Cuba Italy China

Cuba Italy China – a fascinating exhibition, has just wrapped up in Somerset earlier this week. The focus of Cuba Italy was centred on capturing the pastels of decay and faded grandeur of the urban playground. The photographs were shot in Havana, Cuba, and Napoli, Italy. Although, very different places in the world, with diverse histories, language and culture, the images explore back streets and derelict palazzos, of these two vibrant cities; inviting you to complete the narrative of these isolated places.



Barry Cawston’s piece, the Yangtzee River Series, a 2000-mile journey from the mountains in the north to Shanghai, show the though provoking nature his work. The series is an opportunity to see this poignant insight into the lives of the people that live and relate to this magnificent river in China. The dichotomy of Man and environment stimulate his work. Through his lens he expertly depicts the world with a unique and subtle perspective. Shooting on a large-format camera, like a modern day renaissance painter he displays his talent for composition, colour and mastery of his medium.

A unique exhibition demonstrating the diversity of Cawston and Schofield’s work.

For more information visit www.closeltd.com

All images (c) the artist

Mike Ballard – The All of Everything - Art will eat itself

The final exhibition to take place at the Arts Gallery, before the building is demolished for Crossrail, is set to be fittingly epic. This is the largest and most ambitious work yet by acclaimed artist Mike Ballard; from 10 December the Arts Gallery will become The All of Everything, a specially commissioned work which will to turn the entire gallery space into an all-encompassing installation covering floors, walls and ceilings featuring the artist’s flamboyant vision of art history.



Transporting the viewer on a supersonic journey through a galaxy of hypermodern and prehistoric art, The All of Everything races back and projects forward through art history, fusing, referencing and sampling at blistering speed.Merging painted floors and walls and a baroque collage ceiling into one gargantuan installation, the gallery will ultimately become one immersive artwork into which the viewer is absorbed. Negotiating the space, the observer becomes a participant in the installation’s embodiment of the eternal loop of life and regeneration; ciphers of the human endeavour to gain and preserve in a continuous trajectory of creation and accumulation.



This immersive experience is rooted in a giant pharaoh head projecting from one wall, within the eyes of which lie two videos secreted away awaiting discovery. A bespoke audio track entitled “The Last Broadcaster” will emit from the kaleidoscopic eye sockets, signifying the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end.

A time capsule hurled from London’s street art scene back through the artist’s personal art historical heritage appropriating aesthetics en route, from plundering the excesses of the Renaissance to sampling the euphoria of pop art, landing temporarily at prehistoric cave art, Ballard’s work calls on muses as disparate as Baroque kings of bling, prehistoric shamans, ancient Egyptian sovereigns, hip hop monarchy, comic book superheroes and the cosmic philosophy of jazz royalty Sun Ra.

Speaking about his ambitions for the work, Ballard comments “as it is the last show at the Arts Gallery, I wanted to go big, to give the gallery a good send off, by acknowledging all of its surfaces, preparing the space before it goes into the ‘other world’. With imagery from my own personal art history and music that has inspired my work, including flamboyant time travellers Sun Ra and RAMM:ELL:ZEE, I have selected guardians for the gallery as it goes to the other side of time.”

Mike Ballard graduated from Central Saint Martins MA Fine Art in 2007. He has recently exhibited at Maddox Arts and the Louise Blouin Institute. Ballard’s work appears in collections including the Richard Greer Collection, LesMes, Espace Uhoda, Belgium and University of the Arts London Art Collection

10 December 2009 – the demolition of the Arts Gallery 2010, 65 Davies Street, W1K 5DA. Open Monday – Friday 10am – 6pm, Saturday 11am – 4pm. Nearest Tube Bond Street. Admission free.

Images (c) the artist
Throwing the house out the window
Galaxy Ray Print

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Letter from the Curator - Amelie Art Gallery, Beijing

I received this yesterday from Amelie Art Gallery in Beijing. I really liked the images, and the letter to the curator as well, so I thought that I would share this with you. Especially, as the opening line two lines are so poignant for anyone working in the creative industries –we all have moments of genius and then sometimes…nothing at all! How the imagination works. Anyway, I thought this was a lovely way to discuss this exhibition. I hope you enjoy reading the letter.



Letter from the Curator

Dear Ruizhao,

I hear that you’ve hit another creative block. This comes as no surprise to me. Much of any professional artist’s time is spent dealing with setbacks. Your predicament shows that your painting has not grown to formulaic over the past few years, and that you still face each artwork with sincerity. I am very happy to see this. You love fishing. You once told me that the fish and the mythical dragon are very much alike –swim through waters of untold depths in complete silence. You spend much of your free time refining your fishing techniques, and working on strange problems such as how to release a fish after catching it and how to tell its age from its scales.



That is why I proposed Notes on Fishing as an art project. I hoped that it would allow you to bring together your creative experiments and spiritual growth from the past few years. You painted images of a young boy alone at night in the water with a fish, coming home in the evening with a fishing pole, or sitting in a room…I see a bit of you in them. Your fishing experiences (such as your observations of the inconsistencies of fishermen by the pond, your encounter with a wild boar one night on Wild Boar Island, etc.) have imbued your paintings with fascinating and mysterious airs. I agree with your view that an artist’s process of creative maturation is like a pendulum, wherein the larger the amplitude (the larger the breadth of experimentation), the more powerful it will become when it stabilizes. Notes on Fishing calls to mind the daily clashes of ideas in your artistic experiments: you in your studio with the big wooden boxes from Jingdezhen, carefully pulling the half-finished sculptures from their reed wrapping; you were wearing that robe, and at the height of discussion, tearing up your sketch; you writing the words “freedom” and “power” on the wall with an ink brush…



Fishing is such a strange activity. It is the convergence of patience-stretched wisdom and serendipity, with unpredictable results. Perhaps a lifetime of squatting will amount to nothing, or perhaps an inspiring surprise will leap from the water just as hope is fading. The goal of fishing is clear, but one can never depend on the outcome. The best fishermen like Jiang Ziya*, that legendary fisherman of old, are profound figures. For you, fishing lies somewhere between an act of life and the practice of inaction, an allusion to the creative state: hesitation, meditation, patience.



Through Notes on Fishing, I have seen your probing of the essential questions of artistic creativity through pondering the “Tao of fishing”. Why does an artist paint? Why is he enamored with unreal, mysterious things? Fishing becomes a metaphor for artistic creation, even the meaning of life. In these times, when the great sages are long gone, and the keys to thought have grown covered in rust, Notes on Fishing reflects the spiritual conundrum that a young artist faces here and now.

You’re never satisfied with your paintings, and you make repeated changes on the canvas in a single-minded pursuit of spiritual dignity in colors, brushstrokes and facial expressions, swinging from mood to mood. You shouldn’t worry about being perplexed like that. People only have self-contradictions and hesitation when they have a lot going on in their minds, and this is necessary for spiritual growth. Only through deep immersion in them will you make surprising discoveries. The profound nature of fishing lies in the process. One does not have to come home with a bucket full of fish to be a success. Now I realize that falling into your own trap is the key to unlocking yourself. Every artist is like a fisherman. In the flow of vulgar life, he chooses to be an observer. He is never washed away in the waves, and remains in lonely self-doubt. What matters is that you persevere in your belief that in these constantly changing times, painting is a quest for those “mystical traces” that transcend thought, and that this is an irreplaceable and sacred endeavor. For this you need extreme wisdom and tenacity; you need to swallow the drudgery of fishing with a smile.

It looks like we won’t be able to go to Vietnam together, though I’ve always wanted to go. I’m scrawling out this letter to you under the lamplight, and thinking that right now you’re probably under the stars in Jingdezhen, writing, pondering wooden architectural structures of ancient times, or reading ghost stories from “Liao Zhai” (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Qing Dynasty), doing spiritual fishing in the midst of internal chaos. I hope you can maintain this precious vigor.

Think about it, in another ten years, our sharp mental worlds might recede; I hope that your thoughts on the riverbank are always free and unrestrained.

Take care,

Tony Chang

Notes on Fishing-Paintings & Sculpture in 2006-2009
Liu RuiZhao Solo Exhibition
14 November –30 December 2009
Amelie Gallery, Beijing
Curator: Tony Chang

www.longyibang.com

All images (c) Liu RuiZhao