<h1>Archives</h1>
    contemporary art, migration, video installation

    Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, Promised Land (2011)

    June 28, 2011

    Paddling naked, save for a life jacket, through the dark waters of a harbour is so difficult it seems comic. Since the swimmer is in a video piece, one really hopes this is a performance.

    But this is a real life moment in the life of a would-be migrant to Britain. Art is the last thing on his mind. And one can assume it is being filmed by a friend of his and not by Nikolaj B S Larsen.

    This inside footage is one of several rarely seen activities which the Danish artist has captured. And he has done so by handing over cameras to refugees with minimal interest in video art.

    So with little or no attempt to play with genre, other scenes come round out in which plans are sketched in the dirt (infiltration of a truckstop) and maps are drawn on scraps of paper (port security).

    Lovers of classic cinema will recognise this convention. It belongs to the heist movie, or better still that embodiment of British pluck, The Great Escape (1963). There are several ironies in this film.

    But the work is anchored by moving interviews with migrants sleeping rough in Calais. Professional footage shows sunset on the channel, convoys in the rain, finally the lights of Picadilly.

    The three-channel installation is panoramic, and the 55-minute piece immerses the viewer in lives otherwise hard to imagine. Larsen has brought out a sublime quality in the port by night.

    One imagines that seen penniless and paperless from a quayside, channel ferries always look like this. The vision in this film appears authentic, precisely because it is borrowed.

    Promised Land can be seen at Folkestone Triennial until 25 September 2011. See festival website for more details. You can also watch a pilot for the film on Larsen’s own site.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 25/06/11

    June 25, 2011

    Here are some links from the last seven days. Enjoy:

    • The good news, at least to some degree, is that Ai Weiwei has been released on bail. This deserves a televisual breaking news report, as sourced by Leg of Lamb blog.
    • Even more good news, yesterday a Picasso masterpiece went on show in the Palestinian territories. The Guardian is just one of the papers who, for obvious reasons, carry the story.
    • Frieze have got a remarkable portrait of Afghan artist Aman Mojadidi. It figures there are even more risky places to make art than China.
    • There is a great piece on Soviet product design by Justin McGuirk in the Guardian. Two words: boiling wand.
    • Meanwhile, The Moscow Times doesn’t rate new DTV drama Bailiffs. But all the same, the 20-part series looks unmissable.
    • At Animal blog you can watch the trailer to a new German movie about the DiY skate scene in the former GDR.
    • Staying with the onetime Bloc, Bad at Sports have posted an interview with Yael Bartana, the Israeli artist who represented Poland at Venice this year. This is audio, lasting 50 mins.
    • People say art is elitist, and The Telegraph has pictures from a show you won’t get to see unless you hold a diving qualification.
    • If you only read one list of summer beach books this year, make it this one from Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes.
    • Charlotte Young is now the web’s best known unknown artist, thanks to her spoof artist’s statement which went viral. Funny, in a miserable kind of way.

    Uncategorized

    Interview: Semiconductor

    June 23, 2011

    Semiconductor, Worlds in the Making (still), 2011

    In a town where one of the most risky things you can do is ride a log flume on a Grade-II listed pier, Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt are an anomaly. The Brighton duo known as Semiconductor have been to the real ends of the Earth to source material for their art.

    A new show at FACT is the product of three weeks on the Galapagos Islands and a month in the shadows of volcanic Ecuador. Some of the most otherworldly footage the pair have brought back shows the rarely-visited sulphur mines on Isla Isabella.

    “The whole trip was treacherous,” says Jarman. “It had been raining very heavily, so it was very muddy and we weren’t used to riding horses.”

    There are, it seems, few health and safety rules on remote archipelagos.

    “In any kind of Western country you probably wouldn’t have been able to get as close to the sulphur mines as we actually did there, because it was just us and the guide and it was the first time he’d ever taken anybody,” she adds.

    In addition to bemused guides, the pair worked with geologists in the National Park as well as capital Quito to understand their methods. Volcanology is, for obvious reasons, another distant concern in UK coastal towns.

    “A lot of scientists don’t specifically engage with people outside their field,” says Gerhardt. “It’s not like being an artist; they don’t need to find an audience. They just need to find a peer reviewer.

    “It takes us a while to gain their confidence,” he adds. One can see how his studious mien together with his partner’s affability could work like a charm.

    But volcanologists beware. The 25-minute video piece Worlds in the Making features interviews which, says Jarman, “kind of suggest the scientists are telling you what’s happening, but we’ve kind of slightly edited so it’s slightly nonsensical”.

    Gerhardt sees this as a reaction to conventional science documentaries: “It’s very taboo to play with the format, because in a way it’s supposed to be factual and reveal things as they are.

    “Really of course there’s as much fiction in telling a story as there is in a lot of fictional programmes. We’re interested in deconstructing that kind of genre.”

    So the hard science found in the show’s central video installation is interspersed with sinister animations. These purport to show mineral formation and a sea of prehistoric chaos, but probably do not.

    “We’ve got a generative computer script working with the seismic data and will make these landscapes of crystals and minerals,” explains Gerhardt.

    He goes on to point out that rocks, while appearing still, are awash with chemical processes. “So we’re trying to bring that to life, to animate things that you don’t normally think of as moving,” he says. “Time, you know, that becomes a kind of plastic form we can play with.”

    Jarman explains the sonic data is thought to come from lava moving beneath volcanoes, only too slow for the human ear. “I think what we really like about the sounds is they become really tangible,” she says.

    “You feel like you’re listening to rocks scraping and crunching underneath the earth. You start associating things with your imagination.”

    This plays out against an atmospheric guitar track by Oren Ambarchi from the band Sunn O))), in the show’s surround-sound three-channel installation.

    Semiconductor’s first major solo exhibition also features a second piece comprised of archive footage found at the Smithsonian Mineral Sciences Lab in Washington DC. A third work of animations based on the sound of melting ice rounds out the display.

    “You do get the sense in these places of the landscapes being very powerful and very humbling,” says Jarman of their recent voyage.

    And Gerhardt points out: “It’s actually the very dawn of the landscape, so it is literally at the edge of the land.”

    That does sound like a long way from a café in Brighton. It’s a tough gig, but someone has to go there.

    Semiconductor: Worlds in the Making is at FACT, Liverpool, from July 1 to September 11 2011. See gallery website for more details. Interview written for Culture24.

    British art, contemporary painting, Turner Prize, Uncategorized

    George Shaw: The Sly and Unseen Day

    June 21, 2011
    George Shaw, No Returns, 2009, Humbrol enamel on board

    As widely noted, the biggest shock of this year’s Turner Prize shortlist is painter George Shaw’s affinity with the enthusiasts who build model Spitfires.

    He doesn’t hide the fact that Humbrol enamel is his medium of choice. And it now looks like a conceptual statement carried to an extreme. He will have got through gallons.

    Most use these paints straight from the tin. So the scene above works like a joke at its own expense. Painting the fence looks to have been very much like painting a real fence.

    At other times, Shaw renders graffiti or brickwork in a way that recalls the literal-minded approach of a man finishing off a masterpiece of glue and plastic.

    There is little individualism to these works. And that may be why so many British visitors can see their own childhoods and adolescence in the scenes. It’s as if we all grew up in Tile Hill.

    It is perverse to come from art school these days and make nostalgic, representational art. And what’s more it is perverse to use the materials he does, as the artist himself admits.

    George Shaw knows better and we know he knows better. But the fact he has persisted in this project for 15 years, and that we may well enjoy the results, is intriguing.

    That’s not a guilty pleasure, but it is surely an illicit one. The Coventry estate here is a place where none of us are up to any good, where even hanging around could be the biggest of risks.

    The Sly and Unseen Day can be seen at South London Gallery until 3 July 2011. See gallery website for more details.

    They’ve also posted a video clip where Shaw gets embarrassed about using Humbrol paints! For an equally revealing interview with the artist see this Guardian interview from earlier this year.

    Uncategorized

    Found Objects 18/06/11

    June 19, 2011

    The big news this week is that criticismism was down for about 24 hours. Apologies to anyone who tried to visit on Thursday or Friday. Anyway, it’s back…with links:

    • 18 war photographers talk about shots which almost got them killed in the Guardian. This is an agonising piece that somehow conveys more than the pictures themselves.
    • Still in the combat zone, Iraq veteran and memoir author Matt Gallagher writes in The Atlantic and asks why are there no great novels about the War on Terror.
    • Another Guardian story reveals the photo of the year was taken by accident. Ironic that it happened in Vancouver, a city famous for staged, concept-driven photographs.
    • Der Spiegel has an astonishing story about Hallstatt in Austria. Apparently the Chinese are building an illegal replica of the whole town. Imagine this happening to yours. Thanks to @TylerGreenDC.
    • How much will a fried breakfast cost you in Kiev? Well, it depends where you cook it. Russian artist Anna Sinkova has just got three months in jail. Another great video from Animal.
    • Alistair Gentry from Career Suicide has an angry rant about arts funding in the UK which somehow resolves itself into a calm and incontrovertible conclusion. Read it.
    • We Make Money Not Art continue to sniff out some of the most interesting shows in Europe. The latest is a project in Innsbruck in which architects plan bank robberies.
    • Miniature touring artworks seem to be all the rage. Crystal Bennes has been blogging about Karl England’s mysterious Morph Plinth.
    • Miniature touring artworks Part 2: Brooklyn-based Hyperallergic brought some of their mail art to Brighton.
    • The dangerous yarn bombing craze gathers momentum with a street exhibition in Santa Monica. LA Times reports.

    contemporary art, Regency architecture

    Pablo Bronstein: Sketches for Regency Living

    June 14, 2011

    There’s an elephant in the room at the ICA. In fact, the elephant is the room. The spiritual home of the avant garde in London is a well-to-do Regency building on the capital’s grandest street.

    That alone could have been a reason for industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten taking pneumatic drills to the floor in 1984, and why the venue chose to recreate this infamous gig in 2007.

    Pablo Bronstein responds to tradition in more constructive, dare we say, deconstructive way. The gentility of the place has been accentuated for his current show, or brought into plain sight.

    A tromp l’oeil mural in the style of an engraving turns the downstairs gallery into a 19th century plaza. And a dancer in something like period costume turns the plaza into a stage.

    But four empty plinths indicate the current function of Nash House. So the performance becomes a painful comment on any prancing around any of us may have done among the artworks here.

    So it seems that old fashioned buildings cast their occupants as old fashioned people. And yet there is much to be admired by this silent, ongoing performance which implicates the visitor.

    This dance was as erotic as it was mannered. Index fingers beckoned just as they pointed to the heavens. It was both as seductive and elevating as a visit to a gallery like this often can be.

    From time to time, the dancer would find herself in awkward positions. There were poses which looked difficult to hold. But if you engage with contemporary arts, you might relate to that too.

    The ICA will also be a difficult space to fill now Bronstein has brought home the middle class theatre of the whole affair. At least when the Germans played here, a decent builder could have sorted that.

    Pablo Bronstein: Sketches for Regency Living is at ICA, London, until September 25 2011. Check gallery website for details including their extensive co-ordinated programme of events.

    But in the meantime, you could check out this piece on trying to demolish the venue by Alexander Hacke in the Guardian, as well as this film of artists trying to do so on YouTube.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 12/06/11

    June 12, 2011

    Feel free to click through and enhance your day with one or more or all of the following:

    • Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice is the 24-hr montage of real-time movie clips by Christian Marclay. Here’s a temperamental link to a video interview on the festival website and an old piece from BBC News.
    • It’s been called the biggest installation of them all at this year’s Biennale. That’s right, it’s Roman Abramovich’s yacht. Full story in the Guardian.
    • The New York Times reports that £1.7 billion has been put aside to build an art gallery in Hong Kong, although it will have its own shopping mall.
    • Never cross an origami expert. A group of the artform’s leading exponents are sueing artist Sarah Morris for copyright infringement. Hyperallergic carries an eye-opening interview.
    • A mythic painting of the deposition of Christ has just gone on show in Rome, says The New York Times. The work of two artists, and one of them was Jack Kerouac.
    • This is great. In Seattle paper The Stranger, a music fan from Zimbabwe reminisces about his time in London, the year that acid house broke.
    • What was he thinking? An ex-public schoolboy tells Dazed and Confused about the hazards of photographing inner-city grime crews. Good pictures, mind.
    • Ben V has curated some essential film clips for a piece on the figure in contemporary art for C-Monster.net. But how would Chuleta explain Vito Acconci to her homegirls?
    • If you’re still reading,  here’s an interesting slide-show of boredom in art history put together by Slate.

    conceptual art, contemporary art, feminism, installation art, video

    Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want

    June 9, 2011
    Unrelated photo: Piers Allardyce

    In her much-talked about retrospective, the first piece of art is not by Tracey Emin. Nor does it seem much like a work of art. Despite the frame, it is clearly also a letter from her father.

    Halfway through the show is another work in which the art is hard to discern. This is a video piece called Conversation with my Mum (2000). It does what it says on the tin.

    It’s been noted elsewhere that Emin is the subject of Emin’s show. Most surely know by now most of her biography. And that biog is the message, however impressive the range of media here.

    There could be something in the water near Margate. Despite differences and the accusations of copying, the outputs of Emin and onetime lover Billy Childish appear to run parallel.

    First there is the confessionalism, an impulse you surely either have or you don’t. It cannot all be learned behaviour. Then there is the gesamtkunstwerk of painting, drawing, writing, film, etc.

    But the reason Emin is now the bigger player in the art world is not just because she moved into the conceptual arena but, equally, because she wears the former tendency better as a female artist.

    Personal statements and feminist art have gone together since (at least) the 1970s, when Mary Kelly made her landmark work about pregnancy and the early years of motherhood.

    Of course, we now have some real artists of autobiography, the non-conceptual celebrities who spin out their life stories in regular installments to an eager audience. It’s a thin line.

    You may point out that Emin can draw and has read some philosophy. The Exhibition Guide says so. But what a strange and interesting show this would be if she couldn’t or hadn’t.

    Love is What You Want is at Hayward Gallery, London, until 29 August 2011. I got the above image from Wikipedia Commons licence as photography was not permitted. But it seems to fit.

    contemporary art, outdoor sculpture

    Huang Yong Ping: One Man, Nine Animals (1999)

    June 7, 2011

    Nine mythical beasts which presage disaster are on the march. A wagon used to measure time and direction lies broken on the ground. If you didn’t laugh, you might cry.

    The snake with two tails foretells drought (Currently in Europe, tick). The boar with a human head foretells floods (Singapore, tick). The eagle with one claw foretells epidemic (E.Coli, tick).

    These chimera come from a 2,300-year old Chinese book called Guideways Through Mountains and Seas. But any travelling party once with the installation here appears to have fled.

    A clockwork figurine built into the traditional Compass Chariot is the human presence suggested by the title. Traditionally pointing South, he now appears to send the herd West.

    This work was first shown in 1999 at the Venice Biennale. Those columns punctured the ceiling of the French pavilion just as they now infiltrate a Norman castle in Caen.

    But the millennial angst seems fresh enough. Not even these fortifcations can keep out the sense that trouble out there may come home to roost like a cock with a human head (foretelling war).

    And finally, as newsreaders say when it all gets too much, these creatures are cast in a bright and light metal, aluminium. The fish is a good sign. The monkey is ambiguous. It might never happen.

    This is one of four works in the sculpture garden at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen. See gallery website for further details.

    PS: I’m grateful to an anonymous document hosted by the Académie de Caen for a key to the various creatures.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 04/06/11

    June 4, 2011

    You don’t have to go to Venice to be overwhelmed by the Biennale. Festival-related tweets have surely outnumbered the pigeons in St Mark’s Square. Here are some links from the floating city and beyond:

    • In the Guardian, Rachel Withers tells you more than most about Mike Nelson’s installation at the British Pavilion.
    • Writing on artnet, Jerry Saltz suggests national embarrassment might be the point of this year’s American Pavilion.
    • Meanwhile, Adrian Searle demonstrates a surprising propensity for clowning in this video report.
    • Elsewhere, it seems Salvador Dalí is still making work. The Guardian also reports on a shocking trade in what you might call zombie sculptures.
    • A Kick Up The Arts considers the economic health of the London gallery scene.
    • Hard-to-pin-down science related story 1: Jen Graves writes about artists’ newest toys in The Stranger.
    • Hard-to-pin-down science related story 2: Brain Pickings considers four cases of biology inspired art.
    • I am grateful to Animal blog for alerting me to the correct term for the practice of knitting based street interventions.
    • C-Monster.net highlights the mind-blowing potential of some Martin Kippenberger wallpaper.
    • Donald Judd is still exciting: a mash up of the Double Rainbow dude with a visit to a show by the minimalist sculptor (via/ Eyeteeth).