David Hockney on Countryfile

30th December 2012

David Hockney appeared in an episode of Countryfile explaining the colours that can be found in the landscape of East Yorkshire as well as his new work which is created using an iPad. It was the latter element that caught my eye.

Rather than getting an easel out or a real subject, Hockney now claims to retread the same area of countryside using only an iPad and "paint" using that. These "paintings" are then printed on a large scale and are going to be placed in the Royal Academy of Art. I don't really like people who aren't willing to move with the times, and in hindsight when people have objected to new revolutions or progressions it seems too easily preposterous (Whistler Vs Ruskin, Britain's resistance from Impressionism, America's resistance from Modernism etc). But I don't really think that this is a time when it seems silly (which it probably never does at the time). I think painting on an iPad is quite sad and horrible. I didn't like the examples of the works that were shown because it reminds me of when I was at primary school and we used to mess about on Paint and make pictures - but for David Hockney to do the same thing but get the credit of a huge artist just seems laughable and very odd. There's no feeling in painting on a screen with no mess, brush, colours, or physicality to it. Of course, people probably said this about computers generating text when a typewriter was thought to have more feeling, but painting is something that has been around since the beginning, surely it can't be taken over by heartless technology now?

I think it's quite scary how everything with feeling or physicality is rapidly being replaced by something easily done, very accessible and heartless. Everything's so cold now, there's no real expression or intimacy, it's just clinical and distant and I think it's really quite sad.

A Hockney iPad piece
Taken from "www.huffingtonpost.co.uk"

Baltic Visit

Visit: 29th December 2012

Bojan Fajfric

Fajfric is a Yugoslavian artist and his work discusses the political situation there and in particular, the rise of Malosovic. Upon first entering the exhibition space, which was made up of 4 rooms consisting of mainly films apart from the two large wall prints seen in the below image, I was a bit overwhelmed. Film requires attention, and I didn't feel as though I could pay the deserved attention to this many films, especially as they dealt with a subject that was foreign and difficult to me. As a result, none of the films really sunk in and I walked round too quickly, just so I could "get through" the sheer amount of work. I did this until I came to the last room, which was very small and intimate with no other visitors in (they filled the other rooms). In the room was a short film consisting of a monologue over images of riders and horses. Aesthetically, it looked to have been filmed on a Super 8 Camera. The monologue spoke a kind of timeline, beginning with a sight that shocked the narrator as a boy (a man struggling with a black stallion and it bit his thumb off). The next sentence was about reading Marxist documents and becoming involved with Marxism and the Gorvernment at the same time (it was revealed that he later left the police because he could see what Malosovic was going to do). The interplay between the horse and politics continued through dialogue as images of riders riding through forests and graveyards were played. I thought the work was incredibly clever. I interpreted the horse as an example of power that stayed with him through the years, and he grappled with it, similar to the man in his sight. Then at the end of the timeline, after leaving the police, the man opened a riding school - he overcame the power he thought to be wrong that had taken something from him and literally tamed the horse. Even though it was spoken in a dead pan way and the only emotion expressed was at the beginning, I thought it was really moving and I really enjoyed it. It was clinical, but also quite beautiful.

Jim Shaw

The Jim Shaw exhibition was very different to the Fajfric exhibition. For me, I thought one demonstrated experience of wanting political change and horror at what has happened, whereas the other seemed more from an "average joe" point of view, attacking the Western problem of consumerism.

Jim Shaw is a prolific American artist who works in many different medias, but all of his work seemed to look a bit samey despite this. It had a lot of impact due to sheer size, such as "Untitled (US Presidents)" (2006), but the imagery used was a bit too obvious to be good, I thought. For example, businessmen as zombies, the White House hidden behind 1950s household products and 50s comic strips telling tales of the downfall of heroes. I know he is a postmodern artist and therefore draws on a lot of pop culture, but I just thought there could have been a more subtle way to do it. It was of overkill on the "consumerism's bad" front.

Untitled (US Presidents) 2006

In a few cases I thought that the references were too far so that I'm not sure if Shaw was the actual artist. I don't mean whether he actually created it, but more that the authenticity of the ideas might not have belonged to him. For example, the image below could be a mix of Pollock, Baldessari and a portraitist like Saville or Freud. I think it is very easy sometimes to pinpoint different elements of artworks taken from different artists (whether intentional or not) so that it degrades the artwork. It made me think about whether anything original can be done anymore, or whether we'll just keep retreading the past in different combinations. There are a lot of artists who work around this subject - Sierra could be another example.

Hugo D'Argantel-Sypniewski Lecture on Santiago Sierra

Lecture: 5th December

Today we had a lecture on Santiago Sierra delivered by Hugo D'Argantel-Sypniewski. It also highlighted the wider issue of "social art". It's not really a type of art that I am familiar with but I do admire, especially the idea of bringing about positive change like artists such as Ai Weiwei (who I greatly admire - it's hard not to!). I suppose there could be issues raised about who is the artist within artworks of this type due to the reliance on the participation of the audience as well as the possibility of an absence of interactive input from the artist in the actual event of the piece (such as with some of Sierra's work).

However, I do admire this kind of work's defiance to be placed as a commodity that can be bought. (But I was disappointed when  D'Argantel-Sypniewski revealed that Sierra makes a hefty amount from galleries commissioning temporary works or projects.) I think an artist can loose integrity and respect from the issue of money, especially when their artwork has such a pungent political meaning and plays a part in social change. To profit from these seems somehow dirty and exploitative.

On the issue of exploitation, I did think that some of the works went too far and crossed the boundaries of art. (I know you're not really meant to think that because it is "art") For example, "160cm line tattooed on four people" (2000) was too far for me. I understood the back story about prostitution and drug use and the evil that money plays in the cycle, but I think to permanently brand a vulnerable person in a position that no-one should be in is quite evil and nasty.  D'Argantel-Sypniewski said it had philosophical and aesthetic connotations that he seemed to quite admire, and I understand this and even the urge to admire it, but I think it's a different matter between changing the body of ones self and changing the body of others - and again, their vulnerable position makes it almost hateful.

"160cm line tattooed on four people" (2000)
Taken from "www.hydramag.com"

Sierra also said that he doesn't believe anything can be changed; there's no other system but the one in which we currently exist. This is where, for me, he loses the integrity and inspiring element that Ai Weiwei instils in people. It seems odd that he would want to create this art if he doesn't see it changing anything, so he's just highlighting issues. In some ways, when combined with the amount of money he is making, I think that this makes him seem like a profiteer of those who aren't as fortunate as him. As I've said in previous posts, the art audience of his works is, by the nature of exhibiting in galleries, a relatively small demographic of the population. In highlighting the faults of society, he doesn't even seem to care enough to highlight it to a decent cross section of the public. The money, the setting, the lack of optimism.. all of these things contribute increasingly to an idea that he is just playing the system for his own profit - but he is playing it well.

His work does get you thinking, and I quite liked some pieces, but the authenticity doesn't seem to be there and that's something that I find very important.

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.