhibition shows a maturity from the curators to create space with which these subtle, quiet works can speak for themselves.

The first work one sees on entering the gallery is Roman Ondak’s ‘The stray man’, this video piece sees an unknown man slowly strolling back and forth, loitering on the street and occasionally peering into the large windows of an office building. We watch as the scene unfolds but in this scene there is no payoff just an act of supposition on the viewers part as to the view that is seen by the man we are watching, he cranes his neck and shades his eyes but one feels that the important sight inside is only partially viewed. Viewing this we are in a strange dance with the man we watch on the screen. We cant see at what he is looking and might question whether his act of looking is an inducement to others to look or a genuine need to see something which is just beyond real sight inside the building.

Adjacent to this piece is Joelle Tuerlinckx punched paper holes scattered on the gallery floor in a square, one might add to this disruption of the linear pattern as we become aware of our feet scuffing and pushing the fragments of paper as we pass through the piece which then gradually scatters and spreads underfoot during the duration of the exhibition. As with many of the works in the exhibition the work can seem only a part of a wider story or piece of information. The works make us question the honesty, integrity or veracity of documentation and the views of histories contained within.

Robert Kinmont’s ‘My Favourite Chair’ is simply hung on the wall, a fragment, a remnant of the chair back, a wholly personal historical document. Reconfigured as an art object Kinmont elevates this loved domestic object into something more significant to us as viewers, and presumably to elevate it’s standing to something equivalent to the comfort that it once provided to the artist in whichever provenance this was acquired from and manner this seemingly generic object assumed in its life of use. Kitty Kraus configured glass sheets are another generic made significant, placed together from glass sheets of the same dimensions different configurations provide a wider visual interpretation of this amalgam of transparent and clean almost seemingly unreadable material. It is the multitude of visual rhythms created that elevate the materials.

In the downstairs gallery Tim Etchell's neon states “Let’s pretend none of this happened” it is a sinister, isolated statement, free from any further information one might build multiple narratives to explain the back story to this boldly simple, glowing statement. Juxtaposed with Rosa Barba’s “It’s Gonna Happen” at the other end of the gallery one can see the hands of the curators in the formation of this suite of collected works. Barba’s work presents a screen with words that contain a story, each line of text appears like an isolated segment of a narrative, like a description of a films screenplay in transcribed speech and with descriptors of scenes. The words appear and are then replaced by the next line, the passage of time between each seems to obliterate the story.

There are stories within all the artworks but rather than dripping with information and the heavy burden of history these collected works bear only a lightness of happening, they are objects which are not so much viewed and experienced as witnessed, documented and re-interpreted.

The Golgonooza Scrapbook

2010-06-23T09:37:00.002Z

Changes are happening to this blog, for 4 years I have worked on this blog with varying intensity and my intention is to continue to use the Golgonooza blog as the focus for my art writings. However some of the other aspects of the blog such as recommendations for exhibtions in the form of invites and the other more scattered entries of films, music and images of artworks and other finds are now going to be switched to The Golgonooza Scrapbook. The Golgonooza Scrapbook will have increased postings of these types of entries and also links to other stuff too and Gologonooza will continue to be the host for my exhibition reviews and other art writing, I hope those of you who are following this blog will continue to enjoy my writing and take a look at The Scrapbook too.

Steve

River's Voice

2010-04-20T15:43:00.003Z

Bill Fontana’s latest installation at Somerset House is a true journey, Fontana has charted the life of the river from its upper tidal reaches to the sea through many facets of sound that make the rivers voice. A multitude of speakers set around the vaults that surround the Somerset House courtyard are not just integrated but insinuated into the architecture. Descending the stairs to the vaults we step into a truly believable soundscape, in the distance the sound of a wailing foghorn rises into the sky above us. We hear the sound of bubbling water emanating from some subterranean structure, a ghostly inner world with the water almost breathing. Dripping through structures, the surrounding air fizzes with sound, this underground space with its dusty bricks absorbs the soundtrack, alters its frequencies and then emits the rivers history back to us. The multiple rhythms within spaces both interior and exterior can be felt through the recordings, under the large arch at the riverside entrance to Somerset House and within sight of the Thames speakers relay the sound of water constantly lapping under the floor in dialogue with the river adjacent, the sound of the traffic disrupts the voice of the river but rather than dominating it weaves itself into the recording as if attempting to join with it.

In Fontana’s hands the Thames is imbued with spirits, we feel the river as relentless, unstoppable and immortal. References to our interaction with the river in the sounds and video projections of buoys, the cables of the millennium bridge, tolling of warning bells and the clanking of chains one begins to see the river not as a benign, passive presence, but a living breathing entity, one which we speak to every day, one that gave birth to our city and will be here in all its incarnations to ultimately claim the city from us, it is protector and taker of life. One thinks of the river as place of history with its traces marked and etched into its surroundings but with this installation it also becomes a predictor of the future. Film projections of the sites of engineering along the river are a microcosm of our lives intertwined with the river, the cables of the millennium bridge hum a meditative song for the Thames, almost a tribal call. The quality of the sounds Fontana presents resonate at frequencies we would normally overlook at the edges of the sound spectrum. The river is quiet but relentless and beautiful.

The interior spaces of the vaults reflect and absorb sound, from high frequency, harsh and piercing through easily recognisable mid range to sub-audible felt as vibrations through our bodies and the surrounding architecture. A sub-bass boom channels round a vaulted arch of a tiny room and its pulse vibrates through the body, we feel the power contained within the rivers watery body. We see and feel the Thames for what it is, beautiful and gentle but with monstrous power and danger lurking within. The impression of river as a living being is finally reinforced as we hear the cry or wail of a taught chain that moors a ship.

Exiting the installation I hear seagulls, my mind drifts to thoughts of the mouth of the river, of estuarine mudflats, the end of the rivers journey and into the sea beyond only to find that rather than emitting from a speaker it is the sound of real gulls overhead. Swooping, sheltering inland from some coming storm in the territories I had just imagined, a paramagical and poetic impression of the great River Thames insinuated into my understanding somewhere between the real and the imagined from Fontana’s recordings and the reality of my existence just a few yards from the rivers banks.

Constellations

2010-03-06T12:27:00.000Z

Looking at maps one can go on journies, in our minds we can travel from place to place, geographical truths can make way to fantasies. The landscape and built environments can become a fantasy of our imagination, the real can meld with the fictional landscape we create around the points of truth to become something altogether more expansive than just a chart or map might at first appear. The manner in which a map is annotated suggests to the viewer many readings even though the information is replicated in scale and format in many other printed forms, colours of roads, the detailing of topography and even variations in typeset for the names of places depicted can alter our perception of how the real geography may manifest itself.

Kathy Prendergast has employed maps in her art works for some time now and her alterations and adaptions of maps subvert their very use into something more poignant and reflective. For her current exhibition at the Peer Gallery she takes a variety of maps from around the world and using black ink obscures names and geographies leaving just the white dots of settlements left unobscured. Reaching out of this thick covering of black ink, the remaining settlements appear as constellations, like early humans we seek to create shapes recognisable through this dotted information. One might assume this is a starry eyed optimism in urbanism or perhaps a simple meditation on the immensity of the landscape that surround us.

Within this blackened, flattened inky landscape the printed ink underneath when caught by light glows almost golden but then is lost once again to the shadows, colour fights to permeate the darkness of the inky black covering. Scale is lost, information obscured. Across this suite of works of maps from a variety of different countries one observes the flow of settlements, the landscapes integration of differing population densities within its larger physical body. The maps return us to the true geography rather than the pared down easily recognisable flat chart or chartings of an easily recognisable map, framed and behind glass the maps show even more than usual its surface of ripples and folds the maps become like the landscape itself, a flowing physical mass, the dots of human activity a recognition of humanity existing in a larger powerful physical environment.

Monumental Humanity

2010-02-15T13:31:00.001Z

Entering the Grand Palais in Paris the word grand doesn’t do the space justice, it is a huge unwieldy piece of palatial architecture that dominates you the moment you step inside, to ask an artist to fill this space with one unique installation is a tough ask. Christian Boltanski, however is one artist that can take on a space such as this and claim it as his own. This huge public building is the scene once more of Monumenta, each year an artist is asked to create a work for the space and this year Boltanski is the invited artist.

Arriving inside the space one is confronted by a huge wall constructed from rusting metal boxes, each box is individually numbered, the accumulation of numbered, ageing boxes suggests the contents are the personal effects of now unnamed and unknown thousands. It is a quietly ominous introduction to an experience that does not scare but quietly unsettles and pervades the huge space with ghosts of memories that one can feel but not know. Beyond the wall the large space contains a sea of clothing, hundreds if not thousands of various jackets, jumpers, shirts and coats placed in large rectangular patterns across the floor. They fill the floor from one side of the space to the other like the apocalyptic scattered remnants of passing humanity, a discarded sea of lost souls. At each corner sits a speaker emitting the sound of an individual heartbeat, pulsing in its own unique way it is the fingerprint in sound of a chosen soul. At the far side of the space is a mechanical hand plucking more clothing from a mountain of heaped clothes, dropping slowly it hovers at the peak, picks a handful raises it slowly skywards and then opens dropping the selected rags back onto the heap. Bodies of jackets and arms of shirts flutter as they drop and rest once more at the top of the mass, the selected appear at the mercy of a hand of fate choosing at random and then discarding once more to the unknown masses below.

Underlying this spectacle is the thunderous echoing regular pulse of collected heart beats, moving beyond audible sound to actually send vibrations through the room, this soundscape which is constantly being added to by the collecting of volunteers of visitors heartbeats it beats an ominous rhythm, a regular sonic wave like monstrous footsteps or an intermittent but never ending thunderclap rumble.

The environment Boltanski creates is unsettling and might suggest a future after humanity but also celebrates all individuals and their uniqueness and the beauty of our collective existence. To this viewer it appeared as some melancholic poem to our souls, a bizarre monument to humanities passing yet to happen but foretelling that point when the last human is lost to the earth and a warning against complacent assumptions of mortality both individual and collective.

Lurking in the Background

2010-02-05T14:09:00.002Z

The title of Magali Reus’s exhibition “Background” at ibid projects says it all really, initially the viewer might question exactly what these suite of works is really all about. It is when you take the time to step back from the work and observe the environment of the gallery rather than just focus all your attention on the works that Reus’s intentions seem much more clear. The work is ambiguous, frustratingly so perhaps, too pared down and simple, but after some time there is some charm in the quiet works present in the gallery. It is when the works are viewed as the background to a much larger environment that they become more readable and enjoyable to be around. In the video piece that gives its title to the exhibition we see a group of men in a desolately sparse landscape with nothing more than flat gravelly earth and heaps of sand. Dressed in army styled clothing they perform a series of stilted, choreographed activities like some form of choreographed physical training exercises. Occasionally the film switches to sculptural elements that have been placed around the set, the film briefly focuses our attention away from the group to a flash of sunlight on some small sheets of metal placed on the ground. The camera fixes on detailed shots of the movement of the feet of the players as they ascend the heaps of sand, we notice the scars in sand from their movements. Man, the environment and the materials we construct around appear as nothing more than a choreography. The contrived, measured performances seem somewhere between directed and improvised but somehow free as well. We might imagine that in their place in the group we are part of a play of the world in which the seemingly individual responses and freedoms are in fact determined and controlled by others.

The largest of Reus’s sculptures on show is composed of two green rectangular blocks on an aluminium frame set into and spanning between two walls, the paintwork on the blocks looks impeccably and cleanly finished but on second glance this appears to be a falsehood in our understanding of the scene that this sculptural piece sets. Propped against and extending away from the wall and the frame the blocks project into the gallery space with a large overhang, the blocks appear to bow under their own weight and this clean, simple construction no longer appears as robust and immaculate as first thought.

All of the sculptural works begin to unfold in the same manner, simple clean objects are assembled and finished in a quiet manner but despite the varying materials all these assemblages give a very strong initial impression of solidity. The eye is always drawn finally to the spaces around, beneath or adjacent to the sculpture itself. Two punched aluminium sheets are secured to the wall by a single screw at the top, however the eye casts downwards to the bottom of the sheets as they warp and bow from the wall creating shadows. In another piece one painted piece of board sits propped against the wall with another resting on it inset in the top right hand corner. The large bottom sheet is light green and the top is dark, reflective like a mirror, the large sheet is bowed, it appears fragile but also solid.

There are two further sculptures in this suite of works and they too create seemingly coincidental insights into the environment around the works, all works are very static however they imply strongly movement, transition. Those that appear solid are warping and bowing at the extremities of the piece and the eye shifts away from these sculptural forms to the multiple shadows cast across the galleries walls and floor. They appear ambiguous but also suggest very personal assumptions and responses by the viewer.

Leaving Reus’s work one begins to question the environment around us. We might ask whether what appears around us is “real”. Reus perhaps suggests that all is posed, contrived, choreographed and that our sense of control of our lives is in truth at the mercy of forces and influences that we can barely see or feel.

The End of Ideology?

2009-12-04T14:40:00.000Z

After the Soviet Empire dissolved in the upheavals of the late eighties and early nineties and the subsequent dominance of global capitalism as the political and economic force of our modern times we believed that the old ideological struggle between left and right had ended. In this vacuum of non-ideologically placed political pragmatism a new global political stability would be created. In the ensuing couple of decades the dominant market based global economy and its associated power systems were to have provided a new stable global structure with which all of the worlds citizens can rely. We now understand that it is not that simple, this supposed stability has still not stopped terrors of many wars, has not lifted the worlds poorest citizens out of poverty across all continents and has seen an increase in the widening gap of wealth inequality both within nations populations and between the established economic powers and poorer nations. New ideological conflicts have been created and enhanced to fill the old left-right
struggles of the late 19th and twentieth centuries.

The exhibition Re-Imagining October at the Calvert 22 gallery displays works by artists from the former Soviet states and artists from outside these states who had visited the former Soviet Union. Most of the works in this exhibition are stunningly produced and accomplished. Natalia Nosova's beautiful black and white photographs from her series “Baku 2007” document the scratched graffiti on the walls of monumental architecture in the city Baku. One stone-carved wall depicts a seemingly idealised revolution era scene of workers united which is now defaced and seemingly irrelevant with the passing of time. Alexander Soukhorov's “Russian Ark” film of 2002 shows scenes of a grand palace thronging with with the regal and military classes of eighteenth century Russia, the actors glide around in highly orchestrated and costumed scenes of contrived and decadent power. Vadim Zakharov's “Red Square behind Black Square” photographic series are subtly composed with the Black Squares evoking concepts of censorship.
One feels that many of the artists have a love/hate relationship with the Soviet past, the references within much of the imagery in the works shows a pride in the greatness of the old order but also pain at the excesses of the State.

The work that affects most deeply is Kristina Norman's video document of the events that unfolded after her placing of a “Gold Soldier” in the place of the removed “Bronze Soldier” at its original site in the Estonian capital of Tallinn. This site sees the placing of flowers on 'Victory Day' , the 9th of May by Russian inhabitants of the city at what is seen as the grave of Red Army soldiers. For Estonians the statue represented Soviet oppression and occupation and since independence the Russian population of Tallinn see this as a site of Russian identity. In this post Soviet world the integration of all communities into a newly independent Estonia is still a difficult process. Norman's act of the placing of this replica statue was not intended to determine a specific solution or attendant with either Russian or Estonian sympathies but to simply reference the current feelings of alienation of the Russian population of modern Estonia and the continuing need for resolution with the past for both Russians and Estonians. As the film unfolds the events we see as the police arrive to remove the statue and Norman who remains at the scene remind one of the excessive force and implacability of the Soviet era authorities replicated by their Estonian successors.

Beyond the view of the era of the Soviet Union and its history within these works ones thoughts return to the end of that era, the supposed death of ideology and the current global political world. The scenes depicted in Kristina Norman's film do not only evoke memories of Soviet authoritarianism and its new Estonian incarnation but also remind one of the surveillance culture and kettling of demonstrators on London's streets, the aggressive manner of the 'liberating' forces in Iraq towards the civilian population, the suppression of anti-government protestors in post election Iran amongst many others. When the Soviet Union dissolved and the new international political world was imagined we perhaps thought we had seen the last of footage of such excessive authoritarianism by the state but in this new world free of ideology we have seen as much if not more. The old struggle has ended but some methods of that regime remain and have influenced others in their passing from that one nation to many others.

"Please Stay Off The Tracks"

2009-11-16T16:40:00.006Z

For the present time the Barbican Curve gallery is a dark, dimly lit bunker space, scattered with dust, reminiscent of a Second 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 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.

Life in Progress

2009-09-24T16:05:00.002Z

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

2009-09-23T13:42:00.006Z

"Before and After"

Mixed Media

2009

TangentProjects at HTAP

2009-09-10T13:00:00.006Z

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

2009-09-09T19:01:00.004Z

" 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...

2009-09-08T21:00:00.002Z

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. 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"

2009-08-27T21:58:00.001Z

Kitchen Sink

2009-08-16T11:39:00.004Z

Unfinished Business

2009-08-11T14:35:00.004Z

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

2009-07-26T20:40:00.006Z

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

2009-07-26T20:38:00.002Z

Terroir

2009-07-15T18:04:00.001Z

"Terroir"

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

2008-2009

Big Deal 2

2009-07-03T09:02:00.003Z

Explorations Into The Known World

2009-06-06T12:59:00.003Z

image by Malcolm Hazleton

Arctic Circle

2009-05-23T15:45:00.001Z

The Death of Ideology

2009-05-01T08:30:00.002Z

London Stone-London Heart

2009-04-25T18:00:00.001Z

London Stone-London Heart
Cabinet, Glass Jars, London Stock Bricks and Thames Water
104 x 62 x40.5cm
04/09

Between or Inside?

2009-04-23T15:25:00.002Z

Everything about Cinthia Marcelle’s art speaks of quiet tension. Familiar materials and references are subverted to expose our presumptions of what we think we see in front of us and what might not be immediately evident. These subversions create a tension and show a fragility in things that we percieve to strongly represent the comfortable, recognisable constants of life. It is not that Marcelle shakes us from complacency more that she recontextualises familiar views and actions into wholly recognisable but new and perhaps slightly disturbing and disturbed assumptions of inevitable consequences, those things around us that are part of processes which we perceive to have a narratively assumed and predictable ‘beginning, middle and end’. Marcelle handles lightly her scuptural interventions and allows the viewer the freedom to observe from a distance a slowly insinuated re-reading of what we are seeing in front of our eyes. Her current works in the Sprovieri Gallery are diverse but simple, on entering the space we are faced with a divided room, a partition of wooden panels painted in yellow gloss paint, it is only on entering the room properly that we realise that this division is mirrored by another yellow painted panelled wall facing the other, a door is inserted into the panels to allow entry into the space but as this has been left ajar we only realise the echo of the door that allowed entry to the gallery after we have passed through them, once inside we are already being pulled subtly back out of the gallery before we have really entered it. To the left hand side of the gallery a reel to reel tape machine emanates the sound of its turning reels, however instead of the expected tape running through the tape head flaps of masking tape have been reeled around in its place. The masking tape appears torn under the force of the machines action, the force of its action fills the gallery with its sound. Opposite is a collage of masking tape torn and placed in strips reminiscent of brick courses, one looks intently to see the thoroughness or otherwise of the rendering of this piece but is dragged back to memories of walls and other brick built forms despite the fragility of the paper and tape image in front of your eyes.
On the other side of the yellow barrier further into a darkened gallery space is the signature piece and most beguiling of Marcelle’s exhibition, a video projects the film of a yellow earthmoving vehicle ponderously moving in a figure of eight on a muddy landscape. At some parts of its progress its mechanical arm moves downwards to push the muddy soil along its path at others the arm lifts to deposit this load along the continued path it is forming, the tyres of the vehicle flatten and cut their path through these lumps of deposited soil as the machine gradually draws its presence on the landscape whilst creating an action which destroys part of its activity. This see-sawing of movement, activity and intention appears the height of futility but this rhythmic and predictable progress is captivating for no other reason than the spectacle of its insignificant action creating nothing more than a mark on the landscape and a rhythm of activity. The final piece in Marcelle’s suite of subversions and interventions is a wooden rule longer than the height of the gallery which is squeezed between floor and ceiling, its bowed form is squashed inside the interior of the space in a tense but solid corruption of its materiality, form and function.
These actions, measurements, subversions and interventions created by Marcelle do not lead one to understanding or on the path to understanding the profundity of the world but exist in many states. Just as every individual and collective society can only control a small part of our existence at most times we are only between states, in Marcelle’s eyes we exist between predictable and unpredictable, known and unknown, comfort and discomfort and that, perhaps, is the pain and pleasure of our existence.

Goin Downstairs

2009-04-08T14:53:00.001Z

V22 Presents The Sculpture Show

2009-04-08T12:34:00.004Z

V22 PRESENTS: The Sculpture Show 26 April – 31 May 2009 Wed – Sun 12 – 6pm
The Almond Building, The Biscuit Factory, Bermondsey, London.

V22 PRESENTS is a series of projects produced in collaboration with artists, curators and art organisations in a variety of venues around London. V22 PRESENTS decided to explore the modes of thought and production in sculpture. To open a dialogue we put to five artists - Shahin Afrassiabi, Sam Basu, Simon Bill, Cedric Christie, Fergal Stapleton - the following:
For the second project V22 PRESENTS have invited 5 artist curators to select works that engage with current developments and critiques in contemporary Sculpture.
The archaic term Sculpture can no longer contain the multiple directions and potentials that artists have attributed to it throughout its history.
Through bringing together diverse approaches and understanding from international artists, groups and projects V22 PRESENTS: The Sculpture Show is an opportunity to engage with the diverse potentials that have come to encapsulate, and exist within, the definition Sculpture.
Artists/Organisations

Data Wall:AESD: Agency for Economy and Space Development: Maziar Afrassiabi, Shahin Afrassiabi, Sam Basu, John Colenbrander, with thanks to Julian Meinold and Piers O'Hanlon

NIS: New International School: Matthew Stock Treignac Project: Sam Basu, Elizabeth Murray.
The Real:Phyllida Barlow, Anne Damer, Karin Ruggaber, Audrey Reynolds, Fergal Stapleton, Brian Wall, Martin Westwood.

Oysters Ain't:Karen Ay, Fiona Banner, Richard Bartle, David Batchelor, Rob Beckett, Simon Bill, Hartmut Bohm, Cedric Christie, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Steve Claydon, Clem Crosby, Penelope Curtis, Charlotte Cullinan & Jeanine Richards (ArtLab), Cathy de Monchaux, Arnaud Desjardin, Valerie Driscoll, Richard Ducker, Garth Evans, Urs Fischer, FREEE ( Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt & Mel Jordan), John Gibbons, Kathy Gili, Tom Gidley, Paul Gildea, Andrea Giulivi, Stewart Gough, Naum Gabo, Robin Greenwood, Brian Griffiths, Zoe Griffiths, Nicola Hicks, Peter Hide, Flore Nore Josserand, Helene Kazan, Michael Kidner, Philip King, Simon Liddiment, Ed Lipski, Colin Lowe, Christina Mackie, Bruce McLean, Rebecca Johnson Marshall, Haroon Mirza, Henry Moore, Zadoc Nava, Paul Neagu, Lawson Oyekan, Eduardo Paolozzi, Nicholas Pope, Richard Priestly, Michael Sandle, Paul Sakoilsky, Celia Scott, Dallas Seitz, Meg Shirayama, Jane Simpson, Anthony Smart ,Bob & Roberta Smith, Richard Smith, Steve Smith, Sarah Staton, Dan Stevens, Michael Stubbs, Vanya Balogh, Simon Stringer, Gavin Turk, Jessica Voorsanger, Gary Webb, Richard Wentworth, Keith Wilson, Christian Wulffen, Mark Woods, Richard Woods, Lars Wolter.

Well Said

2009-04-07T16:48:00.003Z

This says it all, I have always thought this and agressively put this accross to those who denigrate the work of artists and their 'usefulness' to society but sometimes someone just says it a whole lot better than you can yourself.

http://fluidthinking.karenay.com/2009/04/02/ivan-pope-bound-at-grey-area/

Elevated environment

2009-04-03T12:07:00.005Z

To look at architectural drawings and plans can be a soulless experience, the clean, untouched, utopian drawings can almost seem to deny the existence of humanity and the natural environment. Elevations show details to be achieved in all their pure and pristeen forms with unbroken lines and curves that do not encounter any disruptions. It is for these reasons that architecture can be a beguiling discipline, it represents an ability to view the world in a controlled manner, but when the built environment starts to grow from its foundations and is created in its physical and geographical forms rather than its supposed intended form on the page the reality of the human and natural world starts to intervene and alter the best laid plans. To view Richard Galpin’s meticulous and highly stylised architectural themed designs is to see both the beauty, desperation and delight of the architectural process and its manifestations in the urban landscape. At first we see what appears to be processed and stylised designs of fantastical architecture. Lines, curves and blocks of colour appear as perspectives and dimensions of an idealised urban landscape. Amongst these elements of lines, lines of sight into the blocks of colour reveal the visual information contained within. Images reveal themselves, lettering and typefaces, faces, materials and surfaces, the full manifestations of Galpin’s hand rendered designs are revealed, the blocks of colour and partially glimpsed images also highlight the process by which Galpin has rendered these designs. On large scale photos the emulsion is scored into these accuarately defined blocks and lines and the surface is peeled away revealing the white layer of paper underneath, this revealed surface shows the scuffed and frayed underlayer and adjacent to these blocks of scuffed white, lines and blocks protrude into these vast white areas of space, an exploded or imploded urban landsacpe only partially reveals itself. From this point the detail we look for in the archtectural plans is lost to a wider view of the natural environment dictating its presence on the built environment. One might think that this becomes a saddening realisation, Galpin is showing us the extent to which the physical world we construct around us is open to elements of unpredictable natural change and our own interventions that alter the landscape beyond our initial intentions, however we could see this image of destruction and change as a comforting and encouraging sign that time is marching forward and correcting the arrogance of human activity. Constructions built from materials which age and alter by natural processes beyond our control gain character and alter appearance in beautiful and unexpected ways, they grow and define their own right to existence and place in history. Those which degrade and age into a derelict or weakened state defy our ability to construct our urban world from unsustainable processes or designs rendered without the full rigourousness of our conceptual abilities. We cannot deny degradation and the passing of time and these processes warn us of vanity but also allow us to embrace our world as a natural environment with which we can create a relationship and dialogue.
I leave the Hales gallery and Richard Galpin’s thoughtful and handsomely crafted images and step into the city, suddenly every scratched pavement, dried piece of chewing gum, small uninitended intervention into the materiality of the built environment takes on a much larger significance. Dried puddles of water paint their presence on walls with residues of limescale, plants protrude from cracks in the pavement that have filled with the dust and soil that have been blown by currents of winds created by neigbouring buildings. Even markings left by ourselves to demark intended improvements or repairs to the fabric of our city appear as unintended but poignant indicators of our presence. The city will only acede to our will for a very short time and as the natural world infiltrates our urban environment and time passes its effects on our constructed environment and our own efforts to adapt to the environment we have created become either something to fear or something which can reveal an unnoticed and overlooked beauty.

Nothing Felt

2009-04-01T16:00:00.003Z

Tonico Lemos Auad’s sculptures, interventions and installations are too fragile, too loose and unformed, one feels that the fragile almost insignificant machinations do not carry enough weight to be considered an art object. It is not that the craft of the art works is in question more that such materials cannot hold our weight of expectations, wishes or desires. Where others see materiality I see disintegration, process is lost in the lightness of touch, and sensuality of materials rendered in the production of the work is lost to a dull aching sense of the insignificant struggling to meet our expectations of significance.
To feel no connection to work of such critical aclaim places a critic in the awkward position of feeling that maybe they “just don’t get it”, maybe the artist wants those of us too invested in the grand gestures of art to rethink the balance of power in art and wider society. The signature piece of this show is a silver scratch card wall with a background of vaguely revealed images of offerings to the Candomble goddess of the sea. It has intimations of the overlapping territories of faith and luck being cultures apart but somehow joining, however it does not insinuate to me the significance of this concept but just appears as an amalgam of multi-cultural graffiti. Visitors have ‘scratched’ but revealed nothing more than a need to make their mark by the opportunity to deface the wall with impunity. If the goddess wishes to help encourage ‘faith’ all we have offered is our disregard of her existence beneath this silver veil and given vent to our selfish need to impose our identity on our surroundings.
Broken silver chains looped from the ceiling and repaired with pieces of thread, two holes punched into the gallery wall and grills inserted that vaguely reveal the content of the shelves of the adjacent gallery office, a boat made from felt or bottles, pots and other vessels also made from felt do not make one think of anything other than the insignificance of such objects rendered in such a way. I am only too aware of the insiginificant and overlooked and Tonico Lemos Auad’s art works do not help me to think beyond that simple premise. To reflect on issues of significance and that which is overlooked should be something with which all of us should engage and reflect on however with this current exhibition in the Stephen Friedman gallery the art works just hold an insiginificant materiality, their stories are hidden and do not impress on this viewer any motivation to engage and remain overlooked. But as I said earlier, maybe I just don’t get it.

Overland

2009-01-23T15:13:00.001Z

The act of travelling can be experienced in a variety of ways, for some it is a means to an end, the destination being the only goal and the journey an inconvenience. For others the arrival at the destination is almost inconsequential to the journey, travelling is the way of experiencing an ever moving and changing landscape and diversity of human experiences and dialogues. Between these states there are numerous ways of experiencing our travels or journeys, for most of us we treat our travelling as something with which we can experience both. There is however an unpredictability to travel, journeys to new and unvisited places throws up experiences which give us potential new insights into the world around us and can lead us into unexpected and rewarding friendships or into the orbit of danger.

Sara Haq’s overland project is a series of documents of her observations and experiences as she travelled from London to Phuket, Thailand. The main focus of the exhibition is in Alexia Goethe’s downstairs gallery and in many cases the power of these images are detracted from by the documents of Haq’s journey in the upstairs gallery, along the walls of the gallery are small photographs with handwritten annotations, these snapshots of the journey both visual and written are interesting but one cant help feel that they seem just like the anecdotes of someones holiday. More interesting is the small screen video of some of Haq’s fellow travellers on the Trans-Mongolian, it is without the need for narrative that the strength of Haq’s video works, it is simply shot hand held camera work but this capture of a moment in time within Haq’s overall journey.

The real strength of Haq’s documentation is in the initial downstairs gallery space, unusually for many projects of this kind it is these large scale photos freed from anecdote and without being loaded with too much context that the viewer can truly reflect on journeys, landscape and the imprint of human activity on the world around us. This seperation between the social and human documents of the journey and the representations of landscape in the lower gallery allow us to reflect on our disassociation from the natural world. The seemingly monochrome photographs of the Siberian landscape are taken through the windows of the speeding train, elements of the world outside, the weather, trees and forests, raindrops on the window seem empty and devoid of human activity but after a while the small and insignificant aspects of human activity begin to invade the seemingly untouched natural scene. Telegraph poles, train tracks and cables encroach on the natural scene breaking the rhythm of the landscape with the evidence of humanities interaction with the environment. From inside we see the condensation from the inside of the train window which obscures the image of the exterior scene and minor, almost washed out, only lightly glimpsed reflections from the interior of the carriage. Finally the blurred edges of the photos, distortions of speed of travel and the alterations made to the photograph by the interpretive mechanics of the camera disturbed by movements and actions in front of the lens that it can never capture truly.

Even the most far away and seemingly untouched environments that we may find ourselves in are never truly wilderness and as far and as long as we travel our journeys can never take us too far from the hand of human activity and the lives of others, and that perhaps is the beauty and also the problem of travel and its influence on the world.

Lost in the Orchard

2009-01-16T15:05:00.000Z

The current installation by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov at Sprovieri Progetti exists somewhere between fiction and fact, the Kabakov’s installations always give the impression of having taking the real interiors of spaces and transposed them accurately into the gallery space. This experience of viewing a ‘documentation’ of a real space is, however, wholly inaccurate as the room you see before you is in essence an unreal spectacle. In the Kabakov’s imaginings the room entitled “I Sleep in the Orchard” bears all the realities of the interior of a patients room in an imaginary mental institute, supposedly the patients treatment involves the creation of their room as part of the clinical process. Within the almost cell like confines colours and objects are placed to allow the patient to realise their room as project which enables them to comprehend and accommodate the causes and manifestations of their mental illness.

Alongside the installation on the adjacent wall in Sprovieri Progetti’s gallery space is the fictional account of the patient, Eliazarova, in the text she tells of her past and the story of her removal from the countryside to a cramped and unsettling communal apartment. This disturbing urban environment finally pushes the fictional Eliazorova to attempt suicide and ultimately results in her hospitalisation and the manifestation of her room we see before us. The room contains eight pot plants that sit at the front of the room side by side almost like a barrier and beyond is a bed with its institutionalised furniture of metal frame and white sheets with dull grey woollen blankets. On green and grey walls sits a white canvas with green painted lines and blobs reminiscent of an abstracted landscape. A low wattage bulb hangs in the centre of the room creating an underlit, gloomy, dispiriting and depressing atmosphere. This stark interior and the story that creates it leaves the viewer with a sense of unresolved tension, we reflect on the outcome of this story and the gloomy interior and ultimately the fictional nature of the experience only serves to lower and diminish the mood of the viewer. We see neither hope for Eliazarova and only cursory comprehension of her illness through the realisation of her room.

One could extrapolate this experience and story to the life and work of an artist, taking the disturbed and disturbing elements of the perhaps lonely and isolated practice of an artist and their ideas and the manifestation of their visions in the ‘real’ world. Commissioned, curated, mediated and delivered from the isolation of the artists thoughts into material reality and finally into the full view of the public the inner thoughts and ideas are there to be reflected on, deciphered or just picked over by the prying eyes of the outside world. In the final reckoning perhaps the Kabakov’s suggest that no matter how free we are to place our interpretations in the real world as artists and viewers the realisations and comprehension of these thoughts and ideas can never be fully determined or understood.

Art Of Occupation - A Review

2008-11-01T12:27:00.003Z

London Stone - Equivalents i, ii & iii

London Stock Bricks

Various Dimensions

09/08

photo by Karen D'Amico

"For reasons of safety, we ask the public not to run or obstruct the runners."

2008-10-16T11:43:00.000Z

The familiar architecture draws your eye into the space and onto the spectacle, the runner walks slowly, turns the corner, a minor pause and with a small half step breaks into a run. Martin Creed is an artist who’s work divides opinion, his slight and subtle interventions into the world around him are read by some as empty gestures or others as indicators of significance through the highlighting of seemingly mundane acts in our social fabric. In the Tate his latest piece Work No.850 has a series of runners continuously running through the Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries every 30 Seconds. Ambling, confused, they disrupt the runners path, disengaged by the surrounding architecture and unsure of their onward route. A parting of bodies, quiet, unknowing subconscious reaction. Ignored, deftly negotiated almost imperceptible, the runner negotiates the space. Photographer in his way, weaving between human obstructions unaware of their influence on the runners onward movement.
The simple act of running has been described by Creed in a number of ways and in his own playful way we are left with only speculations as to his true intentions.
But as you stroll through the turbine hall it is the actions and interactions of the passing public that perhaps give a true context and understanding of the spectacle that Creed has created. A large crowd, a massive collective obstruction, unfeeling, disinterested, passive aggressive, causing the runner to make a big deviation through the space. The architecture regarded subconsciously dictating the runners efficient choice of path. A clear run, the runner is off line but easily adapting to surrounding bodies. It is at points where the runners movements are not only affected by the architecture of the Tate’s classic hall but the movements and physicality of those who are adjacent to the action that a sense of real and uncontrived fascination can be invoked in the viewer. Selfish, unconcerned, non negotiating of the space, the group collectively mark their presence in the space unconcerned by their obstructive manner. They will not move, they feel their importance and impose their will on the runner. Two others step aside polite, tolerant engaged in the full social spectacle. Here in the Tate we see modern society and its conditions reflected in the reactions of all those who inhabit the space with the runner. It is in the variety of responses that we can see a society where simple adherence to social codes and norms has shifted to more selfish and individualistic motives. Three young women. Interested, amused that they are obstructing the runners path, pleased to be influencing the process, briefly revelling in the attention. Arrogant, deliberately obstructive, more interested in their own personal space and projecting their identity to any adjacent person. The runner approaches the group, she deviates her path, they see her as an irritation.
We see a society at conflict, in which the need to assert ones own individuality and personality on many occasions predominates over a tolerant and respectful attitude to others. The runner is not only negotiating the architecture of the building but the social architecture of our times.
A Young boy watches fascinated, observing the power and movement of the runner, two others alarmed, frightened by the sound of the runners quickly moving footsteps.
The occasions at which a true and honest regard for the runner is taking place we see how an interest in the outside world can be a truly educating and rewarding experience. A large group of young men and women, a collective obstruction. One in competition chases the runner, seeking the attention and approval of the group. However in many ways society has become selfish and the interest of individuals in their right exert their individuality also affects the rights of others to exist unhindered. The way in which some chose to hinder and question the action that is unfolding around them provides a great insight into questions of personal space and intellectual freedom and the assertion of our individuality and the potential adverse affects this may have on others. Startled and concerned by the runners approach turning to interest and speculation. Anticipation of the runners path, steps aside and allows a clear path.

It reflects well on the Tate that they have enabled Creed’s current work to take place and in many ways the enormity of such a simple performance such as this comes beset with potential difficulties both logistically and conceptually. Selfishness, herd mentality, obstructive. Complete lack of awareness of surroundings, walks across the runners path, changes direction and does so again. A middle aged couple interestedly watch the runner and as he nears them exaggerate their efforts to remove themselves as an obstacle to his path.
Creed has not only challenged the hallowed environment of the Tate Gallery but also pushed the question of what art truly is. Deliberately ignoring, feigning indifference to the runner and his task. Amused, speculating, remove themselves from the runners path. A mass of human traffic, the runner stalls his run, negotiates the space with aggressive adaptive movements to continue his onward run. Watching, peripheral to the runners movement, almost an obstruction but stands to one side. Testing personal space and asserting his right to his own as the runner passes close by.
The simple act of running in the environment of the Tate addresses questions of social hierarchy, we are not just observers of art but a part of the work itself, from Creed’s initial vision of the simple act of running to the spatial negotiations that take place between the runner and the public present in the Tate. Creed has imposed a condition in the Tate with this artwork which provokes our assumptions of what constitutes an artwork, from Carl Andre’s Equivalent viii to Tracey Emin’s bed and beyond Creed’s Turner prize wining ‘lights going on and off’ we have another challenging and potentially seminal artwork of the 21st century.

Indifferent, self absorbed. An obstacle, unaware, surprised and finally embarrassed by their lack of awareness of the runners presence. Interest, awareness, speculation of the movement and mechanics of the runner and his action. Avoiding but respectful, playful and engaged. Respect for the runner and his task.
Once the action began to take place in this public environment a true dialogue ensued, it is unpredictable and uncontrollable. For as long as this piece continues Creed and his runners, the Tate and the public will be forced to interact in an unspoken conversation within the spatial boundaries of the Gallery.
A group, unaware, self absorbed. Several groups stand static in the space, the runner negotiates all with minor adaptions of his onward progress. Creed has taken the’me’society we currently inhabit and by creating a simple act created a negotiation truly in the spirit of our self absorbed ‘reality TV’ times.
Respect for endeavour, regarding the runner from a short distance.
Society has changed massively in the past 50 years and the pace of change is disconcerting and worrying, and as time races past and we try to live our lives in the manner we wish with the minimum of negative impact on others and the world around us we can but hope that a more individualistic society can recapture a sense of community and social responsibility. We have hope that art and society can progress with a true spirit of individuality allied with a respect for the world around us.
Turn of the head as the runner passes unimpeded. One shows surprise. The other gives an explanation of context. The first shows approval.

A spot

2008-10-08T11:30:00.001Z

Art Of Occupation

2008-09-11T18:00:00.001Z

The Golden Egg

2008-08-13T14:00:00.001Z

John Armleder is a highly influential and respected artist, however even the largest artistic reputation can be damaged by the context in which their work is shown and it is within galleries in the chic and moneyed areas of the West End that can often unknowingly subvert any intentions of an artist. In the Simon Lee Gallery Armleder’s current exhibition is subverted by the surroundings of conspicuous wealth and temples of glittering consumption available on your journey to the gallery. On entering the gallery you are met with the smell of paint, always the smell of opportunism in many a gallery. Around the walls huge floor to ceiling two colour paintings dominate with simply rendered motifs or designs. The first wall depicts crossed skulls and another acorns, it is when you see the designs of lobsters on a further wall and cocktail glasses on another that doubts may surface, cocktails and lobster being quite culturally loaded foodstuffs. Facing them are gold painted egg forms and a wall of Hirstesque colourful spottiness. On all the surfaces of these wall paintings are a further selection of smaller canvases on which are painted gloopy, drippy, aggregations of glittery and muddy paint. Rough, ugly surfaces are given a sheen of glittery niceness, any depth in the collected installation of painted, designed surfaces are only lightly implied, Armleder’s huge expansive efforts are lost in an appearance of surface and potential insincerity. We might question that anything much lies beneath the surface of these smart bright art trinkets on show.

However, just as I am beginning to believe my assumptions about Armleder’s current collection in front of me and start to lapse into a sense of despair at this view of easy hit, camply commercial, art fair fodder I am aware of one painting, it’s surface cracked and disintegrating it is beginning to reveal its painted underbelly, beneath smudges of golden yellow paint is an unmistakable sense of revolutionary red.

In Armleder’s installation you might see an ambiguous world in which the forces of commercialism squash any harmful and unsaleable integrity, perhaps we are viewing the death of revolutionary ideals or a rebirth of a modernised upswelling of ‘nu’ revolution. Maybe it is the fight between practice and market, an affirmation of the right to be high and low at the same time. Perhaps it is a depiction of the imagery of the modern world, pragmatic, aloof and powerfully sure of its own right to exist free from any associations except those that it chooses to make, a responsibility free, pragmatic and ambiguous, surface sheen respectable, image led life of entitlement. Just like Berkeley Street and it’s surroundings in which this exhibition sits in fact.

Art Of Occupation

2008-08-11T11:25:00.006Z

"Stupid is the new clever"

2008-07-31T18:00:00.002Z

What is stupid? the most powerful man on the planet is derided as an uninquisitive idiot, many of the most intelligent people I have known have lived in or close to what could be described as poverty. Our measures of clever and stupid are often subverted by cultural constructs such as wealth, education and profession, as a society we become more and more obsessed with fame and blur that distinction with achievement. Life and lifestyle become inseparable, we hide our intellect from others for fear of being seen as too clever and therefore ‘too serious’, we allow our accents to slide into estuarine to hide any indication of privilege and adopt the phrasings of psychologists to describe the most mundane and insignificant aspects of our lives. We beat ourselves up for our lack of academic knowledge and then big ourselves up for keeping it real, we goof around at work so that our workmates wont feel threatened by our success and then work later than the boss to show that we deserve that promotion. We spend way too much on that flash suit and then wear our trousers off our backsides at weekends, we pound the treadmill at the gym to keep our figures trim and then blow it all with liver fattening binge drinking. We buy Derrida and Sartre for our bookshelves and never read them and sneak glances at hello magazine. Our local indie cinema closes because we never visited it whilst we sit at home pissing ourselves laughing at a bunch of teenagers twatting about on mopeds in a playground on You Tube.

What is clever? A rambling and incoherent alcoholic is jokingly referred to as a street philosopher and yet in a stream of drunken anger, sadness and rebellion I have heard the most profound and incisive social comment. As a child I remember putting my parents on the spot by asking a question they would rather I hadn’t only to be fobbed off by a slightly angry comment of ‘don’t be clever!’. We fight for recognition of our abilities and intellect only to be told that we should be quiet and just work hard. We arm ourselves with a hard won set of qualifications only to throw it away for a job that doesn’t tax our abilities but pays well. We see our achievements hijacked and exploited by others and opportunities lost to those whose efforts serve their self- promotion and very little else. Often those whose abilities we respect most are forgotten as fashion sweeps their achievements away in the quest for progress. Our heroes were artists, musicians, sportsmen and actors but were also great thinkers, orators and activists, now we see on our television screens and in our newspapers an endless list of celebrities and wannabees who mistake being a personality with having a personality.

Rich and poor, high and low, inside and outside, stupid and clever, we need the one to understand the other, human beings need to understand the polar opposites of all concepts to place our own lives somewhere in between. Those boundaries delineate the journey of our lives, our identity is placed in the context of the identities of others around us and as such we exist in a society with constantly shifting parameters of behaviour and culture.

Depictions of modern life reflect this shift away from a respect of intellect and talent, we feel the need to divert our attentions from the big issues. Better to grab a 5 minute read of the gossip columns on our daily commute than ponder the latest policy statement announcing a further removal of our civil liberties, better to waste our Sunday mornings with salacious stories of the sex lives of minor celebrities than the working life of the blister fingered eight year old seamstress who made the shirt on our back for a pittance and why not have a moan about that light switch flicking artist who has sprinted back into our consciousness with his latest artwork, surely he is pulling the wool over our eyes, better to ponder that than why tracksuit wearing heavies seemed such a presence running alongside the torch bearers for the latest Olympics. It’s troubling and depression inducing to think about the big issues, to ponder and wonder at life’s inequalities is clever and clever is serious, serious is dull and dull is not cool, cool is trendy, childlike and playful, playful is frivolous and trivial, trivial is stupid. Lets be cool, lets be stupid and play.

Scattered all around the room is every toy the child ever owned, a huge mini scale model, a town of primary coloured plastic creates itself from the imagination, drawings scatter like the plans of a deranged mad architect, and the mad architect will not be stopped in his plans until the town is created. A town of amusement, leisure and a place for all to indulge their own imagination takes shape.

Do you remember the child who took every piece of mechanical equipment apart and by a process of trial and error pieced it back together? Dad hit the roof and Mum said “he’s only playing”. The radio that lay in pieces on the floor seemed so far from ever working again and with Dad’s red, sweating, rage filled face imprinted on the child’s memory he thought he would be hated forever. But that rage turned to pride when a day later the radio sat once more intact, reassembled by nimble child fingers. In later years this child becomes the engineer, little pieces of mechanical masterpieces are constructed together to create the vehicles that take us on our travels.

Absorbed in a nostalgia fuelled, childlike playfulness we can be cool. Did you have a dressing up box? fashion can be our dressing up box, we can create our identity, clothed in our latest tribal wear we can insinuate ourselves into society, claim our rightful place, walking through the streets in the most unusual excesses of fashion. Passers-by snigger but despite the sideways looks and laughing we know that somewhere we belong. Aping the latest look of our favoured hero we join our fellow tribe members, inside the tribe we are accepted, accepted by the tribe we have safety in numbers, no need to worry about being excluded, hidden inside the tribe no-one notices your insecurities.

Ever been bullied? Of course you have, too thin, too fat, glasses, funny voice, bit thick, ugly, too short, too tall, cheap clothes the list is endless and you can pick one or more from the list to give the reasons why. So how to deter the bullies? It’s the classic isn’t it, make them laugh, divert their attention by creating an identity that they warm too, if they like you they wont hurt you. Surrounded by your newly pacified enemies you are part of a community, your identity as the joker or clown protects you. You chatter and joke your teachers into frustration with your stupid antics, however the same inventive use of language amazes when seen in its written form, the pain in the arse class clown becomes the gifted poet with the incisive view and the teacher shakes their head at the contradiction.

Time passes and the child is becoming an adult, how to get people to take notice, make your mark on the world. Through fashion and slang an identity is created, who you are and what you do project your identity to the outside world, you could start a band, be a musician, a designer or engineer, an artist or architect, perhaps an actor, actress or comedian, writer or poet, it might never happen but those dreams of what your future could hold all stem from childhood play. The seemingly futile and frivolous activities of childhood that appeared to have no purpose but to just engage the childhood mind may become the basis of an inquiring and perceptive adult engaged not only in the minds inner thoughts and ideas but the realisation of those thoughts and ideas in the outside world. The seemingly self-absorbed actions replicated in adulthood may be the investigations into the concepts and ideas that surround us.

An act of stupidity can become an investigation into cleverness, an activity badly executed may be a plan, sketch or proposal to achieve great things. Sat in a pub a stupid construction of beer mats may become a rudimentary sketch for a cleverly conceived architectural masterpiece, an absent-minded doodle on a piece of paper during a telephone call becomes the work of a skilled and talented draughtsman. A rambling and humorous anecdote told for comedic value may use the same skilful verbal dexterity to create agreement and concession amongst those of differing viewpoints. The fashions we wear and slang we use may appear stupidly contrived but cleverly integrate ourselves into a community fearful of outsiders.

We negotiate points between those polar opposites of clever and stupid to inquire and investigate, ease and appease, plan and construct. The current British prime minister is lauded by those who know him as one of the most intelligent men in British politics, however, it is that cleverness which separates him from appealing directly to the electorate. Separated by what the general public perceives as a lack of understanding from issues that affect their everyday lives this clever man continues to alienate those whose vote he wishes to attract, more importantly his stated aims to improve the lives of the British people seem contradicted by policies which appear at best badly thought out and at worst to target individual groups. The lowest earners are now expected to have an increased tax burden, costs of services and goods are allowed to soar despite many being employed on decreasing wages in real terms, policies and laws enacted in the name of national security continue despite widespread mistrust and fear of intrusion. We see the once clever use of the political machine by a skilful and intelligent politician reduced to a shambling mess stupidly bouncing from one crisis to another. Perhaps the arrogance of cleverness has finally found that clever can so easily be used in a stupid way.

The comedian Mark Thomas continues to question those at home and around the world about their abuses of our society and environment, his targeting of the establishment often takes the form of playful, absurd and stupid actions but it within this stupidity and absurdity that we see stupidity in the actions and ideas of our supposed leaders and ‘betters’. Thomas’ stupid acts have highlighted legal inconsistencies, breaches of environmental regulations and standards and fraud and corruption in many places and forms. Highlighting the lack of rigorous thought in the application of laws governing lawful protest meant that Thomas legally applied to wear a poppy and carry a banner demanding support for the poppy appeal, stupid isn’t it? Without permission he could have been in contravention of the law and liable for arrest, the stupid and seemingly irrelevant act highlights the stupidity and danger of a badly thought out law, something which limits our right to legitimate protest. The law is something we assume to be in our interest and rigorously thought out and clever, this particular law was enacted to cleverly control protests and their impact, however its effects create protest through the use of acts of stupidity.
It is clear that the stupid use of cleverness abounds in modern life, it affects our earning potential and careers, our environment and health and our safety, security and freedom. But at the required times and places the clever use of the seemingly stupid can provide a playful, frivolous but incisive insight into society, the problems we face, and the solutions we may require.

This is the full text of an esssay written for the exhibition "Irregular Pulse" curated by James Ford at Ferreira Projects, 31/07/08-16/08/08.

Freedom Sound

2008-07-30T11:35:00.002Z

DO NOT.....

2008-07-29T17:30:00.000Z

Found opposite each other on Old Street.

Dodging

2008-07-25T16:31:00.000Z

Jason Dodge’s art contains such a lightness of touch that you could wander past a galleries windows without realising that any work was inside, his sculptures using found objects are in most cases the remnants of processes and actions. The overlooked objects and actions are removed from their original context and through their isolation from their original situations they sit within the gallery as a poetic resonance of recent history and indicators of quiet traditions.

In Gallery one one one Dodge’s collection of art works employ a diverse variety of media. In one work we may ponder the accumulated history and disparate nature of career, labour, employment and social hierarchy. The pockets of a pilot, window washer, acrobat, ballet dancer and judge have been cut from their trousers and placed in the order of the altitude at which these roles are practiced. In another piece a series of photographs have been produced by exposing photographic paper to the light of the summer solstice at a variety of global locations, hung side by side these simple photographs chart the same moment in history at different locations, we see a shared history and experience affected by natural forces and altered by location.

The exhibition at Gallery one one one also houses the work of Tereza Buskova in its lower gallery and is titled ‘Rituals’ and it is in one work in particular that the concept of ritual is most evident, the work “Ringing through Chimneys, A bell attached to the brush of chimney sweep Jörg Häuseler during the spring chimney cleaning in a neighbourhood in Berlin”. This appropriation of a necessary and practical seasonal activity becomes an event, an indicator of tradition and history, in Dodge’s hands the forming of this activity as an event by the addition of a small bell to the sweeps brush makes the necessary and practical a ritual. Perhaps this simple act has with Dodge’s intervention turned the practical and overlooked into a modern ritual that will now become an indicator of local history and identity, whether in the future this addition will remain is not significant, the significance in all Dodge’s actions and art works is the ability to see the social and cultural repercussions that all activities no matter how small may make. Whether these social and cultural activities remain and become tradition or are lost to history is unimportant, what I believe Dodge can show us is that when we place the most seemingly insignificant actions and processes within a site or locality or if those actions move from being personal and individual to being adopted by others that we all individually can have very significant and powerful effects on shaping our environment and its history.

Freedom Sound!

2008-06-27T09:53:00.003Z

Appear, fade, disappear.

2008-06-17T16:17:00.000Z

The theme of memory and remembrance weigh heavily in the work of Oscar Munoz, throughout the selection of works exhibited at iniva we see faces depicted , created or appear in front of our eyes only to fade from view by processes which enable us to see but also to inevitably fade the image away from us. Portraits rely on simple rendering by the artists hand or by reflections which alter and eventually disappear.
In one video piece the image of the artists face is reflected in water held in his cupped hands, this rudimentary mirroring of the face is at the mercy of change and the lack of control we have over the watery reflection, just as in life forces beyond our control dictate what we can observe and the nature of our observations. The mind drifts to the degeneration of the human brain and the destructive forces of ageing on our abilities to recall, recognise and remember as the water seeps through the small gaps between the fingers and the cupped hands. We hold on tightly to our memories but for some even the recall of our own image and actions fades away with the passing of time.
In a similar piece Munoz reflects on our own self image, in a ceramic basin a face is drawn on the surface with a dark material to create the simple lined visage, held still by the water which fills the basin it is still and recognisable but as the plug is pulled the face distorts, the water slowly drains and as the final drops disappear all that remains is a messy remnant of the image. Simply titled ‘Narcissus’ it is an obvious and poetic criticism to the over-reliance on ones own self image and the futulity of vanity. The final series of portraits are comprised of five video screens showing the artist deftly painting portraits of a variety of faces in water on dry slabs of stone, as quickly as the faces are completed and the next is being created the inevitable drying of the water occurs and the faces fade and disappear. People come and go, time passes, the significance of the movement of time and our own insignificance within its passing is clear.

All the works in this exhibition are engaging, at the same time Munoz’s work can be subtle but obvious, simple and powerful. It is in Munoz’s piece ‘Eclipse’ that the inward reflections look outward, seven holes have been created in the gallery wall which blocks our view out of the window, the remaining views out through these tiny dots in the wall are reflected in much the same manner as pinhole camera onto a mirrored disc which then projects the image of the world outside the gallery onto the wall adjacent to the hole, it is a voyeuristic but unpredictable peek in real time at life outside. People and vehicles pass, clouds roll across the sky, the sunlight changes in intensity as atmospheric conditions change and develop. Whilst captured in our own thoughts we voyeuristically wait for the next interesting indication of the passage of time outside, one may feel the sense of being absorbed into a cinematic reconstruction of here and now. This may be where Munoz’s real intentions lie, absorbed in a self indulgent need for recognition, concerned with images of ourselves and others and obsessed with the processes of ageing, the passing of time and our own mortality perhaps Munoz is showing us the futility of too much self absorption and suggesting that we step back outside and take part in life rather than just watching as it passes us by.

Spending some time in Mr Brooker's world

2008-05-29T08:44:00.007Z

I might be feeling in a particular cynical, abrasive and intolerant mood lately but here I am sat on the 214 bus and suddenly a strong mixture of smells diverts me from my book, suddenly I cant concentrate any more and admit defeat, place the paperback in my bag and try to ignore the noxious waft of the guy who has decided to share my seat on the crowded bus. It’s the usual London public transport experience and unfortunately of all the people to share my seat with this guy is the one I am forced to endure, not for me the attractive young lady with the copy of the Guardian who I could peek glances at whilst revelling in the ability to breathe only the smell of freshly washed passenger. Also not for me the young dude with the loud but interesting sound of African music spilling from his oversized headphones, not even the chance of a random and rambling conversation with the benign, smiling, be-dredded homeless guy who probably could pass the journey with a conversation on the meaning of life or at least to jointly laugh at the suits pursuing a headlong rush into their boring office job and early blood pressure. No of course not, I get to share the immediate vicinity of the rest of my journey with a man of many odours, odours of which I can determine seem to be chainsmoked cheap cigars, a breath vaguely reminiscent of fox excrement and an overwhelming smell of freshly pissed pants. When I say freshly I don’t quite mean a toilet spillage accident about 20 minutes ago but fresher than, say, the ability for the odour of piss to nuetralise itself by drying over the course of a few weeks, this smell of piss is fresh enough to have occurred about 3 days ago but not fresh enough to disguise the fact that it has sat for those 3 days gradually cooled but still kept at body temperature to assist full festering fermentation. It is amazing what the human sense of smell can endure and I am just marvelling at this very thing when my nostrils are assaulted further by the arrival at the seat behind me of another wafting of fellow passenger, now in glorious stereo I don’t just have Mr cigarfoxdungpish my nostrils are further tormented by a fellow with the general aroma of 2 day old vindaloo which he now is metabolising back out of his sweaty pores with a mixture of curry and deoderant failure. I am guessing this guy is unsuccessful with the opposite sex, so much so that on the one occasion he managed to get laid, by a woman with permanently sealed nasal cavities, decided that this was such a strange and miraculous occurance that to wash from that day forward might break the spell and therefore the smell of his fetid coupling should remain in all its odour filled glory along with the metabolised and unwashed evidence of his limited but easily recognised eating habits.And just as I can take it no longer and feel that my sinuses are about to collapse shut rendering any message between nose and brain irrelevant we arrive at Kings Cross where both of my charming travelling companions alight leaving me free to breathe and get back to the book which is diverting me from my generally cynical, abrasive and intolerant mood. I wouldn’t say Charlie Brooker’s ‘Dawn of The Dumb’ is necessarily inspiring but it is a bloody good read.

Freedom Sound!

2008-05-17T09:27:00.001Z

Dizzy, Dazzled and Dissatisfied

2008-05-07T15:59:00.001Z

Massimo Bartolini is a humorous and talented artist, his art takes the form of playful interventions in the existing fabric of our lives, he has a skewed, sideways and often tongue in cheek look at the world around us. In Bartolini’s subverted interventions we as viewers are pushed into reassessing and reinterpreting the familiar, we are challenged but also charmed by his art. So standing in the Frith Street gallery for his latest show I ask myself “what the hell went wrong?”, this is the moment where Bartolini steps across the line from tongue in cheek playfulness to self satisfied smugness. With Bartolini’s previous works I have been aware of an artist forcing a reaction from the viewer, in the world we share he pokes, prods and cajoles an engagement with the work and a response to it. It is with this contriving of reaction and response when Bartolini finally oversteps his mark.

In this sculptural, kinetic, video installation eight videos are projected from 2 shelving units as they rotate and revolve the projected images around the gallery surfaces, the looped sounds and images create a never-ending cycle of movement. The images depict scenes of everyday movement a series of seemingly unlinked actions, a house being demolished, moths on a disc of light, a cement truck crossing a road bridge, piano tuner tuning, window cleaners cleaning. These disparate images loop, rotate, cross and overlap occasionally disappearing or obscured by the galleries internal architecture of columns and walls and then reappearing on their relentless cycle. The images change scale, focus and perspective as they continue their journey across the various planes of the galleries surfaces, walls and ceiling.
Presumably Bartolini is showing us a world of seemingly unlinked and unknown forces and actions, movements through time briefly coexisting before becoming once more isolated everyday actions in life’s onward progression.
Life can be a beguiling and intriguing thing< unfortunately as I am once more caught annoyingly and blindingly in the eyes by a passing beam of light from the projectors and as I wheel around in a vaguely dizzying dance contrived by Bartolini I scan the passing images for some understanding and feel Bartolini has me chasing a view of life of frustrating, confusing and boringly unresolved dissatisfaction.

2008-04-17T15:34:00.002Z

Spring Selection 2008

2008-04-15T19:50:00.003Z

Radio Rebelde’s Sounds of Now and Not Quite Now-Spring 2008

1.Yusef Lateef-Love and Humor (1973 ‘Blues for The Orient’, Prestige Records)
2.Jazz Crusaders-Freedom Sound (1962 VA-‘All Jazz’, Fontana)
3.Nina Simone-Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter (7" Jazzman Records)
4.Mark de Clive-Lowe ft Anni Elif-All Of Me (2007 10” Swell Session/Swell Communications Album Sampler Part Two, Freerange Records)
5.Christian Prommer’s Drumlesson-Strings Of Life (2006 12”, Sonar Kollectiv)
6.Soil & “Pimp” Sessions-A.I.E (Album Version) (2007 12”, Brownswood Recordings)
7.Outhouse-Spiders (2008 ‘Outhouse’, Babel Recordings)
8. Message To Our Ancestors Introducing Big Black-2nd Movement….Cause (‘Message To Our Ancestors Introducing Big Black’, Universal City Records/MCA)
9.Marvin Gaye-Main Theme From Trouble Man (2) (1972 Troubleman OST, Motown)

10.Rain/a Lil Louis Painting-Give It Up (MAW Flute Instr.) (2000 Nite Grooves/King Street)

Yachtboy Sessions

2008-04-05T18:23:00.000Z

.....coming soon.....

Gates Closed at The Cellar

2008-03-21T17:28:00.000Z

Utah

2008-03-13T14:02:00.000Z

Dogtown UK

2008-03-04T15:20:00.000Z

Everyday People

2008-03-04T14:00:00.002Z

We exist in a world of movement, individuals are no longer static and confined, the geography of our lives is expanding and overlapping with the movements of many others around the world, none more so than in our cities. It is these ever changing urban environments that we now try to make sense of, fast paced and unpredictable interactions with others have replaced longer more organic development of our sense of place and identity, moments are snatched when once longer dialogues with our surroundings and the people that inhabit them took place, we stand still for some brief seconds and the city goes rushing past in a blur, we hope to make a mark for ourselves but are often hidden in the chaos. In the Phoenix Gallery in Brighton four Hong Kong based artists have been invited to respond to these concerns and explore their city, this series of explorations, chartings and interventions created for the exhibition are titled ‘Everyday Anomalies’ and show us some different approaches to the codes and patterns of urban society.
The exhibition provides a varied selection of art works but one thing in common is a playful but most importantly slowed down interaction with their surroundings, they have all taken their time to look afresh and renew their view of the world around them. It is this indulgence of slowing down, stopping and looking once more that creates art of great power, it is not the overt and noticeable that is significant but as in the very title of the exhibition the mundane, hidden, partially seen or everyday fabric of the world around us. Kwan Sheung-Chi’s fake sculptures are obvious and not so obvious recreations of existing objects, an apple juice carton is screwed up and looks ready for the dustbin but looking once more we imagine in its scrunched and screwed form the discarded apple core. In its imagery we see the space between the real and processed fruit, are we being encouraged to look once more ourselves to determine the real and fake around us?. On the wall adjacent to the apple core juice carton is a dead mosquito, its body and legs splayed as if squashed violently and on the wall traces of blood oozed and dried by its side. On closer inspection it seems this is another fake created from the artists own blood and hair, the artist seems as fragile as the mosquito, perhaps we are too. Luke Ching is an altogether more robust character, he has a playful way with his art, within the cities noise and movement he wishes to make a mark. In silence but with actions that laugh and chatter at those who see them he charmingly mocks our unblinking, unthinking movements and embraces those who see and act with him. In Ching’s video and accompanying photographs we see him in a shopping mall, he carries a helium balloon, seemingly accidently the Disney character balloon slips from his grip and floats upwards until it stops contained by the ceiling of the mall. Some notice, many don’t and in his photographs he returns every day to see the fate of the balloon, until on the seventh day it is no longer to be seen, hope gives way to the inevitability of change. In the gallery space itself Ching has created other interventions and actions, in a hollow in the gallery floor we are asked as visitors to ‘take a nap if you want’, a small mattress and pillow are provided. As the Brighton traffic rumbles past the window outside we could relax, bury ourselves for forty winks and become a living piece of art, why not?, Ching would do so if he were in the gallery with us.
Rather than stillness or rushing urban movements it is the gentle forces and objects outside our atmosphere that fascinate Kam Lai Wan, using star charts and rescaling them onto the world around us we can create a series of actions and journeys somewhere between predictable and unpredictable. Recreated from an antiquarian star chart is a braille chart, journeys taken into the stellar atmosphere in our sighted imaginings can be re-imagined by those without sight. In another work Wan has taken a series of journeys that are once again determined by the stars, transposing and rescaling constellations onto maps to create the route. At each point at which a star would occur a stone is collected and added as a document of the journey, a large and unknowable cosmos is travelled and charted on the familiar land we know but perhaps guiding Wan to unfamiliar places along the route. In Wan’s final series of constellation inspired works a number of modified music boxes have been created, each constallation now chimes in its own unique way as we turn the handle, it is an audible and predictable sound created from something vast and unknowable.
Finally it is the potential for the significant in the seemingly insignificant that interests
Pak Sheung-Chuen, the simple act of shopping is turned into a method for giving messages, the collection of items purchased by Pak are scanned and in the receipt that documents the purchases messages appear. The work entitled ‘Love Letter For LC’ is a message contained in the first character of the title of 4 books bought by Pak, on the receipt when read top to bottom the first characters of each line can be translated into the words “I am thinking of you”. ‘Miracle of $136.70’ creates a biblical message in the second characters of each line, the supermarket items listed top to bottom can then be read as “whoever believes in Him should have eternal life”. Pak’s world is hopeful, we live in a hopeful world where our predictable everyday lives may be leading us to something better, to happier and improved circumstances. It is in Pak’s video ‘Breathing in a House’ that we see this ability to create something better through the everyday, from the 1st to the 11th of September 2006 he created an artwork in an apartment he had borrowed from a friend. In the speeded up video Pak occasionally travels the city but mostly just lounges around the apartment, we see him cooking, eating, sleeping and watching films on his laptop but amongst this mundane domestic environment he is creating and accommodating his artwork. Breathing into clear plastic bags and tying them closed he creates a balloon like installation of hundreds of bags, as the days continue the bags accumulate until finally the apartment is full, floor to ceiling, front to back, it is a beautiful construction which bounces light off the transparent reflective surfaces of the inflated bags. In all these art works the simple act of breathing and being becomes something beautiful and significant, then again it always was but sometimes we need the likes of Pak Sheung Chuen, Kam Lai Wan, Luke Ching and Kwan Sheung-Chi to remind us.

Untitled Series

2008-03-03T12:00:00.001Z

Untitled (series)

Found Printed Images on Watercolour Paper

25cm x 18cm
03/08

'Some Other Stuff' at The Fountain, 29/2/08

2008-03-01T15:26:00.000Z

Broadwick Street

2008-02-28T17:58:00.000Z

Little Green Street

2008-02-28T11:13:00.005Z

text from The Camden New Journal

London Stone (27 Feb 2008)

2008-02-27T11:00:00.000Z

Smoke and Mirrors

2008-02-22T21:04:00.000Z

An artist takes a narrative and often turns the verbal or written material and reinterprets the information into a visual, object based material or intervention. The dangers of these methods are that without the back story an artists work can seem unreadable, the gap between the story and the art work that inhabits the space can be vast. This is exactly the problem when viewing Hague Yang’s latest installation at the Cubitt gallery, Yang has created an installation inspired by the murder of German Green party founder and activist Petra Kelly, without the knowledge of details of Kelly’s death we can only guess at the tortuous and twisted concepts that created the design of Yang’s installation and we are left with many unanswered questions. This in fact echoes those questions left behind or unanswered in the investigations behind Petra Kelly’s murder, we ask ourselves whether this seems to be the artists intention. In the ensuing dialogue between viewer and artwork we question our abilities to decipher the signals and visual messages being laid out before us, perhaps Yang has skilfully reinterpreted those unanswered questions of the investigation into the sculptural forms we see before us now.
Mirrors reflect piercing and changing intensity of light beams obscured by a construction of many venetian blinds that mask the gently blowing fans of scent machines, we pace around the installation looking for clues as to what is hidden, by which and for what reason. Yang’s installation plays with familiar materials and objects and engages many senses but seems at the same time distant and abstract. It is a ghostly environment ready to reveal its secrets only to shroud them in obscurity once more, we search for the clues and wait for the story to unfold only to step once again into the obscured.

Seemingly somewhere between the public and private life of Petra Kelly is the truth behind her death and similarly somewhere between the story of Petra Kelly and Haegue Yang’s installation that has been inspired by Kelly’s life and death is a well conceived and executed art work. It remains a clever but frustrating series of smoke and mirrors.

Hearts of Ice

2008-02-07T19:53:00.000Z

The sound fills the semi darkness of the room, a scratching, dripping, skewed soundtrack of nature, the sound of the life or perhaps death of a vast global force. At the icy feet of a glacier a human is insignificant, a small dirty speck on a huge, clean, powerful force. The sights and sounds of Katie Paterson’s three films in the new space of the Room gallery fill the semi-darkness of the gallery, a blue’ish light emanates from the screen, the strange soundscape alters from the natural to unnatural and back again in fractions of seconds. Glacier’s have shaped our world and left us with an inheritance in the contours and shapes of the geography of the world we inhabit, they have forced their way across the landscape, scouring, grating and polishing the surface of the planet creating the lands we now know. From three Icelandic glaciers, Langjökull, Snaefellsjökull and Solheimajökull Paterson has collected the glacial meltwater and the sounds of their immediate environment, the melting dripping sounds of their existence. We now recognise that this is potentially the last age of our current glaciers, human activity is pushing many of these powerful forces of nature to the end, as the world heats these solid but slowly changing landscapes of ice are finally exhausting their powers. Paterson’s recordings of the three glaciers have been pressed as LP records, moulds have been created from these and then cast in the refrozen meltwater, the sights and sounds of the playing of these ice records are filmed and replayed on the screens within the gallery. The power of the glacier is evident when viewed close at hand, to venture onto its surfaces is to engage in a subtle dance with danger, its colours are some of the most beautiful and astounding the natural world can offer and its dangers extreme, a sublime balance of beauty and danger. The sounds of the three records move between the natural and unnatural, the sounds of water dripping and the slow stretch and contraction of the ice and then the scratch and slip of the abrasive cast ice of the record and the slowly melting grooves. During springtime the immediate danger of the glacier is multiplied, ice bridges become unstable and crevasses wait to swallow the unsuspecting, unfortunate or inexperienced travelling across its face, however on a global scale the actions of humans are changing the life of the glaciers, we have embarked on a battle with a natural force of the earth and as we jeopardise its existence the natural response of the glacier to our actions also jeopardises humans both individually and collectively. Paterson’s three films combine to create a beautiful and poignant artwork, it documents her journey, the landscape and the amazing character of these icy bodies and also poetically documents a potentially dying force of nature whose state we are causing to alter and whose demise will alter our own lives.

Winter Selection 07/08

2008-01-14T12:31:00.000Z

Radio Rebelde’s Sounds of Now and Not Quite Now-Winter 2007/08

1.Max Roach-Freedom Day ((1960) 1972 ‘We Insist!’, Amigo Records)
2.Troubleman-Change Is What We Need (progress) (12”, Far Out Recordings)

3.James Tatum-Introduction/Lord Have Mercy (2007 VA-‘Gilles Peterson Digs America 2’, Luv N’Haight)
4.Build An Ark-Dawn (2007 7”, Kindred Spirits)
5.re:jazz (with Alice Russell)-Gabrielle (2007 12”, INFRACom!)
6.Natural Self-The Love Theme (Nostalgia 77 Version) (2007 12”, Breakin Bread Records)
7.Esther Phillips-Magic’s In The Air (1976 7”, Kudu Records)
8.Steve Reid Ensemble-Don’t Look Back (2007 ‘Daxaar’, Domino Records)
9.Delaneys Rhythm Section-Rebel (1995 ‘No Jokin …. We’re Smokin’’, Rhythm’n Business Records)
10.Marvin Gaye-How Can I Forget (1969 7”(b), Tamla Motown)

2008-01-05T17:22:00.000Z

Santiago Sierra is a controversial figure, his critiques of money systems and labour are often accused of exploiting the same individuals whose lives he aims to highlight. Sierra’s art exposes in its most raw form the continuing issues of prejudice and exploitation of those due to their class, race and sex. In previous works he has paid people to sit hidden inside boxes during the course of an exhibition, one of his most arresting and alarming works involved paying prostitutes the price of a fix of heroin for consenting to being tattooed along their backs. The initial shock at the exploitation of these young women should be no more shocking than the exploitation that they suffer in their everyday working lives however for some Sierra’s actions take this one step further, we weigh our judgements based on our concept of price paid and degradation suffered.

In the Lisson Gallery’s exhibition space at 29 Bell Street Sierra exhibits 6 previous projects of differing scale including a series of photographs investigating the wealth of a variety of inhabitants of Caracas, Venezuela and a 72 hour recording detailing the names, place and date of death or disappearance of 1549 known men and women who have succumbed to political violence in Mexico between 2 October 1968 and 2 December 2007.

In Sierra’s exhibition at the Lisson’s main gallery at 52-54 Bell Street he has produced a series of modules constructed using human faeces and a plastic binding agent. The faeces are formed into the units by being allowed to dry in wooden cases, three years later the cases have been opened and they now reside in the gallery, a biologically inert cast material, opened to view as if just delivered. It is not the form we reflect on but the manner in which this material has been collected, Sulabh International in India sponsored the project to highlight the plight of the workers who remove the faeces from public and private latrines everyday. It is estimated that one million people in India are employed for this task and the working conditions and health implications of such work are obvious. The Indian government has prohibited the use of non-flush toilets and the employment of scavengers but this work still continues.

The moral difficulties we face as viewers or participators in Sierra’s works are ones that we could consider every time we embark on a transaction purchasing services, labour or products, the further from home those services or products are enacted or produced from the more detached are our moral considerations, it is within that moral quandry that the dark beauty, aching pain and political necessity of Sierra’s art lies, for those of us most detached from the true value and cost of life the more difficult the moral issues.

Resonance Plea

2007-12-27T11:07:00.000Z

Dear friends,
Another seasonal begging letter. I apologise for troubling you buthope you can take one minute to help us with a problem that will ONLY be resolved with your help. As you may be aware, Resonance FM was established by London Musicians' Collective. LMC's remit has been, for thirty years now, to support avant-garde music, that supposedly "difficult" stuff that gets lampooned as elitist noise in the popular press and on the "Today"programme.
The list of its achievements would take up many pages (a tiny fraction is at www.l-m-c.org.uk). Suffice to say, Resonance FMwas entirely the creation of the LMC Board and emerged directly fromits work. No other organisation would have realised such a project: no other organisation did. LMC's grant from Arts Council England's Music Department has now been entirely cut. The radio station is not immediately threatened, as it is financed directly by the Visual Arts department (Music having never expressed interest in Resonance whatsoever). But to have one without the other is, as you can imagine, a little pointless to those of uswho set up Resonance FM. This year, ACE has managed to find £1.7million to underwrite the launch of a new music umbrella body, "The New Organisation." LMC was excluded from the discussions about this quango, the stated ambitions of which sound remarkably like what we have been realising on a daily basis for the last five years: the maintenance of a hub which encourages, nourishes and broadcasts the work of musicians of every stripe from our locale and beyond, etc etc (only couched in the language of marketing consultants and apparently to be manned by people devoid of originality or vision). Meantime, too, the sequel to LMC's best selling CD, Peter Cusack's "Your Favourite London Sounds" plays in ACE's lobby as a permanent audio exhibit! I wonder if you would help me by writing a short email to the peopleat ACE Music, expressing your support for LMC? And ask for an acknowledgment of your email. If they receive five or six thousand emails, maybe they will be prepared to reconsider this crisis of their own making.
Please address your email to the following persons: graham.knight@artscouncil.org.uk (Assistant Officer, Music, London)helen.sprott@artscouncil.org.uk (Head of Music, London)moira.sinclair@artscouncil.org.uk (Director, London)peter.hewitt@artscouncil.org.uk (Chief Executive, National)

Please make the subject "From " rather than something generic that can be easily ignored. Bear in mind, these are public servants: they work for us and you can, I think, insist on a response. Don't be surprised to receive an Out of Office automatic replyinitially: of course everyone responsible will be heading to the hills! Please cc it to " plea@resonancefm.com" so we have a copy on file. All emails sent to this address will be treated in strict confidence. The second way you can help is of course financially, by becoming amember of LMC and expressing your support with your hard-earned cash. At this time of year, such a request must appear vulgar and inapposite. And it is something we have never pushed in the past,because the radio station was set up with a sense of social purpose, in a spirit of frank and open hospitality. So don't send us any money, just another email with the subject "Potential Member," no more thanthat: we'll only get back to you IF we manage to crawl out of this particular hole.I find this really mortifying. Every other email from me seems to be asking our supporters for money: and this year we raised over £17,000 from individual donations, so I'd hoped that we were in the clear for a while. But, cocooned in the overwhelmingly positive and intelligent environment provided by Resonance, perhaps I underestimated the cynicism of these times.
Sincerely
Ed Baxter
programming director
Resonance104.4fm
144 Borough High Street
London SE1 1LB
020 7407 1210

In Search Of The London Stone

2007-12-17T18:21:00.000Z

For the past week I have been working on the foreshore of the Thames, set down from the usual movements of the city, to be by the Thames is to step back into London’s past. Researching materials at various sites along the riverside in the centre of London I have been gathering information and observing, collecting, catalogueing and collating specific materials to be used in a series of art works, this series of works is expanding all the time as I respond to my findings by the river side. Under a low winter sun, in freezing temperatures I have seen the hidden London, historical artefacts abound, etched stonework, building debris, the tide laps at the shore with changing intensity as river craft of different sizes go past, various plastics and rubbish float by. The tides reveal and then reclaim the foundations of our city, the discarded remnants of activities that one would not like to reflect on for too long, a three legged bull-terrier cast to the water in death, snatched moments for marking the city, graffiti, tags, impromptu interventions in the fabric of the city hidden from view from all but those few that venture along the river or take a few precious moments of solitude in these places only accessible when the tide allows. Beachcombers, a young man and woman making an approximation of a snowman but with estuarine sand, a sandman if you like, a smoking driftwood fire, an occasional tourist dropping down to the quiet unseen London. Cracked and broken words on rubble, ceramic and stone, voices and histories incomplete, torn and split from their homes and thrown to the bed of the city.

Stepping back into the present by ascending the stairs that bring you back to the familiar London is to step away and out of a melancholic but comforting world, I feel engaged to a history of London that is only evident in these few places, able to return to the present once the tide claims back its territory. For the next few months I will continue charting a London that is all my own, a wonderful place of solitude, a unique place in this ever changing, fast paced city that allows me to find a quiet place of my own but only so long as the river will allow me to.

Fragility

2007-12-04T17:38:00.000Z

Ian Kiaer’s art is light, almost insignificant, the materials are grungy, throwaway byproducts of human activity, his sculptures and installations are constructed from the discarded remnants of modern culture, a culture it seems with the attention span of a chimp. Plastic, sheets of foam, polystyrene, cardboard, paper and other such impermanent materials combine with printed matter, adverts cut from their usual context. Printed snatches of lettering on packaging and strings of catalogue numbers and letters represent a now anonymous product. To step into Kiaer’s found and reconstructed world is to see a depressingly mortal culture, in Kiaer’s installations society appears as fragile and impermanent as the world we construct around ourselves.
Kiaer’s current installation at Alison Jacques Gallery is titled Ulchiro project and represents his current observations of the Ulchiro district in Seoul, South Korea.
In the two rooms of the gallery are a collection of assemblages and sculptures which make up the overall installation, in this installation Kiaer’s familiar stylings are developed further, this exhibition appears to be the starting point to the next chapter in his career, the usual transient, insignificant sculptures retain the same lightness of touch as Kiaer’s previous works but this assembled collection of works provides some larger and more ambitious pieces which skilfully retain the lightness evident in his previous work, this step up in scale is deft and subtly reinforces preoccupations in Kiaer’s earlier art works whilst highlighting something new and beyond those earlier concerns. To view the smaller almost minituarised works of previous years allowed the viewer a very personal reflection of their own life and its connection to the outside world, the scale of these pieces felt personal because the scale felt very much that of the human hand, this condition remains with many of the pieces here but with the added shift in scale with two larger pieces we see a scale larger than the human body, these two constructions tower over us and provide the potential to invade our space and create a place in the world alongside us. The first sculptural form we meet on entering the gallery is a large metal frame, sitting like a thin, aluminium framed, skeletal billboard with the boards removed it appears teetering on the brink of failure, its frame is bolted together strongly but due to the lightness of the material the frame may give way to collapse at any time, the second large scale sculpture is constructed from transparent bin liners, separated and then sealed together to create a larger inflatable model, the air pumped into this inflatable structure helps it maintain its large and imposing presence, however one pull of the plug and this overpowering structure will deflate it into a crumpled and lifeless heap of plastic, these assembled combinations of power and fragilty reflect something that can be harmed by us but dictate their presence to us also. Like those things constructed in our environment Kiaer’s latest exhibition shows not only the fragility of the material world we construct around us but also the frailty of our own lives with reliance on and power we imbue in a constructed world created from such impermanent and fragile materials.

2007-12-02T12:05:00.000Z

Press Release - 30 November 2007
This week the British Surfing Association (BSA) is amazed to learn that British Airways (BA) has been entertaining its passengers with not one, but two, surf movies on its in-flight film channel. In light of the BA ban on the carriage of surf boards that came into effect on Tuesday 6th November, on a business class flight from London Heathrow to New York, a surfer and BA gold card holder was stunned to find the airline showing two surf films- Sony's 'Surf's Up', an animated surfing based tale, and 'Step Into Liquid', a surfing documentary. The BSA's petition for the reversal of the ban is still growing apace and now an Early Day Motion in the British Parliament has nearly 50 MPs' signatures. Although surfing continues to grow on a global scale, BA seems intent to continue to believe that surfers are in their own words a 'miniscule' minority and that not enough surfers check in boards to make it worth their while to meet their needs. However, BA is obviously hoping to use the global rise in interest in surfing to while away the hours on long haul flights. Claire Davidson, a keen surfer from London often uses BA on a weekly basis for her business class flights to Africa, Russia and America and was really shocked to hear about the surfboard ban. Claire said, "I think it is totally ridiculous that BA has banned surf boards and now to add insult to injury they are showing surf movies on their flights. It is just so ironic! I am now unable to use my BA air miles to go surfing and something needs to be done to change this." Hundreds of thousands of surfers travel each year to enjoy and develop their pastime and need to fly their boards with them. For years, top international surfers including the British Surfing Team have chosen BA above all other airlines as they have has a fair and open minded policy about board carriage. At the same time as the surfboard ban was announced BA proudly publicized the fact that it would be loosening any restrictions on their carriage of skis, snowboards, cycles, diving equipment and even guns, amongst other items.In order to turn this ban around the BSA is continuing to urge everyone who surfs to take five minutes to go online and follow their recommended action steps. Surfer action steps:1. Contact your local MPs and ask them to sign the EDM. You can find out who your local MP is and how to contact them by going to: www.theyworkforyou.com.The EDM is number 136 (MPs will be fully aware of how to access the EDM and sign it on behalf of their constituent.)2. Go onto www.britsurf.co.uk and click the 'SIGN ONLINE PETITION OF PROTEST IN THE NEWS SECTION ON THE HOME PAGE'. Follow the easy steps to sign this online petition and add any comments.3. If you have a Facebook account, join the Facebook 'British Airways Surfboard Ban' group 4. Click this link http://www.britishairways.com/travel/custrelform/public/en_gb and register a complaint with BA directly5. Encourage all other surfers to follow these steps

Some Other Stuff

2007-12-01T18:29:00.000Z

p18, Explorer Magazine, Cambridge Dec 07

Looking Over The Shoulders of History and The Future

2007-11-26T16:06:00.000Z

Once an artist reaches a certain age and reputation it is often difficult to approach their work with a critical eye, this was my first impression on viewing Michelangelo Pistolletto’s latest exhibition at the Simon Lee gallery. Returning to his familiar paintings on mirrors this seemed reassuring but perhaps a little unsatisfying to one who has kept a close eye on this artists work, initially it is possible to remain disengaged from the work, pacing around and stopping in front of each piece it is possible to indulge in ‘visual snacking’. Each mirror painting in isolation is a quick and easy hit, from the middle aged trio engaged in conversation who stand apparently ignoring you as you see your reflection peering back over their shoulders or the television cameraman who points the camera out of frame to some indeterminate point. All the images seem very static, actions frozen in time, a couple at a peace protest wave a flag and look directly at you but they do not move, held in mid step they beckon your engagement but once stopped in your tracks give no more. It is when the man who stands with his back to you not looking at the you in the gallery behind him but perhaps looking at the you in the gallery in front of him reflected in the mirror that the human interaction and personality play begins, it is not when you hold yourself still and look that the works unlock themselves but when you begin to move that those in the mirrors begin their movements also. Once the process begins your movements around the gallery unlock your interactions with those depicted on each mirrored panel, other panels are reflected back into sight alongside yourself and the others in the gallery, the mirrors, the gallery space itself, you the viewer, the portraits on the mirrors and adjacent walls at which the gaze of those depicted ends at some indistinct point in the gallery space, all become integral to your experience. It is a dance of humanity in which we move through and alongside others, their influence or lack of influence on us and ours on theirs becomes the overarching theme of Pistoletto’s installation. These reflections of humanity and the associations of society and community is the true key to the unlocking of this series of works, this installation, Pistoletto’s career and his unusual success in remaining stylistically familiar but still refreshing engagement with his work. It is this firm rooting in humanity and society that keeps Pistoletto a fresh and engaging artist many years after the beginnings of his career.

Forces Of Sound And Music

2007-11-20T23:59:00.000Z

Steve Reid is currently regarded as one of the most versatile and powerful jazz drummers of modern times, having seen the developments in his music since his re-emergence in the past few years I awaited his appearance at the Barbican as part of the London Jazz Festival with enthusiasm and a little trepidation. In recent years his live playing has received such reverence amongst audiences that I wondered whether a venue as large as the Barbican could receive his music without dissipating some its power. I needn’t have worried, although the atmosphere here at the Barbican did not reach the same levels as his previous appearance with his ensemble at Cargo in 2005 the audience was carried by the sheer force of will amongst all members of the ensemble. Beginning with his ‘Drum Story’ his drumming patterns created waves of rhythms woven amongst the sound textures created by Kieren Hebden’s electronic effects, this poem based statement of his musical vision created the point of entry for the audience to this evenings performance, at the culmination of this passage of music instead of the usual break before the next number the drumming and effects continued for the remaining band members to arrive on stage. Almost two hours of music ensued with a journey through a variety of rhythms and soundscapes some recognisable, such as Reid’s classic ‘Lions of Judah’, some unrecognisable, this was beyond jazz and in some parts beyond music, all the band members moved with musical fluidity through this vibrant and pure improvisational journey. Reid acts as driving force for the band and as band leader takes responsibility for directing the flow of the music with his many and varied drum patterns, however he has the modesty and courage to allow all band members not so much to solo in the traditional sense but to take the responsibility from him and to lead the music and take the band through new routes on the journey. Kieran Hebden in most part floats through the music creating the enhancements and textures reacting to and complementing the other musicians, Marmadou Sarr’s percussion creates a complement bouncing percussive tones and rhythms off Reid’s playing, Boris Netsvetaev’s keyboards soar and swoop in some parts and jump and drive the music in others, it is the breath of the music, the air that feeds the band. Joe Rigby’s saxophone and flute provided the most formal ‘jazz’ element to the music, Rigby was the only band member to play so sparingly in terms of the time spent playing, however his ability to play such creative and original solos whilst retaining the recognisable heritage of jazz in his playing provided the intensity followed by calm that influenced the atmosphere of the other band members contributions long after his particular part had been played. Rigby was also a great communicator between audience and band, his enthusiasm and attentiveness to his other musicians and bond with the audience with his humility and love when the audience showed particular appreciation to himself or other band members. My final praise goes to Simon Fell, the real star of the performance, his bass playing took the instrument to a different level this evening, Fell’s playing was the metaphor for the achievements of this band and of the music as a whole, hunched over his instrument he plucked, slapped and thumped the bass creating more sounds than you would imagine possible from this stringed instrument. With bow and sometimes two bows in hand he contorted his body to get every last sound possible from the strings. Rhythm, percussion, wailing, growls and hums came forth and without a break his ceaseless movement for the almost two hours of this performance showed a real love of music and experimentation in improvisational sound. This was music taken to the limits, some audience members could not really understand what was happening, it was beyond jazz, beyond music, sound became elemental, it was a night where music became more akin to geology or weather. Reid wants music to change the world, to move us so much we change our view of the world, our view of ourselves and our engagement with everyone around us, if any musician can effect this change Reid will be the one to do it.

Looking For Truth

2007-11-15T19:52:00.000Z

For the past few months we have been made aware of the inaccuracies and half truths constructed by the television media to create revenue and engage audiences, if you have called any competition telephone lines for the variety of programmes which hold home viewing audience participation quizzes then you will be no doubt aware of the methods of our television companies to increase and retain audience figures for their programming. Similarly as you smart about the potential disingenuous acquisition of funds generated from your phone call you will no doubt also be aware of the production methods of documentary makers, the ‘careful’ editing of these films to create mood and to fully put across the messages the filmmaker intends is obvious in hindsight and only but a few would be shocked at this revelation. Michael Moore admitted to this only too happily recently, his honest and open response to such charges showed that many filmmakers are clear that the story is most important and the naivety of some audience members is not their responsibility.
But what of documentary makers of the past?, surely their methods were much more honest. Oh dear, how naïve could we be?, since the beginnings of photography and then filmmaking the crafted filmmaking processes for factual, documentary films have always been subordinate to the message or story.
It is this ambiguous territory of fiction in fact that interests Damien Roach, his current exhibition at IBID PROJECTS contains references to these constructed realities in a variety of forms. On entering the gallery you will bathed in red light, the obvious feel of a darkroom in which images are manipulated and created insinuates itself to you as you engage with Roach’s sculptural works, the sound that you hear is from an LP called ‘Sounds of a Tropical Rainforest in America’, the sounds this LP contains creates the sounds of a rainforest, it is not a field recording from a rainforest but edited together form a variety of single sources. Birdsong, animal calls and rainfall amalgamate in a constructed soundscape intended to represent and mimick reality. On the wall of the gallery plays the film Nanook of the North, this famous 1920’s documentary shows scenes of Inuit life, however some of these scenes are directed and planned to allow the filmmaker to create a more idealised and less real depiction of Inuit life. Roach’s intervention into this film is to project the film onto the gallery wall, a slowly spinning crystal disrupts and alters the images of the film by distorting the projections around the wall in altered, broken and scattered images. Roach’s intention is complete, we are in the centre of an environment intended to create a questioning of integrity, reality and our concepts of fact and fiction.

We hope that those who intend to show us the ‘real’ world through their films, images and representations do so with honesty, but to put across a message strongly it sometimes necessary to alter the reality to enhance the response from others. The manner in which ‘reality’ is depicted is unimportant if it is depicted with a spirit of honesty and integrity.

The Points Between

2007-11-14T14:03:00.000Z

The visual language of modernism has been established and is now a recognisable and ingrained part of our culture, the practical, unfussy linear cleanliness is evident in the work of many painters and sculptors and in the designs and manufactures of architects and designers. Looking back to the beginnings of modernism the clean, efficient lines and minimal stylings free from flourishes are something most of us now take as an easily recognisable style across many creative fields. The four artists whose work is collected together in the latest exhibition at The Approach gallery carry these modernist stylings in their works, interested in the overlaps and intersections in their work they create artworks with a certain mathematical imperative, linear sections, unitary blocks of shade & colour and a minimal usage of material and structure run true through all their works, the unfussy cleanliness and efficiency of modernism are an obvious influence. However, it is where the contemporary world manufactures and interprets these influences that these artists show a movement through modernism and beyond, these modernist traits now break and wobble under the influence of contemporary life, for all these artists the formal systems that are the foundation of their different art works begin to break down and change shape, the mathematical patterns and predictions of the world alter, the edges warp, the framing becomes misshapen, patterns realign in time and space. It is where a formal language changes and develops in front of the viewer that provides real satisfaction in this exhibition, Alexander Wolff’s stitched and dyed canvas paintings show the edges of success and failure, technical specifications in the making of these paintings are subverted by failings and reactions of the dyed material. Tom Humphreys’ sculptures show metal rods which appear bent and misshapen or perhaps reformed and shaped as they rest supported on plinths or perhaps standing free and wrapped around, they form a system of ambiguity somewhere between action and reaction. Nora Schultz’s sculptures similarly contain elements of metal rods, constructed as frames to carry loose unfurled sponge mats, the solidity and rigidity of one material support and enable the loose flowing shapes of the other. Mandla Reuter has altered the phasings of the lights within the gallery, all the lights turn on and off in all permutations possible, the order is specified but it is the buzzing, clicking and fuzzing of the bulbs and elements which give a sense of disorder, control feels as if it could give way to chaos at any moment. It is Reuter’s other work that the true metaphor of this show really drives home, Reuter has commissioned a photographer to take photographs of the LA skyline at intervals to show the movement of the setting sun, the predictable movement of sun across the sky flows ever downwards to disappear for another night behind the pre-existing built shapes of the skyline, ultimately your mind reflects beyond the predictable patterns of movement and shape to the unseen but ever changing human activity within each framed photograph. Modernism seemed to create order, predictability and simplicity in its designs and shapes, but within any order or system it is the points between success and failure, action and reaction, order and disorder that real humanity lives.

Climate Of Change-Images

2007-11-09T21:50:00.001Z

'Soil from the bed of Lake Winnemucca'

Lake bed soil in sample tube in laboratory rack

Various Dimensions

2007

Storm Surge Surf-Kent

2007-11-09T12:00:00.000Z

Some Other Stuff

2007-10-27T12:55:00.000Z

Climate Of Change

2007-10-26T16:15:00.001Z

Eye Spin

2007-10-24T15:00:00.000Z

To look at Cristiano Pintaldi’s pixellated paintings feels very much like being sucked into a television screen and spat back out, simple images from the the TV screen draw your eye and as you construct the story from the still image only to find your eyes breaking under the strain. This combination of reality and fiction appears to be where Pintaldi leads us, under his hand these flat replications of televisual like images are rendered in small pixellated lines in red, green and blue on a black background, sunbtle shading finishes the image and from these dotted pieces of individual colour the image forms it is our own ocular failings which break the connection with the image.

The main image in this exhibition in the small unfussy space of Sprovieri Progetti is taken from television coverage of the Pope’s funeral in 2005. We are faced with a scene of sombre reflection on the faces of the Bush family, Bill Clinton and Condoleeza Rice, behind them Church elders bow their heads in respect at the loss of their figurehead. The power of successive generations of the international political elite alongside the elite of the Catholic church remind one very sharply of the distance between those who hold such global power and the rest of us, this is always clearly highlighted if you take the time to consider these things from in front of your television screen but in reality nearly always further from our thoughts than it should be. The effect of Pintaldi’s painting is to bring the reality starkly to us by showing the failure of the screen media to fully portray the reality, as scene of a funeral should bring sadness but very soon our minds wander to the images of the president, his family and previous incumbent and nothing else. In this three colour image we search for expressions on the faces of those depicted but with the three colour repetitive sequence of pixels my eyes flicker and adjust to determine a true image, the flattened screen like representation loses its images to become a series of eye straining repetitive patterns. The media removes its reality through the it’s technical limitations, metaphorically and technically fact and fiction become subordinate to the failure of the human eye, we watch but we cannot see.

The pixellated painting technique is used in smaller paintings, Jesus on the cross, Peter Sellers as Doctor Strangelove and a single female eye are all rendered with the three colour technique. It is the painting of the female eye that conceptually draws all four paintings together as a single entity. The very simple ideas of watching and seeing is made clear, as the eye once more breaks under the strain of observation the shades and shapes which combine to allow the eye to construct the image once more break to individual dots of colour and repetitive pattern, through the representation of a televisual depiction of an eye, it is what we cannot see which becomes more important than what we can.

Scars of Architecture and History

2007-10-06T21:00:00.000Z

I am standing in the courtyard of the Abbaye de Gellone in St Guilhem, this small village is hemmed in by the steep sided valley of the Herault river which descends from the Cevennes before opening onto the flattened Mediterranean landscape of Languedoc and finally the Mediterannean sea. The courtyard is scattered with familiar regional plants and is a dusty remnant of a more vibrant time, the history of this place renders it melancholic in modern times. My personal story of this place begins on the other side of the Atlantic in New York and seven and a half years earlier, in Fort Tryon Park in the Northern extremities of Manhattan is the Cloisters museum, the museum is a Frankenstein’s monster of architecture, a uniquely new world interpretation of classical world architecture and history this museum is an amalgam of classical architecture from every corner of Europe. It is in January 2000 that I amble glumly around the museum’s hideous concoction of courtyards with the plundered stone carvings and artefacts of the religious and architectural heritage of the continent. Intended to be a collected archive of artefacts lovingly joined in one place to give a nice bite sized romp through medieval architectural history these collected artefacts are joined in a geographical and stylistic remix of history. Romanesque & gothic styles mix together in an architectural & geographical mudfight, it is a depressingly soulless whizz through and up the leg of history, and amongst this museum’s architectural melange are the plundered and abused artefacts of the Abbaye de Gellone.

So seven and a half years later here I stand looking at the abused walls and columns of the courtyard of the abbey, the walls have been shored up by later generations and the remaining structure of the building is now strengthened and protected from further decline. Established in 804, the abbey was a cared for and loved building for generations, its decline began when it was sacked in the 1500’s by protestants, after the revolution in 1789 the remaining handful of monks were removed and the building fell into disrepair. The adjacent chapel continued to be used as the parish church whilst the courtyard stonework and the monastery building were removed by locals who scavenged the stone and sculptures for building materials like some early version of a dodgy architectural salvage yard. Finally after years of gradual abuse all the remaining artefacts were carefully removed and displayed by Pierre Yvon Verniere in the neighbouring village of Aniane, it was this act of rescue by Verniere which kept the sculptures and stonecarvings safe from further damage and destruction but this necessary removal of the artefacts has since resulted in the melancholic sight that now confronts visitors to the abbey. A handful of overlooked details defiantly gaze into the empty courtyard but mostly what comes to eye are the scarred walls that remain and tell the story of the previous architectural beauty now removed and residing in another continent. After his death in 1875 the artefacts rescued by Verniere passed through the hands of several collectors before being bought and donated to the museum where they now reside in their soulless home in New York.

One feels the abbey has lost its soul and perhaps those two sad sites can be redeemed, perhaps one day those sculptures, carvings and architectural details can be returned and given the care and respect they deserve, perhaps the legacy of the abuses of these artefacts and their guardians can in some small way be redressed and the spirit of the abbey reinvigorated by their return to their spiritual home.

Autumn Selection 2007

2007-09-30T12:47:00.000Z

Radio Rebelde's Sounds of Now and Not Quite Now-Autumn 07

1.Jose James-Equinox (2007 10” test)
2.Longineu Parsons-Take The High Road (P’taah Remix) (1999 12”, Ubiquity Recordings)
3.P’taah-The Crossing (Evacuation of Form) (Opaque Remix) (Ubiquity Recordings)
4.Roy Ayers-We Live In Brooklyn, Baby (Sasso Re-edit) (2007 12” Promo, Kat)
5.Soil & “Pimp” Sessions-Sahara (2007 12”, Brownswood Records)
6.Carlos Garnett-Banks Of The Nile (1974 'Black Love', Muse Records)
7.Palmer Brown & Blaze-More Than Gold (The Shelter Mix) (1999 Nitegrooves)
8.Osunlade-Stomp (Elements Beyond Part One) (2007 12” Strictly Rhythm)
9.Jon Lucien-The War Song (1973 'Rashida', RCA Records)
10.Papete-Promessa De Pescador (1997 'Berimbau E Percussao Music And Rythms Of Brazil', Universal Sound/Soul Jazz)

Another Era Ends

2007-09-28T09:36:00.000Z

After the irony of my previous post I report once more of another piece of lost London musical heritage, the forces of greed have yet again removed something of value for their own profit. Last night was the final night of music at The Spitz, after 11 years of diverse programming and presenting some of the best non-mainstream musicians and singers another great venue has closed its doors for the final time. One last night of great music in front of a spirited audience hosted by Miles Danso and The Spitz Jazz Collective saw a loose and ever changing relay of performances full of celebration and freedom with Bukky Leo, Terry Edwards, Gwyneth Herbert, Shri, Beth Orton and Seb Rochford amongst many others all taking their turn to entertain an audience taking one last chance to say goodbye to The Spitz.
Hopefully the team at the Spitz will find another suitable venue to start the next chapter but in the meantime the Spitz Jazz Collective will be hosting regular Sunday afternoon sessions at Rich Mix from the 7th October until Christmas. After the loss of The Spitz and the original Vortex, we look now for the spirit of vibrant live music towards the new Vortex in its new Dalston home, the recently threatened Bulls Head and the lovely Green Note on Camden’s Parkway. Let’s get out there and support our cities small music venues.

The End Of An Era

2007-09-25T21:56:00.000Z

It is not quite the end but a definite full stop before the start of the next chapter in the life of 'Chaser'. The magazine that defined the new jazz dance era and chronicled all musical things eclectic, leftfield and outernational is available in all the usual outlets for the last time. Starting in times pre-Hoxton trendy and pre-digital its spirit will live on in the music it championed and, fingers crossed, we will see its reincarnation in various guises in times to come.

"The Artworld Shuffle"

2007-09-18T20:43:00.000Z

The regular art viewer will be only too aware of the “artworld”TM clichés, this is not only with the work that we see around galleries but also the way we can chart the subcultures and hierarchies within “artworld”. Through manner, behaviour, fashion and occasionally in the presentation of the art work we are made aware of how a gallery sees itself, its perception of its place in “artworld”. At the opening of Yutaka Sone’s “Secret for Snow Leopard” at Parasol Unit I very quickly understand that tonight the art will be subordinate to my fellow visitors all playing the game I like to call “the artworld shuffle”. The shuffle begins as I am welcomed at the door by the two borderguard like doormen, ‘Charm’ greets me warmly as his companion ‘Suspicion’ looks me up and down for signs of evidence that perhaps entry to the gallery should be denied, then I am cleared for entry to “artworld” and waved on. I stroll in and my eyes catch the inquisitive stare of the bag check girls, I wear my clumsiness heavier than normal but without any loose fitting clothing and without my usual scummy courier bag slung on shoulder I look a safe bet for not destroying any art for the night and am allowed full entrance to the gathering. Others are entering the gallery and are confused as they are confronted by someone actually looking at Sone’s work, they are doubly confused as I appear to not be carrying the obligatory glass of white wine. Hmm, yes wine that’s it, lets stroll past the sugary looking white marble sculptures of snowy mountainscapes with ski resorts and past the smaller facsimile of Hong Kong island. Then past the lumpy, snowy, marble sugary, pine trees with ski lifts coasting between this idealised winter scene, all reality and harsh coldness whittled into a soft, rounded, warm fantasy of winter tourism. Beyond the Disneyfied, folk art tableau of carved elephants in wood and glass and the dripping, plastified, seaweed, sponge, dried flower, acrylic and metal, Hansel and Gretel transported to the tropicsoid ‘Green Jungle’. Aha, I see a slinking, leggy, purveyor of alcohol, teetering off on her heels, tray in hand, round that huge model island with painted snow capped mountain rising out of the fake blue sea, s**t where did she go, I lost sight of her behind one of those real plants imbedded in the structure of the sculpted island, past the fake waterfall and pine tree, beyond the ferns and succulents and out of view past that crown of palm leaves. But there at the back of the gallery is the team of tall, glamourous, immaculately dressed, black suited and dressy “artworld” foot soldiers, they aim suspicious stares down at me but my sights are set, dodging the armies of cool indifference and the occasional sniper engaged in a sneer mission, I sneak my way past the middle aged couple Mr and Mrs Euro Artworld and claim my glass, many thanks, danke, merci, cheers.Now upstairs to the upper gallery, I look at the crystal sculptures, the oversized fantasy interpretations of snowflakes, the icy, hard edges rounded and softened into a gloopy, watery drop of sweetened glass, like oversized sculpted boiled sweets. Another glamourous, gallery staff member watches me with her chisel jawed colleague, these are the troop leaders of the “artworld” army, they direct the action, schmoozing the visitors with descriptions of the art work and anecdotes of the artist. They continue to watch me, with a look that gives the impression of a surveillance team eyeing the activities of a guerrilla cell, I finish my drink and take a final look at Sone’s childlike, bright coloured but empty feeling paintings of animals, trees and the natural world. My mission is over I descend the stairs, exit the gallery with its clean, sanitised views of reality, I say my goodbyes to ‘Charm’ and ‘Suspicion’ leave “artworld” and back to the grubby reality of City Road.

Territorial Space

2007-09-13T22:31:00.000Z

I pace around the perimeter of Nathaniel Rackowe’s installation ‘Luminous Territories’ at the Bischoff/Weiss gallery, the light breaks down into darkness, a few moments pass and then the light flickers back into life this time in a different configuration than before. Now lit once more from inside the skeleton of the installation is revealed as a scaffold frame encased in gridded, transparent, plastic sheets. The light changes once more as the fluorescent tube lighting switches to another configuration, the lights are set along the internal frame of the structure at intervals determined by the construction, horizontal and vertical. Again the light switches to another configuration revealing shadows and contrasts from within which allows one to determine clearly the framed structure and the placing and overlapping of the plastic skin.

I continue my deliberate pacing around the large structure, almost filling the upper gallery a small path is created between the installation and the boundary of the gallery wall, the focus of my attention is forcibly drawn to the structure and once accustomed to the intermittent, changing patterns of shade and light the structure appears to glow with warmth whilst structurally appearing closed and uninviting. It is a harsh and overbearing presence and I am reminded of the multiple sites of development and change scattered around the city, those huge sites that take spaces of our city, clad them in temporary skins to hide the activities within and then redefine them. The change of our shared city geography that is removed, redefined and returned to us complete and left for us to assimilate back into the geography of our own personal map of the city without negotiation whether positive or negative.

Rackowe’s impressive construction brings this condition into the gallery with great skill and thought, there is a lightness of touch with such strong materials. The structure creates its own dialogue, it announces its presence, creates its own space and claims it for itself. An inanimate structure given life by an ever changing heartbeat of light. Just as those other sites around our city create a dialogue with us from the start to finish of their development and then through their unveiling and presence on our altered cityscape so Rackowe’s installation does so too. ‘Luminous Territories’ claims it’s space within the Bischoff/Weiss gallery, in this incarnation it will be temporary and the change within the structure will be the beat and hum of changing light, the gallery will claim this space back untouched but until its removal this luminous territory is unique, distinct and untouchable.

Peer Esteem

2007-09-12T14:56:00.001Z

Watch These Spaces

2007-09-11T23:06:00.000Z

2007-09-09T21:53:00.000Z

Sitting Under A Tree In Paradise

2007-09-06T23:40:00.000Z

Our city can seem a sprawling, unknowable, alienating place. We find comfort in the familiar, we build a personal urban psychology where the geography of the city is scattered with places where we can feel safe and secure in a vast anonymous built environment. Those places where some of us find our comfort and safety are the open spaces, unclaimed by the built environment we claim for ourselves small patches of wild, untamed or depopulated green space. In the manner of landscape design most of these seemingly empty and wild green spaces are in fact managed areas, we assume they contain only a minor level of human touch but in most cases they are heavily worked and created to give the impression of an open and untouched oasis in an otherwise fast moving and oppressive city. It is those spaces that Justin Coombes explores and creates his photographic record of what he titles the ‘urban pastoral’, in these commons, gardens, yards, allotments and quiet street corners edged with trees we can stop, relax and reconnect with the natural world and tune ourselves back into the rhythms of the seasons.
In Coombes photographs of the spaces we can reflect on the tension created by city life, in these places where we find a slower pace and point of relaxation there is also a tension, we must sometimes share our place of calm. In his series of photographs we feel this tension, in a park bounded by tower blocks the night descends on a beautiful tree, the final moments of daylight penetrate gaps between the branches and leaves but underneath a small group of potentially menacing individuals lurk. In another park partially obscured by scrubby grass sits a person relaxing but visible in the distance through the fence is a neglected light industrial building and in a suburban back garden the light from a window breaks from the house and casts a tree with its light, it is a comforting sight but outside the frame of light it is surrounded by darkness. Next to a back yard a seemingly empty street sees the movements of people through the windows of their house but outside and unseen a fox tears at a rubbish bag and scatters the scavenged material across the pavement. These scenes by Coombes are reminiscent of the work of Gregory Crewdson, but unlike Crewdson’s seemingly fictional depictions Coombes photographic constructions recreate something that feels very honest and real and just as unsettling.Coombes four images of allotments are devoid of people and do not seem to be as staged as the other images on view, any staging has been created by the allotment users and Coombes has arrived after the event to document this human action in a landscape now emptied. Once more these views show the city moving into night, in one scene the City of London can be seen in the distance, the powerful presence of the towers of the cities financial institutions balanced by the rudimentary and impromptu structures created on the allotments, scavenged sheets of plastic and wire are cobbled together for fencing and plastic bottles cut in half are used as cheap cloches for the plants. We see a self sufficient and adaptable culture, discarded materials are re-appropriated for further use, barbed wire and sheds made from scrappy panels of wood and in the grass are scattered pieces of unused materials ready to be used once more when the owner returns. In the dark of the allotments the light from streets in the distance seep in to the scene, this is the city reaffirming its presence in the calm of the open spaces its light does not saturate but slowly mutters its presence into the quiet.

2007-09-01T10:59:00.000Z

A Word In Your Eye

2007-08-26T19:43:00.000Z

You are invited to the private view of an exhibition that brings together work by artists who have sought to explore the creative significance of words within the world of visual communication.This exhibition has been organised in conjunction with "Write to Ignite", the Hackney Word Festival 07, and will open Monday 3rd September from 6.00 at the Marie Lloyd Bar, Hackney.Further information about this event and full listings for "Write to Ignite" please visithttp://www.writetoignite.co.uk/

Seeing Red

2007-08-14T21:32:00.000Z

Once more the circus of Documenta descends on Kassel, for 3 months a huge collection of the work of artists from around the world has been on view. The feeling of the exhibition spaces around the centre of the town is somewhere between an art fair and a biennial, a broad spectrum of visitors are viewing a huge collection of art which would not normally be seen together in such a way. This curated feast of art provides many problems and allied with the obvious curatorial aims of the directors this mass of work suffers and strains under the weight, it is relentless in more ways than one.

The curatorial aim seems to be a concern with showing socially engaged art, the focus is away from the usual commercial fodder in art fair land, this is an admirable attempt to highlight a different aspect of international art practice but many of the artists are guilty of a polemical zeal that borders on aggressive. Perhaps in isolation the feminist concerns of Mary Kelly, the legacies of the civil rights movement echoed in the work of Kerry James Marshall, the multiple works which reflect on democracy or the concerns with dialogue between west and east or those divided by race, religion or ideology are valid and vibrant but collected together across the 6 Documenta sites they create a mass collective shout that induces equal measures of guilt, fear, anger, helplessness and ultimately apathy. To view all these works is to feel battered into submission, any sympathies to the arguments presented are worn thinner and thinner until you turn away and disengage from any of the issues. This is disappointing given the quality of many of the pieces but they are swamped in a huge sea of art by a relentless swell of social and political engagement, those works that contain an engaging and quiet dignity are shouted down by louder, flashier or more bullying pieces.

Amongst this mass however sits some real quality, away from the main sites Artur Zmijewski’s lone video installation in the darkened basement of the Kulturezentrum Schlachtof shows the value of tolerance and dialogue and understanding when faced by ideological entrenchment. Ibon Aranberri’s installations comprising collections of photographs, documents and other materials relating to ecological concerns within particular geographical sites bring our thoughts from issues of global inaction to local engagement. In the Museum Fridericanum Harun Farocki’s multi screen installation which focuses on individual elements of televised and computer generated information used or created during the broadcast of the 2006 World cup final take a seemingly simple and insignificant event and isolate points which can now be seen in a wider, more significant context. A game of football becomes a series of measurements of individual, local, social and global activities and we can see points at which these elements crossover. In the Aue-Pavilion Zoe Leonard’s photos show a simple and familiar view of the streets, shop-fronts bear the styles and dressing of locality, at one and the same time we can see the uniqueness and identity of place with the generic signifiers of a globalised world, even in scenes of poverty and deprivation we see an outward looking, aspirational, global culture in creation.

The image that lingers longest in this temporary city of art is in its central square, bordered by the built environment of Documenta’s galleries, cafes and shops is the Friedrichsplatz, during this huge exhibition it is the site for Sanja Ivekovic’s poppy field installation. A field of these flowers has been planted in Friedrichsplatz and creates a gentle but significant reflection on history both recent and less recent, this little red flower signifies many things to many people, many thoughts occur to one when viewing this scene, the mind wanders around settling on many places around the world and at many points in history.
It is this gentle scene loaded with reflections of history and political significance that can teach the director, curator and artists invited to participate in this Documenta something important. With all its subtlety and engaging strength it is the red of these poppies and not of blood and flesh and the sound of the wind in the plants not the harsh sounds that emanate from a television or video screen that will last longest in my memory from my short time in Kassel this summer.

Terrain

2007-08-10T15:54:00.000Z

Inside the White Cube I am faced by a scattered soundscape, on nine screens lined along the walls of the gallery are a series simple films inspired by Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’, differing linear combinations of bricks click and clunk together as they move across a series of desolate, derelict, mini landscapes, their domino effect movements march them forward to their goal. Damian Ortega takes Tzu’s ‘Art Of War’, the strategic detailing of use of troops within different ground and terrain, these territorial conditions have been reinterpreted for Ortega’s 16mm films and using the simple unitary element of bricks they are collected into a strategic means of investigating and navigating movements through different ground conditions. Like a faceless advancing army they make their advances across a variety of terrain, the looped films create a ceaseless movement, the territory and placement of the bricks alters the speed and direction but as one pushes to the next the lines of bricks make their inevitable journey. With the backdrop of a derelict site, grubby brick walls and industrial grime the army presses forward, down, into and then ascending the slopes of a crator, around mounds of earth and through scrubby bushes and trees stripped by winter and cast aside by time and the march of the faceless troops. Spearheading towards a wall, snaking down a small hill and splashing into puddles, the lines reach out like advancing spurs, reaching like fingers across the depleted earth, slaloming around boulders from grass to concrete and back again they make their movements unhindered by the variety of ground cover. The images and sounds are ordered, strangely subtle but relentless, we feel the actions of destruction and renewal, the progress of time with the echoes of history.

In the first floor gallery are a construction of five brick built columns, from floor to ceiling these simple brick constructions are shaped to reveal their true forms. The hollowed spaces within the bricks are revealed, these objects so redolent of solidity are shown as somewhat fragile by the revealing of their internal construction, light can be seen at some points through the bricks, cemented together and laid into a load bearing form they still retain a familiar comforting strength but by the action of chipping and shaping the external faces of the bricks into a rounded, seemingly weathered form shows an integrity and honesty in an overlooked dry building material. Ortega has titled these sculptures ‘Project For Social Housing’, from a small cast and fired clay block made to the specifications of the human hand to a simple construction collecting these elements then stripped and shaped to reveal inner complexities, Damian Ortega’s art takes the familiar and mundane world around us and creates echoes of humanity in the simplest forms, shapes and actions.

2007-08-07T16:20:00.000Z

Somewhere between LA and London

2007-08-03T11:04:00.000Z

Adrià Julia is a Spanish artist, born in Barcelona and now relocated to Los Angeles he brings his view of the U.S to Hoxton Street in the Associates Gallery.
The two films at Associates create an overall feeling of incongruity, somewhere in the suburban sprawl of Los Angeles a housewife, Taylor, talks us through the contents of her home, we are given a tour of the rooms of the house which contain the shelves on which a massive collection of family photo albums are held and the other in which her husband's sports trophies and memorabilia are kept, we see a woman proud of her family and her home.

The incongruity in these films comes from the siting, in the small confines of Associates with the edgy and grubby surrounds of Hoxton outside the spacious and ordered interior of Taylor’s home seems a world away. Taylor’s voice is overdubbed with that of a local Hoxton woman so the accent and rhythms of speech are that of London, the world we see on screen are most definitely not. From a shared language it is clear that there is a massive gulf, somewhere between the east end of London and the suburbs of Los Angeles is not only a geographical space but a cultural space, talk of U.S sporting heroes falls on deaf ears, the interior style of Taylor’s home seems alien and the sentimentality and honesty of her descriptions of her life and home are embarrassing when spoken with an accent I always equate with a people who are much more guarded in their approach to describing their lives. There is a uniqueness to the voiceover, a traditional London accent is dying, the dialect and rhythms spoken are being replaced with a much more generic style, pattern and culture. Peppered with cultural references from Taylor’s life it is unusual, for a native Londoner it is a highly melancholic experience, it reflects how many feel about contemporary London, developing, growing but inevitably leaving certain nuanced aspects of traditional London life behind. This is the unique element of Julia’s film, everywhere the film is shown he dubs the film into local dialect, in a previous showing this was dubbed into Catalan. Wherever Taylor may recount her story, in whichever part of the world it will always be unique, this translation of language, dialect, accent, speech will highlight those nuances of cultural locality. Taylor’s home surroundings, her mannerisms and narrative will remain constant but in each location little pieces of the host city or town will creep in and show us the tiny details of locality through the voice that speaks Taylor’s words.

2007-08-02T09:16:00.000Z

Flock

2007-07-29T09:56:00.000Z

FLOCK
Group show to launch DeviateProjects

Private View: Friday 10th August 2007 from 7.30pm
Exhibition continues through 31st August 2007

DeviateProjects
43 Denmark Hill
London SE5 8RS
http://www.deviateprojects.com/

Going Bananas

2007-07-27T18:11:00.000Z

In the Vilma Gold Gallery in Bethnal Green stands a monument to economic misadventure. Michael Stevenson has recreated the Moniac, a machine devised in the late ‘40’s by economist Bill Phillips to provide a 3D diagrammatic model of monetary flow. The machine pumped a fixed volume of water around various transparent channels, pipes and small tanks, these transparent elements represented the flow of money and its influence on each element of the economic model of the times.
Stevenson’s recreated Moniac is just one part of his installation “Answers To Some Questions About Bananas”, outdated economic texts, empty discarded banana boxes, a 1950’s U.S public information film and the Moniac itself are a reminder of the economy and trade in Bananas.

One can’t help but feel that this is just one big hoax, a banana skin left by Stevenson to trip us all up. Whether real or not the feelings that linger are simple, this empty, sad, rusting copy of the real machine is a memorial to an economy that is at best misguided and at worse exploitative. The triumphal and arrogant tone of ‘50’s economists hasn’t changed much to its contemporary counterparts pronouncements on modern economic theory, the justifications for misguided, exploitative or unsustainable business practice and economic activity are just more sophisticated.

As for my visit the metaphor of unsustainable and unfair trade practices was complete, the gallery had been having problems with their electricity supply and video and Moniac were standing inactive, the power needed to fuel the video’s recorded narrative of justifications of the trade and the Moniac’s justifications of the flawed economic theory had stalled into silence and inactivity. It was a clear reminder that the fuel that truly powers the Banana trade, the labour, could also stop and without any fuel any machine will grind to a halt. I am sure Michael Stevenson would smile at the irony but I am certain that Bill Phillips would not.

Return To Offender

2007-07-20T09:05:00.000Z

Help SAS with the 'Return to Offender' Beach Litter Campaign
With our friends at the Marine Conservation Society reporting an estimated 1,988.7 items of litter for every kilometre of beach in the UK (an average of nearly two items for every metre stretch of beach) it is apparent that our beaches are increasingly under threat from a rising tide of items such as plastic pellets, cotton buds and cigarette butts.
SAS launched a Return to Offender - Address Known campaign in 2006 and since then we have been sending back litter we've found on the nations beaches to its owners. It's not always easy identifying the source of the litter but when we've been able to do that we've sent the owners a postcard urging them to do more to prevent litter like their's impacting on the beach environment like it is now.

In particular we are calling for companies;
To step up the 'anti-littering' message on their products
To look at using less harmful packaging to ensure products can be broken down naturally without putting wildlife at risk.
To promote recycling and/or reuse wherever possible
To support community beach litter initiatives or 'anti-litter' projects
Andy Cummins, SAS Campaigns Officer says: "Anyone can help us with this campaign. If you're walking the dog on the beach and come across a plastic drink container for example, take it home, put it in a parcel and return it to the address listed on the bottle, not forgetting to enclose a copy of SAS's campaign letter"
Download the campaign letter here (PDF).

City Road Spit 1

2007-07-19T11:01:00.001Z

'City Road Spit 1'
Spray Paint on Perspex
42 x 30 cm
07/2007

Rhythms Of Life

2007-07-13T16:42:00.000Z

Artists who reflect on the musical world seem to fall into two camps, one is the fanzine style, pop music becomes pop art visual stylings, like being let loose on a seventies copy of Smash Hits with glitter and fluorescent marker pens, the others seem to think about the emotional responses to music and the wider environment of sound and its performance. ‘Play Yourself’ the current group exhibition at Gimpel Fils shows a group of artists whose work attempts to address the ides of our musical tastes and how it relates to our self identity. Many of the artists use the highly colourful styles reminiscent of the more pop star fan preoccupations, not so much an exploration in sounds and emotions but more the fashion led tribal aspects of fandom being allied to musicians, bands and genres of music. These works are all accomplished in particular Stefan Hirsig’s large scale collage, Graham Dolphin’s scratched record works are, as ever, quietly impressive, Muzi Quawson’s Woodstock slides are as captivating as ever, strangely in this setting they seem to carry a little more melancholy and edge than I remember from previous viewings, maybe the people depicted who are searching for the ‘70’s hippy lifestyles associated with that place realise that time has moved on and the spirit of those times cannot be recaptured, a tribal identity in its last death throes.

The two works which standout in this show are those which focus on the nature of performance and the emotional response to music, Mark Dean’s multiple screen DVD shows four differing and individual performances which strangely combine to create a unique joint musical performance. In isolation we see a drummer, two guitarists and a school choir, the musical accomplishment and styles of the different performances are varied, a disparate band of people perform their own compositions, after time our hearing orders these sounds and an unlikely alliance of musicians seems to almost perform together. Are we viewing the power of music to collect and align individuals together in common cause and action?.

Seamus Harahan’s film shows three urban scenes with marginal members of society going about their daily activities to the bouncing beats and rhythms of a reggae soundtrack. With a gently danceable rhythmic backing a lonely homeless figure seems no longer a melancholy sight, he slowly pulls his jacket to shield his face from the wind and light his cigarette, a pigeon flies over head and we feel the world whizzing past, there is the unshakeable feeling that this man has his pace of life just right.
In the other film a stray dog howls and barks in a crowded street, watched by one elderly man he finally moves on as other feet pass swiftly by, ignored by passers by the dog trots away stopping occasionally to sniff the ground but seemingly happy and free. In the final film another homeless man picks litter from a bin, sorting through cardboard and paper he is ignored as he sorts through a jumble of litter, as the film moves on we begin to see that the actions are reversed. Harahan’s film evolves into a view of a man quietly and slowly removing detritus from the streets, spaces between paving slabs are weeded and litter carefully folded and deposited, the man becomes an unwatched force of public-spirited action, at all times the soundtrack plays and gives the impression that even the margins of our society have a rhythm of their own. It may be seldom heard and has its own unique pace, beat and volume but if you listen closely you will hear it playing along with your own.

Summer Selection 2007

2007-07-10T14:37:00.000Z

Radio Rebelde’s Sounds of Now and Not Quite Now-Summer 2007

1.Justin Martin-The Sad Piano (Jimpster Remix) (2007 VA-‘Buzzin’ Fly Volume 4’, Buzzin’ Fly Records)
2.Noro Morales-Saona (Gilles Peterson Remix) (2007 12”, Fania Records)
3.Mombasa-Nairobi (2006 (1975) ‘african rythms & blues’, Sonorama Records)
4.Block 16 ft Jon Lucien-Morning Sun (Pepe Bradock’s Dub Vocals and Beats Mix) (2001 12”, Nuphonic)
5.Marcina Arnold-Forefathers (2007 VA-‘Brownswood Bubblers 2’, Brownswood Recordings)
6.Wamdue Kids-Dreams (1995 12”, ‘Deep Dreams EP’, Acacia Records)
7.Patrick Pulsinger ft G-Rizo-Try to Do (2006 12”, ‘Utopia Parkway EP’, Compost Black Label)
8.Francisco Mora Catlett-Amazonia (2004 12”, Kindred Spirits)
9.Tribe-What We Need (1996 VA-‘Message From The Tribe’, Universal Sound/Soul Jazz)
10.Build An Ark-Door Of The Cosmos Take 1 (Exclusive 12” mix) (2003 12”, ‘Peace With Every Step Album Sampler’, Kindred Spirits)