Aesthetica April/May issue "Wider Narratives" Out Now!

Our April/May issue "Wider Narratives" goes on sale today. This issue is about critical thinking and wider narratives.

Inside the magazine, we start with the Bauhaus: Art as Life - a comprehensive survey of one of the most influential schools of thought from the 20th century, as well as Cuban-born artistic duo, Los Carpinteros opening at Kunstmuseum Thun with their show Silence Your Eyes, which juxtaposes the public, political and private spheres. Photographer, Roger Ballen’s first major UK retrospective opens at Manchester Art Gallery and explores three decades of the artist’s career. We re-examine the illustrious career and the phenomenon that was the YBAs, through Jeremy Cooper's new book Growing Up: The Young British Artists at 50.

In images we explore Mexico from 1920 until the present day with Photography in Mexico, which is on now at SFMOMA. David Creedon’s latest work Behind Open Doors is an intimate portrait of family life in Cuba, and then we survey the World Photography Awards, which opens at Somerset House, London in April. Finally, we introduce Joseph Hahn’s unique blend of fashion and portraiture.

In film, we chat with Karl Markovics, whose critically acclaimed and emotionally intense film Atmen opens in cinemas nationwide. There is also a Q&A with Will Sharpe and Tom Kingsley whose low-budget film, Black Pond, has created a stir in independent filmmaking.

In music, we speak with Frank Turner and examine how national identity can influence popular music. We also chat with the School of Seven Bells about their latest album and losing a member of the band.

In performance, David Shrigleyhas now moved into opera with his latest offering Pass the Spoon. Finally, Gerald McMaster, co-curator of the Biennale of Sydney tells us about this year’s programme.

Buy the issue direct here or pick up a copy from one of our stockists.

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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. 

Daytime TV | David Hall: End Piece… | Ambika P3 | London

Text by Travis Riley

David Hall is a formative figure in time-based art. Credited with introducing the term "time-based media" into circulation through his writing, he followed this by creating the first British course in the subject. In January of this year he was awarded the Samsung Art Lifetime Achievement Award for his groundbreaking work in video art. Ambika P3 is an imposing 14,000 square foot space, hidden beneath the University of Westminster’s Engineering School. It is the university’s former construction hall in which concrete was tested for major projects including Spaghetti Junction and the Channel Tunnel.

An indistinct chattering pervades the area immediately around the gallery entrance, intensifying to an echoed cacophony as you pass through the doorway into Ambika P3’s cavernous space. The source of the clamour becomes apparent a few steps on. The expansive warehouse floor is filled by the 1,001 face-up television sets that make up End Piece (2012). From David Cameron, to Sue Barker, to Antiques Roadshow, the unmistakable sounds of daytime TV slowly come into focus. Taken as a whole, the work could be seen as a depiction of a hell worse even than Dante had imagined, however in its scale, the installation generates an unexpected beauty.

Standing back on the raised platform above the TVs, the images become blurred, and the noise too distorted to represent its source. The incandescent light of the television sets washes over the space, disseminating the harsh daytime TV as a soft glow. The flickering light seems too erratic to be produced by a machine; the network of TVs becomes a sci-fi creation, a cybernetic organism. The fitful cuts between Cameron and an outraged labour backbench becomes a pattern, isolating the televisions tuned into that particular debate, and creating an understated light show that fills the room. A network of cables rise up from across the grid of screens. Ten metres above, the cables come together, gathered centrally by a large hook; a point of dispersal.

The installation is, in essence, a reworking of an earlier piece, entitled 101 TV sets, however in this instance Hall has imbued it with further motive. These are all cathode ray televisions tuned into one of the five analogue channels. Consequently the installation will chart the end of analogue broadcast in the UK. From April 4 the number of transmissions will gradually be reduced until April 18 when the final signals will be switched off at London’s Crystal Palace. The televisions will remain there until April 22, emitting only white noise, a steady stream of light and sound memorialising the final signal.

Two other pieces are included in the exhibition, providing a counterpoint in scale to the vast installation. David Hall’s TV Interruptions (1971) are widely credited as the first instance of an artist intervention on British television. Behind a curtain and away from the din, they are shown here as an installation across six monitors. Films include: a television set that burns furiously, a tap which gradually fills the screen with water, and a cameraman who films a television set on the street, eventually filming through the screen to capture the viewer. The themes of consumption, voyeurism, and immersion in the films make immediate sense in the context of an unannounced broadcast. The subject matter is further illustrated by an auditory accompaniment; a regular announcement of “interruption” punctuated by an incessant bleeping. This along with the haphazard positioning of the monitors, which prevents the films all being viewed from any one position, keeps the viewer at arms length from the events on screen.

Further still from the warblings of mass of televisions, Progressive Recession (1974) is an installation of nine CCTV cameras mounted atop nine monitors. Only one monitor displays its own feed, the others calculatedly resituate the viewer onto an alternative screen. The spatial play is fun, but also disconcerting. The cameras don’t record for security, instead enacting a form of voyeurism. Across the length of the room, two cameras swap feeds; the viewer is constantly fed an image from behind them. Another wall contains the remaining seven cameras. Your own reflection is transmitted elsewhere, becoming horizontally displaced. On the screen before you, in its place, you are left with blank space, or on occasion, another viewer staring back at you. In this way the white room becomes filled with a non-symmetrical surveillance loop, the network of cameras means that a person can never just be in one place.

Whilst with TV Interruptions and Progressive Recession, Hall seems to have looked ahead, forecasting the themes that, after his influence, would pervade the art world; End Piece uses current technology to look back. The installation is concerned with the technologies and signals to which Hall responded in the early 70s. He has taken the opportunity to demarcate a unique moment in time, the technological transition at which analogue television will cease to exist. Concurrently the piece locates a more personal theme, to mark the end of structures that have defined Hall as an artist. April 18 is a moment at which many of Hall’s pieces will become nostalgia. They can no longer be a discussion of present formats but those, which after more than forty years of making art, have become part of the past.

David Hall: End Piece… 16/03/2012 – 22/04/2012, Ambika P3, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS. www.p3exhibitions.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:
1001 TV Sets (End Piece) 1972-2012 David Hall
Photo: Michael Mazière, Ambika P3, University of Westminster

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