Feeling Potty About 'Invisible Reality'

Confession; for someone who actively attempts to avoid pots, saucepans and baking trays involved in everyday life activities such as cooking I find them remarkably exciting as aesthetic objects. And let’s face-it, under the functionality of ‘art’ almost anything can become the item of consideration...

 

A celebration of surfaces, worn, burnt and brandished from a lifetime’s worth of cooking and scrubbing; the identity of sustenance past. A compendium of chrome, 50 shades of grey they glisten. A variation of vessels; big pans, small pans, kettles, buckets, karahi, woks and lids! So forgive me for sounding a bit potty, but the South West deserves to go mad for Subodh Gupta’s latest exhibition of suspended saucepans amongst other works on show in, ‘Invisible Reality’ at Hauser and Wirth, Somerset until May 2^nd 2016.

'Chanda Mama door ke' (2015) Found aluminium utensils, fish string, steel. 107 x 191 x 191"

This work (pictured above/opp), titled ‘Chanda Mama door ke’ (From Far Away Uncle Moon Calls) is one of the more recognisable as being Sibodh Gupta’s work; it features the Indian born artist’s now signature saucepans which he has been using to make large scale suspended sculptures for almost three decades. Though nearly all of Gupta’s work involves using everyday materials, “use of functional and found objects relating to his home country, drawing on both cultural and social shifts as well as considering these objects as vessels with personal and geological histories” (but more on that later...) Here at Hauser and Wirth, Somerset they collectively form a giant suspended pot. They seem to defy gravity despite their weight and also suspend themselves in time as though mid-fall hanging silently and suspenseful in the wait for a crash that is never going to happen.

 

The everyday in this work is pleasingly recognisable as individual components but in a context that feels strange and unfamiliar; suspended as both small individual components each with their own history (and debatably beauty) but all part of a larger than life whole that alludes to something bigger than the sum of their parts.  Together they become the giant pot, a nebula or constellation of stars, an explosion, what is created is something more unreal than the mundane circumstances of their origin. The vessel, the pot, the jar and the saucepan also all having symbolic connotations with the feminine, the womb and links with ideas of creation, which are all rather grand and bigger concepts than the humble saucepan.

“highlighting the differences between our mortal lives and the mysterious cosmos beyond...He explores the connectivity between the two, how great meaning can be found in the everyday...”

That last statement echoing what I have felt/said for years....It should come as nothing new to those who have had to listen to me! I suppose the only difference being that ‘seeing’ meaning in the everyday and being able to communicate it in my art work are two quite different things and certainly outlines one of the challenges or ambition of what I’ve been trying to achieve. Back to Gupta however, this idea literally resonates throughout the exhibition and in the work, ‘Touch, Trace, Taste, Truth’ greets you aptly as you enter the exhibition in the form of what at first appears to be a gigantic yellow gong! Resist the temptation to touch! 

 

'Touch, Trace, Taste, Truth' (2015) Brass, steel, barbed wire. 120 x 120 x 64"

Beautifully simple and it isn’t until you peer around the other side that you realise it is in fact a brass pot suspended on its side (its bottom facing you as you come in, Oo-er!). I read somewhere in an article online that this piece and Gupta’s work in general attempts to, “Aggrandise that which we fail to acknowledge...” which again is fairly self-explanatory, but is a very effective way of justifying Gupta’s use of scale both in the literal sense (these works are mostly huge) but also the metaphorical of taking something meagre and making it something much more confrontational and profound. They almost swallow you up! It’s interesting for me personally because when I was researching artists that used the everyday in their work I mostly looked to the American Pop Artists and Abstract Expressionists as artists who blew-up (made big) egg whisks, car tyres, umbrellas and so on; but it had always felt, particularly with Pop Art (with the exception of Jim Dine), that it was too ‘throw-away’, commercial and embroiled in the visuals of advertising for it to truly link with what I was doing by drawing big tools that were a lot less slick than all of that work. Looking further East at artists like Mona Hatoum (who incidentally has a show at the Tate later this year) and probably Subodh Gupta (who I had previously always overlooked) offer a more meaningful approach to everyday objects that possibly would have fitted with my work more had I explored it further. It is that distinction between the mortal and the mysterious that is certainly something to think about.  

'Pressed for Space I' (2015) Aluminium, fabric, resin. 25 x 43 x 3"

You can see where Gupta’s training as a painter early on in his career has influenced his new work in the series, ‘Pressed for Space’ (also on show) where the celebration of surface in the pots and pans is emphasised at its most clearest. The pans are literally pressed ala Cornelia Parker style into the formal rectangle that denotes ‘art’ in the same way the plinth has traditionally done for sculpture. In these we can easily see the wear and texture of the metal pans, though not as easily recognisable for what they originally were they have become more abstract, formal elements; essentially, a painting made of saucepans! In-between the gaps are tightly packed fragments of coloured cloth which add some colour to the composition as well as allude to the biographical element in the work and Gupta’s Indian heritage. The title ‘Pressed for Space’ may also be a reference to living conditions as well as a sense of re-using, not wasting these objects after they’ve gone into disrepair. The resulting ‘image’ viewed like a landscape takes the idea of the romanticism of a landscape painting with the romanticism of the secret inner-lives of these objects that have now been crushed but like the surface of skin or the landscape forever retain the marks of their past histories. [Hence the archaeology comment mentioned earlier.]



'There is nothing outside the text' [detail] (2013). Terracotta jar, wire, steel.

That mentality continues in the piece, ‘There is nothing Outside the Text’; a large terracotta jar bears the scars of once being broken and presented now fixed, held together with wire and a couple of g-clamps. We’ve been here before, they are the ‘cracks that let the light in’ and a whole bunch of metaphors more that make walking around this exhibition like going to a poetry slam. That is what makes this exhibition all so blissfully accessible allowing for multiple interpretations but using archetypal symbols that help guide that meaning to more universal concepts or ideas. Some of the work I have deliberately left out also touches upon environmental ideas, such as the show’s equally immersive central piece, ‘Invisible Reality’ and ‘Specimen No. 108’ so there’s still plenty of excitement to discover should you go see it for yourselves. I’d recommend you do, this is by far the best exhibition Hauser and Wirth Somerset have done to date and sets a president for what is going to be a year of 'the everyday'...More details of which will be coming here very soon!

Subodh Gupta, 'Invisible Reality' is on at Hauser and Wirth Somerset until May 2nd 2016

http://www.hauserwirthsomerset.com/exhibitions/invisible-reality-20160212



 

Conscientious Anarchy

It was only a few months ago that we were all queuing for Banky’s Dismaland in Weston to experience the anarchic spectacle as the artist unabashedly stuck the proverbial finger up at consumerist Capitalism and modern British political system. Now we find ourselves queuing again for Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy, London for the largest exhibition of the Chinese artist’s work in the UK to date. Whilst both are subversively political, challenge established ideas, question the cultural/financial values of art and are hugely successful at drawing the crowds there are still many things that separate them as unite them. I wonder though how many people will have seen both?

 

Weiwei’s art is anarchism that has found a conscience. If it’s possible for the two to work harmoniously together then Weiwei achieves it, in what are often very minimalist, conceptual and highly labour-intensive, ambitious sculptures/installations which subversively challenge human rights  in previously untold or censored narratives of events. It is highly emotive work and charged with the ongoing ethical battle ‘freedom of speech’ that has even seen the artist who was commissioned with designing Bejing’s Olympic Stadium and conversely also imprisoned by the state. Renowned Blogger and art activist, Ai Weiwei’s exhibition at the Royal Academy creates an interesting tension between the popularity of activism in 21^st Century Britain and place within which political artworks sit within the institute of the art world.

Two open copies of Phaidon’s iconic ‘The Art Book’ (the A to Z of ‘significant’ artists from medieval times to the present day) lay open side by side. The English/American version features Ai Weiwei and the Chinese version does not. In omitting the existence of the artist in one but not the other probably does Weiwei’s notoriety more good than harm but also somewhat chillingly summarises what is the principle themes in Weiwei’s practice of control, censorship and the documentation of history.
 

'Straight' (2008-12) Steel reinforcing bars, 1200 x 600cm. 

If the meaning in Banksy’s work is a one-liner then Weiwei’s is a poem. Ideas and meaning unfold gradually and are open to many interpretations. In the installation, titled ‘Straight’, 200 tonnes of steel reinforcing bars lay in undulating rows atop one another creating a wave on the floor of the central exhibition space. It first reads as a work of minimalist sculpture. Whilst it is massively ambitious in scale it’s simplistic in design; made up of one essential material lain in a systematic, regimented form. The whole thing takes on new significance when you discover the detail and making behind the work (and I stress that the only real way to do this is with the exhibition’s accompanying free audio guide) that the bars are from buildings involved in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 which have each individually been straightened by hand from their post quake twisted state. The waves in which the bars have been arranged now become shifting tectonic plates or waves off a Richter scale; each of the bars becomes symbolic of the scale of destruction and somehow quantitative to the number of lives lost. Even more worrisome upon the final discovery that the steel bars were taken from twenty schools whose construction was covered up by the Chinese government who after a forced investigation instigated by Ai they had to admit that corruption allowed builders to ignore safety codes when erecting the schools. Over 90,000 people were dead or missing as a result of the quake and it wasn’t until further investigation using social media and Ai’s blog that the names of the 5192 children who perished were published and in the exhibition accompanies the work ‘Straight’ surrounding it on the gallery walls.

 

[detail] 'Straight'

Ai Weiwei’s work is known for its use of traditional craftsmanship skills, influenced from Ai’s upbringing when the artist initially earned money fixing/making furniture. In the pieces in this exhibition such as ‘Straight’ the work utilises the power of many and communities who collected and reshaped the steel bars as well as assisting in the collection of data and names of those missing/deceased to be revealed. It is an empowering piece, the fact the bars have been re-straightened is in itself an act of defiance and resilience, an attempt to correct that which is broken. The architectural properties of the bars as well references not only Weiwei’s own relationship with buildings as an artist that has worked as an architect but alludes to the idea of architecture as a way of reinforcing control on people, upholding certain regimes or influencing behaviour. It is a theme which reoccurs in many other works in the exhibition, ‘Souvenir from Shanghai’ being an arrangement of brick, stone and rubble from the site of the artist’s studio which was built with permission from the Chinese authorities and subsequently ordered to be knocked down within weeks of its completion after relationships with the authorities and Weiwei had soured after the artist’s arrest and detainment in 2008. The authorities continue to survey and monitor Weiwei’s activities since.

 

For me, Weiwei is an important artist because he is one of a few contemporary artists working today that raises the importance and position of art in modern life and the power of artists within society. This is a concept which has been maintained by Weiwei in his blog and twitter feeds which the artist sees as an integral part of his artistic practice into the modern wider world. The role of the artist becomes a duty or obligation to the wider community or audience (but does not necessarily mean it has to lose its playfulness or questioning nature). It reminds me of other artists who similarly work within their communities/political systems such as, Gabriel Orozco, Mona Hatoum and Francis Alys.
 

'Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn' (1995) Triptych of black and white prints, 199.9 x 180cm 

Throughout history you had your Duchamps, Warhols and Rauschenbergs who somewhat arrogantly or playfully (depending on how you look at it) called anything that they signed, said, exhibited or mass produced; ‘art’ . They re-valued and reassigned what art could be and what the role of the artist was. Weiwei has stated being influenced by these artists in his own earlier works and in this exhibition presenting the piece, ‘Hanging Man’ made from a bent clothes hanger as a direct reference to Duchamp and Dada. Given a similar treatment are ‘Table and Pillar’, one of a series of works that explores combining two ready-mades from Qing Dynasty temples to create new forms and challenge the ‘value’ of history vs. the art object; ‘Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn’ and Weiwei’s coloured/Coca-Cola vases, again in which the values of cultural and financial work are questioned as well as the challenging of history, systems which it is documented/recorded and whom in society has the power to assign value to an object. The latter is an ideology is echoed in the beginning example of Weiwei’s omission from the Chinese Phaidon ‘Art Book’ to which Weiwei states a defiant truth, ‘The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay.’ Alternatively Weiwei’s intervention of historical artefacts is seen to some as a deliberate act of vandalism, but perhaps in a similar way to Banksy, the role of the vandal and the artist are subverted when both artists’ interventions often add a commercial and cultural value to an object? As well as questioning the nature of what vandalism is it empowers the makers as being in control of creating value to objects rather than being dictated by authorities or system within which the work operates.

[detail] 'Forever Bicycles' (2009-14)

At times all of this becomes a little heavy and one almost feels better not knowing of the injustice, corruption and atrocities. Ignorance becomes bliss, but I still acknowledge that they are truths that we should and cannot ignore. “Art is not supposed to repeat what you already know. It is supposed to ask questions.”* The show ends on a slightly more light-hearted note with the recently commissioned piece specifically adapted for the exhibition, ‘Forever Bicycles’, a chandelier  made up of Chinese bikes strewn with crystals  hanging from the domed ceiling. The idea of a journey, wheels in motion and circular routes in some ways mirrors the artist’s new found freedom of having his passport reendowed since it was taken from him by the government in2011. It ironically also raises the ethics of being an artist as whilst Weiwei is an ambassador for freedom of speech it could be viewed that in his chosen occupation he has to lose his own freedom in his commitment/celebrity-like status to his cause, “an artist is never free...an artist is bound by his gift, his vocation”**

 

Weiwei has more than once stated his belief that it is not possible to separate the art from politics in China and goes back to my own belief from earlier that he is an anarchist with a conscience, an artist who sees his role as not merely a matter of presenting the world but fundamentally trying to change it. 

 

Ai Weiwei is on at the Royal Academy until December 13th 2015

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/ai-weiwei

 

 

All text and images Copyright of Natalie Parsley©

*Kutlug Ataman from ’33 Artists In 3 Acts’ Sarah Thornton

** Andrei Tarkovsky ‘Sculpting in Time’