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.

BV Open Studios, June 2013

A few images here of my studio set up for open studios at BV a couple of weeks ago. This first image was taken by my friend Sophie Rae Harding and tweeted (look her up on twitter, gorgeous illustrations!). Most of my space is being used for the making of Unmade / Remade I, so there wasn't much space to play with, I showed 4 drawings (two pairs) the makings of Unmade / Remade I and Canvas Unpicked and Dipped IV.

It was a really good chance to take stock of what I'm doing and what I've got.

In all it was a really enjoyable weekend, lots of chats and saw some really interesting work. Open studios are a brilliant opportunity to see what and how people make things, the variety is incredible.

Graffiti Squares II

Some particularly logical Graffiti Squares, see original post here

Nearly Unpicked!

Almost finished unpicking the piece of canvas for Unmade/Remade I. This is part one of two unmaking processes before the parts will be made into a new something.

 

This last image is only vaguely related. I looked up at one point today and saw these light-dots. The sun was obviously finding someone's shiny dotted thing.

Northern Art Prize

I try to see the Northern Art Prize every time its on. Partly because of where I'm from but also because it always seems to be good.

The artists nominated this year are Emily Speed, Joanne Tatham & Tom O'Sullivan, Margaret Harrison and Roaslind Nashashibi.

Emily Speed
'Emily Speed's interest lies in the relationship between people and buildings' (http://www.northernartprize.org.uk/2013-prize/shortlist/emily-speed)

Speed has two large sculptures and three small, very beautiful drawings in the show. Her work has a strong aesthetic. Neutral building colours, clay, wood, grey, white. Structures are made functional, with an outside and an inside, on castors presumably for practicality, impermanence? They aren't polished and finished, you can see screws and the making. One of the large sculptures is really interesting in terms of space and how the viewer interacts with it. Outside/inside, battlements and bits of architecture you can sit on, display cabinets, models and playing. Really engaging work of the sort I like best - where the longer you spend looking at it the more you get out of it (sounds like that should happen with all work but it doesn't).


Joanne Tatham & Tom O'Sullivan
'Their work might more usefully be understood as events designed to inhabit a range of situations, activating their surroundings and cajoling the viewer into participating in an absurd kind of theatre'
http://www.northernartprize.org.uk/2013-prize/shortlist/joanne-tatham-tom-osullivan

This work is FUN. That's the first impression. Huge, bright carnival like faces as arches have been built over the entrances to a couple of the galleries. You walk through the mouths to get from room to room. The arches are overwhelming, garish and you can't help smiling at them. The faces look shocked and sad maybe. Not entirely sure what its saying other than interacting with the space and mood of a gallery, but I liked them. ('These large painted ‘portals’ highlight pivotal points at which the historic collection meets spaces in the Gallery used for temporary exhibitions.' according to the website.)
They're really carefully installed by-the-way, the edges where the work meets the actual wall are beautifully crafted.


Margaret Harrison
'‘Common Reflections’ is a reconstruction and reinterpretation of a perimeter fence from RAF Greenham Common.'
http://www.northernartprize.org.uk/2013-prize/shortlist/margaret-harrison

Not keen on this one. It's political, about women protesting against nuclear weapons that were held at RAF Greenham Common. Very literal, and pretty flat for me.


Roaslind Nashashibi
'The compelling film projection features dancers, engrossed in private rehearsal when members of the local public walk in and stand awkwardly around them. The experience is mesmeric for both dancers and intruders, twinned together in an energetic performance.'
http://www.northernartprize.org.uk/2013-prize/shortlist/rosalind-nashashibi

I loved Nashashibi's film Lovely Young People (Beautiful Supple Bodies)! It is described in the quote above. There are alot of gormless people standing around and watching the dancers with varying degrees of confusion (and saying some funny things). As a result you spend alot of the film trying to look normal, aware that you're watching something too and not paying attention to your facial expression. Its a brilliant film for people watching. 
The biggest thing for me though was that ballet dancing is hard work. There are microphones picking up the conversations of the viewers and the dancers. This means that when the dancers are actually dancing you can hear them panting and struggling to get enough air. You also see the concentration, hear the thud thud thuds as they leap and land on the floor and see the precise, fighting, strong movements. I've only ever been to see ballet once (and that was because at Junior school they took us to see Cinderella the ballet instead of the pantomime, as you can imagine we were all seriously unimpressed.) It always seemed to me like a very elegant, prancing and light way of moving, I never thought how physical and harsh it is and how powerful the dancers need to be.
I was less enamoured with her other pieces and had the feeling I was missing something, although she showed some prints from trousers she had put through a press which were quite beautiful.

My vote goes to Emily Speed or Rosalind Nashashibi. Emily Speed's work was coherent, engaging and showed the best body of work. Nashashibi's film was the best single work but her other pieces I was less bothered about and it wasn't as good a show altogether.

I do urge everyone who can to go see it, thoroughly enjoyed looking round!