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2007 Reviews
London Reviews
What's on and what our team of reviewers think.....
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'Arti et Amicitiae' presenting at the The London Group Open Exhibition 2007
The Menier Gallery (The Chocolate Factory)
Part 1 - Nov 6-16, 2007
Part 2 - Nov 21- 30, 2007
Part 1.
Of particular interest is the invitation to the international section of nine invited artists from 'Arti et Amicitiae', a similar group in the Netherlands, of whose curator, Dirk Jan Jager has selected the current show. Part one shows the works of Monali Meher, Jan Robert Leegte, Paul Kooiker, Popel Coumou and Arjen Lancel - all of whom are very well respected for their particular practices.
Situated in the basement of the Menier Gallery, tucked into the far corner, this particular selection of work has a strong presence and a vital link that emerges when viewed in such proximate surroundings.
Striking the first chord is Monali Meher's performance still (digital photo print) from 'Between the familiar/unfamiliar, the home and the heart beats a golden kiss' at the Tate Modern in 2006. A confrontational image, she stands like a gilt sculpture, defying the stark astuteness of the Sol- Le -Witt's wall drawing in the Objects gallery at the Tate Modern. Challenging the established presence of the graphic lines of the room, the image seems a complex achievement in juggling the aesthetic of minimalism with performative presence.
Adjoining this work is a projection by Jan Robert Leegte from his series of 'Ornaments'. The computer-generated image is an active 'Selection Tool' - an Adobe Photoshop tool used for editing images. Just a selection tool marking a wall space seems subversive enough for the exhibition, but he goes a step further. The rectangular selection tools are concentric - thereby selecting themselves in a narcissistic act, making the 'selection' thereby redundant.
Turning to Paul Kooiker's b&w photograph from his series 'Showground'. An obese woman lies lifelessly on what seems to be a bare table akin to a post-mortem scene. In actuality, she is a model in his studio. Just as in the other photographs from 'Showground', the models defy the very set-up of the artist's studio establishment and a rather sinister and subversive aesthetic, roots his series of works.
Popel Coumou also shows a photograph from her series of works in which a had made collage, not larger than A4 size is blown up into an interior/architectural simulation-of-sorts. Puzzling shadows and light theatrically illuminating the collaged shadowy spaces - familiar yet forgotten spaces echoing emptiness. Carefully constructed, the trickery of handiwork converted to a photographed image contains a quality that is stimulating to the senses.
Arjen Lancel's sculpture 'Don't look now' references the film. In white polyester resin, a head within a bowl with water circulating silently and seamlessly spells unease. Here too, the closed loop of water self- negates its function as fountain.
This common thread of a 'takeover' in all the works seemed to emerge as a linking factor. A takeover from the established spaces, and an assertion of a challenging and inquiring new aesthetic.
Darshana Vora
London, 2007
Until Nov 16th- Part 2 review coming soon
Old Reviews
Hyme Time
Image courtesy of Bearspace
Max Hymes - New Sculptures at bearspace
Hymes' main reoccurring motif throughout this collection is the pineapple, which harks back to Victoriana exotica. The repetition of this simple but stylised emblem simultaneously locates his influences within the historical context of the Arts and Crafts movement, whilst suggesting possibly uneasy notions of Imperialist Orientalist pursuits and decadent desires. Yet this forbidden fruit has been remastered, decorated with contemporary PVC beads, reflected in Ikea non-style framed triptych mirrors, mounted on laminated wood deco plinths and presented within a white cube space, the newly expanded Bearspace. Hymes likes to explore and intermingle materials, global iconography and historicisms, displaying his carefully sought ability to capture a trans-modern incapturability. Hymes describes his work as "ambiguous" using "familiar motifs but out of context."1 He has mastered this ambiguity by combining technical skill, visual intuition and aesthetic audacity. Thus Hymes creates, confusingly, his own solid style, without context, but seeming to con texts, where they were previously static in style and intention.
The intangible aspect of his sculptures and paintings, is more their fusion of mixed media and post historical styles; they generate an ephemeral aura, a possibly genuine aesthetic sensation for the viewer. Hymes' container shaped, plinthed objects loom throughout the space like exciting uncategorisable archaeological relics. This is not just because of their classic vase shaped familiarity and their use of natural materials, such as bamboo, twigs and feathers. Nor is it their vaguely familiar Aztec, Islamic or medieval (hence Arts and Crafts) styled patterning, but because of their futility as contemporary things. They hint at usability as containers, but where there should be an opening into which an everyday object could be contained, Hymes has placed a star designed wooden plaque, decorated with drawing pins, or a black beaded pineapple. The viewer is lead to consider that it's not that these objects don't have a use, it's just that their use is decorative. This evocative degree of decoration can render the spiritual, suggesting that there is a use for spirituality itself in our super functional lives. Nearly one hundred and fifty years on from the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris's sentiments now resonate within a messy post-industrial, rather than industrial society. On the brighter side, increasing global movement has enabled Hymes to collect eclectic multicultural materials and iconographic patterns, in addition to British historical naturalistic designs.
With all the attractions to Hymes' works, visiting this exhibition feels like unexpectedly being treated to a fun day out to a theme park as a child. The bright yellow beaded birds on Hymes' centre piece, Truth in Life, look like sugared penny sweets, making it humorously impossible not to touch. On closer observation of the protruding piece, The Spiritualist, you notice that the human skull shape is embellished with glossy plastic twirls, which Hymes constructed using a tube meant for cake icing. Also in the piece, your own triptych reflection in the mirror behind the skull keeps capturing you unaware, lightening the piece and softening the references to death and mortality. The geometric styled pineapples throughout have a cheeky look of Lego construction and the generous, unlabelled spaces between the sculptures and absence of glass casing assists in this playfulness.
Bearspace support Hymes' open approach to display by keeping their curatorial voice to a minimum (on laminated cards located near the door) and by recognising that Hymes' works are worth a whole floor of exhibition space. I could say more about Hymes' references to Colonialism, post-modernity and forms of contemporary worship, only it seems that part of what Hymes is trying to put across, is that these issues are not fixed and cannot or should not be referenced in art as discernable ideologies but as latent and intuitive experiences. Hymes himself acknowledges, "It's about opening up the debate which can't be finished."2
'Hyme Time' by Beccy Kennedy
1. In conversation with Max Hyme 2.Ibid
Bearspace, 22 Bardsley Lane, Greenwich, London SE10 9RF
Until 13 October
Tues-Sat, 12.30-5.00 pm
This Is for You
Image courtesy of the artist
This Is For You: A Book and Exhibition by Rob Ryan at The Rebecca Hossack Gallery
I would describe Rob Ryan's work as romantic, perhaps even poetic, but definitely contemporary and timeless all at the same time. His works are concerned with the human condition, but primarily love, and how we explain love, which is often a very difficult thing for most of us to do. However Ryan's combination of intricate papercut images and text manage to do just that.
When first stepping into the exhibition at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery I know that I have arrived at the right venue, by one of Ryan's signature papercuts hanging in the window. Beyond that hangs a playful rainbow of colour, each image striking from afar as well as up close, where you can truly marvel at the precision and detail of each one. Despite the amount of care and attention that must go into each piece, they all manage to appear fluid and spontaneous in their static frames.
The exhibition celebrates the launch of the artist's first book and over sixty pieces of original framed papercuts can be viewed, and bought. The book is an exploration of explaining love, and each papercut appears to be a very personal account of Ryan's own views on the subject. Walking between the frames feels like a journey of discovery, moving from image to image to be told the story of a boy's relationship with his heart.
The popularity of Ryan's work does not surprise me. His private view was a huge success and many guests left with armfuls of signed first edition books. His most recent work for Paul Smith, Liberty and Vogue has made his artwork very collectable.
Ryan is both a very talented designer and artist, and in many respects a writer as well. The work and the book are enchanting, and the Rebecca Hossack gallery boasts a perfect venue to encounter Ryan's extraordinary new work. 'This Is For You' can be seen until the 3rd of November, and the book is published by Sceptre.
Links:
The artist's website
The Rebecca Hossack Gallery, Conway Street, London.
'This is For You' by Hayley Potter
Finished 3rd November
Perilous Stunts
Matt Calderwood, Projections, at David Risley Gallery, Vyner St
Matt Calderwood has got known for making videos in which he does perilous stunts, like climbing up ladders and chopping away the rungs beneath him with an axe. Some have what he's called an 'escape vibe' - testing the body's relationship with environment and materials. The title of this exhibition of sculptures, then, is a double play, because these are sculptures and they project into actual space, rather than video images projected onto a surface, whilst their corporeal presence suggests a continuation of his thinking. The title as description is skewed again by the sculptures being covered in sheets of pale plasterboard that, when a plane is fully lit from the window, blends into the ground of the white walls, leaving shaded trapezoids as figure. So at certain angles the objects recede rather than project but what they always do is jut into, interrupt and put pressure on the person looking at them.
Body
After walking round and between the sculptures a while you realise that they are a uniform height - about two meters - and that their width is often about that of a body. They loom over the viewer and into the zone between body and world. In addition the structures are all angled in some way to the person entering the threateningly crowded space. With their combinations of intrusion and retreat, and thinking back to Calderwood's videos, these could be the concretisations of moving bodies.
Equilibrium
The dissonance between the connotations of the form and those of the materials could make concretisation problematic - bare plasterboard, the stuff of temporary and unfinished construction, conflicts intricately with the monumental weight the shapes imply. The shapes breed a sense of recognition without location - the ghosts of cranes or bridges - like if the Bechers had done abstract line drawings instead of taking photos.
The most important thing about these constructions, which so far has not been mentioned, and what distinguishes them from other formally similar works, is that they are off-balance and would fall if not corrected by tanks of water resting on the short sides. This ingenious set up is what allows the threatening lean into personal space. With no plinths holding them to the ground and the counterweights inconspicuous, toppling feels imminent. In fact the impression of architecture frozen in collapse gave this viewer to segue momentarily to the most iconic images of destruction, the anniversary of which coincides with this exhibition.
The Nineteen Sixties
With that and the Brutalist feel and the fragile balance they do go back to a cold war of brinkmanship - the deliberate creation of risk, of getting out of hand. The period pervades them: architectural 'ad-hocism'; Richard Serra's 'prop' works; Charlotte Posenenske's galvanised steel structures.
The Future
They are their own things, however, and stand at the end, rather than in the middle, of a trajectory of influence. It is remarkable to feel them manipulating space around you and the interaction of planes rewards repeated and variously-positioned viewings. Let's hope Matt Calderwood continues to experiment in this vein.
Matt Calderwood, Projections, at David Risley Gallery, Vyner St
by Matthew Redmond
Finished 11 October 2007
Intervention
courtesy of the Fieldgate Gallery
Intervention
'Intervention'; Well it certainly isn't interventional in my humble opinion.
Moving on from the misleading title and aside from my curatorial concerns, feeling that the show was too densely hung in parts, some work appears as almost an afterthought; this exhibition was overflowing with experimental and imaginative works. Sarah Pucill's film 'Taking My Skin' being by the highlight.
Maria Anwander's work got the closest to 'Intervention'. 'Untitled' (cuckoo-clock), a large office wall clock with a grey megaphone underneath it, as it momentarily subsumed into the office like nature of Fieldgate. Anwander's inaccessible installation 'The Sun is Shining But Not in this Room' was subtle with the artificial light from a window, cast on the office chair and floor. Though as a note of criticism, I felt it unnecessary to include a rather stereotypical window, drawn on the wall.
Geometric blocks of red colour scrolled across the screens in Julian Hughes Watts wall mounted flat monitors and Lothar Gotz's bright triangular wall paintings also receded into an unobtrusive position of art as peripheral, to something else, showing the theatricality of the other works on display.
Shahram Entekhabi & Becky Ofek's 'Caution' lengths of red and white caution tape wound around pillars producing slanting weaved flats of op-art like white and red. Is there more red and white tape in galleries, than in the outside world, I wonder.
Andrea Gregson who exhibited in the Miniature Worlds show at the Jerwood Space last year, showed 'Headspace' a long padded cell, in a wooden coffin like box, with white ceramic looking blobs that looked as though they may have just wandered in off a Yves Tanguy painting.
Diagonally on the floor lay a serious of soft coloured square canvases with a few also stacked up on a pallet. It brought to mind, rather abstractly, of travelling along the coloured squares, forward rolls. Phil Coy had selected a typical Finish landscape and then copied the pixels from a satellite image of the same landscape. The pixels, painted canvases, were to scale. So his work is a real 'Of Exactitude in Science' Borges, where a map was produced the same scale as the world it mapped.
The landscape theme was paralleled in Amanda Couch's 'Fashioning Landscape Series'; 'Pleating V' where the artist folded large pieces of paper into pleats, producing a virginal dress like textured landscape. Fiona MacDonald's 'Hotbed' left me curious with coral like thumb pressed objects and the contrast to the pallet terrain.
The highpoint of the show was Sarah Pucill's 'Taking My Skin', a black and white digital projection of footage of her and her mother filming each other but exploring this biological connection. It immediately brought to mind Laura Mulvey's 'Visual Narrative Cinema' with its revealing of the 'Male Gaze' in which women are portrayed in film, through the gaze of a man.
In Pucill's film however, the gaze is one of self-reflection. The mother seeing herself in the daughter and the daughter seeing herself in the mother, as the mother illustrates in a response. "How can it be separate when it is always part of you" when speaking of her child. This was said while the Mother is reflected in the mirror that her daughter is holding. In another part of the film, you see a closed eye, then, a younger closed eye- you then realise that the other eye is open but behind the camera filming the others closed eye. An extremely intimate and fascinating film. This film took me away from our brutal, image-obsessed world, into one of intimacy.
Intervention curated by Richard Ducker
Fieldgate Gallery
Finished 13th October
The Capsule Series- Nancy Spungen
EnCapsulated
The Capsule Series is the brainchild of two artists, Anna Stephens and Dorothee Perin. Fascinated by the idea of both Lenin's and Stalin's brains being physically dissected after they died in order to see how they worked, they decided to showcase their own interpretations of the inner workings of the minds of five very different individuals, both fictional and real. Anna and Dorothee wanted to imagine which objects, which landscape, their subject's psyche might choose to manifest itself in the form of. Having decided on the first four individuals - Miss Marple, Eugene Hutz (of Gogol Bordello fame), Nancy Spungen and M.C Escher - they created four installations as part of the project to study them. It was the third of these installations which I went along to review.
Stephens and Perin chose Spungen as a subject because they felt a strange combination of sympathy tempered with admiration for her. They were also fascinated by the way in which she was so famous for being, essentially, just a groupie. Her ruthless way of existing, her boundary-smashing life, the way she fitted so much into such a short life - Spungen piqued their interest deeply. They were fascinated too, by the entire story surrounding her demise, and whether or not she invited it - Spungen having been keen, it is alleged, on regularly asking Sid Vicious to kill her.
The installation was on display at the Section Six Gallery near Brick Lane, and was initially intended to be lit up and viewed at night, from the street. I, however, saw it from a somewhat different - albeit no less interesting angle, walking into the middle of the installation in the middle of the afternoon. Immediately upon entering, the squalor and misery hit the viewer. The first thing my eye lit upon was the bloodied legs and torso of a mannequin peeping out from behind a toilet. After this, I noticed the unmade bed on the floor, decorated with an empty vodka bottle. Next to it lay a scrawled diary, the open pages half obliterated by moisture, and a spoon resting beside it in direct reference to the heroin addiction on which both fed, and was encouraged by, the anguish in the scrawlings. Seeing this, one could not help but think of Tracy Emin?s controversial piece, My Bed, with its soiled sheets and seedy trails of condoms and fag butts, crowned by a hanging noose above the bed. Nancy's troubled childhood was represented in another part of the room - soiled childrens' books rested on a table decorated with a photo of a toilet seat. Circles of candlewax stuck to the table, suggesting some childish destructive tendencies.
An entire wall of the room was covered in a montage of black and white photographs, all depicting fragments of objects and parts of the room. This distorted, incoherent display echoed the drug-warped reality Nancy lived in. Across the other side of the room, a triptych of pencil-drawn sketches provided a three part equation referring to the catalysts in Nancy's destruction and eventual demise - a portrait of the young Nancy accompanied by a sketch of a horse (slang, of course, for heroin) and a sketch of New York.
My visual sense was not the only sense being challenged, however. The installation had a soundtrack. Iron Maiden's 'Charlotte The Harlot- blasted out as I entered - an uncomfortable song about a man falling in love with a prostitute. Other music I heard as I wandered about the exhibit included songs by Raging Speedhorn, Sublime, and, of course, the Sex Pistols. I asked Anna why she chose these particular artists, and she told me she just thought of songs which conjured up the essence of Nancy. There were no particular musical links (apart, of course, from the Sex Pistols songs). The emphasis was on an angry, dark auditory experience - on songs which could have easily been written about Nancy. I left the exhibition with the words of Iron Maiden's 'Charlotte the Harlot' echoing in ghostly fashion around my head... 'Charlotte the Harlot/Take me to bed/Charlotte the Harlot/Let me see blood'... They do, indeed, seem terrifyingly apt.
By Charlotte Dingle
Finished 8th September
Section Six Gallery
Neighbourhood
Responsibility
by Matthew Redmond
About a year ago Simon Pope put on an exhibition in Cardiff in which visitors were invited to go around an empty gallery and imagine they were looking at exhibitions they had seen before. Pope put instructions on the wall near the entrance and employed the gallery staff to guide visitors, but otherwise abdicated from his authorial role. He gave up responsibility for what the viewer saw.
Although it doesn't look like it, similar things are happening at Nettie Horn gallery. The gallery is not itself - for this weekend it is the Guy Hilton Gallery, as the Bob and Roberta Smith sign tells you at the entrance. The works on display are, with one exception, not by Nettie Horn artists and were not chosen by Nettie Horn curators. Instead they are unfiltered contributions from the 13 neighbouring galleries in Vyner St.
The curators - J J Charlesworth, Andrew Hunt and Robin Klassnik - are not curating. The result is that Neighbourhood Watch represents a microcosmic inversion of the very hierarchical control over who gets to show in the art world. A line of subversion in this vein goes back through Simon Pope's piece to Robert Barry's closed gallery of forty years ago.
One of the works at Nettie Horn is a painting in two parts, separated vertically, with an inverted and flipped c-print of it beside. It is called 'Meevil' and 'Evilme': an hallucinatory semi-palindrome with skulls, clowns and porn. It comes from Artists Anonymous, where the group is the artist, strangely correcting a list of works in which the gallery's name comes before the name of the person who made the work.
Complication
Nettie Horn Gallery has moved to take up a space, cuckoo-like, that was previously occupied by Vilma Gold. In the last few years, many galleries have moved into each other's spaces, as well as out of Shoreditch, as the rent goes up. This is the background to an exhibition in which a gallery pretends to be another gallery and shows work from other places, work that is there by virtue mainly of these places' geographical proximity. 'Community' is undermined: as the curtain-twitching suspicion of the exhibition's title suggests, being in the same street does not mean being close. This movement of works is, for some, the nearest they have come to a conversation. Remember also the underlying ambition of the galleries to represent them selves by the work they submit.
Our sense of locale is disturbed again by the works. Brian Catling's video, part of a reel from Alma Enterprises, shows the artist looking like a Beckettian tramp, shaking with the DTs, messing about with knives and mirrors. In close up a fifty pence piece is inserted into a wound on his forehead, then off he goes again. He is accompanied, very loudly, by the dissonant sound of a recorder group. The noise invades the gallery space, bedevilling further encounters.
Other works involve the alteration of pre-existing or recognisable objects: Nayland Blake's mutated puppets, Henry Kroktatsis's aluminium antlers, Laurie Freeman's mannequin torso with piston-like protrusions, and Ross Chisholm's scratchily embellished set of found family slides. They re-iterate the trading of places and borrowing that characterises the exhibition.
Surveillance
Neighbourhood Watch works to question what we think of the curator's role and how we get to see what we see. It does not work as a reliable survey of local art, but sits at the tail end of a line of decisions and deferrals, leaving you unsure if these are artworks that everybody or nobody agreed on. It is a product of a healthily chaotic environment in which object and place, site and non-site are no longer reliable differences. One small work says it all: Satoru Aoyama's embroidery, an intricate chain that floats across a black polyester ground. It looms in the corner, quietly synecdochic of a closed and open, and looped and finite enterprise.
?Neighbourhood Watch?
curated by JJ Charlesworth, Andrew Hunt, and Robin Klassnik
Finished 27 August 2007
Nettie Horn, 25b Vyner Street | London | E2 9DG | +44 (o)208 980 1568
After Goya by Gideon Rubin- Courtesy Jerwood Gallery
Repetition and Sequence
"A sequence is essentially a whole in which nothing is repeated"
With this statement begins the blurb for the 'Repetition and Sequence'exhibition, aptly quoting the eminent philosopher Roland Barthes. The Oxford English dictionary defines a sequence as "a particular order in which related things follow each other" or "a set of related things which follow each other in a particular order". The exhibition seemingly proposes to challenge Barthes' idea, purporting to "focus on artists' use of recurrence of methodology, form and composition in visual imagery, in daily routine or in sounds and movements". Essentially, sequence and repetition are inseparable concepts, but direct repetition with nothing else around it kills the idea of a sequence.
Sequences are formed in vastly differing fashions by the various artists. Michael Ajerman and Ludovica Gioscia both use ideas of layering to create sequence, although in very different ways. Ajerman draws pictures which develop into watercolours and then paintings, layering medium upon medium. Gioscia tears away layer upon layer of wallpaper across a wall, revealing a multitude of patterns in random order- some revealed more than others, some revealed less.
The idea of symmetry is played with in Rana Begum's work, a 3D piece which comprises a serrated sheet of plastic with different patterns on each side of each serration. Whilst the colours on one side of each serration all match, as do the colours on the opposing side, all along the piece, at no point walking across the piece can one reach a point where it is symmetrical. There is perfect repetition in the creation of the piece, but the viewing of it creates a strange, shifting landscape.
Gideon Rubin distorts the idea of the passage of time as a sequence. He displays a selection of tiny pop art-esque, gouache portraits of famous people across the ages, but all out of chronological order. This represents the perfect example of the process of randomising as a repetitious process.
Emilia Izquierdo, in a faintly humorous piece, displays a video of a sleeping person snoring. The snores are repeated, but never identical (some are louder than others, for instance, or occur one straight after the other), and the figure in the bed squirms as it sleeps, thus further distorting the repetition. Yet again, is it repetition or not?
Zadok Ben-David and Silia Ka Tung both opt to explore the idea of sequence and repetition in nature - Ben-David does this with plants, and Ka Tung with the human body. Ben-David's piece is composed of upright sillhouettes of different bits of foliage, all stuck on a large white canvas on the floor. Each plant is placed a distance away from the others, so that they are separate and can be viewed clearly - in contrast to the bunched up formation they would exist in in nature.
Each type of plant is repeated, but at random, as is the case in nature. Ka Tung's piece uses micrographics- pieces of the human body such as hair follicles and blood cells are blown up and reproduced on the canvas. She then folds them over on themselves so that they reproduce, although none of the work is symmetrical. This echoes the fashion in which cells repeat all over the human body, but never in an entirely straight series of repetition.
Itamar Gilboa's installation is formed of three minature rooms of a house, each on a plinth of their own. The viewer must squint through a window of the room, where a tiny TV is displayed. Each room's TV shows a different speaker discussing religious and racial issues. The rooms are different and the speakers all discuss different things, but the theme of each monologue is similar. The idea of each room being different creates the impression that they are all in the same house. One is reminded of the line in the Bible which says "in my Father's house there are many rooms"- only here the rooms have been separated, as if to suggest the fashion in which race and religion drive people who are essentially not so different to one another apart.
As I walked round the exhibition and looked at the pieces on show, I did indeed find that the exhibition achieved what it set out to do, and made me question what exactly defines a sequence. I found it more and more difficult to reconcile Barthes' assertion with the fact that, as the pieces in this exhibition demonstrate, an item having something in common with the surrounding items in its sequence (a necessary condition of qualifying as a sequence) actually does represent a form of repetition. Or does it? Must a series be comprised of entirely identical pieces in order to boast repetition as a quality? I came away with more questions than answers, and I believe that is probably exactly how it was meant to be.
The exhibition - which is on display for the second time, having made its debut at the Bedlam gallery in January - is currently being shown at the Jerwood Space near London Bridge, and is curated by Silia Ka Tung and Sarah Williams. It runs until the 8th September.
Artists: Michael Ajerman, Rana Begum, Zadok Ben David, Dale Berning, Suki Chan, Itamar Gilboa, Ludovica Gioscia, Emilia Izquierdo, Tess Jaray, Gary McDonald, Michal Rubin, Gideon Rubin, Silia Ka Tung
Finished 8th September
'ARTies' by Charlotte Dingle
A review of Jennifer Camilleri's Latest Show- 21st July 2007
Hypersonic Trout Mouth- J. Camilleri
'Arties'
I was expecting to find myself in a conventional gallery setting when I went along to a private viewing of artist Jennifer Camilleri's work. Instead, I found myself in someone's house, standing next to a buffet with a beer in my hand. A brief conversation with the owner of the premises revealed that these 'art parties' (or should that just be 'Arties'?) are a regular occurrence in his house, and aim to provide a space away from the rigid structure of a conventional exhibition in which artists can choose to display their art.
For an artist such as Jennifer Camilleri, this represents the perfect atmosphere in which to view her work. Her crazed, childlike style places her firmly in the category of a Naive artist, and her pieces document such universal experiences as drunken nights out, bad days at the office and having to live with unfriendly housemates. Many of her pieces are created in somewhat unusual mediums: felt tipped pen, emulsion paint on MDF, spray paint on a school playground - and many have writing on them as well.. She has previously exhibited work in such diverse locations as inside a psychiatric hospital and on a Eurotunnel calendar.
Camilleri's style is distinctive, but even within that, there are clear differences between different series of pieces. Her works in felt tipped pen are definitely the most childlike in style- and not simply by virtue of the medium in which they are created. She indulges more, in this series, in the somewhat childlike habit of writing all over many of the pieces- and a lot of it is mis-spelt (which Camilleri assures me is intentional)! I have to admit to finding the studies in felt tipped pen the most interesting, impressive and original of all her pieces.
The pieces Camilleri produces on MDF in emulsion paint almost bring to mind a less angular version of something by Picasso. Camilleri told me that many of them are based on fun evenings out with friends- hence the multi-coloured people and faces piled on top of one another in chaotic fashion. Indeed, it was amusing to overhear some of her friends trying (and failing) to pick themselves out in one of the pieces!
The writing begins to reappear on her latest pieces of work, and this time it's directed at her day job. 'Blah blah blah', she has emblazoned across one piece, "I'm here to do your job". I can't help wondering if her bosses have any idea what Camilleri is really like; whether they have any inkling of the vivid and wonderful imagination she possesses, as she sits at her desk at work...
Many of the titles she gives her pieces, such as 'Furry Sporran' and 'German Sausage' bring to mind kids in the playground crudely trying to impress each other! I find myself enchanted in particular by the thought of Camilleri living her unconventional lifestyle on her boat, drawing in felt tips, and spitting vitriol at boring 'grown-ups' with their proper houses and cars.
Jennifer Camilleri is a tremendously interesting artist, albeit one whose childlike style, it must be said, is initially a little hard to embrace. I found her subject matter resonating- as it surely must with many young women - very strongly with me! Her works certainly grew on me rapidly over the course of the evening, and I left the exhibition with every intention of attending her next one.
LOBBY
At the Hales Gallery
19 July - 18 August
Wednesday Saturday, 11am 6pm
Tea Building
7 Bethnal Green Road
London E1 6LA
Lobby
'Lobby', an exhibition curated by Dan Shaw -Town and Matt Johnstone (both exhibiting) along with Tim Bennet, Peter Joslyn and Magali Reus, all studying MFA Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College, London, is a refreshing, bold and colourful exhibition of fresh aesthetic and carefully constructed works.
Announcing the keynote of the exhibition ('Lobby - a space resisting clear function and a place where time and reality feel displaced) is Dan Shaw -Town's neon lit work 'do I just walk in and come out again', in a subtle white expanse along the wall. Turn around, and Peter Joslyn's 'Audaces Fortuna Iuvat' , a wall-hung sculptural relief with a central motif of a dartboard and darts, surrounded by what seems to be a tattoo- inspired floral design crafted with exuberance and strangely reminiscent of pub aesthetics in its collision of style, hangs boldly. This individualistic iconography recurs in two of his other works, both equally arresting and vibrant. Contrast these with Matt Johnstone's... 2007, a sculpted piece of what can be best described as five tables stacked one inside the other, made of untreated mdf and sizing down from the dimensions of a large dining table- A minimalist puzzle
Tim Bennet's 'Dytopiary', is a strangely animated sculpture looming curiously over the display - A tree trunk balancing by a cheese-like pink wedge. This contrasts his other rather austere wall hung wood and plasterboard construct, in which each material is left untreated and methodically exhibiting its properties.
Magali Reus's architectonic 'In your own time', an observed object displaced and re-introduced in the gallery, sharpens the visual qualities of beach towels and aluminium railings like found objects.
It is a pleasure to engage with this group of works, alive in their aesthetic and freshness of approach.
- Darshana Vora, August 2007
Citadel 1 front room/killing room
32 ARTISTS, CURATED BY DAVID RISLEY
Until August 12th
Opening times: Wednesday ? Sunday 12.00pm 6.00pm
At the David Risley Gallery
45 Vyner Street
London E2 9DQ
'Room with a View' by Darshana Vora
Artists: Jonathan Allen, Alex Hartley, Anna Bjerger, Hans Hovy, David Blandy, James Hyde, Matt Calderwood, Donald Judd, Paul Carter, Henry Krokatsis, James Castle, Melora Kuhn, Ruth Cla, Peter Fillinghamxton, Peter Liversidge, Susan Collins, Jamisen Ogg, Marcel Dzama, Javier Pi�� Graham Dolphin, Damien Roach, Peter Fillingham, Charlotte Moth, Bob & Roberta Smith, Helen Frik, Michael Simpson, Susan Giles, Gavin Turk, Lothar G? Jane Wilbraham, Danielle Gustafson-Sundell, Charlie Woolley, Neil Hamon.
Nothing can prepare you for CITADEL 1 ' FRONT ROOM/KILLING ROOM'. The minute you step into the gallery, you are walking on /into the work of art. Arranged by David Risley in a constructed space to form a Front Room are works by 32 artists- put together like a three dimensional collage.
Made to enclose the space of the front room are panels by Henry Krokatsis, fit to size. The ceiling painted by Lothar Gotz was made specifically for the space, but all the other works have pre-existed this installation and have been put together carefully by David to emulate a living space- a space of strange juxtaposition and curiosities, referenced solely by the objects' inherent uniqueness as much as the setting. "It can be viewed as an Ikea-style' showroom, a stage set, where curatorial decision making and interior design intentionally converge"- is probably an accurate description.
Whilst the individual pieces (domestic in their character) did not engage me, the entirety was definitely captivating. It certainly exuded a personality and created a unique atmosphere. Perhaps it was due to the fact that every (art) object stood in place of one that would ordinarily occupy the living space; such associations breeding a familiarity which defied the altered reality, and teased one's senses.
The Killing Room, though less constructed, had some moving works.
An interesting exhibition, understated and effective.
- Darshana Vora, August 2007
nb.footnotes and references available on request
Borrow & burn by Peter lamb & joby williamson
Until August 12
Transition Gallery
Unit 25a Regent Studios
8 Andrews Road
London E8
'Borrowed Time' by Darshana Vora
In contrast to the above two exhibitions, Borrow & Burn, an exhibition of works by Peter Lamb and Joby Williamson was surprisingly uncluttered. I expected to see a lot more 'stuff' going by the Press Release of the artists' methodology: "Lamb and Willamson collect & question, hoard & interrogate. The ephemeral is gathered and the feral is recalled."
"... make house clearances, mausoleums and museums of stuff."
Peter Lamb's collages presented as large archival digital prints & acrylic (the acrylic, in fact, rescuing them from becoming digital editions & thereby establishing their one-off status) are possibly inspired by a Rauschenburg aesthetic in their expressive mark-making. An uncomfortable dilemma presented itself as I imagined the process - his choice of digitising the collage up until a certain stage (akin to the art-history stage in Photoshop) only to add on a bit more..
On the other hand, Williamson's work showed a careful observation of used objects, the energy and aesthetic of the 'found' object being bargained for a minimalist approach in presentation. 'Reserve', a silver gelatine fibre based photograph on aluminium records the remnants of a tyre. 'Bank' is a series of images of painters'/builders' buckets carefully displayed in lit duratrans.
In these choices, something was lost- sacrificed even, to the clean, presentable, durable, safe aesthetic. I would have wished for a more direct, rough-& ready demonstration of 'Borrow & Burn' at least somewhere in the gallery, to engage me in the truth of the process before the product.
- Darshana Vora, August 2007
nb.footnotes and references available on request
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