Discoveries Aplenty but Geology Exhibition needs to Dig Deeper!

‘Marking Time: Geology 2’ at Watchet’s Contains Art may have ended but for those of you who missed it, this week’s post aims to unearth and discuss some of its exhibits...
 

Moments in Time display of research materials at Contains Art

 ‘Marking Time’ continues where it left off in 2015 as the, culmination of a 2-year creative development project in which six local artists [they are; Alison Jacobs, Melanie Deegan, Sue Lowe, Angie Wood, Lucy Lean and Andy Davey] have met regularly, ‘braving the mud and tides to explore the full extent of the beaches and coast around Watchet’...and learning more about the processes such as erosion and weathering that formed the coastline to inform and inspire their work. Looking at fossils, ‘fossil tourism’, geology, mapping and woollen manufacture the exhibition featured an array of practices from print-making, casting, painting and drawing to paper-folding, hand-spun yarn and more.

 

Alison Jacobs' ammonites made from Geography notes 

The strength of this exhibition was in fact that there were so many different components to look it. The shipping-container space that is Contains Art, became a walk-in cabinet of curiosities with not only the works produced by the artists on display, but arguably in some cases more interestingly, the books, sketches, maps, paraphernalia and fossils themselves collected as part of their research (pictured). I am a firm believer that the ‘research itself’ if done well enough can become the ‘art’ itself and unfortunately there aren’t enough occasions when one actually sees this exhibited in Somerset; I loved looking at the books, fossils, sketchbooks and curiosities displayed on shelves within this exhibition. It said a lot about the interest, passion and depths to which the group of artists had researched geology and the coastline of the surrounding area. In-turn the connection this research had to some of the individual artist’s responses was clear.

 

Andy Davey

 Angie Wood’s earthy paintings (literally, she uses the local earth she collects) have an authenticity of the weather and elements that shape and age much of the Watchet coastline. Melanie Deegan casts large ammonite fossils and sculpts rock formations out of corrugated-card. Andy Davey (pictured) maps the patterns found in the erosion and texture of coastal formations whilst Sue Lowe (pictured) creates collographs based geological layers and textures. Visually these works are engaging and interesting pieces but I feel the weakness in this exhibition is in that, where some pieces touch upon ideas of erosion, layering and excavation that comes with geology and formations of the coastline,

Sue Lowe

they do so in little depth and so in some ways feel more aesthetically pleasing or obvious rather than really exploring much deeper. Or in some ways they feel so personal to the artists who made them that it is hard for the viewer to get anything else from the work.  Some of the colours, ideas and processes that inform the work could have been developed further to create work that was either more site-specific or referenced ideas of geology, weathering and erosion found in other places.
 



Lucy Lean

Elsewhere this is more evident, Lucy Lean spins yarn using local rocks as spinning whorls, her work exploring the human-response to the ancient local trade. She is looking at the primordial nature of ancient processes and human connections with the materials found in a place. The pieces made from this yarn are tactile, totemic, of-the-hand; their yarn having symbolic connections to the passing/threads of time. It makes you think about the physical passing of time and I personally like that it is less direct making the viewer relate the concept of time to the human relationship to craft and the land. It’s enjoyably unexpected.
 

Alison Jacobs

My favourite pieces from this exhibition however being Alison Jacob’s ‘Face’ magazines (pictured) in which she has cut the pages in coastline-like waves to create coloured layers that recede mimicking the geological layers on a map. I like the way these works take a modern and existing object and apply a geological idea to it; the magazine and its cultural history being excavated as stone and soil is -all we see being fragments and glimpses of past histories rather than the 'full-picture'. It brings, like Lucy’s work, a human-element to it that makes it more relatable and suggests the passing of time. Here we have something that was once disposable now being considered as a typological object; it had me thinking of other places we can find other ‘geological’ processes such as layers in billboard, peeling wallpaper, weathered or buried surfaces etc. In another paper-based piece Alison has transformed her Geography degree notes into a sea of origami ammonites (pictured) that neatly line the top shelves of a museum-like display cabinet like precious specimens before spilling out into a disorganised heap on the floor. It’s a thoughtful transgression of our relationship to studying and the paper it accumulates from being highly valued to lining the floors of many a student bedroom. They make you smile and are surprisingly interesting each individually as well as making up the bigger whole.
 

‘Marking Time’ achieves much and does not disappoint in the breadth of treasures it contained; it is rewarding too, to see the research and passion of the participating artists displayed as part of the exhibition as a whole. How that research has then manifest itself in some of the work is perhaps where I am more critical, some of it feels a little obvious or would, ironically perhaps benefitted from more time in allowing the ideas in this work to develop. Even so there is much delight to take from the skill and visual and aesthetic appeal of all the work. For the serious fossil hunter (as with the art in this exhibition), finds found deeper in the earth, in the tricky places that may be hardest to reach are often greater as they are rare.

‘Marking Time-Geology 2’ has ended but visit http://www.containsart.co.uk/ for news of more ‘Contains Art’ exhibitions!
 

Hollow Talk

Pardon the pun but it is hard not to sound sappy when talking about KatiePaterson’s experientially and aesthetically pleasing art work, ‘Hollow’ installed in the grounds of Bristol University. Containing 10,000 tree species formed into a man-made hollow that is encased within a Douglas fir structure; the piece is described as, ‘a miniature forest of the world’s trees’. It’s a macro concept on a relatively micro, or bodily-sized scale. Visitors are invited to enter ‘Hollow’ and contemplate, see, touch and experience the colours, textures and smells of many species of trees, samples of which, we are informed, ‘connect across time and space.’ They certainly do come from all over the world and contain fossilised samples over 390 million years old. It is important that it is bodily sized (the piece comfortably fits 1 to 2 people at the same time) as it allows for a more grotto-like and intimate experience that forces its viewer to get-up-close within the work.

 

Inside 'Hollow'

The collection is impressive and it certainly is an immersive experience, but for all its initial wonder and difference, these romantic notions are in fact driven by something altogether more scientific. It crosses disciplines, Katie Paterson as an artist working in collaboration with students studying Biological Sciences at Bristol University and architects Zeller and Moye. This is refreshing and I think artists working with scientists and architects generally is a mutually beneficial relationship; here in ‘Hollow’ it becomes as much about archiving tree specimens, designing a ‘space’ and ‘creative responses to illustrate how trees influence our experience of the planet’. I'd previously seen a piece by Katie Paterson in 2014, titled 'A History of Darkness' in a fantastic exhibition 'Curiosity'* in Cornwall; this piece archived 'darkness' in the form of slides of the night sky. Here, Paterson applies that same treatment of uniformity and archiving to tree specimens. 

 

There is much to marvel, walking into ‘Hollow’ is to discover a cave-like stratum and experience a muted silence, softened light from holes in Hollow’s canopy and smell from the world outside. As a structure it is a quietening, almost cathedral-like space in terms of the reverence the surprise of stepping into it causes.  After this subsides however its lasting resonance or deeper connection with the trees and how they influence our experience of the planet feels somewhat lost. ‘Hollow’ works as a man-made museum or collection of tree species, the samples within it are mostly rectangular or square cuts but formed into something that is mimicking a natural form.

 

This makes it non-comparable to an actual lived-experience of being in a woodland glade and is therefore hard to relate a machine cut sample of fossilised tree to its history or once living relationship with its environment. We are told some of the trees it contains are of great significance, such as an Indian Banyan tree and a Japanese Gingko from Hiroshima which is a wonderful thought, but these samples have become so detached and altered into their now man-made forms that they become mere building blocks in a larger work. Some may look at this as humbling or a reference to a philosophical concept of all these remarkable trees being altogether a part of one bigger whole that is a statement on ecology and diversity. There is a DNA, building block-like element to ‘Hollow’ which certainly backs this idea up, however for me personally I feel it has less impact now that the characteristics of the original trees has been unified into a form that can be used for construction rather than building something that displayed their more individual and natural forms. Unlike, 'A History of Darkness' the significance and endeavour of collecting these samples is lost with the overall impetuous of the work becoming more about the 'space' and structure rather than the collecting or feat of having 10,000 tree samples -an opinion that I am sure will divide many. The idea of time and age within these samples is hard to gauge and as mentioned previously I struggled, once the initial wow-factor had subsided, to have any lasting thought on the significance or importance of trees from this work.

 



Outside view of Katie Paterson's 'Hollow' at Royal Fort Gardens, Bristol.

These are dead trees, harvested trees and so do not respond, as you’d expect, like living trees that sway and crack and creak in the breeze. It’s beautiful and disconcerting at the same time and made me ponder the question of whether it is possible to ‘preserve something that’s already dead’? Scientifically perhaps, yes you can, but I am less sure of ‘what’ is actually being preserved in ‘Hollow’ as these are samples of wood and not the seeds or living tree itself. Perhaps like most museum collections ‘the act of preservation’ is not in the artefacts themselves but in the educating through the artefacts that leads to and promotes preservation and ecology of living things. I speculate.

 

 I enjoyed this piece but feel it lacks permanence, to what I experienced as a more visual and immersive form of organising or sampling tree species rather than an environmental or human connecting to or relationship with/how trees influence our existence. Like being inside an entomology cabinet rather than looking at one, you could not appreciate the true scope of diversity and range of trees when transformed into one large structure.

 

‘Hollow’ is open at Royal Fort Gardens at Bristol University during daylight hours. For more info visit: http://www.hollow.org.uk

 

*http://spannerintheworkz.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/nosing-around-in-newlyn-and-penzance.html

You're in for a big surprise...

“‘Madame Bridgette’ by Clare Woods is another example of an artist enjoying paint as a medium and is one that you really have to see in the flesh to get a sense of its sumptuous colour and thick, intense glossy sheen created by its metal surface and use of gloss/enamel paints.”

 

'Madame Bridgette' (2005)

It isn’t everyday that one gets the opportunity to quote oneself from over ten years ago! This observation was taken from an essay I wrote about the John Moores Painting Prize in 2006. It was my first (of what has become a customary tradition) visit to Liverpool and the Biennial whilst a student in my first year of my Fine Art degree. Fast forward ten years and here I am writing about my third encounter with Clare Woods’ paintings whose solo show has just opened at Taunton’s Hestercombe Gallery. The quote is important, not just sentimentally, nor in its apparent use of stating the obvious, but taps into a time when I knew a lot less about art so was more instinctive and open-minded in my opinions –something that I am ever conscious of trying to in-part retain.  

 

Therefore, I stick by you, slightly grammatically incorrect essay quote from 2006! In that vein I begin (though not promising that the grammar will be much better). Clare Woods is still an artist that explicitly and almost sculpturally enjoys the stuff of paint (incidentally she trained as a sculptor at Bath College of art, once describing herself as 'a frustrated sculptor'). In her earlier work especially, paint is wielded like a sculptural medium; poured, dripped, scraped, smoothed, spread and brushed; these the more gestural of marks made either with brush or left alone to spread and bleed into other colours creating cellular meiosis-like pools, as gloss naturally does when poured onto a flat surface. In other areas of her paintings semi-representational lines and forms are crisply almost ‘cut’ into the surface creating structure and shape against the looser expressive marks. Upstairs in the largest room this is demonstrated with gusto in the devouringly huge (its floor to ceiling high) painting ‘Monster Field’ (2008).

 

'Monster Field' (2008)

The beauty of painting this and many of her early works on aluminium is that the slick, hard surface is perfect for creating those pools of paint and manipulation of it with brush or palette knife, yet possibly what is the most impressive in this work is the intense use of colour and dynamic composition. Some of Wood’s later paintings become more murky and muddy in their colour palette and feel less pleasing visually than the vibrancy and energy of paintings like ‘Monster Field’ (but perhaps offer a truer depiction of natural landscape colours?). They are ‘high’ colour as my friend (a painter) pointed out to me; as though someone has boosted the contrast and intensity settings on a digital image to dangerous levels of distortion. That distortion being another crucial factor in Woods' paintings which are ‘derived from photographs’ and sit mostly in abstraction but have representational forms within them that suggest fences, bracken, shrubbery, trees, hills or plough furrows. These colours, mark making and forms are in-turn composed into an energetic outcome that is almost musical in the way it is rhythmically paced to lead your eye around its surface. If these are influenced and inspired from the natural landscape then they are heightened and ambiguous; open to numerous interpretations from their viewers, but in their passion for paint  and drama seem to fit their being likened to the Romantic tradition of painting.

 

'Cemetery Bends' (2009)

In ‘Cemetery Bends’ (2009) the wavering between abstraction and representation is clearer and with a darker element of moodiness to it that suggests an eerie, strange forest; fantasy mixed with darkness of the  likes of the Brothers Grimm. Although the majority of Woods' paintings are relatively flat they have depth in their layers of applied paint as well as a reflective depth created from the sheen of the enamel and gloss paint which make interesting surfaces to explore for longer. Some of this layering and cutting (referred to earlier) ties Woods' paintings closer to that of the Danish born artist, Per Kirkeby, whose paintings she cites as looking at. I too first remember seeing Per Kikeby’s paintings in a solo exhibition at Tate Modern in 2009, they are heavily inspired by geology, soil and the landscape and in many cases on as an ambitious scale (and even bigger) as Clare Woods. In Kirkeby’s case, some of his paintings almost burry you alive in their enormity and it’s the larger scale Woods’ paintings that I think work best. They envelope the viewer with their glistening surfaces and intimacy of the luxuriousness of the paint, yet at the same time they push you away with areas of hard, flatter grid-like lines and angles that suggest a more desolate vision of landscape than a thriving one.... For a long time I battled with deciding whether Wood’s paintings were too slick or whether I was reading too much into the type of paint rather than looking at the way it was manipulated; because when one looks at the actual painting within them they feel a lot more anxious and intuitive than being dismissed as pretty patterns and I have come to like them more after reading of the artist’s relationship to making her paintings;  “Anxiety and fear are in the background of everything I do...I think that’s what keeps me going there’s always a fear. There’s always a fear of something.”* In this way the work becomes more like reading a Rorschach blot in being open to interpretation.

 

'The Last Best Hope' (2014)

In another room there are a series of works influenced by First World War landscapes and ideas around painters such as Paul Nash; the tension in these being slightly different to that of the more overtly landscape ones. I’d love to know if Clare Woods paints with a title in mind or whether the title comes after? As with these and nearly all her works, the title either anchors or shifts how the work is then viewed. I prefer looking without knowing the title first.

Overall though in this retrospective, I think I like the earlier paintings better, the most recent being done completely in oil and on a more chromatic colour scale (i.e. tones of pink or yellow). These newer works feel so different and less lively so don’t really captivate my attention in the same way as the earlier pieces. Similarly the more representational her paintings get the less I feel drawn in. A nest, a head, a figure; whilst still abstract the more recognisable they are, the more clumsy they feel, and less sculptural in my opinion because they become less about the paint and more about the image. There is something familiarly 'Francis Bacon-like' in the layering of paint and composition of space in the newer paintings but I’m not quite sure if they feel finished or like a step in the beginning of a new direction? They are all, however, works of an artist who is exploratory, thinking and adapting so it will be interesting to see where using oils takes Woods next.

 

'Untitled Diptych Part I' (2002)

At Hestercombe Clare Woods’ paintings feel more ambitious and more confrontational in their ‘wildness’ in contrast to the softer, well kept formal gardens behind the house, but in keeping with the grandness of John Bampfylde’s landscaping elsewhere. There is a lot to see and mostly it works really well except for the oil paintings on the stairs which I’ve already expressed that I'm not keen on anyway (but may be too far away to be seen) and one piece that fights with slightly awkward lighting and a purple ceiling. I think much has to be said as well for the windows of the gallery which at each exhibition have adopted their own matching detail; in this show appropriately in the form of a long red paint streak. Above all however I stress as I observed in 2006, the importance of seeing these works in person, as reproductions in photos does not quite do them justice. Like the Tania Kovats exhibition last year at Hestercombe and Michael Simpson at Spike, it should not be taken lightly how fortunate and important it is that the South West has access to these relevant, contemporary and inspiring shows and two of them being from painters! I think Clare Woods’ exhibition at Hestercombe rises to this without question.

 

Clare Woods ‘Clean Heart’ is on at Hestercombe Gallery until 30^th October 2016: http://www.hestercombe.com/event/clean-heart-a-landscape-retrospective-by-clare-woods/

 

IMAGES from: http://www.hestercombe.com/event/clean-heart-a-landscape-retrospective-by-clare-woods/

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/johnmoores/recent-exhibitions/24/graphics/large/clare_woods.jpg

QUOTE from:* http://www.clare-woods.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/The-Difference-a-Day-Makes-Interview-with-Clare-Woods-by-Jackie-Haliday-.pdf

Hi've Arrived!

Hive 3# had two covers, one by myself (pictured) & one by Nina Gronw-Lewis

The Summer Solstice on Monday 20^th June saw the publication of Hive3# visual arts zine; editied and collated by myself and Nina Gronw-Lewis. ‘Hive’, now in its 3^rd outing since the project idea was first conceived by Frank Edmunds and Stuart Rosamond in 2014, continues to grow; this edition of the zine featuring the work of 14 artists. They are; Rico Ajao, Frank Edmunds, Jon England, Nina Gronw-Lewis, Kevin Hawker, James Marsden, Tim Martin, Natalie Parsley, Eileen Rosamond, Stuart Rosamond, Ruby Rowswell, Chris Taylor, Rob Watts and Deborah Westmancoat. 

 

Here’s a reminder of how it all works:

 

“With the ambition of publishing twice throughout the year each issue of ‘Hive’ is guest edited by (a) different artist(s) who sets the theme (previous themes include; ‘Track 6’ and ‘The Wrong Side of 15 Minutes’) for the issue. Every Hive has a different theme set to provide new sources of inspiration and possible outcomes for each individual issue as well as giving artists the opportunity to 'do something different' outside their normal practice if they desire. The editor will also collate the work, bind it and produce the cover plus any supporting content (no mean feat, I can tell you). Each participating artist produces a response to the theme on an A3 sheet of paper/surface in any medium of their choosing, making as many copies as artists taking part + 1 or originals of their work and send to said editor. As a result each participating artist receives a completed copy of ‘Hive’ featuring their page and that of the other artists. Part of the appeal is their limited edition and variation in style created by different editors for each issue. To date Hive has been Spiral bound, encased in its own bespoke box and in Hive 3# it is book bolted with two opposing covers." 

 

Our theme for this latest issue was ‘Out of Line’ and true to its nature the artists were invited to collect their copy in person with Hive 3# being revealed, for the first time, publically (to an audience of semi-bemused on lookers) during the opening evening Private View of ‘The Remarkable Everyday’ exhibition at The Old Brick Workshop in Wellington. Remarkable it was too to have the pleasure of being able to hand so many of them out in person, and made for a very un-everyday special occasion.

 

“We cross an unploughed field (a plane traversed by lines), then thick woods. One of us loses his way, explores, and on one occasion even goes through the motions of a hound following scent.

Lines of the most various kinds, spots, dabs, smooth planes, dotted planes, lined planes, wavy lines, obstructed and articulated movement, counter-movement, plaitings, weavings, bricklike elements, scale-like elements, simple and polyphonic motifs, lines that fade and lines that gain strength (dynamism).” -Klee

Hive 3# 'Out of Line'

 

Hive 2# 'The Wrong Side of 15 Minutes'

 

Hive 1# 'Track 6'

 

Hive will return.... In a fabulous Fourth Issue!

 

 

Previous info of Hive 1# & 2# can be found on the following posts:

http://spannerintheworkz.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/nonsense-is-better-than-no-sense.html  

http://spannerintheworkz.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/here-are-my-bees.html

The Remarkable Everyday arrives at The Old Brick Workshop

The opening of a certain exhibition...I may have mentioned... happens in just under five days time. The work began arriving today at The Old Brick Workshop and needless to say I'm excited! Here are a few sneak previews of what to expect as well as our official press release.

 

The fascinating world of ‘THE REMARKABLE EVERYDAY’ is explored in a new, contemporary art exhibition at The Old Brick Workshop Gallery in Higher Poole, Wellington Somerset. TA21 9HW.  

 

Featuring work by nine artists living and working in Somerset, the exhibition has been inspired and organised by artist and bookseller, Natalie Parsley whose own enthusiasm and love of seemingly banal everyday subjects led her to gather together a group of like-minded fellow artists to share her passion with their own views of both the commonplace and the curious in drawing, painting, print making and 3D work.

 

Natalie Parsley 'Blow Torch' 2016 Monoprint and ink

The show has work by Jenny Barron, Andrew Davey, Faye Dennis, Gordon Faulds, Gordon Field, Liz Gregory, Natalie Parsley, Michael Tarr and Scarlet von Teazel. Working with subjects such as tools, ladders, discarded boxes, old utensils and modern technology has led the participants to create some quirky and mysterious compositions, constructions and installations.

 

This is the first group show this year at The Old Brick Workshop which houses a new gallery space and a set of self contained studios, created by owner Alison Cosserat for use by Somerset artists.

The event is sponsored by local business West Country Foods of Wellington and will be open from 11am until 4.30 from Sunday 19^th June to Saturday 9^th July, closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Look out for the RED Signs to the Exhibition

You can expect more info, images and reflections on the exhibition from myself, here on the blog over the course of the next few weeks.

 

One thing is assured...There will be tools!

 

I look forward to seeing you there! 

 

Enquiries to natalieparsley@yahoo.co.uk Or visit

 http://www.theoldbrickworkshop.com



Let The Light One In

Lessons in art history for the uninterested. How do you make the old relevant to today and why does it matter?

 

 In my personal battles of wanting but often struggling to engage with history, I have come to the understanding that for the past to be preserved and remembered it has to constantly be reaffirming its relevance or connection to the present. In this post I will be exploring this thought whilst touching upon two recent experiences from Rome to Watchet, Somerset that look at the art of the 17^th Century Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio whose work is combined with new technologies and ideas in an attempt to illuminate his art for new audiences...

In ‘The Caravaggio Experience’ the viewer is immersed into a floor-to-ceiling projection across a number of sizeable rooms at the Palazzo delleEsposizioni, Rome. Across several separate animations (each portraying a particular theme or technique) Caravaggio’s paintings are presented anew. It aims to draw attention to his work in contemporary way and explores how he created the drama in his paintings to how he created his compositions. It also looks at how he depicted light through using extreme contrast between dark and light, a technique known as chiaroscuro, but also as a metaphor for the moral ambiguities of darkness for ‘wrong-doings’ and light for enlightenment and ‘goodness’.

 

Appropriate therefore that light should be the means from which Caravaggio’s work here is presented, not the illusion of light on canvas but the light itself becoming the medium in which the work is manifest. This in mind, the resulting affect does become more ‘Experience’ rather than mere projection, the 48 minute work is even accompanied by its own composed music by Stefano Saletti and scent courtesy of Officina Profumo – Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella (yet surprisingly, or thankfully none of which can be bought in the gift shop). Knowing it’s heavily tourist-based market the whole thing unashamedly wades further into gimmicky waters, but does so very endearingly and quite imaginatively too, as the animations become their own moving artworks in their own right. One piece animating how Caravaggio constructed his compositions creates drawings on the gallery walls and another leaves you in darkness with glimpses and traces of figures and light within the work. Having seen a few actual Caravaggio’s on canvas, this show is by no means a substitute for seeing the real thing (the projection is good but paint is inherently better) but offers something new, part tribute, part transcription that cleverly compliments and taps into audiences’ familiarity of the emotive qualities in film, cinema and music to appeal to all our senses not just our eyes. The music score is wonderful and begs the question of whether why all art should be viewed in silence and how music may improve, distract or ruin an artwork; an interesting thought.

‘The Caravaggio Experience’ is subject to its criticisms for being novel, gimmicky, commodified or dumbing-down, (it is somewhat unfortunately named to sound like an American theme-park ride) but for its faults bravely offers forward the idea that reverence doesn’t have to come from seeing these paintings in a religious context or even a museum one but begins with an enthusiasm for looking albeit from a  projection, phone screen or book; and if that can ignite a sense of curiosity and interest in its audiences to go experience the real art work(s) or see more art generally then it can only be a good thing. I’m of the opinion that the art world should be conscious not to dumb-down to appeal to wider audiences but does need to try new ways of presenting the idea that with ‘the greater the challenge in reading art’ comes ‘greater reward’ to encourage new and returning audiences to experience art.

 

Elsewhere in a shipping container in sunny Watchet (better known as Contains Art)...visitors can experience another example of how ideas and techniques in Caravaggio’s paintings have been interpreted into new contemporary paintings and drawings. In 2012 James Marsden began making work depicting people using their mobile phones, locked into the world within their mobiles each individual oblivious to the presence of the others around them. This loss of direct human to human interaction being replaced with mobile technologies has generated increasing debate amongst writers, theorists and psychologists as to whether technology has brought us closer together or further apart. Marsden’s work gives visual form to this debate, the figures in his portraits hold aloft their phones with fixed, often neutral expressions so it is hard to tell exactly what they are thinking or doing; devoid of interaction with anything else beyond the screen. It is a truth of our times with the long-term effects of these new human to phone relationships yet to be determined. Is the loss of social interaction any different to how people felt when the book was first invented?

 

James Marsden 'Detachment' Oil on Canvas. 240 x 200cm.

 This outward looking and self-scrutiny echoes trends elsewhere which call us to be less dependent on our phones and more 'mindful'. It is apt therefore that to counterbalance the high-technology observed in his work that it should be told through the medium of oil paint and even more ancient, silver point. Thus the human element so devoid in the people on their phones is present in the artist’s hand, of timely, painstakingly and intently capturing their portraits in oil paint. Stylistically influenced by Caravaggio and old master’s painting techniques, these paintings are intentionally built up in a similar process of layers, glazes and colour palette so that they have a sense of richness and glow to their surfaces [The history of human imagery almost being an evolution of surfaces themselves, from pigment to pixel].

James Marsden 'The Fall' Oil on Canvas, 120 x 180cm

The most significant likeness to Caravaggio in Marsden’s paintings for me, is the direction of light and tonal contrast. In Caravaggio’s paintings the light is candlelit or celestial, otherworldly light and in Marsden’s it is coming from the artificial glow of the phone screen that both illuminates and casts shadow on the users facial features. Interestingly however, this light is still otherworldly just in a man-made rather than in religious sense and, for me at least, alludes to a metaphorical sense of enlightenment that is generated from our relationship with technology as a tool for discovery and learning. It is the counterbalance to the argument that our relationship with technology is an unhealthy one. In another series of paintings the composition from Caravaggio’s ‘The Entombment of Christ’ [left] is directly transcribed, its figures replaced with modern-clothed people (modelled by friends and family) used to recreate the scene of Chirst’s body being lifted by mourners. In Marsden’s version the hands which once pointed upwards to heaven are now holding phones marking the shift in what our current society values as 'sacred' and how our notions of mortality has changed from the idea of spiritual and everlasting afterlife to the '15 minutes of fame' and selfie generation. They’re a bit too close in reference to Caravaggio for my liking, the painting and colour-palette is richer but compostionally I prefer taking the subtlety of taking ideas from Caravaggio in the earlier paintings or making new works which explore the violence, passion or drama  of Caravaggio and reinterpreting those themes into modern day ‘phone-rage or passion’ based situations.

 

James Marsden. Silverpoint.

In his newest work, Marsden uses the ancient technique of silverpoint pioneered by masters such as Da Vinci and Raphael in a series of ‘people on their mobile phones’ drawings depicted onto specially prepared surfaces on wooden tablets in the size and dimensions of an ipad. It is a clever play on the evolution of the ‘tablet’ from being an object to write or draw on, to its modern-day equivalent which does everything. Whereas the paintings sit more awkwardly between not being a highly polished Caravaggio and a loser modern interpretation the silverpoint images here are much more suited to being inbetween high realism and loosely drawn. They bring a more human element to the scenes they depict, the time and patience taken to create each one an important contrast to the immediacy of the ‘selfie’ or ipad photo. Most importantly however, these works will last hundreds of years after their ipad predecessors are long obsolete and this is the most rewarding message in Marsden’s work; not the critique or judgement whether technology is good or bad for us, but that good art will always have permanence and a preservation to ways of seeing/experiencing the world that has already proven historically to in many cases outlive and be held with more reverence than that of technology as Caravaggio and many other artists, musicians and writers have shown though the immortality of their works. Through both of these exhibitions, it is how we utilise both that will prove the longevity of both.

 

"The sacredness of both life and art does not have to mean something cosmic and otherworldly-it emerges quite naturally when we cultivate compassionate responsive modes of relating to the world and each other." -Suzi Gablik

 

‘The Caravaggio Experience’ at Palazzo Esposizioni, Rome is on until July 3^rd: http://english.palazzoesposizioni.it/categorie/exhibition-caravaggio-experience

‘James Marsden: Thousand Year Series’ at Contains Art, Watchet until June 26^th: http://www.containsart.co.uk/

 

 *Images sourced from: http://www.jamesmarsdenart.co.uk/ and http://english.palazzoesposizioni.it

Scissors, paper & glue!

Teachers on a limited materials budget throughout the land rejoice as the variety of things you can do with a sheet of cardboard and bottle of PVA is demonstrated with staggering, inventive aplomb in Michael Beutler's 'Pump House' on show now at Spike Island!



Michael Beutler 'Haus Beutler' (2014/16) Mixed media.

Industrial alongside low budget materials such as paper, string, sticky-tape, cloth, timber and yes, copious amounts of PVA glue are used by Beutler and his team to create large-scale, ambitious and immersive spaces. For his first solo exhibition in a gallery in the UK the German born artist tailors his work to fit the former Tea Factory space that is now Spike Island; here cardboard is rolled, scrunched, wrapped and overlapped to create walls, panels, lights and free-standing architectural forms or prototypes. The resulting work is temporary and bordering between the precarious and surprisingly robust as the limits to how these common-place materials can be recycled and manipulated is inventively explored. Its professional amateurism let loose, in what is the first of what I anticipate to be many more oxymoron’s used to describe what Beutler has achieved in bringing Pump House to Bristol's Spike Island. 

 'Tea Factory' (2016) Card, dye, rope, metal pipes, pulleys.

Cardboard painted tubes in one area of the gallery, titled ‘Tea Factory’ are one example of how play and low-tech experimentation with paper to create structure and form can become vastly transformed when the boundaries of scale and volume are pushed; the throw-away nature of these materials now becomes more sculptural, more weighty and architectural. Are they arches, bridges or Christmas crackers, I'm contentedly uncertain...Walls within ‘Haus Beutler’ (2014/16) become abstract, patch-work quilt like collages, blurring the distinction between abstract surface and structure. All of it is a form of serious or extreme play. I.e. If you could take a humble rag rug or toilet-roll archway/bridge and make another one on a grand scale then it adopts a new sense of purposefulness, celebration of the material properties the materials contain. For example cloth is malleable, can be stained, stretched, scrunched, compacted; it has a tension to it, all of which are properties that in Pump House are adopted into large scale building techniques (the cloth becomes bricks for building).  

It is always refreshing to see art that is fun and walking in and around Pump House feels like being a participant more than a spectator to the work; watching other people inhabit these unusual paper-lined walls feels like being in the art work. As previously alluded to I also like the contradiction of everything in the spaces looking very hand-made and unpolished yet being aware through watching the video pieces (dotted throughout the installation) that it has actually taken a huge amount of team work/effort to create all the stuff in it. It’s a testament to making and the construction and attributes that come with a creative process.

'Haus Beutler' (2014/16) Mixed media. (detail)

I promised myself I wouldn’t write about comparing the work to Phyllida Barlow here; I will not compare Michael Beutler to Phyllida Barlow. I will not compare Michael Beutler to Phyllida Barlow. I will not compare Michael Beutler to Phyllida Barlow....But, I think it is almost impossible not to see similarities between the two artist’s works!!! I’m sorry. Originality being only undetected plagiarism aside, both artists use low-grade materials to create abstract, often unstable looking forms that can be walked in or around by their audience. I think the crucial differences between the two being that Barlow is more of a painter and Beutler is much more context and process driven; the materials often coming from off the site they are built in and thus transformed back into their original environments in an altered state; the central piece in the exhibition alluding to Spike Island’s original use as a tea factory also echoed in the use of tea-bag bricks throughout. The processes of how the components in his installations are made is also often more ingenious than the result and within Pump House a variety of Heath Robinson style contraptions which have been designed to mass-produce walls of wavy, shiney corrugated card are displayed alongside the resulting constructions themselves (and believe me they are quite wacky, but they do the job they were designed for!). I think Beutler wants the audience to know how it’s made and part of the creative challenge is him devising these contraptions made from bits of wood and sticky-tape that enable him to quickly produce larger volumes of surfaces and components to build with.

Humour aside, I was in no way demeaning this exhibition when I called it ‘professional amateurism’ because that is exactly what it is, taking low-tech, low material and transforming it into something new, arguably extraordinary,  which retains the look of a DIY mentality. On a smaller scale these things could be classed as amateur but the installation here is so complex in its variety and volume that it must take a team of organising, planning and professionalism in order to pull it off. It reminds me also of Spartacus Chetwynd, a Turner Prize nominee whose work also sought to challenge the definition of ‘amateur’ within art and critique it as a pure, unpretentious form of creativity rather than as a negative; the perceived ‘lack of skill’ in a work of art is a kind of skill in itself. Beutler’s installation shares some of those ideas I think and possibly may make people consider how we define ‘skill’ and what expectations that creates in terms of how we perceive skill and production within art.

Michael Beutler’s ‘Pump House’ is on at Spike Island Bristol until June 19^th 2016 http://www.spikeisland.org.uk/events/exhibitions/michael-beutler/