Review: Fade Away at Transition Gallery, London

Review by Charles Danby

Following hot on the heels of Transition’s inaugural ART BLITZ auction, a call to arms against impending arts cuts in the UK, the exhibition Fade Away retains a maxim of mass action and presentation, with the large group exhibition this time directed towards the hinterland between painted representation and painterly abstraction.

Presenting a single work by each of the 39 participating artists, Fade Away resulted in an even and dense distribution of paintings across and around the multiple wall surfaces of Transition. With works staggered just above and below a natural eye level, it drew gaze along an implied horizon that proposed a sequential (relational) viewing from one work to the next. This implicit orthodoxy did not however unfold a contingent narrative or progression of stylistic form, but rather a loose series of tendencies, components and directions within current British painting.

Catching immediate attention was a small section of wall directly facing the entrance on which four paintings hung. The largest, located slightly to the left of the midpoint, was the work Für Waldmüller (2010) by Eleanor Moreton. The title suggested a connection to the 19th century Austrian painter, Georg Waldmüller (1793-1865), and in line with this Moreton’s painting seemed to depict a still life assemblage of vases and flowers. The ambiguous surface markings of paint appeared in places to conjure partial disclosures of figures or perhaps fragments of skulls. Moreton’s dark, oblique and tonally flat palette, sympathetic and recursive to Northern European 16th and 17th Vanitas painting, was occasionally pierced by sharp hues of blue and red.

The work immediately to the right, small and alluring in its strangeness, was a red monochrome painting. This work by Clare Undy, Trouble (2010), was marked across its surface by a single twisted and curved line that appeared as a false or illusory rip or tear. This red on red mark was itself doubled by the inflection of its own shadow, which in marking the representational surface of the painting’s ground remained unrelentingly ambiguous, neither imbedded nor fully removed from it. Above and to the right was a similarly sized painting by Nathan Barlex titled Diluvial Geology (2010), which read loosely and through quick glance as another flower painting of sorts. This assumptive inference of subject may simply have been forged through its proximity to Eleanor Moreton’s painting.

Here the contextual allure of perceptual as well as technical, representational and stylistic form was exposed, underpinning within the exhibition a consensus that highlighted its tendency to supplant pictorial representation by exposing and indulging the sensory and material properties of paint. Fade Away in this sense moved towards an unconditional opening-up of a wide peripheral vision within the framework of painted representation and painterly abstraction.

Completing this four-piece arrangement was the small and disarmingly seductive painting Burn (2010) by Jo Wilmot. An almost square (20 x 25cm) white on white canvas aside for the off central depiction, between foreground and background, of a rolled mass, lump, or bundled figure. Across the painting brush marks lay testament to the presence of paint, its flow and malleability. While this privileging of mark was countered by the pictorial representation of a not quite discernable or knowable object, the terms of this union remained beautifully poised on an edge of instability. Added to which the pictorial scale of the central form seemed to change significantly when viewed from either a close or afar. The concise and not quite graspable articulation of this work was matched by a handful of others, most notably the gloriously contained glutinous pink-orange painting of Clem Crosby’s Picabia (2010), and the affecting nakedness of Alice Browne’s Watch Me (2010).

Elsewhere a recurring sense of geometric representation pervaded the works of Philip Allen, Mali Morris and Alex Gene Morrison, while a strand of figuration that at points turned more directly to portraiture, was evidenced in works by Lindsey Bull, Tim Bailey, Zack Thorne, Paul Housley, Sarah Lederman and Kaye Donachie. Here there was a sense that the number of works in Fade Away started to undermine the underlying concerns of the exhibition, extending its parameters too widely, and resulting in a splintered core that became increasingly hard to gauge. In extracting directives of figurative representation the inclusion of works by Bull, Housley and Donachie interestingly and astutely extended this rhetoric, while other works remained tied to concerns that offered far less or even misfired.

Kaye Donachie’s Under my hand the moonlight lay! (2010) showed the tilted head of a woman within a forest landscape. The faded blue-grey / green-grey palette exposed occasional flickers of pale orange that amongst the muted anaemic tones of the painting glowed as fiercely as the sun burning through a heavy mist. Here Kaye’s work pointed to a further tension in Fade Away, one that suggested the prevalence and connectedness of European tendencies of painting, particularly Belgium and Nordic, within a current catchment of painting from the UK.

Added to this, the small scale of the works shown, the largest being around 70 x 60cm, further permeated (even if falsely) a sentiment of quieter austerity or more reserved tendency within the works. A restraint, intent and discretion that again appeared significant and timely in its European rather than American affiliation. It was perhaps also a tendency that was given further substance by the close unity of generation (of the last 40 years of so) and geography between the artists, added to which was the actual slightness of the time that divided the works, with all of them painted within the last four years, and all but one within the last two years.

In slicing time so acutely Fade Away ensures that such questions of tendency can be asked, and while not all works fire so directly, it reminds us that if approached intelligently exposing tendency is rewarding and significant.

The show continues until 24 December 2010. www.transitiongallery.co.uk

Image: (c)Tim Bailey, The Debutante, 2008, oil on canvas, 40.5 x 30.5cm

Review: High Society at the Wellcome Collection

Review by Robert J. Wallis, a Professor of Visual Culture & Director MA in Art History at Richmond The American International University in London.


“Every society on Earth is a high society”: from the caffeine in our morning tea and coffee to over-the-counter pain-killers and a “drink” on the way home from work, to hallucinogenic snuffs used by shamans in Venezuela, drugs are a universal part of human existence. This is the overarching theme of the excellent High Society exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London (until 27 February 2011). Lead curator and widely published expert on the topic, Mike Jay, author of the stunning catalogue, makes no judgements as to whether drugs are “good” or “bad”, should be illegal or legal (the illegal drug trade is estimated by the UN at $320bn a year, around half that of the pharmaceuticals industry), but demonstrates in great variety how they figure in all cultures, through time.

The first cabinet displays a wonderful miscellany of drug-related paraphernalia to demonstrate this diversity: two contemporary glasses of “Wine”, packaged in plastic and ready for consumption are juxtaposed with a “Heavy fetish pipe” (Congo, late 17th or early 18th century), “Fly Agaric mushrooms”, a “Bundle of qat twigs”, “Betel nut cutters in the form of a human head with the wings and tail of a peacock” (Indian, 19th century), a “Kava bowl” (Vanuatu, contemporary), “Amyl nitrate capsules”(London, 19th century), a “Homemade crack pipe”, and a “Digital cannabis vaporiser”, to name but a few examples. The objects are uncluttered by labels although having to look back and forth to the labels on the wall behind was a bit awkward, but the point is made, enticing visitors into an exciting show.

The gallery space is spacious, though surprisingly subdued and clinical in tone(blue, black, white) for a show on drugs. The great range of mixed media is organised according to six themes: A Universal Impulse, From Apothecary to Laboratory, Self-Experimentation, Collective Intoxication, The Drugs Trade, A Sin, a Crime, a Vice or a Disease?; in a clockwise-direction, visitors broadly follow this format. A free exhibition guide repeats the introductory text to each of these themes, and an exhibit captions catalogue supplements this and the text in the displays by fleshing out some of the detail – only reading this would I have learned that Rossetti’s Study of Elizabeth Siddal for "Beata Beatrix" (1860) is included because the later painting on which it is based has the girl holding poppy flowers, alluding to Lizzie’s addiction to and overdose from laudanum.

A 7th century BCE Assyrian tablet from the Royal Library of Assyria at Nineveh recommending “azallü” for paralysis, flabbiness and “forgetting worries”, is the oldest object displayed. A ceramic “Opium Juglet”, c.1500 BCE, made in Cyprus and found in Israel is shaped something like a poppy head and painted with stripes which are suggestive of the incisions made on the capsule to leak sap and harvest the drug. Drug use clearly has great antiquity. Rare films of Tukano Indian shamans using the hallucinogenic Ayahuasca vine (1971) and the Waika Palm Fruit Festival in Venezuela (1959) involving the collective use of hallucinogenic snuff, show how drugs are embedded in ritual life in many indigenous communities today. There are also displays on the use of Kava in the Pacific, the “divine plant” coca among the Incas, and Peyote among the Huichol Indians of Mexico, but the ethnographic material is limited in a show otherwise dominated by Western encounters with drugs.

These encounters, though, are fascinating, particularly the influence of drugs on visual art and literature. The first illustrations of magic mushrooms appear in 1803 after Dr Brande published his 1800 description of a family afflicted by symptoms including hallucinations after eating fungi they collected in London’s Green Park (Andy Letcher’s book Shroom is worth a mention here). Thomas De Quincey, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Conan Doyle were some of the earliest self-experimenters with opium, cocaine and morphine to leave records from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and early editions of their work are on display. An 1822 coloured aquatint entitled "Doctor and Mr Syntax with a party of friends, experimenting with laughing gas" satirises the trend for laughing gas “parties”; pictures by Henri Michaux of incredibly detailed doodles were drawn while under the influence of mescaline in the 1950s; and LSD blotter art colourfully signals the drug culture of the 1960s. An entrancing psychedelic light show reproduced for the exhibition by Joshua White (who worked with Hendrix, The Grateful Dead and The Doors), with a behind-the-scenes view, is a highlight.

Contemporary art is represented by Mark Harri’s (1999) fun video “Marijuana in the UK”, with the artist reading Benjamin’s Hashish in Marseilles and Baudelaire’s Les Paradis Artificiels to cannabis plants to make them grow faster, and Rodney Graham’s even funnier Phonokinetiscope (2001) in which he drops acid and cycles around Berlin just as the accidental discoverer of LSD, Albert Hoffman, did in 1943. The socially-destructive impact of drugs today is marked by Keith Coventry’s disturbing photolithograph Crack (2000) and his memorial-like Crack Pipe (1998) series of bronzes. Mustafa Hulusi’s sublime video work Afyon shows fields of poppies growing in Turkey: a source of Europe’s opium from antiquity to the nineteenth century, destroyed in return for compensation from the USA in the 1960s, with renewed production today for legal medical opiates, this ‘Epilogue’ to the show points to the enduring role of drugs in society and our ambivalence as to their rightful place.

Highly recommended – an unmissable exhibition.

Image:
Copyright Wellcome Library, London. From: Order this large Guinness for the home : the large economical family size : Guinness is good for you / Guinness (Firm), Redgate,Nottingham : [1925?] 19 cm. Library reference no.: GC EPH573:27. Wellcome Library Catalogue

Aesthetica Magazine Gift Guide 2010

It’s that time of year again and at Aesthetica we’re already excited about the festive season. The Christmas we’ll be avoiding the high-street chains (apart from WH Smith to pick up the Dec/Jan issue of course!) and buying our gifts from independent artists and makers.

It goes without saying that we’ve all been bitten by the change in the economic climate so we thought it was the perfect time to put the focus back on something handmade and sustainable; a gift with a story from an independent retailer.

These pieces are an investment buy, and not in the fleeting sense. At Aesthetica, we believe that the origin of the products we consume should be a central ethical concern and from a less serious stance, there is something much more exciting about a handmade gift.

We’ve handpicked you a selection of 12 gifts from our favourite designers, makers and online stores to solve all your Christmas shopping woes!

Amma Gyan’s beautiful pendants are made from moulded leather, which is painted to give a metallic effect. The single pendant is hung on a slender trace chain attached to a solid brass bail.

Sun-Woong Bang’s intricate and delicate jewellery centres around a simple and profound idea, that contemporary practice, in time, will become traditional practice. The pieces are unmistakably contemporary. We’re most excited by the more abstract pieces, such as the Transit Series which generates electricity while being worn!

Yueh Yin Taffs’ sculptures are hand built and exude personality, energy and spirit. Focusing on hand built porcelain figurines of horses in various dramatic poses, these sculptures are inspiring.

A Little Bit of Art specialises in affordable printed artworks. Tackling head-on the fact that we all want art on the wall, but can’t necessarily afford to shell out for it, A Little Bit of Art is an online gallery that offers a diverse selection of artists, illustrators and printmakers who are using different mediums and techniques to create exciting imagery, printing on papers, glass, mirrors, ceramics and wood. Contemporary and current, this website is well worth a look.

Kath Libbert Jewellery Gallery specialises solely in contemporary jewellery. Much of the work on show pushes the boundaries between fine art, jewellery design and fashion resulting in jewellery that is best described as wearable art. It’s all too easy to head straight to the likes of Topshop for contemporary jewellery but it is refreshing to see pieces that are current, design-led, handmade and affordable.

Culture Label brings you an edit of products, currently available from the world’s best museums, art galleries and artists. We are all guilty of spending more time in the gallery shop than in the exhibition itself and this website provides the perfect anecdote to the office blues. We’ve spent hours on this website, making our own wish lists and gaining valuable inspiration from the gift service they provide. Proceed with caution; this site will have you hooked.

Other Criteria is great for those family members who are notoriously tricky to buy for. Working directly with Damien Hirst and a number of established and emerging artists to make limited editions and multiples, t-shirts, jewellery, photographs, posters, prints and books, these products are original and quirky. Our favourite is Hirst’s Silver Turtle which is a bargain at £8,000!

Tom Hare’s willow sculptures are hand-made to order and it doesn’t get more unique than that. Working with greenwood, specifically willow, he creates large woven sculptures which are largely botanical in nature. Each piece has its own character and if you’ve got a big garden would make the perfect centrepiece.

The Peanuts Collection is a beautiful hardback book that covers 50 years of Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Woodstock and the gang. This tactile book features 200 illustrations, and has sections that can be removed, unfolded and pop out. It evokes a sense of nostalgia, and as you flip throughout the pages, it makes you want to watch Charlie Brown’s Christmas and for a brief moment, makes you feel like you’re 10 again.

We Admire has the world’s largest collection of original t-shirt designs and their selection of children’s togs is almost too cute for words. For those kids who seem to have everything, their shirts with Francis Bacon and Cindy Sherman had us all wishing we had children to dress! With designs incorporating Design, Architecture, Cosmology and Philosophy there is something for everyone.

Emma Gordon makes clutch bags and coin purses to order. Tired of only being able to buy mass-produced goods in the shops that were being worn by thousands of other people too, Emma decided to do something about it. Using pretty colours, quirky details and delicate trims, every bag is handmade making them the perfect gift this Christmas.

Complete Creative Package There is nothing like self-promotion at Christmas so our favourite gift this year is a fantastic combination of 1 year’s Aesthetica Subscription, Free DVD of emerging filmmakers, Creative Works Annual 2011 all for £29.95. Offering endless enjoyment for the long winter evenings, this gift will keep on giving throughout 2011!

Filmmaker Series – Q&A with Finalists from the Aesthetica Short Film Competition

To celebrate the launch of the Aesthetica Shorts 2011 DVD, there is a feature on the nature of short films and a discussion of the current film industry in the Dec/Jan issue of Aesthetica.

In conjunction with the feature in Aesthetica, over the next few weeks, we will be running the full interviews with the filmmakers in the blog. To watch these films, order the Dec/Jan issue, and receive a FREE DVD of 13 emerging filmmakers from 7 countries.


Unearthing the Pen directed by Carol Salter – Winning Film
Beautifully photographed, Unearthing the Pen is an intimate portrait of a young Ugandan boy’s desperate desire for an education in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Forty years ago, tribal elders buried a pen, placing a curse on the written word.

How did you begin filmmaking?
I studied painting as part of a Fine Art degree, but by my second year, I started spending more and more time in the college basement playing with the Super 8 cameras. I was attracted to film as a medium, because of the range of ways I could use it in order to tell a story - from the spoken word, music, sound, and of course, moving images - no matter how abstract they might be.

Who and what are your influences?
Listen to Britain by Humphrey Jennings was the first film that made realise how powerful editing can be. It’s a documentary, but it’s like a poem; its deployment of sound and image montage is inspiring. Another film that used the same approach, but was more playful was Unsere Afrikareise by Peter Kubelka. Films that are more fiction that have influenced me include: Timeout by Laurent Cantet, which is about a character who is isolated from the world in which he lives. Equally, Lucy and Wendy by Kelly Reichard is about somebody who feels alone and powerless. While 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days by Cristian Mungiu is another film where the main protagonist battles alone. Strong, isolated characters feature a lot in my work; it’s a theme I return to all the time.

What do you try to achieve through your filmmaking?
I want to get an insight into the character’s universe, their inner world – hopefully in quite an intimate way. I try to hint and suggest rather than be too literal.

Can you tell me about the balance between cinematography and narrative? Which takes precedence?
For me I get a strong feeling about the subject, but I’m not always able to articulate their story through words. I always imagine a narrative in pictures, and I’m particularly drawn to documentary, because there is such richness in the visuals, subtleties and nuances from real life. I would like to think that my stories are told in carefully composed images and sequences.

Talk me through the process of making a film – working practice, shooting, collaborations, funding?
I work as a one-woman crew; I do the research, shooting, sound recording and editing myself. I don’t work in isolation though, I work with people within a community or a tribe who advise and translate. It is crucial for me to build up a very close rapport with my subject. I don’t know if that would be possible with a larger crew. After intense periods of research, I then have a feel for the material I need to capture, but I like to be open to the unexpected, which could make the story richer. Then it’s back home to edit. I like to show rough cuts to friends and colleagues for comments. Unearthing the Pen was self-funded, although I had support developing the idea from the Scottish Documentary Institute as part of the Bridging the Gap Scheme.

What was the most challenging aspect of making your film?
It was tough filming with small budget in a very remote area of Uganda. I travelled there alone and worked with a local translator from the tribe. I didn’t know the culture or speak the language, so I really had to rely on local contacts for guidance in making sure I worked sensitively and respectfully to Locheng, (the boy in film), his situation and to local customs and traditions. My story explores the village elders’ fears that prevented their children from learning to read and having an education. I had to respect their beliefs within their cultural context. I also had a moral obligation not to raise this boy’s expectations in ways that I could not meet, which was really important to me. By pointing the camera at him, I put him in the spotlight and it’s quite a responsibility. My local contacts guided me in this respect.

How would you define cinema culture today? How easy is it to make a film versus the process involved with screening and distribution?
By having my own equipment and resources, I can make films without too many obstacles, however to distribute them and screen them, is extremely hard work; it’s a full time job.

How do you feel short films fit into today’s cinema culture?
Beyond festivals, outlets are unfortunately very limited. It would be great if they regularly accompany feature films.

How do you make yourself stand out from other filmmakers? What’s your plan for marketing your films?
I’ve worked very hard distributing my films to a lot of national and international festivals. That in turn can lead to other opportunities to show my film. I create a website for each film, but so does everyone else! It’s not easy, but I like to think that my work speaks for itself.

What are your future plans?
I am currently working on a feature project, it’s a drama, but I’m using a similar approach that I use to make documentaries. It’s a poetic thriller about a woman’s relationship with her neighbours, playing with the themes of voyeurism and mis-perceptions.

To watch Carol’s film and read a feature about Unearthing the Pen in the Dec/Jan issue of Aesthetica CLICK HERE.