Ferocity and Fantasy

I will start with a short and somewhat unrelated introduction. Last year I explained to my tutor that I wanted to write my dissertation on fantasy art, by which I meant the portal worlds of Charles bear and apocalyptic landscapes of Thomas Hirschorn; worlds that engulf the viewer as a means of escapism. I was informed however that using the word fantasy would only suggest one type of art... art like this...

I still maintain that fantasy art should not be confined to this vile, unicorn frosted display which is why I was so thrilled to read the title of this exhibition, Childish Things: Ferocity and Fantasy in Recent Art, which is, in essence, so opposed to the 'Fantasy Art' stereotype.

The baltic conditions within the Fruitmarket gallery throughout December seem to have deterred its usual visitor levels meaning that if you do brave the sub zero temperature in an extra layer (or ten) you are almost definitely going to have the gallery to yourself, bar one lone gallery assistant trying not to drop off, a rare treat in the pre-festive bustle. As for the content itself, the common misconception is that this is an exhibition aimed at children...not so. In fact many an enthusiastic child has run out of Susan Hiller's brutal Punch and Judy compilation, An Entertainment, sobbing with an angry parent chastising the gallery for miss-advertising. The common thread however linking the seven selected artists is their desire to re-visit their own childhood, generalised notion of childhood and objects of childhood in particular (toys, if you will).

Following on from Johan Grimonprez and, more recently, Martin Creed dealing with broad concepts of order and repetition with a logical, practical approach to art, the selection in Childish Things returns to a more personal approach. While the curator, David Hopkins, is a specialist in the fields of Dada and Surrealism and therefore has a vested interest in the ready-made, it has to be said that the majority of the works in this exhibition explore the notion of the lone, skilled craftsman. Jeff Koons' Bear and a Policeman holds the signature of the wood crafter while the work of the hand is evident in every stitch of Louise Bourgeois' Oedipus Complex. Helen Chadwick's transferred images peal slightly from their wooden objects while even Paul McCarthy's Sound of Music bears the out of focus crackling of originality. Mike Kelly's giant stuffed toy, the most ready-made of all the works, is covered in the stains and rips of everyday childhood wear and tear. It was a feature of his own home for many years before being wrapped in cotton wool and transported by private jet into the white cube.

There is so much to this exhibition that appealed to me. Someone said to me while I was there, 'you cannon help but fall in love with Louise Bourgeois' Oedipus,' – this looks a little stranger in writing but anyone who has seen the piece would, I'm sure, agree. The idea of scattering the objects through the upstairs gallery, mimicking the childhood playpen experience and placing the adult into the state of the child was brilliant but for me sadly, not quite enough. The thing is, we get it, we get that childhood is a scary time of unknowns which ironically shape the rest of your life. Showing a Jeff Koons on a nice white plinth with a little sign next to it explaining what it is just isn't the point. In my opinion it could have done with a little less emphasis on the hot-shot names, a little more 'stuff' and a lot more fantasy.

Bobby Niven at Sierra Metro

After a bout of bad luck in Edinburgh post-graduation (or perhaps the mere realisation that the recession is in fact a reality) I am now decidedly determined to persist with this blog and not jump ship in pursuit of warmer climes (and home comforts). Whether this is a wise move remains to be seen. The strong work ethic I pride myself on has dwindled and so, in an attempt to re-kindle a little enthusiasm for the subject I spent five arduous years studying I have hired out some studio space and now return to writing, with a little more free time and post-festival resolve. No longer a blog counting down the final year of study, I take a new direction - to map the aimless life of an arts graduate and inject the situation with a little humour.

It was with this stoic attitude and in mind that I trudged my way through the snow blizzards in impractical footwear last Sunday to view Bobby Niven’s latest cinematic works at Sierra Metro. Neither the bus breaking down nor the dwindling light and impending snow shower dampened my determination as I finally reach Granton industrial estate and battled my way to the lighthouse - the site of Sierra Metro. Colder inside than out and certainly darker, I was greeted by one, lone member of staff huddled over an electric heater. Had I finally reached the end of the world? There is no denying that selecting Niven’s work for this location was little short of genius. His first film, Hermit’s Castle, a journey to Assynt examining the story of architect David Scott, left the damp, dark, empty interior of that gallery feeling like a five star hotel. Even the wooden benches morphed into deluxe armchairs as the desolate landscape engulfed us. The story goes (and I hope I’ve got this right) that the structure in the film was built by an David Scott in 1955 in an attempt to escape city existence, however, after a single night sleeping in his creation he mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.

Niven worked with both a cinematographer and a sound engineer to create this stunningly shot, eerily sonic piece. You latch onto a sound, or an image, some recognisable point of contact, only to have it whipped from under your feet. Is it a model? No it’s a castle. A helicopter? A bubbling stream? There is a constant play on what you know and what you think you know. Was it strictly necessary however to film this architecture with a fire burning inside it? What struck me most about this work was the overwhelming feeling that the viewer, through the eyes of the camera, was the first witness to the scene post abandonment 55 yrs ago. This illusion is shattered by this other, fire burning presence within the structure. It loses a little mystery, the notion of unearthing or rediscovering and lends, instead, a touch of 80s horror film to the set.

The second film was rather different yet equally disconcerting. More documentary in its formation, it tracks a little of the life of Galip Körükçu, an elderly potter living in Avanos, Turkey and the founder of… ‘The Hair Museum’ which houses over 16000 hair clippings obtained from women. Niven once again hones in on the uncanny nature of this gentleman’s practice - potter by day, collector of female hair by night (purpose unknown).

So what to make of Niven’s practice? Why does he focus on the local, historical views of highly specific people and places. Hermit’s Castle could be anywhere, yet it has its own resounding story. So too does Chez Galip. Each year Körükçu selects, at random, four contributors to the hair museum to take part in one of his pottery workshops. Niven sets the scene ready for the story to be told. Do these highly particular, singular histories have a space in contemporary art, so focussed are we know on the ‘we’ over the ‘I’? Perhaps we are finally witnessing a shift - the return to the personal - I shall investigate this theory further…

The Art of Blagging it!

So much in art today is reliant on an artists ability to bullshit, bullshitting itself has become an art form as Jenny Fiduccia revealed in her recent Map article, ‘Bullshit! Calling Out Contemporary Art’. Edinburgh Art Festival roles around again and simultaneously we see Duchamp’s Fountain at the Dean Gallery while Martin Creed stacks up chairs, wood, cactuses, (imported from Birmingham as apparently there is not a cactus to be found in rainy Scotland) at the Fruitmarket Gallery. What links these two? The art of the blag - I am not being derogatory, billions of pounds go into this art form. The skill has now become manoeuvring the Ikea table and the John Lewis Packaging into the gallery. One of my favourite Creed quotes goes something along the lines of, ‘I like work that is stupid, the stupider the better…’ On another note however, his work IS self-consciously inclusive; while on some levels it is rigorously structured, on others it can be seen as a never ending pattern which the audience, as participant, moves into at any point to activate (for instance the sonic stair piece). Therefore if the audience is part of the work, and the best work is stupid, is the best audience is a stupid one… This is bullshit!

Say Parsley

I finished the last entry rather abruptly and shall now resume where I left off discussing the Arnolfini in Bristol and the rather intriguing second exhibition - Caroline Bergvall and Ciaran Maher’s ‘Say Parsley’. The seeming innocence and playfulness of this title belies a most disturbing concept behind the installations displayed. The exhibition guide reads, ‘The background to the title is a biblical ’shibboleth’; a brutal event where language itself is a gatekeeper, and can become pretext to massacre. The pronunciation of a given word or letter exposes the identity of the speaker. How you speak will be used against you.’ These sound pieces were not only conceptually fascinating but had a real visual strength in the subtlety of design. Playing with language seems to me rather trendy at the moment, certainly at art school the joy of the laser transfer for the ‘text piece’ was never far removed and, to my rather bias eye, always felt a little like cheating. Typography itself is a fascinating subject that should not be dabbled in lightly, it is not just the words but the font too that can be both manipulated and manipulating and must be treated with caution. ‘Say Parsley’ is a tutorial in decision-making. The white light of one particular text installation projected onto the wall rendered the whiteness of the wall itself a totally different, muddier deception of white. The exhibition tied in remarkably well with a book I bought at the shop, Chromophobia by David Bachelor, discussing our obsession today with whiteness. Both book and exhibition reminded me of how hard it is to make decisions today. A single decision can seemingly be argued to reference everything or nothing ( as I have done in this very entry linking unconnected book and exhibition by sheer chance). Bergvall and Maher know this of course, informed decisions are made accordingly; a meticulous assault on the senses.

Me Myself and I

Post degree show I had no inclination to do anything, least of all anything art related. Two weeks on however I found myself in Bristol waiting for a friend to finish work with no money (the show cleaned me out) and no coat (I wrongly assume that the sun always shines south of the boarder). I found myself caught amongst a stampeding group of school children in the Arnolfini which in fact turned out to be a rather lovely gallery with an even lovelier book shop and reading room archiving all passed exhibitions alongside relevant critical and contextual material. The building itself is an old tea warehouse on Bristol Harbour renovated most recently in 2005. There seemed to be two exhibitions currently running (although their separation, or lack of, seemed a little vague - the only indicator as such being the two information guides). The first one I came to was Otto Zitko and Louise Bourgeois ’Me Myself and I’. Zitko’s work runs along the ground floor in the form of monumental brush strokes onto aluminium plates spilling of the plates as they reach the door and overflowing onto the walls, climbing up the stairs. The strong blue of the paint intensifies in colour as it moves from the aluminium to the porous wall and envelopes its audience as they move up the building. While this was, in my opinion, not quite the right location to show Zitko’s work, acting more as a prelude, or some kind of preparatory experience for Bourgeois’ drawings, his work has a strength which is somewhat location-reliant and the wonderful archive gave this fascinating artist more justice than the Arnolfini. Zitko’s wall painting led upstairs to the smallest gallery space in which Bourgeois’ drawings were situated. I was intrigued to discover that the room layout and arrangement of the work was a distant collaboration between the gallerist and the artist, prior to her death. Bourgeois always uses the same frames for her work - float mounting then a card mount surrounding this. The drawings are two sided - sketched through the long nights of an insomniac, all entitled ‘je t’aime’ alluding to waiting for something or someone. However far from being melancholic, these drawings are frantic, energetic, crowded together on one wall of this tiny room, overpowering in both their arrangement and confidence. Each frame can be turned to reveal the other side of the paper yet it was Bourgeois’ decision as to which side should be displayed. On the other hand it was the gallerists’ decision to show these later works opposite one lonely drawing from the 40s. This tentative, frail drawing forms a contrast, a dialogue with the brash later works, emphasising both her growing confidence in the marks she made but also the intrinsic instinct throughout her career.

Last week in Frieze I came across an article entitled 'That Eye, The Sky' in which the author mapped out the recent influx in rather trendy photos utilising the birds eye view. Among those photos cited were the infamous shot of Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher from above and the advert for the Berlin Film Festival where a group of rather organised fans were photographed picnicking in the cue (possibly referencing the initial shot of the 1977 Charles and Ray Eames film Power of Ten). The author suggests that these non-traditional angles through which we see the world are a result of technological advancements. Jennifer Allen (article author) writes, ' it's intriguing to contemplate the difference between Renaissance linear perspective and the zooming celestial eye of our advanced space and information age, market by satellites, digitalization and the Internet.' So are we beginning to see the world differently or are these shots merely turning the intrusive eye of Google Earth into another accepted convention, fashionable view of the world even? I do not mean to be cynical but I believe that these photographs are not evidence of us seeing the world differently but instead seeing the world the same. The fact that the birds eye has become a 'fashionable' viewing station suggests to me that it is now an acceptable convention to see the world through the eye that sees you, the eye of surveillance.

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/that_eye_the_sky/

Schizophrenia is on the rise! According to new research by the Stanley Medical Institute mental illness has morphed into the 'invisible plague'. I have noted before that the words 'science' and 'schizophrenia' come from the same etymological routes – a mind fractured and split into pieces. Are we really turning slowly into a generation of mad scientists, a generation of Victor Frankensteins? Is scientific development proportional to rates of insanity? This is a rhetorical question as specific psychiatric illnesses are notoriously difficult to quantify. One such study however by ECA (Epidemiologic Catchment Area) suggests that schizophrenia has indeed become an epidemic effecting four million Americans (this is four times as many as HIV). This figure has increased ten fold over the last century and is still increasing. Calculations of this exact increase is complexified further by an estimation that 15% of those effected commit suicide. What indeed has information overload done to us?

http://www.schizophrenia.com/newsletter/allnews/2002/disordersincrease.htm