What art have I seen? Out There: Our Post-War Public Art
Walked past this yesterday and today went to see the Historic England exhibition on post-war public art. Highlights how the Festival of Britain in 1951 acted as a platform for new work perhaps in a similar way to how the 2012 Cultural Olympiad and 2014 Commonwealth Games have provided a platform for a new cross artform sited work.
https://historicengland.org.uk/get-involved/visit/exhibitions/public-art/
What art have I seen? Surreal Encounters
Surreal Encounters at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art – Dada through Surrealism.
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/whatson/on-now-coming-soon/surreal-encounters/
Failure, with intention
“To fail meant we took a risk, and because we did it with intention, knowing what we were aiming for and what went wrong, we could immediately go back to the drawing board and approach it again.”
https://hbr.org/2009/05/how-artistleaders-do-things-di
What art have I seen? Jo Spence
Jo Spence at Stills. Three groups of work that clearly demonstrate the radical approaches to photography being used by Spence and her various colleagues. Put this alongside the ‘Context is Half the Work: Partial History of the Artist Placement Group’ at Summerhalland its a salutory reminder of what radical practice looks like.
Good review here http://thisistomorrow.info/articles/jo-spence-1
What art have I seen? Alice Neel and Jess Johnson
Two exhibitions at the Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh. Alice Neel, New York portrait painter. The drawings in the Playfair Library on the ground floor and the balcony are well worth the trouble. The influence of the Expressionists is really strong, but it’s clearly NYC. The show links biography with work which is fascinating, but a bit distracting. The mark making is great!
Jess Johnson’s Eclectrc Panoptic drawings, video and VR environment are all enthralling – the VR environment is really successful transposition of the drawings – it is a linear exploration and not ‘gamified’ but I suspect that the real quality is in the work with Simon Ward to make it feel like you are moving through the drawings.
What art have I seen? A partial history of the Artist Placement Group
Roger Coward speaking about his Placement with the Department of the Environment in Small Heath, Birmingham
What art have I seen? Charles Jencks + Alex Rigg
‘A collaboration in wave form’ at the Merz Studio in Sanquhar. Who knew Jencks painted?
Failure and Mental Health
We were challenged in the q&a after our presentation on the Art(s) of Failure at the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities Summer School on the question of mental health.
There is no smart relationship between working with failure and mental health issues. Anyone saying to someone depressed or with other mental health challenges that they need to learn to ‘work with failure’ is wrong. Using failure as part of a creative process requires a degree of mental strength and resilience. It just does. Only the person knows what they can do. All the serious advice on mental health and depression says to support the individual, not give them any sort of ‘get over it’.
If you know someone with mental health issues then please don’t advise them to find ways to use their failures. Rather support them appropriately. If you are not sure, here are a couple of links.
Scottish Association for Mental Health
Advice for friends and family from MIND
What art have I seen? Dia Beacon
‘Best of minimalism’. The good tracks were Agnes Martin, Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra, Robert Irwin, On Kawara, Fred Sandback. Having come from Mass MOCA it is apparent that Dia need to have a space for one artist to be focused on in depth.
What art have I seen? Mass MOCA
This is part of Michael Oatman’s ‘All Utopias Fell’, a strange spin on solar energy and communication with the stars. The Jetstream is about 3 stories up and contains amongst other things a library and archive.
The three floors of Sol Lewitt’s work arranged Early, Mid and Late.
Explode Every Day – an inquiry into the phenomena of wonder – standout pieces by Michael Light’s ‘100 Suns’ (photos from the Los Alamos National Laboratories); Rachel Sussman’s ‘(Selected) History of the Space Time Continuum’; Ryan and Trevor Oakes’ drawings exploring perspective; Tristan Duke’s scratch holograms; and Julianne Swartz’ trembling, rattling ‘Bone Scores’.
Three works from the Hall Foundation by Anselm Kiefer, one of which immediately physically connected with Kilmahew.
What art have I seen? Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
In the Yellow Room we find Whistler’s ‘Nocturne, Blue and Silver: Battersea Reach’ along with a Matisse, a Degas, a Sargent and another Whistler. Having been to Hearst Castle last year, we wondered what the difference was?
What art have I seen? GSA MFA
Glasgow School of Art MFA at the Glue Factory. Liked Yeonkyoung Lee’s disco inspired installation – v nicely composed. Uesung Lee’s drawings and detritus of drawing as a form of labour. Also Jamie Green’s Shankland ‘Sun Never Sets’ – v clever curatorial exercise. Finally like Sian Collins and Westmoreland Stones.
Holding the paradox
photos: Chris Fremantle
How can art respond to complex social and ethical problems? When should the demand for solutions be resisted? And how might this affect our understanding of cultural leadership?
These were among the questions keenly debated in the first of our series of full day seminars on Cultural leadership and the place of the Artist which took place in Edinburgh on Friday 20th May. Our thanks go to the artists, researchers and cultural organisers who attended and contributed so fully. The day brought together participants from various phases of On The Edge research alongside new friends and colleagues from our project partners Creative Scotland and ENCATC.
Discussion ranged across different understandings of what is meant by leadership and how it relates to artistic production. This led on to questions about the role of art in public life. Some compelling suggestions were made about the distinctive capacity…
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What art jave I seen? Deep in the Heart of Your Brain
Jacqueline Donachie’s exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow. Three groups of work: drawings of lamposts – sources of illumination in the modern urban landscape; sculptures which use the materials of accessibility infrastructure (ramps and handrails) but perhaps seen from the perspective of someone for whom they don’t work or maybe just that they evoke the precariousness of the people for whom they are designed; finally videos speaking to sisters, speaking to feelings of doubt, but also playful. Powerful stuff. (Oh and a piece of armour – a boot – that could flex more than you expected.)
What art have I seen? When the future was about Fracking
He He’s installation and film in the Visual Research Centre in Dundee, part of Mette M High’s Leverhulme funded St Andrews’ based Energy Ethics programme
CV of failures: Princeton professor publishes resume of his career lows | Education | The Guardian
Elizabeth Reeder and I are going to be talking about failure at the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities in June and the reversal that this achieves is exactly the point. Like Hockney including an apology letter from a photolab in a collage or Deller exhibiting his failed design for the cover of the Tube map, failures are materials for new things. http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/30/cv-of-failures-princeton-professor-publishes-resume-of-his-career-lows?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Chicago; 3rd novel; Essays
In June Elizabeth and I are doing a joint session for the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities on the subject of Failure. She’done sessions on the Essay for Phd students at Gray’s which unfortunately I missed, but I’m very much looking forward to the Chapbook promised for the summer and the investigation of the essay form later this year, more details below.
A Trip to Chicago; The Third Novel
We’ve just made a spur of the moment trip Stateside. We swung through Iowa and played ping-pong with family (there may have been some singing and dancing too) and then spent some time in Chicago. It’s April but the city seemed to have forgotten this and typical Mid-western weather welcomed us: ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it’ll change.’ Including more than one blustery bout of snow when we walked Chicago’s version of the highline – the 606. We walked quite a lot in the cold, determined rain. We even braved the weather on an open top bus to tour Chicago neighborhoods run by the Chicago Architectural Foundation.
During February and March I worked to finish a full draft of my third novel, Those We Buried. In this book I not only create buildings but I burn them down…
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Questioning cultural leadership
Who do you depend upon to make your role in the arts possible? Who looks to you for support? What form of change would you most like to see happen – and who can help you bring it about?
Photos: Graeme MacDonald
On The Edge posed these questions to a diverse group of artists, researchers and organisers at the first event of its new AHRC investigation, Cultural leadership and the place of the artist, on 14th March at Woodend Barn, Banchory. Each question was approached through the viewpoints of a range of archetypal roles: artist, funder, teacher, policy maker, board member, parent, venue manager, volunteer. We built a network in miniature of the relationships and forms of influence through which our actions are shaped in aesthetic, organisational and social contexts. Opening up issues of leadership in culture beyond the operation of hierarchies, we tried to understand the…
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What art have I seen? Gray’s Graduates in Residence
They’ve called it Only the improvisation remains constant, a quote from the Harrisons
This is a detail of one of Tako Taal’s works.
A postcard from Brussels
From Jon Price in Brussels
I’ve always loved travelling through Maelbeek metro station, as I often do when staying at my regular apartment in Brussels, going from local stop Merode towards the centre. Until yesterday Maelbeek was most distinguished for its fabulous station artwork, completed in 2001 by the Belgian artist Benoît van Innis. This series of 8 faces would gaze benignly from the white tiled walls, deceptively simple line drawings fired in ceramic. They look at first glance like someone has drawn them on with a marker.
Benoît’s faces, echoes and anticipations of the passing commuters who stared blankly back at them on a daily basis, have been a reassuring presence on this route through the EU quarter. They are also a symbol of the city’s cosmopolitanism, with their sparse detail sufficient to suggest diversity and their open expressions inviting self-identification. I found myself looking for their images on the internet last night…
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NEA Magazine: The Art of Failure: The Importance of Risk and Experimentation
Artists talk about failure
https://www.arts.gov/NEARTS/2014v4-art-failure-importance-risk-and-experimentation
What art have I seen? Musee Art Moderne, Paris
Dufy, de Chirico, Braque and Picasso, Matisse, Sekula (Museum Guardroom), Duchamp, Bourgeois, Messenger.
What art have I seen? Another Minimalism
Another Minimalism: Art After California Light and Space at The Fruitmarket, Edinburgh – I saw Robert Irwin’s 2 year installation at the Dia in NYC in 2000 in deep midwinter. The exploration of formal and sensory experience in this show is really well curated with a spectrum of works by key people. I particularly liked the retinal afterglow from the Olafur Eliasson.
What art have I seen? Island Drift and Nick Hedges
Streetlevel have an exhibition of work done with NVA in the Loch Lomond national park exploring light in a dark landscape. Light is brought to life almost as another albeit strange and new entity in the landscape. In the Trongate 103 Foyer Nick Hedges photographs from the Gorbals in the 70s are a reminder of what highrise housing was replacing – slum tenaments – but Hedges photography doesn’t just capture the issue – it’s as beautifully composed as a Vuillard.
What art have I seen? Drawn into tomorrow
Drawn into tomorrow by IC-98 at Dundee Contemporary Art
BBH story on recent Arts and health projects
Better Building in Healthcare ran the story Arts and health – more than just a picture a couple of weeks ago featuring the ‘Podium Landmarking’ project by Rachel Mimiec, Graphical House and Haa Design for the Queen Elizabeth University Hospitals in Glasgow. The landmarks are designed to work like landmarks in towns and cities, telling you that you are at an important junction. The conventional signage works like street names and directions. They compliment each other.
Rachel and the team did some workshops with staff and patients to understand what constituted a ‘landmark’ and the answer they came back with was ‘something quirky’ that stood out. They then asked some 25 members of staff (current and retired) to tell them about something quirky that happened to them. The result was distilled down in discussion with the NHS Capital Planning Team and then developed by Graphical House working with Haa Design into 3d illustrations eventually built by specialist fabricators, Interior Solutions in Corian (the Dupont kitchen surface product).
That’s how you get a jar of beach sweeties or a pair of flying saucers (or 19 other quirky images) working as landmarks helping people remember where they’ve been in a hospital.
You can also see more about the project on Ginkgo Projects and NHSGGC’s Arts & Health
What art have I seen? Simon Starling
Nine Feet Later by Simon Starling at The Modern Institute. Nice evocation of multiple timescales, almost an iteration of Latham’s Time Base Roller in a group of objects (from bamboo to fossilised wood), including the sense of the ghostly half seen past created by the Dageurrotypes of (reconstructed) previous exhibitions in the space.
https://www.themoderninstitute.com/exhibitions/3-the-modern-institute-3-airds-lane2015-11-14/5352/
What art have I seen? Burnt Sierra and the Ship of Theseus
Calum Stirling’s exhibition Burnt Sierra and the Ship of Theseus at The Briggait.
What art have I seen? Turner Prize
Sadly Janice Kerbel’s choral piece was ‘off’ for the hols, but the juxtaposition between Assemble’s ‘craftivist’ community-focused regeneration of Four Streets in Granby, Liverpool, on the one hand and Bonnie Camplin’s study centre on the community kidnapped by extra-terrestrials was compelling. In one room we found a catalogue of hand-made objects which spoke to our desire for the worthy poor to have quality fittings (for which we might read ‘to become middle class’). And of course we can buy the objects ourselves, reinforcing our sense of our own good taste. In the other we are faced with a wholly other ‘other’, clearly a population of nutjobs with whom we have nothing in common. Except that in the library (and I’ll admit to a particular fondness for libraries – see previous writing on the Martha Rosler Library and of course the ecoartscotland library) there are books that I have on my shelves. I hope everyone found something that they connected with, bringing them one or two steps closer to the individuals in the video interviews – I watched a bit with a woman talking about reptilian aliens.
It would have been the obvious decision to give the prize to this or the room with fur coats over the backs of chairs – perhaps the red topped newspapers wouldn’t even have bothered making the usual fuss. The provocative decision was to award the prize to Assemble, but they aren’t exactly radical social practice – they lack a sharp enough political edge.
Accidents will happen
More on failure, this time in relation to innovation. Article proposes three conditions:
1. Time and space for experimentation (always an issue eroded by ‘good’ project management, the hurry to evaluate, modularisation, time and motion studies, etc);
2. Knowledge ‘push’ is valuable too, and sometimes relevance becomes apparent later (‘pull’ is very popular but people need to know what’s possible in order to pull);
3. Connectivity – tell people about failures (links to ‘open’ methods but also to publishing failure, critical reflection not just KE, etc).
http://ispim.org/#mg_ld_3151
The Hope of Something Different – a piece for A Restless Art
Invited piece for Francois Matarasso’s A Restless Art unpacking some of the similarities between community/social and environmental/ecological art practices.
Old to New in Hospitals: Echoes of Grace
Marlene Creates, Echoes of Grace (detail), 2001
Marlene Creates, the Canadian artist poet known for her deep exploration of the human relation to place, undertook a project demonstrating ways to connect an old hospital with a new one, in particular focusing on staff and their experience of change. The image above is one of a series of panels comprising images, found text (graffiti written on the walls by the staff during the last days they worked there) as well as more formal text. View the project on MARLENE CREATES website.
What art have I seen? Transmissions
Transmissions is an exhibition of work produced from the ASCUS micro-residency at the Centre for Immunity Infection and Evolution in the University of Edinburgh. Works by Mark Doyle, Anne Milne, and Jo Hodges & Robbie Coleman.
Comes back to the question provoked by Matthew Dalziel’s presentation at the North Light Arts Conference in 2014. He reminded us of the question “Who speaks for the wolves?” This prompts the question for our culture “Who speaks for MRSA (or Malaria or SARS)?” This exhibition begins to address that question.
Edward Snowden meets Arundhati Roy and John Cusack: ‘He was small and lithe, like a house cat’ | Life and style | The Guardian
Countries, imperialism, war, surveillance, landscape and failure
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/28/conversation-edward-snowden-arundhati-roy-john-cusack-interview
Should be read whilst also reading Gerry Loose’ An Oakwoods Almanac
What art have I seen? Devils in the Making
Devils in the Making, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow
Cultural leadership and the place of the artist
Really excited to be working on a new phase of artists and leadership
On The Edge has secured a new £100,000 international project to develop professional engagement with its research into artistic and cultural leadership at Gray’s School of Art. Establishing new relationships with the Clore Leadership Programme, Creative Scotland and ENCATC (the European network of cultural management and cultural policy education), the work will generate events and discussions with the cultural sector in London, Edinburgh and Brussels. New publications will be produced and the project aims to inform new developments in cultural leadership training, theory and practice.
The year-long initiative is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) with further support from the three partners. It builds on the longstanding ‘Artist as Leader’ research as well as Jonathan Price’s Ph.D research into ‘Discourses of Cultural Leadership’ (2012-2015). Price will co-ordinate the new project while Professor Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle, the co-authors of the Artist as Leader report, will…
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Remember Nature
Julia Peyton Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Serpentine wrote to ask us to participate and circulate this invitation.
We Invite you to Remember Nature by creating your own event, action, performance intervention or artwork, on social media, in a gallery, a college campus, in the street…
Institutions: Register your interest to recieve specially designed posters to support your event, giving details of name, email and postal address before Fri 23rd Oct.
Individuals: Register your interest to participate in this event
All we ask is that you send us evidence of your contribution however small – for example, you might create photos, films, or other documentary evidence. Once you have run your event please use the WeTransfer service to send us your digital artifacts. Send them to:
remembernaturemetzger@gmail.com
Just copy and paste the above email address into WeTransfer. Send us your evidence before 30 November 2015.
Example of event for Remember Nature at your campus
Gustav Metzger co-curated the programme of last years’ Serpentine Marathon titled Extinction: Visions of the Future on 18th and 19th Oct 2014. During this time his work, Mass Media: Today and Yesterday was livestreamed from Herbert Read Gallery into the Serpentine Gallery throughout the course of the Marathon. Fine Art students from University for the Creative Arts created a media wall from newspapers for 18 hours over two days. Students were fully immersed in this work, scouring newspapers, silently cutting out key texts relating to extinction, working in pairs for 2 hour blocks. This exhibition was curated by Andrea Gregson, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, at UCA Farnham.
Continue reading How to get involved
For more on extinction it’s worth checking out the previous post on Thom Van Dooren’s work.
What art have I seen: Jimmie Durham
Jimmie Durham’s Various Items and Complaints at the Serpentine Gallery – humourous, light touch, playing between the natural and the man-made. Parasol show last year was more critical of society.
http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/jimmie-durham-various-items-and-complaints
Collective Futures Final Report — #COFUTURES
#CoFutures Report is a really valuable source on Collectives across art, design and craft in Scotland – used design thinking methods, residents, events and tools to understand character, issues and challenges as well as values and structures.
http://www.collectivefutures.net/blog/2015/2/12/collective-futures-final-report
Failure h3333333k
Turning technological error/breakdown into architectural animation https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/h3333333k/
What art have I seen? Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly at the new Gagosian as well as the Polaroid works at Davies Str. Understand why he’s in amongst the Abstract Expressionists though the ‘blotting paper’ works are also quite conceptual in their way. They feel like Judd’s technical drawings shown at Talbot Rice a few years ago, adjuncts to the ‘real’ work. But compared to the works in Houston these have a much harder edge.
http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/cy-twombly–october-10-2015
What art have I seen? Escher and Avery
M.C.Escher exhibition at the Dean Gallery. Charles Avery at the Ingleby.
What art have I seen? KennardPhillips and Holoturian
KennardPhillipps (Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps) Here Comes Everybody at Stills is immediately angry: angry about Shell drilling in the arctic, angry about George Osborne, angry about media manipulation.
Ariel Guzik’s work Holoturian in Trinity Apse courtesy of Arts Catalyst, is a slow steampunk meditation on the parallel lives of cetaceans.
What art have I seen? Crawick Multiverse
This was an opencast coal pit up until a couple of years ago. I do wonder what members of the Society for Ecological Restoration meeting in Manchester next week would make of it?
Help Place of Origin
We need your help. Kemnay Community Councillor David Evans just contacted me about a proposal to further surround Place of Origin with housing. Some of you will know that when I was Director of the Scottish Sculpture Workshop we worked with three artists John Maine RA, Glen Onwin RSA and Brad Goldberg (Texas) to create a landscape and viewpoint at Kemnay Quarry called Place of Origin. John Maine framed it as making landscape as art.
So Place of Origin as an artwork made out of 100,000 tonnes of quarry waste and about 7000 trees mirroring Bennachie in the way the Japanese gardens mirrored the wider landscape is all about views. When you are standing at the top you have views for 360 degrees with the quarry in front of you and Aberdeenshire’s beautiful countryside around with Bennachie in the distance. The artists also thought hard about how the landscape and viewpoint would look in the context of Kemnay village.
Anyway there is a proposal from a volume house builder for 49 new houses on greenfield immediately adjacent to the artwork. At present as you ascent the viewpoint you rise above all the housing on Fyfe Park, but this stuff will be on higher ground and will immediately be in your face.
The developer tried to get the housing into the Local Development Plan a couple of years ago and it was refused so they appealed – the Scottish Government’s Reporter commented as follows, “The site is on rising ground and any development would be elevated above the existing housing adjacent to the A933. When viewed from the approach to Kemnay from the east, particularly from the B993, a development on site H1 would seriously intrude on the view of the ‘Place of Origin’. Furthermore, the development would seriously detract from views southwards from the ‘Place of Origin’ viewpoint. Consequently, it is considered that site H1 should not be allocated for housing.”
We are so grateful that Kemnay Community Council are strenuously objecting and they have noted a number of reasons including impacts on the school, the medical centre, the traffic and the stormwater drainage as well as the impact on the artwork. I hope that you will take the time to go online and make a comment. I think frankly you can pretty much reiterate the comments of the Scottish Government Reporter and note that the artwork won both an Aberdeenshire Council Planning Award, as well as a national Saltire Award. You might also make a general reference to Aberdeenshire Council’s various policies on Landscape and in particular the value of place-making.
If you can take the time to object I would appreciate it a lot as would the people in Kemnay who look after Place of Origin. The link, email address and postal address for objections are all on the web page.
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