26th October 2019

 

I was in Venice to visit the Biennale at the weekend.  It was hot beautiful weather, but it was also a Saturday and it seemed the whole of Venice was enjoying the show before it closes in a few weeks. I took the vaporetto from Ca d’Oro to Giardini instead of walking across the city, in order to save time and energy.  As usual it is a great pleasure to join with the visitors and the Venetians as they travel through the city and across the water – especially on a sparkling day as this was.

The theme of this year’s Biennale is “May you live in interesting times“.  I knew of the Glasgow-based artist Cathy Wilkes (British Pavilion), though I did not visit this pavilion because there was restricted entry and a long queue.  Instead there were many artists from China, Africa and India and other previously under- or non-represented countries. India is represented this year for the time, for example.  This was very exciting and  I wish I had had the time and the energy to explore this show thoroughly. It would have taken two days at least, instead of the measly five hours I was able to devote to it this year.  So all I got was a flavour.  For much more, read the excellent review by Laura Cummings in the Observer.

Here are a few notes:

Dutch Pavilion

Stand out items I did see included the Dutch Pavilion, carefully explained to me by the invigilator.  This really helped.  The exhibition is a comment by artists Iris Kensmil and Remy Jungerman on Surinam and the Netherlands and their mutual influence,  including references to Mondrian and Rietveld, the actual designer of the Dutch pavilion.  Jungerman is interested in the way patterns are transmitted and how they shape culture.  I would like to explore the ideas of this exhibition further, as it was absolutely rich with meaning and interest.

“The Measurement of Presence. The Biennale Arte is an arena for continuously redefining notions of nationhood and the locality of art. Remy Jungerman and Iris Kensmil’s The Measurement of Presence calls for an alternative, transnational approach towards what binds us, acknowledging that we are in a constant state of flux. Jungerman and Kensmil explore the possibilities that emerge from not just allowing but embracing this ongoing shift. They explore how a truer measurement of presence, spirit, and history are needed for our interconnected existence.  (Biennale Arte 2019)”

 

Martin Puryear in US Pavilion

Martin Puryear’s confident and beautifully made sculptures in the US pavilion.  I enjoyed this work that was so resolved, so well displayed and which did not require much more from me than admiration and awe at the skill involved.

 

Michael Armitage in International Pavilion and in Arsenale

In the International Pavilion I saw work by Michael Armitage.  He paints quite thinly in oil on huge canvases and his subject is the social and political turmoil in Kenya.  There was more of his work in Arsenale.  I admire his message and also his delicate technique, which is different from the heavy expressive use of oil that I have recently been encouraged to do.

 

Ulrike Muller in Arsenale

             

In the Arsenale I appreciated Ulrike Muller‘s large abstract weaving and her highly focused small enamel pieces (like paintings but not?)   She is interested in critiquing the usual hierarchies of fine art, in which textile art comes a long way down the list.  Good for her. I would like to find out more about her work.

 

Julie Mehretu in Arsenale

            

Julie Mehretu (b. 1970 Addis Addaba) ” is a contemporary visual artist, well known for her multi-layered paintings of abstracted landscapes on a large scale. Her paintings, drawings, and prints depict the cumulative effects of urban sociopolitical changes through the landscape’s alteration of architecture, topography, and iconography.”

“I think of my abstract mark-making as a type of sign lexicon, signifier, or language for characters that hold identity and have social agency. The characters in my maps plotted, journeyed, evolved, and built civilizations. I charted, analyzed, and mapped their experience and development: their cities, their suburbs, their conflicts, and their wars. The paintings occurred in an intangible no-place: a blank terrain, an abstracted map space. As I continued to work I needed a context for the marks, the characters. By combining many types of architectural plans and drawings I tried to create a metaphoric, tectonic view of structural history. I wanted to bring my drawing into time and place.[7]

I enjoyed these paintings, so allusive and delicate, and will find out more about Mehretu’s ideas and work.

 

Otobung Nkanga 

Otobung Nkanga  – I liked her small paintings, so carefully done, and with the colour strip she includes to show her palette.

Some artists were using tech to spectacular effect   Antoine Catala. for example

Liu Wei in Arsenale

Liu Wei – large scale propellor-style installation I found satisfying.  For me it just worked as an art piece and a sculpture.

Arsenale was heavily boarded up in many areas to create the separate exhibitor’s spaces. I usually enjoy this massive echoing space for its scale and I did find the partitioning claustrophobic.

These are a few impressions from the time I spent in Giardini and Arsenale. As usual, there was so much to learn and to see.  I was focused on what was closest to my own interests and that meant painting.  It was fascinating to see what artists are making and saying from all over the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is much too soon (about a week) to write very much about the experience of joining Nottdance for a day. I would just like to thank the organisers and everyone involved for a very special experience.  Here are a few prelim notes.

First impressions

I had a fabulous mind-blowing day at the Nottdance 2019 festival.

  • so well thought out
  • Lovely dance space
  • Beautifully organised
  • Top quality events and performances
  • Balanced “flavours”
  • creative buzz

I had to get there before I could even begin to grasp it.  No idea what to expect

  • Breakdancing?
  • Community event?
  • I did not have a clue, but it turned out to be all these things and super smooth

What I did

  1. Katye Coe’s open class on contact improvisation.  90 mins of free style and contact with music once warmed up.  Beautiful experience.  Starting from “listening to the body”, thinking of gravity and being in space.
  2. Julie Cunningham Open Practice   a privilege to watch this amazing dancer work through her warm up routine, explain her ideas, particularly about gender fluidity and lesbianism, and then perform a short dance.  It probably meant a lot but I enjoyed the beauty of her movement and the integrity of the whole experience.  Discussion about non patriarchal ways of viewing the body, its fluidity and messiness.
  3. Reading room. A discussion group focussed on the small library in centre – started with books being scattered off shelf around the room and everyone sharing or reading what caught their eye.  This was a brilliant way to access the books in a different way, how different when they were on the floor or on windowsills or seats, how much easier it was to start discussions with fellow readers.  I felt more at home and confident in this session.  I appreciated the parallels between choreography and visual art.  So eye opening and shifting.  Books we discussed:
  • Inside Choreocracy
  • Power of just doing stuff
  • Marcus Coates  a practical guide to unconscious reason
  • Wondrous Women – a group in Nottingham
  • Cai Tomos
  • Using the sky  by Deborah Hay – “I wanted to choreograph a spoken language that would inspire a shift in dance away from the illustrative body, despite its intense appeal to dancers and audiences alike, to a non-representational body”   “the surplus of output for my whole body at once far exceeds any additional input from me. 

4. Jennifer Lacey, extraordinary dancer and artist, doing hermeneutics practice in Nottingham Contemporary. I sat in on one session, amazed by her evident            skill and depth of knowledge and vast self confidence.

5. Matthias Sperling and Katye doing an amazing dance in the Nham Contemporary. I was quite tired by this time, went to sleep at one point, still did not understand his ideas, but appreciated the quality and originality and spirit of the beautiful performance.

Thoughts?

  • Oh so refreshing
  • Tremendously aware
  • Wish I had been there for whole thing
  • Wish I had seen more
  • But this was just a starter for me
  • Choreography as a practice, seeing visuals in a different way as a result, choreography as a way of creating with the human body
  • Had a discussion with Antonio from Spain/London about the conceptual/non conceptual approaches to choreography.
  • I think that sometimes conceptualisation is like legislation, the mind as agent, otherwise things do not happen, cannot change
  • I am on a track of sorts, particularly regarding improvising and less emphasis on figurative art
  • Matthias exploring new ways of knowing through movement and the body
  • Hearing about other ways of combining visual art and movement   Dancing Museums  “The Democracy of Beings”

Research and ideas

Matthias writing about magic and science, “the magical and the scientific, the imagined and the actual, the subjective and the objective, or with mind and body.  Warburg placed movement at the centre of his way of understanding the world”.

Matthias on how different artists “could be seen to be exploring aspects of this evocative and generative zone in their practices… I see these practices as working within and on the fundamental connectedness of our mental being, our physical being, and the manifold other human and non-human beings in the environments around us.  “

The practitioner as “seismograph” – a person who is tuning in to particular frequencies, resonances and ruptures that are vibrating in the environments around them, diagnosing their epicentres and bring them to light to be perceived in different and yet related ways”… each offering “vitally regenerative responses to the many-layered complexities that we are living through”  (Matthias Sperling)

How does this relate to visual art and to my work?

Good question.  I am blown away by the experience of being in Nottingham, and now, a week later, am unable to produce a coherent impression.  All I can say is that I understand choreography slightly more than I did, and that I have discovered the beautiful and original ideas and writings of Deborah Hay.  Which might be applicable to my art practice and which might help me understand the body, my body, and movement more.  It is something below the radar, and I prefer to leave it that way, reading her books “Using the Sky” and “my body, the buddhist”, as meditations or prayers.

Taking art off the wall into a physical and shared space/awareness, which is less visual and more holistic.  Also more immediately universal.

Thinking back to the work I did for exhibition earlier this year “Being Human – Together”     I was pushed for time in preparing for this exhibition, and had not yet processed ideas from Mattias’ workshop at Siobhan Davies Dance Studios in London.  In fact I drew in a spontaneous way and subjective way,  so perhaps I was understanding more than I realised.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh what a struggle to move from looking to something else.  That something could be analysing shapes back to their limits, somehow finding the essence of the image, expressing emotions, or something as yet unrealised.

Reading about David Bomberg and his insistence on being  part of the subject, “spirit of the mass”, I tried a new approach today and my current “something” is physical experience, for the horse it is the rough messiness and raw power that comes with the sublime beauty of the animal.

Today, 7th October,  I found a looseness and abstract approach, though it still looks figurative.  Getting more relaxed about the paint   Dare I say. But it is still a leap.

A week or so later, making one of these little paintings each day as “drill”, but now it is making more sense as I look at other half finished pieces and think how I could approach them with more awareness of shape and colour.  Anyway here are three more of the recent little pieces.

 

 

Carton #2

RSA Architecture Forum 2019
Our Place on Earth

This year’s Royal Scottish Academy Architecture Forum will challenge the popular idea that ‘people make places’ by demonstrating that our ‘place on earth’ remains a powerful and omnipresent force that fundamentally affects our person, our national character, our culture and therefore our art and architecture.

We invite you to a dialogue with three critical thinkers, an artist, architect and writer, to deconstruct ‘the now’ through the lens of art and architecture. The role of art and architecture in society has never been more acute, come join us and explore together how we can alter or ignore our reality.

Chair: Paul Stallan RSA (Elect)
Panel:
Jude Barber, Jonathan Charley and Patricia Fleming

Tuesday 10 September 7pm
Civic House, Glasgow, G4 9RH

Paul Stallan the architect –   inner and outer punk, supplied the music

Jude Barber  Collective architecture  Common Guild 

Jonathan Charley  writer  critic political character, recommended the reading, mostly vintage and untrendy.  Cocaine Nights by Ballard included.

Patricia Fleming  gallery owner  administrator  artist, says she was educated not in school, which she hated, but by looking at and understanding artists

I made a special effort to attend this, driving into Glasgow on a damp dark evening and getting lost!  Eventually arrived at the Civic House.  I am so glad I did make this effort, because the event was very encouraging and interesting.

HERE ARE SOME QUICK IMPRESSIONS OF THE EVENING.

The debate was lively and original, especially Paul’s music and Jonathan’s book selection.  Jude made a great contribution from the socially engaged architectural standpoint and Patricia very insightful about the role and nature of artists.  She is aware of the deep thinking that goes into making art, and commented that art works best if it combines an “instant hit” with thought and meaning.

Critical awareness of the pressurised consumerist and politically disoriented society we inhabit, social media included, was taken for granted,  as was the call for an engaged art.

One of the panel, maybe the punk architect, Paul Stallan, maybe all of them, agreed that  art is a destructive force before it can become a creative one.  The deconstruction or destructive is a  part of seeing the new and creating something from the breakages.  I applaud this insight.

Architecture Fringe, an annual summer event, across Scotland – so worth knowing about.