Graffiti Squares

More graffiti squares - push / pull / paint out / paint over / adapt / official vs. illegal tag / block / block / block

See my original post about Graffiti Squares here: http://meganhoyle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/graffiti-squares.html

English Magic - Jeremy Deller

This show is certainly eclectic, it's much more international and world focused than the title suggests. English Magic is mostly concerned with the way the world is, it's opacity and its interconnectedness.

The show seems to be in chapters, rather than a collection of separate works, each chapter is a collaboration in one way or another. Though I am sure the whole is very carefully curated and overseen by Deller, his touch is very light throughout. It's a generous show bringing in influence and control from elsewhere. As a result it feels more valid - more able to represent a country than if it was solely made by one man.

The visitor walks into a dark room at first, showing a beautiful film which has no narrative, but feels a little like a collection of memories. It shows incredible footage of (captive) birds of prey in flight, two Landrovers being crushed (one of which makes up the seat you sit on to watch the film) and footage of Deller's Stonehenge bouncy castle (which I 'saw' in Glasgow - brilliant fun!) It is a suitable introduction to the show and sets up the feeling of barely interlinked chapters which nevertheless inform and feed into one another.

The most provoking 'chapter' for me was 'You have the watches, we have the time' The title is apparently a Taliban proverb. The works are drawings by ex-soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and are now in prisons across the UK. They are drawings, either of important figures involved in the Iraq war - or the soldier's experiences of it. Some are really good portraits, there is a great drawing as if through the sight of a gun (you can see it next to a portrait of Tony Blair in the picture below).

There are quite a few 'chapters' which are imagined histories or futures. They have the effect of throwing the viewer off, the subjects of some of the other works seem less true, less real or more malleable because of them. The best example of this is the poster boy for the show - William Morris returning as a giant to throw Roman Abramovich's yacht into the sea. The mural is beautifully painted, it is photo real but has an (appropriate) dreamlike quality.

All in all it's a great show, and gets better the more time you spend with it. There are so many more works, influences and concerns than I have pointed out here (and for that reason it really suits being in Bristol Museum rather than Arnolfini or even Spike Island). Its definitely a show to go back to for me (its FREE too) and one to make sure you see if you haven't already.
English Magic runs until the 21st September at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery.

A Given Structure, Fringe Arts Bath 2014

I recently had a work in 'A Given Structure' - an exhibition curated by Oliver Adams as part of Fringe Arts Bath 2014.
Fringe Arts Bath is a brilliant annual arts festival which takes over exhibition spaces and disused shops in Bath. It is a all-encompassing, unpretentious and celebratory festival of making (I love it).

A Given Structure was an open call out show for artists who make work within a structure or using a set of rules. I showed 20x20cm Canvas Unpicked and Separated into it's 'Horizontal' and 'Vertical' Threads which was a small, framed piece. 

It was hung on a baton, part of a temporary structure built to break up the space whilst retaining a feeling of openness. I loved the way the baton spoke to the natural wooden frame of my work, and suggested a canvas stretcher.

A Given Structure was a really good show and I am proud to have been one of the selected artists. There were some really interesting works, including a video of one of the artists who went around apartment blocks, seeing how many of them had 1,2,3,4 as their door code.

There was very little colour in the show, what there was was often incidental and there were alot of beautiful drawings. Every work had a high level of finish.
Invigilating the show was telling, there were lot of visitors and most gave the show a good amount of time, with alot of people enquiring about at least one work, how it was made, or wanting an explanation of the idea.

My two favourite shows in FAB this year were;
The Charity Shop Art Appreciation Society, who were selling works they picked up in charity shops for £5. The works were shown (and sold) with a paragraph explaining what they had found out about who made to work, where it came from or musing on the subject matter.
Phase Space, a show in Walcot Chapel showcasing the work of 3 UWE students. It was a very polished show, the works were compelling, often involving movement or rhythm and infuenced each other really well.

Phyllida Barlow's Dock and Martin Creed's What's The Point Of It?

Phyllida Barlow's Dock at Tate Britain is a HUGE piece of work! It is the first work in the Duveen Galleries, that I've seen, which really fills and takes over the space. There is only one title, however there seem to be a few, maybe four or five, distinct pieces of work, or structures. It feel more like a body of work, bursting and filling the galleries with a haphazard of materials. 

Dock is made of cardboard, tape, bin bags, old bits of 2x2 and 2x4 which seem to have spent years in an art school somewhere, being used and re-used before being snaffled by Barlow. Huge patched and smashed shipping containers hover above your head, being held up by cables hanging from bashed and nailed together wood. After a moment though you realise the containers too are easy, unpreciously made from sheets of polystyrene and expanding foam. The structures feel haphazard and throwaway as well as considered and crafted. The work exults and revels in its making. It is a celebration of things made to look like things and hints and making. There is a lot to take in, the details are fascinating and the whole is vibrant and celebratory.

 

The title is a little precarious. It seems to be hinting at Tate Britain's position on the river, and the work is maybe hinting at shipbuilding with it's colossal 'steel' piping and its polystyrene shipping containers. Yet that is something vastly removed from the Thames you can see from the gallery, and any of the Thames I have ever seen as a visitor to London. The materials feel wrong for docklands (or the idea of tem at least?), they relate more to a craft shop, flippant rather than lasting and looming.

I also went to see the Martin Creed show at the Southbank Centre which was hugely entertaining. There is always alot of negativity surrounding Creed's work - for some reason people think that if they could have made something themselves then it's worthless in a gallery. But there was a brilliant atmosphere in the show. Alot of his works are simple and easily 'got' but funny, quizzical and compelling. He points put the little things, which is refreshing... and you never see that many people laughing in a gallery usually, which must be a good thing right?

MUMOK, Beethoven Freize and Yellow Fog

At the end of March I went to Vienna - its a brilliant city, very pretty to wander around and there's lots of good food, art and sunshine!

The mumok is a big contemporary art gallery in the Museum Quarter. I have never been in a building where I've noticed that it feels good before. I don't mean in terms of the atmosphere or the art, but the actual building felt good under your hands and feet. It is made out of some sort of blackish stone which is soft and warm to the touch (even inside, or in the shady bits). And walking up the stairs feels good, the steps are bumpy, they feel soft and yielding somehow and are easy to grip, so you don't feel you'll slip (polished cement floors are slippy - in alot of galleries I feel like I need to hold on..). It was also really well laid out and designed. Often when you're in a really cool building there are always details that seem stuck on at the last minute e.g signage and fire safety features. The mumok building doesn't have that - the fire exit signs are set into (and so flush with) the wall - everything feels considered.

The show was good too. Musee D'Art Moderne A Vendre Pour Cause de Faillite (Museum for sale due to bankruptcy). Below are a couple of the best works. I hadn't heard of Marcel Broodthaers before I saw this show -  his work below really stood out. As well as being aesthetically beautiful and somehow satisfying it felt dynamic, as if it was paused at the moment just before something was about to happen. The poster you can see on the wall (I think it was a poster for one of Broodthaers' exhibition) is mirrored in blank posters laid out on the table, ready to be ripped off their pads and made into copies/alternatives? 

Marcel Broodthaers

This Pistoletto work was intriguing, home/interior features in strange shapes. The white pillar you can see in the foreground is made of stacked shop-bought canvases. There were also a couple of text pieces by Bruce Nauman which were really compelling. One told you to imagine yourself pressing into the gallery wall, meeting yourself pressing in backwards from the other side of the wall.

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Top of my list to see in Vienna was the Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt. I saw it in the Liverpool Tate a while ago. Then I went in with no expectations and was blown away by the absolute beauty of the work. There are parts of it which are incredibly rich and detailed and other parts which are pared right down to a few fainter lines. It was good to see the work again. However, though it is in the building it was made for, it isn't permanently installed in the room it was made for, which is a bit annoying but im sure this is a conservation issue. It was much quieter than in the Liverpool Tate so there was time and space to look at it in more detail.

Beethoven Frieze (image Wikimedia Commons)

We just happened to be walking past this building at the right time to see Olafur Eliasson's Yellow Fog, which is active daily at dusk. Moody, atmospheric and lovely to happen upon.

Olafur Eliasson, Yellow Fog

Unmade/Remade I

Unmade/Remade I is a work I started in June 2012. First I stretched canvas over a 1m x 1m frame (I put together the frame myself - but had the wood cut to size and bevelled). I then pulled the canvas off the frame and unpicked it, unweaving and separating the threads into two piles, depending on which way they were aligned in the canvas (e.g. horizontal or vertical if you always looked at the canvas from the same side). I am now unchipping (with mallet and chizel) the frame. It is quite hard going - I think I need to get a much thinner, much sharper chizel.
When one side is unchipped I will use half of one of the piles of threads to wrap the splinters of wood together, before repeating the unchipping and wrapping for the other three sides. I am unsure exactly how the wrapping will go - and what from it will take at the minute, as with everything I'll work out the most natural way of doing it as I go.

I finally feel like I am getting somewhere with Unmade/Remade I! I'm unchipping the wood of the stretcher, it is slow work but intriguing in the way the wood breaks up, the difference between the wood on the outside and that on the inside and the knots. The knots are especially interesting - they are really tough and seem more sap-drenched than the rest of the material. They are also stoppers - when shards of wood are splintering off from the whole they stop at the knots. This was unexpected, from memories of popping the knots out of the garden fence when I was little I thought they would be slightly separated from the rest of the wood and would break out of the frame easier. 

The work feels in a good place, I am getting to work on it almost every week and have sorted a way of making drawings from the wood - which i'll chat about in my next post.

Can You Draw?

I often get asked whether or not I can draw, I usually say 'mmm no, not really' - but I am never satisfied with that as an answer and I'm not sure its true!

I do draw, I make lots of drawings, some with pencil and paper, some pencil, paper and medium. I'm currently working on some stitching drawings. It is a big part of my practice.

When I am making a large work or something which is going to take a long time I investigate it through drawing. Not always the whole work, in fact hardly ever the whole work, mostly I pick out small details and behaviours in the material. It is a way of pausing the work and pointing out the interesting bits, both for myself and potential viewers. They often don't look like much, a collection of lines, but they are a way of saying - 'look at that, thats cool' which is not as instant as a photograph, but needs less maintenance (in terms of developing/printing/framing etc.) and seems more personal, more caring somehow.

So why can I never say yes when someone asks me if I can draw? I don't often know what they're asking - scared that if I say yes they might go 'OK! Draw me right now!' and I won't be able to. I sat down recently and started drawing people from Art Review and I just get bored copying real things. I only enjoy it if it doesn't take too long and is of something I've made or for my own practice. It might have to stay as a question I can't really answer.