New work: My Latest Watercolours.

If one removes subject matter from a painting what are we left with? Colour.... I have been using colour as the subject of my watercolours. I have been exploring the ability of colour to affect  moods, elemental feelings; these can be mellow or dramatic, the paintings may have an open structure and can be playful. I have not been working from observation or memory. I have been working on creating luminous works as I am interested in the power of colours to heal or otherwise to impact the viewer, or even the painter, myself. 

While I am painting them I am fully absorbed, I am totally in the moment, I am one with my watercolours in alternate space away from the frantic running around found in the city; working in watercolours for me is a way of breaking away and appreciating being in the moment; I find it to be deeply relaxing and it helps me deal with the stress that is consequent on living in a pressurised society, where we live with deadlines, required to produce in a vicious circle of competitiveness and consumerism; so for me doing my watercolours is stepping out from those things, giving time to myself away from the external pressures. I focus on each brush stroke rather than on the final picture, not seeking perfection but just going with the flow. 

I enjoy using bright colours especially pinks, purples, oranges as a way to express freedom. My freedom as a woman artist to paint as I like & to do what I want, as I think we take freedom for granted in the West. Sadly in a lot of countries around the world people and especially women are still not able to express themselves to their full potential and are not free. With my watercolours and paintings I am reminding myself how lucky I am to be in a country where I  am free to express myself artistically and that we should never take freedom for granted.

While painting my watercolours I don't have to worry about anything.... I can just be; it's getting in touch with my own body and mind. I don't make them to sell them but when they are finished I just use them as blankets to envelop my soul with the many colours. I generally hang them in my room, seeking to disappear into them like a magician.

I like the immediacy of watercolours, their transparency, the way I can use them to go from bold colours to mellow, at once creating atmospheric pieces. I create a safe space where I can paint in a more authentic way going beyond a linear narrative, opening a door to mystery, transformation, the unexpected. Below are further examples of my watercolours.

Invisible Art at The Hayward Gallery 2012

In 2012 I went to the Hayward Gallery to the Invisible Art exhibition but I forgot to review it so I will do it now because it was a very interesting well curated exhibition about the invisible and emptiness.

When I tell my friend's (not artists) about Invisible Art they always look at me puzzled the first thing they ask is it possible to create something invisible? Then they say if is it invisible, how I am going to be aware of it? The Invisible Arts exhibition is about how do you engage with art. It questions the idea that the content of art can not always been seen. First of all some of the artists that have dealt with Invisible have been interested more in the actual space than a visible work of art inside of it like for example Robert Barry Energy Field see below.

Then there is Yves Klein and his plans of an 'architecture of air' below where he was keen to explore the subject without any visible content. Yves Klein was interested in mystical ideas, the infinite, he strongly believed  that what can not be seen it is of most value like for example love, hope, it's an Utopian work.

Most of the works in Invisible challenge our understanding of what is art and push our perception capacities asking us to use not only to see with our eyes but with our imagination. Some artists in the exhibition used invisibility to show political disappearance, marginalisation of social groups and to make the viewer aware of the suppression of information like the work of Teresa Margolles. Some of the works where also funny like the one by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan  where he poked fun at the absurdity of bureaucracy as his work was about a police report about his invisible art work being stolen in the car, which is very funny as the story is so absurd.

 What the exhibition shows is the variety of works in terms of concepts achieved under the umbrella 'Invisible Art', in one case there is a piece of paper that an artist looked at for 1000 hours over a period of five years. There is the work by Italian Gianni Motti where he used invisible ink highlighting that the creative process is private as the viewer can not see what he wrote, he is the only one who knows what he wrote.

More serious is the work of Teresa Margolles where she is using water  inside humidifiers as they where used in the morgues to wash the bodies of murder victims in Mexico city mainly killed by drug cartel so in this way you are not looking at photographs of bodies but you are actually feeling the mist of their bodies on yourself which I found to be intimate and disturbing.

Then there is the 'Plinth' by Andy Warhol where he stood before stepping off, his take on fame and traces of it and society obsession with fame.

The Erased Playboy centre fold by Tom Friedman  where  he spent a long time rubbing off the playboy pin up from the play boy centre fold. It seems to me that Friedman is interested in the concept of how to make a drawing with no image. One is left only with the creases of the Playboy which are specific to playboy centrefold ( I am no expert on this but my male friends say so).

Then i saw The Yoko Ono early sixties Introduction paintings: typed commands which stimulate the viewer imagination as the audience was asked to participate with their imagination.

Yoko Ono said 'in your head, a sunset can go on for days. You can eat up all the clouds in the sky'. Her instruction paintings  where not just graphic images in themselves that's why she had the instructions typed for example her ' Hand Piece' typed in 1961 reads: 'Raise your hand in the evening light and watch it until it becomes transparent and you see the sky and the trees through it', it's poetic.

I also found very poetic the work of Song Dong where he wrote a diary on stone due to being poor and not able to afford ink. His thoughts disappear when the water dries which is quite zen in the approach. Also Lai Chich-Shen'g work is interesting he basically draws in pencil around the  Hayward Gallery space on the edges of pillars and doorways, around floor tiles

Then there is the work by Byars made in 1969 which was  unsettling as you had to go inside a space that was pitch black and I lost any any sense of bearing. It was titled the Ghost of James Lee Bayars, I didn't know where I was even if there was a small light towards the exit which I really couldn't see so  by mistake I went out from the entrance instead of the exit, I couldn't find it and I bumped into some one else too..

It was also interesting to see how people around me where nervous around the empty plinth by Tom Friedman called Curse 1992, apparently he hired a professional witch to curse the plinth I can assure you that nobody was going near it  away of showing the power of superstition on people.

In the exhibition there was also a car park space number 4 by Carsten Holler a space that was supposed to have an invisible car which was quite weird I mean I walked inside the car space couldn't have cared less if there was a car or not but i did see other people not walking in the space actually thinking that there was a real car there even if invisible, maybe there imagination was stronger then their rational side.

At the end of the exhibition there is a fun work by Danish artist Jeppe Hein called 'Invisible Labyrinth' where the audience had to listen to digital headphones and walk around a wall less labyrinth. There was a strange humming vibration emanating from the headphones which told you that you had hit a wall so you had to change direction which made the work partly about the barriers that surround us and we are not aware of.

Jack & Dinos Chapman Sackler Gallery.

When you see Clown & Mr Bubble in the cockpit you can be sure you are looking at a piece by Jack & Dinos Chapman which is about the twin towers. The Clown & Mr Bubble undermine the terrorists and the making of the cartoon, recognising the 6 differences: making you spot differences which echos the twin towers and it's an echo of the two images.

In the exhibition rooms there where Figures of the Ku Klux Klan  seen wearing not white robes as most art critics wrote in their reviews but dirty shower curtains. Two of them are having sex with each other while wearing 'gay' rainbow (symbol of gayness) socks and sandals, they are figures of menace and ridicule. One can find them also sitting in the cinema watching a movie at the centre of the exhibition which makes them part of the audience and it makes us as spectators complicit.

They are a metaphor for racism, intolerance.  During the movie 'The Organ Grinder once can see more masturbation at one point Jack & Dinos Chapman adults come out of their mother's vagina Samantha Morton.. Inside the glass cases  dotted around the exhibition are: genocidal figures, McDonald's, death factories, images of capitalism, Holocaust. Forests  are shown being cut down shawling bodies by Nazi figures while connecting aquatic zoos with dolphins so the work  it's also about  the exploitation of animals & the sea (natural resources)  and contamination, as the sea it is painted black like oil. There is a whole pile of bodies inside McDonald's which suggests that McDonald's kills people and that the McDonald clown that was in the plane it's every where which makes the McDonald symbol into a terrorist, it's just another way of killing people, they kill people with crap food.

Then there is another piece with written at the top Come & See and below a group of animals having sex with each other but each animal was a food victim of the larger animal but rabbits don't eat mice so their 'predatory theory' doesn't hold here it's a weak point in the work they over did it, if they had only stopped at the rabbit!

In their work there is a lot of humour to do with sex like the figurines on the life boat doing position 69 (Kamasutra position) or like in the other piece where the penis is fucking the brain which is a ridicule, they use sex as weapon to undermine.

Thought I did find there where to many pictures on the walls, to many Ku Klux Klan figures so it becomes repetitive and the joke becomes stale. The exhibition had a clutter feel to it, the work needed a much bigger space. Also I saw some embalmed crows on the art work of the failed Kurt Scwitters which I saw as an other oppressive symbol. It's a distopian image it's a view of the world which is completely dysfunctional there is no love to be seen any where it's all about death and decay like for example in the portraits the faces (inspired by Goya) where all decaying and a woman had her mouth slashed open, (the work was bought and then vandalised, worked on by them) which shows teenage angst against past history & status.

Their work it's at the opposite spectrum of someone like for example Matisse whose artwork is life affirming their work to me is like the artistic architecture of hatred but done with humour, it's stimulating & dark thought I wouldn't advice someone who is depressed to view it and I do wonder how they would feel if they had their work vandalised? It is worth a lot of money and it takes them a while to make it, they are being photographed in famous magazines and shown on TV so I find this side of their work nonsensical as they are part of the establishment as much as the people in the portraits they ridicule. Their work seems to always be scarting on the edge of madness because of the manic energy within the work and because of this manic energy there is a feeling of over production of the imagination like of people who are in psychiatric hospitals. 

Cuban Artist Ana Mendieta at the Hayward Gallery.

Where to start with Ana Mendieta? From her unsolved death on the 8 of September 1985, was she killed by her then husband and minimalist sculptor artist Carl Andre after a drunken argument? Or did she commit suicide? Her friends and family don't believe this to be true as they always described her as passionate, alive, argumentative this shows in her art work on show at the Hayward Gallery which I found deeply moving, her work stays with you after you leave. I was so moved that I wasn't even able to go and see the other exhibition by Dayanita Singh. If you have to go and see an exhibition go and see this one it's really not to be missed I am saying this especially to women as Ana Mendieta's work is direct and powerful. In fact the gallery was full of women slowly going from one picture to the other and then going back to it, I think there is a thirst in women to see other women artist's work that speaks to them. Ana Mendieta achieves this fully but it is sad that a lot of her works where not known and not shown in her life time the last section of the exhibition deals with this as during her lifetime she rigorously documented her work also with the help of her early boyfriend and academic Hans Breder. The last part of the exhibition presents a variety of documentary from slides to postcards she sent to friends and at the end one can take a poster of her, which I really enjoyed as it also includes her biography. 

Her work deals with the female body, she made silhouettes of her body in mud, earth, covered in grass, leaves: perfomance pieces of the female body connecting with earth. It is a feminist piece of work, political as she reclaimes blood as a feminist material in art. 

In her performance pieces, she uses blood in a transcendental way to evoke the power of female sexuality as part of the universe showing that we are just one with everything that surround us, it is a magical ritual where she reconnects with her South American roots, Native Cuba and ancient civilizations for example of her beloved Mexico. In Room 1 of the exhibition are a group of photos of herself, her body as as subject and object, self distorted portraits, one can see putting her face against a glass or her body against a piece of glass and being photographed.

There are photos of her transferring a friend's beard onto her own face where she plays with the notion of beauty, gender, belonging ( she escaped Cuba when she was young and lived in Iowa which was culturally very different from Cuba) her body looks sexy but there is pain in her work, ancestral female pain but by working with it through her art she gives energy to her work and transmutes the pain in defiant act of appropriation and liberation and show and independent spirit which is very empowering especially for a female audience. 

In Room 2 Rape scenes below on the left hand side there are photos of her self as she had been raped. The female body here is used to show male violence which was in response to a rape & murder that happened at her university, of a student nurse named Sarah Ann Otten.  It is been said that she would invite people around when in ' the scene' of rape and she would stay in the same position for up to two hours which was documented by a friend on 35 mm colour slides.  

Also powerful in Room 2 are her paintings done with blood and tempera which are also filmed called ‘Body tracks’ she deeps her hands in blood and arms and smears them on to walls and paper in quite a precise manner and in opposition to the work of Yves Klein 1960 Anthropometries where he used naked women with their bodies covered in paint like living brushes while Mendieta is fully clothes and presses herself against the wall in act of defiance.. Also blood is central the ritual practised by the Catholic Church through wine in which she was raised.

In 1971 she went to Mexico for research and she said that the experience was ' like going back to the source, being able to get some magic just by being there'. From Mexico her work becomes more unified and will incorporate different elements self, nature, place, sculpture, performance, drawing and she creates her first silhouettes where nature takes over her body where she looks at her context within nature she basically recorded her physical presence both in Mexico and Iowa after this she replaces her actually body with imprint of her self in mud on trunks. Then there are photos called Blood and Feathers,  where Mendieta is shown naked and covered in feathers which shows parallels with indigenous cultures and shamanism.

Photographs of her art & performance pieces are the permanent piece of her transient work, performance.  

She also created mummy like figures of her self shown in Room 5 in memory of Native Americans who inhabited the area and in reference to other ancient cultures like the Mayan cultures. Through her reference of the goddess Ixchell, with this work she focuses on life death and rebirth while researching her origins. The photographs in the first part of the exhibition are small and in colour but Room 6 in her later stage they become larger and black and white.

In Room 9 (the 1980's period) where she started making permanent outdoor sculptures made out of mud and a binding agent which are covered in cracks, flat on the ground and together look quite abstract using sand from Cuba and Egypt some inspired by Maltese culture where women where matriarchal, sexless and large which feel like big wombs. In this section are also large trunks of of trees that had died which she transformed by drawing silhouettes in them reinforcing the idea of the tree of life.

Another moving artwork made out of a bunch of black melted candles outlining a human body on the floor which felt strongly ritualistic to do with occultism and about death, called Ranigo Burial below. I actually saw the piece when the lights where not on but it still moved me.

Finally in Room 7 are her drawings drawn on a type of bark paper made by the Otomani people in Mexico other images are drawn on paper made by her.

The images where down in ink or dark acrylic, I mean they look black and felt ghostly being in a room surrounded by dark silhouettes felt quite spooky. They are figures associated with Cuba's indigenous Taino culture so in a way she was trying to reconnect with her ancestry. She also drew on leaves on the copy or autograph leaves and when living in Italy she used any leaves she could find to draw on but I found this work weak lacking of the visceral immediacy of earlier work done with her body or imprints of it (she stayed at the American academy in Rome) she loved Rome, Italy and felt accepted there. On show are also photos of the Tree of Life which Mendieta saw as a being protective and as a regenerative force and also a symbol of family and it is considered one of the most important theme in her work from this she drew inspiration and created silhouettes called Albero de Lavita or Tree of Life and they are mostly upright unlike the earth horizontal flat bound one. The poses required staying still for long periods of time too, required stamina and self control. She had to stay completely still while breathing through a straw as her body was covered in dried mud and was indistinguishable from the dead tree, see below.