Balcony Drawings, 2018 - 2020

Sea twine collected, unplaited and redeployed I, January 2019

Melanie Smith, MACBA

Some thoughts / notes

Coloured light - bathed rooms in a glowing mood. 

Loved the title 129 Thoughts on Insubstantial Subjects and Matter as if works are in progress and can be physical thinkings - can relate to how I make and also pushes back against the idea that works in places like the MACBA are finished, done and raised onto a pedestal, they are still part of a continuum. 

Liked this work in terms of installation and subject. Found photos which inspired the work projected on the wall at the back of what feels like the 'main installation' - viewer nudges into the corner behind the work to see them - honesty in that all parts of the piece are exposed - the inspiration and the workings of the installation. Paintings, lights, mirrors and a film of a performance in another show - recycled, self referential but in a whole world/idea/work creation way.

Gorgeous and beauttifuly made small paintings hang throughout the show - referencing history or architecture - seems to anchor the show, punctuating the photos and installations with works where you can see/believe more easily the time spent making them - building up and paring down layers. 

Great installation of film throughout - each in a different way and with seating that reflected the work. I and a friend have been talking about art-film-seating - when films are so long why an uncomfortable wooden bench? and only space for four people- esp if in a dark room. Memory of watching Derek Jarman's Blue at the serpentine, bathed in blue light and on bean bags we sat for ages and absorbed - same as with Pipilotti Rist at Houser and Wirth (sheep skin rugs?) Here with Smith, the whole space, including the seating, is thought of and references the content of the film.

Loved this room, thinking on painting. There were a series of smaller paintings on the wall adjacent to the big painting, of scenes from Hieronymus Bosch's painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. The huge painting includes the same drawings/copyings, but configured together. Carpet with a giant ear on the floor in front and the studio light pushing a pink circle on the wall, tinting the room. 

Still that honesty, everything well considered but visible as objects / installations / sculptures. 

Group of women taking photos for each other. Each woman would give their phone to a friend and go and pose in the light - sharing a scarf as prop. Their own phones, not keeping cool pics of their friends. Others acting as onlookers or waiting their turn. Overt. Instagram? Intrusive, invading the work for something unrelated -backdrop, or just using and looking at the work another way, not so precious. 

Patti Smith and Liverpool Biennial, talking

Brossa Poetry, MACBA

Fantastic show, the best section consisting of 'visual poems' on sheets of A4 paper. The works are displayed pinned to the walls or at eye-height in frames, allowing the audience to see both sides of the drawings. Great, un-fussy and matter of fact display. 

The poems are gorgeous visual gestures and playings. Cutting, sticking and inserting, playing with the paper as a three dimensional object. Often including newspaper type or cuttings as well as tickets, string, pins, matchsticks and other ordinary items. There are also some more traditional poems and some small sculptural works. 

Lack of Catalan wasn't a problem, though I would love to read some of his other poems and even in the drawings there were titles and a few incorporated words, only a few of which I understood. 

Odd to call them visual poems - like a different way of looking at drawings- not as drawings but more abstract, as ideas rather than gestures perhaps? Or maybe just drawings by a poet.

Definitely a show to mull over on a second visit.

Also two other great shows on at MACBA at the moment:

Beneath the Surface. Works from the collection looking at sculptural paintings, including the gorgeous Derek Jarman film Blue

Rosemarie Castoro, Focus at Infinity.

Inventory of Behaviours

David Salle at CAC Malaga

CAC Malaga is a confusing space. It is one single storey building, I found myself walking around what I think were three separate shows, but the layout meant it was not easy to tell where one show ended and another began. It would be impossible to go and see one show without walking through another. I don't think this should be an issue, but it caused mild confusion as I was looking at the works.

David Salle paintings were in the first space and were genuinely engaging works. They seemed to be looking at both subject matter; narrative and form and also at the actual stuff of painting; playing with the canvas, cutting and filling holes and shapes in the surface, jigsawing works together.

The first painting to catch my eye was Charge! This was a colourful war painting, painted loosely and looking like a copy of something much older (there's probably a reference there that I didn't get). The whole painting is overlaid with Yves Klein -like prints of female bodies, pressed onto the image. The women look as if they are swimming, stretching and some are in the fetal position. The body prints have loose pencil lines around them, as if they were planned very meticulously and sketched out first. They made me think of an extremely physical making process, the loose painting of a large canvas and the manipulating the work and the bodies to print over it. The fact it was painted first, already invested with time, makes the printing process much more intriguing, presumably a messy difficult thing which can't go wrong. I am still questioning the imagery; a war scene (male) with impressions of nude female bodies masking the original image.

Other Salle paintings were more domestic, and more looked like copies of older works. These had parts of the canvas cut out, and (one coffin-shaped) other stretchers jigsawing into the gap. I really enjoyed looking at the works and feel like I need to see another Salle show to work them out more. They were very successful paintings for me.

The other interesting thing in the CAC was an installation by Kimsooja, Lotus: Zone of Zero. Lotus lanterns are hung high up in a grid and there is audio of melodic chants. The lanterns are a deep flesh-like purple, when you're walking underneath it feels comforting, womb like. The installation of the work misses it's mark though, the rectangular grid doesn't mirror or in any way take into account the triangular-ish shape of the room. The work feels as if it was moved from another gallery and installed in exactly the same way.

Sigh, Sam Taylor Wood at Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao

Watching Sigh feels absurd, mesmerising. It was the stand-out work for me at the Guggenheim this weekend.

The film is shown on a number of screens arranged in a circle, so the viewer stands surrounded by the different sections of the BBC Concert Orchestra. We can hear a piece of music, specially written for this work and inspired by one of Taylor-Wood's earlier pieces. The BBC Concert Orchestra are playing, without their instruments. The members of the orchestra are dressed in ordinary clothes (no concert-black) in what looks like a warehouse space. They are stern, absorbed in their playing. They mime the in-between gestures, the taking on and off of parts, the relaxing/limbering up of the mouth. Some forget to hold their instruments when they're not playing, their hands resting open on their knees. It's a beautiful collusion between 'serious professionals' and seems like magic at times, the drummer mimes a sound and it appears.

Here is a short video of San Taylor-Wood talking about the work, with some clips of the work itself. Here is a link to the write-up on the Guggenheim's site.

Thomas Bayrle thoughts from Ice Cream, Phiadon

When did it start?

'It started early. Gottfreid Semper's phrase "All construction comes from weaving" really bowled me over. All of a sudden the material / canvas in front of me was more than just a textured, flat, woven surface. Now this texture was a relief, a three-dimensional flat sculpture. Long before I'd heard these words, I'd been amazed by the repetitive ups and downs rendering the most delicate single thread into a firm, integrated collective structure. The body, an atlas, linen etc were all fabrics, the sight of which would trigger images in me of endless cityscapes, in which I could and would live myself. Materially these fine structures also provided an acoustic connection to the great big lilting 'sing song' which was even more important for me: the rosary, the rhythmic time signature of railway sleepers, Steve Reich and the beat of heavy diesel engines.'

Thomas Baryle, questioned by The Wrong Gallery.
Ice Cream Contemporary Art in Culture, Phiadon Press Ltd 2007

100 pieces of sea grass individually knotted and released into the wind

100 pieces of sea grass individually knotted and released into the wind

Performance, Playa del Magdelena, September 2016

Goodbye studio!

I'll miss the thinking and playing space, whiteness and distinctive utility boxes. Hopefully there'll be a mark II somewhere down the line.

Sweeet

Sweeet

Street drawing, seen on East Street Bristol, May 2016

John Akomfrah, Vertigo Sea at Arnolfini

Akomfrah's show consists of two videos; Vertigo Sea, which was shown at the Venice Biennial in 2015; and Tropikos, a new work. Vertigo Sea is phenomenal, incredibly beautiful, haunting and enveloping. It is a three channel film made up of archival film and photographs, it references Herman Melville's Moby Dick, but the re is much more to it than that. The film looks at the sea and humanity's relationship to it, as a space to travel from one country or situation to another; and as a secret, lawless place where animals and humans can be hunted and exploited. The audience is shown the majesty and awe-inspiring beauty of the sea and it's potential as a space of horror, desperation and suffering. Vertigo Sea is not unpleasant to watch though, it holds you, drawing out feeling and empathy and seducing the audience.

Tropikos is much less grand and seductive than Vertigo Sea, it appears to holds more of a narrative and therefore wants 'interpreting'. It's a little like a silent period drama; all the dialogue has been cut and we're left with the in-between shots, but that's not quite right, because the work feels like a container for huge ideas and thought; the characters are trying to imbue the audience with these ideas. It's big and heavy, worth absorbing and considering.

I was lucky enough to see John Akomfrah in Conversation with Anthony Downey last weekend. It was a brilliant talk, both Akomfrah and Downey were eloquent, interesting and completely generous with sharing their ideas and thoughts with the audience. The questions/comments from the audience were similarly generous, making the whole thing a complete delight.

Vertigo Sea is open at the Arnolfini, Bristol until the 10th April 2016.

Material / Control, Redcliffe Bridge, Bristol

Material / Control was a collaborative, artist led exhibition co-ordinated by myself, Polly Kelsall and Emily Krainc. Bristol City Council kindly gave us the use of the gorgeous, brutalist Control Room on Redcliffe Bridge for just under a week.

Kelsall, Krainc and I created a truly collaborative show, we worked in the space throughout the week. All work had to respond to the Control Room and it's environment, or each other's work. We followed these parameters as we edited and changed the work in the show.

• On leaving the space each day, anything made or left belongs to Material / Control 

• Each edit must reference the space, its content, and/or it’s environment 

• Make new connections between objects, images and works 

• Add or remove 

• Nothing will be permanent 

• Nothing will remain unchanged

We kept a blog throughout the process; from planning and preparation to the final day. It was used to document changes, consider and highlight work and in some instances to present work. You can see my text works reproduced in the previous post to this; they were first 'exhibited' as blog posts at material-control.blogspot.co.uk 

Material / Control, for me, felt like a genuine conversation. It pushed me out of an established way of making and into something which was much more iterative and quick-fire; working with objects and works in an instinctive way, rather than being very thought through and self referencing. I also got to make pieces which were very much my own works, but in a different context and as a way to describe a space. 

Despite our best efforts though, each of us couldn't help feeling a little protective and a little put out at some of the interventions by the other artists. It is hard to let go and on my part there were a few re-arrangements and a few patches of colour that were frowned at and quickly changed. Maybe that was cheating, and it was fun to chat about that feeling in the end - I think we all felt at least one piece or arrangement had been 'ruined' by one or other of us!

The show became a series of call and response gestures. It showed more than anything how three artists can notice such a range of things about a space, and then bring out these things in wildly different and personal ways.