What art have I seen? The Asset Strippers
Mike Nelson’s The Asset Strippers at Tate Britain transforms the Duveen Galleries into some part of Govan or Clydebank, Paisley or maybe East Kilbride.
The structuring of the dignified neoclassical spaces into a series of workshops, lacks only the suspended fluorescent lights to fully realise the conceit. The partitions’ materials, structures and even adornments are all evocative of industrial spaces across the UK.
The assemblages in the first space seem more ‘found’ whilst some in the rear spaces are more contrived or absurd and more poignant, particularly the giant diesel engine on a bed of sleeping bags.
It might be trite to say there’s poetry in the everyday of industry, but in truth you can find it easily.
What art have I seen? Victor Pasmore Gallery
View of Victor Pasmore Gallery
Small selection of works by Victor Pasmore who lived in his later life on Malta.
Very clear sense of Pasmore’s Modernist understanding of the way the artwork is a thing in itself, not a representation or derivation. Curious if this links to ideas of Object Oriented Ontology?
Pasmore says, “Once independent, a painting becomes the sole visual object so that its content becomes totally immanent in its form and image, a condition which renders its meaning essentially potential. Emerging in anonymity, therefore, the new painting can become a sign or symbol of infinite extension, directly finding its place in the eye and mind of the spectator” (Images of colour 1983).
Harman says, “By ‘objects’ I mean unified realities – physical or otherwise – that cannot fully be reduced either downwards to their pieces or upwards to their effects.”
And goes on to say, “But for the arts, as for the social sciences, the greater danger is the upward reduction that paraphrases objects in terms of their effects rather than their parts. For it is dubious to claim that objects are utterly defined by their context, without any unexpressed private surplus.”
Obviously an artwork is a thing in the human world, but for Pasmore it is not a communication, a message, between the artist and the spectator. It is a thing in itself, not reducible to a representation.
What art have I seen? ‘Dora Maar’ and ‘Prehistory’ at the Pompidou
After the Picasso Museum and also the Tate’s Dorothea Tanning exhibition (with it’s continual reminders that she was married to Max Ernst), this was more interesting and better judged. Includes Dora Maar’s early commercial work, her social investigations, move into Surrealism, connection with Picasso, later abstract photography… rich and diverse.
The ‘Prehistory’ exhibition is a huge survey of art and archaeology, taking inspiration from Lucy Lippard’s Overlay. Interesting that France has its own history of geological ‘realisation’ parallel to Hutton in Edinburgh.
Giuseppe Penone
What art have I seen? Picasso Museum, Paris
Permanent collection and the temporary exhibition bringing together works by Picasso with works by Alexander Calder. Came away with a renewed respect for Calder’s judgement and elegance. Some of the Picasso works… less so.
What art have I seen? Love at first sight
Morag Myerscough’s installation in collaboration with poet Jo Gilbert encompasses the Mercat Cross. Commissioned by Aberdeen’s LookAgain Festival (based in Gray’s)
Lovely story connecting Myerscough to Aberdeen, and Gilbert is a powerful voice for Doric poetry.
Audiences and … pt5
This thread records bit and pieces that seem relevant to thinking about the complexity and many dimensions of art in the world.
Although my colleague Anne Douglas might ask for a tougher and more careful articulation of the ways in which improvisation is operating here, Francois Matarasso’s piece is a pretty good articulation of what we know to be possible and opens up what he means by Community Art pretty effectively.
Celebration of Richard Fremantle’s life
Harriet Walter very kindly read a piece at the suggestion of Chloe Fremantle Blegvad.
It came from the Portsmouth Priory School newsletter and was very close to Richard’s heart. It has a similar sentiment to The Four Quartets which he also loved. Oskar Baines Fremantle videoed this. The text copied out by Chloe is below.
This captures his spirit so well.
What art have I seen? AMBIT: Photographies from Scotland at Stills
AMBIT: Photographies from Scotland at Stills in Edinburgh. Kieran Dodds’ talk for University of Aberdeen Alumni, particularly on his work on Church Forests of Ethiopia.
System Failure
Exhibition on San Francisco focused on tech failure. Apex Art, who are based in New York City, present this in SF, the heart of tech.
The essay highlights the tech mantra,
fail fast! fail big! fail often! fail better!
Which is of course a signal bastardisation of Samuel Beckett,
Ever tried. Ever failed. Try Again. Try better.
(Nothing about size and speed.)
Good essay to be found here https://apexart.org/exhibitions/kornstein-defabio.php
What art have I seen? Everybody in the Place
Jeremy Deller’s Everybody in the Place, an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 at The Modern Institute
Busy for a sunny (taps aff) Saturday in Glasgow – lots of artists sitting in the dark being reminded of their youth (Ally Wallace, Rowena Comrie).
Interesting proposition that Social Media has replaced music as the mode of existence of young people…
But seriously, compelling argument for the role of late 80s music in the counter culture flowing from Europe to the US and back again. Continued relevance in the ongoing rise of the Right.
What art have I seen? Gathering by Alec Finlay
Finlay, Manifesto for Walking
Alec Finlay’s exhibition Gathering at W OR M in Aberdeen opens up a relationship with the Scottish environment (that which is around us whether urban, rural, forest or mountain top) as a space of walking and hutting, but also of re-wilding and in which to make poetry. We think of mountains and forests in the sublime tradition of art, but Alec gives us this in everyday and contemporary terms. He uses games and the domestic, even children’s toy blocks, to engage us. His form of concrete poetry, poetry to exist in the world, in workplaces and domestic spaces, is quirky but not precious.
Finlay, Timeline of Re-Wilding
What art have I seen? Chick Chalmers
Chick Chalmers An American Roadtrip at Gallery 10, Edinburgh. On the recommendation of Alex Hamilton.
Audiences and… pt4
Lucas Ihlein’s short essay on blogging and how he uses it as part of a situated practice (whether in local communities or communities of interest) opens up interesting questions about exoticisim and neighbourliness, seeing the familiar and how to make it strange, as well as the use of a blog as a form of interaction.
What art have I seen? Who’s afraid of drawing?
Works on Paper from the Ramo Collection at the Estorick Collection.
Drawing from Italy between 1910 and 1990. Abstract, figurative, with words and in relation to sculpture.
Talking to my cousin last night, we discussed how small exhibitions, well curated, can have more significance than their scale.
This exhibition covers periods where Italy was having huge influence on the world, at the time of the Futurists after the First World War, and again in the 60s when, alongside Arte Povera, Italy was a political maelstrom and fashionable too. Another cousin (it was an evening of cousins) said, just think about photos of young Italians on beaches in the Sixties, the height of chic, and it was the same country that had the largest Communist Party outside of the Soviet Union.
And then there was fascism, Futurism slipping into questions of power and technology, Il Duce, etc.
It’s all there in the selection of drawings: designs for facades of Fascist headquarters, pseudo neo classical Saints, but also found and distressed objects as drawings, satire, cinema, mathematics… all life in fact. Every approach to making drawings. As the curatorial statement says,
Drawing – considered as any kind of work on paper, regardless of technique – is the load-bearing skeleton for much creative experimentation, a medium favoured by painters and sculptors that often represents the first visualization of an idea.
What I didn’t see was any reflection on collecting, which could have been brought out in the relation between the permanent (Estorick) collection and the visiting (Ramo) collection. This could have happened by highlighting which artists exist in both suites, leading to hurried journey’s between floors, but also by some comparison of the conditions of collecting, the motivations of collectors.
Having been listening to the Collect Wisely podcast with Pamela Joyner, the concerns of collectors, their ambitions and motivations, are vital to understanding the body of the collection.
What art have I seen? London 2026: Recipes for building a Food Capital
London 2026: Recipes for building a Food Capital at the Roca Gallery.
Lucked out to be able to join a tour by the curators from Department 22 (Clare Brass and Dejan Mitrovic).
Varied and interesting collection of architecture and design proposals. All are more or less real now but the conceit is that they need to be more real in 2026 when London’s population hits 10 million.
Symbiosis is a key theme, along with making food processes visible.
Interesting how energy bars are the cutting edge of experimenting: as evidence of the reality of the proposals we were offered both insect protein and algae based commercial products…
Also Joan Snyder’s Rosebuds and Rivers at Blain Southern
What art have I seen? Dorothea Tanning
Dorothea Tanning at the Tate Modern. Jake asked if in an exhibition of Max Ernst there would be so much reference to his wife – seems unlikely. Mostly we don’t know about the women in male artists’ lives, unless they are ‘muses’ or lovers. Tanning’s narrative in the interpretation panels is woven with Ernst’s.
Beside this it is also interesting that all the publicity images are from the first phase of her work, which is most obviously part of the Surrealist tradition we are familiar with. There is mention of the fabric sculptures, but no images of the later much more optically complex and freely painted works. These explore the fragmented sense of subconscious experience. Rather than glimpses through doors, we have actually fragmented elements merging in complex patterns and forms. The resolution of this in the room-scale installation of fabric forms is truly Lovecraftian.
What art have I seen? The World Turned Up-Side Down
Mark Wallinger’s controversial piece commissioned by LSE puts UK University business models into sharp relief – are People’s Republic of China or Republic of China (Taiwanese) students more valuable? Change the colour of Taiwan so it is part of PRC or keep it a different colour? £19,920 per undergraduate and up to £35,568 for an MSc in Finance and Private Equity.
What art have I seen? New Contemporaries
Karolina Bachanek
New Contemporaries at the Royal Scottish Academy. Many talented, ambitious and provocative recent graduates from Scottish Art Schools. Very much the spirit of the age. Bachanek’s (Gray’s) environment made of supermarket and other plastic bags creating a seedy chill-out space – mind/life of a dosser or reality for an art school graduate? Plants that don’t want to be touched. Amateur research library as art.
What art have I seen? Leonardo Drawings
Leonardo da Vinci Drawings at the Kelvingrove, Glasgow
What art have I seen? Oral Suspension
Photo courtesy of Look Again Festival
David Blyth and Nick Gordon collaborated on this at once jokey and nuanced exhibition in Look Again‘s new space on St Andrew Street. It’s great to have a space on a street in central Aberdeen, but this exhibition should have been in the Aberdeen Art Gallery in terms of its scale and ambition. Open at exactly the point the City further cut its commitment to the arts, this shows what outstanding work is happening in the North of Scotland: an ecosystem being damaged by short term thinking.
Nick Gordon is a graduate of Gray’s, a sculptor and part of the group running a new printmaking workshop on Orkney. David Blyth teaches at Gray’s (and taught Nick).
The works are weavings of traditional folklore with newly discovered uses of the skate (and it’s iconic shape) are complemented by the artists’ investment in the project, taking skate oil supplements during the whole development of the work and offering ‘traditional’ recipes including a skate skink.
The human symbolic relationship with the skate is complex, not least because of the curious sense of a human face particularly in the landed hanging skate. Strange as this is, it is complemented by the strangeness evoked by other aspects, hinting at secret societies and mysterious rituals.
Image courtesy of Mood of Collapse blog
Jon Blackwood’s short text associated with the exhibition highlights connections with local conservation organisations, and the general threat to skate populations (some being on the IUCN Red List). He quotes Donna Haraway alluding to the complexity of connection and interdependence.
This exhibition demonstrates how art can take us into a deeper relationship with the more than human, but also how both art/culture and other living things are undervalued and threatened by our current insistence on valuing everything through the market.
What counts as ‘impact’?
Does an email citing a published ‘output’ inviting you to submit papers and join an editorial board of a new Journal count as impact?
I’m asking this because I regularly get emails mentioning the paper Gemma Kearney and I had published in the International Journal of Art and Design Education which, according to Google Scholar, is the 3rd highest rate Visual Art Journal.
I’ve pasted a typical email in below.
The paper, Owning Failure, has been cited three times (again according to Google Scholar), but I’ve had countless emails about it.
Other papers are more frequently cited, but this is the only paper ever mentioned in these invitations.
So good Journal, low citations, lots of soliciting emails… is that any sort of impact?
From: Journal AJAC
Sent: 08 March 2019 07:37:13 (UTC+00:00) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London
To: Christopher Fremantle (gsa)
Subject: Dear Fremantle, C; Kearney, G: Invite You to Submit Papers and Be Editorial Board/Reviewer Panel Member
International Journal of Literature and Arts
(ISSN Print:2331-0553 ISSN Online: 2331-057X)
Open Access Policy (OA) Peer-review 50-70 Days Paper Publication
[http://img.literarts.org/logo/w523582388996.png]<http://www.literarts.org/home>
Dear Fremantle, C; Kearney, G
International Journal of Literature and Arts (IJLA) is a peer-reviewed academic journal, establishing a solid platform to all academicians, practicing managers, consultants, researchers and those who have interest in emerging global trends in literature and arts.
Having been greatly attracted by your paper titled “Owning Failure: Insights Into the Perceptions and Understandings of Art Educators”, we wholeheartedly invite you to submit papers and join the Editorial Panel/Reviewer Team.
Become the Editorial Board Member/Reviewer
We have been dedicated to building IJLA into a world’s top journal. Well-known experts are cordially welcomed to join the Editorial Board/Reviewers Panel.
Have any interests of joining the Editorial Board/Reviewers Panel?
Please find more here: http://www.literarts.org/joinus
Advantages of Joining the Editorial Board/Reviewers Panel:
1. Quickly improve your perceptibility in your research fields.
2. Get cutting-edge materials on latest scientific discoveries.
3. Authoritative certification in PDF format launched by the editorial office.
4. Have your personal profile listed on the journal’s page.
5. 10% off of the original APC.
Submitting Your Article
IJLA was launched with the aim of promoting academic communication all over the world in a more productive way.
During the past years, lots of scholars have contributed many papers to the journal. With your contribution, experts from all over the world will achieve more in the process of scholarly research. We invite you with sincerity to contribute other unpublished papers that have similar topics to the journal. Your further research on this article is also welcomed.
If you are interested in submitting a paper, please learn more here:
http://www.literarts.org/submission
Here attached the abstract of your research which has impressed us most:
Title: Owning Failure: Insights Into the Perceptions and Understandings of Art Educators
Keywords: failure; artists; practice-led; pedagogies; learning
Abstract: Failure forms an important dimension of art and design and is inherent in creative endeavours. This article explores current literature on failure in the art and design context and offers a contribution through qualitative research drawing upon interviews with lecturing staff in a UK art school. The findings from this research emphasise the complexity of the concept of failure. Three key themes emerged regarding respondents’ perceptions of failure: failure as a process, as a means of learning and as an issue in assessment culture. This research is exploratory in nature, and whilst the limitations of the small sample are accepted, the article contributes to the dialogue and discussion surrounding the often emotive concept of failure.
Regards,
Margaret Fredricks
Editorial Office of International Journal of Literature and Arts
Audiences and… pt3
Reflecting on what it means to put someone at the centre of making art… Projects Director for ArtLink, Alison Stirling’s thoughts published on the Creative Scotland website.
The more they work together, the more the person at the centre benefits; the clearer the idea the more the person at the centre benefits; the more artists and thinkers are involved, the more the person at the centre benefits; the more time they spend learning from each other, the more the person at the centre benefits.
What art have I seen? John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing
John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing at Two Temple Place.
Well put together exhibition on Ruskin including contemporary responses. Hannah Downing’s Vertical Panorama drawing is particularly stunning.
Draws out his interests and the development of his poetics particularly in looking at nature, from formal compositions in the conventional manner to attention to nature itself.
What art have I seen? Mladen Miljanović
Utopian Realism at W OR M in Aberdeen, the first solo exhibition by Mladen Miljanović in Scotland.
Miljanović’s work is surreal (inc a video of his tutor at Art School being fitted with Lie Detector equipment before being interrogated and beaten by the Secret Police). But the performance, which involved Miljanović handcuffed to a pillar in the middle of the space for the duration of the opening, is possibly the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve read about pretty strange stuff in London and elsewhere in the 60s and 70s (shutting audiences into spaces, etc) but this was a personal first.
But how do you make something real and meaningful in a Gallery? Miljanović said he couldn’t show the work of his Teacher being arrested and interrogated and stand around being the celebrity artist – if he showed the work he had to ensure it wasn’t just entertainment. The performance ensured that the exhibition was inflected with a shared experience.
Of course the fact that he instigated the arrest and had organised the filming, all without his teacher’s knowledge, multiplies the strangeness.
Richard Fremantle, RIP
Obituary for my uncle Richard Fremantle, thanks to my cousin Peter for making this happen.
What art have I seen? Cage and Rauschenberg
John Cage Ryoanji and Robert Rauschenberg Spreads 1975-1983 at Thaddaeus Ropac.
What art have I seen? Marina Abramović – The Cleaner
Marina Abramović’s The Cleaner at Palazzo Strozzi.
https://www.palazzostrozzi.org/mostre/marina-abramovic-2/?lang=en
Career survey including all the well known pieces some being reperformed. Really powerful pieces. Not everyone enjoyed it – some thought it was pretentious. Some channelling of the AAA-AAA
Audiences and… pt2
Another piece of writing that has stayed with me comes from Matt Baker, Orchestrator at The Stove in Dumfries. In 2010 he wrote a piece entitled ‘A serious attempt to unravel public art’ about how all public art needs a door. He expressed it more elegantly. Read it here. And there is a pdf Sacrificial Materials: A serious attempt to unravel public art (deep breath).
Audiences and… pt1
I had an interesting conversation recently. Someone said to me. “I get irritated when I ask an artist how they think the viewer of the work will respond to something they are working on. They often say that they are making the work for themselves. When I ask them whether they want people to see the work, they say Of course. When I ask them who, they say People.” We are here talking about studio based work, work that is made and then shown, but this brings up larger issues.
And there is a truth that anyone making work in a studio in the end is making something to a personal agenda. And neither of us were thinking that making art was a form of marketing where a clear sense of the intended audience, segmented and analysed, was central to the process. Working in public places is almost always a negotiation.
So I’m going to be exploring this question, drawing attention to writing that I think helps address the question, “What is the relationship between the artist and the audience, participant, collaborator, co-creator, etc?” There will be a series of posts and they’ll all have the Title “Artists and…” Some may just be links to other pieces of writing – where relevant I’ll provide pdfs too.
The first is from Anne Douglas’ forthcoming publication in the Connected Communities Series for Policy Press.
Anne recently wrote, speaking of Allan Kaprow and John Cage,
…they shared the question of where creativity begins and ends – with the composer, with the performer and/or with the audience? This shift in the power of creative agency is poignantly evidenced at this early stage in Cage’s 4’33” (1952). The performer sits at the grand piano but does not play it. Instead the ritual of a classical performance frames ambient sound creating an environment that is sensory and, importantly, draws the audience, performer and composition together in a shared space connected through listening. The conventional hierarchy in which the (active) composer generates material that the performer (as mediator) realises to a (passive) audience gives way to new configuration. The listener, who could be composer or performer or a member of the audience, becomes the creator of his/her own singular experience of sound.
Douglas, A. 2019 Redistributing Power? A Poetics of Participation in Contemporary Arts. Bristol: Polity Press.
You can download the book from the Connected Communities website
What art have I seen? Rasheed Araeen
Retrospective at the Baltic of Rasheed Araeen – member of the Black Panthers, Artists for Democracy and founder of Third Text.
What art have I seen? Spellbound
The Spellbound: Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is really very problematic. It seems to be both parochial and also evade the deeper issues.
The exhibition contains a wide range of material culture from spell books and equipment through troves of clothing and shoes found secreted in houses, paintings and prints representing witchcraft and devilry, as well as some contemporary art which ‘channels’ the theme.
On the parochial front it seems to focus wholly on the southern half of mainland Britain, not address Scotland at all (Tam O’Shanter?), nor the North of England, nor Salem in Massachusetts, nor Norway, nor Africa… the view of the subject we are left with is very geographically specific – not that there is anything wrong with that, except I’m left wondering if that’s accurate? After all one of the most compelling objects is a South American object – an obsidian mirror apparently owned by John Dee. What other connections are there?
But on the evasion of deeper issues, the criticism is more fundamental. There are references to patriarchy and witch trials. There is a chair designed to test whether a witch is heavier or lighter than a church bible (lighter and you are a witch). But there seemed to be no contextual discussion on what shifts in the cultures of Europe and North America in the 17th Century such that women suddenly start being burnt for witchcraft. Not all witches are women and not all ritual and magic is associated with women, but women become the focus of violence and the exhibition could have enlightened us. Rather it left us with an idea of the various aspects of the practice, but no larger understanding.
What art have I seen? Santiago Sierra and Mike Kelly
Santiago Sierra’s Black Flag and Mike Kelly’s Mobile Homestead at DCA
http://www.dca.org.uk/whats-on/event/santiago-sierra-black-flag
What art have I seen? Artes Mundi 8
Artes Mundi at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/10264/Artes-Mundi-8/
What art have I seen? I Object: Ian Hislop’s Search for Dissent
Very good, diverse and provocative exhibition of satire, caricature and disruptive intervention (and not all lefty liberal either).
From the time of the Pharohs in Egypt through to the Umbrella protests in Hong Kong via classic British fart-based disrespect of leaders and rulers.
Taking Joanna Macy’s triumverate of ‘actions to defend,’ ‘Gaian structures’ and ‘shifting consciousness’ this is pretty much a workbook of ways to undermine authority.
It shows the breadth of the BM’s collection but also perhaps shows that this isn’t a focus of collecting. Hong Kong and Tianamen Square are represented but Occupy isn’t – the diagram created by Rachel Schragis of the Declaration of Occupy Wall Street would speak volumes.
Possil Free State, Greenham Common, Twyford Down, Faslane, the ZAD, Standing Rock and all the other combinations of defending and Gaian structures are insufficiently represented.
Perhaps the Liberate Tate/Art not Oil campaign is too close to home: the parallel Sumerian exhibition is sponsored by BP.
Of course out of context pretty much everything needed explanation, but there were many objects which stood out regardless, including the bronze head of a Roman General buried under a triumphal gate deep in Africa beyond the Empire.
In other cases you had to spot the critique including in the Seychelles banknotes where the engraver had included rude words around the head of the Queen.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/i_object.aspx
What art have I seen? Colourists and Life School
Beth Fisher’s astounding and inspired drawing of her family with her dead mother. Just one of a number of powerful pieces in Ages of Wonder: The Royal Scottish Academy Life School
Also The Rhythm of Light
Scottish Colourists from the Fleming Collection
What art have I seen? Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Went to see the Mastaba and associated exhibition again.
What art have I seen? Keith Sonnier
Keith Sonnier’s Until Today at The Parrish.
Also Barthélémy Toguo‘s work resulting from his residency at The Watermill Centre.
What art have I seen? Prada Marfa
Elmgreen and Dragset’s Prada Marfa. So gentrification… it’s definitely a thing. Art definitely can cause it. We saw a small tract house for sale – sign said Zoned for Residential/Commercial inc Art Gallery. The art workers we met (eg part-time tour guide with two art history degrees/full-time chef) were struggling to survive housing costs in Marfa. Of course we can be ironic about it, but what else can we do?
What art have I seen? Chinati Foundation
What should a museum be when made by an artist?
The artist decides where and how the work is installed (in agreement with the artist who set up the museum).
Works do not compete with each other.
Work is (almost exclusively) permanently installed.
The work is well documented but there are no signs and labels (except where they are part of the work).
What art have I seen? The Block
Studios and Libraries in The Block, Judd Foundation.
20th Century Books organised by date of publication (or author birth maybe).
Books before 20th Century organised by geography.
Studio contains work for thinking.
What art have I seen? Blue Star Contemporary
A Manhattan Beach Memoir by Gary Sweeney. Family home going to be demolished so turned inside out, becoming an installation, a tribute and an evocation of America in the second half of the 20th Century.
From Underfoot: Breaking Through Surface and Ground. Group show of materials, concepts, details.
What art have I seen? Assemblages: Sculpture, Found Objects and Boxed Reliefs
Assemblages: Sculpture, Found Objects and Boxed Reliefs at the Fine Art Society, Edinburgh including work by Fiona Dean, Will Maclean, Alberto Morocco amongst others. Did the latter influence the former?
Why we should learn to embrace failure | Elizabeth Day | Life and style | The Guardian
Gender issues, narratives of failure, resilience and opportunity
leave a comment