A Pause

Today:

I noted this: ‘We are capable of believing in things that have proven to be false’ – This may well be the title of the next body of work.

I listed to this:  http://johannhari.com/2012/02/24/the-religious-assault-on-free-speech/

I saw this:

A Bigger Picture

David Hockney at the RA

“We see with memory. My memory is different from yours, so if we are both standing in the same place we’re not quite seeing the same thing. Different individuals have different memories; therefore other elements are playing a part. Whether you have been in a place before will affect you, and how well you know it. There is no objective vision ever – ever.’ (Hockney 2009 in interview with Martin Gayford, RA)

Red Detachment

Red Detachment

With some initial hesitancy I feel the need to reflect on my latest painting ‘Red Detachment’. I don’t necessarily want to talk for the work  – it is important that it holds its own autonomy and I doubt that words will be sufficient to summarise my thoughts and feelings generated by this work. But this work has surprised me on many levels. It is as if it is has come from deep inside me and holds so many meanings with layers of personal and political histories.

I recently rediscovered a few postcards sent to me by my father from his time in China in the early 1970’s. The cards he sent to me were of the Chinese State National Ballet – in particular images from the dance ‘The Red Detachment of Women’. I suspect that he was taken to this ballet as part of the business hospitality that he received when there.

The cards always intrigued me – beautiful images of dancers in bright colours, some holding weapons and wearing uniforms leaping across the stage, some in unison, others dancing solos. Even at an early age I was aware of how different and perhaps exotic these images seemed in comparison to Western contemporary ballet.

On rediscovering these images I became motivated to do some further research in to these dances and have uncovered a number of interesting articles about these dances and their significance in recent Chinese history.

The ‘Red Detachment of Women’ was choreographed and performed at the time of the Cultural Revolution in China. It was a state supported art form and was very much written and performed within strict parameters to support government propaganda. My understanding of the story is that it is about a peasant girl that escapes from the evil landowner, with the help of a communist agent and then joins the red army to seek revenge on the landowner. Mao Zedong evidently loved it. The score was devised using a number of traditional Chinese folk songs and some of the dance postures were taken from Chinese Martial arts – when not holding guns many dancers have clenched fists in opposition to more western forms of ballet in which the hands are open and softer. There is plenty more reading that I am uncovering on this and if anyone has a film of these ballets do let me know – I ‘d love to watch them.

This piece of work has uncovered a whole new line of enquiry for me – how dance and art are used and sponsored by governments to support their own power objectives – the influence of patronage. It is a beautiful image to work with but what lies behind the beauty is complex – there is confinement and control within what initially appears to be a free powerful movement across the space.

Painting

I have had the privilege recently to see the current exhibitions of Gerhard Richter at the Tate and Wilhelm Sasnal at the Whitechapel. Two contemporary masters of paint; their ability to use it to create an illusion of an image while being honest about its materiality I find overwhelmingly seductive.

My enthusiasm and emotional reaction to these works has prompted me to dig deeper as to what it is that makes a good painting and why I continued to be enticed and beguiled by this art form. How is it that some works have such presence that they make me want to stop still and look and can even create an emotional reaction. It is almost as if they vibrate at a different pace to the everyday.

These artists have the practiced skill of being able to place paint on the surface in such a manner that it creates an illusion of an image, event or feeling that moves beyond the flat surface. A gesture that communicates so much and moves beyond what is the present. In Sasnal’s ‘Robert Smithson’ the use of black white and grey tone and brush stroke creates such a seductive image that steps beyond the materiality of its existence. The black paint of where the boot merges into the dark background baffles me. The full shape of the boot is not illustrated, it is not visible, but we know it is there. Similarly in another work  (which I will locate the title of) the leg of the figure is only made visible through the highlights, the leg is also part of the background but we know its shape through as much as what is not there as well as what is painted. ‘Kackper’ is another of Sasnal’s work that I truly think is beautiful. His subtle ability to create the illusion of light streaming through the canvas is mesmorising.

Recently I have been reading ‘Painting is not a Representational practice’  by Barbara Bolt in ‘Unframed: Practices & Politics of Women’s Contemporary Painting ed. Rosemary Betterton (2004 IB Tauris) in which Barbara Bolt analysis her paintings ‘Reading Fiction’ and ‘Reading Theory’: “…at some indefinable moment, the painting takes on its own life, a life that almost seems to have nothing to do with my own conscious attempts to ‘control’ it. The ‘work’ takes on its own momentum, its own rhythm and intensity…. The painting takes on a life of its own. It breathes, vibrates, pulsates, shimmers and generally runs away with me. The painting no longer represents, nor does it merely illustrate reading. It performs it. The painting transcends itself and becomes a dissembling presence…” (p42)

Bolt raises the question “If a painting comes to perform rather than merely represent some other thing, what is happening?” (p43). Without citing her whole article on this, which is very worth reading, I think she raises some interesting theories on what a painting does. What it performs is beyond that of paint on a surface. A ‘good’ painting, i.e. one that has the power to stop me in my tracks, is one that successfully excels beyond that of its materiality and communicates on a very different level to that of its material substance; it transmits a resonance or vibration beyond its objectness.

I am excited that painting continues to inspire me and will no doubt continue with this investigation into its perfomativity and resonance, although I wonder if language and cognition will ever truly be able to sum up our fascination with the painted image.

The Museum of Everything

Stefan Häfner

I arrived at Selfridges today with some trepidation. I find department stores, especially on a Saturday afternoon, overwhelming. Their labyrinth like qualities with bright lights, shiny things, synthetic smells and people jostling in all directions is my idea of a surreal hell. Everything seems distorted and unreal. I was relieved to find that the entrance to the Selfridges Hotel where the work of Judith Scott was on show and the discussion around ‘The Art of the Studio’ was up a separate staircase from the street.

When I entered the gallery I was pleasantly surprised by the space. It was like an industrial warehouse with exposed concrete walls and rough flooring. It seemed far removed from the commercial bustle of Oxford Street.

Judith Scott

 

 

The lighting and the surrounds showed off Scotts work fantastically. These labouriously wrapped sculptures suspended in the space seemed to tightly hold so many stories and emotions. There was tranquillity in the curation of the work that balanced out the seeming endless passion entwined in the making process of the sculptures. I felt honoured to have encountered Scott’s work.

Following the interesting and international contributions to the discussion on ‘The Art of the Studio’ I got the courage up to battle the crowds and enter the show in the ‘Museum of Everything’ show in the basement of Selfridges.

I thought the labyrinth qualities of the show suited the department store yet was a welcome contradiction to the objects being sold in the store. On viewing the show I became completely overwhelmed with emotion as I encountered the work of Harald Stoffers. I could feel the tears welling as I stared at the density of his lines of words weaving and wondering across the pages before me. It held such passion and frustration.

Harald Stoffers

“A thought, a word, a sentence, Stoffers daily art practice speaks on his behalf in letters written to a fictionalisation of his mother” was written next to these works. I could not ‘read’ these letters, they are in German, and I am not sure if I spoke German I could read them, or if they are ‘readable’. But the art of Stoffers is a language that communicates beyond the written word. It is visual, emotional and says so much more than the words written. The fact that these are letters to a mother is loaded in itself. It is almost as they represent the so many words that we would like to say to our mothers but are unable to utter. They say so much.

Sleep Furiously

Sleep Furiously, a film by Gideon Koppel. A beautiful, poetic meditation on the rituals of a small rural community in Trefeurig, mid Wales. Koppel clearly has a personal and close relationship with this community as the intimacy in this film is one of its strengths. Koppel manages to draw us into view this small community by allowing us to just observe, to see, some of the intimate passings of everyday life and the passing of time.

Koppel has carefully chosen and beautifully shot the moments he wishes to share with the viewer. The hands of a woman baking, a boy plaiting, a line of sheep in the distance traversing a landscape, a calf being born, piglets and sheep being shorn all tied together by the mobile library van.

The film leaves you with some beautiful Morandi-esque still images with a haunting sound track from Aphex Twin. An understated masterpiece and an elegy to a disappearing world.

Future Useless/ Future Perfect

The creative act or inspiration for art work usually arises from a series of ideas; when thoughts or images merge into another to produce a new image or art work. Recently I have been working through a number of methods to produce a new body of work. I have used found art works and images and have reproduced or reformed these images to suggest a different narrative to that of their past form. I have also revisited the act of painting  and colour theory and at times have combined this with the found work or solely used the method of painting to suggest a further dimension beyond the flat surface and a presence beyond the now.

To an extent this collage and presentation of ideas can be described as what Deleuze refers to as the fold; the folding inside of the outside. A simple interior and exterior mutually existing yet at the same time increasingly complex as what is present goes beyond the visible and includes the folding of time and memory.

For me there is no boundary between the works and how they becomes visually present through the making process; by presenting these ideas together I aim to suggest a continuous ‘texturology’ between the works. This idea is summarised in my ‘Fold Series’ paintings which suggest a visual presence of the fold in an abstracted form in which a ‘finite number of components produce an infinite number of combinations’. The system of geometric forms finds is own space and the use of colour and light suggests an exterior beyond the surface. The repetition of shape is not uniform and so offers and opportunity for the series to continue indefintely or break down or deviate to create a new set of visual ideas.

For a the planned exhibition with fellow artists Sophie Barr, Alice Rolfe and Griffits&Blackburn I am eager to bring new systems together in a space to stimulate further ideas and explore further the idea of a continuous ‘texturology’ as we work in collaboration to bring our ideas and visual references together under the working title of ’Future Useless/ Future Perfect’.

Quotes: Richard Wentworth – Leaning

In an interview with John Reardon Richard Wentworth is talking about some stacks of tiles he saw leaning against poles when driving in France. “The mutual leaning had a wonderful sense of intention, a wonderful repetition.” When he returned to photograph these stacks he was disappointed and frustrated that tiles had fallen over. They weren’t the same “…they had lost that decisiveness.” “They’d lost their visual weight, which was partially the power of the leaning, with the pole coming out of the top. I love leaning, a sort of purposeful repose.”

(Richard Wentworth in Mollin, David & Reardon, John ed. (2009) ‘Ch-ch-ch-changes: artists talk about teaching.’ Ridinghouse (p361)

Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘Red Desert’ (1964)

This is now firmly in the top ten. What a joy of a movie visually. I find Antonioni’s use of colour extraordinary. Yes I can see the comparisons with Morandi, especially in the title series and with Tapies. The fact that Antonioni has also painted the landscape to enhance the colour in certain scenes is incredible. I understand that some of the trees and landscape were painted black to enhance the contrast with Giuliana’s (Monica Vitti) green coat.

The rust and the reds against the grey industrial landscape stand out with such boldness and strength, it is like someone has dragged a paintbrush across the screen. The pipes and steam of the factories merge in with the fog, surfaces, polluted riverways and ships that churn past add to the tension of the narrative if not the mental confusion of Giulana.

I want to watch it again. I want to paint it. He is an artist that has closely observed the industrialisation the ‘bigger machine’ of late 20thC Italy. He has found a rich and vivid beauty in a desolated brutal landscape.

The yellow smoke lingers on at the end.

Barbed Wire

In the book Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity (Wesleyan University  Press 2004) Reviel Netz has written a history of barbed wire from its agricultural beginnings in the late 19th Century America to its military and political uses in the late 20th Century. I havent had the chance as yet to read this book but have enjoyed the interview with Netz in Cabinet Magazine issue 22.

I have been noticing barbed wire, it is used on some of the fences that have been erected around the olympic site. Fences that cut across through routes. Obstructions. The structures of ownership  control and fear.  How space is divided, secured, occupied and owned is something that I keep coming back to and it is probably a response to being a city where space is scarce.