A thing of beauty...

A thing of beauty is a joy forever,
Its loveliness increases it will never
Pass into nothingness...    -Keats

Maybe we all need a little joy in our lives every now and then? That question is largely rhetorical. Maybe I am getting older and am more conscious about what is happening politically in the world but in my lifetime, I do not remember a time as wrought as the one we are living in now; for that reason and the colder, darker winter days, I think that we need things that are inherently uplifting to compensate. And it is ‘joy’ that is the resonating theme present in the work and literally in the accompanying text, mentioned not once but several times, which describes the work of Albert Irvin [1922-2015] whose epic sized paintings are on display alongside his prints, early paintings and works by abstract expressionist painters (who influenced him) in an exhibition on at the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) in Bristol.

Albert Irvin -Northcote (1989) and Rosetta (2012) Acrylic on canvas at the RWA

Text in the catalogue aside, the effect of walking into the gallery containing large-scale works radiating with colour, huge, clean sweeping brush-marks in dynamic strokes and patchwork quilt-like shapes, has as an immediate impact on the senses. Oranges, pinks, reds next to greens; complementary colours zinging and dancing from left to right in an assortment of shapes, daubs, dots and strokes that, I defy, almost regardless of one’s personal taste in art, not to widen their eyes in reaction to confronting a room full of Irvin’s paintings. Colour is incredibly emotive and perhaps more-so in the winter when we are faced with less of it on a daily existence. Personally, I found the first room of the RWA exhibition to be joyous for that reason. Although I am interested at analysing whether it was a joy because of the colours in the paintings or whether that sense of joy comes from what Irvin has done with colour? It is probably a combination of both, but part of me wondered if there was an element of the Duchampian ready-made to how some of the Abstract Expressionist painters used colour. Barnett Newman and Rothko weren’t so much creating ‘red’ as though we had never seen it, as they were presenting ‘red’, a colour, for what it is. Attempting to give space or volume to something which exists but maybe we never fully notice or experience (similar to that of Duchamp putting a urinal and calling it art). Yet, I also appreciate that a Rothko and a Newman are completely different in their treatment of how they applied colour to canvas, that creates different mood and feeling; I think I am just curious as to where my response to these works lies, in the colour (doing what colour does naturally) or in what artists, in this instance, Irvin do with it.

The highlights for me are Irvin’s paintings from the 70s onwards, around about the time he started working with acrylic paint and is said he, 

‘took to their [acrylics] properties immediately. Working horizontally stopped the inevitable run-off of water-thinned paint from top to bottom, and by placing the canvas stretcher on large cans, he was able to reduce the drying time of the saturated surface…’

These paintings are deceptively simple in their cleanness of how colour is applied in shapes and layered without becoming muddied almost textile-like or reminiscent of Matisse’s paper-cuts, and it is an interesting parallel to see Irvin’s thought processes displayed in the exhibition as using coloured paper scraps to build his compositions before he scaled them up into paintings. Incidentally, the vitrine displaying some of the paper cuttings alongside a pair of Irvin’s paint splattered shoes, brushes and paint cans was an unexpected highlight. The old irony ringing true for all artists it seems that the palette used to the mix the paint is often more interesting than the resulting painting... that unintentional freshness so difficult to recreate. Though Irvin does retain some of that sensitivity to knowing when to not overdo a painting and allow certain colours and shapes space. Arrived as if by magic by anyone who has ever tried to create an abstract painting and been left with a muddy, chaotic over-worked mess. It is harder than it looks.

Kestrel (1981) Acrylic on canvas.  213 x 305

Gesture and the use of movement and action present in these paintings, such as the sweep of yellow across a pane of blue in ‘Kestrel’ (1981) gives extra dynamism to the use of colour, rendering it less static as we attempt to imagine the tool, the movement and body it was attached to that created those marks, Irvin was known for using ‘improvised squeegees’ and decorating brushes. In the accompanying rooms to this exhibition a collection of paintings from an exhibition at the Tate titled, ‘The New American Painting’ includes a Pollock, De Kooning and Motherwell whose use of action, volume and bold confidence in their approaches to painting inspired Irvin when he went to see the exhibition in 1959. Certainly, the parallels between the Irvin paintings which use a lot of black in them alongside saturated colour, such as ‘Untitled 3’ (mid 1970s) use a similar colour visual language and use of saturation as some of the works by the American painters. These rooms included a collage by Grace Hartigan who I’d previously never heard of and was like a combination of Kurt Schwitters meets Abstract Expressionism.

Untitled 3 (mid 1970s) Acrylic on canvas. 213 x 305

Irvin’s early paintings, also on display (before he used acrylics), done in oils are contrastingly more representational; depicting street scenes, portraits and still-lives. Though they are still very painterly and become increasingly abstract with paint as a medium being applied in different thicknesses, mixed with sand or scrapped and smeared (with influences of Francis Bacon and even a Futurism-style sense of movement in some) being precursors to what lead to the later treatment of paint in this very physical, experimental way. The influence from meeting Cornish artist, Peter Lanyon in Irvin’s early branching out into abstraction are also readily comparable. Lanyon’s birds-eye view mix of abstraction with landscape elements filtering into Irvin’s treatment of painting on the canvas horizontally ‘from-above’.

Untitled 6 (1975) Acrylic on canvas. 178 x 

I remember hearing more than once from different tutors during my art education that, ‘angst is easy’ and that creating art which has the opposite effect and brings a smile or joy to people’s faces is actually quite hard to do. I mostly agree with that and in the same sense I think it can be often easier to criticise art than it can be to see the merit in it or face the difficulty of attempting to understand it when it is easier to dismiss it as being ‘rubbish’. Despite this, Irvin’s paintings aren’t angsty enough for me, personally speaking; they are quite flat and need room to breathe compared to the sumptuousness and intensity of a Howard Hodgkin or scratchy variation of marks in a Peter Lanyon. Yet for the use of colour alone I cannot fail to appreciate the joy they bring.

Albert Irvin and Abstract Expressionism is on at the RWA until March 3^rd 2019

https://shop.rwa.org.uk/collections/events/products/albert-irvin-and-american-abstract-expressionism

Through a Glass Darkly

Despite her popularity I have never really looked at CorneliaParker’s work in as much detail as it perhaps deserves; until now, that is! It seems logical that on my quest to research artists that use the everyday in their work that I would have written more about her compressed wind instruments, exploded shed, unravelled spoon, deconstructed silverware and other works in which Parker transforms ordinary objects into something unexpected or compelling. I’ve seen her work in several places, so overcoming my reluctant adversity to the obvious I visited ‘One Day This Glass Will Break’ as part of entry to the exhibition,‘Women with Vision’ at the RWA in Bristol.

The exhibition features approximately twenty prints of various sized and arranged glass vessels that have been photographically captured on paper using a process inspired by 19^th Century photography pioneer, William Henry Fox Talbot; whose experimental techniques we learn in this exhibition, have had a significant and reoccurring influence on Cornelia Parker’s practice since the 70s. The objects in these images selected because of photos Fox Talbot produced featuring a similar subject matter and compositions of objects. Cornelia Parker's images to me look like drawings, they are charcoal black and hazily soft whilst holding a weighty sense of definition, so that the cut and characteristics of each glass vessel remain visible. It was almost surprising to discover that they were photographic positives, created using a process called photogravure and solar printing which are loosely, as I understand it, made when objects are placed on a plate and exposed to ultraviolet light to create a positive image of the light that travels through a glass vessel rather than of the physical vessel itself… Clever stuff!

'Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass (bottoms up)' 2016

For me, it is a philosophical reminder of the dichotomy between the illusion of objects reproduced in 2D processes and their physical known reality; I have always found the illusion of the thing to reveal more of an understanding of its shape, form, weight and ‘existence’ in terms of how we perceive it, far more than the placing of the actual object on a plinth for consideration. Whilst shadow, X-ray or ghost-like, the glass jugs, decanters and bulbs in this series of prints are a manifestation of the void spaces within objects rather than the thing itself and are in-fact an attempt to capture the image of light that passes through. Negative made positive in an almost RachelWhiteread-like move but without the literal physicality of turning negative space into a solid; these are turning a negative space into a photographic representation of a solid! There is a second layer of mental gymnastics if one also considers what the presence of the glass through which we view the image of the glasses does to how we interpret it, i.e. can we ever see an image clearly if through glass with all its reflections? The plot thickens!

'One Day This Glass Will Break' 2015

Cornelia Parker’s work often literally flattens objects, such as the trombones in the wittily titled, ‘Breathless’, so it is interesting here to see that process is used again but taken into a flattened representation and trace of the original object itself; sometimes from unusual or unfamiliar angles such as the view of the underneath or bottom of a glass or of several shot glasses stacked within one another (pictured). For personal reasons I was particularly drawn to how the image opposite looks like an X-ray of a spine. These alternative, flattened and groupings of objects are unexpected and amusing; in some ways I think they almost create a sense of animation or potentiality to their expected static presence. Parker’s work has often been likened to using actions of cartoon-like violence in their creation; other prints in the exhibition demonstrate this with explosion like areas of splatters and blots created from the artist spitting tequila onto a prepared photo plate. An abstract expressionist meets punk form of expression that turns something repulsive and aggressive into something arguably beautiful but also echoed in the title with the implication that these things will break (by age or by violence? It is left to us to decide). These double-meanings through the production, titling and execution are present in many of her works.

Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass (three decanters) 2016

Ironically the glasses in ‘One Day This Glass Will Break’ as images will never break, as such, immortalised by the photographic process. The original ones of course will eventually age, decay and break. In that way these images share something with museum-style preservation with some images even composed in a way that includes identification tags on some of the glasses. The vessels become metaphorical shadows that are both twin and opposite of its original, they represent the relationship photography philosophically has with capturing a moment in time as associations with death and mortality. The title of this post, ‘through a glass darkly’ refers to the idea that we have an obscure or imperfect vision of reality which to me seemed to fit with the ideas of 'what is real' and 'what is not' at play in these prints and the literal take that the prints exhibited in ‘One Day This Glass Will Break’ show glass which is dark, rather than light and transparent. Those were at least my initial thoughts into this body of work, maybe in time I will see things more or less clearly.

You can see Cornelia Parker’s ‘One Day This Glass Will Break’ (ticketed as part of the exhibition ‘Women with Vision) at the RWA until January 28^th. Further details on the link here:

https://www.rwa.org.uk/whats-on/cornelia-parker-one-day-glass-will-break 

Images sourced from; http://themultiplestore.org/cornelia-parker-one-day-this-glass-will-break-at-alan-cristea-34-cork-street-until-14nov/;  https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/about/touring-programme/hayward-touring/cornelia-parker-one-day-glass-will-break and http://www.londontown.com/LondonEvents/Cornelia-Parker-One-Day-This-Glass-Will-Break/074b8/

Text Copyright Natalie Parsley© January 2018

The Unbelievable Weightiness of Air

Helen Jones 'Formation' 2016 Black pigment & pastel on tracing paper.

The puns pretty much write themselves, it’s a gas, walking on air, breath of fresh air, lofty ambitions; whatever the opinion on the current exhibition about Air at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, one thing you won’t hopefully be calling it is a load of hot air. Celebrating everything aerological from the air we breathe to clouds, the wind and sky that has inspired countless poets, artists, philosophers, writers and musicians. It is the space where hearts have been won, battles have been fought, our relationship to the ground mapped and explored, music and sound reverberates, meteorological events unfold and questions on the very nature of existence asked. Therefore it is not to be taken lightly! It is no coincidence that in the central weeks of this exhibition opening that it should coincide with the Bristol Balloon Fiesta (and for fans of that there are several hot-air balloon works in the show)!

Freya Gabie 'Wind Break' 2014 Shredded plastic and glass.

With such a wide breadth of concepts to cover this exhibition features over seventy works from the 1700s to the present. At its centre is Joseph Wright’s ‘An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump’ painted in 1768 and on-loan from The National Gallery; it presents the otherwise darker but essential relationship the living has with air and scientists first attempts to understand this all too important invisible matter. It is a treat to see this painting in Bristol that demonstrates the Caravaggio-like use of lights and darks (chiaroscuro) so well, my only slight reservation is that the gallery spaces of the RWA are not dark enough to quite do the work justice. The ideas within the work do however set the thematic concept behind the show successfully, of how artists have attempted to depict this invisible element that cannot be seen but whose affects clearly can. 

Joseph Wright of Derby 1768 'An Experiement on a Bird in the Air Pump'*

The galleries displaying older works feature some of what you may expect; the romantic cloud studies by Constable, weathered sunlit sky studies by Turner as well as paintings such as Millais’ ‘Bubbles’ in addition to some of the more unexpected but equally engaging paintings such as ‘Balloons’ [1920] by Ernest Townsend that cinematically composes the scene of an elderly man and woman blowing up balloons intended for children. No two depictions the same, this is perhaps best illustrated in the battle-fought ‘sky’ paintings during WW2 in which the almost abstract power and dynamism of Nevinson’s air view of mostly sky as a representation of the battle grounds of Britain is in good company with two watercolours by (commercial reproductions favourite) Eric Ravilious who takes a more earthy and grounded view to capturing his more gently stylised almost uncanny viewpoints of planes and blimps from the ground looking up. Other highlights, to which this show would not be complete without, include an air glider abstract painting from Peter Lanyon and a Lowry with his factory-lined cityscapes of chimneys pouring out smoke; in the context of this exhibition it is a reminder of the darker relationship and responsibility we have to our atmosphere and the effects of pollution.  

 

Ernest Townsend 1920 'Balloons'

 The contemporary half of the exhibition has even more approaches to offer and visitors are greeted by a work which is amongst the only piece that actually demonstrates the protagonist of this show in action! The breeze that wafts through the central gallery space can delicately be noticed as it passes through colourful plastic fibres intentionally shredded. Deconstructed from a familiar beachside wind break, its wooden poles replaced by glass ones instead of shielding the wind, now allows it to pass through. This piece, titled ‘Wind Break’ also alluding to the pun of its now broken and delicate state, is the work of Freya Gabie and is a living contrast to her otherwise static but incredibly accomplished  series of fine drawings of dust clouds and explosions. The ability to capture air through drawing or capture some of its ‘lightness’ is explored again in pigment drawings on tracing paper by Helen Jones and in photographic collages by Ian McKeever, whose images have an immensely drawn quality to them hovering somewhere between representing the sky or sea; an idea, interestingly for a book fan like me, McKeever states as having precipitated from reading Stanislaw Lem’s Sci-fi classic Solaris. Elsewhere Annie Cattrell, Mat Chivers and Jessica Lloyd-Jones use glass-blowing and 3D printing techniques to capture physical manifestations of breath whilst Neville Gabie bottles-up the breath of 1,111 people and asks them where they would like to have it released. One of the best is Dryden Goodwin’s animation of his son’s breathing created through an exquisite series of tiny pencil drawings.

Eric Ravilious 1940 Barrage Balloon

There are a couple of works that feel have been forced into the exhibition, Janette Kerr has a seascape, arctic-based painting whose subject matter dominated by mostly sea and thick layering of paint feels too heavy in the context of this show as does a series of heavy hand-made paper woodcuts by Peter Ford. In contrast the Peter Randall-Page, marble piece titled ‘Solid Air III’ is literally heavy but has been made with a lightness of touch and the surface of the marble has a sky-like pattern to it that counterbalances its otherwise weightiness. Mariele Neudecker has a body of work in the exhibition from ‘The Air Itself is one Vast Library’ series. A film, ‘The Land of the Dead’ offers a hot-air balloon perspective looking downwards toward the land in Egypt. The work is projected horizontally, its aerial views of roads, farmland and burial sites capture the shapes and surfaces of our relationship with land making it visually one of the more intriguing works exhibited. It puts the viewer into a state of uneasy artificial weightlessness reminiscent (as observed my discerning exhibition accomplice) of Simon Faithfull’s ‘30km’ (2003) film of a camera attached to a weather balloon as it spirals upwards giving a dizzyingly aerial perspective of the land.

Alex Wood 'Discovery'

Bringing a lighter tone to the show is Berndnaut Smilde’s photograph of a cloud which was atmospherically created to briefly occupy the central hallway of the RWA and is a fleeting moment in time that reminds us of the impermanence and ever changing state of air and climate. Alex Wood’s maquette-style part ready-made models or prototypes of exploratory aeronautical vessels are playful and imaginative bringing a sense of uplifting joy to what otherwise at times feels a rather brooding exhibition. I think a bit more humour would not have gone amiss, whilst referring to breathing there was no mention of any other bodily windy attributes (perhaps thankfully!?). Not entirely content with painted representations of balloons and bubbles I would have liked to see some more child-like air inspired wonders such as pinwheels, a whoopee-cushion, a desktop fan or a Martin Creed balloon room or Tom Friedman’s empty plinth, ‘Untitled (a curse)’ which perhaps challenged or poked-fun at the concept of air and nothingness in a much dryer way. Apart from a piece by Gabie there was also a missed opportunity for more environmental pieces or works which explored the theme of the destruction of our atmosphere and/or cotangents within it, there are several artists for example who draw into polluted surfaces or how bacteria in the air creates mould and led to discoveries such as penicillin. There is almost another whole exhibition which could have been created in addition; Air II!

I do feel that sometimes the RWA doesn’t quite search as widely away from the South West, London or the academicians it is loyal to when curating shows but then maybe I shouldn’t expect it to? Nonetheless it is an ambitious exhibition to produce and there is a lot of work to be seen and comprised together in one location that makes it highly worthy of anyone’s time one breezy summer’s afternoon.

Air: Visualising the Invisible in British Art 1768-2017 on at Bristol’s RWA until September 3rd

http://www.rwa.org.uk/whats-on/air-visualising-invisible-british-art-1768-2017

Images marked with * sourced from: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/joseph-wright-of-derby-an-experiment-on-a-bird-in-the-air-pump; https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/balloons-61093