Do you see what I sea?

In her latest exhibition at Exeter Phoenix, Tania Kovats dives into the socio-political and environmental concerns of mankind’s relationship with the sea. Influenced by her ongoing exploration of water and by marine biologist Rachel Carson’s 1953 book ‘The Sea Around Us’, the exhibition focuses on themes such as coral reefs, the horizon line and maritime culture exhibited through sculptures, drawings and installed works.

Bleached (2017) mixed media

Carson’s influence is quite literally and immediately present in a series of drawn book covers forensically represented and taken from different versions of ‘The Sea Around Us’, each meticulously rendered and observed so as to capture every wrinkle and fold from their wear and tear. My own personal interests in all things book-related leads me to wonder if these books all belong to Kovats or whether they were loaned, found or borrowed from their original readers? They all look like books which have been read and travelled, where have they been, how many people had read them, had the ideas they contain affected someone’s life? Books like weathered skin show the passing of time and age, a thought that I have never really previously given much contemplation to until I thought about how drawing a book cover must be like drawing a portrait, the book design itself may be mass produced but the wear of the book is individual and something of a pleasing mystery in its uniqueness. I like the idea that the physical object of the book itself can hold a relevance as much as the ideas with which it contains.  For the purposes of this exhibition however, the temporal nature of these book covers perhaps a reminder of the ever-changing sea itself, as Carson’s book reiterates, 

The Sea Around Us (nine spines) 2018, pencil on paper

‘It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.’ -Rachel Carson

Continuing with my book theme, in 2014 Kovats’ produced a book about drawing titled, ‘Drawing Water’ to accompany an exhibition the she had at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. I never saw this exhibition but found the book and remember how it reinforced my own feelings about drawing can be a ‘way of thinking’ or a means in which to lose oneself and ponder new ideas.

'I draw to find my way out. Drawing fills the space when I'm not sure what I am doing. It's my mechanism for map-making and my search engine, even when I don't know what I am looking for.'-Tania Kovats

Therefore, one could argue what better way to understand the sea or contemplate it than to draw it? A large installed drawing titled ‘Sea Mark (Prussian Blue)’ 2018 created via a series of blue watercolour dashes or horizontal pools conjure comparisons to abstract puddles or the shapes of light hitting the surface of the sea going out towards the horizon. It is no coincidence that the medium with which to draw is connected with water and only reinforces its connection to the sea it represents (a similar piece was created in a solo show at Hestercombe in Taunton during 2014-15). Displayed across a series of sheets pinned together on a wall being both a scaling-up process and a compartmentalising of elements that make up the greater whole. It is as if Kovats is saying that the sea is too vast to contemplate or depict in its entirety so it must be broken down into a series of repeated shapes until its scale can be installed rather than preconceived. It also puts the viewer directly into the work, making us contemplate our own situ and scale in relation to 'the sea' or something much bigger than ourselves.

Sea Mark (Prussian Blue) 2018, watercolour on paper

Somewhat bias of me, I have so far only focused on the drawings of what will strike many people as a very sculptural exhibition (debatably the work ‘Sea Mark (Prussian Blue)’ is almost quite sculptural in its installation). A series of vitrines titled, ‘Bleached’ 2017 containing ‘an imagined bleached coral reef’ represent a bleak and sterile view of the impact humans have on the health of such habitats. Like a beautiful, yet fragile petrified forest and a warning told in museum-form, conveys the message that these reefs are a dying and precious ecosystem that must be protected lest they become museum relics of the future. Part of me wonders if it is all too obvious in how it is meant to be read and that this work leaves less to the imagination, but then maybe it is more important that the message is clear? In a second room adjacent to ‘Bleached’ two more sculptural works titled, ‘REEF’ 2018 are more experimental. A bit like the premise of drawing as a way of ‘figuring out’ these hand-maquette sculptures made from concrete and neoprene (ironically the same stuff used to make wetsuits) are prototypes for a ‘functional coral reef restoration structure’. They are less polished and sort-of awkward if a little clumsy looking in comparison to the vitrines but as consequence have more potential in what they could be interpreted as. Potential, that could be believed as being a 'new imagined coral reef' or for those more sceptical, like me, at the very least something that is more multi-faceted in its abstraction than its linear-ness in being representational. 

REEF (2018) concrete, neoprene

The overriding ambition that the work Kovats makes intends to, ‘reflect on our relationship with the sea, and encourage more connection and agency in how we connect to the natural world’ is quite a bold statement. I do not know if I personally feel a greater connection or understanding after seeing the exhibition than I had previously, but discovering more about Rachel Carson is certainly something I am keen to pursue, particularly how what she wrote in the 50s still feeling very relevant today. Having seen other work by Kovats previously at Hestercombe, I am excited by her methods and inventive enquiries into water, the ocean and creative processes as a means of understanding and getting audiences to engage with work. I think ‘Troubled Waters’ is just that, where it achieves is that it is intriguing and unusual enough to want to contemplate but readable enough to be able to take away a sense of meaning from it. Whilst the drawn elements are important, to me at least, in stopping the whole exhibition becoming too ‘cold’ and emotionally bleak, bringing back something of the human-hand and presence to make us connect to the work more. The waters Kovats foretells may be troubled but there is hope too, perhaps, is we do not loose a sense of humanity.

  

Troubled Waters – Tania Kovats is on at the Exeter Phoenix until 11^th November 2018

https://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk/events/tania-kovats-troubled-waters/

These Streets

Nothing quite says “Happy New Year!” like the scenes of city streets or towns painted in ‘rainy’ greys and dusky pinks! If igniting some post-Xmas cheer was the intention in the timing of Michael Calver’s exhibition of paintings in the Exeter Phoenix Bar Gallery then they may be a just a little bit ‘off’ in doing so. Then again, it may also be possibly quite clever in that the dark and slushy greys in Calver’s paintings quite accurately depict some of the mood and climate many of our towns and cities are currently experiencing in the slump of Xmas and New Year festivities.

 

  As it would have it one particular dry and sunny Wednesday afternoon, I decided to visit the Phoenix to see Calver’s paintings in person... They are far from being vibrant, bustling or exuberant impressions of urban environments, they're darker and so it is quite difficult to have a sense of optimism about these paintings; their bleak and muted palette seems to dominate the feeling of the work, combined with the blocky nature in which the buildings/scenes are built-up and skewed perspective(s) leads to a sense of unease or claustrophobia. The characters present within some of the works (and the audience to some extent) become almost trapped or swamped within these environments rather than being situ within them or free to leave as they please. This quality is also what makes them so compelling and despite their less than rose-tinted viewpoint I find myself drawn to their painterly qualities, i.e. shape, form and colour. Whilst being mostly grey you could even argue there is something optimistic about them in the way in which slivers of colour occasionally sneak through the layers of paint in the form of a chink of orange, yellow or pink as a highlight or edge around a building or chink of light from a window. Sometimes they even become completely abstract, in the painting, ‘Pit’ the grey blocks take over the whole composition and become an impassable lump, mound or maze baring a slight resemblance, for me at least, to some of Philip Guston’s work in which the stuff of his father’s occupation as a rag and bone man become the subject and then abstraction for many of his paintings.

 

Pleasing in their banality like the working class streets of a Lowry or some of the uneasy realism of Robert Tressell’s novel, ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’; this is not to give these paintings delusions of grandeur but give them a context into how they may be read. Hovering between an impression of a place and the abstract they are highly imaginative but in doing so they also perhaps unintentionally paint a picture of some of the reality of streets and cities today. The way in which cities are built-up around themselves, the inner-city always threatened to be engulfed by encroaching urban renewal; cranes and vehicles; the climate and weather patterns; colours and absences of colour in urban landscapes and the characters and personalities (desirable and undesirable) which inhabit and animate these places.

 

There is also an element of story-telling happening in this series of paintings, dog walkers possibly what looks like men fighting, meetings in alleyways/backstreets, prostitution or other illicit night-time activities! Calver’s other art series’ have included immensely detailed, busy drawings know as ‘RAG Drawings’ and feature some of the characters, bustle and underlying sense of disturbance that is present and animates many of the paintings exhibited in Exeter Phoenix. It is rewarding to see how these earlier works may have fed into some aspects of the new paintings (I recommend you check them out on his website if you haven’t seen them http://www.michaelcalver.co.uk/) and whilst I may be slightly bias in preferring the drawings to the paintings the quality that I admire about them both is their darkness. The edge that the paintings have which the drawings don’t however is their ability to create atmosphere through light/dark tones, they are perhaps in that way more theatrical.

 

It feels an almost rare thing to see a painter working today who isn’t abstract and isn’t representational (generally speaking, I know there are others) when what feels to me like a large chunk of the market is entrenched with painting that fits into either of the extremes. There is something pleasing in its difference about work which combines the two. Whilst this exhibition won't do much to banish the New Year blues it may remind many that not all painting, like art need be comfortable in order to be worth our consideration.

 

Michael Calver’s Paintings can be seen at Exeter Phoenix Cafe Bar Gallery until February 6^th 2016. More details found at: https://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk/events/michael-calver/

http://www.michaelcalver.co.uk/