SNGMA Shows 'Sculpture Through the Ages' (The Rough and the Smooth)

This winter the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is host to a veritable feast of sculpture through the ages. Art, as in life, does not run a smooth path and this exhibition showcases the inconsistency of creativity. While some decades allow us to gorge on greatness, there are definite dry spells and the odd famine made all the more evident by the unusually traditional, roughly chronologically ordered rooms. There is an Australasian plant called the Xanthorrhoea who’s flowering is actually stimulated by bushfire, like these rather genius perennials this exhibition showcases that, while much development and refinement comes through migration of ideas, a select few rise independently from the disappointing ash surrounding it, undeterred by unpromising times.

‘The Sculpture Show’ is a mammoth twenty two rooms of rump steak; disregarded by those beef-elite lovers but perfectly flavoursome once you've chewed on it for a while. I shall not gnaw over every piece of gristle on display but instead give some time to a few tasty favorites. Lets start with that baby, it is after all rather difficult to ignore being that Ron Mueck’s A Girl, 2006, is a blood covered, follicle bearing, five meter long newborn and also the first thing you see on entering SNGMA. I rather felt that my boyfriend’s connection between this and Madame Tussaud's was missing the point of the piece; ‘How alien we all are. How did we get like this? How isolated is the human form…’ Yet I also had to concede that perhaps he was correct, this is a man using his grasp of cinematic techniques to connect with a different world. While it is, without doubt, a highly skilled work, despite its immense stature, there is surprisingly little to emotionally connect with.

I rarely read wall plaques, however on this occasion I was sidetracked away from the artworks by a few choice snippets. Degas’ sculptures were created merely as tools for his paintings, a Rodin figure had been sliced directly off a larger sculpture and cast in bronze - an unusual development away from the highly realistic 360° approach of his predecessors and contemporaries. Paolozzi turned to sculpture a little later and formulated a unique method of pressing items into wax which he then built into larger surfaces - 3D collages for a fearful new age. I enjoy unarguable facts like these, or maybe I just enjoyed these works, works that do not require too much outside interpretation to appreciate them. To some this might seem lazy but I disagree, one would be hard pushed to look at Paolozzi’s mechanical figures and not draw a connection with modernity and the effect that the machine had on civilisation; the delicate balance of desire for progression and fear for the results. What is wrong with appreciating an artist’s generosity in giving us a very strong image to connect to an extremely abstract concept?

I am not the first to say that this exhibition seems to meander off the beaten track a little as we move upstairs away from attempts to depict reality towards our present day. I’d say in fact that this occurs exactly at the point where we arrive at Bruce McLean’s ENTIRE ROOM. Four screens worth to be precise where we watch McLean buffooning around, ‘reacting to the abstract modernist sculpture of his contemporaries.’ I don’t know about you but if I had studied at St. Martins with Anthony Caro I’d want to be working with him, not reacting against him! This is a personal gripe of mine however which I think stems from being shown so many photos throughout my university career of McLean sitting on a plinth looking smug. I am trying to get over this sort of irrational annoyance for times have changed since Pose Works for Plinths in 1971 and there are many more contemporary issues in art for me to focus my anger on.

So a mixed bag all in all, hard to please everyone but difficult to leave without enjoying some of it at least. This is a Sunday afternoon show for sure only to be consumed after a leisurely breakfast and followed with a glass of wine. Some people find afternoon tea an unsatisfying idea. Neither a light lunch, nor the main evening feast, yet I have always found the idea of afternoon tea rather charming. A little nibble to everyone’s taste and a wholly digestible overall concoction.

Mystics or Rationalists at the Ingleby

The following article was written during a particularly arduous gallery assistant shift in August and, while now a full month out of date, deserves to stand as a record (mainly to myself) of what I am inspired by, and horrified by, in contemporary art.

After a few weeks away from the computer I return. Yes I know that it is the festival and I should be spending every waking hour trawling lesser known venues for under appreciated talent but, quite frankly, after six years of elbowing my way through plastic poncho clad crowds I have morphed into… a festival Scrooge. My best friend in the world (who multitasks as a rather fab actress) came to stay with me for the start of August. While out jogging one morning - something I neither enjoy, nor am seeing any significant benefit from, a passer by was heard to shout, ‘The Festival wankers have arrived!’ I turned to look at my friend clad in rather sleek black Lycra and sporting a pare of sun glasses in the rain and was rather inclined to agree with said passing Edinburgian. With this in mind I retired for the entirety of the month to the secluded comfort of my flat. There has however been a few exceptions to this rule - each coinciding with a bout of rain, a resultant illness and a vow not to go out until September.

The Ingleby Gallery proved worth braving the elements for. ‘Mystics or Rationalists’ takes its title from Sol LeWitt’s seminal Sentences on Contemporary Art. I was skeptical on arrival when presented with a ‘Welcome’ mat as the first piece on display by the artist Ceal Floyer. I have just looked at the website to find that, ‘Ceal Floyer’s work challenges us to re-examine the world around us,’ my mistake, I thought that that was the object of contemporary art. A welcome mat, rather than doing this, should be confined to the Homebase bargain bin. Do not get me wrong, Homebase is my Narnia; a place of dreams which, once entered, many a Sunday DIY dabbler may not return. This as may be the Welcome-mat-as-art conundrum symbolises a depressing relic of the early naughties when the artist pallet was made up of a set of letraset transfers and a ruler disguising itself as an alphabet. Needless to say, the exhibition improved markedly on entering.

‘Mystics or Rationalists’ is packed with big names; Susan Hiller, Cornelia Parker, Katie Paterson, yet each piece was small, unassuming and reverently selected (with exemption of Susan Hiller’s homages). A shelf of stunningly functionless marble ’Globes’ by Iran do Espirito Santo based on light fittings (so I was informed) were wittily presented not in plinth nor cabinet form but on a simple shelf jutting out from the wall, as if being proffered for use, were they to have one. The Ingleby Gallery website describes him as, ‘Often working on an ambitious scale, [where] he wryly subverts the Minimalist tradition through his abstracted sculptures of familiar everyday objects made strange by their disorientating size and incongruous materials.’

Another stand out piece for me was Cornelia Parker’s ‘Bullet Drawings’ made from lead bullets drawn into wire and set suspended in glass frames. While I know her mainly for blowing up sheds and the likes, these bullet drawings, while quieter, encapsulated a similar cyclical quality between destruction and regeneration. So, Cornelia Parker blows things up. ‘Blow something up’ would be one of those ambiguous crossword clues with duel and completely unrelated meanings; exploding matter and enlarging or scaling up. Both definitions could be used to describe Parker’s practice, both are rooted in science. At this point a glimmer of GCSE Physics returns to me, The Conservation of Energy where, ‘Nothing can be created or destroyed, it just moves from one state to another.’ Parker definitely falls in the ‘Rationalist’ part of the title.

Something should also be said about Simon Starling’s ‘Autoxylopyrocycloboros’; a self-generating piece of work exhibited in slide projected format. Come to think of it this is not unrelated to my hypothesis that Cornelia Parker has based her entire career on the Conservation of Energy Theory. Starling’s piece was a number of photos shown on a continuous loop accompanied by a clicking, wiring soundtrack which now places the carousel slide projector in the retro category. The stills showed the artist progressively (or digressionally) attacking a boat he was in while feeding the debris into the boat’s furnace. This goes on until of course only the furnace remained and, with neither fuel nor boat to power, it sunk into the river. While this could be read as a depressing morality tale, I prefer to see it more rationally. Maybe next time this is shown the boat will be solar powered, the furnace will be electric… and the slide projector will have been replaced by HD, 3D surround cinema. For, while I may be pessimistic about the Scottish weather, creativity is not a sinking ship eaten up by the technological furnace. If I were to be rational about it!

Is Curation a One Man Show?

‘Microstoria’ Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh
An annual collaboration between Contemporary Art Theory students and  Visual Cultures students from Edinburgh College of Art


A group show with group curation could have gone horribly wrong! Imagine the pent-up tension that builds as a number of driven, creative individuals battle it out to add their two pennies worth to the final product, released from their solitary library-led existence. The ‘Battle Royal of Young Curators’ imagery that this conjures may be a slight exaggeration, however I have been informed by one of the curators involved, that it is not entirely myth. This unique approach to curation must work to broaden avenues not merely foster ill-feeling between its participants if it is to produce positive results. It must establish a diverse melting-pot of influences and direction which, at best, can open our eyes to a new way of viewing the world, (at worst make us want to close them and disregard contemporary art all together).

More established galleries in Edinburgh, for example The Fruitmarket have long-practiced this method of multiplying their curatorial tentacles. Once a year, as testified by its current show ‘Narcissus Reflected’, The Fruitmarket enlists the expertise of an outside voice to open the doors of perception, so to speak. ‘Narcissus Reflected’ has been curated by David Lomas, a specialist in Surrealism. Lomas has revolutionised the interpretation of Salvador Dali’s ‘Narcissus’ by reuniting it with Dali’s poem of the same date and title, as Dali himself intended. The poem contains a number of specific viewing instructions for the painting itself. Lomas also brings an artist known only as Jess to the UK for the first time in the form of a meticulous, hand-drawn collage and life-long project ‘Narkissos’. Lomas proves that the Narcissus mythological subject, far from belonging to a bygone era, still offers pertinent moral value to our contemporary climate.

I thought to lead this entry onto a discussion of the recent Talbot Rice show ’Microstoria’ and end with a few puns on the necessity and value of amicable collaboration.  I now find myself returning to the Talbot Rice tomorrow for an evening discussion. For this reason I shall hold fire on this subject as I fear that my youthful, ready-formed and fluffily-constructed opinions may suddenly be contradicted when vocalised tomorrow! To be continued…

Susan Hiller at The Tate Britain 1st February-15th May 2011

Self-titled exhibitions come with a certain expectation that is unlike any other show. Its audience expects a totality; a glimpse through various facades, guises and stages of work to the person who made them. They are rarely so much a selection but more an all-encompassing collection, a Gesamtkunstwerk. Hiller often presents herself as the curator within individual works, for example ‘Dedicated to the Unknown Artist’ 1972-6 in which she credits those photographers and postcard hand-painters of British seaside towns. However, there seems little thought given to the overall curation of this exhibition,. The good, the bad and the, quite frankly, ugly, have been indiscriminately lumped together.

I am constantly confused as to why the trend today seems to be for mothers and fathers to splash their newborn all over the internet (I am mainly talking about facebook here). Mary Kelly’s ‘Post-Partum Document’ still eludes me and a mother’s desire to want to exhibit her finest creation does not, unfortunately seem to have diminished. Perhaps it is a hangover from my mother who, in trying to boost the sales of her photographic business, sold a photo of me and her to the paper which later carried the headline, ‘Talking to your Child about Sex’. As a result, such works as Hiller’s ‘Ten Months’ 1976, in which she displayed documents of her pregnant self alongside typed-up journal extracts from the time, merely fill me with fear for that poor exploited lump, still too little to sign its consent form.

Hiller’s dream mapping and automatic writing generate a similar unease and a feeling of overindulgence towards their author as ‘Ten Months'. Less enamored was I still by Hiller’s recycled works. I was once told by a tutor that you should love your artistic disasters like an ugly child - I am still not sure where she was going with this, they may turn into something beautiful in the future? Like Tracy Emin destroying all her past works in her ceremonial burning while studying at the Royal College of Art in the late 80s, some things really are best relegated to collecting dust under the bed. If they were no good to begin with then I very much doubt that shredding them and hanging them upside down is likely to improve their appeal.

The works described above truly were overshadowed however by acts of brilliance. As one critic so aptly put, ‘It has taken decades for this American artist to grow out of her wordy cleverness and the terrifying results have been more than worth the wait.’ Ironically enough it was those works which utilise found images, objects and sound, appropriated to create new, open-ended meanings, that really caught the eye. In other words, her skill as an anthropologer, collector, media-combiner and curator overshadowed any act of creation. Hiller’s radical combinations of media, science and technology were really spectacular yet slightly tempered by their proximity to the soggy looking, shredded canvas of an earlier work. ‘Magic Lantern’ was one such stunning, hybrid installation in which three carousel slide projectors, set at slightly different distances created a mesmerising optical illusion. Equally visually and mentally appealing was ‘From the Freud Museum’ in which objects from Hiller’s own collection were paired in custom-made boxes, referencing Freud’s own collection of artifacts. In Hiller’s own words this evokes an alternative, ‘archive of misunderstandings, crisis and ambivalences that complicate any such notion of heritage.’

‘PSI Girls’ 1999, synchronised the moments of high tension in which women learn how to channel their telekinetic powers in popular films, seen through a series of coloured filters in both a powerfully disconcerting, yet humorous manner. Humour creeps into Hiller’s work from time to time with a welcome interlude to the dryness of her subject matter. ‘PSI Girls’ intermingles images from ‘Matilda’ alongside more sinister horror films. ‘Dedicated to the Unknown Artist’, while crediting the unaccredited, also draws attention to a certain British preoccupation with bad weather.

All in all a mixed bag, yet is this what we should expect from a self-titled retrospective? For someone who is so obviously so selective within each separate work, this mishmash did not do her acute eye justice. The exhibition felt scattered, ill-advised and spilled laboriously into the corridor and an extension area. I must conclude that this creative curator has been badly curated. Perhaps the curation of the curation spoilt the creation!

A few (mostly unrelated) thoughts for the day:

The program on L.S. Lowry ‘Looking for Lowry’ has recently been aired on Sunday 24th May, ITV. A number of distinguished figures such as Ian McKellen and Paula Rego discuss why Lowry is simultaneously so loved by the public and dismissed by the academic and cultural bodies that be. From a related article in the Guardian I am led to believe that the argument is not a populist issue but a class one, although despite reading the article I am still at odds as to what this really means. The Tate seems to have thirty or so (I cannot quite remember the figure) Lowry paintings and drawings in its collection, only one of which has been on public display within the institution itself. I know many people who site Lowry as their favourite artist, I for one was introduced to this artist at the tender age of eight via a selection of slim, paperbacks in large fonts laboriously read to me by my Grandmother. The collection also included a short guide to Monet, Turner and Renoir. Maybe I am mistaken and the Tate has a proportional number of Monet’s, Turner’s and Renoir’s squirreled away in its never-before-seen collections but I am guessing not. This is because while these artists encompass a strategic change in the way we see the world, even think about the world, Lowry merely depicted a way of life. His is not so much insightful as intuitive documentary and where does this fit into a wider art-historical and social history after the advent of photography?

One week on and I have finally managed to cajole my weary internet into action and actually watch ’Search for Lowry’ rather than mindlessly pondering its subject matter. I was a little disappointed. It painted a lonely figure, debt collector by day, painter from memory by night, awkward and repressed. It discussed the theatrical appeal of Lowry’s crowd scenes with their full figures caught in movement against their flat, matchbox, Manchester stage set. Nothing new, in fact I think I read something similar in my trusty paperback guides age eight. It failed however to really get to the bottom of why Lowry seems to have been omitted from every exhibition of 20th century art. It is a ridiculous argument to say that the Tate is anti-populist - look at the shop, the branding. The majority of Manchester’s tourists are brought in by The Lowry Centre which sees 800 000 visitors per year (this was a number plucked from a 2008 survey and has, no doubt, increased). It is not a tourist economy that the Tate should be sniffing at and one that in the same year pushed Manchester into close third behind Edinburgh and London for most popular destination for overseas visitors.

Just a thought for the day…

http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1081254_lowrys_the_biggest_draw_in_tourism_boom
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/18/ls-lowry-tate

New Contemporaries

During the course of the year past (and yes it is indeed nearly a year since my college days) I have born the weighty presence of ‘New Contemporaries’. This is an exhibition of sixty recent graduates selected on their degree show held at the Royal Scottish Academy and accompanied by all the pomp and ceremony that this prestigious venue carries with it. No sooner had the initial excitement of showing my work in this stoic venue worn off than I became increasingly troubled by what this privilege entailed. It was not merely the logistics of storing and re-installing a piece that was roughly the size of my bedroom x4. It was also the worry of the hefty bill that comes with re-creating a degree show piece out with the college support network (and supply cupboard).

For the last few months I have found myself glued to Ebay into the early hours of the morning, frantically bidding on projectors. Then there has been the endless transportation (by foot) of planks of wood and weighty electronics from one side of Edinburgh to the other. On top of that there was the uncertainty that (a) I would be able to re-create the piece again and (b) whether the gallery would live to regret it if I did! What, you ask, does the fledgling artist dipping their toes into this competitive world get out of this ordeal?

Not very much, was my initial response, if you discount the back ache and the sleep deprivation. I did however congratulate myself on my resourcefulness at scavenging most of my materials from the local scrap yard - despite the wrath I ensued from the local bus drivers of Prestonpans as they ferried me and my large sheets of wood and glass back to Edinburgh. Secondly there was Emilia and Adam, surely the happiest and most useful people to know in Edinburgh as they come equipped with a van the size of a mobile home. The install was disappointingly simple - so ready was I for a melt-down moment in front of my contemporaries at the RSA that when it failed to materialise I felt alarmingly depleted.

It has been a lot to pay for a confidence boost. However when I cast my eye to the wider picture it really isn‘t as bleak as all that. When I finally came out of the gallery after a constant four day install I thought that that level of stress was not for me and I was going to start looking elsewhere for my kicks. Two weeks on I have just received confirmation of my first solo show at the H-ART Gallery in Colchester later this year. I’m sure this will come with its stresses and strains, sleepless nights and back ache, it seems however, against the odds, that this is also what I thrive off.

‘Doers and/or of Doings’ Part Two (a pop up school) - After allocation of schedules

For some reason I considered myself to have got off rather lightly with my week-worth of activities, that was until I tried to cram them into my already exhausting schedule. Task one: document a seventies dinner party. This was a great success leaving behind a selection of gaudy photos (the majority of which seemed to be of a cheesecake which distinctly resembled scrambled egg) and a rather cloudy hangover. Our authenticity to the era did not stop at a few wide brimmed cocktail glasses but alas continued into the booze budget - rather meagre by today’s standards as sadly we went for quantity over quality.

Through the week I dutifully ploughed my way through tasks 1-5. A selection of readings prevented me blankly staring at the wall during my official post as a gallery assistant. Many of these I have summarised and analysed already in past blog entries. In the evenings, rather than venturing to the pub or the cinema (or settle down to yet another episode of ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’) I was content to blog/twitter/papier-mâché the night away. I smuggly started to reorganise my day to day routine, putting my past lethargy down to sheer laziness.

Then I started to feel ill, tired and run down…
Whether this was psychological still remains to be seen (a universal aversion to over-activity). It did however seem to tweet its way through the group with surprising speed as the week unravelled. Head aches and snotty noses were presented with pride at the final meeting - signs that we had all worked ourselves an unhealthy amount. A warning of the perils of over-zealous activity. By the end I had made a small stop-frame animation, negotiated You Tube, Skype and Twitter aa well as give a power point presentation at Stills. A closing event took place on Sunday at Sierra Metro where we each presented our boards with our month long project documented over the surface. It is only now that all the paper has been ripped down, the curtain closed etc that I have time to reflect on the whole experience.

I think the pop up school went the first bit of the way towards kick starting me into action and the rest now has to be up to me. I was looking for a way to realign my opposing methods of practice, bring them out of the studio and back into home/work and leisure. I needed to inject my practice with the dose of playfulness it somehow lost along the way. There were also some unexpected perks, for instance learning how to use the technology I had been avoiding for so long. Having confined this to time-wasting I now appreciate how the web can become a valuable source of self-promotion. I took a small icing nozzle away with me from Mairi’s collection of objects and who knows, Part 2 ‘From Fish to Fantasy’ might be out sooner than you think! Many thanks to Francesca Miller, Mairi Taylor and Travis Souza for a month of great interaction and manic activity.

The Forgotten Prop

Still ploughing my way through the allocated reading list for ‘Doers and/or of Doings’. Yesterday’s article to be subjected to three hours scrutiny over the course of a particularly dull gallery shift was the preface to a book called ‘The Stage Life of Props’ by Andrew Sofer. I thought that his was an interesting piece to blindly post to me. I can only assume that it arrived as the result of a comment I made in an early meeting about some wayward desire to get into scenography and set design at some point in a rather distant future.

So what was there to say about the article? No doubt this preface was designed to pique my interest into reading the whole book. If so it failed in its task but not for lack of interesting content, but rather for lack of relevance to me… in any way. That having been said, there were, in this introduction alone, some rather interesting comments. Props (along with sets and mechanical effects) within the theatre are rarely written about critically. The article states, ‘Most books that mention stage properties in their title are manuals aimed at aspiring stage designer or technical director.’ ‘And?’ I hear you cry? Well what this effectively means is that scenography is not getting the critical analysis it deserves, the type of analysis we associate with the arts. The props, the set, the effects, these are seen a sensationalist mechanisms which create the spectacle. However these mechanisms are of central importance to the experience itself. What is not said directly through spoken word can be hinted at more subtly through a symbolic use of set and prop.

The book (I understand from the preface) analyses the existence and use of these mechanisms not as passive emblems but active events. The article describes this as, ‘a mechanism of appropriation to address a wider semiotic crisis within the theatre and often culture.’ From the simplest to the most complicated of sets, these miscellaneous items create an atmosphere, set the scene and say the unsaid before a word has been uttered. The power of the prop should not be undermined.

From Fish to Fantasy

Doers and/or of Doings: pop-up school part 1

The idea of the pop-up site/school/shop/restaurant has transcended its original (rather idealistic) beginnings; a site accessible to all, initiated by anyone, a site without the stress, strain, chance and investment required in starting a business. Perhaps this change occurred when Michelin star chefs jumped on the band-wagon taking over small country pubs to peddle their gastro wares or when Faberge opened up the mother of all pop-up shops in one of the most exclusive ski resorts in Switzerland last month. Never the less, the notion of the pop-up school as a method of initiating and promoting a fledgling idea, testing the waters of the cut-throat wide world, has always appealed to me in an era where business ventures are deemed a disaster, closed down and sold on for scrap parts before they have had a chance to get their money-making feet off the ground.

It was with this in mind that I tentatively walked into my first class of the pop-up school ‘Doers and/or of Doings’ at Edinburgh’s Sierra Metro under the instruction of artist and thinker Travis Souza. The subject appealed to me - ‘Impasse’ or ‘Creative Block’ - (‘general art vs. life crisis’ as another member rather eloquently put it). It is the well trodden path of the art student on leaving college, full of hope and enthusiasm, to then find themselves a year past, working in some dingy pub, depressed with not a single artwork to show for themselves. I could see myself following suite feeling inexplicably like, rather than increasing my life prospects, the five year masters had instead placed me in a vacuum from which I emerged, out of touch with reality with little more than an accumulation of paper under the bed and a diverse selection of fine-liners to show for it. It was this or the pop-up school!

Little did I know the twist in the route to follow. First came the email - a presentation on said ‘Impasse’, a selection of images and (heaven forbid) A TWITTER ACCOUNT were all required for the first Sunday (leaving me exactly three days). Having not spoken about my art for over six months and always associated the idea a twitter account with, well, self-indulgent twits, I was flummoxed. After the first meeting however, I came away more relaxed with my mind fuller and much less haphazard than I had felt in many a month. Twitter proved to be quite addictive and I secretly justified it to myself as being ‘for art purposes’. I slightly competitively attacked the task in hand, intent on throwing myself into researching the other member’s Impasse while stubbornly ignoring my own.

Then came the next issue, I had absolutely no idea how to research since leaving the drowsy confines of the university library. I tried the Central Library, panic selecting books on the merits of their front covers, read exhibition reviews and finally landed on typing in words and phrases into Google trying to hit upon some happy coincidence that might be in some way helpful to the other member’s practice. Sunday evening I emerged from session two feeling dazed and confused after six hours tucked in a small room, huddled round an electric heater working on schedules for the week ahead for the other participants. The idea was that these schedules would exist within day to day life rather that trying to create art outside of reality. When I got my weekly plan back it read something like a mad old woman’s to-do list. I had to orchestrate and document a 1970s themed Valentines dinner party, make a short film to the recipe of papier-mâché, fish and nesting among other things. I shall let you know how this pans out. Until then however, the image is a taster of the week that followed.

Many thanks to the pop-up school for making this the most manic, creative and hilarious week in some time.
http://doersandofdoings.wordpress.com/

Possible Worlds

Day two sitting in the gallery bought a second selection of fine readings courtesy of Sierra Metro’s pop-up school. The first I picked up had the best title in the world, ‘Embodiment: From Fish to Fantasy’ by Andy Clark yet two pages in the content had become, well, incomprehensible to say the least. I gleaned a little about embodiment being something to do with exploitation of the localised environment (some example of a Blue fin Tuna was selected). After that the scientific lingo sent me off course and I moved swiftly on to article 2: ‘Possible Worlds in the Theatre of the Absurd’ by Katerina Vassilopoulou 2006. This was fascinating. I am a keen theatre fan and am aware of the theatre of the absurd commonly summarised as being built on futility and meaninglessness of life and death bought about by the post-war period of the 1950s. I have seen Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, read a little of Ionesco’s ‘Jacques or Obedience’ and even was part of the costume team for an ammeter dramatics version of Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros’ but thought little about the mechanisms behind absurdity. What I came to see was that we have a certain expectation of a play which is based on reality, this can become absurd by slipping seamlessly into fantasy (or rather another type of reality - textual reality). The fact that the worlds created are then accepted by the characters expands an understanding of certain phases which adjust in tune to the characters’ purposes. Absurdity (as opposed to realistic fantasy) is created by the way characters deal with rational situations. Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros’ is considered absurd due to the characters’ acceptance of the situation where as Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ is realistic fantasy for its characters’ rejection of the situation. The possible-worlds theory is no doubt a fascinating topic and one I shall endeavour to track further in the future but for now it is exciting merely to re-ignite my enjoyment of learning, reading and absorption of information.

Confused about Photography?

I am taking part in Sierro Metro’s pop-up school run by Travis Souza this month - ‘Doers and/or of Doings’, I shall elaborate on this further at a later date. This involves a series of tasks given allocated to me by other artists to fit into my day to day life and work. Some of these are a little strange -documenting a 70s dinner party, making a short film to a recipe involving things like a fish tank, but there are also a few less bizarre tasks - readings etc. The first was called ‘Photography as Representational Art’ written in 1986 by Robert Wicks.

I always try and sum up an article in a sentence or two to formulate/clarify it in my mind. I then analyse it to see how I may apply it to my work. The summery I came up with goes something like this:

Photography’s inherent link to a ‘presentness’ results in the sacrifice of the opportunity for total fiction offered by other representational art forms. This required ‘presentness’ however, when linked with relevant technical manipulation is what in fact makes a photograph a representational piece of art.

(For this to make sense it is obviously necessary to read the whole article)
Obviously a lot of the discussion on manipulation of the medium (or limitations within this manipulation) are now obsolete due to technological advancements. The link to presentness however will always be the essence of photography. We can photoshop indefinitely but the initial photograph will always be a static capture of something. This confused me somewhat and merely chose to clarify photography in my mind as a tool for documentation rather than a piece of work in its own right. This is not to eliminate that photograph becoming a piece of work but that is up to how the artist chooses to elevate it. The article left me bemused, it seemed to argue the case for photography as a tool for manipulation while discussing it as a representational art form. I still somehow think that I will continue to use photography a tool of manipulation rather than creation.

Marc Camille Chaimowicz at Inverleith House

The Fine Art/Interior Design boundary has never been definitive. Marc Camille Chaimowicz uses Inverleith House to export ’The Interior’ into the world of fine art not as a shell to be filled but a subject to be analysed. Indeed the parallel has often been drawn between Chaimowicz’s work and the Gesamtkunstwerk; total work of art. What Chaimowicz so cleverly procured in Inverleith House was what effectively looks like a stately home. The full-length windows look out onto the idyllic Botanic Gardens (maybe not quite yet but come spring we can but hope). This setting frames the work somehow and draws the architecture as well as the surrounding landscape into the interior. Pieces no longer become distinguishable from one another but meld into a single environment.

Chaimowicz commissioned a carpet from Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios. This carpet sits on an oddly lop-sided plinth. The insignificant becomes the significant not by merely being raised above floor level, but raised to an uneven level above floor level. I bloody love plinths! What ever happened to them? Where did they go? Or does every gallery still use them to death but now that we are all so used to seeing things floating in mid air we no longer take note of what they are on. I read an article in ’Map’ recently about the artist called Audrey Reynolds who makes a feature of the plinth. Reynolds’ plinth and blob-on-top-of-plinth (and sometimes carpet under plinth) become one complete picture. The plinth traditionally has never been given much credit - perhaps not quite as aerodynamic as the plane, the plinth, never the less, does still perform the pretty unimaginable task of making an object float in a space. Chaimowicz’s tables and furnishings ARE plinths, Chaimowicz and Reynolds are together reinstating the plinth. These plinths are a bit of a cut above, beautifully carved, cast and … functional.

If Reynolds’ work has been described as a sort of grubby minimalism, then Chaimowicz’s pastel hues and flower prints, strategically placed mink stoles and silk knickers could perhaps be described as candy-floss minimalism. The antithesis of minimalism in so many respects and still perfectly in tune with the minimalist sensibility. An art built on such a multitude of stereotypes only proves a development in artistic opinion. There is no longer this desire to conform to a similar style. Perhaps we are moving into a freer, more liquid time where artists seem to be picking indiscriminately from various disciplines and styles. They are proving that there is more to be gained from throwing ideas together than segmenting them apart.

The digital age has re-aligned our opinions on where, what and whether to separate different disciplines at all as origins become blurred into cyberspace. Chaimowicz embraces this modern Gesamtkunstwerk, yet his execution and the subsequent forms reference a different era of functionality, slick design and precision in implementation. Can work be overtly masculine AND feminine, cluttered AND sparse, minimal AND, somehow, maximal? Or, maybe, these polar opposites never existed in the first place. Labelling something results in elimination of the shades of grey, categorisation places everything that does not exactly epitomise it, outside of it. Chaimowicz (and Reynolds) with the help of a few plinths, are bridging the gap.

Dialogues Past

I think I have mentioned before (on more than one occasion) the recent surge of performance artists re-visiting and re-assessing their earlier works. Once again another exhibition came to my attention highlighting this particular phenomenon, ‘10 Dialogues’ at the Royal Scottish Academy, so here I am, yet again, bloging about other artists reliving previous successes. The thing is that many of these performances are only deemed as being of seminal importance in retrospect. Now Marina Ambramovic (the mother of all performance artists) draws thousands to her events, as seen in the Manchester International Festival 2010. Yet in 1975, when she first scored a star on the floor in paraffin and set it alight with herself inside, it was not to a jostling collection of well-to-do gallery goers but a concerned bunch of students who then had to drag her from the charred zone on her loss of consciousness. At least if Ambramovic was to re-create this work today the MoMA would probably have ten firemen on queue to lift her out the wreckage and a helicopter on hand to airlift her to safety, while filming it all of course.

Ambramovic was not however the artist I started of writing this article about (she is merely a useful study for the matter). The piece that particularly caught my attention in ‘10 Dialogues’ and made me reconsider the recreated performance was a simple film of a car journey, itself a recreation of a previous film made from a car journey by another artist. The work was shown on one TV split into two screens so that original film and recreation showed in tandem. The piece was perfect, each camera angle, close up and panning-out had been recreated and yet rather than the two images looking the same the scenery had changed so much in the thirty years or so between them that the two films melded into polar opposites. Where once there had been a lamp post, later there was not, once a hedgerow, now a block of flats.

It bought to mind the futility of attempting to re-create past events. No doubt someone will always have barged in in the interim and built a block of flats or situated the fire brigade on stand-by. This is what I took away from ‘10 Dialogues’. It was an exhibition that celebrated the past and an analysis of how it impacted on the future. It was not about trying to keep events in cotton wool but mapping how things changed. When I was at college I once spent months making the most god awful mess of paper mache wires. It looked horrific! I then spent the next few months trying to work this revolting lump into every installation I created to no avail. After seeing ‘10 Dialogues’ I took a photo of this piece and promptly binned it. It was a mess, it didn’t work and I’m moving on. It is not our job as artists to dwell on previous disasters, to drag a reluctant success story out of them. Perhaps they will in time hold that status but dwelling on the past has always been acknowledged as an unhealthy occupational hazard likely to catch fire and blow up in our face.

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/