The Formal Language of Protest | Tina Hage: Gestalt | Tenderpixel Gallery | London

Text by Bethany Rex

Tina Hage (b. Port-au-Prince) is a London-based artist. She grew up in Düsseldorf and studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne until 2004 and then completed her Masters in Fine Art at Goldsmiths in 2009. Gestalt, Hage's first solo-show in London, opened earlier this month at Tenderpixel. We spoke to Tina about her work and future plans.

BR: Tell me about Gestalt. What are the bare bones of the project and where did it begin?

TH: My work starts with found images particularly those from newspapers and online media. I often look at journalistic images and have amassed a large collection of these, so I have become very aware of the various uprisings in different countries that have sprung up since the end of 2010.

What interests me is that all the protesters from these diverse places appear to be people on the street as opposed to seasoned activists and are self-organised. However, the actions of the UK rioters cannot been seen in the same context as the protesters in Egypt for example. 

There is clearly an unplanned movement of masses in a swarm like mentality which uses social media and networking to communicate. The result of this is an almost spontaneous physical presence on the street. The protesters are mostly anonymous; there is no confirmed leader and most of the time the faces we see in the media are completely covered.

It is important to mention that this work is not about the subject of protest, but rather the formal language that these protesters start to create. Until recently, protests were usually pre-organised with defined leaders and political agendas. The language emerging from these new protests represent a different way in which masses now form. It is one of anonymity and viral chaos. 

BR: What can we expect to see from the new work and what reaction do you anticipate from audiences to the show?

TH: When you step into the gallery space, you are physically standing inside the work. The photographic installation is made of large format prints on panels, set up very closely next to each other. The other element of the show is a book, containing images in the exhibition and additional works from the series. It creates rhythm, movement and patterns by juxtaposing the images next to each other in the page layout. Both elements are important to the show because they broaden the context of the work. The show and the book are not a political statement about protesting, I am more interested in looking closely at the anonymous individual and how they emerge as part of a movement; their gestures, appearance and actions. I would like the audience to discover a visual language that lets in their own association towards the work. I did not want to produce work which can be put into a distinct category, I always feel that restricts ways of thinking and new associations. I am fascinated by these current movements across the globe and I would like to contribute to see the individual in other aspect besides the greater political movement they are part of. 

BR: What is the significance of the title of the show?

TH: The title of the show, Gestalt,  is a quite an important aspect of the work. It is a German word and means in general to “form” or to “take shape”.  Specifically, it can mean that a figure/person is taking shape for e.g. coming out of the dark or from far away. It defines that moment when someone/thing appear, the seconds before it becomes clear what or who it is.

Not knowing who these people are in the pictures, yet the lingering sense of an idea blurs the individual into the collective. This makes them part of something greater. It is difficult to recognise the figures within the Gestalt Series as well. If familiar with my work, the viewer might suspect that it is me. In my study of the individual v. the masses, I use myself as the anonymous repetition in the work. For me, this helps to articulate the forming of contemporary protest we have been discussing above, but also brings into question the constructing/deconstruction of photographic images.

On a larger level, it also describes a phenomenon which is not yet clear. It is only beginning to take shape. I feel that the way masses operate in a swarm mentality has the potential to change the structure of society and how we interact.

BR: Where did your personal interest in this relationship between the collective and the individual begin? 

TH: I became particularly interested in this relationship when I read Siegfried Kracauer’s book The Mass Ornament, in which he describes the mass as the bearer of the ornament. The individual is very much integrated in capitalist production processes, and indeed it is through their work which contributes to these processes.  Although the book was written nearly 100 years ago, I feel that it still has its relevance and I find it helpful when trying to understand capitalist societies.

BR: What can we expect from you in 2012?

TH: The publication Gestalt I made for the show is now available at art book shops, like Banner Repeater at Hackney Downs train station and I am hoping it will be seen in more art book shops later in the year. It will also be presented at Art Cologne in April with Thomas Rehbein Gallery in Germany. I am also working on a project for a group show with the Modern Language Experiment that will be hosted at Angus Hughes Gallery; and there is the potential of another solo show later this year in London.

Tina Hage: Gestalt, 10/02/2012 - 01/04/2012, Tenderpixel, 10 Cecil Court, London, WC2N 4HE. www.tenderpixel.com / www.tinahage.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.

The AIPAD Photography Show New York Opens Thursday 29th March

The 32nd edition of The AIPAD Photography Show New York will open this Thursday 29th March. It promises to be a fantastic show with new by Philip-Lorca diCorcia from David Zwirner, New York and a specially curated exhibition of early French photography at James Hyman Photography, London. A number of extraordinary portraits will be on view from Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, who are showing Linda McCartney's photographs of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix alongside new portraits of Occupy Wall Street protesters by Accra Scheep at Steven Kasher Gallery.

We've previewed some of our favourite images here but would always recommend you pay a visit to the show yourself. To accompany the galleries, five panel discussions will be held on Saturday 31st March covering such diverse topics as Emerging Artists in Photography and How to Collect Photographs. It's not just anyone giving these talks; expect appearances from the likes of Jennifer Blessing, Curator of Photography at the Guggenheim, New York and Sandra Phillips, Senior Curator of Photography at SFMOMA.

The AIPAD Photography Show New York, 29/03/2012 - 01/05/2012, Park Avenue Armory, 67th Street, New York. www.aipad.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. Stephen Wilkes, Coney Island, Day To Night, 2011. Digital C-print, 40 x 80 inches

Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

2. Weegee, Water Spray, ca. 1940. Vintage gelatin silver, printed ca. 1940, 10 x 12 inches. 

Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

3. Karen Knorr, The Joy of Ahimsa. Takhat Vilas. Mehrangar Fort. Jodphur, 2008 - 2010. Pigment print, 50 x 60 inches. Courtesy Danziger Gallery

4. Matthew Pillsbury, Tribute of Light, 2011. Pigment ink print,30 x 40 inches. Courtesy Bonni Benrubi Gallery

5. Matthew Brandt, American Lake, WA C1, 2011, from the series Lakes and Reservoirs. C-print soaked in American Lake water, © Matthew Brandt, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

6. Guy Bourdin, Untitled, 1970s. Polaroid, 4.2 x 3.3 inches. © Estate of Guy Bourdin. Reproduced by permission. Courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery.

Excessive Beauty | Sebastião Salgado & Per-Anders Pettersson: AMAZON | Gallery of Photography | Dublin

Text by Sarah Allen

This month Dublin's Gallery of Photography plays host to the work of two esteemed photographers - Sebastião Salgado and Per-Anders Pettersson. Each photographer presents distinct bodies of work which deal with the Amazonian rainforest and the ongoing plight of its inhabitants.

Sebastião Salgado has achieved international acclaim for his seemingly effortless ability to transform any subject into art, his name becoming synonymous with haunting monochrome images. Yet Salgado remains one of those truly divisive artists, his oeuvre typically inciting heated debates amongst photography aficionados. The accusations leveled against him are essentially the same as those leveled against photojournalism in general. Primarily his images are criticized as being reductive, overly rhetorical and too willing to aestheticize. In essence Salgado skeptics often view his work as a distasteful plundering of the picturesque.

If you come to this exhibition weighed down by such preconceptions it will be hard to retain an unbiased response. This is because well over half of Salgado's showcased work, culled from his ongoing project entitled Genesis, depict the exotic and little known Zo'é tribe and thus deal with the endlessly intriguing "other" and the impulse to fix a fading rarity. However it is hard to see how even the most hardened cynic would not succumb to the sheer skill and entrancing artistry of these works. Ceremonial activities and hunting scenes feature heavily and see the quotidian lives of the tribe presented to the viewer as an embodiment of the mystic and almost surreal.

Peppered amid these images of tribespeople are awe-inspiring landscapes which portray untouched nature; they induce a kind of reverence we reserve for such icons as Ansel Adams. They hint at a form of modernist sublime where a sense of the absolute and the majestic is made palpable. Working in black and white has allowed Salgado to imbue his subjects with an abstracted and graphic quality - in one such example we see the Great Juruá River reduced to a simplistic but formally striking meandering line resting amid a rich landscape.

Salgado's work is without doubt indebted to approaches of modernist photography and the core belief in the inherent structure to be found in everything. Examples of symmetrical doubling are evident throughout this collection of images, none perhaps more captivating than the Waura Indians fishing; the luminous tones and strong chiaroscuro of which is poetic in its beauty. Indeed Salgado's oeuvre has often been described as "excessively beautiful", however it should be said that lending credence to this claim would be to ignore the fact that his subjects in and of themselves are "excessively beautiful". The Amazon, standing as the antithesis to our sometimes shallow and crass culture, is itself the paradigm of beauty and its inhabitants embodiments of the rare and uncorrupted. Furthermore, for those who maintain Salgado's emphatic style undermines the objectivity of his images we have to question whether he is motivated by objectivity in the first place. Stylistically his work is reminiscent of W. Eugene Smith and it seems apt that Smith once noted: "the photographer can have no other than a subjective approach".

In terms of Pettersson's work, one may have reservations as to how any photographer could attempt to stand shoulder to shoulder with the photographic presence that is Salgado. However the fact the two bodies of work are physically separated into different levels of the gallery made this issue less of a concern. The most idyllic image by Pettersson Morning Mist in Acre leads the viewer into the second phase of the exhibition which focuses solely on his photographs. Bridging the divide between these two stylistically discrete bodies of work with this image is an insightful curatorial move and one which renders the transition seamless. Rather than capturing pristine nature Pettersson has chosen to expose the ravaged and disturbing aftermath of deforestation. It is almost as it the exhibition sets up a polarity of utopia and dystopia; where Salgado virgin nature plays off Pettersson's exposition of humankind's ruinous effects on the environment. The aforementioned image of Morning Mist in Acre both attracts and repels, its beguiling and sumptuous colours camouflaging the mass deforestation that lies beneath.

While Salgado's work could be said to idealise and romanticise, Pettersson's exists very much in the present. This primarily owes to the fact he is shooting in colour; however what is equally apparent is the fact that his compositions do not display the kind of obsessive attention to compositional and formal harmonies evident in Salgado's. For example, his photographs capturing the process of rubber tapping seem to reside in the realm of documentation as opposed to fine art. However, if there is one aspect of Pettersson's images which is open to criticism it is the presence of actress Gemma Arterton. At the risk of being overly cynical, there was something almost devaluing about her presence, it seemed to abate the poignant message of the project on a whole.

The Gallery of Photography have done an excellent service to the photographer's works in terms of exhibition presentation. In past projects such as his photobook entitled Workers Salgado isolated his captions from his images. Yet given that the narrative authority of photography is mutable at best it seems almost negligent not to include explanatory text with the images. However it was encouraging to see that this exhibition included not only revealing captions but also a jam-packed leaflet to take home. As well as this it is quite hard to grasp the sheer scale from these images however by communicating statistics in layperson terms the magnitude of the issue is not lost.

The inclusion of these statistics remind us, lest we forget amid the virtuoso photography, that this project has a very real and tangible agenda, one which seeks to drive change. Thus a primary function of photojournalism, its use as an instrument to highlight the incongruities of life and propel reform is brought to the fore. What this exhibition essentially does, apart from sating our appetite for beauty, is sensitize us to our participation in the malaise that is First World decadence and disregard.

AMAZON: Sebastião Salgado & Per-Anders Pettersson, 01/03/2012 - 01/04/2012, Gallery of Photography, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. www.galleryofphotography.ie

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.

Caption:
Copyright Per-Anders Petterson.
An aerial view over the rainforest in Amazonas state, Brazil on June 21, 2011.

Massimo Nolletti | Bar Lane Studios | York

Massimo Nolletti's April exhibition at Bar Lane Studios is a wonderful celebration of the sounds and vibrations of everyday life. This series of work represents the endless possibilities of photography in an urban setting, exploring the Australian landscape and all its idiosyncrasies.

Massimo Noletti: Oz, 10/04/2012 - 14/04/2012, Bar Lane Studios, 1 Bar Lane, York, YO1 6JU. www.barlanestudios.com/www.massimonolletti.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.

Caption:
All images courtesy the artist

Celebrations of the Strange, the Pathetic and the Morbid | Glamourie | Project Space Leeds

Text by Elizabeth Holdsworth

An immobile red hatchback, front smashed against a skewed road sign, blares out hypnotic and maniacal club anthems from its boasting stereo system. Beyond, bagpipes coalesce with distant explosions, and someone, somewhere, is cranking a hurdy-gurdy.

This is the distinctive sound of Glamourie, the current exhibition at Project Space Leeds so named after Celtic lore, a magic transformation from "the normal aspect of an object or area... [into its] resplendent... semblance." Upon this fluid basis, the exhibition voyages upon exploring the idea of a glamourie and itself becoming one. Project Space Leeds' expanse of divisible spaces becomes the ground for the figuration of a holistic approach to curating, where artworks are both nestled and spliced together in the pursuit of an altered and distinct whole.

Once through the project space's glass exterior, the visitor is greeted with a relentless cacophony and visual conundrum. Like opening a loaded and secret drawer, the show tumbles and spills unrestrained into the spaces like an overflowing toy box. Artworks overlap and buttress each other unashamedly and without classification. Each contained area of the space is categorized by a symbol on the wall, so that, if examining the accompanying leaflet closely and deciphering the materials of the works, visitors can just about decipher which work is by which artist. A deliberate move towards shaping Glamourie as a whole and single entity, artist-curator David Steans makes no apologies for this esoteric gesture: "there is no interpretation, you have to take everything in at once", he explains during a gallery walk-round.

Above the gallery reception desk the exhibition's title is rendered in funereal floral lettering in pink, yellow and maroon. The floral letters, titled Service for a Vacant Coffin, form both branding of the show and an artwork by Steans, setting the climate and distinguishing Glamourie as not something dead, but something uncanny revelling in the ghoulish, lurid and uncouth. Although Steans claims the exhibition to not be an artwork itself, the curating of it was undoubtedly approached as an artistic endeavour and it becomes tempting to make that conceptual step.

Leading us into the largest area of the gallery space, a long, low banqueting table in MDF stretches through the space, places set with a single Bristol blue glass bowl, one for each artist in the exhibition. In contrast, aside the table is a demarcated cell, closed off from the rest of the space by a newly installed partition wall. To enter this area the visitor must climb through a hole in the shape of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, into a white box with black geometric shapes painted on all sides of the walls and floor, like entering a surreal electronic hallucination. This space exclusively contains the work of Ant Macari, a contrasting arrangement to the rest of Glamourie: an amazing space, yet incongruous to the the rest of the exhibition. Like a self-contained solo show within Glamourie, Macari's work shrugs off interaction with the group and refuses to join the feasting.

In gestures which deface and dress the PSL galleries, works by Joseph Buckley and Harry Meadley both point to the limitations of the neutrality of the space. Buckley's giant gaffer tape crosses fill every pane of glass on the front of PSL, so that the gallery may well appear abandoned to a passerby or commuter on the adjacent Leeds to London railway line. As light pours through the windows the X's strike through everything, effacing all in its path. Shadows with no shadow (that thin black line)(2012), Harry Meadley's black electrical tape, creates a fake shadow line along the base of the galleries' walls, an aggrandising or perhaps gentle mocking of the roughness of a project space. Near the entrance, forming an area easily mistaken for the gallery's cafe seating, Oakwood Gallery 3 by Matthew Crawley is a replica of the front of a Spanish Tapas restaurant: a large backlit sign mounted on the wall flanked by hanging baskets of plastic flowers, hovering over lightweight metal tables and chairs. Eclipsing the entry spaces of PSL, Crawley implants a playful new façade which serves us the rest of the show: all art as tapas.

Glamourie is an exhibition curated by an artist, of his fellow artists, predominantly for other artists. The blue bowl banqueting table, Iona Smith's Super Supra – Glamour toasting rite feat. David Steans (Tameda) illustrates this sense of camaraderie to great effect, as it becomes apparent that the table top is resting on and supported by the benches along each side, so in order to function the table would need to rest on the laps of each of the artists in the exhibition. Indicating the possible endangerment of its kind, this network of artists arises out of connections forged amid a UK art school system currently being dismantled. Visitors attending Glamourie hooked in by themes of ritual and ceremony and expecting immediate recompense will most likely be at a loss, as this clandestine company of artists, with a loud, ugly collection of intriguing works, is not one to be easily untangled or resolved.

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.

Glamourie, 14/01/2012 - 31/03/2012, Whitehall Waterfront, 2 Riverside Way, Leeds, LS1 4EH. www.projectspaceleeds.org.uk www.glamourie.co.uk

Caption:
1. David Steans Service for a Vacant Coffin
2. Iona Smith, Leon Sadler and Ant Macari
3. Sophie Carapetian, Joseph Buckley and L Foundation
4. David Steans, Kitty Clark, Harry Meadley, Chris Evans, Paul Mc Devitt and Rory Macbeth
All images courtesy of Project Space Leeds
Photography: Ben Statham

A Pilgrimage of Self-Discovery | Idris Khan: The Devil's Wall | Whitworth Art Gallery | Manchester

Text by Carol Huston

Born into a Muslim family in Birmingham in 1978, London-based artist Idris Khan decided to stop practising Islam when he was fourteen years old. Despite this, he is now reknowned for producing Islamic-themed works which garner public acclaim. In a recent interview, Khan likened the practice of reading the pages of the Qur’an to his artistic process, which he described as a continual return to the same place. For Khan, this place appears to be found in the methodic repetition of found texts, written or photographic. For his current exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, Khan’s recent works overlap written texts, obscuring the traditional understanding of how we read and communicate.

Khan’s work challenges notions of original authorship, recalling Roland Barthes’s seminal 1967 essay The Death of the Author. No stranger to the writing of Barthes, Khan used the pages of Camera Lucida (1980) as subject matter in 2006. Like the masters of appropriation who preceded Khan, such as Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and Andy Warhol, Khan reinterprets found texts and reworks them to suit the interests of his current practice. In line with Barthes’ essay on dubious authorship, Khan acknowledges that he is not the sole author of his works by allowing room for multiple readings interpretations according to the viewer’s perspective. For the seven drawings from the series of twenty-one prints, 21 Stones (2011), Khan combines verses from the Qur’an with melancholic personal notes; "My mother died on the 23rd January 2010." "God is great." "We lost our baby" "Why did this happen?" For the prints, the artist combines Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, with English phrases, nodding to his Muslim heritage. Departing from his artistic roots in the manipulation of photography, Khan hand-printed the drawings using bespoke stamps. The repetition of stamps in a block-printing fashion creates a rythmic, circular pattern on each print, akin to concrete poetry in which the visual image is paramount to the text.

As a collaboration with the British Museum’s current exhibition Hajj: Journey to the heart of Islam, in which Khan’s work is included, the Whitworth presents the series of works as an opportunity to educate the British public about a religion still veiled in controversy and misconception in popular culture. Dark and dramatic, the gallery space is barely lit with spotlights illuminating the works into view. The centrepiece of the exhibition is three ominous, black cylindrical sculptures punctured with funneled vortexes. Verses from the Qur’an are embossed across the top of the each sculpture in both Arabic and English. Together, the trio The Devil’s Wall (2011) represents an aspect of the fifth and final pillar of Islam, the performance of Hajj in Mecca. For believers, Hajj ought to be practiced once in a lifetime. As part of Islamic ritual, believers throw seven rocks at each of the three Devil’s Walls, or jamarat in Arabic, in remembrance of Ibrahim’s sacrifice. Rather than depicting the jamarat themselves, Khan’s work portrays a stylised represenation of the dishes used to catch the fallen stones after they have been tossed against the jamarat. Serving as a reminder of his shared Islamic background, Khan’s interpretation of the Qur’an is both an homage and a declaration of personal reclamation of the verses which he uses.

Coinciding with the chants evoked by the sculptures are four photographic compositions based again on found texts - musical scores written by minimalist classical composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Typical of Khan’s ouvre, he interjected text over the composite arrangement of musical notes. For each of his prints, Khan uses twenty to thirty photographs in which he layers over each other, rendering the musical notes often indecipherable. The process requires several months for Khan to complete a single work. In Different Trains (2011), for example, Khan leaves legible only the secondarily-sourced phrase "from New York to Los Angeles", referencing Reich’s frequent trips between New York and Los Angeles as a child during World War II. Voices (2011), Contrary Motion (2011) and Three Songs (2011) are composed of photographs taken of scores by Philip Glass, another minimalist composer. Along with Different Trains, these works play with the falsification of three-dimensional texture on a two-dimensional surface. Like the rest of the works in the exhibition, the composite designs of musical scores recall the ways in which manipulated photography can appear to be painting-like, as seen in the work of Lahore-based artist Rashid Rana.

Idris Khan: The Devil's Wall, 23/02/2012 - 13/05/2012, Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road Manchester, M15 6ER. www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk

Artist's Talk: Idris Khan
Tuesday, 3 April, 6-7pm, (reception at 5.30pm) Free
Idris Khan will be at the Whitworth Art Gallery to talk about his work, and The Devil's Wall.
Please note a reception will be held from 5.30pm and the Artist's Talk will begin at 6pm.

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.

Caption:
Idris Khan, The Devil's Wall (2011)
Courtesy of Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York

Mark Storor: a tender subject | An Artangel Commission | Secret Location | London

Text by Emily Sack

“Do you hear me?” echoes a haunted voice in a vacuous subterranean space while a man crouches in a cell unable to escape the persistence of the creeping and persistent speaker. This is just one of many vignettes encountered in Mark Storor’s most recent collaborative performance acknowledging the experience of homosexuals in the prison system, both as prisoners and guards.

Meeting at a gallery in Central London, visitors are then transported in vans winding through the streets to arrive at a secret location. The disorientation is highlighted by the darkness and a permeating sense of uneasiness. Having surrendered all mobile phones at the meeting point thereby losing connectivity with the outside world, audience members are isolated and stripped of a network beyond the strangers attending the same performance. Once arriving at the secret performance venue, a heavy industrial door is opened and visitors are herded down the stairs to a fluorescently-lit waiting room. After an uncomfortable silence a stern prison guard orders the audience to form a single-file queue and leads the way to a series of performance spaces on either side of a long corridor.

Each of the mini-performances, like single-act plays, feature different actors and inspire disparate emotions. The initial space features a film of a man attempting to escape a crate by prising planks loose with his bare hands. Another holds two men and a house made of loaves of bread. A most peculiar scene has two men stepping on tiles covered in soap while being persistently splashed with buckets of water. Despite the strangeness of the vignettes presented, two were exquisitely beautiful: a floor covered in soil with flowers attempting to grow, and a heart-wrenching scene of a man embracing a deceased man sprawled in a massive pool of blood.

The audience experiences a tumult of emotions feeling empathy for the actors though bewildered by the circumstances. There is a strange sense of uncertainty that arises from the juxtaposition of freedom and restriction. In the corridor the audience is ordered to remain in a queue and follow the guards; however, once enclosed in each individual performance space, the audience is free to move about the space and examine each situation from all angles, creating a sort of theatre in the round. Once visitors become immersed in a scene another guard enters and orders the journey to continue and lingering is discouraged.

Mark Storor spent three years investigating the experience of homosexuals in the London prison system conducting interviews with prisons and guards alike. There seems to be a dystopian stripping of identity, a loss of individuality among both parties. Or, perhaps worse, the defining of a multi-faceted individual by a single characteristic. The aptly titled performance plays with the meanings of the words ‘tender’ and ‘subject’: implying both the sentimentality and emotion felt by the prisoners and the tenderness of a bruise, while subject can refer to a specific individual or the topic as a whole.

Overall the performance was a bit heavy-handed and perhaps a bit too abstract, though certain scenes certainly evoked beauty and sadness and strength. Returning to street level, somewhere near Farringdon Station, it becomes apparent that the performance occurred in a disused meat-packing facility. The outside reality feels like an extension of the underground world, and regardless of how each visitor personally relates to the scenes below, all are left with Storor’s research question: “in a hostile environment, where everyone has a role to play, how do you maintain a sense of yourself?”

Mark Storor: a tender subject, An Artangel Commission, 16/03/2012 - 31/03/2012, Secret Location, London. www.artangel.org.uk

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.

Photography: Stephen King

Birdhead: Welcome to Birdhead Again | Paradise Row Gallery | London

Text by Daniel Potts

Birdhead's concern is the flow of power from West to East, as gauged by that thriving metropolis of ever increasing scale, life and culture: Shanghai. Captured in black and white, the city in all its enormity - skyscapers, towerblocks, flyovers – is seen in its potent vastness to host the human activity. We are encouraged, therefore, to view the snapshots – for a snapshot aesthetic is employed - of culture with an eye to the effects increasing power can have. Groups of images are numbered in the exhibition; 1 is an introductory piece, 2 to 14 consist of two large images each, 15 and 16 consist of a high volume of images and 17 is best viewed as the finale, therefore it is best to view the whole exhibition in number order, according to the guide.

Ji Weiyu (1980) and Song Tao (1979) form Birdhead. They both appear in the photographed images capturing contemporary daily life in Shanghai. Here, in China's greatest city, we find the pair socialising with friends: eating out, talking, laughing, partying. We also find them sleeping it off. In the lower of the two images forming exhibit no.6, Untitled (Large 9 & 10), 2011, a man wearing only a shirt and underclothes sings or shouts with apparent abandon into a microphone. His enthused gaze is directed towards the camera, and we are reminded of the bacchanalia of a karaoke excursion. Exhibit 7, Untitled (Large 11 & 12), 2011, captures, in the upper image, a young man slumped in a bean bag, smoking. Continuing the theme of nocturnal hedonism, the lower image captures a woman dressed in an elaborate, white-feathered dress with a matching hat that obscures her face. The corresponding, post-night-out morass is to be found in the lower image of 8, Untitled (Large 13 & 14), 2011, as a young man sleeps, which in the spatial and thematic context suggests a hangover. Apparently in response to the after effects of indulgence, a man drinks coffee in the upper image. In exhibits 12 to 14, along with striking images of a polished, mounted mineral fragment and an agitated portion of water suggestive of the sea, we find further images in which youth culture is captured. The energy of the dancers at a live gig is the subject . Similar youthful activity is to be found in the mutiplicity of smaller snapshot images in exhibits 15 and 16.

Shanghia's urban landscape, evocative in the inclusion of the skyscrapers and high-rise towers of advanced capitalism and affluence, forms the backdrop to these joyful and carefree cultural phenomena. Evidence of consumerism and the possession of leisure is rife. Exhibits 9 to 11 capture young people and children enjoying leisuretime in manicured parkland. The use of these images seems to compound the impression that the culture of youthful leisure has an established position in the city. Thus far, the visitor may reflect that Western experience teaches that with increasing affluence came the emergence of the teenager. And we are aware that youth culture, and youth sub-cultures, accompanied this change. Perhaps we may also reflect from our own current, cultural experience that with increasing affluence comes the increasing extension of the adolescence. In this exhibition these complimentary trends seem to have been captured and interpolated as an expression of the ongoing flow of power from West to East. This in itself is a great achievement, attained with considerable grace in in the immediacy of the execution. The use of the snapshot aesthetic conveys and compounds the sense of youthful leisure with overtones of tourism. Coupled with the solemnity of black and white, we are encouraged to engage with the images seriously. However, Birdhead go further.

Exhibit no.17, Song Dynasty Poem, 2011, provides a broader point relating to the folly of youth, which seems to surround the piece in the accompanying photographic exhibition. The poem expressed using the original characters is written on a double track of, what looks like, slate squares, encased in the uppermost surface a very long wooden box. The box gently rises from one end to the other, such that from the side it may be viewed diagonally. Though modest it is charismatic, and it can be seen as the centrepiece of the exhibition. An English translation of the poem, titled Youth Does Not Know How Sorrow Tastes by Xin Qiji, can be viewed at the lower end of the work. The poem reflects on experience in life, how naïve youth which often focuses on melancholy does not know true sorrow, and how that sorrow is the price paid for wisdom. There is little point in describing a poem further, which may be viewed to great effect as the finale to an experience which is at once familiar, yet somehow other.

Birdhead: Welcome to Birdhead Again, 09/03/2012 - 07/04/2012, Paradise Row Gallery, 74a Newman Street, London, W1T 3DB. www.paradiserow.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.

Caption:
Birdhead Untitled (2011)
Cellulose Black and White Print
100 x 121 cm
Copyright Birdhead and courtesy of Paradise Row

Born out of Necessity | Architecture and Design Galleries | The Museum of Modern Art | New York

Among the most common and enduring definitions of design is "problem solving." A problem arises, the designer analyses it and distils it into goals, and then she creates a roadmap to a solution, working with the means at her disposal. These include the budget, the materials and techniques she can afford and master (for an object like a chair, a lamp, or a bicycle, for instance), or the code and software she favours (for a digital product, such as an interface or an interactive map). She must also consider the requirements of distribution and marketing, if the product is meant for wide dissemination. If she is good, this process, simple and linear, will result in an elegant, functional, economical, and meaningful solution, the splendid outcome of an inspired syllogism. Design is often not linear, however, and sometimes, rather than focusing on solving existing or forthcoming problems, designers - informed by current technological and social developments - imagine possible future scenarios and infer from them urgent issues that may eventually need to be tackled; in other words, they design problems for which we all one day might need solutions.

Born out of Necessity features objects of design from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art that are solutions to problems, some of them real, concrete, and urgent, and others speculative, tied to possible future scenarios, their urgency removed but no less intense in the designers’ minds. Some highlight emergencies at home or at sea; others are made to be used efficiently in medical crises or to be deployed in response to natural disasters. While some are staples of everyday life in the present moment, such as Band-Aids, earplugs, and coffee cup lids, others address possible problems of the future: a planet-wide food shortage caused by overpopulation, for instance, which leads to an inventive redesign of the human gastrointestinal system; the ethics of lab-grown meat; or the psychological effects of organ transplantation from animals.

In some cases, challenges specific to people with disabilities (the problems of a few) have led to products that improve everybody’s life (solutions for all); in others, solutions to pressing needs in developing countries are extrapolated successfully to the environments of cities in wealthier nations. Design that is first problem making and then problem solving often veers dramatically from the visual and functional catalogue of the modern tradition. Its predictive and narrative power comes alive in objects that address present and future cultural developments - such as the integration of environmental responsibility into everyday behaviours or the marriage of ancient religious beliefs with up-to-date media and habits - and that aim to anticipate and prevent future technological and ecological quagmires. Goals and means come together in the design process, a remarkable synthesis whose ambition is to distil an object that is much more - in significance, functionality, innovation, and elegance -than the sum of its parts.

Born out of Necessity, 02/03/2012 - 28,01/2013, Architecture and Design Galleries, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019. www.moma.org

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. Andreas Vogler and Arturo Vittori of Architecture and Vision.
Desert Seal (2004)Polyurethane-coated polyester fiber and silver-coated Mylar.
Prototype by Aero Sekur, Italy.
Gift of Architecture and Vision, 2006.
Image by Architecture and Vision.
2. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby of Dunne & Raby.
Grass Processor, Tree Processor/Digester, and Augmented Digestive System from Designs for an Overpopulated Planet: Foragers. (2009) Fiberglass.
Gift of The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, 2010.
Image by Jason Evans and courtesy of Dunne & Raby.
3. Andrew Burroughs, Dickon Isaacs, Stacy Benjamin, Dick Grant, John Grimley, Jerry O’Leary, Anton Schubert, Amy Schwartz, Paul South, and Eric Sugalski of IDEO and David Kravitz, Douglas Schein, and John Brassil of Organ Recovery Systems. LifePort Kidney Transporter. 1998.
Polyurethane, polystyrene, polycarbonate, and polyester. Manufactured by Organ Recovery Systems, USA.
Gift of the manufacturer, 2006.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
4. Zach Lieberman, James Powderly, Evan Roth, Chris Sugrue, TEMPT1, and Theo Watson.
EyeWriter (2009) openFrameworks and custom software, eyeglasses, PlayStation Eye camera, IR pass filter, IR LEDs, battery clip, resistor, zip ties, and metal wire.
Image by the EyeWriter Team.
Architecture & Design Purchase Fund, 2011.

Selfridges Film Project | London | Film 1: Alexander McQueen

To celebrate the unveiling of the Womens Designer Galleries in its London store, Selfridges has commissioned The Film Project - a bespoke short film collection. Intended as an experience rather than a conventional exhibition, the free screenings continue until 26 March at the Old Selfridges in London. For those who can't make it to London, the short films from available online and we will be screening a selection on the Aesthetica Blog every day this week.

The Film Project showcases films from some exciting names: A.F. Vandevorst, Alexander McQueen, Ann Demeulemeester, Comme des Garçons, Dries Van Noten, Gareth Pugh and Rick Owens.

Selfridges has appointed curator Emma Reeves to work closely with the designers who have been invited to take part in the project. These designers have created short films which interpret the essence of today’s modern woman: sophisticated, intelligent, confident, stylish, strong and feminine. The designers have chosen to collaborate with a range of international filmmakers from exciting young talent to more established names.

Alexander McQueen film Obscure Desires is directed by the acclaimed cinematographer and art director Dustin Lynn. Watch it for yourself above.

Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed | The Freud Museum | London

The Freud Museum was Sigmund Freud’s home in the last year of his life from 1938-39. The museum has attracted interest in the contemporary art world having previously worked with artists such as Susan Hiller and Mat Collishaw. The current exhibition, Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed, presents the artist’s recently discovered psychoanalytic writings as well as other art objects that range from sculptures to textiles. This exhibition curated by Philip Larratt-Smith displays psychoanalysis – the connection between Freud and Bourgeois – through writings and artworks shown here for the first time. Asana Greenstreet speaks to Larratt-Smith about this exciting exhibition:

AG: There are so many conversations going on between ideas, objects and artworks. How did you conceive these conversations working in such a contained space?

PL-S: Well it’s a very charged space, obviously. I knew that the selection would have to be very precise so that the work would hold its own against the space, but also so that it wouldn’t feel as though the Freud Museum had been turned into a more traditional exhibition space. To me it’s a very good match, the pieces look strong, and the rooms are very elegant. It’s nice to have the works installed in rooms of a human scale in a domestic space, which is very different from, say, how it looks in most institutions, such as in the institutional white cube. It’s incredible to be able to hang works like, Janus Fleuri (1968) in Freud’s study, to hang it over Freud’s couch where his patients would lie down.”

AG: Is Janus Fleuri the key work in this show?

PL-S: For me, it’s the most important work she ever made. I wrote an essay about it in the catalogue called The Return of the Repressed, which gave its title to the show. To me that is the core of all of Louise’s work: it’s a “summing up” of the binary oppositions that run through her work giving it tension and complexity. Her own relationship with psychoanalysis was properly ambivalent, in the Freudian sense. This allowed her to become the great artist that she was. Without it, I’m not sure that she would have made the same transformation.

AG: How did you set about selecting the works for this exhibition?

PL-S: This is a new version of a show that has travelled around South America; it’s my exhibition from Buenos Aires that also travelled to São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. And that was a much more comprehensive selection of work because Louise had never shown there before, so it had more of a character of being a retrospective, whereas this is much more of a cherry picked selection.

AG: And a lot of these works have never been shown before...

PL-S: Yes, like The Dangerous Obsession (2003) on the mezzanine level. In London Louise is very well known because of the Turbine Hall installation and the Tate Modern retrospective; I think the audience here has had more experience with her work, and to make a more targeted or ‘”surgical” show is fine.

AG: I Am Afraid (2009) is an extremely gendered piece. Was Bourgeois conscious of these ideas when she was making her work?

PL-S: It’s an interesting question. She always said that the artist had an unusually direct relationship to the unconscious, and this direct access was both a blessing and a curse. It’s in Freud’s theory of repression. On the one had memories come back to Louise, but they come back with an emotional intensity that is often unpleasant and overwhelming, this makes it difficult for her to function in everyday life. But at the same time it’s a gift, because the artist is capable of sublimating these troubling experiences into permeated symbols.

AG: There are very different types of symbols in this exhibition. Some appear as words, texts, as well as the art object in its different forms. Would you agree?

PL-S: Yes sure. Louise was a great talker, a great mythologiser of herself, and told her life story the way she wanted it to be told. On the one hand she distrusted words, she said “with words you can lie to me, you can fool me”. Whereas she felt that in the visual realm you could know if something is true or false. And yet, Louise was such a prolific writer. There are over 1000 psychoanalytic writings, and they are one of the many forms of writing Louise has left us. It’s interesting that someone who had such a distrust of the verbal should have done so much writing herself.

AG: Were these writings the start of the idea for this exhibition then?

PL-S: Yes they were. I worked as Louise’s literary archivist from 2002 to her death in 2010. I am currently preparing the entire psychoanalytic writings with facsimiles for publication.

Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed, 8/03/2012 - 27/05/2012, The Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens, London, NW3 5SX. www.freud.org.uk

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.

Caption:
Louise Bourgeois
UNTITLED, 2010
Fabric, thread, rubber, stainless steel, wood and glass
199.4 x 221 x 110.5 cm.
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth and Cheim & Read
Photo: Christopher Burke, © Louise Bourgeois Trust

Raeda Saadeh: True Tales, Fairy Tales | Rose Issa Projects | London

Text by Deborah Schultz

The title of the current exhibition of photographs by Raeda Saadeh at Rose Issa Projects, London, is well-chosen as True Tales, Fairy Tales brings together and highlights key aspects of the artist’s work. While a number of the images refer to fairy tales, these are not happy ending fantasies, but are deeply rooted in unresolved contemporary issues. Although this exhibition features only photographs, Saadeh is also a performance and installation artist. As is often noted, her background plays a crucial role in her work. A Muslim Palestinian, she studied at an Israeli University in Hebrew, lives in Jerusalem and has an Israeli passport. With such a complex status, Saadeh personifies the absurdity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although (in theory) she can travel to the west, she is unable to go to Arab countries. The early photograph Crossroads (2003) provides a visual form for the imposition of the political conflict on the individual. Standing in a doorway with a suitcase ready to go, one foot is set in a cube of concrete making travel impossible. Saadeh is the model here, as in all her works. The authenticity of the image is crucial and she actually cast her foot in concrete. She looks out of the image, with an expression on her face of calm determination mixed with anger and patience.

The literalness of this image segues into more nuanced fictions as the artist explores political and gender concerns via complex narratives. Saadeh is clearly the model in each image in the Fairy Tales series. Although she has been described as the Cindy Sherman of the Middle East there are clear differences in their methods. Sherman, in a sense, is the better actress as, with the use of prosthetics and make up she takes on each character and becomes unrecognisable. Sherman’s images are also more credible, whether as film stills or family portraits, with the characters convincing fitting their surroundings. Saadeh, meanwhile, has clearly dressed up for each part. By drawing attention to the artifice of the image, she is more concerned with highlighting disjuncture, discord and displacement and so structures her images accordingly. Her fairy tale characters do not quite fit the harsh reality of the background scenes. Looking out of each image away from the viewer with a mixture of strength and vulnerability, she is alert to danger, always on the watch for whoever may be watching her. Cinderella (2010), for example, in an old-fashioned pink ball gown, looks over her shoulder in fear that she has been followed. She seems to have fallen on the steps of an old town which has become a popular tourist area with soft lighting and museum signs on the walls. The back story of each photograph is hinted at; this particular image was taken at 4am in Jaffa, in streets formerly inhabited by wealthy Palestinian families, who hurriedly left the city in the middle of the night. This Cinderella is not concerned with the transformation of her clothes and carriage, but with the night time curfew. Meanwhile Rapunzel (2010) sits in the entrance to a ruined old house with a new Israeli settlement in the background, while Penelope (2010) knits from a ridiculously large ball of wool in the ruins of more recent properties, the metal spokes sticking out of the rubble visually analogous to her woollen thread. Little Red Riding Hood (2010) is slightly different from the other images in the series. The amusing discrepancies between Saadeh, her little girl outfit and plastic basket full of bread are striking. She is smaller here, lost amongst the forest of skyscrapers of the Tel Aviv financial district. Her smile appears innocent but knowing, seemingly aware of how bizarre she looks while, at the same time, acting her part, cautiously crossing a danger zone to take food to her family. Full of borders and divisions, the spaces of these images correspond to those in contemporary life most notably in the Middle East, but relevant to other regions too.

Some images from Saadeh’s Great Masters series are also on display, including that in which she dresses up as Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, calmly pouring milk but in the setting of a ruined home. Thus, through old master paintings and fairy tales she uses fictions to explore the reality of women living under occupation and the ways in which they need to overcome endless challenges and obstacles, regarding both external repression and cultural stereotyping. It is the spirit of the works and of the artist’s enchanting personality that makes them most effective as Saadeh, impressively, remains calm throughout, employing absurdity in the face of absurdity.

Raeda Saadeh: True Tales, Fairy Tales, 08/03/2012 – 07/04/2012, Rose Issa Projects, 269 Kensington High Street, London W8 6NA. www.roseissa.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.

Caption:
Copyright of the artist and Courtesy of Rose Issa Projects

Santiago Sierra: Dedicated to the Workers and Unemployed | Lisson Gallery | London

Text by Emma Cummins

Notorious for his controversial and ethically dubious video-works, Santiago Sierra is a contentious and well-known figure in the field of contemporary art. Both politically and aesthetically provocative, his work combines elements of social and institutional critique to confront the problems of labour and the politics of contemporary culture. Best known for works such as 160 CM LINE TATTOOED ON 4 PEOPLE (2000), or 68 PEOPLE PAID TO BLOCK A MUSEUM ENTRACE (2000); Sierra exploits the terrible inequalities of society to proffer perspicacious insights into the history of art and the realities of neoliberal capitalism.

A magnet for writers and critical theorists, Sierra could be construed as a facilitator – an artist whose wilful exploitation of people results in live, participatory events that are documented and displayed as “art”. As highlighted in Dedicated to the Workers and Unemployed, a mid-career retrospective at London’s Lisson Gallery, the camera is key to this process; a silent, yet indispensable witness to his uniquely prescribed artistic contexts.

At the Lisson, visitors are greeted with a room of 14 wall-mounted monitors and headsets. Revealing a selection of the artist’s well-known video works, the room is a cleverly curated montage of Sierra’s participatory works from the late 1990s to 2011. From 100 HIDDEN INDIVIDUALS (2003) to THE WALL OF A GALLERY PULLED OUT, INCLINED 60 DEGREES FROM THE GROUND AND SUSTAINED BY 5 PEOPLE (2000); we see grainy, black and white shots of people engaging in durational performances that toy with notions of power, surveillance and social complicity.

Realised in a variety of different locations – in galleries, streets, office blocks or abandoned buildings - works such as 8 PEOPLE PAID TO REMAIN INSIDE CARDBOARD BOXES (1999) are loaded with paradox. Both social and sculptural; culturally rich yet morally ambiguous, their oxymoronic allure is compelling and disturbing in equal measure. In this particular work, we discover (through the video’s disconcertingly self explanatory title) that a collection of cardboard boxes are components in a unique, participatory performance. Paradigmatic of Sierra’s documentary video-work, the piece nods towards Minimalist sculpture and the history of Conceptual Art, yet seethes with the uncomfortable presence of people who quietly comply with the artist’s instruction.

Whilst Sierra, in the wake Claire Bishop’s essay Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (2004), has long been associated with the field of relational aesthetics; contemplation of this particular work reveals that Sierra’s ostensibly “relational” works could be read as ruminations on the unnerving, invisibility of power. Subsequently, his inhabited cardboard boxes – breathless, yet quivering with life – could be interpreted as a visualisation of power relations, their disquieting ambiguity and concrete social effects.

If, as the great theorist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre once said, space is a “social product”, not an empty container of social relations; Sierra’s work seems to proffer an image of the intangibility of capitalism and its ideological hold on the body. Unlike relational aesthetics however, where the artistic medium is the body – or the interaction between bodies through human relations - Sierra’s work contains a sculptural aspect that is often critically overlooked. It is significant then, that whilst the majority of works at the Lisson are materialised as videos, the last room of Dedicated to the Workers and Unemployed contains a new and revelatory sculptural work.

Loudly proclaiming the word “NO” in huge black lettering, it is a welcome aberration in a show that privileges documentation over empirical experience. Caught between two rare photographic works – where the word “NO” is projected above the Pope and across the chest of an unsuspecting policeman – the NO sculpture represents a new direction for Sierra, a full-blown embrace of materiality and potent, aesthetic presence.

Infused with an air of stubborn resistance, this loud and uncompromising sculpture is a facet of a large-scale video-work titled NO, Global Tour (2009-2011). Two hours in length, the film documents an unusual journey - a journey where two NO sculptures are transported on the back of flatbed trucks across Europe and the United States. In Berlin, Toronto, Rotterdam, Washington and many other places (most notably the industrial areas of cities) the sculptures – weighing half a ton each, and measuring about 5.10 by 13.12 feet – traverse everyday environments to create a kinetic sensation of hope and resistance.

Through the simple invocation of the word “NO”, a heavy irony forms a conclusion to this hard-hitting and expansive retrospective. If we consider the acts of complicity that make Sierra’s video work possible – the silent “yes” from his accepting participants – it seems apt to suggest that Sierra’s “NO” is a crude, yet productive indication of a significant, stylistic shift. If, as the artist routinely insists, his work merely represents the conditions of life that we are “uncomfortable confronting”; NO, Global Tour transmits a nebulous sense of possibility rarely seen in his earlier works.

Santiago Sierra: Dedicated to the Workers and Unemployed, 01/02/2012 - 03/03/2012, Lisson Gallery, 29 Bell Street, London. www.lissongallery.com

Santiago Sierra: Films and Works, 20/01/2012 - 10/04/2012, Reykjavík Art Museum, Iceland. www.artmuseum.is

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.

Caption:
Santiago Sierra
Dedicated to the Workers and Unemployed
Installation view
Lisson Gallery, London 2012

The Figure in Space | Alice Channer: Body In Space and Edward Thomasson: Inside | South London Gallery | London

Text by Travis Riley

Having been given the opportunity to exhibit at South London Gallery, Alice Channer took the bold step of creating an entirely new set of works to fill the impressive gallery space. The resulting exhibition, Out of Body, consists only of works made this year, and in many respects, appears to be as much a single installation as ten smaller constituent works.

Measuring the full ten metres from floor to sky-lit ceiling, Channer has hung three images of classical British Museum sculptures, printed on metre-wide strips of heavy, white fabric, entitled Cold Metal Body, Warm Metal Body, and Large Metal Body. The images are digitally stretched, and their proportions considerably distorted. In its overextended form the printed stone seems to pour from the ceiling, pooling on the floor where the fabric comes to rest. The scale of the works allows them to take on their own dizzying gravity as the spectator faces them. The statues depicted are all without head or limbs, essentially bodiless, however the implication of form beneath the remaining drapes of fabric is enough to give an immediately human impression. These banners of bodily space without form are emblematic of the other works on show.

Just as the banners fill the vast, vertical space in the gallery, the installation of pieces Reptiles and Amphibians, seems designed to fill the considerable floor-space. The titles are easy to locate in the works, which are mainly composed of smooth curves of polished stainless steel positioned to imply a reptilian gate. Amphibians comes complete with a ragged tail and lolling tongue, both made from aluminium cast Topshop leggings. The leggings are dotted about both of the works, cast in order to replicate the curves of the steel, but positioned in parallel, the materials are always spaced and never touching.

The walls of the gallery are filled with similar intent. Eyes, takes up the entirety of the left wall, and Lungs the majority of the right. The works consist of thin, looped aluminium frames covered by a thin layer of spandex. Each frame is hung separately, such that they can be horizontally spaced across the length of the room. Affixed by a flat spine, the frames curve outwards from the wall in an angular, imperfect semi-circular form. Each has a distinct shape, and viewed along the gallery wall there is a sense of sequence and accumulation; every form becomes superimposed into the next. In Eyes the sequence is sporadic, the distance between the frames and variation in form, frenetic. Conversely, Lungs has a rhythm. The impression of breathing, the heaving of a chest, is unavoidable. The spandex layer provides the skin, sometimes taught, sometimes bunched up by the motion of the frame. Between the two lungs is Arms. Two aluminium cast cuffs poking from the wall. These bring the exhibition full circle. The gauntlets are much less about their own physical frame, more about the space they contain, a space filled by an imagined human form.

On the first floor of the gallery is a second exhibition, which provides a remarkable, if coincidental, counterpoint to Alice Channer’s. Both are about the human body and space, but whilst Channer generates a general human image without body, Edward Thomasson’s exhibition, Inside, generates a vision of the person trapped inside the body and the body trapped in the world. His video (also titled Inside (2012)) consists of three cross-edited scenarios. An acupuncturist delivers a simple treatment, female prisoners receive art-therapy, and a woman and man sing a song called "Not Safe Inside". The scenarios seem disjunct, yet somehow are effortlessly viewed as a whole. The video is narrated by one of the prisoners, who explains a difficulty in expressing feelings, and she, along with the music, provides an informal backing track to the overarching series of events. The web of reference in the video is so well spun, that even as we follow the camera inside the singer’s throat, the whole scenario remains plausible and indefinably rational. The final, self-reflexive narratorial statement, spoken as the prisoner stares toward the camera, mouth-unmoving, awakes you from the sequence, but leaves the debate about personal and private, physical and metaphysical space, ringing in your ears. “You’re inside my head, after all.”

In both exhibitions there is a focus on space. In Thomasson’s, space is constrictive. Physical space contains the prisoners, and emotional space is equally suppressed. In Channer’s, form (human or animal) is in the spaces within and between works. Her sculptural pieces are predominantly made up of flat surfaces. Space is found and trapped by folding, stretching, and shaping these surfaces around it. The negative space is not empty. The viewer is left to find the missing figurative element of each sculpture projected into it. On the reverse of each of the three banners is a small gesture that alludes to actual, undistorted human scale, such as a direct print of Channer’s arm and hand. The images are separated by less than a centimetre, yet cannot be viewed simultaneously. The sculptures are figurative; the figure is deliberately fragmented, but fully represented.

Alice Channer: Out of Body and Edward Thomasson: Inside, 02/08/2012 - 13/05/2012, South London Gallery, 65-67 Peckham Road, London, SE5 8UH. www.southlondongallery.org

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.

Caption:
Installation view from Alice Channer: Out of Body at the South London Gallery, 2012.
Photo: Andy Keate.
Image courtesy the artist and the South London Gallery.

Phil Hession: My heart is always trembling, afraid I might give in | The Context Gallery | Derry

Text by Angela Darby

Irish folk music has played an intrinsic part in the socio-political history of the Irish working-class. Through this medium an injured party could publicly express their frustrations at the hardship and ignominy of servitude placed on them by corrupt landlords or overseers. The folk song traditionally embodied a communal view; venting anger or giving a voice to hopes for a better future. Emotive ballads rallied the masses into believing that they could perhaps enact change.

For his solo exhibition at The Context Gallery, the artist Phil Hession presents three renditions of the Irish ballad The Rocks of Bawn. On an external wall at the entrance to the gallery the three versions, archived in old newspapers, are illuminated on large light-boxes. Within the darkened main gallery an array of machines, cameras and cables map out the space whilst a video silently and hauntingly illuminates one of the gallery walls. The footage projected was shot on the opening night as Hession performed each of the ballads live. The "raw" sound from this performance was recorded on three unique apparatus installed within the gallery space: a lathe attached to a record player, a polygraph and a set of single–lens reflex cameras. The artist activated each device and this symbiotic, physical relationship is present throughout the exhibition. At the first station a DJ’s record deck sits on top of a handmade, wooden structure. A lathe used in the cutting of master recordings is attached at the back and there is a crank handle at the side, which is reminiscent of an old-fashioned 78-rpm gramophone player. Spinning on the deck is a shiny compact disc with abrasions etched deep into its surface. As Hession sang he turned the handle scoring his vocal sound waves into the disc. The disc was then "played" and sampled to initiate a layering of live and recorded sounds. There is a paradox evident here in the concept of this piece: through the act of recording Hession has skilfully obliterated the contemporary technology by treating it as one would a vinyl record thus rendering it ironically obsolete. Finbar Rosato, contributing writer to the exhibition’s accompanying essay asserts that: "Hession strips the digital format of its anonymity ...and gives it a new framework based on human experience and action."

Attached to the floor of the gallery are a series of power cables that have been secured with black tape suggestive of a circuit board allowing the flow of power from one object to the other. At the second station a polygraph’s needles measured and recorded the performer’s physiological indices: respiration, pulse and blood pressure as he sang the next version of the ballad. The artist’s contact here is much more corporal as the relationship between man and machine moves beyond the purely instrumental. From the graphs still attached to the machine we can "read" Hession’s involuntary reflexes and visceral responses he produced at every vocal inclination of The Rocks of Bawn. At the third station, the artist sat in a chair facing a set of single-lens reflex cameras mounted on tri-pods. Hession captured his own self-portrait whilst performing the final rendition of the ballad. The flash photography created a dynamic theatrical strobe-like effect similar to the atmospheric lighting found in a club or music event.

Throughout the entirety of the performance Hession had been meticulously collating each piece of audio/visual material; even wiring the mechanical devices for sound: the creaking handle, the noise of the lathe machine, the needles on the polygraph, the shutters and flash from the SLR cameras have all been captured. Hessian and collaborator Christian Cherene have reassembled the resulting noises into short fragments of sound that softly emanate at each of the stations. With most performance art the viewer is usually met with the left behind debris and detritus but here Hession has cleverly and competently avoided this shortfall by presenting his "props" as fully formed, tangible works and sculptures that have a commanding presence of their own.

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.

Phil Hession: My heart is always trembling, afraid I might give in, 17/02/2012 - 17/03/2012, The Context Gallery, 5-7 Artillery Street, Derry, BT48 6RG Derry/Londonderry. www.contextgallery.co.uk

Photography: Paola Bernardelli