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?