review

A Correspondence: Marguerite Humeau

Alexis

 

Betty brought Marguerite Humeau to my attention during her feedback to my Mid Point Review. The artist works with similar ideas I work with, organic life, sound, the past and myths. It is interesting but I do find her installations somewhat too clinical and the sculptures lacking in depth. What I mean by this is that they do not have scales of vision: they are large and smooth and had all their interest sanded off them. The slickness lacks humanity and looks rather plastic and artificial which does not seem quite in keeping with her ideas. They look like reproductions of Blender renders in fibreglass or some similar material. In any case, I like that she works with mediums and ideas that I can identify with and is one of very few artists that is in my direct sphere of interest.

 

Art Now: Marguerite Humeau, Echoes, Tate Britain, November 2017

 

Low Residency 2019 Day 3: Morehshin Allahyaai

Alexis

 

 

Warning: this post contains very subjective material.

After over six months I still remember one visit and one work in particular. At the Annka Kultys Gallery in the London City Island an exhibition of digital works was showing entitled Re-Figure-Ground.  Two things I remember, the video-game-like virtual reality goggle-based immersive 3D videos complete with kinetic controls with which to travel within the virtual world, and a simple 3D animation that did not do much with a spoken audio.

The VR works were interesting enough from the point of view of technology but quite honestly they left me underwhelmed on account of their lack of conveying any point to them other than showcasing the technical work. And to add, the resolution was so poor that it left me wondering whether I needed new glasses. This inconsistency between the vision and the actual vision left me somewhat frustrated. Claudia Hart’s augmented reality was like walking through a myopic fruit machine of social media icons along pointless corridors. The fact that she is examining the body, perception and nature ‘adapt[ing] the forms and software normally used to create 3D shooter games was no compensation for what was clearly meant to be a transformational experience. 

The Karst cave by Snow Yunxue Fu’s was, as she says, an attempt to embody the concept of Plato’s cave in a virtual realm. She then continues to say, ‘providing a contemplative environment for the visitor to wonder; walking and teleporting within the control of the wireframed virtual hands that are given to them’. Really, Plato’s cave? That is certainly not what Plato was on about when he described our secondhand manipulated perception of the world. Leave that bit of referencing and you are left with an enjoyable, if somewhat, again myopic trip fantastic.

 

 

The rest of the show I found cold but one work did stand out for me, and it was not the most accomplished technically. Morehshin Allahyari’s video installation She Who Sees the Unknown, Aisha Qandisha was a back projected video 1 of a 3D animated figure that did not do much other than turn around a bit and sit in some sort of digital sea. On its own it would have graced any number of album covers for some group or other singing about whatever. However, when combined with the narrative it became something else. It transported me to another world of magical realism in some ancient past which is very much present. 

The combination of powerful scripted content with a weird large image moving, now menacingly with the audio gave me the sense of a deity being displayed before its awestruck followers. This remains in my mind not only for the content but how something relatively simple in digital terms, can still have impact compared to more sophisticated presentations. 

 

Portfolio – Morehshin Allahyari

Morehshin Allahyari is a new media artist, activist, educator, and occasional curator. She was born and raised in Iran and moved to the United States in 2007. Her work extensively deals with the political, social, and cultural contradictions we face every day.

 

  1. Onto a white acrylic sheet (transmits around the require 50% of light for a good back lighting as Jonathan explained to me) suspended from the ceiling and cleanly fitted onto the sheet by means probably of some sort of projection mapping[↩]

Andrew Lord: A Case of Phusis

Alexis

 

 

I mentioned in a recent post that I am now ready to look into a contemporary context for my work. This is not altogether easy as what I do is not centred on one idea or medium alone. I know that many artists today are cross disciplinary and work in various mediums; this makes contextual correspondences all the harder to find. I have to be careful not to mention every one and sundry that I like or identify with in some way. This sort of openness would only confuse and lead to a lack of direction. What would making a long list do, help in the project development, show my wide taste in things?

No, what I am looking for is work that directly contextualises mine in terms of contemporary ideas and environments. Andrew Lord, ten years my senior is one such practitioner. Although he would not like to be called a potter, his body of work very much centres on the idea of vessels and clay, something I also work with.

Lord’s central notion is an interesting one. It is an idea that many working in clay have followed for some time, that of ‘rescuing’ pottery from still life painting. As Mark del Vecchio lucidly points out in his book, Postmodern Ceramics:

From Pablo Picasso to Giorgio Morandi, Vincent Van Gogh, and George Braque, pottery has tended to be the visual anchor of most still-life compositions. Contemporary ceramists have begun to reverse the compliment and draw inspiration from the paintings in which these pots appear, returning them to the three-dimensional realm, but retaining some painterly associations. 

Looking for what is common between two and three dimensions is a process which also requires an awareness of what is lost in translation. Only in this way can an essence of the object be made manifest. 

 

Andrew Lord displays his work in such a way as to allude to the still life genre by placing objects on tables and plinths, carefully arranged in terms of light, time of day, space and so on. The arrangements often remind me of Morandi’s still lifes, treated as emerging from the material becoming objects felt in the making. He leaves overt traces of how the object is formed often to the point of caricatured.

 

This work is consonant with elements of some of my work, playful and ‘rough modelled’ caressed into being aimed at a sense of Platonic idealism imperfectly fashion in and on (E)arth. 

It also interest for me to note that in some cases, vases are displayed just off the floor in a similar way to how I plan to show  H’s Play Things in the final show… with one twist. 

 

Much of this approach is consonant with what Heidegger says in his essay, The Origin of the Work of Art:

  1. The material (clay) is central and clearly evident in the work. 
  2. The clay is subservient to what is being portrayed yet it ‘shines forth’ 1.
  3. There is a struggle between the nature of the material and what it tries to portray, what it is formed into or as Heidegger would say, between the Earth and the World.
  4. The vessels are not the product of craft yet he uses, techne or mode of knowing, to bring out hidden Aletheia, or being.
  5. The being of the thing is not just made, it is brought forth and made evident. It is generated from within through phusis as though through natural law.

But what is the role of craft in this act of phusis? Heidegger does become confusing, or more likely confused unable to articulate a distinction between craft and art: he descends into subjective ideas of the mystical and the sublime and sacred to support his thesis. Perhaps a simple, if still elusive reply is that the impetus for a work of art comes from within an internal process of natural growth, whereas craft’s impetus is external to its growth. It is clear to me that this categorisation is false in many cases and can only be considered from piece to piece and not generically.

Having said all this, Heidegger does provide a useful way of thinking about art as a spontaneous act of emergence in the making also raising interesting questions regarding the relationship between what is ‘being creative’ and artistic practice. 

  1. Heidegger[↩]

Skype Chat 3.2: Jonny Briggs

Alexis

 

Link to Youtube video

Jonny Briggs work is firmly embedded in photography despite being informed by his perception of the medium’s inadequacies. Although he has worked hard to break free from traditional paradigms, it nevertheless continues a long tradition of constructed tropes and illusions.

His work is sensitively conceived through the optics of his own psychology and familial relations. Although at times he has moved away from this tight subject matter towards a more general view of things, he always gravitates towards the nuclear family both for subject matter and technical assistance: this seems to be where his strengths lie for the moment. Though the images may be appreciated without explanation, a fuller knowledge of their genesis and background makes them all the more engaging. 

His carefully constructed images always leave clues as to their artificial nature confessing their falsity in an honest declaration of that fact. This partial unveiling of the inversions between what is authentic and what is not  can only be a form of authenticity itself. This is a case in which knowledge of the subject matter and artist benefits the work and does not detract from the trope but rather adds a further layer to its fabric.

The simplicity of his repertoire possesses a freshness which is in tension with an undeniable claustrophobia. This may evolve into something else in time with life’s experiences.

 

Significance and Meaning and the Mid Point Review

Alexis

 

Having completed my Mid Point Review video, I sat back and thought about it, what does it communicate, how would it be seen by my peers? The video touches on some of my current research and development, nothing concrete as yet, no final work(s) to show or indicate their latent presence. Ideas and thoughts strung together, loosely milling in my brain taking up positions, making connections, only to be shaken up again. 

I was struck by the coherency of the other presentations, how singular and linear, how focused on a single target. In Michelle’s video, she talks about the small history, not found in books, encapsulated in conversations and daily actions. This made me think that I deal with large history, quite a different proposition. But at a point the two must meet. Where does the individual become society and vice versa? This is something I think about a lot; the tension between the small and the large. I would be interested in following this line of thinking further in my work. 

Held in all that is said and done lie two things, meaning and significance. These are words often used synonymously. Both convey information but in subtly, or perhaps not, different ways. They can convey roughly the same information with very different implications. Meaning is about the information contained within something and how it is represented, it is symbolic. What is the meaning of, ‘a thirst for knowledge’? The desire to know more about things. Significance on the other hand is more about the relevance or importance of the contained meaning, its impact or consequences: your thirst for knowledge in this research is significant to what you might find. 

Both ideas work with information but in different ways, symbolic versus causal.  What I am saying here is that my work deals with both the symbolism, the semantics of something and its consequence. Another example arises out of the question, what is the meaning of your work, what is it about?  I have plenty of answers to this but are they significant, will they affect the person or just switch them off. This ties in with the conversation had with Pav during the group presentations on the second day of the Residency. I have to be interested in the meaning, it is one of the things that sustains my interest in what I do. However, it is more relevant to be talking about the significance of the work: how does it affect the receiver. And for this, a conversation needs to open and remain open. I cannot tell what the significance of a work will be. I can work with significant matter, but how it affects someone else, that needs to be part of an exchange.  

This brings back to mind Anderson’s idea of art, ‘culturally significance meaning, skilfully encoded in a sensuous, affecting medium’. It is ‘significant’ that he deliberately uses the two words in his anthropological summation. The meaning is encoded through a medium that both affects and is perceived phenomenologically, not just semantically. The skill lies in how effective the artist is in doing this. The point then becomes, how significant is the meaning and all that is done with it, to others?

I have some ideas as with Hermaphroditus and Logos.

 

Chat Session 1.3: Symposium 1 Second Week

Alexis

The third skype chat session was the second week of the first symposium: 3, 2, 1…

It was a lively session with a lot of discussion on and off topic but I shall dwell here only on the work shown. We only saw four practices so it gave us plenty of time to open out the conversation into all sorts of areas. The practices were very different indeed, from illustration to curation, psychology to installation. 

Christopher Tayah shows an eclectic range of mediums, from 3D printing and sound to video, painting and digital design. His work uses psychology and psychoanalysis, with himself as the protagonist and thematic center, to create a collage of means expressing states of mind and the fragmented nature of perception and memory. The video Rouge might be taken as emblematic of his current ideas. It takes the form of a surrealist descent into a dream-world that features water, fragmentary found footage from his childhood, and a focus on the colour red in the midst of a desaturated world reminiscent of French and Spanish surrealist films. 

Friederike Hoberg works under the alias of Sophie Petit. Her figurative paintings and drawings are in contrast with her sculptures that go from using found objects in the manner of Arte Povera to installations using resistant materials such as glass and metal. The presentation focused on Air: an installation comprising coloured glass hanging from metal chains at varying heights in concentric from the ceiling of a commercial centre. The geometry and play of light in the space, demonstrate her stated concern for the material and aesthetic aspects of her practice and the emotional affects these might cause.

Irina Bourmistrova is a curator. Interesting to have a curator on the course. A completely different slant on things. She has experience in curating and managing exhibitions and galleries in different countries and is primarily interested in digital works that deal with science, technology and ecology. Irina wants to explore the natural history of the gallery in today’s society and whether it will survive and in what form it might adapt. She has opened a gallery space in London and it will be fascinating to see how her perspective as a gallerist and curator might impact on the course and conversely how the context will inform her trajectory.

Sandra Wilmann is an illustrator who has recently entered the digital graphics field. Her work takes everyday life as its theme expressing what is referred to in Norwegian as stemming, a feeling inferred from the environment and felt by the subject. Her illustrations have an interiority that reflects this notion. She has of late also started to introduce animation into her images and is currently taking inspiration from East Asian styles and artists, primarily the manga genre of both Japan and South Korea. 

Again the symposium threw up a disparate set of practices. In contrast to last week, the themes and concerns were also very different. As a whole, this makes for an eclectic mix on the MA course which can only be a good thing. It makes for conversations that encompass different views and aims, a context ripe for contingent ideas that can only help fertilise the ground over the next two years. Whereas last week the overall sense I took away was one of existential concerns, this week what arose in my mind was how aesthetic priorities affect a practice and its perceived standing; also how the outside perception of a practice form can influence the practitioner and not always beneficially. This is very much a matter of environment: is it always necessary for the artist to be responsive to the society they find themselves in?