"Please Stay Off The Tracks"

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

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.

When Words Fail Me...

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

The Campaign for Drawing have been encouraging us to use this valuable skill for ten years. 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.

Unfinished Business

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

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

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

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

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

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

Between or Inside?

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.

Elevated environment

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

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

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.