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    conceptual, contemporary, painting, sculpture

    Keith Tyson at Parasol Unit

    October 30, 2009

    Written for Culture24

    Exhibition: Keith Tyson – Cloud Choreography and Other Emergent Systems, Parasol Unit, London, until November 11 2009

    It goes something like this: n pigeons/a non-graceful tree of 2n generations where each gen has r vertices and then has r+1 edges and r and n are random integers within the limits (0<n>5) (1<r>9). The work is called Operator Painting: n Pigeons and a giant painting of 1 bird accompanies the equation.

    Keith Tyson’s new Operator Paintings are characterised by a mix of science and surreal humour. Numbers and words appear as important as images and many are written with the precision of a signwriter. Pictorial elements are rendered with the functionality of a text book.

    Indeed the first Operator Painting is entirely typographic. Large Abstract relies on mental imagery, building a narrative out of arbitrary phrases such as “a half buried tile” and “chlorinated eyes”. Poetic fragments revolve around another dense equation involving pi, cos and theta.

    Each of these pictures has its own formula. The relationships look like nonsense and it would be easy to dismiss them as satire. But there’s an air of intelligence and surprise about the rules which suggests they carry their own meaning, at least as far as Tyson is concerned.

    In the wider context of the exhibition, his interest in science goes beyond a sense of fun. It has also led to the discovery of a new technique. The Nature Paintings variously resemble mineral, brain tissue, lava and aerial photography. They use paint, pigment and an innovative chemical reaction on aluminium.

    The Fractal Die sculptures also call attention to the creative role (or roll) of chance. These are blocky 3D chaos patterns; the primary colours and 90 degree angles suggest an explosion in a Lego factory.

    The show’s eponymous painting group is Cloud Choreography. In style they move from fresco-like study of heavenly fluff to photo-realist panels depicting jet vapour. Mushroom clouds and globally-warmed tornadoes also feature. Clouds have lost their innocence, and guess what, so has art.


    contemporary, sculpture

    Peter Randall-Page rocks at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

    October 21, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Exhibition: Peter Randall-Page, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Underground Gallery, Garden Gallery and open air, Wakefield, until January 2010

    Glacial boulders provide much of the raw material. And having been thawed out and carved up by Peter Randall– Page, the rocks still appear to be moving.

    To claim that stones have energy fields would until now put you in a bracket with new age types and fans of ancient civilisation. Yet in this artist’s most extensive exhibition to date, that is surely the case.

    At least one piece appears to breathe —  a boulder covered in uniform craters, called Inhalation. While another seems to give off warmth —  a huge rock called Skin Deep covered in thick grooves.

    But the beating heart of this show is a room containing two dark limestone monoliths. Fructus and Corpus stand more than 2m tall and bulge as if still growing.

    They are carved and polished to within a millimetre of their geometric design. This smoothness, coupled with more than 13 tonne a-piece weight, gives them an almost magnetic appeal.

    Elsewhere a roomful of tiny working models exert just as strong a pull on the viewer. Because whether simply folding clay or experimenting with maquettes, Randall-Page creates strange beings along organic lines. Even on this micro scale they have a sense of mass.

    Other works explore the musicality of geological structure. Rocks In My Bed takes its name from a Duke Ellington song and features four boulders each with their own backdrop. The well-balanced composition pulsates with funky black and ochre stripes.

    Meanwhile, six large earthy coloured works on paper resemble brain tissue. They are in fact walnuts, just one of many formal correspondences revealed to us through this show. Indeed all the works here have one thing in common, life force.

    conceptual, contemporary, installation, painting, sculpture

    Turner Prize Exhibition 2009 at Tate Britain

    October 19, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Turner Prize 2009 Exhibition, Tate Britain, until January 3 2010

    Turner Prize art rarely speaks for itself. A deformed lump of cream-coloured plastic is fixed to the wall. It is an exhibit by candidate Roger Hiorns.

    “What do you see?” a mother enquires. “I see a man on horseback.”

    “I see someone galloping along,” agrees her young daughter.

    This would be a fine interpretation were it not for the blurb on the wall, which kindly informs the viewer that said sculptures are laced with bovine brains. A nearby pile of grey dust turns out to be an atomised passenger jet engine. The devil, as they say, is in the detail.

    Painter Richard Wright also benefits from a few words of explanation. His exhibit is a gold leaf mural of considerable size and complexity. The abstract design looks like wallpaper and is at first about as interesting.

    Then you read that come January the gallery plans to paint over the work, which must have taken ages to execute, and it soon becomes a breathtaking feat of futile endeavour. It has quite a lot to say, for a piece of interior design.

    Even more reliant on their short text is Lucy Skaer. Her wow factor comes from exhibiting a sperm whale skull, partially hidden with a screen. She has also drawn a whale skeleton with painstaking magic marker swirls. Twenty-six Brancusi replicas made from coal dust are poised nearby. It is arty, yet puzzling.

    Her work is designed to slow down the act of looking. Which just gives time to wonder why you are looking at a dead cetacean. There is no doubt a good reason.

    But most baffling of all is Enrico David. His installation includes two large papier-mâché eggmen on rockers. These make you want to punch them and that is quite an odd reaction to a piece of art.

    He also brings us an emaciated, cloth diplodocus creature with a wooden face. It stretches the length of the room and, be warned, into the furthest reaches of the viewer’s mind. It is both ghastly and brilliant.

    David’s work is just too weird for words, but it stands on its own dubious merits. If this was a prize for work requiring no background knowledge, he would surely win.

    conceptual, contemporary, kinetic sculpture, music

    Stephen Cornford interview

    October 18, 2009

    Published on Art & Music

    The dense reverb is always there. Artist Stephen Cornford has to speak up to be heard. In the room are eight customized turntables on plinths with speakers. None are switched on, but all are plugged in. And that is enough to make the air throb in Brighton’s tiny Permanent Gallery.

    “This show sounds so different from how it did a month ago,” he tells me. “Some are quieter. Some are louder. These are things which I deliberately don’t want to control, for instance that noise which you hear now, and it does different things.”

     

    It’s worth pointing out that the units do not play records. They play ball bearings, marbles, springs, gravel and empty bells. They have slipmats made from metal or stone. Each one produces three or so minutes of chaotic noise when activated.

     

    The turntables are a new departure for the Devon-based sculptor, who more often puts instruments to such strange uses. He uses motors to swing an electric guitar and powered-up amp around in an “aeolian loop”. Or spins guitars and a bass round the gallery to create an “aleatory song”. Or vibrates the necks of a row of wired up guitars. 

     

    Cornford says his interest lies in the iconography of the object: “The electric guitar is if you like a symbol of rock culture, of youth culture, of this kind of rite of passage of young people to make music, not only young people I guess. And throughout its history it’s been reinvented as music has moved forward, as rock and roll music has moved forward.”

     

    On a more classical note, he has also done unusual things with a piano. This has included putting contact mics inside the casing to play with the tone of different strings. Electromagnetic pick-ups have turned the tinkling ivories into a drone instrument. He’s even clamped firebell motors to the bass notes.

     

    “The piano I kind of see as the icon of classical composition,” Cornford explains. “It’s what a composer uses. Most classical composers would sit down at a piano. They wouldn’t have all the other instruments available to them when they’re writing their concerto or whatever, so it kind of sits as, yes, as the icon of that field.”

     

    The sculptor defies each instrument’s traditional function by exploring their shape, size, weight and resonance. He claims to be more concerned with physical characteristics than musical properties: “I don’t really have an interest in music as notes, as bars, as melody. I’ve just got an interest in the sound phenomena that these things are capable of creating.”

     

    Inevitably though, things get musical. Cornford has begun to perform improvised gigs and comes to the interview fresh from a set of feedback in which a snare drum became a string instrument. He has produced a 7” single to accompany the Works for Turntables show. And his slightly wild curly hair certainly puts one in mind of a musician.

     

    But the term “anti-music” still brings forth a pleased chuckle: “I guess I try not to draw any lines around what is music and what isn’t music, which is a very old Cagean idea, but I really try to look at all sound as potential music. All noise is potential music, just depending on the ear of the beholder.” Indeed John Cage was one of the first composers to work with a phonograph turntable.

     

    Cornford admits he has friends who don’t like his automated and improvised pieces: “They’ll say  ‘Oh, it’s just horrible sounds!’ and I sometimes think that’s almost like a moral objection to unpleasant sounds.” Instead, he argues that music, like art, need not be beautiful.

     

    After pondering the differences between those two worlds, he suggests: “Maybe music just kind of plugs so straight into you. You can’t close your ears to ignore it and it resonates with you in ways we don’t entirely understand.

     

    “And because of that,” he adds with a grin, “People don’t really like it when it makes them feel kind of nervous or awkward.” At this point his record players, which have us surrounded, seem to hum in agreement. Cornford’s non-musical music has been misunderstood for too long.

    contemporary, painting

    Damien Hirst at the Wallace Collection

    October 15, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst, The Wallace Collection, London, until January 24 2009.

    How often does middle-aged famous millionaire Damien Hirst really think about death? Well, by the evidence of his new show it is the only thing on his mind.

    Much has been made of his decision to return to painting. In fact he returns time and again to a single painting, the still life momento mori. In other words, he now paints skulls – lots of them.

    You might imagine he also paints fruit, flowers, dead pheasants and the like, but no. Seasonal produce isn’t dark enough for the former YBA, although he does throw in ashtrays, shark jaws and iguanas.

    Some paintings do feature a lonely two-dimensional lemon. This may be included for the sake of its colour, or its art historical significance, or simply because it goes well with tequila. It’s not clear.

    Nevertheless, colour is the second most obsessive aspect here. Brooding blues and silvery blacks dominate most compositions and, despite a nod to Picasso in the show’s subtitle, Francis Bacon is the real influence at work.

    Hirst credits Bacon with inspiring his colour scheme and has also taken on his rough edges. Two of the most theatrical pieces are even monumental triptychs.

    But whereas Bacon painted suffering flesh, Hirst has stuck with comedy bones. There is very little pain in this vision of mortality. The works resemble X-rays or kids’ book illustrations. Some of the skulls almost grin.

    As well they might, because the new show is bang on brand. Trademark skulls and shark jaws aside, there are plenty of spots and butterflies too. That could be why the 25 paintings have already sold for a reported £50m.

    But it is not about the money. Hirst’s move to painting is a gesture towards art history and the artist’s own connections to the past. Look, he has written a guide to 26 other pieces in the Wallace Collection.

    It reads like the script for some yoof TV, so not much angst there either. If Hirst thinks about anything 24/7 it is more likely to be art rather than death, and his own chances of immortality.

    contemporary, curating

    Daniel Pryde-Jarman interview

    October 12, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    An interview with curator and gallery owner Daniel Pryde-Jarman from Brighton’s Grey Area

    Daniel Pryde-Jarman is on his way to becoming a doctor of curatorial practice, a leading authority on the concept of heterotopia. “It basically it means other places, spaces of otherness,” he explains. “Heterotopia comes from Foucault’s concepts of otherness and psychologically different spaces.”

    Jarman is no stranger to unusual venues. As an art student he put on exhibitions around Portsmouth in settings including a lift, a window and an emergency exit. “That was quite amusing,” he says.

    “At every opening I had to prove to the Health and Safety Officer that the exhibition could be dismantled in case of fire very quickly and not get in the way.”

    Now he demonstrates the value of otherness by running an independent and subterranean gallery in Brighton called Grey Area. The space was opened in March 2006 and, since then, has held more than 30 shows and numerous spoken word events, film screenings, artist talks and discussions.

    Jarman looked at various shops and industrial units in the quest for his alternative venue, finally choosing a storage area he discovered by accident.

    “It had really fallen into disarray,” he recalls. “It literally had a cooker in the main exhibiting space and all these soiled clothes with a kind of hermit’s nest in the corner in the back room, so it was pretty different to how it is now.”

    Despite obvious improvements, the gallery is still intimate. “All the exhibitions we produce have to be tailored to the space and we don’t have a lot of it,” he says.

    “Sometimes it’s frustrating to work on a show within those confines, but it’s also something that obviously we embrace.”

    Nevertheless, the long-haired curator balks at the word challenge: “To say it’s a challenge almost gives it the wrong tone. It is difficult to work with artists and create something that works. It’s a difficult thing to do.”

    In one recent highlight for the gallery, David Blandy transformed Grey Area into a kind of basement youth club. Jarman describes this relationship with the British pop artist as “symbiotic.”

    “I guess there are certain similarities or certain threads between the artists we work with,” he says.

    “A lo-fi kind of aesthetic, a certain kind of immediacy and a lack of facade or pomposity is something we try and explore.”

    Not content with one “other” space, Jarman is keen to produce more off-site projects in future. He is currently assembling a line up of artists to perform a gig in a deconsecrated church. The December event will take place at the nearby Fabrica gallery, and include 2001 Turner Prize-winner Martin Creed.

    Nor is it inconceivable that Grey Area could relocate. Like many Brightonians, Jarman appears to have a love-hate relationship with the city.

    “There are a hell of a lot of artists and creative people in Brighton and not a lot of spaces for them to do things outside of pubs,” he accepts.

    “I think that it’s really important to have an independent space which you can approach as an emerging artist or even as an internationally known one, where something can happen without the bureaucracy – a place for ideas rather than legislation.”

    Where will that be then? No doubt heterotopia.

    conceptual, contemporary, painting, photography, video

    Artists Anonymous at Riflemaker

    October 6, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Artists Anonymous – Lucifer Over London, Riflemaker, London, until November 21 2009

    David was apparently hewn from a 27-stone block of marble after which Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel single-handed. Would he not, by the end of it, have looked something like Arnold Schwarzenegger?

    The question is asked on camera by a sock puppet in this London show by Berlin-based Artists Anonymous. The footwear not only has good comic timing, but also conceals the group’s identity. Art, they say, should matter more than ego.

    Instead, consider their fresh approach to picture making, called the after image. Most works here feature twice: the first painted in negative, putting dark shades and new features where the eye sees light. The second  is a photograph in which colours have been inverted to produce a recognizable yet twice-removed scene.

    So Pan Dreaming is a murky composition of a child in a push chair, a pensive adult form, the reflection of a figure on the floor and a collection of balloons. But one look at the after image, Pan’s Prison, confirms that all those elements are there and the whole thing is every bit as nightmarish as you expected.

    The technique produces a highly distinctive palette. The colours are either sickly, muddy or bleached out. They call to mind another non-realist school of German painting, Expressionism, and blur into one another, bringing a surreal vagueness to the subject matter.

    The paintings are augmented by some found sculpture and a basement screening room straight from one of the neighbourhood’s sleazier establishments (we are, after all, in Soho). On screen a very blonde woman in a gimp costume harangues the audience from behind a Punch and Judy stand.

    The sock puppets describe the after image as a world of pure imagination, a retinal memory containing an infinity of possibilities when presented with any given scene. And to view the world this way, they argue, is to enter the sock dimension, which incidentally is where all those missing socks actually go.

    Who said the Germans don’t have a sense of humour?

    conceptual, contemporary, illustration, sculpture

    Made in Brighton at Ink_D

    October 2, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Exhibition: Made in Brighton, Ink_D Gallery, Brighton, until October 4 2009

    For a small gallery, this is a big group show. Seventeen artists have been squeezed onto the wall of Ink_D in the North Laine. All are Brighton based and much of the work is Brighton inspired. So just how much talent can one seaside town accommodate? Each has been given 30 square cm to demonstrate what they can do.

    James Cauty, who once set fire to £1 million of profits from his band KLF, is still causing controversy, just on a smaller scale.

    Stamps Are So Gay is a page of perforated covers showing two cowboys engaged in a lewd act. As with a photo stand from the pier, there are oval holes where the faces should be, and a young straight couple peers through.

    Imbue has also made a statement. Taking cues from the logo of Brighton and Hove City Council, he has made an emblem which looks more like DisneyLand. Perhaps life here is too much fun.

    Another comment on the city’s reputation for hedonism comes from satirical cartoonists Modern Toss. Come To Brighton shows a couple of daytrippers on the train, taking a stroll, dancing and finally throwing up into a dustbin.

    Andy Doig designed the neon sign above the gallery door and his medium is light. He has responded well to the brief with a fairground bulb mounted on a section of painted wood from a pier.

    A gaudy cable joins it to the mains. Ride Relic is a simple, well-executed slice of city life.

    Another sculpture provides another highlight. Sean Madden has taken inspiration from Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock to produce a cut-throat razor with the words “I Love You” engraved in the blade.

    It is a brilliant evocation of both old style gangsterism and also the dark side of a dirty weekend.

    There are 25 pieces by every artist and all the works cost just £75. Whether you’re coming to Brighton for the day or you’ve lived here all your life, it would be hard to find a better souvenir.

    painting, pre-Columbian, sculpture

    Moctezuma at the British Museum

    September 30, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Exhibition: Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler, The British Museum, London, until January 24 2010

    Before too long you come across a likely looking knife. The handle is sculpted into a crouching warrior and covered in tiny chips of turquoise mosaic. The blade is a vicious looking slice of obsidian. But according to the plaque this was a ceremonial ornament, never actually used for human sacrifice. The effect of this news is a strange sense of disappointment.

    Not far away is a two-foot tall pot decorated to look like an eagle. A plaque reveals this would have been used to store human hearts prior to burning them as an offering to the gods. Now that’s more like what we look for in our Aztecs.

    But as curator Colin McEwan has been quick to point out, this exhibition is in fact about a civilization called the Mexica (pronounced Mesheeka), who were ruled by elected Emperor Moctezuma between 1502 and 1520. He has described this as “a signal moment in the history of the Americas”.

    The human heart pot is in fact unfinished. Chances are the local craftsmen were interrupted by the arrival of Hernán Cortés and an army of Spaniards. It briefly seems as if the conquistadors had a righteous cause, until you come across an indigenous picture book (a codex) which shows one of Cortés’ stewards burning four Mexica nobles at the stake for late payment of tributes.

    It’s an irony that Moctezuma is said to have mistaken Cortés for a god, the legendary hero Quetzalcoatl. The Emperor sent many gifts to the explorer, including a fabulous two-headed serpent made from carved wood and covered in turquoise mosaic and fragments of red thorny oyster shell. This exhibit did not have far to travel and most will recognize it from the museum’s permanent collection.

    Many more astonishing works of art have come from further afield. The Monument Dedicated to Sacred Warfare is a pyramidal altarpiece made from volcanic rock. On its first visit to Europe, it sits atop a plinth in the museum reading room. In 1507, the year it was made, the Mexica were still in blissful ignorance of the war that would end all wars.

    The latter part of the exhibition tells the story from the invaders’ point of view. An extensive series of oil paintings inlaid with mother of pearl, the Enconchados, relate how the kingdom slowly passed into Spanish hands. A vast screen glorifies the conquest with an epic narrative sweep. The conquistadors brought armour, swords, Christianity and disease. The Mexica gods, while awesome and mysterious, could only look on.

    conceptual, video

    Hannah Rickards at the Whitechapel Gallery

    September 26, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    MaxMara Art Prize for Women: Hannah Rickards, Whitechapel Gallery, London, until September 23 2009

    If Hannah Rickards’ latest work tells us one thing, then personal accounts are not to be trusted. So perhaps don’t believe all you’re about to read.

    It centres on a phenomenon which takes place on Lake Michigan, where an inversion of temperatures causes a mirage of an inverted city. Nowhere in the show do we see photographic or video evidence for this – instead, the viewer must rely on a group of eyewitnesses.
    The witnesses are all reliably dull locals, late-middle aged pillars of the community. Rickards has got them together in a non-descript institutional space. A projection screen on the back wall suggests we are in for a lesson of some sort as, indeed, we are.

    Three chairs face the middle of the room, making the viewer feel they occupy a fourth. Sometimes we see empty chairs, at others Rickards blacks out the screen. She lets voice-overs speak out of the darkness or over the empty room. Competing testimonies are dubbed over each other.

    One man says he can’t recall there being any colour. Another has a vivid recollection of red lights. A woman listening begins to shake her head, the shake eventually becoming a nod. Two men who are dressed identically cannot agree. The hallucinatory event is compared to a movie, a black and white photo, an Etch-a-sketch design. “I don’t think anything I actually saw actually had dimensions,” as one speaker puts it.

    The 10-minute film is deliberately short on action and visual appeal. Nothing distracts from the divergence of subjective accounts. It’s a good point and well made, but the piece is so dry and economical that boredom is the occasional result, and this is not helped by poor sound quality.

    Rickards herself takes an ironic standpoint on the debate. The film is called No, There was no Red. Whether you agree or not is up to you.