TATE BRITAIN: TURNER PRIZE, RACHEL WHITEREAD, EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE - V&A: SHADOW CATCHERS

Thursday 28th October was spent at Tate Britain and the Victoria and Albert museum.

My visit was primarily to see the Turner Prize nominations for this year and a day later, I have already forgotten who they are (so as far as I am concerned, not a memorable lot!). Four artists are nominated each year, this year's Turner Prize nominations are:

Dexter Dalwood
Angela de la Cruz
Susan Philipsz
The Otolith Group

Dalwood's painting is flat, but yet intriguing: it's very vivid and uses very different styles thrown together. Cubism, still life, collage like imagery: for my money, he is a very strong contender.

De la Cruz's work is also painting but she has detached the canvases from the frames and they are just 'hanging' on the wall, totally disembodied and divorced from their original purpose: sorry, not moved by it one little bit.

Susan Philipsz's voice is her way of expressing herself for this nomination: no visual art but three big black speakers in a white room. From them emanate the artist's voice and it's very hypnotising, extremely relaxing. Maybe she is trying to blur the boundaries between visual art and music but for me, this is just not enough. Even with her explanation of the work: 'uniquely evocative sound installations that play upon and extend the poetics of specific, often out-of-the-way spaces', I am not convinced!

The Otolith Group founded in 2002 by Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar, is showing an audio visual installation of a number of documentaries on various TV screens simultaneously playing in a dark room. It's all very confusing (which I suppose is the point being made as the group is questioning the nature of documentary history) but there again, I fail to be taken in by the work.

The winner will be announced at Tate Britain on 6 December 2010, so I will just have to wait and see if Dalwood is a winner!

OK, to some much more interesting stuff now:



Ms Whiteread is better known for her 3d work, looking at interior spaces.
One of her more monumental sculptures was her concrete cast of the interior of a nineteenth-century terraced house in the the East End of London made in 1993/94 which only survived a few months before the council destroyed it. She has also exhibited in the turbine hall at Tate Modern in 2006 and I remember seeing her pretty memorable installation 'Embankment' (made of many white boxes)




But this current exhibition is really special because it shows all her drawings, which is not what I know best in her work. As I am working on graph paper I was really moved to see that, she too uses this way of working out her 3d ideas. But what is interesting is that whichever colour the graph paper is (orange, red or green) she will use a similar tone of ink for her drawings and then put resin on the solid part of the object she is trying to depict. Her drawings are working drawings so show all the mistakes and re touchings and don't pretend to be anything else than plans for 3d works and seem very intimate.





I particularly liked the photos stuck together and simply drawn onto with masking fluid to give an idea of the finished product, such as her work for he fourth plinth in Trafalgar square.
The exhibition concludes with a number of vitrines showing Whiteread's collection of objects: from sticks of wood in the shape of guns, to coral as well as glass and small casts of light switches.

A MUST SEE!!

Going through the various galleries within the building, you can't but fail to notice Fiona Banner's 'Harrier and Jaguar' work in the Duveen Galleries: two enormous planes totally out of context and cleansed of all their original paintwork. Banner has always been fascinated by fighter planes and she says that she remembers as a little girl seeing them over the welsh mountains: 'At the time Harrier jump jets were at the cutting edge of technology but to me they were like dinosaurs, prehistoric, from a time before words'. She has totally transformed them from their original purpose: now they have become helplessly trapped into this space: the Harrier suspended like a trapped bird and the Jaguar turned upside down on the ground, its polished surface acting like a mirror, beautifully useless.








I finished my visit of Tate Britain with the Eadweard Muybridge exhibition, and what a visual feast that was. Though I am not a photographer, this was very informative and his photography is very much iconic and well known through images of galloping horses. He was an innovator and his studies were the foundation of cinematography.





This show is full of prints of animals and people in motion as well a landscapes, mostly as albumen prints (process dominant between 1856 and 1885 where paper is coated with salted egg white to bind the light sensitive chemicals on its surface).

There is also a vast number of stereographs: two nearly identical photographs which, when viewed through a special viewer acquire a third dimension.

What fascinated me most was his constant research into trying to attain the illusion of movement thus jumping from photography into the first moving pictures done through his Zooptaxicope (a modified slide projector).






.

Muybridge was also very good at self promoting and never missed the opportunity to be interviewed by local newspapers as well as giving lectures on his inventions.

This is another MUST SEE for any art and photography student!!

To conclude, I braved the busy half term underground to go to the V&A and see another photography exhibition: 'Shadow Catchers'.



This time, a camera-less collection of works by five international artists:

Floris Neusüss
Pierre Cordier
Susan Dergres
Garry Fabian
Adamd Fuss

This was a very busy show so I will go and see again at a quieter time: it finishes in February 2011 so plenty of time yet. The exhibits are just mesmerising and I have just spent hours swatting on all the techniques and artists.

I have been following Susan Dergres's work for years now so was not disappointed to see some of her very iconic work 'Under The Moon' series involved working with photographs of the moon and combining these with water and branch patterns exposed to sound vibrations. But I really like her 'Chladni figure', made with iron filings and just can't wait to try this out for myself...

As usual, no photos of the exhibition allowed so follow the links above to discover this marvellous show!!!

ONE CHURCH STREET - LAST FEW DAYS OF DRAWING EXHIBITION

Yesterday, I had decided to go to London to visit some exhibitions. However, the weather got worse and worse and as I would have to get wet in Town, decided to stay local and went, by car, to see an exhibition at 'One Church Street' Gallery in Great Missenden (Bucks).



The Gallery opened a few years ago and although it has had a lot of very good exhibitions since its opening, I think the current one is by far the best. It's only running for a few more days (closes on Saturday, 30th), but it is worth seeing and it definitely gives Cork Street Galleries a run for their money.
The exhibition is simply entitled 'Drawing - open submission' and has exhibits from over 25 artists. Though the gallery is not vast, all the exhibits sit comfortably apart and there is plenty of room to appreciate their beauty. The shade of works is primarily monochromatic and it is the textures which makes this exhibitions so very much pleasurable for me.

I was particularly fascinated by Kate Hipkiss' Christchurch Cathedral.



I was very taken by Hannah Leighton-Boyce's 'Notes on Movement: 'London-Berlin-Stroud'. No explanation necessary to see her journeying through different country and immortalising her way of transport with mark making on a long ribbon of paper. Dates and locations are detailed on the paper too, not sure how she managed to record that but it makes part of the charm of the piece with its mix of obvious and mysterious.





Jayne Wilton's work is always a delight to see, so expressive and touching on a subject so difficult to record: Breath.



Joe Graham's mark making on newsprint was also surprisingly mesmerising: he traces figures from the television and his imagery is then printed on newsprint and makes moving images become static again.



Both these artists won the 'best artwork' competition and will be rewarded by having a collaborative exhibition in October 2011.

I will conclude by showing you images of the which impressed me most, installation with newspaper and black and white photography by Bridget H Jackson, very neat!!



Their are many more beautiful pictures and sculptures to discover so go and see before it's too late!!

5 DAYS: 63 DRAWINGS

I am glad to see the end of this week as it has been a drawing marathon. I had set myself the task of doing 63 ink drawings of little ink 'creatures' inspired by nature, interior of the school's chapel, all the books I have now collected for my residency etc. I have worked with pencil drawings first and then inking each drawing one by one. Their small size (8x8cm) means I really need to concentrate and patience is of the essence!

I am also very pleased with my choice of subject matter as well as forms and shapes. I have no doubt that seeing the works of Bernd Ribbeck, Nano Funo, Lee Bull and Sandra Cinto at Freize, has helped me realise that drawing seems very much back into fashion (as if one is trying to 'go back to basics' and hold on to more traditional and representative work).

Here is a few samples of my current efforts which will probably be transformed in the future...:







Inspiration from nature, well, nothing new here, but if I am going for 'going by to basics' then, nothing better that nature to give me ideas...





Also using the buildings around me at school:









Close ups:





At last, the work is complete:



To do this work, I had to be very still and quiet so listened to the radio, especially an interview with Damien Hirst on radio 4, worth a listen! (click on the artist's name to get onto the link)

PREP WORK BEFORE HALF TERM

Before half term, I managed to produce a few drawings mainly inspired by the idea of the School environment being a 'living organism' or more specifically now, a multiplicity of lots of organisms making a 'whole interlinked community'. I have also armed myself with even more biology books, natural history books and photos of the buildings around and my favorite is by far the fabulous illustrated paperback version of Ernst Haeckel 'Art Forms in Nature'.







The drawings were first drawn in pencil, then ink and then water coloured. However, having read a little more about Ernst Haeckle and a research by Luke Jerram, it seems that illustrations of biologic organisms are often coloured to make them more attractive, rather than depict their real colour (if colour they have, as some are so transparent, they hold very little pigmentation in the first place). So for now on, I will leave the drawings uncoloured.

I have also done a few ceramic experimentations using paper clay porcelain, as well as photographic experiments - just trying to see what engages me visually. Before the porcelain is fired, it is hard to tell if the experiments are working, and the idea of a multiplicity of little 'beings' is really exciting. I am quite pleased with the rayograms.













I seem to be making some headway, so onwards and upwards. Half term should give me time to do some more drawings and with luck, some more ceramic studies too.

FRIEZE EXHBITION - LEAVING ME COLD THIS YEAR

I think I am getting a little too jaded about this ‘Frieze Frenzy’. So many people looking as so much work and yet, nothing feels particularly new or enjoyable (especially not the queuing, even with prepaid tickets). Thank God David Shrigley is keeping the troops entertained by tattooing visitors in return for a donation to Medecins sans frontiere. His ‘I’m dead’ taxidermy dog, still fills me with glee and somehow is still refreshing amongst all the well known artist’s repeated assaults on the senses




Frieze Project artist Simon Fujiwara’s Frozen City, also brings some humour. With his fake archaeological dig of a Roman city supposedly uncovered under Regent’s Park, he describes a multicultural and overindulged society where the art market might have been the most public space, ahhh the irony...




(Fugiwara being interviewed)

Of course there are still the top artwork from some of my favourite artists: Anish Kapoor, David Nash, Gerhard Richter, Tony Cragg , Mark Francis, Jonas Burgert





Maybe I am just taken by their work because it is so beautifully exhibited and highly crafted and maybe I am just an old romantic enjoying form, space, colour and textures but all these pieces don't fail to touch me.

In all this sensory noise (visual and auditory), I still manage to find exciting artists such as Bernd Ribbeck and his highly colourful small scale geometric paintings, Nano Funo and her graceful nature inspired paintings, Lee Bull and his brush work on leather, Sandra Cinto's powerful wave, Ricky Swallow's bronze casts of gun shots on cardboard and the most fun, Donald Moffett's 'astro turff' paint on wood:








However, even they fail to keep me happy and in the end, I just stopped all this 'noise' by just people watching: Art students armed with notebook, Italian drag queen with big buffon hair, Pink lady (a must see, she is there every year I think!), more students, more notebooks, Matthew Collinge and his wife Emma Briggs enjoying being incognito away from their studio work, students/notebooks, young beauty Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) eating sushi next to me, Brian Sewell and his tweet twin set and Roisin ‘the Irish thief’ Byrne from Goldsmiths.



I got out pretty quick in need of space and fresh air and to enjoy the outside sculptures. I was not disappointed by Gavin Turk's sleek giant size Guinea Foul and Goose Eggs as well as Daniel Silver 'The smoking Silver father figures' bronze statues with big shot entry wounds.
To round up this year's Freize I took a walk through Sanchayan Gosh - DOOSRA 'The Other Maze' image of which concludes this entry very nicely...