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/

Oceans of intrigue

Since the opening last Friday, of Tania Kovats’s exhibition at Hestercome it seems to have done nothing but rain! Let’s hope the exhibition titled ‘Oceans’ that comprises 365 bottles of donated sea water, sculptural reefs, atlases and other works that both explore, document and use water as both source and material for the work is not prophetic of things to come!  

I find it exciting (not to mention an incredible opportunity for Taunton) that Kovats has been chosen to be the second exhibition at the recently opened Hestercombe House, Somerset. The debut show, ‘Leaping the Fence’ opened in May 2014* and exhibited the work of sixteen contemporary artists from Mark Wallinger to Mike Nelson. Kovats (who also had a piece in that first exhibition) is the first artist to have a solo show here which includes a new piece, ‘Sea Mark for Hestercombe’ (2014) above the staircase and entrance hall as well as bringing together previous work(s) from the exhibition ‘Drawing Water’ shown recently at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. (Regular readers will note that I wrote about the book which accompanied that exhibition in a previous blog post.**)  

There are two aspects of Kovats’s work in particular that I’m glad have been presented into the show at Hestercombe. The first being an emphasis on the importance of drawing in Kovats’s practice; where drawing is used as a means of exploration, investigation, documentation, measurement, action – consequence –the passing of time. In ‘Oceans’ the first thing that hits you on the impressive stairway is a drawing or wall work of tiled, inky brushstrokes that intermediate horizontally disappearing into an imaginary horizon like a series of puddles or clouds. Could they also be islands? Or tide marks? A similar piece in another room later reveals that the marks to be the broken surface of the sea, ‘the wet marks originally made on the tiles were dried and were fired and return to their fluid origins, glossy and liquid’. Despite learning this, they remain ambiguously still quite abstract, quite meditative. Elsewhere there are multiple drawings made from evaporated sea salt water and ink on blotting paper. They’re exploratory and alchemic in their seemingly simple curiosity of, ‘what happens when I put this together with that and let time pass. It produces spontaneous, seemingly effortless, often beautiful (if I may state my personal opinion) and uncontrived results. For Kovats, perhaps this method of drawing which relies less on the ‘hand of the artist’ and more on the passing of time, is a more authentic reflection of nature and properties of the sea water. In her words,  

“I let a drawing make itself. I am not drawing anything but the drawing...in other drawings the ink retains its fluidity and floods the paper...echoing the movements and forms of water in nature.”

'Sea Mark for Hestercombe' (2014) Tania Kovats ***

 The second aspect brought from Edinburgh to Hestercombe is in the presentation of a variety of works that allows for multiple meanings on the same theme. I shall explain, ‘Drawing Water’ presented work from  map-makers, writers, shipbuilders, whalers, soldiers, sailors, artists, archaeologists, cartographers, scientists, uranographers (mapping stars), engineers and dreamers  all of whom have used drawing as a way of searching, understanding and looking at water and our use/connection to it. In ‘Oceans’ we see how that influence has filtered (pardon the pun) into different sides of Kovats’s practice; from the drawing based works previously mentioned, to the sculptural and participatory nature of the piece 'All the sea'. The following quote taken from ‘Drawing Water’ by archaeologist Colin Renfrew reiterates this cross-over and shift in contemporary visual arts practice,  

“Over the past century or so the visual arts have transformed themselves from their preoccupation with beauty and the representation of the world into something much more radical...into what might be described as a vast, uncoordinated yet somehow enormously effective research programme that looks critically at what we are and how we know what we are.” 

'All the sea' (2012-14) Tania Kovats

In ‘All the Sea’ (2012-14) 365 bottles of seawater have been collected and sent to the artist from individuals all around the world forming a library of seas all gathered in one place. It is a little bit reminiscent of Susan Hiller’s ‘Homage to Joseph Beuys’ (1969-2011) in which the artist collected antique bottles filled with holy water from around the world. If I may be bold, I actually prefer that piece aesthetically and can’t really ignore it for being so similar to Kovats’s piece to avoid mention. In some aspects, what Hiller did for holy water, Kovats is doing for oceans and what is striking about both is away from the 'labels'/ideas we surround them with they’re both essentially still, water. The water in ‘All the sea’ mostly looks the same (except for the very obvious, if alarming, yellow North Sea and subtle variations in sediment colour in others) and in being contained Kovats doesn’t seem to be trying to present the vastness or power of oceans, in a sublime sense (these are not huge gestural paintings) but the preciousness of it, it’s very sameness in relatively modest, clinical/functional plain looking bottles, more personal and more controlled.  Inadvertently though they create an awareness of the scale of oceans not by being different, but by being many. This statement of unity, for me, is representative of the water cycle as a whole, the idea being that tomorrow’s dirty dishwater is eventually someone else’s rain. They cannot be pigeon holed into having one preferred reading, like Hiller’s more pilgrimage/spiritual based piece. Kovats’s waters are not her own, they have their own stories, that largely remain anonymous.  Mischievously too, I still wonder if anyone was tempted to sneak their bath water in there somewhere claiming it was sea....  

‘Where Seas Meet, North: Baltic & Tasman: Pacific’ (2013-14) is another example where two sea waters inhabit separate vessels but also connect via a pipe at the top, in the undistinguishable similarities between the two seas it highlights or reminds us that the fabrication of boundaries, as a way of mapping/controlling oceans, is man-made idea. The mapping theme, neatly ‘flows’ into another work in the exhibition, ‘Only Blue’ (2013) which uses obsolete Atlases, laid open on four tables with their landmasses erased under white paint so all that remains is the blue of the sea. In the same way it is much easier to understand the physicality of sky based on where it meets the horizon, where it meets the land, a tree, a hill, a mountaintop, plane or bird; the same can be said of oceans/water and we can only comprehend their vastness by the relationship to the land or containers that surround them. Or at least so I speculate. ‘Only Blue’ makes one aware of the oceans more as a physical space, as to a temporal one that links landmass. It’s like when you’re learning to draw you learn to draw negative space between objects as to the positive, solid object itself.

Oddly for me, the more representational works in the exhibition are the ones which fall flat in having less to say, ‘Reef 1’ (2014) and ‘Reef 2’ (2014) are two sculptures made from barnacles covered in gesso. They are more obvious in their connection to the sea and are actually more static and heavy than the fluidity of the ink drawings and other sculptural works which have something more of a process or ‘moment in time’ to them; this can also be felt in the series of sculptures titled ‘Schist’ (2001) whereby wax is layered and compressed by lead shot into arched folds mimetic of tectonic plates. Although now hardened they retain a 'molten', soft appearance to them which bizarrely, feels more close to nature than the actual natural object of the barnacles. In a separate room a third sculptural style ‘Tilted’ (2002) is a cast rocky interior hidden inside a contrasting modern, flat architectural, plinth-like exterior. They are a little reminiscent of Mariele Neudecker's mountainscape/forms in mist-shrouded vitrines, but I'm not dwelling too much on that its just interesting if you like these works and want to find an artist who is similar.       

'Schist' (2001) Tania Kovats

 It is really rewarding to see a solo exhibition at Hestercombe that has so many different approaches to exploring its central theme. Kovats's practice is coherently diverse and I enjoyed experiencing each of her works individually in rooms but also together as a whole show. The whole thing was  'more digestible' as someone put to me, which I think was pretty apt.  

 I left having spent the evening of the private view in the greatest of company and felt enthused that more people should know and experience this exhibition,  later I also wondered if Kovats has paid our Hydrographic office a visit and vice versa...? It seems as though the two are connected.  

“Water is the element of connection.....that any action however small is connected to every other action and sends a ripple out into everywhere.”

Tania Kovats 'Oceans' is on at Hestercombe until January 11th 2015

 Visit: http://www.hestercombe.com/whats-on/events-and-activities/181-tania-kovat-s-oceans/event_details 

Further reading:

*http://spannerintheworkz.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/look-if-you-like-but-you-will-have-to.html

**http://spannerintheworkz.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/drawing-water-by-tania-kovats.html

*** Photo courtesy of Sara Dudman

Drawing Water by Tania Kovats

  This is a book...that alters preconceived ideas about drawing

 Drawing Water is the catalogue and essays from the exhibition (of the same name) curated by artist, Tania Kovats held at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, May 2014.

I first came across Kovats's work in the form of her sculptures, cavernous voids that sat somewhere between natural forms and man-made pedestals. The environmental statement to her work was clear although until I discovered a copy of 'Drawing Water' in the bookshop I had no idea she was also prolifically interested and knowledgeable on drawing. In particular, Kovats uses drawing as 'a mechanism for exploration' or in her words,

'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.'

 'Fantastic!' I thought to myself. Wishing I had only found this insightful book before I completed my MA project report which was all about drawing as a 'drawing out'. Again some of the ideas I was exploring echoed by Kovats words in this book,

Hard to find, or difficult to see. Something gets found in the drawing-explained and measured and put into a language that can communicate beyond the failure of words. Drawing is a mechanism for exploration as much as a tool of representation.'

 Using the theme of the water in its many guises; the sea, the waves, rivers and rainwater, Kovats documents the diverse forms in which map-makers, writers, shipbuilders, whalers, soldiers, sailors, artists, archaeologists, cartographers, scientists, uranographers (mapping stars), engineers and dreamers have used drawing as a way of searching, understanding and looking. The book is a treasure-trove of curiosities and it is fascinating how the distinctions between scientific and precise drawings from map makers to that of artists and writers is blurred so that we almost view the maps as art and the expressive/representational work by the artists as documentation and record. Joseph Beuys's colour lithograph of a seal in the exhibition looks as though it could be an MRI scan of the same animal. There are a few artists that have intentionally adopted documentary style modes of presentation as part of their work, K P Brehmer's 'Sky Colours' (a series of watercolour shades or blue/grey recorded daily on graph paper) being one such example. From ancient carvings and maps to modern and contemporary art, Drawing Water also features work from, Francis Alys, Eva Hesse, Eric Ravilious, Gerhard Richter, Roni Horn, Tacita Dean, Alfred Wallis and many more. It is beautiful to look at as it is to read and I found it to be unpretentious largely due to the variety of drawing types it features, from the highly representational, to impressionistic and conceptual; there is something for everyone, but more importantly it demonstrates the diversity of drawing as a medium for communication and discovery.

Also read: Twice Drawn -Ian Berry, Jack Shear, Jean Fisher, John Berger,  On Drawing -John Berger, The Power of the Sea - Christiana Payne and Janette Kerr, Art as Experience -John Dewey

Drawn Out

The drawing a day project continues and now at my half way point it’s time for the, now customary reflection on how it is progressing (and there’s a lot to say so make yourself comfortable!):

Some days I don’t feel like drawing (hard to believe, for someone that has set themselves a drawing a day challenge for the second year in a row but it’s true). I sit at my desk (ok so it’s actually my bed which I kneel at) and think, ‘What am I going to draw today?’ ‘How am I going to draw it? Should I even bother?’ I may go for a walk or if I don’t have the time I just start drawing, usually the first thing that comes into my head. These things are usually picked from conversations I have had with people or images I have seen during the day but the link is often so dependant on context or personal that I do not expect anyone to know the reference other than me. You see it’s not really what I draw that’s important to me but the need to draw the kind of drawing which involves an intense amount of concentration or thinking that is my concern.

Of course most of the time I first have to search for an image of the thing I’m drawing for reference or when possible draw from life or imagination (although in practice this seems to happen very little) and then after few minutes into starting and my earlier doubts or fatigue gradually disappear and I’m immersed in the focus of what I’m drawing. The intensity of looking, mark making, decision making and working out generated by drawing offers escapism to think and reflect. The conscientiousness comes back towards the end of the drawing and I start analysing whether it looks ‘finished’ or not. This often results in a few minutes spent polishing/or not what I've created.

Why be so representational in my drawing style then? I have always found this the hardest question to answer and have had an ongoing dichotomy between my need to make marks/surfaces, often more associated with the self expression of abstract art; and the symbolic, meaning imbued imagery of representation. I tend to hover between the two and as result am never sure if the representational image is there acting as ‘something to hang the paint on’, a ‘shape in which to draw in’ or whether it is something more subconscious and therefore more meaningful than I pay attention to. Perhaps by staying within the boundaries of creating a representational image I’m keeping a control on what I’m doing with the mark making/act of drawing implying that I want to ‘let go’, so to speak and become lost in the expressiveness of mark making but not loose myself completely, having to control the mark making so that it eventually ‘looks’ like something and remain somewhere within the familiar constraints of reality? Well, that’s a frighteningly honest assessment which goes some way into revealing more about my personality that I hadn't really expected. It makes it difficult to know where to go from here or whether I carry on as I have done and let this journey run its course. It’s certainly proving very useful and developing, albeit very slowly at its own pace so far...

05/05/14 - Inspired after seeing (a friend from my art degree) Lucy's drawing of a goldfish on Facebook.

In my usual search to find answers to these questions I refer to knowledge learnt from books and have recently read ‘Guston in time’ by Ross Feld. The book is an analysis and dialogue through the letters of American painter Philip Guston (an artist whose paintings and unique drawing style I have long admired) and writer Ross Feld revealing new insight into Guston’s working practice.  I found it interesting how Guston spoke of his ‘need’ to paint as though it were a compulsion, almost something non-voluntary and that he saw the act of creating as a ‘getting-rid of’ or purging, the resulting painting being seen to Guston as a sort-of aftermath of these intense thoughts/feelings he expressed through his art,

 ‘That the purpose of creating is to kill it or at least get rid of it -once and for all. Now I truly am fearful of creating -such a dread of it.’  (Guston 2003: 64)

This counterbalances the preconceived idea that creativity is this joyous, celebratory or almost divine experience and highlights that the ‘need to create’  and act of creativity as also being painful  or coming from difficulty, frustration and the more unpleasant sides to a person’s character/experiences. Now, I in no way (thankfully) have similar life experiences to that of Guston, who when very young found his father hung himself and since (Guston) went on to have an incredibly self-destructive relationship with excessive smoking and drinking; but and the reason I included that quote by him here, is because I can relate to the need to create as a kind-of compulsion or obsession –better out than in, sort-of mentality. The thought of not making any art or doing something creative for a considerable length of time is terrifying and actually unimaginable. Even if that creative outlook wasn’t drawing I would have to find something creative to do. Although, again, perhaps like Guston I often wonder if I would be better off without this urge to create/to express oneself as it is often more difficult to do than what it actually helps/solves. Hence the ongoing spiral  and denial of the artist: and need to have to create more and more until you reach an end or find an answer that all the while you’re conscious of not actually wanting to reach that end because you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself once you got there. And we voluntary put ourselves through this?!

I briefly alluded to this same conundrum in my Masters dissertation which touched upon the idea of ‘drawing is a drawing out’ where head, heart and hand come together in the embodied act of drawing based on not just what a person is seeing but their lived experiences, thoughts and feelings that influences how they draw. It’s worth a read, as of course I would say, and if you’re interested there’s a link to read it online at the top of this page titled ‘MA Project Report’. I refer to it as well as it seems that I am still on that thread of enquiry and am interested in returning to it again, with more focus, in the future.

12/04/14 -The post-Rembrandt inspired drawings. Image of ceiling fan seen in a Rauschenberg collage/combine painting that I decided I wanted to draw.

16/01/14 -First drawing painted by mixing tones of green. Had a stigma of using green in paintings since using pre-mixed green on Foundation Diploma. I'm over it now! Honest.

There were quite a few significant changes to the project this year, namely; use of colour, larger sketchbooks, more open-mindedness in what I choose draw/more imaginative. The results so far have been a much more diverse, richer, challenging and interesting set of drawings than those of last year. I think the drawing has ‘improved’ in the sense that they are now more varied in mark-making, shading, tone and in observational detail but in this way they, at the start of the year became much more illustrational and lacking perhaps in personality or trace of hand, by which I mean the sort-of imperfections and handwriting evident of the person who has made the drawing. In ‘Drawing Water’ artist Tania Kovats whose practice uses drawing as a means of exploration, notes ‘Awkwardness in drawing is as interesting as fluency.’ (2014: 11). You heard it here first, I have license to become more awkward than perhaps I already am!

Around March time, after having seen the Rembrandt etchings in Amsterdam the drawings took on a whole new quality where the intensity and variety of mark-making was key in defining form and tone. These drawings had more substance to them and were an improvement in coming out of the flatness of representation I had fallen into. Currently the drawings are in a limbo between the two as I am trying to combine the colour painting  of the flatter illustrational drawings with the mark making learnt from the ‘Rembrandt inspired’ drawings. We’ll see how it pays off!

17/02/14 -As result of conversation with friend regarding the Yellow Long Horned Beetle (Seriously! This is the kind of thing we talk about in the pub.)

With that in mind points to consider now moving forward into the second half of the year:

-          Backgrounds: Why do I tend to always draw objects/animals/plants in space? Left as a drawing on the page. I have begun already exploring on using the whole page instead of just focusing on the subject.

-           Combine colour with mark making: As mentioned above, experiment in combining the more painterly and tonal attributes of using coloured inks with the tighter more intense mark making learnt from the Rembrandt black and white pen drawings.

-          Try some purely painterly, loose drawings with no pen. Or use pencil instead of pen for softer more subtle line quality.

-          Leave some drawings unfinished? Abstract. Continuous line/blind drawing.

How much or little I choose to push myself to fulfil these is up to me. Already the project continues to improve and develop naturally at its own pace and how keen I am or not to push it on more quickly will depend on how daring I feel on a day to day basis. By at least being aware of what needs improving and what is working I can make those decisions more informed.  Tricky stuff this drawing business, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’ll leave you with this quote from John Vernon Lord, he’s an illustrator but I think the following quote encapsulates what drawing is pretty succinctly,

‘The challenge of drawing involves fathoming shapes; probing measuring and adjusting; working out comparative proportions; highlighting and shading; emphasising and diminishing; composing; combining intuition and thoughtfulness; fumbling and stumbling; the sorting of marks; the cursing; the rubbing out; the hesitations; the adjustments; the decisions; the hopes and anticipation; the heartache; the overcoming of weakness; the hoping for control; the taking of risks; reacting to unexpected developments that may arise; getting the desired expression and mood; establishing the content; getting to grips with the subject; inventing – and the whole process reaching towards a visual conclusion.’ (2014: 8)

References:

FELD, R. Guston in time: Remembering Philip Guston. (2003) Counterpoint Press: USA.

KOVATS, T. Drawing Water. (2014) Fruitmarket GalleryPublications: Edinburgh.

LORD, J V. Drawn to drawing. (2014) Nobrow: London.