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    contemporary, painting, portraiture

    Zachary Walsh – Greek Street

    August 6, 2009

    Published on Culture 24
    Zachary Walsh – Greek Street, Ink_d Gallery, Brighton, until August 23 2009

    Zeus has you fixed with a hard stare. It’s a surprise to meet him in the flesh like this and he looks avuncular, somewhat amused, yet quizzical. It’s definitely him because stretching out behind are eagle wings and to his side is an old-fashioned dial telephone marked with the word God.

    The father of Olympus could look alive and well for two reasons. First, he’s painted in a contemporary style with a bold graphic background. Second, the sitter really is alive; the subject is also father of the partner of artist Zachary Walsh.
    A picture of a painting of a woman in a white gown with a telephone in front of a cross

    His wife, naturally, is painted as Hera. She too looks very much like someone you could meet in the street tomorrow. Walsh gives us a sense of her (slightly world-weary) personality, so that her realism comes as a shock. It’s not what we expect from our gods.

    In fact all the models for this show are friends or relatives of the artist. It first took two to three hours to photograph each before working out their immortal counterpart. Needless to say the results are flattering. They also breathe new life into Greek myth.

    Hades is cast as perhaps a louche, aging rock star. Persephone is a woman just past her prime. Hades and the Abduction of Persephone, as painted here, looks tender, touching and and entirely consensual.

    Most of the settings in this show are flat plains of colour. Walsh also uses photographs to build on his interpretations. Hades is flanked with dinosaur skulls. Orpheus poses with a double bass. Of all the birds sacred to Aphrodite, she is here shown with the swan.

    Walsh says his interest in Greek myth comes from the way each story offers psychological clues about every living human. “Even after millennia this insight is ever relevant, but really I just love the magic,” he adds.

    The magic continues upstairs with some eleven pictures of Cyclops along with Medusa, a sparrow-like siren and Argus, the giant with a hundred eyes. These monster paintings are smaller, uglier and appear not to be portraits of friends and relatives. But if only they were.

    conceptual, contemporary, painting

    Gilbert and George at White Cube

    July 30, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Jack Freak Pictures, Gilbert and George, White Cube, London, until August 22 2009

    Two years ago Gilbert and George were accorded the ultimate mark of respect from the art establishment in Britain. The highlights from their lifetime’s work were put on display in the most extensive retrospective show ever to be staged at Tate Modern.

    You might expect to find the pair sipping champagne and scanning the Queen’s Birthday Honours list, but instead their response has been to make their largest and possibly most subversive series of pictures to date.

    So in new work Prize the two artists have their tongues out. There are shields and crests painfully stuck on their flesh. Another piece called Bleeding Medals shows them festooned with Union Jacks surrounded by sporting medals for the most piffling of achievements.

    The national flag features heavily in the show, often violently treated with image manipulation software. No less violent is the way that technology has been used to twist and fracture the self-portraits for which Gilbert and George have become famous.

    At times they smash two icons with one stone. In Jackanapes they morph themselves into red, white and blue cartoon shapes with monochrome nipples. Nettle Dance has the flag emblazoned across their trademark suits. The pair hop around in front of a nettle bush, clearly stung by something.

    Elsewhere they attack the religious aspects of patriotism. Christian England features a crucifixion in which Christ sports a Union Jack loincloth and halo. In Stuff Religion the two raise their limbs like puppets. It’s as if they’ve been pressed into the service of church and state.

    Meanwhile Gilbert and George continue to make work that shares many features with ecclesiastical stained glass. Bright colours predominate. Each new work has been printed on a series of panels framed with dark metal “leading”. Digital trickery has allowed them make kaleidoscopic rose windows out of pieces such as Homey and Sap.

    Other diverse themes are worked into the exhibition, including sexuality, Islam and London’s East End. But despite spanning two venues on opposite sides of the city it all hangs together very nicely – in fact few shows will offer the viewer such a coherent political statement as the Jack Freak Pictures.

    conceptual, contemporary, painting, sculpture

    Fabric of War at Phoenix

    July 30, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Fabric of War, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton, until August 16 2009

    Ex-serviceman Mike Blake has ripped up several US flags, shredded a handful of dollar bills and even gone so far as to cut up and pulp his military uniform. The reconstituted garments now form the canvas for his anti-war picture Vortex. Green flecks of currency swirl amidst tattered stars and stripes in an explosion of outrage at the role he was made to play in Iraq.

    Blake is a member of the Combat Paper Project, an American organisation which helps war veterans come to terms with their experiences by making art from their uniforms. Camo gear is cooked and macerated to make sheets of paper which are used for artworks, journals and papier-mâché.

    Judging by the works on display at the Phoenix, this is a process filled with catharsis. Eli Wright has made a piece called Broken Soldiers in which sheets of grey paper are stitched together like the edges of a wound. Across them is printed a declaration to destroy the symbols of war and “make them beautiful.”

    Another example is Ecology, where Drew Cameron has blended soft grey army issue cloth with the remnants of his country’s flag. The result could be a peaceful landscape, a battlefield reclaimed by nature. Or more likely it is abstract, like Cameron’s Flak Jackets, in which the uniform dissolves, losing meaning.

    Many of the soldiers-turned-artists suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. An entry in a recycled journal  vows over and over again that the author, a man called Robyn, will never use a gun again. In just six lines it brings home the horror of armed conflict and something of the redemptive nature of the Project’s work.

    Also on display are works from the Monument series by Marshall Weber. These are colourful rubbings and collages taken from war memorials all around the world. Much like the uniforms, these sombre engravings have here been chopped up and reconfigured. The effect is of a confusion, an inability to make sense of war.

    It’s a show that as many people as possible should see.

    20th century, painting

    The Scottish Colourists at Pallant House

    July 30, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    The Scottish Colourists – Paintings from the Fleming Collection, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, until November 1 2009

    Between 1909 and 1912, Edinburgh was closer to Paris than London. The French capital was awash with new artistic ideas and two Scottish painters were already making a name for themselves as Fauvists.

    Samuel Peploe and John Fergusson were among the first British artists to get to grips with the radical new trends in painting which emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, sharing their place at the cutting edge with compatriots Francis Cadell and George Hunter.

    The Scottish Colourists were never a movement, and their work shows a wide range of styles and influences. What brought them together was a passion for travel and paint. It’s through their efforts that modern art first reached our shores.

    As a result, much of this show is experimental. In Jonquils and Silver by Fergusson, light dances as if from  the brush of Manet. His Jean Maconochie is a dark, bold portrait with echoes of Frans Hals.

    Cadell, inspired by a trip to Venice, produced highly limpid brushwork in Carnations, but later in his career we find him painting The White Villa, Cassis, with Cézanne-like solidity.

    Peploe even declares his own “white period.” Lady in a White Dress is an impressionistic study of a very natural-looking Edinburgh model called Peggy Macrae. Yet within five years he is using bright greens, yellows, reds and blues to paint Luxembourg Gardens, taking on the palette of the Fauves.

    It is Peploe who first appears to hit upon a style of his own. Vase of Pink Roses and Roses are two similar works from 1925. Strong colours are still in evidence, but they’ve been flattened, and a new interest in geometry would seem to dictate the composition.

    After soaking up the sun in rural France, it must have been a wrench to bring their easels back to Scotland. Yet all four of the Colourists did so, and the resulting landscapes are perhaps their most impressive works.

    In Ceres, Fife (Fifeshire Village) by Hunter it could rain at any moment. Yet the rooftops are bathed in a warm orange glow. This, one feels, is a Highland scene from a Southern point of view, and all the more interesting for it.

    conceptual, contemporary, installation

    Mens Suits by Charles LeDray

    July 24, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Mens Suits by Charles LeDray, The Fire Station, London, until September 20 2009

    First, note the missing apostrophe from the title of this show, in which attention to detail is everything. It’s an intentional flaw which reads like a warning to expect something from the lower end of fashion.

    The typo seems to tell you a lot about Charles LeDray. This is his first major show in Europe and his work is little known. He’s not someone with traditional artistic training, indeed he’s largely self taught. And he began his career as a security guard at Seattle Art Museum

    But whether the mistake is defiant, self-deprecating or merely ironic is hard to say. From a technical point of view, LeDray is a highly accomplished sculptor. Mens Suits took three years to make, all by hand.

    Three pieces are on display at the Fire Station, each one a miniature retail environment. One is a posh Men’s Outfitters complete with a short tailor’s dummy and a 360-degree fan of diminutive ties. One is a thrift shop, with circular racks for jackets and shirts plus a table groaning with piles of folded t-shirts. The third is a laundry area, furnished with more clothes, racks, laundry bags, pallets and a scaled down ironing board.

    There are hundreds of garments, all expertly sewn, and hundreds of miniature hangers. Up to four little buttons have been fixed on well-cut jacket cuffs, and there’s a row of tiny gloves – but no one could ever wear these clothes. They wouldn’t even fit a child.

    It represents a bewildering amount of work, which calls into question why an artist should go to so much trouble. All we are left with is an effect, albeit a powerful one. The inevitable absence of customers or even sales staff fills these scenes with pathos. Despite the meticulous care taken in production, an air of neglect hangs over the dusty rails of the store and the disorder of the back room.

    Suspended ceilings hang low over each installation, limiting full-sized visitor’s views. What this show means is never made clear: it’s quite possible we are not meant to know.

    conceptual, contemporary, installation, sculpture

    Cold Corners by Eva Rothschild

    July 24, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Cold Corners by Eva Rothschild, Duveens’ Commission, Tate Britain, London, until November 29 2009

    Sometimes less space can be more. Tate Britain’s Duveens Galleries aren’t quite as large as the Turbine Hall just down the river at Tate Modern, but the neo-classical surroundings offer quite different possibilities.

    When commissioned to fill the area in 2007, Mark Wallinger reconstructed Brian Haw’s peace camp from Parliament Square. A year later, Martin Creed orchestrated sprinters to complete 70m dashes in the name of art.

    Now it’s the turn of Eva Rothschild, and the first sculpture stretches the length of these two imposing halls. It’s black, just 76mm wide and minimalist. Chances are it would have got lost within the cavernous belly of London’s other Tate building.

    The late 19th century galleries also offer more to play with. Rothschild’s installation wraps itself round pillars and climbs through the gaps left by architrave and arch. It’s all jagged edges and gloss finish, so the contrast with the smooth, sandy stone walls could hardly be more pronounced.

    These 26 interconnected triangles of aluminum box tubing are the Dublin-born artist’s first large scale work. She describes the feat of engineering as “a confused and anxious alternate architecture within the galleries.”

    The result is a structure which can hardly be taken in at a single glance. It requires you to walk the length of the building, and in places invites you to cross through to the other side. The piece clangs when an unsuspecting visitor trips over it, which happens from time to time. You only wonder how anyone could miss it.

    19th century, illustration, painting

    Darwin at The Fitzwilliam Museum

    July 24, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Endless Forms: Darwin – Natural Science and the Visual Arts, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until October 4 2009

    An 1838 print from The Penny Magazine shows us Jenny, sitting on a chair, wearing children’s clothes, holding a ball. It’s remarkable, because this little lady was a captive Orangutan. Jenny was one of the first apes to appear in London, dead or alive.

    It was the same year Charles Darwin first sketched his famous evolutionary tree in a notebook and added the words, “I think.” Apes weren’t only a bit like children – they were also our ancestors. It was an imaginative leap that would compound the public’s fascination for monkeykind.

    There was, of course, some horror. Our new relatives were traditionally viewed as clever but sadistic animals. The Cat’s Paw, by Sir Edwin Landseer, depicts a monkey enlisting an unlucky cat to extract chestnuts from a fire.

    But looking more closely, artists soon picked up on more innocent qualities. An 1852 watercolour by Joseph Wolf shows a young chimpanzee who could almost be one of the family. Darwin must have been impressed, since he later employed Wolf to help him prove that some simians actually smile.

    This is just a fraction of what can be gathered at a brilliant exhibition to celebrate 200 years since the birth of Darwin. It clearly demonstrates that geology, paleontology, natural selection and anthropology have inspired a good share of 19th and early 20th century art, and it documents the crucial role illustrators and artists played in the development of evolutionary theory.

    There are a smattering of masterpieces on display, including Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, by Degas. This bronze sculpture caused uproar at the time, when critics compared the subject to an animal. They may have been missing the point, because Darwin’s theories on our kinship with beasts were a direct influence.

    Other big names include Turner, Cézanne and Monet, but of equal prominence here are some lesser-known figures who would barely register in a history of art. John Gould, who was both ornithologist and illustrator, accompanied Darwin on his voyage to the Galapagos Islands, and was the first to recognise the differing species of Finch and Mockingbird.

    It was to prove a vital discovery to science and, ultimately, of no less importance to art.

    contemporary, installation

    The Elephant Bed by John Grade

    July 24, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    John Grade – The Elephant Bed, Fabrica, Brighton, until August 31 2009

    Brighton and Hove rests on a layer of powdered elephant, but do not be alarmed. The pachyderms in question lived in prehistoric times, sharing the region with buffalo and deer.

    Their remains are collected in a strip of shale that washed out from under the Sussex downs about the time of the last Ice Age, some 200,000 years ago. This is now the bedrock on which the seaside city rests, giving its name to the latest giant installation at Fabrica.

    There’s more to this geology lesson because the animal remains are mixed with chalk, and the local chalk is formed by coccolithophores. It was 80 to 110 million years ago that these tiny algae met a similar fate to the elephants. The South coast is now famous for their calcified sediment.

    That’s quite a lot to get your head round, and this show doesn’t quite deliver on the full story. The Elephant Bed simply conjures up the lifespan of the stunningly-named algae, which appear as equally spectacular white suspended cones.

    Fifteen of them hang from the building’s high rafters, each made from hundreds of small paper trays. Four of the coccolithophores appear part-submerged in an oily pool which occupies a third of the gallery floor, the water creeping up their stems.

    The most striking thing about the display is the way these huge cones appear to float, at various heights, above the gallery floor. In the slightest breeze they come alive and sway in an approximation of the plankton they represent.

    Visitors can experience the thrill of being microscopically small and wandering among the swaying life forms – there’s even one you can duck under and peer inside. Little or no background knowledge is required to enjoy the installation on this level.

    Exhibition notes reveal that John Grade is fascinated by landscapes and has a thing for the geology of this part of England. In conveying this he has been partly successful, although you may be disappointed to find a lack of elephants at this show.

    craft

    Perversion in Hove

    July 13, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Deviants, Hove Museum and Art Gallery, Hove, until September 13 2009

    Whereas artists are encouraged to break rules, craftspeople generally aren’t. From potters, metalworkers and textile experts, the public usually demands something useful or at the very least decorative.

    Deviants is a touring exhibition which makes an example of some 16 makers of craft objects who refuse to conform to the stereotypes of their trade. The work on display serves no purpose other than to startle, shock and amuse.

    Take Teapot on 15 Legs by Irish ceramicist Jill Crowley. You would need a syringe to fill it and an age to wait for your brew to trickle out of the perversely narrow spout. And yes, it has 15 legs, which is at least 12 more than is strictly necessary.

    Then again, Teapot by Angus Suttie is equally implausible. This one has two spouts, one of which looks stuck on as an afterthought. A tasteful glaze might have rectified matters, but the paintwork looks half finished.

    Some works hint at functionality, but others just laugh at the idea. Brick-Filled Bag by Gillian Lowndes is rendered redundant by the eponymous section of wall. Hello? by Richard Slee does indeed pose a question. Is it a pair of vases? A pair of skittles? The viewer is left mystified.

    But what you might do with Hans Stofer’s work is more immediately apparent. Grape Trap is an elegant steel prison for an unsuspecting grape and Grape Run is a similar contraption for rolling your captive back and forth.

    You’d think that a piece of knitting might be less bizarre, but the glove on display is about a metre long and has been designed for 25 fingers and thumbs. At least Hand of Good, Hand of God by Freddie Robins is a sensible shade of grey-blue.

    Elsewhere, Christopher Williams has fashioned an exquisite pale pink bowl that looks both operational and aesthetically pleasing. There’s one drawback, inevitably. His Bum Bowl is shaped like a rear end.

    “All the works have been selected to show the stranger edge of craft,” Amanda Jones, of organisers the Crafts Council, has explained. It’s a boundary which certainly blurs into the realms of art.

    contemporary, installation, photography, video

    Mauritania via Shoreditch

    July 4, 2009

    Published on Culture 24

    Currents of Time: New work by Zineb Sedira, Iniva at Rivington Place, until 25 July 2009

    From the window of Rivington Place, three photos offer a mirthless reproach to a comedy café opposite. Boats sink into a menacing sea. Time and the elements blacken what remains. The camera freezes each vessel in a watery grave, just off the coast of Mauritania. It’s part of the world we would rather forget about.

    Inside the gallery are more photographs of dereliction. Oil tankers sit stranded, leaking toxic waste onto the beach. Heaps of scrap are left to warp and rust in the desert sun. Boats have become environmental hazards with a lyrical, haunting quality.

    The focus of this show by Zineb Sedira is a fragmented video installation called Floating Coffins. Some 14 screens display scenes from this inhospitable stretch of coastline in North Africa. There are more deserted boats, as well as crumbling buildings, lonely salvage workers and, lo and behold, flamingos.

    Mauritania appears to be more than a dumping ground for ships. It’s a birdwatcher’s paradise. Which gives us the sad spectacle of gulls flocking in front of a decommissioned tanker and pelicans hopping around an oil-stained beach. With so much sun, sea and sand, it’s almost idyllic.

    But what really darkens the mood is the astonishing soundtrack by Mikhail Karikis who, in collaboration with Sedira, collected sounds over a period of time spent on location. Eight spherical speakers hang from the ceiling and together they make the darkened auditorium shudder like a vast ship pulling into its final berth.

    It’s a sound that hints at the deadliest side of life here. The coast is a treacherous departure point for many who leave Africa in search of work in Europe. Mobility, migration and displacement are key themes for Sedira, who grew up in Paris as a second generation Algerian.

    Floating Coffins is her most complex work to date, but it should have broad appeal. “We expect people to come who’ve never heard of the artist,” says curator Tessa Jackson. “and for them to be able to engage with the work.” It’s recommended, even if you’ve never heard of Mauritania.