Paul Rooney at VG&M

Visit: 28th November

The Paul Rooney exhibition at Victoria Gallery & Museum is comprised of video installations within two rooms. I'd never heard of the artist before, and upon seeing more video installations I was initially quite skeptical because it seems to be the main staple of any exhibition at the moment, but I really liked the show. My favourite was "Small Talk" (2001 - 2010). I liked the use of humour in the discussion between the captions and the story behind the work of the artist revisiting the footage he had taken and repeating it, as well as the reference to the end of the film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg by Jacques Demy. I admired how the dialogue didn't sound too cheesy and cringey, as sometimes I think artists who play with words can step into dangerous territory if it isn't executed well. I also felt a bit uneasy when we were informed of the attention to detail Rooney gives the actual text and how any minor alteration could change the meaning of the whole piece. I thought this was an unnecessary addition to add to an interpretation of the work and reduced its worth somewhat as it seemed an obvious thing to say, but not meaty enough to base an interpretation of and a bit of a "cop-out", I suppose. When interpretations like that are said it seems like people are clutching at straws to read something into a work of art, and that makes me questions whether everything that has been said is relevant, or whether it is all forced speculation, and I think that's a sad thought - especially when contemporary art is so heavily dependent on its idea for its worth.

Small Talk

Returning to the dialogue in Rooney's films for a moment though, I thought he had been unsuccessful with the dialogue in "The Futurist" (2008) - the main piece of the exhibition. Everyone seemed to enjoy the film, and I thought there were some good ideas in there as well as a lot of parallels with directors such as David Lynch in moments of tension. However, I thought that most of the good ideas weren't executed well at all. For example, the main character often talks out of synchronization with the sound the audience hears, apparently to remind the viewer that it is a film they're watching and not real life. But the fact that a viewer is watching a surreal film in a blacked out room in an art gallery that they have consciously entered seems to be indicative enough, without the out of sync bits that do appear to be mistakes. The dialogue the main character uses is at times quite toe-curling. I always think that if you hear lines of dialogue and don't immediately think of them written on the pages of a pretentious script then it is successful. But it seemed like a GCSE drama production - childish and clumsy in places even though you want it to be consistent and good and, in this instance, live up to the hype. There's also a female character at the end of the film who's acting is like that of a drama student in a monologue which I found cringey. I also thought the camera movement was too distracting - it was so much like a home video that I thought it ruined the production and end product.

There was another piece called "Letters that Rot" (2010) which was the interior monologue of a tree telling of a dream in which it was chopped down by a postman called Franz. The film was made up of white words on a background on a constant vertical scroll like film credits. I thought the placement of the projector in a pile of chopped wood was great and the angle that it was on caused ghostly reflections to slide along the floor and up the screens in the corner of the room, creating a dream-like effect. I thought that was really innovative and  used the medium to its best capabilities to suit the work. Some of the script was great, such as the line "Here Comes Franz" and the whole idea was quite ingenious, but I thought that most of the script was disappointing when opposed with the actual idea and possibilities. It seemed more like Rooney's self-indulgent attempts at poetry and I didn't think it fitted very well in the context. I was quite disappointed by most of it.

We were shown round the exhibition by Moira Lindsay who explained themes within the work as well as the work that goes into curating an exhibition such as this. It was really interesting to hear about and raised issues about acquiring art and conserving it which I had never even considered, such as the storage of new media and the Contemporary Art Society. I enjoyed the visit and found it really thought stimulating.

Copperas Hill - Biennial

Visit: 14th November 2012

The Copperas Hill Biennial exhibition included a lot of film - that was the thing that stood out to me when I first entered. There was sound coming from everywhere and huge screens wherever you looked. I was really thrilled about this, because I really love film and I think art films are better than ever before but I was a bit disappointed to hear that some people on my course thought there was too much film and that they didn't like this and were a bit sick of film. But by the end of the exhibition I felt I agreed with them a little bit (which was possibly worse!). I think its really exciting to see good art films, but I think it seems a bit like everyone's doing it at the moment just because it's an "in" medium, but I don't think the medium necessarily suits the meaning or purpose of every artwork - it's like they've shoe horned it into their work and it doesn't work some times. For example, the below film, "Sassuma Arnoa" seemed a bit surplus to requirements to me. It was a woman kneeling in the sea and then shots of a naked women manipulating her skin. To be honest, I wasn't really sure of the meaning because the captions didn't provide much help and I felt a bit dim because I didn't understand it. But there were other films, such as a Marina Abramovic style one of a woman beating herself, and a film showing dog fighting on one projection simultaneously to interviews with people who partake in dog fighting on the adjacent projection. This last example I thought didn't work effectively because it depicted something that is disgusting and cruel (or I think so anyway) and it was filmed from a distance in such a kind of indifferent way, with little camera movement, that it didn't seem disgusting or cruel. Perhaps this was the artists intention, but I presume not as the other film showed people making outrageous comments about how dog fighting is natural and it was clearly meant to provoke a reaction from an audience member.  Perhaps it was a statement about how numb we've become to viewing violence and violent acts on screens or projections - a similar sentiment to Warhol's "Electric Chair" maybe.

In addition, there was another film about Polish immigrants and I went in there with a few classmates who said it was too long to watch. I thought this was a shame that the overpowering use of film throughout the exhibition meant that some works which required prolonged attention weren't being given a chance like the other works. I didn't think the Biennial section of the Copperas Hill building had enough strong films there to justify having the medium so prolific throughout. In fact, for the rest of the day I went around many other of the Biennial sites and the films that were shown there weren't really amazing either - I think the proliferation and lack of quality that film in art seems to be condoning at the moment is going to help the focus shift to another medium - and probably soon.

Jessie Kleemann, Iben Mondrup, Nimis Lyngap - Sassuma Arnoa

Some people have said that the fascinating and somewhat beautiful features that still remain in the old Post Office building are distracting from the work and it is at times hard to tell which is art and which is a mere feature of the building. However, I don't think this is a negative. Having anything in an art space, or calling anywhere an art space makes you view it with completely different eyes - it's like Duchamp's idea of "when is art" as opposed to "what is art". So putting this building in an art context makes you automatically be visually aware of its beauty - which I think is incredibly interesting in terms of changeable perceptions and how we approach things in different contexts. In this way, we get to assess our own criteria of what or when we think art is - if you think some left signage is beautiful or interesting or charismatic enough to be art, who's to tell you you're wrong - no caption required. I also disagree that this detracts from the artwork. I thought the whole venue worked really well. I also thought that when looking from art to interesting features, like the marks on this chute shown below that I thought were amazing and very beautiful and delicate, like a mark making technique perhaps, I then looked at the art with fresh eyes. There was a lot of art works in the space, so to be given a rest and look at something for pure aesthetic value rather than meaning or context was refreshing.

Close up of marks on chute

Chute with marks on

I also really liked the below work by Sckpinicka. (There were more collages in the series by the artist.) Most of the works in the exhibition were quite big and intimidating and bold, so I thought this image was a refreshing change as it was so small and delicate and intimate. Personally, this is a kind of art I really like anyway. I love the arrangements and placing of things, and I love it when people collage old photos and magazine images together. I love how the meanings of images change when they are taken out of context and again with each new piece of paper, colour, line or image that they are put together with. I thought these collages were really beautiful and I liked the opportunity to get really close to something quiet in the space. I thought the inclusion of these works with all of the huge works was a bit of really successful curatorial work.

Kama Sckpinicka - Collage on Vintage Paper

Despite some of the negatives pointed out, I thought that the general, overall quality of the work in the Copperas Hill building was really impressive and invigorating. I think it's probably my favourite venue that I have seen so far in the Biennial and I left feeling quite inspired and refreshed!

Open Eye Gallery

Visit: 14th November

from "marmalade-cafe.blogspot.com"

Upstairs in the Open Eye Gallery is a display of a collection of Mark Morrisroe photography, showing both abstract and figurative works. I don't really know much about photographers and the only ones I've really heard of before are Robert Frank and Ed van Der Elsken, so this was an exciting change. Admittedly, at first when I started looking at the images I felt quite uncomfortable. I'd just been downstairs to see the Yoshiyuki exhibition featuring images of people having sex in a park in Tokyo wherein the participants seemed a bit too heavy on the male side compared to the female, and it seemed a bit sinister because of this. Then, coming upstairs there was photography that included found pornographic imagery of women, so I felt a bit uncomfortable and upset almost, because it always seems to be women that are exploited and taken as an acceptable target of gazes. (I was especially uncomfortable when the only other visitors taking long looks at the works in both exhibitions with me were male). I then saw quite a few images of naked males, presumably from pornography being used in the images. At this point my boyfriend became quite uncomfortable, which I was a bit happy about to be honest. I was relieved, and I found it massively refreshing to encounter an exhibition that demonstrated the exploitation of a male body (even if this was not the intention of the artist). I think everyone's become too accepting to view women as the standard objects, and this is especially true of men, the majority of whom who I have witnessed become very uncomfortable when faced with exploited images of their own gender. For this reason, I enjoyed the exhibition, especially an image called "The Psychology of Leather" - not only because it featured a man, but also because I thought the composition was incredible. 

Some of the techniques used in the other photographs reminded me of Mariah Robertson, whose work consists of analogue photography manipulated to look like digital photography.

Mariah Robertson - Untitled 34

Of course, despite the manipulation and experimentation of and with the medium, there aren't many similarities in the purpose of these artists' works. With the subject of AIDs and the interest in the body/ own mortality, I would have to say the Morrisroe work is more coherent to that of Derek Jarman's. I thought that, especially when taken in context of the artists own life, the works were very powerful. They weren't morbid, I didn't think. I thought they showed a kind of vitality in life, and a humour, and a richness that a life well lived should have. There were some somber, more intimate photographs, like small interludes into Morrisroe's mind, which I thought were really touching. I really enjoyed the exhibition. I thought there was just the right amount of photos so that you could appreciate each one fully.

From Open Eye Gallery Website

The above image is "Untitled" by Kohei Yoshiyuki, whose work was exhibited downstairs at Open Eye. I thought the way the visitors viewed the work, with a torch in a dark room, was extremely clever and unique and made you more involved with the artwork and its context; flashing a light on each image, you felt like a bit of a pervert, looking at things you shouldn't, but you couldn't help be fascinated by them, because they were objectively beautiful photographs and interesting displays of human nature. Looking at the images in this way made the whole gallery experience completely different to any other in terms of how a visitor views photographs.

Judy Chicago at The Black-E

8th November

Judy Chicago at the Black-E
Taken from "archive.constantcontact.com"

Tonight I went to a Judy Chicago book signing/ event at The Blackie, a community Arts Centre in Liverpool. I felt quite inspired by the speeches given, especially by a co-chair of The Black-E called Wendy Harpe who spoke very passionately about the subject of the role of women in art, which was quite moving.

Judy Chicago's speech highlighted her struggle to become and have her work be appreciated in the art world. She spoke of an anecdote where she was studying at university and her lecturer told her class that women had made no contribution to art, which was met with shocked gasps from the audience. I found her passion and ambition really inspiring, but for me, the whole subject of feminism in art sticks in the throat a bit. I know there are a lot of people who disagree with me, and this is possibly because I'm younger and I haven't been around to see the progress, or the struggle. However, recently I've been looking at Ai Weiwei's work, and this I think casts a questionable light over the issue of feminist art (perhaps rather unfairly). What I'm trying to say is, someone like Ai Weiwei is fighting physical and mental oppression - people having the identities of their children killed in an earthquake hidden from them, and being beaten up for speaking against the government. In no way can anyone say Ai Weiwei doesn't fight - his art has effect. But at the event tonight Chicago said "I thought "The Dinner Party" had eradicated that kind of thing", with regards to a sexist comment spoken by a woman. "The Dinner Party" is one installation in one art gallery in America - how can that alone eradicate anything? Arguably, art only gains attention from the middle classes who are interested in art - it's not exactly a huge demographic - and Chicago hardly promotes it in many other ways. Yes, there was a talk in Liverpool tonight, but it's 30 years after the work was made. I know I haven't changed anything and perhaps Chicago has, but I just think she might have for artists, she's not really changing society. By contrast Weiwei has caused uproar and massive attention for his issue - and the biggest difference I think is the difference of ego. Chicago said "I'd always wanted to be an artist ever since I was a little girl" but surely this is partly due to an ego trip - becoming part of history and getting your name in the art history books (her words not mine). But Weiwei isn't about the ego - he's about the issue. He reaches wider audiences and uses different mediums because yes, he is an artist, but he's a real activist. Chicago's having potentially elitist exhibitions and installations and assuming a wide cross-section of people will come to them - that's not the way it works, I don't think.

Wendy Harpe included the topics of pole dancers and anorexia in her speech - the idea of women being oppressed by society with these bizarre social pressures that people think can be liberating, when really they're quite demeaning. But again, she said she's been "fighting" for over 30 years and to be speaking to a room full of 50 or so art fans isn't exactly getting out there. And the work Chicago makes doesn't exactly hit this topic - these are issues of society as a whole: the way our whole history has had women as the second sex - the pressure to look good for men, to be objects, to not be thinkers or remembered. This isn't something that can be solved with a few installations, sure it raises awareness, but men are still in charge of the large art institutions. Men are still dominating the history books. Men aren't under as much pressure as women to be objects of desire. It's ingrained into everything - and I sadly don't believe that can be changed in our life time, especially not by art - it doesn't effect enough people.

This isn't to say I didn't admire the speakers or their determination, because I really did, this is just a slight annoyance at the regular use of the term "the fight" that they repeatedly used. I do admire them, because they do at least try and do something.

Wolstenhome Creative Space - The Inhospitable Landscape

Visit: 8th November

(Installation)

 Today we visited The Inhospitable Landscape at Wolstenhome Creative Space and I found it really exciting and new. Unlike some of the things I have seen in the Biennial that have seemed a bit "safe" and conventional, I found the scale and interactive element of the work really unusual and overwhelming. The installation of trees and video in the same area reminded me of something out of a music video for The Cure or a Tim Burton film. It was quite eery, and quite unoriginal, until I noticed the TV screens dotted within the foliage and the specifically made for exhibition music. What I did think was unusual about the exhibition was that the literary inspirations that were noted by the artists were made available in a kind of mini-library within the work so that you could take it home and see how it related or inspired it perhaps. I glanced briefly over the titles and saw "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell, as well as "Great Expectations" and "Mrs Dalloway". I found that quite fun within the exhibition to try and see the links there. For example, I thought the presence of the beat of the music and TV screens hidden within the trees were quite evocative of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" I liked how the artists had taken the theme of hospitality and reversed it within this exhibition as so far I've seen quite safe and friendly interpretations of the theme, although here the space was very inviting and not "unfriendly" as one might assume. 

Along with some wallpaper designs, there was also another room containing video art that portrayed differences between natural and man-made (shots of forests contrasted with architecture or urban life). I liked this and I thought the size at which it was projected was really effective and almost all-consuming. The shots of buildings and tower blocks, reminded me of the work of Hilary Lloyd, ("Tower Block") that was in the 2011 Turner Prize show, especially with the way the camera scanned up and down the buildings. The same shots and them of architecture within nature also reminded me of the Cyprien Caillard film "The Smithsons" that was on this year at Manchester Art Gallery. I think for the theme of hospitality and the unexpected guest this idea is quite relevant as, in my opinion, it conjures ideas about where we as humans fit into the world and how we effect it. Architecture is probably an unexpected and perhaps unwelcome guest in nature. The shots of urban life were very grey and dull and quite oppressive/depressing, in the same way that tower-blocks blot out life, in the same way that cities perhaps block out nature, in the same way we become so wrapped up in ourselves and our own creations/habitats that we become oblivious to the beauty that exists beyond us and our egos and our creations.

(Film Projection)

I found the visit really invigorating. The old industrial building it was set in was a really effective gallery space and I thought it was really successful, especially for a group of young artists!

Jack Kerouac - The British Library

Visit: Saturday 3rd November 2012

Yesterday I went to the British Library in London to see Jack Kerouac's scroll of "On the Road". "On the Road" is my favourite book because of the typical desperate enthusiasm coherent within the works of the Beat Generation. My favourite thing about the book is the way the characters are so thirsty and enthusiastic for life, they're so active and really live life with amazing lust and speed; they live life in that "live every day as your last" sentiment that is normally an impossible cliche. But more than this, I love the subtle whiff of desperation and emptiness beneath the actions that would be more associated or comfortable with the sentiments of the existentialists. It's like an incredible, vibrant joy that seeps over and almost masks that instinctive feeling of being lost and not sure what you're feeling that I think is fundamentally human. It's cheesy to say a book changes your life or the way you think, but this book really did that for me, it made me think positively and gratefully about living, whilst making me wish I was alive in 1950s America, drinking coffee, listening to jazz and writing literature about being or discussing poetry in cafes.

From "oztypewriter@blogspot.com"

So, I was really excited to see the scroll in the flesh - and it didn't disappoint. It was really thrilling to see the handmade notes on the scroll and the editing that Kerouac had done himself. In addition to this, it really gave you a physical feeling of the continuous prose. I've read around the subject widely and I've always thought of that image of Joe Strummer in the sleeve of "London Calling" (right), but I've never really understood what it meant, or what it would be like. But seeing the scroll gave an overwhelming sense of the process, it was so clear to visualise Kerouac sat there frantically writing and drinking coffee.

Because the strength of the presence of the scroll was so great, I didn't think it was necessary to have a lot of the things that were in the exhibition. Having read widely around the area, I knew most of the information that was displayed, and they didn't provide any new depth of the subject. There was a paragraph of information that began "Wired on coffee..." that was repeated 5 times around the quite small exhibition, which gave the impression that they didn't have much to say about it so had to repeat themselves. I also thought they had got some small elements of information wrong, for example the origin/coining of the word "beat" in this context was attributed to a different time and even meaning than the one I have commonly read (the one of "upbeat, beatific and on the beat" that was said in a conversation Kerouac had with John Clellon Holmes). Because of this repetition and lack of real insight, I thought the information cheapened and distracted from the actual scroll quite a lot. The scroll was in a glass case, partly unrolled and surrounded by boards of pictures and information. I noticed at one point that every visitor in there was looking at the walls rather than the scroll which I thought was a bit sad, because only a few people gave the actual work enough time.

However, I did like the photographs that were enlarged. The whole 1950s aesthetic is so seductive and Kerouac seems so handsome and charismatic  Most of them were taken by Allen Ginsberg, and I especially liked the ones where they'd left his descriptions scrawled across the bottom. I also really loved an illustration by Kerouac that he'd sent to his publishers depicting how he thought the cover of "On the Road" should look. The drawing and letter he'd sent accompanying it were quite funny and charming.

And again, commercialism had its place there. The directions were all to the gift shop that was full of Beat books and merchandise - posters, notebooks, luggage tags and card holders (?!) I thought it was a little bit demeaning to the work itself, in the same way the boards and information around the exhibition seemed to be. I think they should have let the work be appreciated and viewed on its own merit, and not allow it be cheapened by expensive novelty items - it's literature, not novelty. Despite this, it was amazing to actually see the scroll and I think it's great that treasured cultural artifacts like this can be shown in England and transported around.