Whose line is it anyway?

One particularly blustery spring morn a dot went for a walk and consequently found itself on a train to Honiton before arriving  at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery ‘Drop me a Line’ exhibition where it was then joined by lots of other dots that then became a bunch of lines that came from all over Devon, Somerset and beyond...

 

It was too difficult to resist the obligatory Paul Klee reference when beginning to write about the current exhibition of line inspired work at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery created, curated and installed by Somerset-based artists Louise Baker and Michael Fairfax. Klee even more relevant when you take in to consideration just how playful (literally) this particular exhibition is due to its concept of viewer/participant interaction as part of the work which is to be told in two parts (so as to avoid a one liner!) at the gallery throughout 2015.

 

 

Ahem, the current and first, ‘Drop me a Line Part I’ also sees the gallery divided into two halves with Michael Fairfax’s installed piano wires, strung in a series of constellation-like configurations (to be plucked or bowed by the viewer) in the downstairs rooms whilst upstairs Louise Baker’s  lines on paper feature hundreds of mixed-media drawings (in the broadest sense of the word) collected as result of an open call to any ‘line-makers’ out there that sought the opportunity to drop her a line of their own making (interestingly many but not all have been sent by artists). The received lines have then been collated into a huge wall work by Baker where the lines are revealed not just drawn but dribbled, daubed, gilded, stitched, collaged, burnt, printed, written, smudged, stained, sketched, scribbled and torn. There are lines which are solid and fixed others that are more fluid and temporary, varying from the completely abstract to the more representational; each one as different as the handwriting of the individuals who made them (should you feel compelled you can also create your own line to add to the series to be shown later this year). You seldom see such a wide variety of mark-making all in one place and it was both fun and fascinating to try and guess the work/marks of any artists I recognise (with more mysteries than that of being solved!)

 

 

 

I imagined what a delight it must have been receiving these unique drawings individually in the post, each with their own story/ journey they’d undertaken. Therefore in some ways, I felt a little disappointed that the  joy and surprise of each drawing’s uniqueness/subtlety felt as though it got lost in presenting them all together on a wall. The intimacy of each one sometimes a struggle to see in the gallery space and having to contend with the surrounding drawings around it so the sense of an overall journey, chronology or line was a little confused. I speculate that Baker, also a maker of extraordinary hand-made art books, will collate them into a book at some point which I can only imagine would help resolve some of the issues I had with seeing the work presented in this way. Something of a mark-maker myself though I still found much I could relate to and be inspired by, in addition to this work Baker has also displayed a series of threshold lines (pictured above) made from graphite which has been crushed/brushed/stepped on by the feet of visitors as they enter/exit the doorway to her studio space at Hurstone in Somerset. They are a poignant reminder of the beauty in the simplicity to be found in everyday, incidental mark-making and the traces we create unintentionally. More personally too they were reminiscent of my own tribulations with using a hammer and graphite to make drawings during my MA. 

 

 

Contradictory, Fairfax’s work downstairs reveals the other side to installation by which the work has been installed to fit the space so much that the room and gallery walls become part of the work itself. The piano wires connected by tuning pins attached to the walls are composed in response to the architecture of the room and form their own shapes, patterns and lines of varying lengths and degrees. It is a sensorial experience for both sight, sound and touch. With the use of either their hands or bows (provided) viewers are invited to pluck, stroke, strum and listen to these lines whose sounds are reverberated in different walls around the gallery. To aid the hearing process viewers can also pick up, what for lack of knowing its official name, I’m going to somewhat crassly call a ‘piece of wood’ (pictured below) to listen to the walls more intently creating a sharper/deeper sound. Viewers can also record and send their sound interactions which will become the basis for work made in the second ‘Drop me a line’ exhibition later this year. I love the idea of listening to walls and the old saying of ‘if the walls had ears’ as a way of people responding to and interacting with a space in a way they would never normally have the opportunity to; would the walls of an old cob walled cottage sound different to that of its modern brick counterpart? There’s that and the fact, that regardless of one’s personal musical abilities it is fun to be able to touch ‘the art’ as it is fun to make sounds and noise by plucking piano cords. There are even many dualities between this work and the drawings upstairs in the way we talk about rhythm, pace, depth, richness, sharpness and resonance as qualities within the work. It is these variables that will mean that the range of responses generated by these drawings and sound recordings will be vast. My attempts weren’t so much spaghetti western as they were random noise but I enjoyed the experience none-the- less.

 

 

One of the most remarkable and special things about art is that sometimes you can make a lot of work out of very little and what ‘Drop me a line’ does is take something very seemingly straight forward and as simple as a line, as its starting point and creates opportunities that invites copious possibilities from its participants which are both fun and revealing at the same time. In all the richness of sound and visual imagery you almost forget it’s the humble line that threads all the work together.

 

 On that note I’ve a few lines of my own.

You will visit ‘Drop me a line’ at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery.

You will visit ‘Drop me a line’ at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery.

You will visit ‘Drop me a line’ at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery.

You will visit ‘Drop me a line’ at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery.

You will visit ‘Drop me a line’ at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery.

You will visit ‘Drop me a line’ at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery.

 

You really should.

'Drop Me A Line Part I' is on at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton until May16th 2015

More details and opening times at: http://www.thelmahulbert.com/thg.aspx?pageID=2

Radical! -Egon Schiele at the Courtauld

Given the influence his work has had on drawing and the depiction of the human form it is hard to imagine the Austrian artist, Egon Schiele [1890-1918] was only twenty-eight when he died of Spanish flu. Seeing the first museum exhibition of his work shown in the UK for twenty years at the Courtauld in London you get a seldom seen sense of just how prolific Schiele was (there are 38 works in total), an insight into why his work was so significantly controversial for its time and why it is still relevant and influential today.

Ironically, myself also soon approaching the ripe old age of twenty-eight (and sincerely hoping not to be struck down with a case of Spanish flu!) it seemed like the opportune time to be inspired by some Schiele in person.

'Crouching woman with green headscarf' (1914) Gouache and pencil, 47 x 31cm.

Schiele’s drawings are punchy, nude full body portraits of women, himself and his lovers, family, cohorts are often depicted in uncomfortable awkward poses, limbs/hands often exaggerated or contorted at unusual angles, the backgrounds bare so as to make sure the subject receives full attention. They are explicit ‘everything’ is literally on show and in some cases, pornographic or as one commentator explained, “Erotic representations without erotic content.” (if you can comprehend such a thing, then this is actually quite an accurate way of putting it, I think!) Conversely, perhaps, in the expressive way in which they are drawn they also hold at times a tender anxiety that wavers between being confrontational, sensual and vulnerable all at the same time. Their daring controversy was not lost at the time they were produced with Schiele actually being imprisoned on ‘public morality grounds’. He was radically ahead of his time and there is a lot that we could discuss and in fact most of what is written about Schiele deals with this debate of the eroticism and perceived opinions of explicitness and censorship in art and modern visual history...blah, blah, blah...

'Sneering Woman (Gertrude Schiele)' (1910) Gouache, watercolour and charcoal with white highlighting, 45 x 31.4cm.

BUT we're not interested in any of that are we? For the purposes of this blog post I'm personally focusing on the 'drawing' and not the subject matter of Schiele’s work really in any way. In truth I went to the Schiele exhibition because I was fascinated to see how they ‘worked’, how they looked as drawings. If I need continue in my own art, I do my utmost to avoid people directly all together! I just don’t find people that interesting (in the art sense). If there are ‘people’ or traces of them in my work they are present more metaphorically with tools or mark making or other referential symbolism. In essence it may be difficult to separate the drawing from the thing it is depicting or derived from as in the case of representational drawing like Schiele’s but just how much do the two influence each if at all is something I am curious to find out.

'Nude self portrait in grey with open mouth' (1910) Gouache and black chalk, 43.8 x 30cm.

What I did find is that Schiele’s figures and representation of the human form are very ‘sculptural’; his self portraits are very angular, his nude female forms very heavily outlined, very ‘solid’ looking. Again, I think this is why I admired them as drawings because they were delivered very confidently, there are no rubbed out lines, all the workings are on show, layered and add to the sense of personality/character in the drawings (particularly in his self portraits). Although they never have the impression of being overworked and there is an immediate confidence and ferventness to capturing these people, these characters, these forms down on paper.  Perhaps like handwriting even whilst the artist himself isn’t ‘present’ within the work, in the sense of being depicted you are always aware of his presence as the hand/the eyes the thinking person looking behind the work. In a slightly feminist way,ahead of its time these drawings have been analysed now as not having the gaze of the male voyeur but of, and I quote, ‘a man who genuinely loves women’. Make of this what you will but for those sorts of reasons they do feel refreshingly honest, real, raw (delete as appropriate) as they are quite unflattering really, a lot of them but inadvertently become quite 'beautiful' in their honesty because of their unabashed, fleshy, bony, hairy, patchy coloured, blemished human openness. A quality in part echoed by the artists choice of using a brown paper surface to draw on the material a more disposable, immediate and everyday one than the preciousness of white paper or canvas surface.

'Fighter' (1913) Gouache and pencil, 48.8 x 32.2cm.

With Schiele’s nudes there is a sense sometimes that the figures are merely a container, an outline in which to house and hang his mark making, stains, colour within (see above). An observation that recalls a similarity with the work of Jim Dine who would almost be a complete abstract expressionist for it not his use of motifs such as hearts, tools, plants or birds that aside from their symbolic qualities he sees them acting as formalistic devices in his words, ‘something to hang the paint on’. I don’t pay this connection of Dine to Schiele too much heed but other than the fact that it helps draw attention to just how diverse the variety of mark making approaches Schiele used in his drawings that perhaps are more easily overlooked in favour of the subject matter.

Needless to say it was an exciting exhibition. Schiele's drawings are as radical today as they were then, just in a different sense of the word that highlights them not for their difference, for their 'controversy' as they did then but for their ability to still hold your attention and be intently surprising. It was an intense, thoughtful and crucially for me, unsettling enough exhibition to make me think about my own drawing habits/techniques so as not to become lazy. 

 In a Spanish flu free scenario it would be intriguing to know what Schiele may have carried on to create next.... though one thing is for certain, his work assures he will never be forgotten.

What are you waiting for?!

Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude is still on at the Courtauld until January 18th!

http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/exhibitions/2014/Schiele/index.shtml

Images plundered from:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/10/egon-schiele-graphic-virtuoso-vienna-nudes

http://www.artfund.org/what-to-see/exhibitions/2014/10/23/egon-schiele-the-radical-nude-exhibition

http://blog.artsper.com/events/egon-schiele-the-radical-nude-at-the-courtauld-gallery/

http://www.dailyartfixx.com/2013/06/12/egon-schiele-1890-1918-2/