What art have I seen? The Circle of a Square and The Effect of a Butterfly
Henrik Håkansson’s exhibition with The Modern Institute.
Strange exhibition including video of butterflies flying in Håkansson’s garden filmed using a very high speed camera. The huge structure holding the not very large screens is a curious installation. The wall-based works use historic Joseph Albers’ prints composed with butterflies captures and preserved by Håkansson as a young man. Donald Judd is also present in another wall based element.
I remember Håkansson’s piece in Radical Nature – a tree tipped over on its side. In the end whilst Håkansson engages with living things in different ways, it doesn’t feel like he draws attention to interdependence (other than perhaps ironically). As David Antin put it,
“The idea of an ecological art is the idea of an art that articulates dependencies, its own condition for existence or those of the world” (David Antin, ArtNews Nov. 1970 p. 90).
What art have I seen? Fluctuations in Elliptical Form
James Hugonin at the Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh. Had the good fortune to sit and talk with James in the gallery with his works. We discussed the pattern, the system and the hand. He mention that someone has just written about his work in relation to AI. We talked about Sol Lewitt and in particular Sentence 28
Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
Sol Lewitt Sentences on Conceptual Art 1969
We discussed the propositional (ie not deterministic) character of this sentence in relation to the role of the hand, including in Lewitt’s wall drawings.
Now I’m discovering the work of Julius Eastman.
What art have I seen? Women’s Work
Maria Macavana’s exhibition, Women’s Work, comprising work developed during the pandemic with healthcare workers. It explores the relationship between women who have worked within the NHS and the tools that are important to them to deliver their work.
Two rooms comprised drawings, two with works made or contributed by people working in mental health and wellbeing – Cristina Logan, NHSCT Governance Lead Radiographer; Dr Lindsey Macleod, Independent Clinical Psychologist; Kasia Zych Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist; Angela Bialek Art Therapist; and Sarah McLean Social Worker.
Macavana’s drawings are captioned with texts explaining their significance to these women.
Macavana has been working in dialogue with Dr Macleod for a considerable period and this extends the work. It also links with work Macavana has done in Sri Lanka with craftswomen working with coir rope and palm leaf cocoons.
Macavana’s work, careful and subtle, evokes other women’s work, both physical and caring. It is based on conversations over long periods. It pays deep respect to these care workers with its care.
What art have I seen? Dislocations
Group exhibition at the Hunterian Art Gallery Glasgow.
“Dislocations was developed in dialogue with The Hunterian’s online exhibition Old Ways New Roads which details the production of Scottish landscape through military, touristic and Romantic representations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dislocations traces the contestation and revision of such canonical representations.”
Went with Gill and Aaron Ellison, currently on an international fellowship at St Andrews. Aaron was very struck by the relationship between Jade Montserrat and Webb-Ellis’ Peat and JWM Turner’s Peat Bog, Scotland.
What art have I seen? Code Red and Forever Changes
Peter Kennard’s raging photocollages railing against oil and extractivism, pollution, nuclear weapons.
Hydro infrastructure juxtaposed with fabric covered glaciers.
Tim Collins reckoned this was the best of the exhibitions on during the Climate Talks.
What art have I seen? The World’s Edge
Thomas Joshua Cooper’s exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is of his emptiness and extremity works.
Over the course of the last three decades, the American-born photographer has travelled around the globe, making photographs of the most extreme points and locations surrounding the Atlantic Ocean.
The result is an episodic journey that covers five continents: Europe, Africa, North America, South America and Antarctica. Cooper has set foot on uncharted land masses through his work, contributing to cartography and earning him naming rights of previously unknown islands and archipelagos. The only artist to have ever made photographs of the two poles, Cooper refers to this body of work as The World’s Edge — The Atlas of Emptiness and Extremity.
The photographer, who was born in California but who has lived in Scotland for many years, having founded Glasgow School of Art’s Fine Art Photography Department in 1982, first exhibited The World’s Edge at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His first monographic exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland is based upon that presentation, with 35 pictures featuring i
Fascinating because Cooper mostly looks down to capture the edge of the land and the sea. The long exposures mean that the land, the rocks are crisp, whilst the sea is blurred, in motion, of a different visual quality. But curiously there is a sameness to the images, largely without human features. The extreme edge of land and sea isn’t made characterful as in tourist photography. The Carribean and the North most Scottish Isles are similar. Perhaps you can tell the colder places from the warmer. For a project about travel there is no touristic characterisation. The three walls of polar works, really mostly white with some revealed rock texture, are exquisite and meditative in a particular way.
What art have I seen? A Portrait Without Likeness
Alison Watt’s new body of work on show at Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Hot off the easel. All based on Allan Ramsay portraits of women. All details. I love the cabbages but they are slightly flat? The paintings of books channel Michael Craig Martin? The lace is a-maz-ing. Conceptually and curatorial rigorous.
What art have I seen? In Relation to Linum
Christine Borland’s exhibition at Climate House, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh
What art have I seen? The Glasgow Girls & Boys
At the new Art Gallery in Kirkcudbright.
Interesting to discover the multi-generational story as well as links to Arran, France and other places.
Working with Allan Kaprow
What art have I seen? Tendency Towards’ Haunted by the ghost of a flower
The resonating thought
Haunted by the ghost of a flower an exhibition by the collective Tendency Towards at The Barn. Tendency Towards are all graduates of Gray’s – an evening with students in discussion with the collective. The work is in the ongoing conversation with a curator, in the appropriation of materials (theatre flats) and in the composition of the space.
Making an exhibition as a collective, as another identity from all the individual identities, is a particular exercise in negotiation, and in working out how to speak with a single voice. Each personality in the collective is important, and the whole can be better than any individual if the collective draws out the best in each other.
What art have I seen? Ironstone Prize
Visited Banbury to see the Ironstone Prize with Gail Anderson and Mark Bigelow, who had a piece included. Local open competitions are such a good thing – a community should periodically have a chance to see what the artists living there do. This included a mix of the pleasurable, the rigorous, the experimental and the enquiring.
What art have I seen? Eco-Visionaries
Eco-Visionaries at the Royal Academy. Quite a mix of work, old and new; video, sculpture, performance, architecture; addressing energy, interspecies communication, extinctions, pollution, waste, and other ‘ecological’ issues.
The final element was a performance – we entered a room and sat facing a mirror. We put headphones on. We were addressed and asked questions about our perception of our own mortality. Then the light changed and the mirror revealed itself to be a tank containing jellyfish with another group sitting on the far side. There was some discussion of how they were also experiencing the same performance, albeit ‘offset’ so our actions were seen by them, and then their actions were seen by us.
However the most provocative element was the jellyfish who are doing very well as a result of climate change – I know this because I see a lot of big ones washed up on Ayr beach. The elements that asked us to consider our lives and the changes we might need to make, in juxtaposition with the jellyfish and their thriving, were powerful. The two audiences was a bit ‘over egging’.
Overall the exhibition demonstrated the many ways artists, designers and architects are to a greater or lesser degree succeeding in wrestling, some for more than 50 years, with the issues of the climate and biodiversity emergency. Each work makes sense as an attempt to grapple with all the complexity that Timothy Morton highlights in Hyperobjects – the nonlocality, the phasing, the stickiness and so on. As an exercise in curation I’m not sure it made sense beyond ‘look at all the ways…’ It also didn’t quite address the lameness and hypocrisy that Morton also highlights.
What art have I seen? Hamish Fulton
A Decision To Choose Only Walking at Parafin.
Fine selection of work – the itemisation of walking around many Kora suggests more committed Buddhism. Fulton talks about the time it takes to get into the ‘quiet mind’ at the start of a walk.
The statements “I am a contemporary artist, not a mountaineer. I have no knowledge of Alpine-style climbing and I see no reason why I should paint a ‘good likeness’ of any mountain. I employ words but I’m not a writer. I am a walking artist and I record all my walks in word form…” 60 years of clarity…
What art have I seen? Max Ernst on the first floor and Richard Serra on the third
Max Ernst: An Invitation To Look
The Artist’S Career Surveyed In A Private Collection
Un/fortunately only three of the fifteen works because of another event, but came away with the catalogue.
The show features fifteen works from an exceptional private collection, covering Ernst’s entire career from 1925 to 1971, acquired largely in the 1950s and 1960s by a prominent Italian collector and friend of the artist.
Of course the question of ‘how to look’ is vital. All the works in the exhibition involve different methods used by Ernst in addition to drawing and oil on canvas – frottage, collage, grattage, and gesso relief.
Upstairs in a different dealership is a selection of Richard Serra drawings – examples of several different series. These test the edge between drawing and sculpture; the surfaces are as dense as Chestnut tree bark. The one exception, a looping line spiralling across the page is more like a stream and banks of accumulated sediment.
What art have I seen? Nick Cave’s ‘Until’ and Red Note improvising
We were at the evening organised by ArtLink Edinburgh where, as part of their Altered States programme in association with Nick Cave’s ‘Until’ installation in Tramway, Red Note Ensemble improvised for a mixed ability audience.
ArtLink is an ‘arts and disability’ organisation, and this immersive experience was amazing, taking an already stunning installation and creating a moment where an audience spent time together just being … in our bodies, in the environment, in the light and glitter, in the sounds…
What art have I seen?James Richards ‘Migratory Motor Complex’
More collage today (bit of a theme) this time sound. At Collective on Calton Hill. Video from original presentation with other works by Richards for Wales at Venice Biennale.
Migratory Motor Complex is how your digestion works. Slightly ironic since I was discussing ‘diverticular’ with a colleague over coffee this morning!
What art have I seen? Ade Adesina, NeoNeanderthals
Ade Adesina, After the Questions, linocut, 2018
Ade Adesina’s linocuts.
Robbie Bushe and Jeanne Cannizzo’s collaboration NeoNeanderthal. Bushe said Neanderthals didn’t wreck the planet in 250,000 years. Maybe if they came back… Cannizzo is an anthropologist and maker. Brilliantly in one case are objects she has made, provided interpretation for, and the contested the validity of aspects of the interpretation. Bushe’s paintings and drawings have aspects of children’s books with cutaways to show ‘how it works’, but what’s going on is genetic extraction and the reproduction of an extinct species.
What art have I seen? Collage
Collage exhibition at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
What art have I seen? Fife Arms
Louise Bourgeois, Spider
Had lunch and a bit of a look around
What art have I seen? Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers
At Somerset House – threaded by Harold Ové, including music, sculpture, photography, painting, writing, poetry, music, carnival, fashion, design, activism, anger and politics.
What art have I seen? Walid Raad’s To be honest the weather helped
Walid Raad makes work that blurs with everyday life, but coming from the never ending conflict of the Middle East. His images are often banal, but the stories that he wraps them in are sharp – the ‘first job’ photos of shop fronts which are later discovered to be put out of business because they wouldn’t pay the extortion. Above the discovered artist who made works on the backs of paintings in a museum.
How do you deal with (adapt to) living in a state of continual low intensity war?
Para-fictions.
https://www.stedelijk.nl/en/exhibitions/walid-raad-2
Also saw Welkom in adjacent rooms a totally factual documentary photography exhibition on mining communities in South Africa. The implementation of Apartheid, the connections with Dutch culture, the impact on young people. Very strange because the aesthetics intersect.
What art have I seen? Rijksmuseum
Medieval and Asian art.
Saint Elizabeth’s Day Flood (1490-95) amazing record of a flood in 1412 caused by storm surges in the North Sea https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/155667–r-s/collections/elisabeth-panelen-dordrecht?ii=0&p=0
Also ‘A Lohan’, carved wood from China before 1400AD. “This is Ajita. He concentrates fully on listening to the reading of a sutra, a scripture that conveys the Buddha’s teachings.”
(and we thought Masaccio was good) https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search/objects?q=wood+figure&s=chronologic&p=1&ps=12&st=Objects&ii=10#/AK-MAK-1727,10
What art have I seen? Faith Ringgold
The activism sits alongside the storytelling. The humanity alongside the anger. The imagination, the stars of the lights on the bridge, the girl floating.
The consistently acknowledged involvement of family in the making of various of the works, particularly the influence of Faith Ringgold’s mother, must be pretty exceptional in contemporary art.
American People Series #6: Mr. Charlie, 1964 (from Faith Ringgold’s website)
What art have I seen? Cindy Sherman
A lifelong conceptual project.
What art have I seen? Energy Objects
Hannah Imlach’s Energy Objects at WORM in Aberdeen comprises works made over a number of years resulting from an ongoing enquiry into the infrastructures of renewable energy, on Eigg, on Orkney and at Donside in Aberdeen. These carefully crafted objects are no less beautiful than the Archimedes Screw newly installed in the community hydro project in Aberdeen, or the OpenHydro units at EMEC on Orkney. Imlach also touches on the relationship with Community Land Ownership, the critical connection between energy and political evolution.
What art have I seen? My Own Private Bauhaus
David Batchelor’s exhibition at Ingleby
Circle, Square, Triangle. Colour, Play, Repetition, Variation.
What art have I seen? Placing Sound
Maja Zeco performing her work ‘Hold In/Breathe Out’
Maja Zeco opened her exhibition ‘Placing Sound’ at Gray’s School of Art where she is just completing her practice-led PhD with a performance of her work ‘Hold In/Breathe Out’. This work might be a meditation on the experience of immersing yourself in everyday life and stepping out into perhaps your own mind, or in some sense private space. Zeco filled a large bowl with water and as she immersed her head completely in the water, triggered a soundscape of an urban environment with associated imagery. As she came back out of the water about 30 seconds later she ended the audio imagery. She breathed in silence. Her urban included images of streets and buildings and I’m pretty sure I saw an artillery piece.
Spead across three rooms, this exhibition represents nearly 10 years of work exploring sound and performance. One room is quartered and composed of sounds from the North East of Scotland (Aberdeen and Banchory) and from Bosnia Herzegovina where Zeco was born. Voices and bird song, trees and traffic all layer over each other drawing you to different points in the room as different elements come forward.
The middle room has video and physical documentation of two performance works. In one case, One Thousand Pomegranate Seeds’ bringing the action in the video into another form of presence with the physical evidence of the event in front of you whilst watching its making. Below is the promo video from Horsecross, Perth, where the work was originally performed.
The first room you encounter (I started with the last) again brings together different forms of documentation, physical remains and video, of performance – in this case ‘Silencer’ and in another part of the room the space in which Zeco performed ‘Hold In/Breathe Out’.
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.
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.
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? Chick Chalmers
Chick Chalmers An American Roadtrip at Gallery 10, Edinburgh. On the recommendation of Alex Hamilton.
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? 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 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? 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
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/
CHRIS FREMANTLE 
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