Phyllida Barlow at Tate Britain. Excellent exhibition.

When I had some time to kill between lectures I went to the Tate Britain to see the new sculptural installation (commissioned work) called 'Deck' by the British artist Phyllida Barlow, located in the Duveen galleries and loosely inspired by the view from Tate Britain Milbank of barges floating in the Thames.

 

 The work is in stark contrast to the newly refurbished galleries and staircase which look really composed, elegant, neo classical. Phyllida Barlow's work is massive, chaotic, in all possible ways. I could walk through it and around it. It is an anti monument made out of every day ordinary materials such as cardboard, polystyrene, foam, colourful tape, wood (timber), a combination of texture and colour, scrap materials that have not been used for years, that one would not associate with a monument - these are used to make stilted giant towers, with cardboard which doesn't sit perfectly straight, the jumbled pieces of wood stuck one on top of the other, going in different directions - these bring a sense of chaos to the whole section.  It is in your face and you can't avoid the work as it is so large and imposing, there is no refinement to it, it is blatantly crude.

She says: 'The idea to begin with was incredibly simple: to plant into the Duveen a new structure that counteracted the reverent, vaulted space, and its almost religious connotations, and introduce an almost basic geometry'. Barlow with these colossal architectural structures made out of ordinary materials (some are built like scaffoldings), is referring to industrial structures, containers, while at the same time referring to the history of sculpture very present in the other rooms of Tate Britain.

 

 

The first piece is made out of five large blocks,  the size of a shipping container, with orange and black cords; everything is mangled, nothing is straight or precise, nor precious. I am not allowed to touch anything, though, and I really feel like touching the mad tower made out of cardboard and colourful tape similar in height to the other pillars in the gallery. It is a funny joke about the straight classical, past monuments made by men; nothing is certain in her installation, her column is not perfectly straight but is made out of crumbled cardboard and it's got colour around it in total opposition to the seriousness and self importance of past monuments; but the work is huge like past and current male artists love to make. In one way it's great that a woman artist  is commissioned to do such giant work, on the other hand why does a woman artist need to do big work as a male artist? This is my own general question: do women artists need to play like their male counterpart artists in order to be recognised? The large scale sculptures are excellent; while walking through them just the sheer size of them, going up to the roof and down to the floor, brought me mentally back to the past and to large scale monuments, architectural works, and to question their validity and place in society. Also by whom they where chosen and for whom? Especially considering that women were not included generally in monuments and did not participate in the making of monuments in the past, so in this context I find Phyllida Barlow's sculptural installation excellent and feminist, and I looked at in comparison to past monuments made by men for men and in comparison to Tate Britain which was built by masculine authority. (Nowadays, however, Tate Britain does show plenty of work by women artists, more so than other galleries.) The sum of her works stands in comparison to Tate Britain's solid structure, a skeleton, a dystopian view, with the look of ruins. The work is about assembling, storing, arrangement, the material is predominant and is right in your face. There is no single viewpoint for the work so the viewer is forced to move around, across and under the work.

Barlow's work also refers to arte povera, minimalism, and to British sculpture of the past.

 

 Yes, everybody can enjoy the sculptural installation and the simple ordinary materials, combined with coloured tape these make you think of a child playing, assembling; there is nothing high tech in place apart from the way it's assembled that I am sure required a specialist team. Barlow said: “I love the cliché that a child could do it. Yes, a child could do it, but when you’re an adult, you’re doing it for real, either because there’s some OCD condition where you’re a hoarder, or for practical reasons, or you shift a bit further over and it’s in a museum of art''.  Through her work she questions the fundamental aspects of sculpture, its presence in space and its physicality, a combination of softness and hardness.

Phyllida Barlow was a teacher at the Slade School of Fine Art; her students included Angela de la Cruz and Rachel Whiteread; she was a strong influence on a young generation of artists. Previously she studied at the Chelsea School of Arts (1960-63) and later at the Slade School of Art (1963-66) where she trained conventionally in sculpture and in techniques such as metal casting, armature construction, plaster modelling etc. I find this interesting as nowadays in art colleges across the UK there is no conventional teaching (apart from theory), or practical classes.

I went to her exhibition because I work with found, scrap materials in my own sculptures and was interested in how she used those materials and also because in my own work I aim to create something different.

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Shelagh Wakely at the Camden Arts Centre.

The Camden Arts Centre

At the Camden Arts Centre they usually have good exhibitions on and they're free; I can't actually remember if they have ever had a bad exhibition! I arrived at the exhibition from walking on a very busy, full-of-heavy-traffic street, the Finchley Road - I wished that I had gone up to Hampstead station on the northern line and walked down through the charming and quieter streets of Hampstead to get there. At the Camden Arts Centre they show emerging artists, international artists, and more established better-known artists and they run a residency programme to help artists develop in their practice. They combine this with educational activities, public events, talks, film screenings, art performances and family activities. The Camden Arts Centre is a Grade II listed building and an Arts Council art centre; it was refurbished in 2004.

The Director, since 1990, of the Camden Arts Centre is Jenny Lomax OBE. In the 1970's she worked at the Whitechapel Gallery as part of a curatorial team set up by Nicholas Serota. This time I saw the exhibition by British artist Shelagh Wakely (1932-2011) which expanded from the Gallery into the garden and included ceramics, unfired clay sculptures, prints, videos, and drawings.

I did find interesting that she lived abroad a lot. She spent most of her youth in Kenya and later on in Brazil. She studied at the Chelsea College of Arts (1958-1962) and she worked as a textile and clothing designer in the 1960's; all of these different elements in her life are present in her work.

In gallery 3 on the floor there is a gilded black silk sheet (pic above), slashed with a knife, and the gold side of the piece reflects ambient light and should cover the room in a shimmering pool of gold, this would turn the art work into an installation piece; but I didn't experience or see this because it was a grey day so I could only observe the piece on the floor without the whole room being suffused with light.

In the room there are two gold trolleys with wilted fruit but in one trolley the fruits looked fresher than those in the other; the gallery assistant explained to me that this was because they had been made by the gallery assistants while the older fruits actually were found in Shelagh Wakely's studio. I have to admit I preferred the older looking ones - they made me think of a ghost in a room: the fruits looked greyish and lacked the golden vibrancy of the other fruits, they are like a negative. There are also organic pieces, such as tangerines, grapefruit, aubergines which are left to rot and are gilded - some are covered in gold to look wrinkled and dried.... it's about the passage of time, it reminds you how things were, vital and full of life but now they are dead.

In the middle room inside a case there is a necklace made from a string of cherries and fruits, imprisoned inside a cage of fine wire jewellery. Here again the fruits are wilted, they have been left to rot, the combination of these elements gives the piece a sense of fragility, of the passing of time, something vital has been turned  into a skeleton.

In Gallery 2 on the floor I saw a giant swirling pattern of turmeric made out of cut-outs, stencils not easy to make, as they are done in blocks to make them look like an uninterrupted piece, the turmeric with the light would cover the whole room in yellow but again I didn't experience this or see it because it was a grey day outside. I couldn't smell the turmeric either so I didn't experience the installation side of the art work, and can't say like others have said that her work goes beyond boundaries, that it floods all spaces. Nor can I say that her work involves all the senses as I wasn't allowed to touch anything due to the fragility of the pieces, but I was also told by the galleries assistant that they had worked with kids reproducing some of the pieces in the exhibition, which is great!

 In the garden there is another work of Shelagh Wakely's. I felt that the garden was actually the weakest link in the exhibition as the squares laid out there would have been better shown on a dark surface, as presented in the gallery leaflet, rather than on grass. The colour of the bright green grass was overwhelming the piece and it distracted me from focusing on the actual work of the piece and in particular the delicacy of the small pieces of silver inside was overwhelmed by the green grass. The piece stands out more on a dark surface - check pic below.

In the Garden are also works by Susan Hiller (with sounds - this was the one I liked best!) and  Alison Wilding and Richard Deacon. Another area in the garden is also dedicated to plants with  medicinal properties such as chervil, anise, angelica etc.. this is based on Wakely's own garden in North London and also inspired by a commission that Wakely did for St Geroge's hospital in Tooting, which shows her love of nature.

Lastly in one of the rooms were large drawings, doodles of bowls that turn into something quite different, concave or abstract shapes, where colour is minimally used with splashes of blues and reds predominant; some of the drawings could be considered negatives or between positive and negative, a transitory face due to their indefinite structure. There are also films in the show in which one could see Shelagh Wakely working outdoors, leaving her work to be affected by the weather and it was interesting to watch how this changed the actual pieces.

Pierre Huyghe at Hauser & Wirth in Saville Row London.

 

 

Even though I have been very busy I managed to see another exhibition in central London, by French artist Pierre Huyghe at the Hauser & Writh Gallery in Saville Row London called 'In Border Deep'. At first I thought the gallery was shut because it looked completely blacked out from the outside; I pushed their main door anyway to find out they were actually open but blacked out for the exhibition for which they are keeping three aquariums in the main gallery. Some had fish inside with lights that switched on and off. I was a bit concerned for the welfare of the fish because in one particular acquarium the light kept flicking but also because the acquarium looked dirty, but maybe it's ok I am no specialist in aquariums. The aquariums are positioned on the left hand side of the Gallery next to each other while next to them on the right was a film showing and at the back another film was showing but in the sections of the aquarium there was also what looked like a red painting going across the room and in front of it a stone sitting on top of sand. I mean it was quite dark in the gallery so I couldn't see it that clearly because the whole Gallery was blacked out; I felt like I was inside an underworld. The way the works were set out in the gallery was coherent as there was space between them and it worked well with the films been positioned on the right and at the back of the gallery. 

 

Pic taken of the aquariums when lights inside the Gallery were on.

Apparently the three aquariums contain biotopes from Monet's ponds in Giverny but I didn't see any water lilies floating on the surface of Huygh's ponds and one is supposed to see them. Strange. Inside the aquariums are supposedly sunken man-made objects that have been modified over time by the erosion of the water, I guess, natural elements. But I didn't see any. The lighting sequence  is programmed to a fast-paced rendering of the variations in weather conditions as recorded at Giverny between 1914-1918, when Monet painted the 'Nympheas' which are in the Musee de l'Orangerie. The light sequences for each aquarium follow the shortest day of the year in 1914, the autumn of 1917, and the entire four year period. I wouldn't have known any of this if the Gallery assistant (who was very nice) hadn't told me. I did notice the lights timings were different as one was flickering but I have to say the flickering was bothering me and I was wondering how would it affect the fish? So I focused more on the aquarium with a slower pace of light. Looking at aquariums is reported to lower your heart-beat.

 

 

In front of three aquariums  I saw a reclining figure, a concrete cast, a headless sculpture which looked covered in moss (above). I was told again by the gallery assistant that inside of it there was a heating device that encouraged the growth of vegetation, and apparently I was supposed to notice that the sculpture  was 'emanating a body temperature' like a human body. I failed to notice any of this and if I hadn't asked the gallery assistant or read the Gallery leaflet I don't think in the dark room I would have noticed anything at all. At least it was coherent with the 'theme' of the exhibition. It represents an anti monument as it is not fixed and is continuously evolving.

 

Film De-extinction 2014

Going on to the two films, the first I watched was  the one at the back of the Gallery which was apparently the starting point in the exhibition ( I went to the fish tanks first because they were closer to the main entrance) where Huyghe uses microscopic and macroscopic motion-controlled cameras to record insects encased in amber. Actually they are done so close up that sometimes it looks blurred to the point that could look like moving paintings. I did find it really relaxing to watch, they are slow moving, combined with the soundrack similar to a mechanical shuttle which I didn't hear very well, indeed at points I thought it was soundless. I think actual music would have added to the piece. Anyway, the film is done in consecutive close up frames where Huyghe explores the idea of 'an instant frozen in time'.

 

Film The Human Mask 2014

The other film titled: 'Human Mask' is a dystopian setting where an animal acts out the human condition; the animal is trapped; apparently this is inspired by a real monkey in Japan that has to wear the mask of a young woman and has been trained to be a waitress; I mean really weird.. it has a dark undertone. At the back of the aquariums I saw a stone on the floor which for Huyghe marks 'the origin of man and the development of rudimentary engineering'. Really?  Above is a work called 'the Clearing' apparently made from sanded down layers of paint from the wall's surface exploring the wall as a body, as something alive, what is left of human remains.... again I didn't notice this due to the room being dark.

 

 

I saw what looked like a painting on a wall (above on the left hand-side) and only found out about it because I read the Gallery leaflet. Anyway it combines with the rest of the work with the overall theme of the exhibition. Because the whole gallery was blacked out and by the way the works were positioned in the Gallery I felt like I was in an enclosed space, a cocoon in which one could walk around the gallery in a circular way surrounded by living organisms. This shows that the artist is interested in growth and change as the aquariums and the sculpture are living organisms that constantly grow and change so that the gallery becomes a container where new events and encounters take place, but in conditions and context that are imposed by the artist. Each aquarium for example is a mini theatre with the fish being the performers. Huyghe said in interviews that ' you throw a piece of banana in a compost and there will be a metabolisation. It's not that the banana disappears, but it will do something else? It will achieve a different intensity of being a banana. That's what I am interested in, this banana-ness and this variation of intensity and how things leak into each other'. So he is not interested in the end but more in the transition, he constructs a play.The live elements, like for example the fish inside the aquariums, can create something umpredictable and in doing so change the rhythm of the work so the work itself is continuously changing which will affect the time and space and will help to draw in the viewer, It sent me into a meditative state in some ways; anyway it was a consistent, interesting exhibition with elements of surprise and darkness.

 

Adriano Costa at Sadie Coles Gallery, London.

I haven't been blogging since June. I just had the worst summer. I decided that if I want to get back in my University course I have really got to start again blogging.  I have been thinking... how can I do the last year at University if I can't even concentrate on basic things? So I thought if at least I can start back on my blog maybe later I can start working back on my thesis again; so here I am. The first exhibition I got to see is the one by Brazilian artist Adriano Costa (BA Universidade de Sao Paolo) at Sadie Coles Gallery, titled: Touch me I am Geometrically Sensitive. It was the first time I went in the Sadie Coles Gallery in Kingly Street which is at the back of Carnaby street, in a street full of restaurants and bars, very centrally located. From inside the gallery one can see busy Regent Street; it is easy to get to. Inside the exhibition space most of Costa's work is shown together in one large room; the works are closely displayed so that you really can't focus long on one particular work.

His work was made over a period of two months while he was staying in London which was to lead to the exhibition, and using all sorts of objects that he could find around from rugs to bricks, but I feel that some of the objects he chose were not just found but purchased especially in one particular piece called Bartira/Suggestion for Furniture - here the ladders looked brand new and also in Untitled, which undermines a bit of the spontaneous concept implied by the Gallery in their leaflet  and by most art critics: 'mostly gathered in situ - harness of everyday daily objects', yes he does use some daily objects but it is not spontaneous work, it is thought through and is not entirely whatever was to hand for inspiration. I would say Adriano Costa is also a 'conceptual/referential artist': he reminded me of Brazilian modernist Helio Oiticica in his use of plants and wood and in the tea towel tapestry, and there is also reference in his work to Carl Andre'.

 

Overall the room looks busy and messy because all the works are so closely put together so I didn't feel I could focus much on one piece. He combines a different range of forms, materials (mainly industrial), and colours but the colours are not really dominant in his work, form and materials and geometrical shape have priority in his work.

Some works are bigger in scale than others, some are suspended while others are more earth bound.In some of his work, by using common materials and being playful with their combination like putting foam inside Perspex, suspending socks for example, he is showing how a supposedly uninteresting material can be made into art, but this is not a new idea it has been done before. Even if the work is playful I really didn't feel it was 'art of the incidental' like the Gallery states, it is not at all, it is well thought out one can see this by the way the work is positioned in the space. There are paintings made into geometrical patterns; some work better then others but I didn't feel they added anything to the rest or added anything new to what has been done before by other artists. I felt they were the weak link in the exhibition;

I mean they were really average, like the squares on a board, and the artwork called Norwegian Cheese (pic. above), they didn't add much to the other pieces; also the newspaper cut out and frames with some of the things happening during his stay in London in the news added nothing more to the exhibition.  What's the point of this? Is he trying to say that a lot of contemporary art is useless? Which seems to me the opposite of what he says in his other work. He said that he used the newspaper cut-outs to understand the country he is living in, which I find odd. I don't think you can really understand a country by only living in it for two months and cutting things out from a newspaper and then by framing them he is saying anything can be art and he is making fun of the art world, despite showing his work in a major art gallery. But the rough newspaper cut outs and the dark smartly polished frame didn't really go together and he has made a point in previous exhibitions of not using frames or pedestals as part of his work as he said in interviews, so what he is doing now is not consistent with what he has done before.

He  did use some recycled materials, polythene bags recycled from different London Boroughs so basically using them in a different way. What I do question is the fact that the way he uses the materials is not really ground breaking and has been done before by other British artists. Why is a major British gallery asking a Brasilian artist to do work about London instead of showing hs work about Brasil which is better?!

There are a lot of artists in London in British Universities working on similar concepts in very innovative and interesting ways but they don't seem to be taken by some major British Galleries, there are hardly any major galleries going around universities in London to see what is available; they seem to prefer taking artists from the USA and Germany mainly or from other countries. So I really do feel bad about a lot of English students that are paying £9000 per year with poor studio space who don't have access to studio space outside of University because they can't afford the high fees in London and on top of that galleries don't even look at their work or promote them, and there are hardly any scholarsips or sponsorships for art students but they are getting charged the same as students of other faculties who don't have to spend money on art materials.

And they have to compete also with a lot of other artists from Europe who don't pay the £9000 per year fees but only up to £1800 and they have to compete with Scottish students who pay only £1800 per year. I think English art students are currently really badly treated in their own country which opens the door to another argument: that of the politics in the art world on how they choose artists.  I am amazed by the dedication of a lot of British art students at my University who work hard to achieve the best in really difficult financial circumstances.

Marina Abramovich 512 Durational Performance at the Serpentine Gallery in London.

Serpentine Gallery

While the cabbies were protesting in Central London I left Uni to go to the Serpentine Gallery to see the exhibition by Marina Abramovich. Can't really call it an exhibition because her work is a mix of things. I was left wondering if it was done in the right setting....should this be in an art gallery at all? It's like if you went to the Theatre but instead of a play you saw a line of paintings..What I mean is that it's a completely different experience from what you expect it to be and this can be either good or bad, and I will tell you why.

 

Marina Abramovich inside the Serpentine Gallery
 

Firstly I was very lucky - the queue was not long at all. I went in straightaway; before you entered the Gallery you had to leave behind your belongings, mobile phones, watch, basically you were asked to leave your 'armour' behind because this is a distraction to what she is trying to do inside the Gallery. After I left all  my stuff behind in a locker I went inside the Gallery, in the main room of the Gallery there were several people standing then I saw Marina Abramovich going up to one person and taking them for a walk, she did this several times with different people. She is obsessive and regularly repeats things and whispered in their ears, nobody was talking or communicating with each other, some were standing and some lying down. An elderly man moved to the main platform and started just gently moving his feet against the platform making a really light sound; he was just going with the flow. Because what he was actually doing was putting his finger in the fault line of the durational performance, that he wasn't free to express himself  even in silence ( he was hardly making any noise).  A Gallery attendant went up to him and moved him on to a chair, the man was visibly upset but he sat in the chair and started waving to someone opposite him; they did not respond to him, a classic example of alienation  and of group compliance. Basically he had disrupted, knowingly or unknowingly, the performance but Abramovich wasn't even in the same room when he did it & other people didn't seem to be bothered by him....So this gentle, elderly man was taken out by force and kicked out by security for just moving his feet against the floor and what is more worrying is that nobody helped him, or backed him up which I thought was appalling and also made me think of mind control and group behaviour (everyone conforming with the group).

Marina Abramovich Vogue

This made me deduce several things. One, that really it wasn't a free event where you could express yourself freely so basically you were free inside the Gallery but on Marina Abramovich's terms and on the Gallery's own terms. Entering the Gallery and leaving all your stuff behind is not for you to feel liberated like Abramovich suggests but rather is conforming to her ideas; you are asked to leave your armour behind (she doesn't want people with baggage but I think she has got plenty of her own!)which I found sinister and verging on cultism, as you are accepting Freedom on her terms but most importantly because through her 'performance' she is trying to bring people to an uncharged territory and to do so she bombards the viewer emotionally. She is playing with the viewer's emotions while working with energy  and the problem is you might not be aware she is doing this which is dangerous  because some people might have mental problems so their behavioural traits would make it impossible for them to conform to what she is trying to do and they might get ungrounded before they realise what is happening to them.

You see, all the security and the Gallery are not there to protect you the viewer but are there to protect her, Marina Abramovich, so if you have an emotional reaction to what she is doing nobody will help you and you will be left to pick up the pieces afterwards. If you find yourself unexpectedly in this situation please breathe into your stomach, take off your shoes, and go outside and walk in the grass in the park; basically reground yourself.

There were very interesting behavioural dynamics inside the Gallery; how would you feel if you stayed all day inside the Gallery or every day  and you weren't chosen by Abramovich to walk with her but you saw everybody else getting picked up by her? Wouldn't this frustrate you, make you angry? Don't worry she is just playing with you emotionally, creating drama. I mean all the other people that got picked up by her looked ecstatic, happy, then later were raving about her.  At the same time you have been filmed all the time, yes because before you enter the Gallery they tell you that you can't film her or take photos ( that's  how she makes money from the film); this is controlling, it made me think of the books by George Orwell, you are in a compressed environment with strangers, being filmed with no privacy. The whole performance is like being in the theatre with no plot where everything moves within restricted parameters. Why would anybody want to go in a Gallery and see this what do they get out of it? I didn't experience anything ground-breaking about her work while I was there. I mean her work is based on Yves Klein and the idea of giving priority to the process instead of the product. So the process of art-making is more important than the final product; it is also body based work like most of her previous work. So there are other artists that have worked with the body such as Vito Acconci, Yvonne Rainer, Chris Burden, Gina Pane. Also she based her work ( and by this I mean the energy side of it) on Shamanic practises, in some of her previous work where the viewer was allowed to inflict wounds on her this was based on a specific Shamanic practise where the Shamanic Practitioner serves the community by becoming the legitimate central focus of affliction for the community, but she has twisted it and again was playing with the public emotions by putting herself naked so arousing erotic emotions in the viewer but by asking the viewer to behave in the opposite way from erotic feelings, creating drama see below..She also shares Nikola Tesla's (Yugoslavian scientist who castrated himself) interest in energy and transmission.

But I also felt that she had issues with her body, that on some level she hates her body and herself so she doesn't see the body in a positive way, as a vehicle one can do positive work with. In some interviews she stated we should just 'be energy' which again is misguided and dangerous. Going back to her previous work, she was the object of others' gaze and she presented herself as a commodity for capitalist consumption, but in the current performance the viewer is the object of that gaze and she is working more with energy to make people feel they are in the present moment. For her the artist should not have any 'objects between him/her and the public viewer, just a direct energy dialogue' but here it is in the wrong setting, being filmed and in a public performance which doesn't make any sense. The space is not intimate at all like she described it, I repeat you are in a room full of strangers while being filmed (voyeuristic spying) not really in control which is not a good place for 'energy exchange' as any good energy worker can tell you, you are actually being bombarded with other people's energy & you have her playing with you emotionally.

When I came out of the Gallery I experienced Marina Abramovich's fans; one man told me he travelled all the way from the USA to see her, they were all exulted, high. One said I have been touched by her which made me think of events of a religious nature with a Guru or Cult leader where groups can be divided into people who love the Guru and those who don't; all of this was very much present here.

It made me think of the nature of Celebrity: do they go and see her because they think she can transform and give meaning to their life or because she is famous? The people I spoke to outside the Gallery were telling me how amazing she is and didn't want to hear a different point of view.

Chris Rojek & John Frow wrote about  how Celebrity today contains significant parallels with the functions normally ascribed to religion, religious leaders. They both wrote about that through celebrities it is possible to belong to something beyond the particular culture. I think this is very much present with Marina Abramovich. Why would anybody sit in front of her on her own terms to experience being present?  If you want to experience being present you can just meditate in your own room like a lot of people do on a daily basis.. oh but this might be hard work and you are not part of anything or being filmed... The majority of people that I saw at her performance were well educated arty types like me, no average Joes in there.

As to Abramovich's performance, I am very glad to be out of her 'controlling mad chamber'. On TV she said she would have ripped of a Bacon painting; I think this just underlines that she is not appreciative of other forms of art apart from body performance especially her own. Anybody who tells you they can make you experience being present or transform your life is actually using you and your time for their own purpose and you are allowing them to do so. A lot of people take her too seriously; if you feel uncomfortable at any given moment inside the Gallery please leave, don't succumb to peer pressure.

The Time Magazine called her one of the most influential artists of our times; I think someone at The Time Magazine must be drinking or is part of her PR machine.

Key elements in her work are: role playing, staging, repetition, body art, theatre, energy work.

Body art means work in real time, they create a work of art using the body and this is available for future reference only in the form of films, or documentaries. Unless you are Marina Abramovich and you have decided to re-perform other people's work which many find unethical including her previous partner, artist and collaborator Ulay.

Marina Abramovich with Ulay

If you suffer from mental problems don't go to this 'performance;' you are putting yourself at risk if you go; don't stay too long, again you might be putting yourself at risk. Also I am not sure it is suitable if you are Autistic or for  children as they like to move about and be free and they couldn't care less about 'experiencing the void'. In the Gallery leaflet is said children under 12 are not allowed in.

My Latest Off Site Exhibiton.

In the Off site Exhibition for this year I decided to explore something new, a combination of activist, protest art, performance and street art. I have been working on a current issue: that of 'High Tuition Fees' which sadly have had a negative effect on the pockets of students across the country (we are the first group of students in the history of the UK to pay such high tuition fees, unlike previous generations who were lucky enough to get grants and pay very little in comparison). At the same time in this specific work I have been exploring the idea of Freedom and how in the West we take it for granted. I mean going around looking for an exhibition space, the other students and I found out soon that the whole of central London is geared towards making money and private business. All the public spaces (including gardens) where we thought they would be happy to have us free of charge for a day but instead told us that we had to pay a lot of money to use the so called 'public space'. We finally found a small rundown piece of land to do our exhibition called 'Free' which many members of the public really enjoyed. I had several people coming up to me asking me about the exhibition; they were very positive and interested. We  were also very sensitive to the fact that we were in a public space; we did varied, temporary work interventions, sensitive to the environment, easily removed, street art - a kind of exhibition which with the bad weather we had wasn't at all easy. With our work we hope to create a free space where one is free to express oneself at will.

Specifically in my work I seek to challenge the traditional boundaries and hierarchies both in society and in the arts; to show that art students - emerging artists - are not represented by those in power and our view point is being completely ignored, especially by the politicians in government. By doing the exhibition in the street we sought to bypass the galleries and access directly a wider audience and create a free, open, new space for us emerging artists, not normally accessible to us, and to create a new cultural space for the public to engage with. With my protest performance piece I encouraged the public to get involved with questions, generally to participate in a dialogue even if it was just to ask me questions, to break boundaries between myself and the viewer. In fact I had some people asking me questions about the slogans I had written on my banner, which was great! And asking me about the way I was dressed. I added an element of fun by wearing a bright wig and glasses and blowing balloons in the air, thinking of performance art to stimulate engagement with the audience but also to question identity, self-representation to bring change in how we view what is around us, and to show to people and myself that it is important to have a voice. Also colour is very important to me; it's a major factor in my artwork and I felt it added playfulness to the performance but it is also present in my paintings and in some of my sculptures and assembled work.

Mark Wallinger State of Britain 

I did look at three artists in particular. One is Mark Wallinger and his State of Britain; another is Gillian Wearing; but I also researched the 1960s Happenings and in particular Allan Kaprow. Mark Wallinger, whose work addressed visually the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where he rebuilt Brian Haw's protest camp with completed antiwar placards (the same as were seen in Parliament Square before being pulled down by the police thanks to the new Government policies banning British citizens from protesting permanently in front of Parliament) .... Mark Wallinger said that it was an historical reconstruction and he was making a point about freedom of expression, just as I am doing in my work with my banners and the way I am dressed and the overall performance.

Gillian Wearing's performance

 I have been studying Gillian Wearing's portraits and dramas and at her idea of performance where she is seen dancing in a shopping mall, very much aware of her amused audience, demonstrating the liberation of anonymity which in turn allows us to be more truly ourselves. I also looked at her work 1997 Masterpiece. 10.16 and the 1992 series Signs that say 'what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say' where people in the street are offered pen and paper by the artist and they can write their own message to be shown. Finally I studied Allan Kaprow and his Happenings where he interacted with the audience to create an open space without barriers between the artist, the creative experience, and the audience but I turned it very much into my own experience and individual protest performance..

Simon Hantai Villa Medici Rome.

While walking around the narrow streets near Piazza di Spagna in Rome I went up to Trinita' dei Monti. I wanted actually to view an exhibition in Villa Borghese but I ran out of steam! I managed to get to the top of the hill and see there the amazing views of Rome. I was surrounded by tourists and street vendors and it was very warm so I decided to cut my walk short and just go and relax inside the French Academy/Villa Medici in Trinita' dei Monti. Originally I wanted to visit their gardens and building because they are stunning; unfortunately I arrived too late in the afternoon and was only able to view the exhibition which, nevertheless, was very interesting. But I would recommend if you intend to go to call them up and find out at what time you have to be there as you cannot just wander around the building in your own time - you have to be shown around by a guide in your language. I have to say I was rather annoyed that they charged me the same to visit the exhibition when I couldn't view the building with the gardens. Outside of the exhibition space there was a video showing Simon Hantai at work. In the first room you were straightaway hit with his very large work on canvas. Overall the exhibition had many of his paintings in different sizes, 40 I was told by the gallery attendant; there were also smaller paintings from his period in the 1960's  and 1970's. The first part of the exhibition included the Galla Placidia (1958-1959), and the

Ecriture Rose, composed of small brush strokes similar to calligraphy. There are also works that show his famous 'pliage technique' (folding as a method) or the first Mariales, apparently his answer to Pollock and Matisse. 

Ecriture Rose

 

The second half of the exhibition includes his 'Tabula series' (1974-1982) and after that the Laissees (1981-1994). There are also works that have not been shown to the public before which I was very excited to see, like the Great Mariale (1960-1962) which was stored in the Vatican Museums and was not exhibited in France at the Centre Pompidou. Simon Hantai  (Hungarian, born 1922) became a French National in 1966 and died in 1985) He studied Fine Arts in Budapest (he was detained by the Gestapo due to the fact that he was the president of the student union in the Academy but then was allowed to continue his Fine Arts training at the Academy of Fine Arts).  What I found interesting about him is that for 15 years he removed himself from the artworld as he was concerned with his work becoming too commercial. It has been said that Hantai had to be forced to show his paintings. I relate to this, and as he said himself he always worked in the margins. 

Simon Hantai said. 'I was starting to receive commissions. I was being asked to paint the ceiling of the Paris Opera House. Society seemed to be preparing to paint my work for me. I could have obeyed; many, perhaps most, painters do. The prospect did not coincide with my desire'. So he went back to seclusion in his later years.

To escape Soviet ruling in the area he moved to France in 1948  were he met Andre' Breton. He was following Surrealism at the time but he broke away around 1955 to focus deeper on abstract art thus becoming a known voice of abstraction in post war France. His work is made of organic forms, it drips in calligraphy style; he used a spatula to spread the paint and he started working on the A Galla Placida  (pic. below) where he used the bell of an alarm clock (I found this quite funny) to take away the more superficial levels of paint.  More religious is this painting where there is an element of theology combined with mysticism in his work and it is also very gestural and the work generally is of a large scale which actually reminded me of a monument to abstract painting influenced by Georges Mathieu and abstract expressionism.

 He had a keen interest in the surface quality of a canvas and in the 1960's he was part of a group called Support Services. In some of the paintings in the exhibition I noticed that, while he was an artist with a great sense of colour, some of the work seemed monochromatic. In others, like the Encrose Rose, the pink writing is done with multicoloured lettering, combined with Christian, metaphysical undertones and philosophical text (he was interested in Philosophers such as Kant and Heidegger). 

Mariale

Mariale

 

In all his work three things are important: colour, movement and texture; in some the paint covers the entire canvas, while in others - especially with the 'folding' technique - precise white areas were left showing. Some of them make you think of the surrealist and automatic writing, others of Jackson Pollock's action painting. But Simn Hantai makes it his own - the colours in the paintings are impressive, some with a motion feel to them like scattered leaves or broken glass and an assemblage of colours, others such as Encruse Rose, composed of pink, delicate, dense, multicoloured writing. Some of the combinations of colours have a metaphysical effect while others made me think of earth elements such as water, fire etc. 

Tabula series

The second half of the exhibition include is 'Tabula series' (1974-1982) and after the Laissees (1981-1994). 

Laissees

His work is mechanical, a combination of blindness of execution (which again like in Hans Hartung  looked very precise) and a geometrical component but they also remind you of natural forms. With the method of  'folding' he didn't just use the canvas as surface to paint on he used the actual fabric and folded it scrunched and tied and he added the paint afterwards so the end result of this is a repeated pattern across the canvas with pieces of canvas left empty. This is due to the fact he was working with ideas of silence and absence, some critics say that he created a  visual silence due to him being in exile but I find his work anything but silent as the colours in some of the paintings are so strong and in your face due to the large sizes of the canvases. 

 

Frida Kahlo Palazzo Quirinale Rome, wonderful exhibition.

I have been lucky to see this wonderful complete exhibition of Frida Kahlo at the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome. From the exhibition I extracted several key ideas in Frida Kahlo's work.

Firstly she had her own personal vision of the world, she portrayed herself and people she knew, she was open about her sexuality in her painting. Through her work we can see she was questioning ideas of self love, the importance of gender, her strong link to Mexican history, ancient history and folklore; she was very much linked to the environment that surrounded her but also used Catholic iconography in her paintings and was inspired by Italian artists. In her paintings she often used an inscribed banderole (a ribbon-like scroll) and tied-back drapes as used by 19th century Mexican painters at the bottom or top of the paintings to describe the sitter in the portrait or the meaning or purpose of the painting. Also she used tied-back drapes in the background like them as you can see below. Adolfo Best Maugard and his book about bringing back Mexican art to it's native roots in 1923 influenced her strongly.

Her background is very interesting; her father was a Hungarian Intellectual from a Jewish family ( his family moved to Germany), her mother was part Indian from Oaxaca; she was a combination of European and Indian known as mestizo, meaning mixed, and most of her life she lived in the Blue House where she was born. The colours in her work are very vibrant, but there is pain in her work as in her life. I did wonder if this 'pain' aspect in her life was actually being played by her, did she see herself as a martyr or was she playing a part or was it actually how she felt? I feel more inclined on the last option as the genuine one, but I felt a discrepancy between a lot of her work, where there is strong sorrow and pain, and the photos of herself in the exhibitions, smiling and surrounded by friends - it seemed in contrast with the paintings. In her work she writes her own story. I see her portraits as visual illustration books where she shows all the important things that happened in her life or that have badly affected her, and also the people that influenced her, while also engaging with her country, Mexico, and it's past history.

She, like Diego, loved buying Mexican artifacts; she collected Indian crafts and art pieces; also she was the first woman to have tried psychoanalysis. There are drawings in the exhibition (art therapy drawings suggested by her practitioner to help her with her depression) made by Frida in her later years depicting this period. She had lots of mirrors in her house where she would observe herself as an object; reflection and duality are shown in her paintings, reflecting herself in the mirror to affirm her existence, which then gets used in the portrait as self defence; even the costume, the jewellery, the animals in her painting seem to me to show her way of affirming herself and protecting herself with things or animals she loved, as she felt lonely. I do find that her work is open to interpretation due to the different strong symbols in her paintings and one might even project one's own interpretation on the paintings, for example in the painting My Nurse (oil on metal 1937) there is a mother and child theme; some people find this moving, others think it's predominantly about fear; others think it's based on Christian iconography of the Madonna and Child. I do think too she was inspired by Italian art and Christian iconography but she turns it on its head making it her own.

 

One of the most important events in her life was on the 17 of September 1925 when the bus she was on with her then boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez Arias, crashed and she suffered terrible injuries. Arias discovered that Frida had a metal rod going through her abdomen. I have read that it was taken out by someone on the spot with no anaesthetics, awfully her spine was shattered in multiple areas, but I don't think she lost her virginity from a rod in the accident, as is suggested in some books; I think this happened earlier but she might have associated death with sex. Frida had to undergo 32 operations in her life and had three miscarriages.

In the exhibition there is a painting of Arias, and one of the buildings outside the hospital that she saw from her window. There is a self portrait from 1926, her first self portrait which she painted after her accident as she was confined to a bed and was said to be feeling bored and obviously painting would have helped her, taking her mind away from the pain. The portrait is influenced by Italian Renaissance artists such as Botticelli & Bronzino's Eleonora di Toldeo. It has strong European influence due to the longer features, the dressing gown, and smooth skin; this is in contrast with the later portraits which show a strong connection to Mexico and the Aztec culture. But one thing is unique in this portrait from Renaissance painting, firstly it was done by a woman painter, secondly the deep gaze of her dark brown eyes which is in opposition to the languid looks of the Renaissance paintings.

After the accident Frida met Diego, a communist who had serial affairs, a womaniser throughout his life, but then again she had them too, they married in 1922. Diego will be her guide in paintings, also telling her to look in the past history of Mexico for inspiration. In the exhibition I felt his strong presence both inside Frida Kahlo's painting and also in the photographic exhibition of her; he is always present and there are also his paintings, including one of them which is at the beginning of the exhibition and is called Cactus. Ella Wolfe said of Diego 'that for him sex was like urinating' so while Frida had countless operations, both skeletal on her spine and also gynaecological, Diego was continuously having affairs but it's been said he was also very affectionate, generous, and warm but ultimately I don't think she was ever able to get rid of him emotionally, to separate herself from him, although his positive remarks at the beginning pushed and encouraged  Frida to paint more.

Another thing I noticed in the exhibition, and this is about her paintings, is that she liked to paint on metal, meaning a smooth hard surface rather then a canvas which is woven; this is due to the fact that her paintings are very small. I think a larger canvas is more suitable for larger paintings. I was actually shocked about how small some of her paintings actually are, for example Henry Ford Hospital 1932 oil is done on metal during her period in the States she spent 4 years there there is one painting that shows more clearly the duality between life in Mexico and the USA where she is wearing a pink dress.

There is also a surrealist influence in her work which is clearly noticeable in the painting 'What the Water Gave me', 1938 oil on canvas,  combined with elements of Hieronymus Bosch. Her work is detailed, the iconography in the painting is sexual (two women on a mattress), combined with a bit of Gothic horror (silent expression horror movies Nosferatu maybe?1922) where her feet are in a bathtub of nightmares, a Tehuana dress is floating in the water, there is a lot of personal information but at the same time it's also self referential- is it giving a hint about her bisexuality?

One of my favourite paintings in the exhibition is the Self -Portrait with Thorns and Hummingbird 1940. Frida is looking out with sad eyes with her pet monkey (on one shoulder), called Caimito de Guayabal and her black cat. The hummingbird on the necklace stands for the reincarnation of dead soldiers, the butterflies seem more unearthly due to their light colour and are to do with mythical imagery from the Aztecs, but it has vivid colours ( see picture below on the left) unlike Self Portrait with Monkey 1945 (picture below on the right), where the tones are muted to show depression: the vegetation is dense and claustrophobic, it's dry, dead, there is no nourishment inside the painting unlike previous paintings, in this painting the monkey clings to her, she has a sad expression in her eyes.

In the 1940's Frida was ill and spent a long period in bed when she reacted by painting the Little Deer in 1946. In Aztec mythology the Deer stands for the right foot and hand; these were the parts of Frida's body that were in pain.

Again with this self-portrait she is affirming herself in the world and leaving a legacy of her story for posterity.

In the middle of the exhibition there are many photos of Frida with her friends. Between the portraits made by her and the photos I noticed she wore a lot of ruffled skirts and embroidered blouses which were from Isthmus of Tehuantepec, to show her Mexican identity, but also to hide her limp on the injured right leg.

Another powerful image is that 'Of me and My Doll,' painted in 1937, when she had another miscarriage. In the painting she is not  holding a baby in her arms but is sitting next to an ugly ceramic doll. She is smoking with her hand in her lap (defiant posture) and looking straight at the viewer, a sad expression in her eyes. Another similar painting to this one which I liked a lot is that of her and her pet dog called 'Itzucuintli dog with me', 1938. Here again she is not touching her dog but is separated from him, has a sad expression, alone smoking.  One gets the feeling by the way the animals are positioned on the canvas in her paintings that 'they can move' or leave unlike her and they offer her companionship while she is always shown as fixed, immobile, like a Goddess.

Frida's still lives which were also on show in the exhibition are full of sexual references eg 'Still life' 1942, where the papaya is half slashed and seems again a portrait of her physical body. There are also allusions to the life/death cycle, and to earth. Frida also shows flowers as female or male genitals to do with fertility, there is a yin yang presence in her work, light and dark, male and female, life, death which define the world, the sun and the moon. Duality is predominant in her work which goes back to the PreColombian notion of the sun and the moon, between light and dark, sun as in the masculine element and the moon the feminine element..
 

The self portrait of the 'Border Line Between Mexico and The United States 1932', where the sun and the moon are both present in the painting and where Frida is seen holding the flag of Mexico,  shows that her heart is not with the industrial, fast mechanical USA (the American flag is covered in smoke). Mexico and America are shown as separate spaces but  the sun and the moon of Mexico are real. Mexico is shown with rubble, exotic plants with pre-Colombian fertility idols, a country rich in history, while the USA is shown covered in smoke and machines with Ford written on it. The painting is ironic, she is shown as a statue attached to two rods one to Mexico the other to the USA but the generator goes to her and to the exotic plants.

She is wearing a sweet pink dress (the painting is very small) but her nipples are showing through the dress and she is holding again a cigarette in an act of defiance...

Frida Kahlo in one of her diaries talked about the use of vibrant colours and she described them in different ways: Cobalt blue standing for purity of love and electricity.. Magenta: the Aztec colour old Tlapali, the blood of the prickly pear, the oldest and brightest. Leaf Green: science, leaves, sadness, Germany. Yellow: madness, sickness, fear. Green: good warm light then she describes dark green as the colour of good business and bad advertising. Greenish yellow: more madness and mystery. Red blood? Navy blue, distance but also tenderness.

I will end with a picture of Kahlo's Blue House now a Museum and one of Kahlo's prose poems taken from her diary.

My Diego:                               

Mirror of the night.                        

Your eyes green swords inside my flesh,

waves between our hands.

All of you in a space full of sounds –

in the shade and in the light.

You were called AUXCHROME the one who captures color.

I CHROMOPHORE - the one who gives color.

You are all the combinations of numbers. life.

My wish is to understand lines form shades movement.

You fulfill and I receive.

Your word travels the entirety of space and reaches my cells

which are my stars then goes to

yours which are my light.

Ghosts.