Elmgreen & Dragset at the V&A in London.

As part of my Uni course with our tutor we went around London to view Galleries this time it was an exhibition at the V&A called Tomorrow by the Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset I didn't know what to expect as I have never seen their work and didn't know much about them either. As I had lost my group I found my way on my own to the section inside the museum where they where exhibiting actually when I got there I realised that it wasn't an exhibition but a spacial installation based on a fictional narrative in the 160-year old museum's former textile department that had been close for eight years, so it was exciting to see that the space had been used again and in an alternative way. It felt great to walk through the corridors of the museum looking at artifacts behind cases and find one self suddenly in The Tomorrow exhibition where one could touch items, sit or actually lie down on the bed it was interactive unlike the rest of the Museum. It's so interactive that while I was in the bedroom I actually pocked into what I thought was a sculpture but it was to my great surprise a person that screamed & then looked at me puzzled ( in my defence I can say that the lighting in the room was quite deem) he wasn't part of exhibit oh no he was a visitor like me.

                                

 The Tomorrow exhibition occupies 5 rooms in the form of an apartment obviously of someone wealthy from an upper class background this was given by the expensive furniture, items that I found in each room of the British architect Norman Swann who apparently never built anything. As a visitors we see his house as he is about to move out of it, in the  new Kitchen ( made by the new young tenant called Daniel Wilder, the architect student) I saw a lot of boxes used for packing items. The rooms made me think of old stately houses in England, there where real waiters going around the rooms making you feel in a different space and time where the upper classes lived. Elmgreen says that Tomorrow 'is a commentary on the disappearance old British society and a failure of the European experiment'. I didn't get this while being in the rooms, I would also add that the artist's view of what the old British society was in a particular time is narrow and they weren't there to experience the dominance of the upper classes also  they are from Scandinavian egalitarian countries, not really elite based, they might base themselves on documentation but it's really just fictional out of their own imagination.

 I felt uncomfortable as I felt none of it was real, a bit like mental masturbation. Some items in the rooms where there to give clues about the character of the person living in the house but he was fictional too a bit like being in a theatre setting which is made for the viewer to engage with the 'artwork' in a different way like you would do in a site specific situation so experiencing  it directly, it really can not be described. This is not a new concept but it is interesting the way they engage the audience & again the use of the space. This specific direct way of experiencing the installation makes you silent, looking for clues and stretches the time you spend inside the installation this is if you enjoy being in the space, if you enjoy being in an opulent surreal space if not you will be running for the door.

Some of the V&A objects can be found in the rooms and they will go back to the museum, but walking around the rooms looking at the items sitting down, I felt that the artists are interested in the fear of change about the future and the past: there are the old comfortable rooms in contrast with the metallic cold kitchen that indicates a new life has come in and how the future and the past connect with each other or not, about what one does with one life or not, it's about failure of fear of failure shown ( but I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a 'Western anxiety' like the artists said I think this is really stretching it) in one room with architectural projects which never saw the day light, in this sense the installation it's successful.

All Images By Elmgreen & Dragset at the V&A.

Mark Tobey the predecessor of Jackson Pollock.

Yesterday on a seriously rainy day I decided to go to the exhibition of Mark Tobey at the Thomas Williams Gallery in posh Old Bond Street in central London. It was my first time in the gallery which set on the first floor of the building, one had to ring a bell to get in. I did find the staff in the gallery friendly. Mark Tobey's work was well set up in one room. The work was mainly of a small scale: watercolours, tempera, mixed media from his late period the 1960's. I did find interesting the sizes of his work the variety of sizes especially for the watercolours which combined with the gentle use of colours in the work an air of intimacy, delicacy far remote from the stronger, vigorous work of Jackson Pollock. Yes because while I was observing Mark Tobey's work I noticed an 'all over 'painting style with no focal point, free of boundaries which later was central to Abstract Expressionism and the work of Jackson Pollock who was introduced to Tobey's work at the Willard Gallery in new York in 1944 but while Tobey's work is carefully constructed, calm & partly inspired by calligraphy Jackson Pollock's work was strong, the execution energetically almost violent and the scale of the work much bigger. Also I did find amusing that Mark Tobey's style actually came from the period he spent in England more specifically in 1931 at Dartington Hall in rural Devon owned by Leonard Elmhirst (who studied under the poet & social reformer Rabindranath Tagore) & his wife Dorothy, where he also met Henry Moore, Lucian Clement & Stephan Freud, Piet Mondrian. In 1935  while in Devon  Mark Tobey experienced an artistic breakthrough: he started a new way of painting called Broadway see below,

then was followed by Welcome Hero(1935) & a Broadway Norm(1935) in this last one there was no connection that could relate the painting to the title. In the exhibition  most  of his work did not have titles. For the first time in Broadway he used lines as a way to go beyond objects with a variety of combinations this was also present in the untitled works in the exhibition. One doesn't look at the lines to examine their intrinsic quality because they are freely combined  and unifying the object with the space around it in such away that you have to relate to the whole of the picture they are the first example of the 'bordeless'  picture or as Harold Rosenberg called them in 1952 ' an apocalyptic wallpaper'. One thing I always found curious about Mark Tobey is that he followed the Bahai faith so Tobey thought that each stroke of his brush maybe divinely directed I read some where that a portrait painter names Juliet Thompson introduced him to the Bahai' faith. Anyway one thing is for sure that from his work one can see that he was constantly searching for a freer way of painting, to be closer to nature and a strong influence of Chinese calligraphy. Chinese ink wash painting where also comes from the idea of a freely moving brush stroke he did actually travel to Shanghai in 1934 and then to Japan where he was not only absorbed by the culture, but he also discovered Japanese Zen Buddhism, Japanese ink painting and he studied Zen meditation in a Zen Buddhist monastery near Kyoto.

Most of the works in the exhibition are actually part of his late period: the 1960's where he was based in Basel Switzerland and are mainly watercolours, tempera & oil on paper with stronger colours, the use of red with a variety of forms and shapes from vertical brushstrokes Untitled 1964 to small dubs of painting Untiled 1970 in this period he also experimented with monotypes with no lines. I did find his work inspiring both in the concept, use of colours and the variety of sizes in his watercolours and the variety of types of paper he used which gave a completely different effect to his watercolours. I did find exciting that there where no figurative watercolours but they where all abstract and varied in their combinations it felt liberating after I have been to I don't how many figurative watercolour exhibitions in London. Below are the works of Mark Tobey which are on display at the Thomas Williams Gallery all untitled but from his later period the 1960's.