Tate Britain Commission 2012: Patrick Keiller | Tate Britain | London

Text by Emily Sack

It may seem that a fictional institution created to further the research of a fictional scholar and his fictional endeavours would be too abstract and absurd to have any real artistic clout, but Patrick Keiller’s most recent project brings the imaginary to life in a very real and concrete way. Robinson, the enigmatic scholar, seeks to explain the current economic and social condition based on historical events and their remnant markings on the landscape.

The exhibition in the beautiful and spacious Duveen Galleries of Tate Britain resembles a cabinet of curiousities filled with works from the Tate collection as well as other artifacts and objects spanning diverse concentrations from art to geology in equally diverse media. Patrick Keiller undertook the monumental task of browsing the Tate collection for works to include in The Robinson Institute. These works represent historical prints, drawings, and paintings from JMW Turner and James Ward grouped seamlessly with some of the biggest names in 20th-century art including Joseph Beuys, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Andreas Gursky. The incongruousness of time, media, and styles represented highlight Robinson’s thesis: that events and sentiments in history reoccur throughout time and this results in the present status quo. To Robinson nothing is random; even the falling of a meteor relates to contemporaneous events.

The exhibition begins with a diagram of Robinson’s journey through the English landscape, and this route determines the arrangement and chronology of the exhibition. Visitors are confronted with depictions of travelers and wanderers, as though to legitimise Robinson’s method of research. Robinson relies of textual sources, of course, as any good scholar would (and a number of these are on display), but it is important to note that the most poignant of discoveries are made outside the library, in the environment being studied.

The journey sets about the chart the development of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. This begins, in Robinson’s research, with the 1795 Settlement Act that allows rural works to migrate more easily to cities and industrial centres in search for work and a better life. The actual act in scrolling 18th century penmanship has been lent by the Parliamentary Archives and is displayed alongside a larger-than-average meteorite that fell in the same year. The juxtaposition of a large piece of rock from space with the seemingly closer migration of man bridges the phenomenological with the concrete.

Circling around the galleries, the visitor is soon confronted with images of nuclear anxiety. The jump from 1795 to mid-20th century and present day is a bit drastic, but it emphasises a cause and effect relationship. Scientific development has provided civilization with countless advantages over the preceding generations and a greater understanding of the world, but it has also caused terrible destruction and augmented existing conflicts. Science and industry, since the beginning have inspired both awe and fear, but the development of nuclear warfare, postulates Robinson, has encouraged a more pessimistic worldview. 

The octagon space of the Duveen Galleries is used to screen an hour of re-edited footage accumulated by Keiller for the 2010 film Robinson in Ruins. The scenes included allow visitors to see the world from Robinson’s point of view, almost as a bird-watcher – patiently observing the landscape and hoping for a revelation. The footage focuses on the natural landscape and highlights Robinson’s belief that history has left physical and tangible markings that help present-day scholars interpret the past. An exhibition text notes that “Robinson inclined to ‘biophilia’, the love of life and living systems, having learnt that symbiotic relationships between organisms are a primary force in evolution.” The faceless scholar sees mankind and its relationship to with time as a "living system" that requires the past to create the future.

The Robinson Institute is certainly interesting as an exhibition and creates a genre of its own. While several of the photographs in the exhibition, as well as the film footage, are shot by Patrick Keiller himself, the majority of the exhibition includes work by other artists, and objects that are not art at all. It becomes apparent that in this case the exhibition becomes single work of art; that all the varied parts create one whole, and this blurs the boundary between artist and curator to an extent.

Simultaneously educational and whimsical, thought provoking and humourous, Patrick Keiller takes visitors on a journey throughout the country and throughout time. Robinson believed that “if he looked at the landscape hard enough, it would reveal to him the ‘molecular basis’ of historical events,” and perhaps if more people took the time to study in this way, there would be a greater understanding of the present world.

Tate Britain Commission 2012: Patrick Keiller, 27/03/2012 - 14/10/2012, Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG. www.tate.org.uk/britain

Aesthetica in Print

If you only read Aesthetica online, you are missing out. The April/May issue of Aesthetica is out now and includes a diverse range of features from Bauhaus: Art as Life, a comprehensive survey of one of the most influential schools of thought from the 20th century, Growing Up: The Young British Artists at 50, which centres on Jeremy Cooper's examination of the illustrious career, and the phenomenon that was the YBAs and Behind Closed Doors, an intimate portrait of family life in Cuba from photographer David Creedon.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can find your nearest stockist here. Better yet, subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine. To subscribe visit the website or call us on +44 (0) 1904 629 137.

Caption:
Patrick Keiller
Robinson in Ruins (2010)
Film Still
© Patrick Keiller

I Myself Have Seen It: Photography and Kiki Smith | Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art | Arizona

I Myself Have Seen It: Photography and Kiki Smith is the product of a decade-long conversation between independent Curator Elizabeth Brown and the artist, examining a little-known body of work to provide important new insights into Smith's extraordinary career. Aesthetica spoke to Claire Carter, Assistant Curator at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) to learn more.

A: First of all, I just wanted to ask about what you see as the importance or influence of photography in Kiki Smith's wider oeuvre, including the sculptures for which she's probably best known?

CC: Introducing the exhibition, Elizabeth Brown outlines Smith’s use of photography: “Over three decades she has experimented with its use in many ways: as a tool, as a means of personal expression, as a way to construct meanings. She sees it as a flexible medium in which she can explore space, composition, colour and texture, free of the material constraints of sculpture or printmaking.” The primary goal of the exhibition is to describe both the formal variety of the work and its conceptual extent—the ways Smith thinks and articulates her ideas visually, using the camera.

A: Many of the photographs in the show appear consciously posed or staged. They don't come across as snapshots but much more as tableaux or orchestrated mini-scenes. Do you see this as an important aspect of Smith's photographic style?

CC: Smith constantly carries a traditional 35mm camera—she photographs constantly. Many of the photographs represented on a larger scale are made of motionless scenes, inert sculptures, still landscapes, taxidermy animals. I think this adds to the feeling of orchestration. However, the diminutive 4 x 6 inch photographs that line the floorboards of the museum walls reveal a much more improvisational or extemporaneous tone.

A: There are both large scale and small scale photographic works in the show. How does scale function in the photographs? Is their a distinction in the approach she takes to the larger works from that in the smaller works?

CC: That is an interesting question. All of the photographs in the exhibition were made with a 35mm, handheld single lens reflex camera and shot with traditional colour film. Of course the size differentiation emphasises the works’ importance, but each image is capable of being any size at any time. However, the photographs Smith chooses to enlarge have a sense of quietude, solemnity. There is a sense that the photograph is a complete thought with a beginning and an end. This is in contrast to the installation of 1,300 small 4 x 6 inch photographs that line the floorboards of the museum walls. These images are exquisite and beautiful in their own ways but they are also a kind of linear brainstorming, almost a film reel that transports you through the galleries and through Smith’s world.

A: Reproduction, in every sense, has been an important theme for Smith in many of her works. Do you see reproduction as important in Smiths photography, given that it is an essentially reproducible medium?

CC: The emphasis on Smith’s process is a good way to contextualise this question. Really all of the work in the exhibition is an example of Smith’s process—her engagement with the world, her inspirations and muses, the process of documenting the various states of her drawings, carvings, sculptures. Photography is the perfect co‐author in observation.

A: The exhibition features some of Smith's experiments with time-based media. Could you tell us a little about these works and how they relate to Smith's other photographic works?

I would advocate first considering that all of Smith’s work is essentially time‐based. Although photography and her videos are explicitly time‐based, Smith presents the passing of time by tracking the many transformations and changes a sculpture takes on during its lifetime. In the exhibition catalogue of the same name, curator Elizabeth Brown states: “Smith is drawn to the way such repeated, incrementally changing views conjure up the experience of being with the subject….what Smith describes as ‘movement through stillness.’” It’s interesting to know that when studying at Hartford Art School, Smith’s focus was on filmmaking.

A: One of the most interesting aspects of the show seems to be the inclusion of some of the photographs Smith takes as part of her sculptural process. How does her approach in these works relate to works where the photograph is the finished work in itself?

CC: I think Smith's observation in the catalogue explains this approach perfectly: “I don’t think my work is particularly about art. It’s really about me, being her in this life, in this kin. I’m cannibalising my own experience, my surroundings.” Curator Elizabeth Brown contextualises this quote stating: “This holds especially true in the photographs, most of which originate with projects in other
mediums. Extending the cannibal metaphor, Smith’s photographs can be seen as devouring and reprocessing her sculpture. But the relationship is reciprocal: they also nourish her works in other mediums in multiple ways, contributing to their invention, their development, their process, and their interpretations.”

A: The exhibition includes photographs from a wide period in Smith's career. Is there a development in style over the period in your opinion or is the way she uses photography consistent?

CC: Smith makes photographs incessantly. The curatorial endeavour of sorting through such an archive to make a manageable selection means the selection cannot represent every facet of her development. More than arguing for a clear stylistic development, the exhibition presents selections of photographs that demonstrate the wide range of creativity and ingenuity Smith applies to her work.

A: I'm really interested in the works that make use of traditional myths and fairy tales. Could you tell us a little about these works and how Smith is able to subvert their meanings and implications?

CC: Kiki Smith often uses the iconography of fairy tales in the characters and narrative in her artwork. She borrows from Western iconography already laden or fraught with meaning. The visual symbolism of Little Red Riding Hood, the Evil Witch, the screaming banshee, trigger a flurry of associations. Smith breaks this dialogue, however, by interjecting unexpected storylines into the traditional stories. At times Little Red Riding Hood becomes a girl with a grotesque, hair‐covered face; harpies become beautiful, lithe sexual bodies, banshees are based on portraiture of real women.

A: Many of Smith's sculptures seem influenced by Julia Kristeva's ideas of the "abject" and "horror", particularly in the context of the AIDS crisis. Do you see these ideas as important in the photographs?

CC: Kristeva and Smith were born within fifteen years of one another. Both feminists are interested in identity, the feminine, sexuality and the representation of women in culture. Certainly Smith’s images blur the line between the abject and the beautiful—one of Kristeva’s main interests. Perhaps most interesting however, is that Smith and Kristeva see the subject in a state of unending process—always
morphing and growing and changing. In their artwork and writing, respectively, they emphasise the instinctual, emotional, psychological—characteristics generally associated with the feminine.

A: Finally, the title of the exhibition seems really interesting as it relates the art of photography to Smith's individual and personal vision... Could you tell us a little bit about what you see as the importance of the title to the exhibition, is there a sense in which the camera is documenting the way Smith sees the world?

CC: I Myself Have Seen It: Photography and Kiki Smith emphasises, first and foremost the first-person perspective. What is interesting here is the plurality of meaning - this could reference Smith's
visual encounter with the subject; the utilisation of the photograph as documentation, or proof; or the perspective of the exhibition-goer, sharing Smith's representations of the visual world.

I Myself Have Seen It: Photography and Kiki Smith, 11/02/2012 - 20/05/2012, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, 7374 East Second Street, Scottsdale, AZ 85251, USA. www.smoca.org

Aesthetica in Print

If you only read Aesthetica online, you are missing out. The April/May issue of Aesthetica is out now and includes a diverse range of features from Bauhaus: Art as Life, a comprehensive survey of one of the most influential schools of thought from the 20th century, Growing Up: The Young British Artists at 50, which centres on Jeremy Cooper's examination of the illustrious career, and the phenomenon that was the YBAs and Behind Closed Doors, an intimate portrait of family life in Cuba from photographer David Creedon.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can find your nearest stockist here. Better yet, subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine. To subscribe visit the website or call us on +44 (0) 1904 629 137.

Caption:
Kiki Smith Untitled (from: Crow). 1997
Chromogenic (Ektacolor) colour print
© Kiki Smith, courtesy PaceWildenstein, New
York.

Matthew Picton: Urban Narratives | Sumarria Lunn | London

Text by Bethany Rex

Cities are often described as living organisms; viewed as subject rather than object. Matthew Picton engages with this traditional of humanising the city by deconstructing the clean, uncompromising aesthetic of the cartographic city plan and imbuing it with the unique history and culture of each place.

For this exhibition Urban Narratives, Picton depicts these cities as active participants, affected by outside sources and shaped by their internal social structure. They city becomes a subject and an entity of its own.

BR: Urban Narratives opened earlier this month. What has the response to the work been like so far?

MP: It has been extremely positive so far, very well attended at the special evening for the young diplomats of London and the LSE Alumni, we had many interesting questions and received some good input and thoughts. People seemed excited by the work, and that's important to me.

BR: What do people understand the work to be about?

MP: It's about cities, urban life, history and the perspectives given by literature. There is a clear understanding of the work's depiction of the vulnerability of human civilisation. People also clearly recognise the work to be about mapping and will locate their own personal narratives within the cartographic framework.

BR: Could you talk us through your relationship with the concept of the city? Where did this begin?

MP: My relationship with the concept of the city is an ever expanding one. I started seeing the city as akin to an organisation but what I increasingly see is something more akin to an accumulation of humanity stretching back centuries. A city as an accumulated depositary of culture and the progress of civilisation, a body which has grown through the tumults and events of history. I always begin with an excitement about a city, an enthusiasm that is found in the imagination of it's history and visual appearance, which leads to an imagination of what a life within the city might be like, or has been like.

BR: I've been reading about your work, and your research must be meticulous. What's your favourite place to think about what you'll make next?

MP: Looking out of the window on a long flight. The view from high up has always intrigued me, particularly the macro aerial perspective offered by the plane seat. Again not unlike looking at a map, except here starting to imagine past the immediate visual gratification of the geography and on to thinking about the social and historical components of the landscape.

BR: We've got a shared love for Thomas Mann. Is there something particular about Death in Venice that inspired you?

MP: The wonderfully poetic and evocative nature of the writing and it's mirroring of the decline and slow death through the centuries of Venice. All of course put into the very personal and human terms of the decline of the central character, Aschenbach as he follows his obsession.

BR: Where on the map do you hope to transform next?

MP: I am particularly excited about making a sculpture of St. Petersburg. I am planning to use a map from the early 19th century that depicts the extent of the flood waters of the year 1997. I anticipate travelling there to collect some of the Nevsky water and mud. The work will encompass some of Russian poet Joseph Brodsky's writings and poetry; writing that reflects upon the transition of St. Petersburg to Leningrad and back again, writing that reflects the mythology of St. Petersburg in Russian Literature. The work with also include portions of Shostakovich's 7th Symphony, which was written about the gruelling 3 year siege of St. Petersburg. Thus it will be a work reflecting different eras and transitions in the history of this city.

Matthew Picton: Urban Narratives, 08/03/2012 - 06/04/2012, Sumarria Lunn, 36 South Molton Lane, Mayfair, London, W1K 5AB. www.sumarrialunn.com

Aesthetica in Print

If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The February/March issue of Aesthetica is out now and offers a diverse range of features from an examination of the diversity and complexity of art produced during the tumultuous decade of the 1980s in Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, opening 11 February at MCA Chiacgo, a photographic presentation of the Irish Museum of Modern Art's latest opening, Conversations: Photography from the Bank of America Collection. Plus, we recount the story of British design in relation to a comprehensive exhibition opening this spring at the V&A.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Captions:
1. Hollywood Crushed and Burned (2010)
A sculptural map of Hollywood created from the covers of the fictional film Earthquake (1974) and the documentary Killer Quake (2004). The work provides a fictional dramatisation of imagined and future earthquakes as well as imagery from the actual Los Angeles earthquakes of 1989 - 1994. Film and documentary are as much bound up with the history and future of LA as the fault lines that sit beneath it and it seems fitting here that the two converge in the sculpture.
2. Lower Manhattan (2011)
Lower Manhattan if the first "smoked" sculpture Picton has made. The complex cartography of the city plan was created from the headlines that followed the 2001 World Trade Center tragedy, DVD covers of the film Towering Inferno and book covers of the novel The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. The finished work has been carefully "smoked" from the site obscuring the colour of the sculpture. Without doubt this event will take its place in human history and has already shaped the lives of those in the city, the country and many more around the world.
3. Portland (2011)
Created from the covers and text of the novel The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LaGuin and the DVD covers of the films Dante's Peak and Volcano.