BV Open Studios 2015

I had a great time at this year's open studios. I was in the studio for the whole two days this year, making and chatting to people. It was great to get to chat at length with other studio holders as well as the public.

I was the only one showing in my studio, which meant I could properly clear out my space, putting books, tools etc in the car and squatting on another studio holder's table for most of the weekend. I showed a few different works, most finished and one in-progress. 20x20cm Unpicked and Separated into it's 'Horizontal' and 'Vertical' Threads has been shown before at Fringe Arts Bath, the rest are new. I tried not to be too precious about what I showed and where which seemed to work well.

Unmade/Remade I (In Progress/Failed), Canvas and Stretcher

20x20cm Canvas Unpicked and Separated into its 'Horizontal' and 'Vertical' Threads, Framed Canvas Threads

20x20cm Canvas Unpicked and Wrapped, Canvas

Found Things (Tower), Materials Unknown (Plaster & Cardboard?)

This is a very new work which I included on a whim really. It is not about the materials of painting at all, but is formed from a few objects I found and have been keeping in my studio for a while, thinking they fit, maybe just because of the colour. It felt quite liberating just to throw it in, and a lot of people were asking about it. 

As usual through conversations I found out what I liked about the objects and why I have been keeping them; they seem to suggest materiality and 'thingness' without actually referencing real-world objects, and I haven't made them so they seem to have been formed rather than made. It's a thoroughly satisfying 'thing'.  

Study VI of 20x20cm Canvas Unpicked and Wrapped, Emulsion, Lukas IV Oil Medium and Pencil on Paper 

These drawings are quite difficult to photograph as they are so pale (better images will be on my website soon). I love them though. Maybe I shouldn't say that about my own work, but particularly with the drawings of 20x20cm Canvas Unpicked and Wrapped, I love making them and they are exactly the kind of drawings I think are very beautiful; quite subtle and pale and not really of anything commonly recognisable.

Stitched Chip from Unmade/Remade I (I), Canvas and Paper

I enjoyed watching people's reactions to the work. For some people its just not their thing, and they walk in and straight out, which is fair enough. Other people laugh and you can see they think it is a load of crap (even though they try to pretend otherwise!) which again is completely fair. Then there are a few people who take the time to look, figure out what is going on and either chat amongst themselves or to me. I only make for myself really but it is really gratifying to have conversations with strangers who are excited, interested and completely understand what you're trying to do.

BV Open Studios

It's BV Open Studios 24th - 26th April, come and see some brilliant people making amazing and beautiful things! There will be a bar on the Friday night and cafe all weekend.

Temoins Oculaires, Isabelle Cornaro at Spike Island

Temoins Oculaires is an immaculate show. Walking into the huge central space in Spike always feels good for the soul, it is bright and feels lifting somehow, both to the work it holds and the visitor. Isabelle Cornaro makes great use of this space. She fills it with four works which serve as backgrounds and foregrounds to each other as you move through the room.

Installation view of Reproductions (#3, red) (2010/15), acrylic spray paint on wall, 290x435cm and Scenes #2 (2015) varnished birch plywood, gold mirror Perspex, stainless steel, acrylic paint on glass, 227.5x127x120cm

Two paintings on opposite walls are titled Reproductions (#3, red) and Reproductions (#1 purple). According to the guide 'they are reproductions of enlarged stills from the artist's film Floues et colourees (2010)' This film is shown in another room, it is quite mesmerising, showing paint being sprayed onto a surface. The Reproductions hold the viewer in the same way, they are textured rich surfaces you could stare into for hours.

Detail of Scenes #1 (2015) varnished birch plywood, gold mirror Perspex, acrylic paint on glass, 220x96x70.5cm

 In the middle of the room are two satisfying, slick sculptures which are like totems with bare, painted or covered surfaces. This room, with it's hinting sculptures and paintings referencing other works and other surfaces, seems like an exploded version of Cornaro's three other Scenes works, which are spread throughout the wide corridors circulating the central gallery.

Reproductions (#1, purple) (2010/15), acrylic spray paint on wall, 290x435cm

The Scenes read like 3D paintings, they are obviously supposed to be seen head on and are placed with their 'backs' hovering just off walls. You feel the need to walk around them, see around the objects and view them from the side just because they are objects. But the works themselves reject this, giving you nothing but what you can see from the 'front'.

Scenes #5 (2015) acrylic paint and varnish on MDF, Fabric Bakelite, miscellaneous objects,  200x320x200cm

According to the guide the Scenes 'could be described as physical representations of the act of watching'. They have a very particular aesthetic, deep colours, shiny surfaces which look like they could be furniture veneers, and domestic objects. They put me in mind of a 70's home, they also speak of film sets, stages and pop-up books somehow.

Scenes #3 (2015), acrylic paint and varnish on MDF, plastic laminate, miscellaneous objects, 150x320x238cm

I lingered in the final room for a while. Here three films play out, all using the objects or materials seen throughout the show and all mesmerising. They 'investigate concepts of accumulation, symmetry and entropy' and do seem to be concerned with the act of looking and watching. I get that from these films more than from the sculptural works. 

The works are beautifully made and ask you to linger around them, they have such strong personality and presence (especially the Scenes) that they seem to be looking back at you. If you can get to see the show this weekend I highly recommend it. 

Temoins oculaires, Isabelle Cornaro is at Spike Island until the 29th March. 

Pipilotti Rist at Hauser and Wirth, Somerset

Jenny and I went to check out the Pipilotti Rist show at Hauser and Wirth Somerset, Stay Stamina Stay was absolutely gorgeous; rich and mesmerising.

There are three works by Rist, an outdoor installation and two large scale videos. Mercy Garden runs along two perpendicular walls in a huge dark room. The floor is covered in sheep skins and the video is incredibly tactile and sensual, you can feel everything going on on screen. We watched the video through more than once and could hardly tear ourselves away.

Sleeping Pollen was a more complicated installation, consisting of mirrored globes or pods which slowly revolve. Some were passive, but others had projectors inside them. As the pods move around the videos slowly travel across the walls and become distorted. The videos were of plant life and it was like being underwater. Everyone in the space moved slowly, but kept moving, it was a fluid and calming room, truly immersive.

Having seen the Turner Prize show this year the Pipilotti Rist show brought back my faith in video art. The Turner Prize works were all incredibly sterile and intellectual, it was so good to see videos which are absorbing, transcendental and which really grab and hold you.

There was also an installation by Rist outside the gallery, Hiplights were pants hung over lights whimsically strung like bunting in the courtyard.

In addition to Rist's work there were two other, smaller shows. John Chamberlain with mangled Gondolas and great poems and Richard Tuttle with some small sculptural sketches hung on the wall. The Richard Tuttle works were the kind which just inspire you to make.

Overall Hauser and Wirth Somerset is a great place, it's in a beautiful setting and has a garden. Interior is lovely too very tastefully and perfectly renovated and there's a shop and bistro. It sparked a few conversations around accessibility (in that the visitors all looked like art students or part of the wealthy Somerset set) and comparisons with Yorkshire Sculpture Park which is much more accessible and pulls in a huge, diverse crowd. YSP is much more established though and is a public space, rather than a private gallery. In all H&W Somerset felt very generous, it was a great day out & we'll certainly be regulars. Perhaps more people just need to know about it?

Barcelona; Arts Santa Monica, MACBA & Sagrada Familia

Arts Santa Monica

There were three shows on at Arts Santa Monica when I went, a small one of Isabel Banal i Xifre's table top works, one on drawing, and another looking at scenery

The table top works were my favourite, it was the kind of room which throws up alot of questions and I felt like I really wanted to chat to the artist and discuss why the works weren't on the floor or shown in another way. I felt like I trusted her judgement too though, so it was a tiny room with only 5 works but was really engaging.

Trace, Drawing as a Tool of Knowledge, was set up beautifully. It was split into four themes and each theme had a room to itself, separated by plastic curtains, that you had to push through to get into the new room.

Drawings were shown on the wall and underneath glass on tables, allowing a lot of drawings to be seen together. It was easy-viewing, the number of drawings on display meant I glanced through all on them but only really looked at the ones which grabbed me. 

Tale of the Beautiful False Things looked at scenery. A couple of the works stood out to me; there was a video work I'm sure I have seen before but can't remember where, about children playing and the way they affect and interact with their environmant and each other. It is always strange seeing a work you have seen before in a different city at a different time, it is a little disconcerting as you always have a different opinion of it, or realise you have misremembered it. 

Pictured below is the work I liked the most, unsurprisingly for anyone who knows my work. It is (translated) 'Painting of Olot which has Given Olot it's Image Back' by Perejaume and consists of a canvas (presumably painted on) which has been dismantled, and presented in a perspex box with the title. I felt my lack of Catalan here though as I couldn't read the title at the time, and as you see it's pretty integral to the work. 

MACBA

The MACBA is a great building - not necessarily from the outside, but the atrium is lovely - it's a huge white, bright space. There's a great Lawrence Weiner work running the length of the far wall and the way up to the galleries is a series of slopes against the window. There is a huge sense of space and light.

Aside from the atrium I wasn't so taken with the MACBA as a space, it was very awkward to walk around. If you go to, for example, any of the Tates - you walk around a show and are thrown back into the atrium at the end. At the MACBA however you go in and out of rooms, start in the middle one, have to find the next and then walk back to find the last room. It's quite distracting when you're trying to look at a whole show. It's also interesting to note that the invigilators in MACBA are more like security guards than invigilators, there to protect the work than answer any questions on it, they certainly seem hired out and unapproachable. 

The image above shows a room that was tucked away at the end of the atrium. All the works in there were replicas and you were encouraged to 'approach the collection with your senses'. This was a great thing to be able to do, and it felt really strange to be asked to touch works on display! I got alot out of it and think it would be a geat thing to tag on to most shows, a room of replicas you can touch and engage with in a different way.  

The shows I saw were- Oskar Hansen, Open Form; The Immaterial Legacy, An Essay on the Collection and Art & Language Uncompleted.

Oskar Hansen, Open Form was interesting and I liked the way it was laid out. One of the pieces told of a polish apartment block, when it was being built the authorities had allowed the future residents to draw where they wanted the dividing walls in their apartments, so they could make the kitchen/living areas bigger/smaller as they liked. Unfortunately though when the block was finished the residents were assigned flats on a random basis, and so didn't get the one they had designed!

Above is a work I really liked, from the The Immaterial Legacy show. It seems incidental, almost escaping the gallery and squashed into a corner. I enjoyed looking around this show, it seemed relevant to MACBA and so to the city I was in, it was accessible and had some great works in it.

Art & Language Uncompleted looked good (see image above)- but was really dry, too much writing and way too high brow, I just wandered through the rooms and wasn't at all engaged. This was a shame and a huge mistake on the curator's part I think, especially as I glimpsed a couple of lovely, funny works and the last room was great but by that time I was bored and a little disillusioned. 

Sagrada Familia

Whenever I have seen images of the Sagrada Famillia it mostly looks disorganised and a mess of carved, bleak stone. However that's not at all what it's like in real life, there is so much colour both inside and out, and the views from the towers are great. It is however a bit of a tourist scrum and moneymaking machine, not even almost a place for contemplation and quiet reflection!

In life the building is lovely, there are coloured mosaics on the outside and the inside is drenched with colour from the stained glass windows. The detail is incredible, everything is designed and decorated to within an inch of it's life, but in a quite beautiful, clean and elegant way. 

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.