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    conceptual art, contemporary art

    Carey Young, Counter Offer (2008)

    February 27, 2011

    Not everything that gets hung on a wall purports to be art. Certificates, contracts, constitutions; all these have at one time or another been framed and put on display.

    Counter Offer is hardly an aesthetic statement. It comes across as a legalistic exhibit, a founding document of the type which reminds you how much weight words on paper can carry.

    Carey Young presents an offer of freedom followed by an offer of justice, with the proviso that the first offer will be “automatically withdrawn” upon the making of a second.

    This suggests more than 100 years of political history boiled down to a bloodless struggle between two pieces of paper. You have the freedom to spend money, but not if you agitate for equality.

    You might wonder why freedom is offered on the left and justice on the right. But then freedom could also be emancipation. Justice may take the form of fascism.

    The four ideals cannot co-exist. That paradox exists not merely as a sad fact of human life, but as a matter of law. And the legal framework accounts for all our freedoms and servings of justice.

    As for what underpins this framework, who knows? Just maybe, it is art, because this piece puts our rights and wrongs in the balance. And now we are stuck with justice, whatever that means to you.

    You can read an earlier post about Carey Young here, or go to Culture24 to read my review of her show at Cornerhouse, Manchester.

    Counter Offer can be seen there in the exhibition Memento Park until March 20 2011. See gallery website for more details.


    conceptual art, contemporary art, installation art, war art

    Mary Kelly and Ray Barrie, Habitus, 2010

    February 23, 2011
    Mary Kelly Projects 1973-2010, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester Photo (c) KP Photo 2011

    According to a 2003 book, there were 3.6 million Anderson Shelters in use during WWII. They must have been a common sight, as common as catching a glimpse of your parents having sex.

    Mary Kelly, b.1941, has spoken of the War as a political ‘primal scene‘ for people of her generation. And so into this sculptural shelter are carved the wartime memories of eight of her contemporaries.

    These are best read in the mirrored floor of the structure. So you have to get the angle right to read  the lived experience of war, although they are no less real for that.

    These memories have also punctured their stainless steel surrounds. Clearly these arrangements for protecting the next generation were only a partial success.

    And because the whole piece is reflective, atrocities such as the Holocaust or Hiroshima may yet be written on our own faces, dress, comportment, whatever our age and distance from the war.

    Witnessing this violence at whatever remove may lead to anger, confusion and a desire for revenge. If this was a Freudian case study, you could explain the events of May ’68 this way.

    But you might also wonder about your own political primal scenes. These will depend on your age and location, but chances are you can remember the terrors of your own childhood shelter.

    Habitus forms part of Mary Kelly: Projects, 1973-2010, which is on show at Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until June 12. See gallery website for more details and read my review of the show on Culture24 here.

    conceptual art, contemporary art, installation art

    Carey Young, Follow the Protest, 2009

    February 19, 2011

    Good news comes by phone, as the old adage goes. It has even been said more recently that it’s good to talk. So visitors to Carey Young’s show may already be keen to pick up this phone.

    In a gallery context it promises even more excitement. As Alex Farquharson points out in a highly informative essay about the artist, such a device recalls a well-known moment in conceptual art.

    (The 1969 landmark exhibition When Attitudes Become Form, which included a telephone on the floor. Artist Walter de Maria would occasionally call.)

    In this case we make the call, and after a brief ringtone the line goes through to an automated call centre system. And no matter how much enjoy art, it is hard not to hang up.

    The impersonal voice offers multiple options which let you access field recordings from the 2009 G20 protests in London. You can hear a range of chants, interviews, ambient noises and a speech.

    In one clip a passerby states that the atmosphere on the demo is “imbued with love”. But all of the fervour and the spirit of the event has been put at a safe distance by the hated interface.

    But then again, most mediation of the anti-globalisation movement is to some extent corporate. We are free to hop channels, switch papers, etc, but is it not all programmed?

    In the context of this somewhat kitsch office set, that may seem funny. Perhaps the best we can do is laugh at our predicament.

    Carey Young: Momento Park is showing at Cornerhouse, Manchester until 20 March. See gallery website for more details and check out the artist’s website here.

    conceptual art, contemporary art, media art

    Cory Arcangel, Beat the Champ, 2011

    February 15, 2011

    This post, about art hacks, has almost nothing to do with cultural journalists. It has more to do with a visit to the Cory Arcangel installation at the Barbican and computer hacking.

    Arcangel has taken 14 games consoles and fitted a chip which allows the system to play itself. His coding dictates that the central character in each of the games, all ten pin bowling, always loses.

    Media art as practiced by Arcangel may be new, but the spirit of it goes back some way. You might argue that a famous 16th century painting could contain a skilful hack into our field of vision.

    Modern art is meanwhile full of examples of what you might call hacking. Pointillism found a short cut to the visual cortex. Cubism fixed a few residual problems with perspective. Surrealism cracked the firewall of the preconscious mind.

    And the spirit of sabotage is certainly there in the work of Nam June Paik, whose first show in 1963 featured pianos which had their keys glued together and were otherwise wired up to fail. So this is a tendency which has been in media art since its beginnings.

    Games consoles may not be quite as resonant as pianos, yet. So Arcangel’s history of bowling games is a pretty narrow theme. But it no doubt acquires depth and relevance if viewed from the right angle. Just like that skull by Holbein, in fact.

    Blogger Thomas Schickle offers one such angle with his review of the show and interview with the artist.

    Meanwhile, here’s a glowing review from self confessed fogey of sorts Charles Darwent in The Independent. Here’s a featurette on the show with quotes from Mark brown in the Guardian. And finally,here’s my slightly less enthusiastic review for Culture24.

    Beat the Champ is on show at The Curve in the Barbican Centre until 22 May.

    conceptual art, contemporary art, film art, live art, sacred music

    Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, File under Sacred Music, 2003

    February 10, 2011

    Since singer/songwriter Tom Verlaine cropped up in a recent post, it seems excusable to quote him with regards to the subject of this one: a re-staged gig by The Cramps.

    Both emerged from a scene based around New York venue CBGB’s during the mid 70s, but the gig in question was played in 1978 to an audience of inmates at the Napa State Mental Institute in California.

    The event was filmed by Target Video, leading archivists of the punk scene, and on the evidence of this YouTube clip it was a lot of fun. It features the kind of happy, harmless lunacy you get in feature films. And lead singer Lux Interior appears quite benevolent towards his audience – it is after all a free concert.

    In 2003 Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard remade the cult film, drafting in contemporary musicians for a re-enactment at the ICA. Once again the punk community and the mad community, so to speak, were represented in the audience.

    But there are a few striking differences between the two sets of footage. Picture quality is not great in either, but in the new film it appears to be worse. The degradation of the stock might stand in for the passing of time and the mythic haze surrounding the original event.

    Secondly, Forsyth and Pollard have set in motion a much darker, scuzzier performance than the one I saw online. Again, I could be wrong, but this might reflect the myth of that gig and the projections of all concerned, in the same way as the damaged sound and picture.

    And thirdly, the contemporary art duo have produced a backlit poster for their 22 minute movie, certainly an asset which the first film has done without. The earlier version has been distributed through networks of fans and record dealers. This new incarnation has an artworld gloss and seal.

    Which brings me back somehow to Tom Verlaine, who once sang “I recall the actor’s advice/That nothing happens until it happens twice.” In other words, now that someone’s made a film about it, we can say for sure that an infamous gig really did take place.

    As if to prove it, here is that official poster: Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, File under Sacred Music (Lightbox), 2004

    File under Sacred Music can be seen as part of Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard: Publicsfear at South London Gallery. It is a really great show and if you can make it there before March 18, do go.

    Here is an early review of the show from Rebecca Norris at Culture24.

    contemporary art, contemporary installation, sound art

    Susan Hiller, Witness, 2000

    February 7, 2011
    Witness, 2000 (Tate Britain Installation shot). Original commission Artangel. © Susan Hiller. Image:Tate Photography/Sam Drake

    Truth, it is sometimes argued, is an effect of discourse. And discourse in this case has given rise to a nebular, eerie-glowing alien life form. You cannot hear it, but it speaks many tongues.

    We realise almost at once this is a sound installation. Those are not tentacles and suckers but speakers hanging from the ends of cables. The voices and languages are all human.

    But the effect is extra-terrestrial. That is even before you tune into some of the narratives and work out they are all eye witness accounts of visits from UFOs or creatures from another world.

    These witnesses do not often get heard. But their speeches are not unlike the on-the-ground tales we might hear down the phone from members of public on the TV or radio news.

    Mainstream eyewitness accounts are given full credibility and help to construct our very sense of geopolitical reality. And of course history and law both depend on this sort of testimony.

    So this far out piece by Susan Hiller raises a serious question: who gets called upon to witness and which scenes get an airing? If overlooked discourse can conjure a living, breathing alien, what else might it call into being.

    Witness can be seen in the Susan Hiller show at Tate Britain until May 15. Read Laura Cumming’s review in the Observer.

    20th century, contemporary art, contemporary sculpture, Uncategorized

    Susan Hiller, Lucidity and Intuition: Homage to Gertrude Stein, 2011

    February 4, 2011

    What could be more uncanny than neat piles of books actually underneath a desk, if not neat piles of books on a decidedly uncanny subject? In this case, automatic writing.

    For Gertrude Stein, to whom this sculpture is intended as a homage, the books represent a return of the repressed. The writer went from experimenting with the technique to denying it existed

    The binder on the work surface contains her postgraduate work on the topic, with an introduction by Susan Hiller. This is the dry, public facing side of the work, the writer and perhaps the artist too.

    But the subterranean library is where you’ll find the action. Suddenly we have colour. Those books give the sculpture a transgressive energy. They fly in the face of reason.

    For me, the most unheimlich thing of all was to notice who gave Hiller her first books about Stein. According to her introduction it was Tom Verlaine. I assume that’s the singer and guitarist.

    His former band Television looms much larger in my imagination than the towering figure of 20th century art and letters to whom this piece is dedicated. Although I probably feel they shouldn’t.

    Ironic that one of my earliest influences should have found its way into this piece about suppressed artistic sources. Not that I would ever disown my love of that whole New York punk scene.

    I wouldn’t want to come home to find a poltergeist had bricked up my desk with records, after all.

    This piece can be seen as part of Susan Hiller: An Ongoing Investigation at Timothy Taylor Gallery until 5 March. See gallery website for more details.

    You might also read an interview with the artist by Rachel Cooke in the Guardian and this piece about the show at Tate Britain in the same paper by Rachel Withers.

    conceptual art, contemporary art, contemporary sculpture, modernism, performance art

    Rory Macbeth, The Wanderer by Franz Kafka, 2011

    February 1, 2011

    Looking at art and reading can seem poles apart. Galleries are public spaces in which we move from one room to another. Reading is usually sedentary and usually in some way private.

    But The Wanderer by Franz Kafka, by Rory Macbeth, suggests otherwise. The title promises a mobile activity, while the reading which took place held many gallery goers in one spot.

    In case you were wondering, this does not represent the discovery of a lost masterpiece by Kafka.That is a home-made book, a translation, and Macbeth claims not to speak German.

    Gregor Samsa crops up, so we may take this to be a version of Metamorphosis. And we may also take it that in every act of reading some translation, or metamorphosis, takes place.

    Of course, reading does get done in galleries. We read plaques, interpretation boards, even the works themselves. But this work suggests it may all stray from the path of intended meaning.

    The modernism of Kafka et al may be to blame. And this may be a warning, given the outcome for his best known protagonists. Wanderings can only go so far, after all.

    NB: That’s not the artist in the photo, but someone he delegated to perform The Wanderer at the launch of Display Copy at Kunstfreund Gallery, Leeds (29/01/11). The show features work by Rory Macbeth and Ross Downes and runs until 12 February. See gallery blog for more details.

    contemporary art, contemporary sculpture

    Urs Fischer, Untitled (2000)

    January 27, 2011

    These two mismatched halves, screwed together and suspended out of reach, bring to mind both the promise and the pitfalls of romantic love.

    First there is the seedy, fruitful aspect of these two fruits pushed together. But then there are the unavoidable differences as they find themselves hung out to dry in a marriage from hell.

    Half this story comes from a Greek myth. It is said human beings once existed in pairs, joined back to back, and that jealous god Zeus cleaved them in two “like a sorb-apple”. Aristophanes tells the tale in Plato’s Symposium.

    The playwright goes on to ask what might happen if, “with all his instruments,” Hephaestus offered to re-attach any two lovers in search of their missing wholeness.

    He concludes: “There is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need.”

    So no one can resist the invitation of the god of sculpture. This might explain why life is full of odd couples and why we invest so much in a perishable union.

    But we might yet say that this symbol of youth (apple) and symbol of immortality (pear) were made for each other. They hang in perfect balance and it is reported that as both halves decay they really do appear to melt into another.

    This piece is one of the overseas contributions to Modern British Sculpture at the Royal Academy. It can be seen there, in varying stages of decay, until7 April 2011.

    Read more about Swiss artist Urs Fischer from Calvin Tompkins in The New Yorker or from Adrian Searle in the Guardian.

    conceptual photography, contemporary art, contemporary sculpture, installation art

    Sean Lynch, DeLorean Progress Report, 2009-10

    January 25, 2011
    DeLorean Progress Report, installation view

    Tooling presses once used to manufacture a dream sports car of the 1980s are now to be found 18m below sea level, a habitation for crabs, sea cucumbers and a lobster. This is not a metaphor.

    A metaphor would be the 1981 commercial for the DeLorean DMC-12 which showed the car by the ocean with both gull-wing doors open. This image dissolved into a shot of an actual gull in flight.

    We have long been familiar with happenings in life which get called stranger than fiction. But this installation is comprised of real world objects which appear more wondrous than art.

    There are photos of submerged cast iron presses, together with crabs, taken by industrial divers. And the stainless steel body parts from a DMC-12 were made by a vintage car restorer.

    Admittedly, both forms of evidence were commissioned by artist Sean Lynch. So the first becomes a conceptual photograph and the second a contemporary sculpture.

    And yet biomarine surveys are conducted in Kilkieran Bay and there are many DeLorean owners who lovingly maintain their vehicles. So the works also display what might be called the poetry of fact.

    You may be wondering why part of a car factory is submerged off the coast of Galway. The fact is, after DeLorean went bankrupt, fishermen were among those who brought up the scrap.

    The presses became anchors for fish farms, which themselves are no longer economically viable. So as you can see from its Progress Report, the DeLorean is going nowhere fast.

    Sean Lynch’s installation can be seen as a possible future in Simon Starling: Never The Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts) at Camden Arts Centre, until 20 February 2011.

    You can download a .pdf of the car’s Progress Report from the artist’s website, here. And read an indepth feature on the project written by Kevin Barry in the Dublin Review.