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    2010 lists, contemporary art, Don Delillo, John Ashbery

    Top 5 art shows which I failed to see in 2010

    December 20, 2010

    The season of list-making is upon us. But lists, according to US novelist Don Delillo, are a form of ‘cultural hysteria’. As if the impending winter festival wasn’t hysterical enough.

    This year, rather than try and minimise the anxiety, I thought I’d crank things up a notch or two by compiling a list of the best shows which I never got round to this year. It is a shocker.

    • #1: Chris Ofili at Tate Britain
      Big draw: major survey, voice of a generation.
      Small excuse: January must have caught me napping.
    • #2: Jenny Holzer at Baltic
      Big draw: we need slogans more than ever.
      Small excuse: it was 292 miles away.
    • #3: Gauguin at Tate Modern
      Big draw: first showing in more than 50 years.
      Small excuse: there’s still time, but it’s 15 quid.
    • #4: Laura Belém at the Liverpool Biennial
      Big draw: showpiece of the UK’s biggest Biennial.
      Small excuse: got massively waylaid by video work.
    • #5: The The Things is (For 3) at Milton Keynes Gallery
      Big draw: mystery artist, playful anecdote-worthy work.
      Small excuse: two trips to MK in 12 months already.

    The irony of this list, of course, is that it worries me there are plenty more shows out there which didn’t make the cut. Possibly, there are even better shows I, and perhaps you, failed to see.

    It makes me think of John Ashbery’s epic poem of the 1970s, Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror. One line has always stuck: “the dread of not getting out/before having seen the whole collection.”

    But the fact is, no one can see the whole collection. Ashbery devotes more than 550 lines to just one painting by Parmagianino, and still there is probably more that could be said.

    All of which explains why lists are so popular at this time of year. You mention the title, jot down a thought, and move on. To respond more fully to the avalanche is unthinkable. Erm…merry Christmas!

    Comments welcome, as ever, if there’s maybe something you wish you saw this year and it’s giving you angst. Get it off your chest.

    Christmas, contemporary art

    Gifted at Josh Lilley Gallery

    December 14, 2010

    The artists on a gallery roster are invited to think of themselves as colleagues and take part in what we know as secret Santa. Instead of bottles of wine, DVDs and chocolates, they must give artworks.

    Secret Santa operates as a closed, rational system for regulating generosity at work. It brings teams together. It ensures no one is especially favoured or left out. Those are the pros.

    The cons are the same as any occasion of gift giving in our society. Calculation threatens the premise of altruism. It may be impossible not to expect something in return.

    Rather than a £10 limit, each of the artworks represents hours of professional time. So the shadow of calculation hangs over the workmanship, while the creative impulse escapes the circuit of trade.

    One condition for taking part is that each artist took possession of his or her gift and then made some further art with it. And the resulting hybrid works are now for sale.

    But you cannot put a price on inspiration, and that makes art the perfect gift. There is something generous about making it, buying it, even selling it, as this seasonal show demonstrates.

    Gifted can be seen at Josh Lilley Gallery, London, until January 7 2011. For more details visit gallery website.

    The show is curated by art lecturer and writer Ben Street. Follow him on Twitter: @thebenstreet.

    Advertising, Browne Report, Higher education funding, Slade occupation

    In Support of the Slade Occupation

    December 8, 2010
    A tongue-in-cheek look at the way big corps might start campaigning in favour of the Browne Report...

    Even when the profit margin is not immediately apparent, there is something to be said for ivory towers. More of that later. Now it’s time to step outside and comment on real world protests taking place at the Slade School of Art and elsewhere.

    The student demonstrations and occupations are about more than the right to spend three years putting off the shackles of employment. That right was enjoyed by most of those now in white collar jobs and certainly most of those in parliament, but never mind.

    They are also about a duty which is felt to some extent by everyone who opts to take a course in the arts or humanities, a sense that there is more to human life than succeeding in business.

    To see why arts education matters, you need only look at the heart of the most commercial sphere of all: advertising. If money talks, the £10.9bn spent on this industry in 2010 is very eloquent on the importance of aesthetics.

    As Braque said, art disturbs, and it can stir up any number of useful desires for advertisers. So if you take creative endeavours out of this context, they become more than a piece of indulgence. They becomes a catalyst for other forms of social change.

    That is why the humanities are under threat, not because they are a waste of time, but because they are potentially dangerous. Just ask anyone with a dumbed-down multi-million pound brand.

    All of this may be why culture is so often sequestered in the sort of towers which are now being attacked by the Browne Report, which incidentally features some stylish graphic design.

    Take away that bit of garnish and it would be capitalist ideology in its rawest state, and surely nobody wants to see that.

    You can read an insightful blog post on the man behind the proposed reforms to higher education by Catherine Bennett on the Guardian website here. Or take a look at this convincing argument against the competitive model for higher education by Stefan Collini on the London Review of Books website here.

    Oh, and follow the Slade Occupation blog, here. The times are as inspiring as they are frightening.

    contemporary art, contemporary sculpture

    Rostan Tavasiev, Ghost (2008)

    December 5, 2010

    There is a highlight of the current show at Grey Area. That word is used because the rest of the works are in darkness. Visitors are provided with torches. A lightbulb forms part of Tavasiev’s sculpture.

    So what it seems to illuminate is the arbitrary way we give a personality to the spirit of the dead and not yet buried. It would be shapeless white smoke were it not for those two cartoon eyes.

    These eyes are comic and two dimensional, as if beneath the glare of enlightenment thinking, we cannot allow our ghosts to have any depth of character.

    Likewise, any memory of the departed may now just be a thing to clutch in the night like a soft toy. The overhanging bulb is a discouragement to too much grief or pathos.

    This was just a toy bear, so his granite monument is absurd. But he would have more dignity, surely, if the cloud of his being was allowed to dissolve into the shadows which consume all the other works in the show.

    Ghost can be seen in Their Wonderlands at Grey Area, Brighton, until December 19. Visit gallery website for directions and opening times.

    You can also read more about the context of this piece in a blog post by the curator of Their Wonderlands, Harun Morrison. And/or check out the artist’s uncanny yet colourful website.

    contemporary art, contemporary sculpture, taxidermy

    Tessa Farmer, Swarm (2004)

    December 2, 2010

    No, your eyes do not deceive you. Those really are tiny winged skeletons riding on the back of a dragonfly. And there are a hundred or more spectacles like this in Swarm by Tessa Farmer.

    They give the impression of an airborne war, as if the skeletons are fighting for control of their glass cabinet. Which makes the artwork a theatre of conflict. Perhaps those fragile, hideous creatures are critics.

    But in fact, the gallery guide suggests they are fairies. Each one is a dessicated tinkerbell. The hope you might have cherished in secret, for a more magical world, is here turned inside out.

    And the wonder you might feel at such painstaking work soon turns to horror when you consider the results. No one wants to see dead insects, and bony fairies with fly wings attached, surely?

    Except of course, many people really do. This piece seems to fascinate visitors to the gallery. If art is a mirror, this example of it shows a spectral, parasitic species fighting over thin air.

    It is not a million miles from a battle in a desert, a debate in parliament, a war of words conducted online, or any struggle between ideas first dreamed up by those already passed away.

    Swarm can be seen in Newspeak: British Art Now Part Two at Saatchi Gallery until 17 April 2011.

    climate change, contemporary art

    Earth 350, Brighton

    November 27, 2010

    Today I found myself clapping and cheering for a piece of art although I have little idea what the work might look like and am not at all sure if it is any good.

    Nevertheless, I was participating. 2,000 of us stood on the seafront in minus temperatures for an hour and a half. At 12:45 we pointed at the sea for much longer than was comfortable.

    Then it was over. The unanimous cheering was completely spontaneous.

    Also, we looked silly. Most of those helping create this living sculpture were decked out in hooded blue ponchos. Some even less fortunate were in yellow. Subjective, I know.

    The plane was taking photos and it seems we were representing King Cnut. I made up part of the wrist of an arm raised in defiance of the sea. But the disappointing waters were like a millpond.

    Thom Yorke from Radiohead and the band’s favourite artist Stanley Donwood had designed this artwork. And it is one of 22 similar worldwide stunts to express both concern and hope around the theme of climate change.

    Hats off to the bloke nearby who brought an iPod and speaker dock on which he played the album Kid A in a gesture which seemed at once ironic and reverential. Becoming part of a Thom Yorke creation must be the ultimate experience for a Radiohead fan. (Me, I can take them or leave them.)

    It is said the sculpture will have been visible from space, though I guess what it looks like is beside the point. The real beauty of it is that so many people have endured boredom and cold for the common good. I would cheer that, any day.

    Read more about the project and check out some impressive photos of living sculptures from around the world on the Earth 350 website.

    Oh, and it seems the photos from today’s event are already online. Check them out here.

    conceptual art, contemporary installation

    Michał Budny, Untitled (2010)

    November 25, 2010

    Two or three millimetres are all that separate the showpiece in Michał Budny’s exhibition from the most workmanlike and mundane results of a bank holiday weekend’s DIY.

    Invited by the SLG to show in their Matsudaira Wing, the Polish artist has done what any new arrival to this domestic space might have thought to do. He has whacked up shelves in an alcove.

    They look brand new. He has not even painted them. Were you not to read the notes to go with the exhibition, you might not even notice the twist. Budny’s shelves are all just a tiny bit bowed, by only millimetres, as if from the weight of unseen books.

    Since the show is called Author, you would be forgiven for asking where these tomes might be. Perhaps this author, like Joyce, is invisible and paring his nails. Perhaps he is simply dead.

    Either way his powers are waning. The shelves are not unique, because two sets in two different rooms comprise the full installation. And the work is untitled, as if Budny disclaims all authority.

    This show has the potential to enrage contemporary art sceptics, should any find themselves at the South London Gallery. But there is a lot to be said for Budny’s shelves, more certainly than meets the eye.

    Michal Budny is at South London Gallery until 28 November.  See gallery website for more details. This piece was written for Culture24.

    contemporary painting

    Jonathan Wateridge, Jungle Scene With Plane Wreck (2007)

    November 22, 2010

    One thing we can know about cave paintings is they tended to show stuff outside the cave. So art got started as a way of showing what was not actually visible at the time.

    Take this scene of a passenger jet stranded in a jungle. A film crew would have gone all the way to a sub-tropical location to get an image like this. Wateridge has not left his studio.

    Of course, films get made in studios and paintings get made from nature. But perhaps imagining and recording are still the fundamental aspects of fine art and camerawork respectively.

    Where there is little question a scene was painted from life, art becomes an invitation to imagine, rather than an argument to believe.

    So painting seems more honest than film. They say the camera never lies, but it lies by implication. Film-makers make an apparent claim to witness the most fantastical stuff.

    The work in question mixes it up. The artist has made a model of a plane and crashed that in his studio, using the technique of an SFX department to spur on his vision.

    Call this a piece of self-deception. But there may be a trick like this behind every great work of the imagination.

    Three paintings by Jonathan Wateridge can be seen in Newspeak: British Art Now Part II at Saatchi Gallery until April 17 2011.

    contemporary painting

    Tom Ellis, The Dogs (2010)

    November 18, 2010

    The first words which spring to mind are of course ‘dogs’ and another beginning with F. Whichever order you put them in will depend on your attitude to the animals and act in question. But either way, it first reduces the painting to a cheap joke at the expense of painting itself.

    Although there seems to be another picture here. Something in the incline of the canine heads hints at romance. Disengaged from the waist down, this could also be a human couple, sharing the view of a sunset perhaps. We can see ourselves here surely.

    Either dogs are more refined than we give them credit for or we are no better in our relationships. It is still a joke, but now appears to be a better one.

    The greyness is funnier too. Two isolated figures in a landscape might also have been Romantic with a capital R. But those wishing to project their souls onto this scenery will have to admit to a certain lack of drama and colour in their lives.

    And given the activity shown here and the possible love between two sentient beings, boringness is a nice touch. But there are shades of grey. The sky is light. It is quite pretty, really.

    The Dogs can be seen in Newspeak: British Art Now Part Two at Saatchi Gallery. You can read a review by Laura McLean-Ferris in the Independent, here. Three stars seems about right. Meanwhile, my review for Culture24 can be found here.

    Newspeak: British Art Now runs  until April 27 2011. For more details see the Gallery website.


    contemporary art, design, performance art

    John Maeda is the Fortune Cookie, Riflemaker

    November 17, 2010

    Despite better intentions, this blog post is all about me. And you can see none other than myself in this Polaroid taken by artist, academic, and sometime futurologist John Maeda.

    I met John earlier today in a sandpit where he is spending four days in performance as a sort of live interactive fortune cookie. That is his advice to me, scrawled beneath the picture.

    My consultation lasted ten minutes and ran contrary to expectations. I had meant to ask about the future of art and the future of journalism, but within 30 seconds I was blethering.

    I also had a theory that oracular wisdom belonged to literature, just as beauty might have belonged to art and perhaps emotion was in the realm of music. So was this piece to be a literary crossover?

    In fact, it had more in common with music. It had emotional affect. And those emotions were fear plus a sense that, as Maeda wrote in the sand before me, things were slipping out of control.

    And then at one point he wrote the word “dancer” and by way of explanation said that I showed an awareness of my own body of which I had up to that point been quite unaware. Hmm.

    But it was hard not to believe the Rhode Island School of Design professor, as he drew me out and summed me up in a format which was like therapy with Don Draper from TV show Madmen.

    There were reservations. Despite what Andy Warhol said, I’m not a fan of convergence between art and business, and major brands have indeed come to Maeda for his blue-chip advice.

    Then there was also confusion when the artist handed me this Polaroid. I had requested a more anonymous photo of a drawing in the sand, so I got more than I paid for with this signed portrait.

    For whatever reason, I was not about to argue. And the 10-minute appointments, free so long as you buy an artwork, already contain generous amounts of Maeda’s energy and insights.

    Since this is such a first person account of the experience, I should mention that my ex also had her fortune told earlier in the day and was happy for me to blog about that also.

    As you can see from this photo of them both, he calls her an integrity chameleon. As far as I am concerned, where she is concerned, he has really nailed it there. In that at least, I can be objective.

    This four day only live exhibition (16-19 November) at Riflemaker, London, is already fully booked. But if you like the sound of John Maeda’s work, you can follow him on Twitter, get some free downloads here, or watch him give a very engaging 17 minute talk.