Core Gallery Interviews

2011-10-19T14:39:00.000-07:00

Interview with Annabel Tilley

Chantelle Purcell talks to Annabel Tilley to find out about the current exhibition ‘Home’ at Core Gallery, which is co-curated by Annabel Tilley and Rosalind Davis. Home features the work of 12 contemporary and internationally acclaimed artists who explore the question: What does home mean today?

Image: Knitted Homes Of Crime © Freddie Robins

The concept of home has become a widespread subject of increasing tension in the 21st Century, affecting all aspects of society and identity. Home is no longer a safe word but a loaded word and a delicate place, vulnerable to attack – both globally, financially and intimately. In this interview we find out about the motivations and curatorial development of this exhibition. We talk about the resurgence in drawing over the past decade and the potentials of contemporary drawing practice we also discover more about Annabel’s practice.

‘Home’ has been extended to this months Last Fridays in association with South London Art Map where Core will also be holding a closing party (as they will be relocating to a space in Deptford).

October 2011 >>

CP: Can you tell me more about the current exhibition ‘Home’ at Core Gallery?

AT: The idea for the exhibition came to me in two ways. The first was when I visited the 2010 Jerwood Drawing Prize and I noticed a drawing by artist, Lucy Austin, entitled: A Machine for Cleaning my House. This red watercolour of a surreal phallic shaped, feather duster-like object fascinated me. A week or so later I had a tutorial at Core Gallery with British artist, Graham Crowley, and critiquing my work, he suggested that in subject matter I might consider moving ‘closer to home’. And in that moment something clicked in my mind and, almost immediately, I approached Rosalind Davis and asked her if she wanted to co-curate an exhibition on the theme of home.

Image: A Machine for Cleaning my House, 2010 © Lucy Austin

CP: How did you go about selecting each of the artists? And how does their work respond to the very loaded ‘concept of home’?

We chose artists whose work we knew and liked but who made work that had some connection to our combined notion of Home and that, often in some form, celebrated or subverted the idea of the domestic. For instance I chose Lucy Austin because her drawing not only ridiculed the idea of the domestic machine but was also referencing a darker subject altogether, the self.

RD suggested Freddie Robins for her wry and perverse work Knitted Homes of Crime, which, literally, features a collection of knitted homes – of infamous female murderers. Rose Wylie was a natural choice for me, as she had once shown me a collection of obsessive watercolour drawings of the many brick surfaces in her own home.

Carolyn Lefley’s photographs appealed to both of us but led to different and interesting choices. I was drawn ‘Living Room (from the series ‘Home’) an image of a dimly lit, warm, surburban sitting-room, and the safe middle-England upbringing it suggested. While Rosalind chose a larger-than life bleak image of a bare room except for an empty bed and curtains. On first sight the scale of the room is mystifying until one realises one is looking at a dolls house.

Image: Living Room (from the series Home) © Carolyn Lefley

For Home the artist Delaine Le Bas specially created: The World Turned Upside Down. In the Cathedral of Exotic Misery (after Kurt Schwitters). I chose Le Bas after having seen her work in the first ever Roma Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Her installation piece features a candy-coloured, Disney-print structure with a celebratory ribboned exterior suggesting a village fete. Yet on closer inspection this tent-like structure leaves one feeling uneasy with its life-size manikin of a masked child in wellington boots surrounded by an array of discarded stuffed animals, fragile model aeroplanes and clothes with exquisite embroideries of words like FEAR.

In Kate Murdoch’s Birdcage and I Don’t Suppose I’ll Ever Go There, chosen by RD, home is a domestic prison and a poignant receptacle for souvenirs, signifying other people’s holidays and the elderly recipient’s unfulfilled dreams of travel or escape.

In Rich White’s installation, Not At This Address one enters a wooden labrinyth and walks forward – with trust in one’s heart – into the darkness through short, uneven corridors towards the light. Eventually one mounts a platform and comes upon a small and cosy white room with an armchair, a place to meditate, to think – a quiet place – a place called home. Rich White’s initial proposal had hinted at something more desperate, a place of refuge or escape from a difficult world. Yet what Rich White actually created is a place concerned with serious reflection, in general, but more specifically on the idea of home, and what that might be.

We both chose Emily Speed’s cast plaster piece entitled: egg – nest – home – country – universe which consisted of a group of slightly larger than life-sized eggs [I am guessing Duck eggs!] each with a fantastical miniature type of home cast onto the side.

Image: egg – nest – home – country – universe © Emily Speed

Meanwhile RD chose Peter Davis’s evocative and exquisite hand carved figures of women – Standing Woman & Seated Woman which, for me, can’t help but suggest the continued cultural dominance of the woman as central to the idea or memory of home.

We felt very privileged that RD was able to borrow several old and new works from the British painter, Graham Crowley, particularly his lyrical landscape, Yellowdrift and the huge but infinitely graceful black and white oil painting of flowers arranged in a vase.

Image: Yellowdrift © Graham Crowley

RD suggested that I include my large-scale drawing Rememberance of plants past (extracts from: The Encyclopaedia of Plant Portraits, compiled by A. G. L. Hellyer, 1953).

This monochrome ink-on-paper drawing is based on images from Hellyer’s book, and considers a world that was once reflected back to us in black and white, be that originally television, newspapers, books or photographs. Hellyer’s book was a best-seller for over a decade and would have been on the bookshelves or coffee tables of many homes in the fifties and sixties.

CP: Can you tell us more about the curatorial working process between yourself and Rosalind Davis?

It became apparent, early on that we would take different approaches and this provided a vital tension in our relationship as co-curators. It meant nothing was taken for granted, and that each artist and piece of work had to win their place on merit, including on the publicity and private view cards. I really enjoyed that debate and dialogue and it meant each of us stuck out for what we believed would create a good overerall show, rather than just championing the individual artists we wanted to work include. Rosalind is highly intelligent, and quick-witted and kept me on my toes. We didn’t know each other very well when we began but it’s been a fascinating and wholly pleasurable journey, where I feel I have been stretched to consider an old subject in a new way.

Rosalind and I are at different stages in our lives, and I think our approach to the subject, and the work suggested, is a reflection of that. For instance, I was thinking more literally about the home, as a domestic space that we are born, grow up, live in as adults, often with partners & families, whereas, Rosalind took a more metaphorical approach and considered the bigger picture. I believe this has led to an interesting balance between the intimate and the grandiose, the fantastic and the poignant.

CP: Do you think the notion of home as a safe and congenial space exists within this current climate? Is this exhibition a hybrid or conflict between old and new ideals of the home? And what does home mean today?

I do believe ‘the notion of home as a safe and congenial space exists today’, has always existed, and will continue to exist. In fact I believe whether as a desired domestic space or the idea of a safe mental space, this is what we are all searching for. And that that search is encapsulated by the age-old question first posed by the Greeks: How should we live?

However, in another sense, in a difficult financial climate or a world challenged by natural disasters, as Rosalind makes clear in her own paintings, people are very susceptible to losing their physical homes.

What is also noticeable today is also an emphasis on streamlined style – the IKEA-factor – one might call it, where the interior of houses often look similar and bland. You buy into a designed style rather than creating it yourself. The eclectic look of many disparate objects coming together in one room, new and old, antique and modern etc, seems to be rare. This was obvious to me looking at my own adolescent and deadpan work: Silent but for a clock-ticking, 1977. A black and white photograph of the family sitting-room in our West London flat; where the appearance gives the impression of a group of eclectic objects collected over a long period of time. I think the conflict is very apparent if you compare that work with say, Carolyn Lefley’s colour photograph Living Room (from the series ‘Home’).

I am not sure there is one answer to that question: What does home mean today? Because the exhibition, and our thinking around it, has created a whole myriad of possibilities. My instinctual response would be that home is a place buried deep inside all of us; it is also a profound place of memory in our childhood, and remains a current place of abode – I like to think of home as a happy place, and a space where you can be yourself – neither of these statements applied to my rather privileged & bohemian yet ungoverned & chaotic childhood where my sister and I grew up to be ‘seen but not heard’.

Image: Delaine Le Bas

CP: How did you curatorially approach the space of the gallery, to create a sense of place?

At one point I suggested we quite literally create the idea of someone’s flat in the space, with a front door and furniture etc. But we quickly rejected this idea as impractical, and perhaps, gimmicky. However, it is possible to see the space as like a corridor in a house, where you hang work next to each other for aesthetic as well as practical reasons. The exhibition was also built round the knowledge we would have at least two large works, one obvious and exposed, the Delaine Le Bas installation and another, by Rich White, invisible and hidden.

Image: Souvenir, Deutsche Kirche, 2011. Ink on paper, 28 x 19 cm © Annabel Tilley

CP: In the essay ‘The Inexorable Rise of Drawing’ in Issue 6 of Garageland, you discuss the resurgence of drawing in the past decade. What revelations have been made within contemporary thinking of ‘drawing practice’ and what potentials have you found from working within this discipline?

The main revelation in the last decade with the arrival of exhibition spaces like The Drawing Room and Andrew Hewish’s Centre For Recent Drawing is that drawing is, indeed, now regarded as a practice in its own right. In some ways it always has been but often, in monetary & art-world status terms it has been forced to be seen as the poor relation of its big-macho-brother painting [but, I hasten to add rarely in intellectual or aesthetic terms, and among artists, certainly drawing is seen as a sophisticated tool for conveying ideas and feelings, if not shapes & colours!].

I see the second revelation as being about the idea of defining drawing, and what it might be. I believe competitions like The Jerwood Drawing Prize have contributed to this debate as did some of the original drawing degrees and MAs that were available, but have now been replaced, due to financial constraints, by the all-encomposing bland term: Fine Art, which by its very breadth ceases to pose the once exciting and specific question: What is drawing?

Of course, drawing can be anything one wants to use a single leap of imagination to define, as such. However, for myself, I am more interested in how traditional practices of drawing can be used to convey contemporary and conceptual ideas, often by inverting the subject matter and questioning people’s preconceptions or by simply re-emphasising the mundane, the everyday, so we look at our world a new.

Living artists I particularly admire for their drawing are: Kiki Smith, Rose Wylie, Tracey Emin, Marlene Dumas, Adam Dant, Claude Heath, Rachel Goodyear, Susan Collis, David Hockney, Emma Stibbon, Heather Deedman and Lucy Austin.

Dead artists I look at, all the time are: Joseph Beuys, Leonardo da Vinci, William Blake, John Ruskin & Thomas Bewick [Oh dear, nearly all men!] and I forgot the great, and dearly lamented, Louise Bourgeoise – amazing drawings that just make you want to draw.

Image: (Detail) Rememberance of plants past, 2011 © Annabel Tilley

CP: Curator Audrey Yeo states that your work is ‘a poetic aesthetic of time that also shows a reverence for history.’ How do you bring a contemporary twist to these objects of the past? And what new insight can we learn about the present through history and vice versa?

In my drawing practice I like to use traditional paper-based forms of drawing such as pencil and ink on paper, and my desired intention is to explore contemporary ideas. These often include the use of archive images.

For instance, I recently took part in LONDON/BERLIN – a group show, curated by Andrew Hewish of London’s Centre For Recent Drawing, that explored contemporary drawing in those two cities. Andrew asked me to create a wall drawing based on motifs from the old GDR. I chose architecture and worked with the sublime East Berlin archive photographs of Gisela Stappenbeck. I allowed myself to let go of my literal tendencies, and worked purely from the emerging patterns, and repetitions I found in her photographs. I recreated the structures as individual motifs. The idea of drawing straight onto a wall in a gallery was a new venture for me but far from suffering the anxiety I had feared. I found the experience of creating something that would later be painted over, rather liberating. It caused me to work harder, and create even more elaborate detail, and as I did so a shakey, hand-drawn remnant of the once-held GDR socialist dream appeared in pattern-form on the wall, 50 years after the Berlin Wall was built amid barbed wire, guns and tanks, and 21 years after peace demonstrations caused it finally vanquished torn down. However, I do not think of my work as in any way political, or commenting on current or past political maneouvres.

My recent large-format ink-on-paper drawing:

Rememberance of plants past (extracts from: The Encyclopaedia of Plant Portraits, compiled by A. G. L. Hellyer, 1953).

is, as I said earlier based on images from Hellyer’s book, and considers a world that was once reflected back to us in black and white, In post-war Britain the use of colour was expensive, and thus rare. Colour denoted luxury. Today colour is taken for granted and b/w images are, ironically, rare and often used to create a stylised statement.

In Hellyer’s mass-produced: Encyclopaedia of Plant Portraits from the 1950’s each plant is photographed individually in b/w. The book allows no sense of scale, so a type of democracy is imposed on the plant world where everything appears a similar size, and in comparable tones of b/w. Nothing appears bigger or better. Only a plants individual structure stands out.

I have taken that idea literally and reinvented the monochrome images as hand-drawn individual motifs, emphasising their distinct structure and pattern. Yet taken as a whole, the overwhelming effect could be a printed wallpaper. Indeed, the drawing is presented unframed on a roll of Fabriano paper which rests on the floor beneath.

The process of making this drawing has made me realise I have become interested not only in the way that our world was once reflected back to us in black and white, but in the significance of these out-of-focus, blurred images that represented our world, then, as perhaps a cold, distant, disinterested, post-war, poverty-of-ideas time and place. When I draw from the photographs in Hellyer’s book, I invert what I see and recreate them as sharp, tonal, detailed almost larger-than life images but still using B/W. In my practice I love the idea of limitation, and how once one imposes such limitations, for instance: ‘I will only draw in black ink, I will only draw old photographs of plants from one book etc’ one discovers a whole new freedom within those limitations.

Image: Souvenir, Amalgamation, Ink on paper, 56 x 38 cm, 2011 © Annabel Tilley

CP: Within your work you ‘collect and source fragments of long forgotten news clippings or distorted taxonomic images.’ Presenting them in an anthropological way akin to how museums classify and present artefacts and specimens in collections. Would you say that your work is an epistemological critique on how museums / media shape our perception of culture and nature?

It is quite new work so I am still trying to understand the subtext for wanting to draw from old black and white, out-of-focus photographs in mildewed books bought from Oxfam.

However, I like the idea that everything used to be ‘understated’ and now everything appears to be overstated &, indeed, often overated. We live in a world that exaggerates everything, making it bigger & better, and faster and more colourful than it really is. Today we produce so many images, and so much colour and so fast that it is overwhelming and it creates an impossible-to-quench thirst of expectations. The ‘bad’ photos I work from now seem to have an integrity, they are what they are, they make no false claims, and if anything, totally under-represent the often stunning and colourful product they are ‘selling’ – flowers & plants. I like this irony.

Image: Souvenir, Deutsche Kirche, 2011. Ink on paper, 28 x 19 cm © Annabel Tilley

CP: You have been involved in the DIY Educate Programme at Core Gallery. Can you talk of the importance of educating and nurturing other artists? And can you tell us about the forthcoming events?

Rosalind & I are passionate about this subject because, at different times, we both left art school and entered a world that seemed unhelpful and unconcerned with the plight of new graduates, and the way they might orientate themselves, through an indifferent-seeming art world. We have been hugely fortunate in 2012 to work with a great variety of artists who have been totally enthusiastic about what we are trying to do. From the young British Painter, Phoebe Unwin, RCA graduate & printmaker, Jenny Weiner, and a-n artist-talking editor, Andrew Bryant, all have made a great contribution to a programme that aims to support and encourage new graduates with practical experience straight from the horses mouth; acting as role models providing the artist’s own advice and narratives regarding the highs and lows, joys and disappointments of being an artist in Britain today. So far, so good, it has been a great success, and we will be back next year with a whole new exciting 2012 programme. And you heard it hear first.

CP: Home will be the last exhibition at Core Gallery’s current space before relocating in Deptford. This exhibition therefore seems highly topical and and poignant. How do you think this will heighten the fragility of the show?

Actually, the sudden wave of unexpected joy, fulfillment & pleasure that has come as a result of working with intelligent, generous, and hugely talented artists on a great and varied theme like home, makes me think you may not have seen the last of Home, or the extremely productive and pleasurable TilleyDavis partnership. Let’s end on another high!

Watch this space ….

To find out more about Annabel Tilley’s practice and curatorial projects visit:

www.annabeltilley.moonfruit.com

Or follow Annabel on: twitter.com/annabeltilley

Biog

Annabel Tilley has exhibited in Britain and Europe, and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2005. She has undertaken several residencies and public commissions, Most recently, she created a wall drawing for London/Berlin, a drawing survey exhibition curated by Andrew Hewish (C4RD, London) at Fruehsorge Contemporary Drawing in Berlin.

Her work is held in private collections in Britain and France. Annabel Tilley has written for Arty Magazine and Garageland, and also writes regular reviews for a-n’s Interface, and the blog: how to emerge?. Annabel Tilley trained in Fine Art Painting at The University of Brighton, and has a studio in Deptford, South London.

CORE GALLERY OPEN CATALOGUE

2011-09-19T15:51:00.000-07:00

CORE GALLERY OPEN CATALOGUE
FEATURING TEXTS FROM GRAHAM CROWLEY
JANE BOYER & ROSALIND DAVIS!

Interview with Sarah Williams

2011-07-05T02:27:00.000-07:00

Laura Eldret and Sarah Williams, The Multiplicity of a Moment, Exhibition, 2010

I am delighted to interview Sarah Williams, artist and curator of the Jerwood Visual Arts programme at Jerwood Space. Williams is one of the four judges for this year’s Open Submission Competition that will be selecting works for an exhibition at coregallery which will run during the Deptford X 2011; an international contemporary arts festival in south east london, 23rd September - 2nd October 2011. (Other selectors include; Alli Sharma, Graham Crowley and Fiona Macdonald).

Sarah Williams uses sculptural objects, architectural interventions, performance and photography to explore the relationship between object, live event and documentation.

Sarah Williams recent exhibitions: ‘The Multiplicity of a Moment’, Two-person show with Laura Eldret, Five Hundred Dollars, London (2010), ‘Kunskog’, Five Hundred Dollars, London; ‘Director’s Choice’, Curwen & New Academy Gallery, London (2010); Recent curatorial projects: ‘SHOW’, Jerwood Space, London (2011); ‘Locate’, Jerwood Space, London (2010); ‘Build’, Blyth Gallery, London; ‘Breaking New’, Five Hundred Dollars, Vyner Street, London (2009).

July 2011 >>

CP: As one of the judges for Core Gallery’s ‘DX Open Competition 2011, what will you be looking for when selecting artists?

SW: Originality and innovation.

CP: What is the significance of ‘independent’ competitions such as Core Gallery’s DX Open?

SW: Independent competitions are crucial to artists who are seeking opportunities and who may or may not have an existing network, providing a platform to exhibit their work and to have their work seen by a group of selectors and curators. Competitions also offer the organizers the opportunity to engage with a new pool of artists.

CP: You recently had an exhibition with Laura Eldret ‘The Multiplicity of a Moment’ at Five Hundred Dollars Gallery which was described as exploring “the tensions of a live moment between a viewer, and a series of objects and scenarios”. Could you describe how you and Eldret considered the work in relation to the past, present and future? And how intrinsic were the spectator’s within this staging?

SW: The exhibition was staged in a way that allowed the spectator to experience the space in two parts. The viewers entered the first gallery through a covered archway, which signaled the start to the exhibition where minimal artworks, made by both Laura and I, were displayed. These works could be defined as either as

Laura Eldret and Sarah Williams, The Multiplicity of a Moment, Exhibition, 2010

sculpture, props, backdrops, platforms or something ‘other’. This part of the exhibition showed potential to be an active space, almost like a stage or set.

The second gallery contained two films which ran concurrently. The films were created in the space before the exhibition opened to the public. Three dancers were invited to respond to the artworks in the exhibition and their performances were filmed in twenty-five minutes cycles on a black and white CCTV camera and digital camera.

The exhibition addressed the present moment (a spectator experiencing the objects and installation in the space), the past (the films which showed performance action that had occurred previously within the space) and the future (the potential for each objects/art work to be used for future interactions). The spectator was key in linking these phases together.

Williams Suggitt, Metamorphosis series, 2003

CP: Since 1999, you have collaboratively worked with Natalie Suggitt, creating various characters and scenarios in a continued attempt to transform yourselves. Where do you draw your inspiration for these fictive characters? And how important is the role of documentation within these performances?

SW: Our collaborative practice explores continued attempts to transform ourselves and our surroundings. Characters are created within strange, unexpected and ridiculous scenarios inspired by everyday happenings and daydreams. The work often plays upon the childlike desire in wanting to experience the world as another form, and from a new perspective, leaving behind the restrictions of the human body. Yet these transformation attempts inevitably result in frustrated failure and comment on our limitations of being human.

The live moment and subsequent documentation can sometimes be co-dependent. For example work doesn’t always materialize as a performance. We have made work as sculpture, photography and cardboard cut-outs which are then placed within a site specific environment. The use of photography, which comes from documenting a performative action, allows us to play with a sense of scale, where characters can be shrunk or enlarged in size. For example, ‘Metamorphosis series’ includes photographs of performances of us dressed as birds. The photographs were then printed to the same scale as a black bird and installed in trees at an exhibition in Queens Wood, London.

In 2000 I studied for a brief time in America in the sculpture department at Ohio State University and performance was a major way of working for artists there. I was taught by Stelarc and during that time he curated a series of 1 minute performance which I took part in. Some of the performance pieces have really stayed with me despite there being no existing documentation of the work. Performance can be a really potent medium because the work often relies on memory to exist, and the audience, are responsible for carrying that memory on to other places and experiences through recollection and story-telling.

Photographic, film or written documentation of a live moment cannot fully hope to capture an original performance, but can sometimes open up another angle to the work.

Williams Suggitt, Invention No 1, 2007

CP: Within these fictional scenarios you seem to move beyond the imaginary into the realm of the ‘virtual’ and the ‘other’, approaching the concept of fabulation. (Creation of fables / stories filled with fantasy). Fabulation is thus not a subjective or a deprived matter, it is rather a question of becoming and of visions and belongs to the world of affects and pure percepts, where a life appears as immanent and released from its subjective attachments, a life wrested from the personal lived. 1

How do these transformations of the ‘self’ help you to re-examine subjectivity and approach the ‘other’? Would you say there is a sense of futility in the continued attempts at transformation?

SW: Addressing issues of ‘other’ within the work inevitable leads back to the’ self’, the inadequacies of the human form and the true impossibility of attempting to transform to ‘other’. The key part of the performances and creation of fictive characters is to show the failure to become something other than the human self.

Williams Suggitt, Invention No 1, 2007

Made from rudimentary materials, the costumes and props embrace this sense of failure, but again represent potential to embody an imagined fictive space or situation. The characters, though aspirational in nature and in their appearance, will never be able to encompass the characteristics of the subjects they act or play. For example the professor who has built a time machine out of cardboard and tin foil won’t ever actually be able to travel forward or back in time (as with ‘Invention no.1) but can only imagine the possibility.

CP: What are you currently working on within your practice?

Monument 1, 2011
SW: My practice is curatorial and studio based. I see both aspects interlinked, feeding into one another. In my studio i’m currently working on a series of large scale drawings that explore monumentality, the partial recreation of stage sets and historic artifacts. These works contain a sense of failure within their format and scale. These works may prompt future performances or actions. I’m also really interested in how we discover information and how the internet is being utilised by artists as medium, subject matter and source material.

CP: Can you describe the unique programme of opportunities, awards, events and exhibitions that Jerwood Visual Arts Gallery provides?

SW: Jerwood Visual Arts (JVA) is a contemporary gallery programme of awards, exhibitions and events at Jerwood Space, London and on tour nationally. Jerwood Visual Arts promotes and celebrates the work of talented emerging artists across the disciplines of drawing, painting, sculpture, applied arts, photography and moving image and is a major initiative of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.

www.jerwoodvisualarts.org

JVA became an umbrella programme in 2006 and during that time we have worked with 549 artists, 85

selectors and curators and numerous writer and designers, bringing together a huge network of artistic practice. The programme is quite unique in that it focuses on specific art forms allowing us to investigate current approaches in drawing, painting, film and making. The Jerwood Encounters exhibition series allows us to create exhibitions across disciplines and to test out ideas.

Working for JVA allows for collaboration and the sharing of ideas. It is a dream to work with artists who are at relatively early stages in their career, who will go on to shape the future cultural landscape.

CP: You recently curated ‘SHOW’ (the fourth in a series of Jerwood encounters shows) which commissioned the work of artists Edwina Ashton, Jack Strange and Bedwyr Williams. Can you tell us more about your curatorial involvement within this and other exhibitions at Jerwood Visual Arts? And how have you sought to challenge the notion of exhibition making through performance and durational works?

SW: My role at Jerwood Visual Arts is to coordinate and curate the exhibition programme alongside Shonagh Manson, Director of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Parker Harris Partnership. I curate the JVA blog and work with 3 writers per year to use the JVA exhibition

programme as a spring board for their writing.
http://blog.jerwoodvisualarts.org/

‘SHOW’ was the fourth Jerwood Encounters exhibition that I curated for Jerwood Visual Arts and sought to examine the integral role that performance plays within an artist’s practice and its subsequent representation in an exhibition context. The exhibition consisted of live performances and experiments in performance documentation.www.jvashow.co.uk

Jack Strange, Zip And Zing, 2011. Photo: Thomas Rydin

As with ‘SHOW’ and other exhibitions I have previously curated for JVA I tend approach the exhibition as a medium and consider how that medium can best be utilised by both artist and curator in order to produce ambitious works and an interesting exhibition.

I work with artists who are making extraordinary works and are willing to take risks, working in an experimental way with unknown outcomes. I like to think that an exhibition can be an opportunity not only to showcase an artist’s work but to be a catalyst for an experimental way of working, where an artist gets to realise an idea within a supportive structure and with some funding. For example ‘Locate’ (2010) was an exhibition of three artists’ responses to the concept of ‘site’ with artists Mel Brimfield, Sarah Pickering and Aura Satz. The exhibition allowed for the creation of new bodies of work by each artist. www.jvalocate.co.uk/

Mel Brimfield, Four Characters in Search of a Performance (Installation view) 2010.
Photo: Paul Winch-Furness

In order to allow for experimentation, I set up a specific structured environment, a testing ground of sorts. For example the exhibition ‘Laboratory’ (2009) gave three artists, Steven Eastwood, Jock Mooney and Mia Taylor the opportunity to use a gallery space as an experimental site for the production of new work over a period of 4 weeks. The exhibition doesn’t have to be a static experience, but can be something that shifts and develops over a period of time. www.jvalab.co.uk

With these experimental exhibitions, I always create an online catalogue which have been made in partnership with Nick Eagleton at The Partners. This seems to be the most appropriate way to document the changes and developments that occur within a live or process-led exhibition. For ‘An Experiment in Collaboration’ six artists (Gemma Anderson, Daniel Baker, Michael Pybus, Paul Richards, Karen Tang and Jackson Webb) were asked to choose a collaborator/s to work with to create a new piece of work for the exhibition. The collaborative activity was mapped over the course of 5 months through an online blog:

www.anexperimentincollaboration.blogspot

Jock Mooney, Laboratory (Installation view) 2009. Photo: Paul Winch-Furness

CP: Do you have any forthcoming projects / news to divulge?

SW: I’m working on an exhibition with Clare Undy for Abstract Critical, about current issues in abstract practice focusing on artwork of all mediums which uses its own materiality as its central subject matter. I’m also working on an exhibition for JVA which will be shown in early 2012.

CP: Thankyou Sarah!

Karen Tang and Daniel Sanderson, Modern Molluscs (Installation view) 2008. Photo: Emily Picot

Interview with Elizabeth Murton

2011-06-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

I am delighted to interview Elizabeth Murton, artist and curator of the forthcoming exhibition ‘A Theory of Everything’. This transdisciplinary exhibition brings together artists and scientists who work in different media and fields, ranging from sculpture, installation, photography, video and scientific research. Bringing science together with art is an opportunity to look for patterns and comparisons in a different context. Through this exploratory process the exhibition aims to set up conversations that lead into a discovery of the re-interpretation of what is possible.

Rules & Regs © Elizabeth Murton

Elizabeth’s practice explores installation, sculpture and drawing inspired by structures and methods of construction, specifically: textiles, weaving, architecture, psychology and theoretical physics. Her interests are in the physical world, both human-made and otherwise and how we form our understanding of our surroundings.

Since graduating from Textiles (Visual Arts) at Goldsmiths, Elizabeth has probed the notion of process through exploring the capabilities and visual qualities of different materials. Elizabeth Murton’s structure ‘Module’ was selected for a Crafts Council commission for their annual show in Somerset House in 2009. Cited by Emma Chrichton-Miller in the Financial Times How To Spend It magazine (Nov 2009) as a ‘striking, sculptural woven piece…’

Other commissions and exhibitions include ‘Can’ at South Hill Park, Berkshire; ‘Work and Play’ at The Maltings, Farnham, Surrey; ‘Orbis Opifex’ at the Crypt at Euston; ‘2012 Prototype’ at Islington Car Free Day and Deptford X in 2010.

June 2011 >>

CP: Can you tell us more about the forthcoming exhibition ‘The Theory of Everything’?

EM: I have been interested in the idea of ‘A Theory of Everything’ for a long time. Imagining that everything is linked in some way, and that there is some inherent order in the world opens up interesting questions and debates. When we see chaos, is it in fact chaos, or that we are limited by our perception and can not see the bigger picture?

‘A Theory of Everything’ is what string theory is often called. As stated in the press release, it ‘is a concept in theoretical physics bringing together the micro and macro: small scale theories like quantum science which describes the world at the size of atoms and electrons, and large scale theories such as general relativity, which describe things at the scale of planets and galaxies. This theory concerns all forces and matter and their influences on the patterns and behaviours we see surrounding us.’

String theory describes the world as if made from vibrating strings on a micro or quantum level. It needs at least 10 dimensions to work - both scale and space wise difficult for us to comprehend. It is thought the 11th dimension is a layer that wraps around or indeed spreads out from the other like a membrane or ‘brane’. Strings and membranes are great ways to visualise these abstract concepts of dimensions,

particles and forces we can’t see. I think this appealed to my textile-art back ground. The ideas of construction in textiles are obvious metaphors, but also provide physicality and comparisons to these concepts. The exhibition is not focused on textile metaphors, but rather how we search for patterns and the limits of our perception. How we structure and attempt to understand the world through grids, theories, science, models and other structures and patterns and of course the chaos we see as well.

CP: In the press release it states: ‘The theory of everything implies all things are linked in some way and one expression of this could be found in patterns.’ What patterns and comparisons can be found between the artists and scientists ideas? And how accessible will the exhibition be to the viewer?

EM: Patterns in their simplest form are something repeated and in regular order. Whether this be line, mark making, sound, or form. In the exhibition, the work relates to the aspect of science that is attempting to apply, find and form patterns (and order) in our environment and the possible synthesis of this with visual and audio art. We do not know if the patterns we do see are present or it is just our interpretation. Some pieces look at how we understand information in psychology theories, perception, physics, and biology. Approaching the theory of everything from possible patterns and order in the environment and our ability to perceive them are vital parts of the equation.

The audio pieces in the exhibition both respond to the sound in the gallery space, but in different ways. Daniel Jones’ piece concerns how bacteria communicate through sharing packets of DNA called plasmids. This leads to complex evolutionary patterns in their behaviour. ‘Horizontal Transmission’ is setup so that the bacteria respond to gallery noise which they then mimic back to the gallery. The behaviour they use to share DNA, is used to respond and repeat noise.

This mimicking occurs in Hugh Metcalf’s installation as it picks up ambient sound, applies rules and plays it back into the space. The process of the copying involves rules that evolve within set limits. This creates seemingly chaotic soundscapes. Like human perception, there are a set of rules applied, but here the rules do not lead to a product that encourages (human) understanding.

Rules of perception are expressed in Ed John’s research from his PhD. He is studying and developing vision for robots. This is difficult as we don’t understand how we see. The rules he places are different from human perception processes, and divide up visual information for robots to analyse which creates images we don’t necessarily understand. We do not know how our brain processes vision, therefore we can not replicate the patterns we see in visual information for robots to use.

‘Eleutherobin, Coralline Swansong’ © Anna Cocciadiferro

Anna Cocciadiferro’s piece is based on the chemical structure of coral which is synthesized to be used for medical purposes. It was found that this coral, eleutherobia, produces a chemical which is much gentler for the patient and a stronger drug. The copying of the chemical structure and reusing is a process of repetition from one area of science to another. If there is an underlying link between everything, the fact that something in the ocean can affect and cure an animal on land, and that bacteria can share DNA, like a conversation, demonstrates our ability to find cross-overs between separate things.

It may be tempting to say these links a coincidental but perhaps it is because, if the big bang is the start of the universe, everything began with the same building blocks. The study of cosmology- the universe, looks back into time to gain an understanding. Our universe is currently growing, so as you look back it is smaller and smaller, until it is just particles. The piece inspired by quantum particle behaviour, ‘Quantum Communication Through a Spin Chain’ uses ink drawings to represent a trace of the electron spin. The surface itself is not regular or consistent and folds, overlaps and changes directions randomly- much like the unpredictability of the quantum world. Balint Bolygo’s piece, ‘Animechanics’ again uses a strip of material (film), but on a much smaller scale. The film physically moves and is gradually marked by the movement of gravity affecting a pendulum. The circular mark making is similar in both pieces, but represents two different scaled parts of string theory: gravity in the theory of relativity and quantum science. And in these pieces the scale is reversed- macro science representation being much smaller the micro science!

The mark making on a moving or continuous surface with Metcalf, Bolygo and myself using this form brings us to the idea of ‘branes’ I spoke about in the first answer. M-theory is an extension of string theory, some people theorise that the 11th dimension either wraps around the other 10, or rolls out from it, to infinity. On the rolled paper, tape or film the mark making represents particle ‘spin’, the force of gravity and sound. These bursts of activity have created pattern on these surfaces. Like non linear (chaotic) bursts of action. These could be used equally to show non-linear representations of the growth of bacteria populations or the birth of a star. Bursts of energy and events that change the outcome and development of things.

Brain Collage © Paula Salischiker’s

There is a tactility in the exhibition which contrasts with the abstract concepts and computer/ audio works. The materials showing through the exhibition are from a muted palette. The burst of colour mostly come from Liliana Sanchez’s ‘Soup’ and are reflected subtly in Caroline Lambard’s installation and Paula Salischker’s brains collages. I hope the colour carries you through and draws you on through the space, as the texture brings it back to the materiality in our scale of existence. The green ‘Soup’ represents an excess, a chaos which could be a comment on our society today and it’s use of resources.

And, in comparison to cosmology, it goes back to when everything was just a big soup of things. With the big bang at the beginning of the universe and the beginning of life on earth, it is suggestive of the time when things were not differentiated and had developed the diversity of functioning live forms and structures that surround us today.

CP: An article written by Ken Arnold about Science and art: Symbiosis or just good friends? Seems highly relevant. Would you say that science and art have a symbiotic relationship? How has the coupling of art-science proven mutually beneficial within this exhibition? And have you faced any curatorial challenges in bringing together a transdisciplinary exhibition?

EM: For me, science and art are about exploring; seeking understanding of the world around us and expressing possibilities (or sometimes ruling them out). I think ‘science’ and ‘art’ are just massive topics, and difficult to define. To summarise two massive topics to allow discussion, you could say, does science: testable knowledge; and art: created for thought and/ or emotion/ expression; have a relationship? Yes. They both seek - the difference is science strives to be testable. Interesting both the science topics I have been looking at in my own practice are difficult to test, on the fore front of our knowledge. Theoretical physics relies somewhat on computer programmes testing theories. Perhaps this lack of visual and physical representation in everyday live is what attracted me: visualizing the invisible. Perhaps this is one way in which these types of collaborations are mutually beneficial.

Soupa © Liliana Sanchez

Speaking briefly to Ed Johns this morning, he is arranging his research for presentation, I brought up some interesting projects and colour experiments for him. Provoking thought for him as well as me through our discussions.

I have found this exhibition really enjoyable to curate. I think because it is something I am interested in anyway. It was not a challenge to find pieces that portray elements of us understanding and searching for patterns. In future it would be a great project to perhaps focus on these different elements for an exhibition like quantum science or gravity. In contrast the breadth of possibility has been the fun of this show as a theory of, well, everything!

CP: In the lead up to the exhibition you have held a series of ‘Tea Party Discussions’ on and around the topic and managed a continuous blog promoting the active exchange of dialogue and debate. Within this show there seems to be a re-thinking of the exhibition as the manifestation of the final ‘event’ to something more process orientated. Through your curating how have you tried to extend the exhibition format and make it more interactive?

EM: My practice is process lead and I like to leave the construction and the materials exposed. Perhaps it is the same here. I have left all the ‘nuts and bolts’; the thinking and discussion. My work is often about potential, representing possible for movement and change. I hope this exhibition opens this up too, and does not tell people what is what, but allows them the space to think. This links to your previous question, as it is about other ways to engage the viewer.

The thought possibilities and the scope of the project emerged especially with the tea parties. The two different discussion groups added completely new dimensions to the debate. The rolling discussions provided a longer period of development and further engaged with the ideas around the show. Extending the exhibition format to have a larger time element where it has existed, not just when it is physically on display, seemed a natural form for it to take. The ideas literally encompass space and time, and even with this long development time, we have barely even scratched the surface!

The blog seemed like another natural extension of the project in time. With curating and researching lots of thoughts and links come up, it seems a shame not to offer these elements, especially as it is about discovery and process. A blog is a great communication tool. (The Tea Parties will be available to listen to in the exhibition).

Not to Scale © Elizabeth Murton

CP: For this show you have collaborated with psychologist Kaidy Stautz to create a sculpture inspired by Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality (1970). You have also collaborated with physicist Bobby Antonio to create a wall piece inspired by his research into 'quantum communication in a spin chain'. Can you tell us more about these two works?

EM: With the psychology inspired piece, 'Not to Scale,' it was interesting working through the ideas and trying not being too didactic about the theory as it already has a visual form. Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of personality (1982, 2000) can be represented within a circumplex, with orthogonal lines each representing the spectrum of a trait, for example impulsivity to self-control, or extraversion to introversion. An individual’s placement within the circumplex would be dependent on the interaction between separate traits. The theory has a biological basis, linking the traits anxiety and impulsivity to the reactivity of underlying brain systems.

As Kaidy began explaining how to interpret the diagram it became more mysterious. How you relate to the piece also depends on the experimental definitions and values you ascribe it. So the boundaries of the theory vary again. I studied psychology and I am interested in understanding humanity, personality and how we work. I am not sure it is as linear as we would like it to be.

Layers of paper, printing and mark making create the piece. The neatness of the circular 'factor space' of the theory, is repeated, and sometimes marked with the linear spectrum aspects of the theory, but not enough to ascertain how you fit into it. It is like looking in on it, but being outside of the theory. The printed brains are exhibited separately from the circles. The shape of the brain is concentrated on areas that correspond with the behaviours in Gray's theory, but they are not linked or identified in the space.

Not to Scale © Elizabeth Murton

The other piece is large new installation. It is a three dimensional drawing where the surface comes away from the wall, spinning out in new directions. It is inspired by Bobby Antonio's research which looks at 'Quantum Communication Through a Spin Chain'. The 'Theory of Everything' is trying to unite quantum physics, which relates to the world at a very small scale and is unpredictable, and macro physics like general relativity, which relates to things like planets, and is measurable and predictable.

The idea of the 'spinning' has immediate visual connections, spinning tops, dancing, movement. The particles are in a chain. Each individual particle has a spin. The movement of the particles which make the spin however is a mysterious internal property which we do not have any analogies for our world. Bobby describes his research below;

'...I look at things such as electrons interacting through this mysterious 'spin' property, and I see if I can use this interaction to transfer information through the chain - in fact there doesn't have to be any 'movement' in the chain at all (at least not in the way we would normally think of movement), and the changes in the chain that I look at are purely internal changes - changes in what 'direction' the spin points in.

Installation Shot © Elizabeth Murton

The ink is the trace of the movement but how it was made remains a mystery. This separation of source and effect is found in quantum science and therefore it is a representation of our interaction with this quantum world. The paper's form and shape, also imply that the space where the spin is is different from our ideas of space in our world. Some of the drawings are obscured, referencing the unpredictability not only of the electrons, but also of the quantum world they exist within.

This idea of unpredictable movement is captured in this new installation. The ink 'spin' drawings appear on paper which itself looks as though it is moving. The ink is the trace of the movement, not the source which is, apparently, very quantum. The paper's form and shape, also imply the space where the spin is, is different from our ideas of space in our world. Some of the drawings are obscured, referencing the unpredictability not only of the electrons, but also the quantum world they exist within.

Detail of Indevelopment, 2008 © Elizabeth Murton

CP: Within your own practice you explore methods of construction, specifically: “textiles, weaving, architecture, psychology and theoretical physics.” How does theory help you to explore the capabilities of materials?

EM: In this exhibition my main material has been paper and ink. It wasn't a conscious decision from the start, but both pieces naturally evolved onto paper. It really has been a pleasure working with such simple and elegant materials. Paper is inexpensive, not precious, but part of everyday. As my materials often are.

The theory provides limits, within which I can then use to structure the ideas and ascribe them onto materials. The materials I often like to push and pull them away from their natural purpose. With the quantum piece it is a subtle change of use of lining paper, which is repeated and becomes dramatic.

Spinbang © Elizabeth Murton

The paper on the large quantum piece took some manipulating, coercing it into curves and waves. This goes against it's straight fibres and limited elasticity of the paper, as quantum science seems to avoid being understood and predictable! It is however a fabric of sorts, and I believe it starts to take on much more of that element of movement and flow in the installation. Much like the tape in Balint's and Hugh's work, and the fabric in Anna's.

Can © Elizabeth Murton

The psychology piece 'Not to Scale' I dreamt about after I had finished. The holes somehow make it spongy and absorbent, allow you to look through, but the layers of tracing obscure it again. The construction is delicate and temporary. The printed circles and the stencils are both in the piece, showing both how the work was made, and what is left over once something is designed and made, thought through and rationalised. Here the left over excess of paper is still in the space for all to see.

CP: Can you tell us more about the upcoming Salon Event: (Science & Art Discussion, 6th July 2011) that features the guest speaker Dr David S Berman, Reader in Theoretical Physics at Queen Mary College?

EM: This will be a very interesting event. The salon event will explore the idea of a theory of everything, a concept in theoretical physics, and the relationships that develop between art and science. Each speaker will give a brief introduction to their specialist areas followed by open discussion. It will be a unique opportunity to question the experts and present your own views.

Speakers will be Dr David S Berman, Reader in Theoretical Physics at Queen Mary College, recent collaborations have included the Cartier award winning project with artist Jordan Wolfson at the 2009 London Frieze Art Fair and he is now working with Turner prize winning sculptor Grenville Davey;. Dr Berman will present an introduction to the notion of unification in fundamental physics leading up to a description of the peak of our current understanding of nature, which goes by the name of M- theory.

Adrian Holme, a Biologist and Lecturer in Visual theory, Camberwell College of Art & Design, and UCA, Maidstone, and convenor of the Research Cluster in Art, Science and Culture. In his talk, Adrian will consider aspects of the relationship between art and science - initially a unified enterprise during the early European Renaissance. Do art and science really form the distinct ‘two cultures’ described by CP Snow in 1959? What role does art and imagination (and Romanticism) have in relation to science and culture?

Bobby Antonio, PhD student researching quantum computation at University College London. His talk will present a brief overview of quantum physics, an extremely important and successful yet counter-intuitive theory. The talk will aim to give a short introduction for those not familiar with quantum physics, highlighting the reasons why many people, including Einstein, found the concepts hard to accept, and why it has had such a profound effect on disciplines outside science, such as philosophy and art.

Salon places will be limited, so early booking is advisable.

Further details on exhibition website.
http://atheoryofeverything.tumblr.com/Salon_Event

To book please email salon@coregallery.co.uk.

Engine ChatChat

CP: You are an integral member of Core Gallery and part of the DIY Educate management team, in which you run the group Art Crit ‘Engine ChatChat. Can you tell us more about the developments that have been made through this educational engagement? And how has Core Gallery’s ethos has helped you gain autonomy?

EM: It is about engagement, discussion and critical context. Core Gallery has a great atmosphere as it is surrounded by people (literally as our studios surround the gallery) who are committed artists.

Engine ChatChat sprang from my need for discussion and sharing of ideas. You might propose that the tea party debates are in fact a spin off of this, but the item on the agenda is not someone’s practice but a theory in science. As the artist Helen Pynor said, who was at a Tea Party Debate said, art can provide science with critical discourse. After all, science is just one methodology for understanding.

Core Gallery is a great space for curatorial and artistic experimentation. Being in a place with a great, supportive gallery team- Rosalind Davis, Gillian Best Powell, Charlie Norwood, to name but a few, means you can take risks and... learn. This is so important. The over gentrification of these areas means that it will drive this type of space out. The team and great ideas at Core rely on the being Deptford; the affordability and artist run spaces in general allow us to push, take risks and create artistic capital. If we can’t afford the space. We will go else where. I think this is an issue London needs to address.

CP:Do you have any forthcoming projects / news to divulge?

EM: All new ideas are top secret for now, one thing I will guarantee is more science-art collaborations. I have more ideas for quantum derived pieces too. More Engine and more Tea Party discussions!

CP: Thank you so much Elizabeth

EM: Thank you, great questions.

NB: Please note, I am not a scientist and whilst I try to be accurate I might have got a thing or two down inaccurately here!!

Interview with Alli Sharma

2011-06-14T15:32:00.000-07:00

I am delighted to interview Alli Sharma, artist, writer and co-director of transition gallery in london. Sharma is one of the four judges for this year’s Open Submission Competition that will be selecting works for an exhibition at core gallery which will run during the Deptford X 2011; an international contemporary arts festival in south east london, 23rd September - 2nd October 2011. (Other selectors include; Sarah Williams, Graham Crowley and Fiona Macdonald).

The Hippopotamus, London Zoo Postcard series, 2010, oil on canvas, 10 x 15 cm

Sharma co-directs Transition Gallery along with Cathy Lomax (founder) and Alex Michon. Since joining the gallery she has curated exhibitions ‘Fade Away’ and recently ‘Mock Tudor’.

Sharma has a BA fine art from central st martins school of art (2007). Recent shows include; Awopbopaloobop, Transition Gallery, London (2008); Un-Still Life, The Apartment Gallery, London and the Painting Room, Transition Gallery, London (2008).

June 2011 >>

CP: As one of the judges for Core Gallery's 'DX Open Competition 2011, what will you be looking for when selecting artists?

AS: Interesting ideas.

CP: What is the significance of 'independent' competitions such as Core Gallery's DX Open?

AS: Gallery-run open competitions are increasingly popular at the moment. They give a wider spread of artists more opportunity to exhibit, but it also seems to be taken for granted that artists will pay a fee to be considered for selection. If the artist must pay a fee, then I think it should guarantee that their work is seen by all of the judges, and no pre-selection takes place.

CP: You are co-director of Transition Gallery, an innovative artist-run space and publisher, now in its ninth year. Can you tell us a bit more about Transition Gallery and your involvement? And what advice would you give to a relatively new space such as Core Gallery in ensuring sustainability?

Fade Away installation, gallery north, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2011

AS: I am one of three co-directors with Cathy Lomax (founder) and Alex Michon. There’s an energy at the gallery which is incredibly stimulating and supportive. The ethos is do-it-yourself, from publishing to curating and we do a lot of work at grass roots level with new graduates and emerging artists. Sustainability is tricky and generally we keep costs to a minimum. We operate at an exciting stage within the gallery system and we are careful not to overstretch ourselves. At the end of last year we held our first auction, Art Blitz, in order to raise funds for the gallery with an amazing response from artists and buyers. I think the key is to look outwards and not get too introvert. We’re always looking for opportunities to get involved in good projects. Recently, Cathy and Alex took ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ to an artist-run art fair in Limerick, Ireland, while I attended a symposium for an exhibition at Gallery North in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Alex and I will be selecting a graduate winner for the Transition Prize at Chelsea College of Art next week; the prize being an exhibition in early August. I will be setting up our publications at the A/FFair of Publishing in London Fields 22-24 July and in September, Cathy and I will travel to Belgium to install ‘Face to Face’ at Galerie d’YS. We also attract good interns who volunteer their time with remuneration in the form of support, guidance with their own projects and the opportunity to get involved with the magazines. We ask exhibiting artists to talk about their work to staff and they get first hand knowledge of how a gallery operates, which can be a valuable experience. I started at the gallery just over two years ago, assisting artists, like Emma Talbot, install their exhibitions and helping Cathy curate in the gallery.

Fade Away installation, Transition Gallery, London E8, 2010. Photography, Michael Ajerman

Last year I curated ‘Fade Away’, a painting exhibition with 43 artists, which toured to Gallery North with a symposium and publication. I also blog artist interviews on Articulated Artists and so my first piece for Garageland magazine was an interview with George Shaw for the Nostalgia issue.

Fade Away installation, gallery north, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2011

I help edit the magazine and am currently researching and writing a piece about mock Tudor for the forthcoming issue and generally learning new things all the time.

Edd Pearman 'the heart is a lonely hunter', acrylic and resin, 2011
CP: The current exhibition at Transition Gallery "Exam" involves Edd Pearman, who was one of the selected artists in Core Gallery's DX Open Exhibition 2010. Can you tell us more about this show?

AS: Edd sent Transition a fantastic proposal for ‘Exam’, which he curated himself. It was beautifully presented, well thought out and intelligently put together and stood out from a lot of submissions we receive. The works are mostly precisely detailed, controlled and uncanny.

There’s an intensity of labour and an outsiderish theme, but it’s a very clean, obsessive type of outsider and something about it that makes me think of the isolated activity of building and painting intricate Affix models. The piece by Ceal Warnants mixes brutalist architecture with old-fashioned homely furniture and nicely reflects the building at Regents Studios where Transition is based. Her use of pattern is a theme shared in other works by Julie Cockburn and Matt Brown and repetition in Boo Saville.

Julie Cockburn and Ceal Warnants, Exam Installation
2011, Transition Gallery
Julie Cockburn has meticulously cut out geometric shapes in a found painting ‘Shellshocked 1’ then reconstructed the pieces in a different order. It sits uncannily above another painting ‘Provenance (Dining Room)’ of what looks like an old black and white photograph featuring ‘Shellshocked 1’ in the background, suggesting it’s previous history. Adam James has created a plaster head, eyes closed, lying on it’s side, which I think is based on his father, but modeled on his own face and is exacting in detail with an extravagant, curly beard. I shared a studio with Alex Ball at St Martins and admire the painstaking detail in his paintings. His immobile, solitary figures are taken from literature and often suffocated by matter. Figures in the show generally look stiff, dead or vacant, even humanoid.

Adam Dix’s figures take on a subservient position next to communication satellites and technological apparatus. Matt Brown has drained the colour out of a pixellated face and Edd’s St John’s Ambulance man carries a weighty resuscitation replicant. There’s a sad story behind the doll who’s face is based on a girl who drowned in the Seine River and so her dummy, which is the default worldwide, is constantly resuscitated. And it’s by strange co-incidence that his piece is called ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ (after the book by Carson McCullers), which happened to be the title of the previous show at Transition by Tara Derby.

Pebbles, 2010, oil on board, 20 x 15 cm

CP: On Axis Alison Sharkey states about your paintings "Her luscious paint marks transform rejected piles of junk ornaments sold for pennies at second-rate charity shops into objet d’art, subjects worthy of portraiture and desire.” What is your intention in reviving these discarded objects? And the paintings seem to emanate nostalgia and sentimentality, are these works inspired from personal childhood memories?

Pipistrelle, 2009, Oil on board, 20 x 15 cm
AS: The objects, for me, are usually more than their object selves and make me think of other people or places. You know that feeling when you walk down the street, minding your own business, then you stumble upon something and you’re transported to another place and time, it’s that’s sort of thing or when things become so familiar that you don’t see them anymore. I like sentimentality, things that are over-the-top, like paintings of animals by Landseer. Looking at the past is just a part of being human but I don’t dwell on it too much. I think the things are painted with a particular attitude, getting something down fast, quite bold and immediate.

They don’t shy away from nostalgia and sentimentality but I hope there’s humour too. If there is an intention then it is that they are motifs for painting, excuses to engage with the stuff of paint.

Young Chimpanzees at Tea, London Zoo Postcard Series, 2010, Oil on canvas, 10 x 15 cm

CP: Your works are often presented on a small scale, in a series, grouped together as collections like keepsakes above a mantelpiece, is it your intention to tap into the viewers sentimental urge to collect? Can you describe how desire manifests itself within your work?

Pawnshop Pendant, Anne Boleyn, 2011,
oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm
AS: I hadn’t thought about the collection of things. They are mostly objects although I have painted animals but I think the idea for them comes from a similar place, in that it’s something to do with our relationships with things. I make work and then I have to look at what I’ve done to try to make some sense of it, so I don’t have the intention to tap into what a viewer might think, I get to the point where I want to try out an idea in paint to see what it is. Probably the series and collections of things comes from the dissatisfaction with just one thing, it’s not enough, so I try several. Or it might be that I make a lot of things that are scrapped and just a few survive. But I do collect things that I might consider for paintings. I was delighted to see Sir Peter Blake’s collection of animals made from shells at Holburne Museum in Bath this week because I have collected a few of those myself and they are quite ridiculous and definitely something my grandma would have had on the mantelpiece.

Pawnshop Dad 5, 2011, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm
CP: Can you tell us about the recent paintings you have been working on for the forthcoming Transition Gallery OFFSITE exhibition ‘Mock Tudor?

AS: I moved recently, to a house opposite a park, which once housed a medieval manor, and found the local pub signs like The Swan, The Old Ship and The Hart also evoked an ancient past. Painted pub signs are disappearing with the introduction of trendy new bars and The Hart chimed in particular as I had been chased by a stag in Richmond Park. I’d also been looking in the pawnbrokers’ windows in Hammersmith and had read they were gaining popularity at the moment because they provide cheap borrowing. There were initial necklaces, like the one Anne Boleyn wears in the Holbein portrait but without the pearls, lockets and DAD rings. There are so many stories there. Things burst in and puncture your everyday life and offer the chance to consider things that you might ordinarily overlook. So I’m working on a series of pawnshop jewellery paintings and animal representations based on pubs.

CP: Do you have any forthcoming projects / news to divulge?

AS: I have been making small paintings from images of postcards from London Zoo for over a year now, which will be part of ‘Zoo’, at The Meter Rooms in Coventry in October 2011. It’s a new space opened by Dan Pryde-Jarman who runs Grey Area in Brighton and also features work by Mike Bartlett, Cathy Lomax, Anton Goldenstein and Stephanie Quayle.

Lion and Lioness, London Zoo Postcard series, 2010, oil on canvas, 10 x 15 cm

CP: Thankyou Alli.

For more information please visit:
www.allisharma.com /
www.transitiongallery.co.uk /
www.articulatedartists.blogspot.com

Interview with Tom Butler, Alyson Heyler & Marion Michell

2011-04-20T04:53:00.000-07:00

I am delighted to interview Tom Butler, Alyson Helyer and Marion Michell artists of the forthcoming exhibition ‘Extra Ordinary’. The work of Tom Butler, Alyson Helyer and Marion Michell forms a strange symbiosis, a disjointed world of macabre coexistence that holds humour, ambiguity, intensity and contradiction. Last year Butler, Helyer and Michell were selected for this group exhibition from over 250 artists worldwide as part of Core Gallery’s 2010 Open Submission Competition by our prominent judges Graham Crowley, Kate Jones and Matt Roberts.

Tom Butler, Marion Michell & Alyson Heyler

In this interview I gain insight into the exhibition ‘Extra Ordinary” (which is curated by Jane Boyer and Rosalind Davis) and the developments they have made within their practices since showing at Core Gallery’s DX Open Submission in September 2010.

Tom Butler completed an MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art and and BA at Chelsea College of Art & Design and exhibits internationally, currently residing in Maine, USA. In 2010 Butler was selected for the ArtSway Open, The Ludlow Summer Open and artWorks Open.

Alyson Helyer is a graduate from Chelsea College of Art & Design and has been selected in 2010 for the artworks Open and Crash Open Salon. Previously Helyer has been selected for the Celeste Art Prize, The Jerwood Drawing Prize and the Whitechapel Open.

Marion Michell graduated from Central St Martins School of Art and Design in critical fine art and has worked in mixed media and video exhibiting internationally. Michell has recently had a solo show at the Arthouse in Wakefield.

April 2011 >>

CP: Can you tell us more about the work(s) that have been selected for the forthcoming show ‘Extra-ordinary’ at Core Gallery?

To the unknown master © tom butler

TB: I have three bodies of work on display, Cabinet Cards, which are nineteenth century portrait cards, Cartes de Visite, which are essentially smaller versions of these that were handed out like calling cards and Postcard Works. All three are appropriated images I have collected over the last few years. I paint on the surfaces with gouache.

Nannys Boy © Alyson Heyler

AH: The works are still really trying to deal with the idea of the portrait. I’m still very much interested in the single image, trying to find archetypes, which hide deep in our psyche, trying to deal with the psychological and the physical.

Tied Pair, 2001, Tissue Paper © Marion Michell

MM: A lot of my art touches on childhood, on growing up and its anxieties. It is as much an exploration of memory as of physical experience. Not necessarily concrete memories, more moods and atmospheres, interwoven with elements from myths and fairy tales. I work with papers, wools and artificial hair, making shoes, figures, dresses and other outfits from scratch and transforming found objects into something

that expresses new sets of emotions and fantasies. There will be a set of five small dresses crocheted from artificial hair, intense and a bit scary in a fairy-tale sort of way. Female body hair is such an object of cultural anxieties and pressures, and crocheting little hairy dresses seemed a good way to play with some of these notions. There will be shoes made from tissue paper, looking heavy and solid, and several free-form crocheted outfits, maybe even a video.

Five perfect maidens, 2010/11, artificial hair, double-pointed knitting needles, twigs, wire, approx 20 - 25 cm x 25 - 30 cm © Marion Michell

What ties the work together is the urge to make manifest emotional states, esp. anxieties about difference and otherness, but also the question how the feeling of being different might manifest in a physical way. Initially my work was very much anchored in the real but lately the shapes have become freer, stranger, and at the same time more concentrated.

Tender Pervert. 2011, oil on linen on board, 66cm x 55cm © Alyson Heyler

CP: What revelations in your work do you think will occur as a result of exhibiting alongside the other artists?

TB: I think the sculptural element of Marion’s work is going to give the exhibition life while Alyson’s will evoke something far more formless and unsettling. I think my work sits in-between. Depending on curatorial juxtapositions, some of my work may seem more alive, in others more dead. It’s in the overall resulting narrative that intrigues me most, something we individually couldn’t generate alone: a gestalt. I can’t wait!

AH: I really don’t know what to expect or what truths will be revealed. I always go to see a show with the hope of seeing something new, to see what others are up to, or what I can borrow. I like to come away from a show thinking ‘How did they do that?

MM: For me first of all it will be about the encounter of different media, different languages. We share concerns, seem to enjoy probing matters of the unconscious, but our processes of engagement, of exploration, of making visible what is dimly felt are excitingly various. My work is more directly physical in that I create or manipulate objects while Aly Helyer and Tom Butler create or manipulate images. But we all use the physical as an entry-point into the psyche. I guess one could say that we try to make concrete what is unspoken, unacknowledged, and we don’t shrink from looking at abjection… I can’t wait to hear the conversations between our pieces. The question is: will there be whispers? Songs? Shrieks?

CP: Can you describe how the unconscious manifests itself through your work?

TB: I never really know what’s going to happen when I start a new piece. Although, I know I want to translate and give shape, to obscure something/reveal something but that’s about it. I know the unconscious has manifest when I leave the studio feeling both seduced and a little uneasy or on-edge.

The Lesson © Tom Butler

The Diligent Mother, 2010 ©
Alyson Heyler

AH: What a question! I’m not aware of how this really happens or when it occurs, I suppose the process is the catalyst, opening up the possibilities’ of chance and accident, allowing something deeper to happen, learning to trust your own instincts is another. I have fleeting moments usually late on in the evening when I’m painting, when I’m not aware of thinking or doing, maybe this is when someone else or some other takes control.

Changeling, 2010 © Marion Michell

MM: I think in how the unexpected shapes, the extra, the different sit comfortably with the ‘normal’ ones - there is a degree of innocence here, not least in the relatively small size of the work and the focus on childhood, but anchored in and evocative of bodily things, instinct, desire, pleasure, pain.

It takes a moment for the shapes to become disquieting and something arises from the strange physicality evoked. What kind of bodies could inhabit these outfits? Does the body demand their shape or the other way around? All this is set in tension with the softness and quaintness of crochet. Something wild and excessive works through and against the contained, controlled material. Delicacy and humour are set against and with a stressed, strained toughness. Gaps open - the viewer may stumble.

I want to make art that moves (truly, not just in a crocodile tears kind of way) on all kinds of levels. That moment when you’re touched - of barriers at least creaking a little if not breaking down, of protective layers being pierced. Away from static, perceived attitudes to a moment of uncertainty, vulnerability, as fleeting as the condensed breath on a window pane. A flow of something versus stasis. A morsel of life. A momentary freshness. The unconscious hangs like a purple shadow from our heels…

Eye-rhyme, 1998 © Marion Michell

The Bird catcher © Alyson Heyler

Farlin © Tom Butler

Hardy © Tom Butler

CP: When viewing the works there is a sense of transportation into the “un-real”, as it states in the press release “a disjointed world of macabre coexistence”. What else exists within this other-world? And what feelings do you think this will evoke within the viewer when encountering the exhibition?

We were wicked, we were wild, 2011, two viscose embroidery threads and one woollen one, 19 x 29.5 cm and 18.5 x 31 cm © Marion Michell

TB: I imagine secrets, indulgence and vice, yet with constant fear of breaking apart. The ‘other-world’ suggests to me something either non-bodily or bodily in a form that shifts and transforms, rather like a creature in an M. R. James ghost story or gothic novel. I would hope to evoke in the viewer something of that apprehension one feels before reading such a story.

AH: When I’m painting it feels just as real to me as the outside world, I recently came across Merleau-Ponty and was relieved to hear that he considered “paintings to be a model of reality as real as the models we create of the world in our minds”.

I hope the viewer will find something that is new and old, familiar and strange when looking at the paintings.

MM: In our work/world conventional boundaries don’t function: the real interweaves with the dreamt, the actual touches the imagined, the beautiful and the monstrous exist as one.

For me the question of how we perceive reality, and esp. what we exclude (at our peril) from what we define as the ‘real’ is important. What else is there outside the proper, the allowed, the norm? Unwieldy bodies needing to be controlled, strong emotions needing to be checked? On these terms reality itself is macabre, reality is to be feared. Difference is a threat.

We buckle under the burden of expectations to fill prescribed roles. The figures in Aly Helyer’s and Tom Butler’s work wear the consequences like growths on their heads and faces. Are they adorned or branded? The boundaries between viewer and work are also unstable in much of our art - with Tom Butler’s pieces you have to lean really close to see what’s going on and may feel in danger of being infected by whatever is happening there.

And what about the phantasies and projections we indulge in when faced with the mystery of an other? Abjection comes from the judgement, separation and suppression of difference, in others, in ourselves. And who feels distress here? The figures evoked or the viewer? No matter how we look at the work there is always a residue of something that unsettles. Have the figures lost control over their bodies or have they decided to fully project their inner lives/selves? Are they wounded or whole? Do they reveal their full being or is it just a new mask? I ask myself these questions breathlessly, with a shudder. Laugh, choke down tears. Want to turn away, like a child holding their nose in order not to smell something stinky, while it all seeps in through my pores.

In any case the real world is hard to take, and we tend to get through life by trying to switch off from what we can’t contain: the mess of living, the mess and mutability of our bodies, illness, war, hunger, homelessness, nearby or far away…

Our bodies are not perfect. We want our bodies mutable, to a degree. The ideals of beauty and eternal youth put immense pressure on us, link imperfect bodies with shame. The de- or maybe re-formed bodies we imagine in this exhibition, with their proliferations (or lack) of hair and limbs and even stranger things slither on the brink of abjection and there attain a kind of imperfect, but very much alive beauty. Look them in the eye!

"Dear Father..." © Tom Butler

CP: What developments have you made within your practice since showing at Core Gallery’s DX Open Submission in September 2010?

Untitled © Tom Butler

TB: Using photographs, images of real people. Victorian Portrait Photography fascinates me in that it has a weird ‘stuck-ness’. Roland Barthes wrote, in Camera Lucida, about a photograph taken in 1865 of a young man on death row, “He is dead and he is going to die…”(p95). As viewers we are privileged, if unsettled, witnesses to this.

The Postcard Works shown at DX Open were already a big step for me because they were figurative. My work previously was pretty much landscape based. In fact, my education is in Sculpture and I was always concerned with space, or at least in an absence. Now, I want to occupy that space and fill it with all I can conjure.

Portrait of The Art Tit As a Young Man © Alyson Heyler

AH: Backgrounds have always been problematic for me. I’m trying to give them more importance, to integrate them more. I’ve been looking at early Renaissance and Modernism (in particular Cubism) and looking at figure ground relationships, how to combine illusion, perspective and flatness.

MM: I had my first solo-show that summer and together with the exhibition at the Core Gallery and being selected for this new show with Aly Helyer and Tom Butler from a pool of interesting artists my self-confidence has deepened, and my trust in my work. Seeing one’s work up on the wall (if that is where it goes), in communication with other work, seeing how viewers react and interact has helped me consolidate the direction of my practice, following my interests… I’ve also become more ambitious with my applications...

CP: How important has the DX Open Submission Competition been to you? And what advice would you give to prospective applicants submitting work to similar competitions?

TB: Super important. I really wanted this one, especially with the quality of the judges and context of the gallery. I am also impressed with Core Gallery’s critical and progressive education programme, DIY Educate. I am thrilled to have been invited back to be a part of it.

My advice with open submission competitions - look who’s judging, keep the application simple, consistent and don’t bullshit.

AH: It’s been a very positive experience, working as a painter is by its very nature an isolating experience, so competitions like DX are crucial in getting your work seen. Also I think Core are quite unique as they have built up a support network that anyone can access. Also because I was selected, along with Tom and Marion, it’s been an added bonus to get the chance to show a larger group of paintings. You usually can tell if its going to be about the work by who is on the panel.

Tickled with love, 2007 © Marion Michell

MM: Well, it might have just been a small entry on my CV, but through the selection for Extra-Ordinary and consequently becoming involved in the various processes towards and around the exhibition (incl. this interview) I’m learning a lot. The connection with Core Gallery has become fruitful on so many levels, much more than I expected. So it’s always worth trying, it may lead to other things.

CP: Have you got any forthcoming news to divulge?

TB: A solo exhibition curated by Charlie Levine in November at Aedas Architects, Birmingham. I am also currently the featured artist at Obscura, an awesome non-profit organization run by artists and educators in Maine, USA: www.obscuraweb.org

AH: The Hackney Wicked Festival in the summer.

MM: I am one of 30 international artists selected for Kaunas Biennial TEXTILE 11: REWIND-PLAY-FORWARD, in Kaunas, Lithuania, this September. The brief was to link one’s work with a text, a narrative, to do with memory, where the personal, the social, the historical interweave. Both text (Pedestal for a legless girl) and work (crocheted series of 7 changelings) will be displayed in the exhibition.

CP: Thankyou very much, Tom, Alyson & Marion!

Interview with Rosalind Davis

2011-01-31T18:25:00.000-08:00

I am delighted to interview Rosalind Davis a practicing artist, writer, lecturer, elective member of AIR Artists Advisory Group, and co-director of Core Gallery.

Core Gallery launched in April 2010 with the experimental curatorial exhibition 'Exquisite Corpse' since then it has continued to thrive into a dynamic and innovative space for contemporary arts and has worked with around 100 emerging and established, international and UK artists and curators.

In this interview we look to the past and survey Core Gallery’s 2010 highlights, we find out the commitment and work that goes into sustaining a gallery. I get a peek into this year’s exciting programme and discuss the cultural relevance of artist run spaces.

8,000 Souls Part II, Oil and embroidery on cotton, 60 x 40 cm, 2009 © Rosalind Davis

Rosalind Davis is a graduate from the RCA (2005) and Chelsea College of Art (2003) She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally.

Davis also has a blog on Artist’s talking on visual arts directory a-n (www.a-n.co.uk) which has received much acclaim, winning one of 2009’s blog of the year. It was also selected by Matt Roberts (Matt Roberts Arts) as a choice blog of the month in July 2009.

February 2011>>

CP: Can you tell us about Core Gallery’s ethos and how this is unique within Deptford’s art community?

RD: Core Gallery invites curators into the space to explore their practices, they are free to develop ideas and bring in artists that they feel will fit; they work without limitations as much as possible. We in return do our utmost to promote and facilitate their shows, connecting them with other artists, spaces and opportunities wherever possible.

The Deptford Arts community is a very exciting one and each space has its uniqueness and our colleagues here have been very warm and inviting, if it had not been for such a rich artistic landscape here then it is unlikely we would have set up the gallery – we felt we would like to contribute somehow and in turn create something exciting in an underused space which would also feed into our studio artist’s practice and nurture networks.

Here are two very good quotes from 2 curators we worked with at Core in 2010 which does better than I in expressing what Core is about:

“One of the few truly eclectic contemporary art spaces in London, Core Gallery's first year of exhibitions and events has been diverse, thought provoking and substantial.

As a writer/curator Core Gallery has provided me with the space, the support and the network to develop my ideas, try out new things and showcase new and emerging artists. Core Gallery is proving to be a vital addition to the South East London art community.”

Andrew Bryant

“Working with Core Gallery is an energising and inspiring experience for me as a curator. It embodies many of the most positive aspects of artist led spaces, acting as a platform for risk taking, experimentation and diversity of practice with real commitment to and engagement with the development of the local arts ecology”

Nick Kaplony

Artist Talk: The Eighteenth Emergency, 2010 © Core Gallery

CP: William Morris declared in his 1884 lecture ‘Art & Socialism’ that: “Association instead of competition, social order instead of individualist anarchy” were the ways to free creativity and return it to the working man. How pertinent would you say that this statement is today? What associations have arisen from the conception of Core Gallery?

RD: I believe through sharing knowledge and working together we can only strengthen artists roles and improve our situations. Association is better than competition, that way you can build a community from which you can nurture and sustain yourself, your career and others.

At Core we have also set something of a new precedent in terms of our associate members, who are not actually in the studio space itself but contribute significantly to the space such as Jane Boyer and yourself and the artists who contribute to the space or education programme.

I spent 5 years pursuing my own career (and still do) after leaving RCA and it was time to expand myself through the expansion of my own practice through the gallery and it is something I find very fulfilling and rewards me tenfold. Running the gallery and the hard work we do inspires generosity from others in a mutually beneficial way.

JooHee Hwang, Installation View, Sisyphus exhibition © Core Gallery

CP: The programme last year promoted an experimental approach to exhibition-making and placed a strong focus on curatorial concepts. How do you plan to maintain that this year?

RD: This year our exhibition programme is going to continue to be experimental, focusing a little closer to home with myself, Elizabeth Murton and Jane Boyer all curating exhibitions rather than just having guest curators.

Two shows I shall be curating this year: one with Jane Boyer of our DX winners ‘Extra-Ordinary’ in April and an exhibition called ‘Home’ with Annabel Tilley in October. With home, we are exploring this theme in the widest sense of the word- a place of fragility, transition and identity from a cross generation of artists. Artists so far for this project include Graham Crowley, Delaine Le Bas, Rich White, Freddie Robins, Peter Davis, Kate Murdoch, Rose Wylie, Lucy Austin, Emily Speed myself and Annabel Tilley.

I am finding the process of curating a very interesting, analytical, critical and exploratory role. I am testing new muscles and learning an awful lot. Also working in partnership is something I very much enjoy, the debate, the conversations which lead you to interesting new paths. It is a delight.

We are also delighted to invite back Nicholas Kaplony and Andrew Bryant and we are very excited to be working with Coexist, a dynamic artist led space in Southend in a collaborative project with our studio members that will tour from Coexist to Core at the end of 2011.

CP: In Jane Boyer’s interview I asked; “What do you think the key is to creating a sustainable artist-run space?” Jane answered, “co-operation… honesty, integrity, trust, sharing, responsibility, communication.” What other strategies are also key to a gallery’s survival and what will you be implementing this year?

RD: I concur with Jane, she has pretty much nailed it: Strong shows, an awareness of the need to be accessible, to be good at promotion and marketing.

Last year we had 11 shows, 3x open studios, 1 community workshop, loads of art talks and it was rather overwhelming and not exactly sustainable (somehow we managed it) so this year we are having less shows and already have our 2011 programme sorted and so it is more manageable for me – so I would say also that balance is also key.

I would conclude in saying that generosity is part of the backbone of what we are doing here, to artists and curators who work with the space and they are equally generous and supportive of us so I think that is part of the success of artist led spaces. I think artists like the freedom of not working with a commercial gallery- it’s a very nurturing way of working, you don’t just feel like a commodity and that is essential and empowering for artists to feel their integrity is being respected and uncompromised.

CP: In an AIR interview with Jack Hutchinson you stated that: “In art education there should be compulsory professional practice for artists, which is essential if new graduates wish to survive in the art world and even get a sense of their newly qualified direction. It is a wilderness out there and you need to do your research.” How important are internships for new graduates? Can you describe the internship programme you have established and how it has added to the dynamics of the gallery?

RD: I think the internship programme is very important. I value my interns highly and seek to harness their strengths and push them to learn and follow projects that they are passionate about. I have three interns at the moment- Jo who has been with us for about 6 months and helps deal with audience development, Jasvinder who has been sorting and jazzing up our website and creating some fantastic graphics for printed materials.

Charlie Norwood is also joining the gallery team (previously at Goldsmiths) and is going to be undertaking some art writing for the space- critiquing shows or possibly writing essays to accompany the exhibitions which will be a wonderful addition.

Without them, our studio artists and our associate members, core gallery would not exist. They in turn are great supporters of the space. I am very pleased to say that one of our interns has gone onto do a curatorial internship at the Tate.

I think part of the role of the gallery is about good practice and we pass this onto our interns. Core, at every level, gives people room to manage their own projects – such as these wonderful Core Gallery interviews which again increases our profile, is a fantastic educational tool and also contributes to your own career.

The Eighteenth Emergency: Exhibition shot, 2010 © Core Gallery

CP: Core Gallery’s is re-launching this year with a show in February curated by Andrew Bryant? What can we expect from this show?

RD: This is the second time Core shall be working with Andrew Bryant: his first show the Eighteenth Emergency was a very intelligent experimental show which I really enjoyed and learned from and I know we can expect something similar this year.

I cannot divulge too much more than that about the exhibition at this stage except that the show is going to be exploring the use of technology and within art.

The artists are: Jim Prevett, Niklas Tafra, Chad Burt, Daniel Lichtman, Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh and Adrianna Palazzolo all of whom studied or are studying at Goldsmiths. The work I have heard about so far has sounded compelling, amusing, strong in concept and execution.

The Eighteenth Emergency: Exhibition shot, 2010 © Core Gallery

CP: A question that is frequently recurrent and is the title of a recent symposium held at Whitechapel is: Art: what is the use? Speaking on behalf of an active artist and gallery director, in your opinion what is art’s use? Any why more than ever is this question crucial?

RD: Artists are incredible. What the general public don’t understand about artists is that they are talented, not just at the art bit. Practising artists know that this is not the only thing we have to do: out of necessity one has to do your own marketing, research and development, manage people, projects, understand law and legal frameworks, create business plans, business development, marketing strategies, organize and manage finance, pr, network endlessly, be adept at negotiation and writing funding applications, leading and managing people, audience development, collector development, education, teaching, professional practice, social engagement and politics. Surviving rejection, funding cuts, knockbacks to name but a few things.....

Out of the desire to survive and sustain and to nurture we learn countless skills: we are analytical, thoughtful, empathetic, compassionate, passionate, philosophical and aware of countless issues.

We draw on a range of skills, experiences, cultures. We are endlessly creative. We are endlessly self educating, self critical, self directive. We challenge ourselves endlessly, we adapt and we try over and over. That takes courage, it all does.
The creative sector works damn hard at being everything we need to be to survive and you know what, we are pretty talented at all this plus the actual making. We need to be recognised and valued further for our contributions to this world. Don’t forget artists are needed, and should be appreciated.

Alyson Helyer, Marion Michell, Tom Butler

CP: Can you tell us about the much anticipated show that is with 2010’s Deptford X Open competition winners; Alyson Helyer, Marion Michell and Tom Butler?

RD: The exhibition is called Extra-Ordinary and will be at the end of April. Jane Boyer and I shall be curating this exhibition and the three artist’s works are going to create a very intelligent show exploring the transformation, subversion and distortion of the normal and everyday into something Extra Ordinary.

The title of the show also reflects the fact that these artists were selected ultimately from over 250 artists and have great promise.

At the moment we are pulling together the curatorial themes and the next thing shall be to visit the artists studios and select works for the show / discuss new possibilities.

Tom who lives and works in America at present is coming to London to be here during the exhibition which is a great bonus too.

Deptford X Open Competition, 2010 © Core Gallery

CP: You have a blog (Becoming Part of Something). That followed the emergence and development of Core Gallery. Can you tell us how this has been useful to profiling the gallery and gaining a larger audience?

RD: Extremely useful! A blog opens up opportunities for dialogue with artists, curators and many others. The blog is quite unique in the sense that there aren’t many blogs about running a gallery space. It is often about ones own practice so it gives an interesting insight into the amount of work a gallery can do and demonstrates the integrity of our space which then also brings in supporters amongst the artistic and wider community who are now contributing to the space in one way or another. I had not quite expected such a thing, such generosity!

I am as well as others very grateful about the artists talking platform on a-n, it is such a fantastic platform for critical engagement.

One of the most important developments through the blog was the involvement of Jane Boyer as an associate member of Core who has been incredible in the helping of the running of the gallery since Autumn last year.

To expand as well: the support we get from other artists due to the blog is down to the honesty of it I think. The practical challenges. I have a genuine passion for artists and I am constantly fascinated by their practices- I celebrate those things through my blog. At times as well I demonstrate my sheer exhaustion! I think it’s important to be realistic about the challenges artists face and the difficulties of juggling my own practice and my many different roles as artist, teacher, writer, gallery manager, project coordinator and now AIR advisory member.

I also had a letter published in a-n about the workings of an open submission as it is fairly controversial issue amongst artists- (where does the money go to, how is this justified etc) explaining how much work open submissions can take. We have a huge responsibility to the artists we work with to get things right and to change the way artists are treated for the better.

We shall actually be discussing the usefulness of blogs at a future Nuts and Bolts Workshop as part of DIY Educate partnered with a-n.

CP: You were recently elected to the AIR Artists Advisory Group, how do you plan on fulfilling this role and representing and campaigning for artist’s causes?

RD: It was an incredible accolade to be nominated to AIR, to be part of a group that shall contribute an insightful, balanced, representative view on current issues faced by the creative sector, to engage others in a proactive manner with the aim of helping and tackling challenges to achieve the goals faced within the creative sector.

I think that we need to collectively create change in current Government policies, public opinion, employment, galleries etc. Education as well is a hugely important issue for me. Part of my election agenda was as follows and so I hope in the 4 years that I shall be on the AIR council that I shall have been able to contribute towards these goals I have set myself.

Air Event, 2010 © Core Gallery

Helping artists directly by providing them with tools which can enable them to navigate and maximise their impact on the art world while avoiding the pitfalls.

Facilitating the development of its members by growing the artist community and representation of artists within cultural institutions.

Creating a structured educational programme of artists’ talks to educate others from our own experiences and giving beneficial advice to advance artist’s careers.

Promoting the interests of AIR members by effectively building key relationships and ensuring the interests and views of artists are understood and acted upon.

Developing the arts by building networks of artists and institutions either directly or indirectly facilitating creative partnerships and arts events.

Increase our visibility and emphasising our strengths as a culturally important sector to the public so that we can gain more support for our issues.

Helping to Empower Artists as a group not only within the commercial world of galleries but also the wider cultural strata, to be considered as important as any other social commentator working for example alongside government.

CP: Core Gallery has already received a considerable amount of support from its Cor Blimey studio members, associate members, invited artists and curators, but how can people become more involved in supporting the gallery?

RD: We are looking for patrons, sponsors, supporters on every level! We definitely need more financial support as we have no funding to run the gallery and there is an opportunity for people to contribute with a donation, or to purchase a core gallery chair which is giving an important resource to the space and is a very manageable £10.

In addition we are very open to people being involved in the space whether it be; helping mount or take down a show, invigilating, flyering etc! A little help can go a long way! Just get in touch, see our support pages or buy a chair!

We are also happy to have the joining of a new associate gallery member Becky Hunter, an artist, art critic and writer who is going to be looking after our press side of things. Basically the door is always open and people can contribute by just coming and enjoying the shows and passing our info onto others.

All our DIY educators are supporting the space which enables us to provide something even more to our audience and community.

CP: As well maintaining a full exhibition programme Core Gallery facilitates and runs an education programme: DIY Educate. Can you outline what this entails?

RD: DIY Educate is a contemporary education programme run by artists, curators and other art professionals to encourage artistic development for those seeking to further their career in art.

From peer-led and one to one critiques, professional practice workshops as well as a number of artist’s and curator lectures, DIY Educate provides opportunities to learn, network, share ideas and knowledge, providing impetus for artists to develop their practice. DIY Educate also gives practical guides and resources to help artists survive in an unstable and competitive climate, making the most of their skills. How to get work, how to get paid, how to maintain your career- artists have to do it all for themselves constantly and it is a lot to navigate. It is also the real stuff about surviving, the nitty gritty, that we can all feel disappointed and rejected at times but having worked with many artists and students and the last year at Core we saw there was a real need for artists at all levels (and not just when you first graduate) people can get isolated in their practice, be unaware of how best to push themselves whether creatively or even publicly. Another thing is that the London Art scene is huge, we are creating a nurturing pocket for those who may have just moved to London, giving them an opportunity to tap into a rather huge network.

Artist Talk: Psychometry exhibition © Core Gallery

CP: In your recent blog you give a rundown of the highs and lows of 2010. Can you describe briefly the highlights and the challenges you have faced. Also what can we look forward to in 2011’s exhibition programme?

RD: I think everything to do with the gallery has been a challenge but a rewarding one. I have been stretched– particularly intellectually. The skills I have gained, the amazing artists and curators I have met, that is beyond measure.

Having never run a gallery before I am proud of all that we collectively achieved and this year we have more support structures in place and even more support than we started out, so I feel very positive about 2011.

The challenges I think will often be the same challenges: trying to find a balance, trying to do everything I can in the time I have, finances…… but we will just get better at this more.

CP: If you could write a Core Gallery manifesto for 2011, on behalf of the arts collective, what would it entail?

RD: Really simple things which is not exactly a manifesto but is how I hope that we can all be:

Be generous
Maintain your integrity
Be respectful and generous to others
Nurture art and artists
Pull your weight
Explore ideas
Do not limit yourself or others- be open, seek to understand, to educate yourselves and others.
Professionalism
Say thank you (and please)
Remember that people are not perfect so try not to throw stones.

CP: Is there any news or projects that we haven’t discussed that you would like to divulge?

RD: I have just started working with Matt Roberts as his exhibition manager which is very exciting. I shall be assisting specifically with the Salon photo prize, the Salon video Prize and Julie Cockburns solo show at Matt Roberts as well as working on the catalogues. Matt is an example of someone who is extremely professional, friendly and extremely generous and a very intelligent curator. He has been a great mentor to me and Core Gallery and I am really thrilled about learning more from him and being involved in another fantastic space.

I have also been asked to be on the judging panel for the University of the Arts, Xhibit 2011, which is UAL’s most prestigious annual student exhibition, now in its 14th year. The central aim of Xhibit is to showcase high quality student work from across the numerous colleges of the university, ranging from painting and photography to film, fashion, sculpture, and beyond. The exhibition is expected to reflect the diversity of talent within the university. It is an unexpected honour to be asked.

CP: Thankyou very much Rosalind

Interview with Jane Boyer

2010-11-15T18:16:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to interview Jane Boyer, our new associate member. Boyer joined the 'Core Gallery Collective' in October. Since then she has been involved in the development and sustainability of the gallery. In this interview I gain insight into her practice, I get a preview of the work she is exhibiting for the forthcoming show 'Relay' and find out how she supports the gallery as an associate member.

image courtesy of the artist

Boyer states in a recent blog: ''I am delighted to be a new member of Cor Blimey Arts. We're already busy at work and it is such a pleasure working with an energetic group of like-minded people.''

Boyer studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1986. Since then she has participated in several exhibitions in the western United States including California, Oregon and Utah. She was an exhibiting artist in the 1988 Nuclear Visions exhibition organized by the Oregon Coast Arts Council which explored the condition of living in a nuclear age. Which toured the United States and Canada for two years.

In 1998 Boyer changed her medium to painting. With discipline and diligence she taught herself to paint. Boyer's current work reinterprets gesture not as a renewal of Modernist theory but she uses gesture to recall the body in time. Placing the body in time, places it in relation to everything else happening at that same moment. It is in this context that the self exists and is also obliterated. She is currently living and working in France.

November >>

CP: Can you tell us about the collaborative work “Extreme Narrative” that you are exhibiting for the forthcoming ‘Relay Exhibition’?

JB: It is a work based in identity and 'the other'. What I mean by that is the identity represented in Extreme Narrative is in relation to some other person or situation. It is this context which places identity in relief. Extreme Narrative looks at how an identity is interrupted by context, by 'the other'.

CP: Why did you choose to invite guest artist 'Annabel Tilley' to show work alongside yours? What revelations do you think will arise from this collaboration? And how will it re-contextualise the meaning of your '6 obliterations'?

JB: I had been thinking of how I could work with Annabel for some time, even before I joined Cor Blimey, so I had some ideas outlined in my notes about what our work shared in common. When the opportunity arose, I re-read my notes and contacted Annabel straight away. I think the pairing of our work presents a broad view of interrupted identity in that my 6 obliterations offer a psychological balast to Annabel's 64 Fritzl's and her Fritzl's give a tangible sense of reality to my 6 obliterations.

The moment I saw the work together I could see the meanings of both bodies of work merge to create meaning in 360° - meaning became sort of three dimensional, encompassing abstraction and reality. Annabel's work is based on an actual news story and my work is based in the conception of the psychology and emotion within these 6 subjects - I find this dimensional meaning compelling.

I was struggling to understand why 'innocence' was an obliteration. I could see it as a disarming force, sort of an opposition to negative influence, but that wasn't a fully satisfying rendering. I did a little research into Josef Fritzl and found the meaning that I knew intuitively but couldn't pinpoint. His claims of 'innocence' in saying, and I'm paraphrasing, 'you don't have children with someone if you don't want children,' were utterly destructive to the humanity of his daughter and the children of this forced union - even beyond the other horrendous crimes he had committed against all of them.

CP: You have recently become an associate member of the Core Gallery arts collective, can you tell us what attributes you bring, and the vital role you play?

JB: I was self employed with my husband for over 16 years as a craft jeweller in The States, so I have a background in business, learned the hard way - by doing. All of the organizational skills, marketing skills and general professionalism that I developed come with me. I see my role as one of supportive propulsion. I hope to help move things forward in the paths already laid out.

6 obliterations - denial

12.5" x 9.5"

acrylic, graphite, ink, pastel, gesso on paper

image courtesy of the artist

CP: Since joining Core Gallery you have gained access to an extended community of artists. How do you think this will impact the "moment of creation” within your practice?

JB: Well, every stimulus goes in and comes back out. For me, that process manifests in that moment of creation. I've worked hard to learn to trust that moment because it is the ultimate unknown. Not only are your movements unpredicted, but the reasons for them are also unknown. And there is no knowing where you're headed. But that is why I said in my blog, 'I never face the white unarmed.' Every time I go to work all the stimuli I've accumulated goes with me, that will no doubt include the stimuli from my colleagues in Cor Blimey.

I've learned to trust the moment that stimuli comes back out and listen to it.

CP: What do you think the key is to creating a sustainable artist-run space?

JB: Cooperation. It assumes everything else that is vital to success - honesty, integrity, trust, sharing, responsibility, communication. If there is a basic agreement to cooperation among members, then I truly believe obstacles can be overcome, or at least those obstacles become defined and separation can take place, if needed. It's like any partnership, it takes work, but if the will is there the partnership can thrive.

Vif! - solo exhibition August 2010, La Galerie d'art à la campagne

Charente-Maritime France

CP: You have a blog (Working in Isolation: a dialog with history) on Artists Talking. Can you tell us what discussions and dialogues have arisen as a consequence? And how this has been useful to profiling yourself as an artist?

JB: I am so grateful to a-n for the Artists Talking platform. So many discussions have come from my blog it's hard to know where to start. A big discussion of identity has come about with David Minton. He is very exacting and he has demanded some keen explanations from me about how context defines and obliterates the self. I've had wonderful discussions with Rob Turner about technology and nature. I have several dialogues with other artists which happen privately via email but were initiated by Artists Talking. They detail practice, theory, our 'gods' in art, etc. Without question, all this writing and dialogue has helped me to clarify my ideas.

It's damn hard, but I love to be challenged for an explanation of my work or concepts.

CP: Within your paintings we get a fleeting glimpse of ‘gesture’ and the presence of the ‘artist’. There is a Deleuzian sense of becoming and an unresolved quality within the work. Can you talk about the importance of transience within your paintings?

image courtesy of the artist

JB: We live in a universe of flux, everything moves. Transience is what is real for me. We all carry our histories to each present moment, so what was, is becoming and what is, was. There is no beginning or end, just moments of awareness.

I see 'presence' and 'gesture', for me the indicator of presence, as being fleeting, momentary. The world has changed so much and so rapidly I think the only hope we can have to state our presence is in a flash, as an inscription rather than an expression, to borrow an idea from Sean Burke, Jacques Derrida et al.

CP: Your practice is heavily engaged within the painting medium. However recently you mentioned that you have started to work with the photographic image again, can you talk about what direction this has taken? And how the two mediums inform one another?

JB: My photography has always been abstract, I feel that is an important thing and makes the transition practically seamless. Essentially, I can do different things with abstraction according to each medium. Photography allows me to work with what I 'see', painting allows me to work with what I 'feel' in a sensory, tactile sense. I think the precision of seeing, via photography guides my painting and the imperfection of my movements in painting animates my photography.

CP: Do you have any forthcoming projects / news to divulge?

JB: I'm going to be co-curating an exhibit with Rosalind Davis in the spring and I'm really looking forward to that. I want to develop a curating practice as well. I know it's a hip thing now to be an artist/curator, but I've been interested in curating for years and the opportunity for me to explore that is now with Core Gallery.

CP: What achievements would you like to reach in the coming year both professionally and as an artist?

JB: I suppose, at the moment, the two go hand-in-hand for me. I would like to do more work with sculpture, and this would require the space to make and present it. I'm thinking a lot about history right now and I'm noticing other references to history as I read. In my mind I'm dismantling the notion of history as linear and I want to explore that.

CP: Thank you very much Jane!

JB: Thank you Chantelle. I'm delighted to be a member of Cor Blimey, it's really exciting!

Interview with Nick Kaplony

2010-10-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

It is a pleasure to interview Nick Kaplony, a freelance curator, practicing artist and education officer at Battersea's Pump House Gallery. He is also the programme coordinator of Artquest.

Untitled (Siren) © Debbie Lawson

Kaplony is curator of the forthcoming exhibition at Core Gallery 'Psychometry', an exhibition of works by 12 contemporary artists that channel and manifest the intangible and invisible through their work. The exhibition takes its title from a practice employed by psychics and mediums, whereby past events and personal histories are divined through physical contact with an object.

I talk to him to find out his motivations on contemporary curating, more about the forthcoming show, and his recent developments within his work.

October >>

CP: Can you tell us about the forthcoming show at Core Gallery ‘Psychometry’?

Monkey No 6 © Peter Jones, 2007, 30.5cm x 25.5cm, oil on linen

NK: Psychometry is a group show that takes it title from a practice undertaken by spiritualists and psychics that allows them to ‘read’ the intangible attributes of an object by touching it, such as its history, or the history and emotions of the previous owner. It’s looking at artists who can be said to do a similar thing with their practice: Making intangible and invisible ideas associated with their subject and the materials they’re working with manifest and visible.

There are twelve artists including myself involved in this show Claire Haddon, Peter Jones, Sean Langton, Debbie Lawson, Sophie Molins, Michaela Nettell and Tom Simmons, Richard Paul, Helen Pynor, Melanie Stidolph, Karen Stripp. All with very different approaches.

Jungtis © Michaela Nettell and Tom Simmons, May 2008

To give you a flavour of some of the sort of thing to expect: Debbie Lawson’s carpet sculptures and furniture installations which take gallery visitors on a psychological journey through domestic space, where everyday things are eerily animated and the very fabric of the interior comes to life. Peter Jone’s paints meticulous portraits of old toy monkeys. The wear and tear of their history animates their features and imbues them with character and life. Richard Paul immaculately photographs seemingly disparate objects. The photographs are at once detached, poetic and evocative, the pairing of objects suggests not only a relationship between them but an overarching significance that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Range © Richard Paul

CP: You were recently involved in the judging panel of London Art Award 2010 that was part of the London Fringe Festival.? You said: ‘I see it as the Fringe Festival’s role to help discover hidden gems.’ What did the festival unearth and what were the highlights of the selected works?

NK: Well it’s the first year of the festival, so it’s really just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s already showed up the vast diversity of practice being undertaken. There are some impressive developments in painting particularly this year.

CP: You were involved in the Slowfall projects, an artist-led collective that held the aim of ‘creating local and international exhibitions of art in unconventional venues’. How important is the ‘space’ when considering the curation of a show?

NK: There are many different approaches to curating and putting an exhibition together. I enjoy working on exhibitions where the work has some kind of relationship to the space its being shown in. Particularly when exhibitions are put on in locations or buildings with a rich history of strong identity of their own. It’s a wasted opportunity to ignore that I think.

Installation shot from 'Ringing'. Exhibition in St Augustine's Tower, 2003 © Nick Kaplony

CP: The collaborative process has become a growing interest within contemporary curating, with exhibitions such as ‘Indian Highway’ at Serpentine Gallery, 2008 and Subversive Practices at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, 2009. What is that excites you about the polyphonic voice within the exhibition process?

NK: One thing to say is that I think curating is (ideally) a collaborative process even with only one curator involved, where the curator is collaborating with the artists they are working with. When a group takes on the task of curating much of what excites me about it can be said to be true of collaboration in any process: If its goes well several points of view bringing unexpected results, greater than the sum of its parts. There’s also a relinquishing of control which is liberating.

Vigour Mortis © Jock Mooney, Exquisite Corpse Exhibition

CP: What are the challenges and uncertainties, involved with putting a show together, such as: Exquisite Corpse, Core Gallery, 2010 which brought together 11 artists and curators. How did you effectively manage the collaborative process?

NK: It’s funny because Exquisite Corpse, though it was most certainly a collaborative exhibition, in that contributions came of several artists and curators, there was very little collaborative process in making it happen, no negation and no compromises that often play a part on collaboration. I set up a system, and a set of rules whereby curators/artists could make contributions to the show without having an overall vision of the exhibition. A chain of curators was created. Each curator then made a selection of work based on that of the previous curator in the chain. The work was placed in the space in the order that it was chosen.

Exquisite Corpse, Exhibition shot, 2010 © Core Gallery

CP: ‘Exquisite Corpse’ was an experimental approach to curating that presented the viewer with an insight into the selective processes involved. Was it your intent to demythologize the notion of the ‘exhibition’? Will this exhibition influence future projects?

NK: I was interested in how artwork is interpreted, and how people make connections between individual pieces. I thought that setting up this chain of selectors visitors would get a flavour of the processes and thinking involved in putting an exhibition together. I’m sure it will have an influence on future projects but I’m not quite sure how yet. Its bubbling away at the moment

CP: Where do you get your inspiration for curatorial projects and does your own practise inform your approach?

NK: Definitely, the sort of themes and ideas that I’m interested in my practice are also the things that I’m excited by as a curator (though not exclusively). In terms of what can lead me to develop ideas as a curator, it can be anything from a space, or sometimes I see an artist who’s work I particularly like, and then, gradually, as I come across other artists in my work, I can’t help but see connections and slowly the idea for a show is formed. This is very much what happened with Psychometry, the next exhibition I’m working on at Core gallery.

Breath, 2010 © Nick Kaplony

CP: What are you currently working on within your own practice?

NK: I’m working on a new video work called “Breath” which is an exciting departure for me. I haven’t worked with moving image before (well, barely). It’s leading me down an interesting path, looking at ideas around faith and medicine.

CP: How do you resignify artworks in order to create a fresh perspective that has a strong curatorial authorship?

NK: I think (hope!) that creating a sense of curatorial authorship isn’t my concern. In getting a body of work together inevitably the relationship between individual pieces in an exhibition colours the reading of the works, they resonate and effect each other, and I guess you try to create connection which highlight relationships that you have observed as a curator and also offer the possibility of new interpretations.

CP: As the programme coordinator of Artquest, the London-based service provider for visual artists. Would you have any advice to offer graduates, in preparing their degree shows? Approaching gallery spaces and the continuation of their careers?

NK: In a nutshell read the Artquest website! No, seriously everything that you need to know is on there and it’s an invaluable resource. But in terms of bite sized advice: Treat your degree show as it’s the beginning of your career as a professional artist, not as the end of your studies and with regards to approaching galleries, unless they specifically say they accept unsolicited proposals, don’t approach them cold! Build a relationship gradually.

CP: Do you think the economic downturn offers the possibility to cultivate a new landscape for the art world? What impact do you think this has on artists and institutions?

NK: I would use the word necessity rather than possibility. Its going to make it harder for everyone, but it will be interesting to see what direction practice takes when there is less money / funding leading the way.

CP: And finally if you could curate any show, with any artist/s and in any space what would it be?

NK: That’s tough. I’d love to do something in huge country manor, with a maze and sprawling grounds. As to the specifics of the artists it would depend on the location but something with a mix of young and more established practitioners.

Thank you Nick Kaplony!

Interview with Rachel Price

2010-10-19T06:21:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to interview Rachel Price an Independent Curator and Artist. In this interview I gain insight into the possibilities of sculpture, art’s political potential through contemporary curating and I find out about the highly anticipated exhibition ‘Sisyphus: The Absurd Hero’.

Price draws together the work of 7 exciting UK artists presenting new sculpture and video responding to the Greek Myth of Sisyphus. The exhibiting artists all explore notions of the absurd, futility and circularity in their practice whilst simultaneously displaying an immersion in the process, be it material or conceptual.

Price’s sculptural practice examines the often frustrating relationship between image and form, working on the assumption that our physical experience of the world helps inform our conceptual formation of it.

Alongside her studio practice Price works as an independent curator providing opportunities for emerging and established artists to produce new works in response to challenging curatorial themes. Price graduated from the University of Reading in 2006 and has exhibited throughout the UK.

> > October 2010

Still from ‘Daedalus’ © Rodney Dee

CP: Can you tell us more about the forthcoming exhibition at Core Gallery ‘Sisyphus: The Absurd Hero’?

RP: It was a case of a number of elements coming together at the same time and an attempt to articulate a general air of impotence and repetition in the art world. I was simultaneously researching the work of some absurdist writers, and revisited the works of Albert Camus and specifically

'Chandelier' © Nicholas Bailey

‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ which seemed particularly apt. As a sculptor the intense physicality of Sisyphus’s unrelenting toil to absolutely no end was such a bittersweet image, I had to investigate it further. Most notably I recall the line: “[ ] …..his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him the unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing”. The sentence carries such a weight, something I wanted to try to embody.

I had also just come across the work of Nick Bailey, a sculptor recently graduated from Wimbledon College of Art, whose work seemed to articulate this impotence and disappointment so well. From there I recruited the other artists, using the imagery of the Myth of Sisyphus as a springboard.

CP: Could you describe in detail how each of the artists respond to the Greek mythology of Sisyphus?

RP: Pleasantly surprised by the breath of interpretation the artists presented in relation to the myth, I came to view the notion of the absurd in a new light. But also how relevant they all believed the myth to be at this point time, the commitment and depth each artist had invested in their works and research was evident.

Starting with Nick Bailey, who was already dealing with a realm of mild disappointment and temptation in his work. However I should highlight the distinction between the tension in works like ‘magic missile’ where we are presented with the promise of release and the utter impotence of works like ‘The End and the Finish’ which seemed more appropriate in this context. Bailey’s works presented me with the biggest challenge editorially.

‘Life Pencil’ © Alexander Bates

My interest in Alexander Bates’ practice was his recent investigations into what defines something as an artwork. Rooted in previous laborious and repetitive works (‘No chewing in class’) and his rebelling what he identifies as a ‘very human compulsion to create order out of disorder’. Interestingly Camus purports that the absurd lies in the conflict between what we want (meaning/reasons) and what we are supplied with (formless chaos). Bates’ work ‘The Life of a Pencil’ is a drawing of a pencil, made using a pencil until the pencil runs out: A succinctly pointless, labour intensive and humourous work to the tune of some 60 metres.

Jim Bond’s kinetic work lends itself particularly well to the theme. The piece he is showing ‘Dust’ was made a couple of years ago and Bond presented it for Sisyphus. Bond uses the human condition as a springboard for his mechanical works, reductive and subtly humourous these works highlight the circular nature of the everyday. The disparity between the mechanical aesthetic and very human content of the work seems particularly relevant here.

‘Dust’ © Jim Bond

Rodney Dee‘s interest in Sisyphus lies in the perpetual nature of the act in relation to some higher purpose: “For wherein most rituals offer the allusion of transcendence; Sisyphus’ own efforts at pushing the rock are a testament to his absurdity – continually reinforced with every failed attempt. As a result his description as an ‘absurd hero’ is well deserved, for whilst he never reaches the apex of the hill, he is never fully released from the cycle either and therein lies the opportunity to try again”. Dee refers to the fabled architect Daedalus in his video work in which the story underpins mans innate desire to escape from the human condition whilst elevating himself to a celestial vantage point.

‘Continuous Space’ © Joo Hee Hwang

Joo Hee Hwang’s questioning of the idea of territory results from personal experience of finding herself in unfamiliar surrounds. She explores what she terms as ‘subjectivity of space’ through her vast sculptural installations. Hwang’s specific interest in the myth lies in the notion of a world within a world, the realities we create for ourselves. For Sisyphus, the mountain became a world within itself, a new reality.

Matthew Kay’s work ‘After This all has Passed’ was a result of Kay’s resistance to the idea of futility and nihilism in relation to the myth of Sisyphus. “What may appear to be a blank screen is in fact animated from hundreds of laboriously made black felt tip drawings. Challenging the notion of nihilism, that anything is futile, it questions the existence of impotent art objects or an empty gesture; are there really such things?

My personal interest in the myth lies in the physicality of the task without reward or meaning the action is for it’s own sake and Sisyphus his own master - this is an extension of my interest in the interplay between our physical and conceptual worlds, and that a work of art should strike a balance between the two. The work ‘Labour the Point (Water Torture)’ is essentially tautologuous, going to unnecessary, repetitive lengths to little conceptual gain. The work literally outweighs itself.

CP: What can we expect from Part 2 of Sisyphus: The Absurd Hero?

RP: Originally I split the works of the 12 artists into two parts as there was a huge distinction between: ‘resistance’ (retained hope in face of absurd) and ‘acceptance’ (almost celebrated futility, labour intensive) works. I later decided to present a more balanced view of these interpretations within both shows. For example: presenting Matthew Kay’s resistance of the notion of nihilism alongside Nick Bailey’s casual acceptance of it. I think in Part II this disparity is more pronounced. I think there’s a humour about this show. A device perhaps we employ in the face of the absurd.

'You’ve Carried Your Ashes Now Carry Your Fire’ © Matthew Kay

CP: Would you say that this exhibition is a response to the continual ‘circular’ nature of an artist’s practice?

RP: It’s part of it, but more so a feeling of lack of progress or inventiveness in general, that we are recycling ideas. The circularity of art practice is inevitable, the more you work the more problems you face. No line of enquiry is ever concluded, it’s about feeding your own curiosity.

CP: You recently had a solo show with ‘Squid and Tabernacle’ that was held in a shipping container. What were the considerations and challenges of working site specifically? And how will you and the other artists utilise the space at Core Gallery?

RP: Squid and Tabernacle approached me at a good time with the challenge of this space. As a nomadic gallery they select their artists in response to a site, an extremely novel approach to curatorial practice. Artists should be able to contextualise their practice temporally, geographically and conceptually, this project forced me to do this. The Hartwell site was literally a hole in the ground when I arrived in April, the sea container empty and ready for me to do as I pleased.

‘Planning Permission’ Installation View, 2010 © Rachel Price

The final installation ‘Planning Permission’ utilised reclaimed materials from the immediate area to recreate ‘unfeasible architectural models’ by means of both reflecting; the state of flux of the area, but also the boundaries we should push when re-thinking our urban environment. As part of the installation I tipped the container at an angle and filled a corner with concrete as to utilise the maximum potential of the space, something I never could have achieved in a gallery. The work of projects like Squid & Tabernacle that get contemporary art out in the public realm are integral in rethinking the way we present and view art.

In terms of Core, there’s an energy which I think comes from being slap bang in the middle of two rows of studios. The shows I’ve seen there so far have had a painting bias, but I relish a challenge to rethink the established conventions of a space.

CP: As an ‘artist working curatorially’ can you tell us how the collaborative process of working with the artists is enhanced? Do you feel that by working collectively in this way provides the artists with a greater autonomy?

RP: As an artist my concerns aren’t going to be that far detached from any other artist working now, so to provide a platform to voice those concerns is important. For instance I was struck by the response I received for my call for artists for Sisyphus, what I believed to be a fairly specific line of enquiry within my own practice was actually reflecting the feeling of quite a few artists at this time.

I think I decided to approach other artists with opportunities to show in response to quite restrictive themes to force the reassessment of the relevance of our practice. Something I think curators are failing to provide at the moment. Moreover because of the dire economic climate, especially with the further cuts to arts funding, the stance of individual artists and institutions can go one of two ways: The individual artist tries to make their practice more financially viable and ‘plays it safe’ or will look for ways of independently funding curatorial projects, free of the constraints of funding applications will have uncensored reign over their content, and that’s quite exciting.

CP: Previously you curated an exhibition at Lewisham Arthouse titled ‘Skinflint’. The artists deliberately used ‘lo-fi materials’ at a time where there was a ‘trend for an outlandish decadence in approaches to art-making’. This exhibition seemed to be a reaction to consumerism & the art market, but also highlighted a change in how we consider art-making. Can you talk about arts political potential through exhibition making?

Installation View ‘Skinflint’ 2009 © Rachel Price

RP: For me it was completely reactionary, I do believe it was the revelation of Damien Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull in the middle of an economic downturn that did it for me. To this day I still can’t understand where he was coming from with that work. So it was not so much about the dire situation of the economy at large more so the role of the artist in reaction to it. Hirst was case in point.

For me the role of an artist is as an inventor, and when means are restricted we are forced to invent, to rethink. The artists I included in this show were artists I admired for their unique utilisation of materials.

Exhibition View: SkinFlint, 2009 © Ralph Dorey

In addition I think the work of an artist is always inextricably linked to the environment it is being made in, either consciously or unconsciously. The job of the curator is to pick up on these trends artist to artist and make them relevant to the now. Individual artists tend to be so engrossed in their practice that they don’t see the immediate relevance or urgency of the work they are making. Exhibition making, in turn, is an excellent platform for the ‘feel’ of a time to be projected back out into the public sphere.

CP: What are you currently working on within your practice? And what is important to you as sculptor?

‘Nervous Wreck 002’ 2010 © Rachel Price

RP: My work on Sisyphus has been very research heavy, and has lead me down some disparate lines of enquiry. I continue to research the absurd but am also very interested in the nature of creativity itself in psychological enquiry, namely the work of Mendick who identified the creative object as ‘the union of two distinct and disparate nodes’.

In this respect the work of comedians like Stewert Lee and Mitch Hedberg are as important as any fine artist. I am taking this idea quite literally in my studio investigations and applying it to my image/form studies.

As a sculptor this element of experimentation is hugely important, both in material and conceptual investigations. I’m concerned that sculpture is becoming too language dependent, that the role of instinct and material investigation is becoming obsolete. A balance between head and body is important.

I recently revisited the work of Hermann Obrist at the Leeds institute and remember thinking ‘this is scupture’. Obrist invented form, new ways of negotiating and viewing our physical world – that is what a sculptor should do. The dance between abstraction and representation, somewhere between physical truth and subjective experience, but made with an empathy for the human condition.

‘Delusions of Grandeur’ 2006 © Rachel Price

A sculptor should favour experience over representation, this is particularly relevant now in the digital age and presents all sculptors with a dilemma. I myself am a self confessed luddite and worry about the implications of over over-reliance on images and digital reproduction and how it will effect learning and progress, especially at a developmental level in children.

CP: You reach new possibilities within your work by your liberal use of materials. Can you talk about how your choice of materials adds to the physicality of form and to the conceptual narrative?

‘Sweet Enough’ © Rachel Price

RP: I use a lot of reclaimed materials that tend to be laden with their own preconceptions and assumed uses. I find it interesting how materials are often assigned a gender as a result of the above. In addition I find images hugely seductive, but misleading, in pairing image with form I attempt to highlight the disparity between representation and the reality of the physical world.

There’s a lot of destruction in the process – bending, impaling, snapping, and this is hugely important in the way I approach and rethink the use of materials. As I’ve mentioned before, the physical presence of the work should serve as a tool to affirm the conceptual narrative. They should be interdependent.

CP: Do you have any forthcoming projects / news to divulge?

RP: ‘Sisyphus: part deux’ is in the offing. At the moment my curatorial projects are taking precedence over my own studio practice. I’m also working on a research proposal for the upcoming residencies at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.

CP: You are based at ASC studios in New Cross, situated within a growing community of artists. How important has this been to you in the development within your work as both a curator and an artist?

RP: The New Cross/ Deptford areas are a great place to be for an artist. I find the freedom of the artist led studios and galleries highly conducive to an experimental and risk taking approach as an artist and curator, projects like Deptford X reflect the needs of the artist but are also sensitive to the area in which the art is shown. Conversely I also think that it is important, in a growing community of artists, not to become isolated from movements in the rest of London and the UK, and indeed internationally - that a dialogue should be encouraged both within the community and with the wider sphere.

CP: Thank you Rachel Price!

For more information, please visit: www.rachelpricesculpture.co.uk

Interview with Patrick Morrissey & Hanz

2010-09-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

It is a pleasure to interview Patrick Morrissey and Clive Hancock (Hanz). In this interview I find out about the forthcoming show ‘Monochrome Set’ at Core gallery. Which is a collaborative project between Patrick, Hanz and ceramicist Leyla Folwell. The title of this show is intended to bind the works together under a theme which may evoke any number of associations with Pop culture and kinetiscism.

'Two People in a Room' 2010 © Patrick Morrissey

Morrissey’s work represents a development of ideas initiated whilst taking his degree at Goldsmiths College. Morrissey utilizes geometric and numeric systems to create a visual field or ground which contradicts and simultaneously informs the audience’s perception of each piece.

Hanz has evolved his method as an outsider artist. He started to produce art in the late 1970s, very much influenced by the punk art and music scene. He uses ‘discarded’ material in his work.

September 2010 >>

CP: Can you tell us about your forthcoming exhibition ‘Monochrome Set’ at Core Gallery?

Patrick: Hanz did a piece of work some years ago; unusually for him it was in black and white instead of his highly colourful boxes.

Hanz: It was my Millennium box, obviously done in the year 2000 and is shown here in the ‘Monochrome Set’.

Patrick: So we decided at that time to create black and white work at some point for a future exhibition. When Leyla joined Cor Blimey Arts, we both found something about her strong sculptural forms that appealed to us. We invited her to contribute some of her work to ‘Monochrome Set’, we were pleased that she accepted and she produced the work you see before you now.

CP: Given the title, how do you selectively choose colour within your works?

Patrick: For ‘Monochrome Set’ the choice was easy, all the emphasis has been placed on the structures / language of the pieces. I usually work with colours that vibrate.

Hanz: ‘Monochrome Set’ has given me the freedom to experiment with the language of my work also. In my colour boxes I choose a set of colours from the environment around me, then use a numerical system to place them on the tubes and cones.

Patrick: This is our first exhibition where we have created a body of work with a specific theme allowing us to go back to the very basics of our constructivist / concrete work and has re-affirmed our original direction.

Millenium Box, 2000 19"' x 19" © Hanz

CP: Hanz and Patrick, you have shared a studio space together since 2008. Can you tell us how your work has developed? How important is the studio practice.

Patrick: We have worked and developed in parallel for many years but since sharing a studio we have been very free with our ideas. We are both happy to have an open dialogue concerning our work and the creative processes involved

Hanz: We both work in very different media and can share a way of working in the studio but the work still retains its individuality. The work always seems to hang well together.

Patrick: Studio practice is all everything is about the work.

CP: What artists are you inspired by?

Patrick: Jose Patricio, Kenneth Martin, Francois Morellet, Sol Le Witt, Bridget Riley.

Hanz: Victor Vasarely. Mathew Frere-Smith, Fernand Leger.

Howeldrehevel, 8" x 8 " © Hanz

CP: Hanz, can you tell us how your abstracted relief constructions are formed and the materials you use?

Hanz: I use 1” long pieces of electrical conduit and the cones are made of paper, in my random boxes anything goes.

CP: Why do you choose discarded materials?

Hanz: Discarded materials / found objects can be used to great effect; the colours and textures can create amazing patterns, initially I created collages using packaging and cut up magazines, it was very anarchic. I found an off cut of conduit and started to place textures and colours in the tube and the work just seemed to develop from there. Patrick encouraged me to look at the constructivist’s work; which was a revelation to me. In my random boxes there is still an element of that anarchy but the tubes contain and order it.

Exhibition view at Nolia’s gallery 2010

CP: Patrick, you utilise geometric and numeric systems to create a visual field. Can you describe this process and how do you begin to create your paintings?

Patrick: I usually prepare for a piece of work by having an idea of a form literally in my ‘minds eye’. I try this out on paper, producing and working through several drawings until I feel I have achieved my original intention. The ideas are fundamentally instinctive, but are reigned in or structured according to the geometric / numeric development of each piece. All the work has a developmental progression contained within a framework, but there can be deliberate variation or adjustment; which will contradict the progressive order of the elements concerned. The results, by the paintings very nature, will be to automatically create a field or mid-ground between it and the viewer, so that perspective becomes irrelevant and the relationship (hopefully) between work and viewer will be totally direct or physiological, i.e., the experience of looking will become the initial reaction, perhaps followed by associations within the viewer’s own experience.

CP: How do you both incorporate kinetic techniques within your art?

Patrick: The kinetic aspect of the work is a bi-product of the process.

Hanz: As my work has a depth to it, all of the surfaces cannot be seen at the same time. As the viewer interacts with the work its innate qualities are revealed.

CP: Do you have any forthcoming projects / news to divulge?

Patrick: We have both started a series of new works and are currently in negotiation with other established artists in the U.S.A, Europe and London with a view to holding a group exhibition in the New Year.

CP: Thank you very much!

Interview with James Wright

2010-09-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

It is a pleasure to interview James Wright a selected artist in Core Gallery’s Open Exhibition for Deptford X 2010. Wright is one of Eighteen artists who were selected from an outstanding pool of entries from across the world by Graham Crowley, one of the UK’s most distinguished living painters, Matt Roberts of Matt Roberts Art and Kate Jones, Marketing Director of John Jones.

The Shrouding, 2009

Wright graduated from the Royal College of Art. His work uses a vocabulary of symbols and motifs, often from historical painting but many of his own making, to denote the themes of original works which the artist revisits. James Wright was singled out by Kay Saatchi in the 2008 Selfridges Art Exhibition: 'Anticipation' as well as Jerwood painting and drawing prizes as well as being shortlisted for John Moores 25. James recently completed a residency at Gloucester Cathedral, culminating in two solo shows: ‘As It Was In the Beginning’ and ‘Memento Mori’.

I speak to Wright to find out about; his motivations for applying to the Open Competition 2010, the work he submitted, how significant the residency at Gloucester Cathedral was in the development of his work and the possibilities of his current practice.

September 2010 >>

CP: What attracted you to apply to the Core Gallery’s Open submission Competition at Deptford X 2010?

JW: I was excited by Mark Titchner’s statement of intent and felt that my work bore a direct relationship. This along with wanting to be part of a much larger exhibition is what attracted me to apply. I also thought that the calibre of the selectors helped to ensure an exciting and stimulating show.

The Sacrifice, 2009

CP: Can you tell us about the work that you submitted?

JW: I submitted three drawing’s that each appropriate particular works from the annals of art history. The Sacrifice traces the composition of Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of St Peter, The Shrouding is informed by the work of Gerard David and his lamentation paintings in particular, and The Entombment is after Rogier Van Der Weyden’s The Entombment of Christ. Each drawing displays a reflected image which, along with the subject, reminds us of the fragility of life and the subsequent passing of time.

CP: Your work is informed by religious iconography. How significant was the artist in residence program at Gloucester Cathedral in the development of your work?

JW: For some time now, works of art from the Early Renaissance, with their particular idiosyncrasies and peculiar inaccuracies have informed my practice. The residency at Gloucester Cathedral afforded me the time to fully immerse myself within the work. I think that people naturally assume that I am religious person, but that is not the case, and it is certainly not a pre-requisite of the residency program. The fact that my work often addresses Christian beliefs, visualised in an apparent secular narrative, allowed for interesting dialogues to evolve. Attending the cathedrals many services certainly informed my practice and made for a stimulating and thought provoking period of research and study, much of which I continues to feel.

The Burial, 2010, Acrylic on oak, 30 x 21 cm

CP: Your painting technique is highly informed by traditional methods used by artists from High Renaissance and Flemish schools. Could you describe the techniques you employ?

JW: A lot of it is actually quite dumb. Simple techniques employed to give believable, realistic painterly and visual effects. What may appear at first to be laboured and heavily worked, can be born from relatively simple means. The biggest challenge often comes from trying to get the paint to do something that it inherently does not want to do.

CP: What artists are you inspired by?

JW: It is difficult to say. I am certainly inspired by many artists work and quite often a postcard hanging on my studio wall will provide a ‘light bulb’ moment. I think that somewhat unsurprisingly, most people would assume that I am inspired by works of art and artists whose practice is close to my own. However, this is not always the case. Sure, I like to see how certain artists achieve a particular painterly and visual language, but this is usually so that I can employ similar methods within my own work, I’m a kind of magpie in that respect. But, in a contemporary context, I really enjoy seeing works by Nicholas Byrne, Ryan Mosley and Paul Housley for example, and it’s also fair to say that I have a real soft spot for the work of Jane Harris.

CP: Your paintings are loaded with symbols and motifs that revisit art painting history. By situating the contemporary with the historic, how has this transformed these urban landscapes?

JW: Much of my work remains esoteric and certainly relies on a knowledge of art history and symbolism. The urban landscape, and more definitively the gutter subject that I choose to represent, are simply my props, my models and a source of continuous inspiration. I’ve grown up and lived in and around cities and large towns all my life, and the familiarity of these scenes helps inform the narrative. I think that at its heart, there is something really curious about introducing low-fi subjects to high-art supports on a scale usually preserved for icon or miniature type works.

The Waster, 2010, Acrylic on oak, 30 x 21 cm

CP: The viewer is presented with intimate, vignette shaped paintings that have been described in a recent article on the BBC as “small and jewel-like”. Is this a way of re-attaching sentiment back to these unwanted and abandoned landscapes?

The Tomb, 2010, Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 21cm

JW: It is certainly about giving life to objects, and in many circumstances a new or even hidden life. The vignette aids this transformative process because of its relationship to portraiture and allows the viewer to attach human attributes to otherwise inanimate objects. The paintings themselves are actually rectangular in format and the vignette is archived by a simple framing device that has it origins in the generic school photograph with it faux gilded cardboard oval mount. Much of the work, because of it relationship to religion, has sentiment attached to it that is subsequently thrust upon the depicted object.

CP: Do you have any forthcoming projects or news to divulge?

JW: I do, I am planning an exhibition in a major public space outside of London, but it is perhaps too early to divulge in greater detail.

CP: Thank you very much, James Wright.

Interview with Graham Crowley

2010-09-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

It is a pleasure to interview Graham Crowley, one of the most distinguished living painters in the UK today. Born in 1950, Graham Crowley studied at St. Martin’s School of Art London 1968-72 and Royal College of Art London 1972-75, and has held significant teaching posts including Professor of Painting at the RCA (1998-2006).

GC on a 1950 Vincent | pictured on the TT Course (Isle of Mann) | 2007

His paintings span a vast variance in style from the appropriationist art of the 70s to his brilliantly luminous landscapes of the present day, tracking a fundamental narrative with political, cultural and personal histories within them.

Crowley is one of the guest judges for the forthcoming ‘Open Competition at Core Gallery for Deptford X 2010’, where eighteen artists have been selected from an outstanding pool of entries from across the world. I speak to him to find out; his views on the education system, ‘modern art’ and what it was like to be a student in the revolutionary 60’s.

September 2010 >>

CP: How did you and the other judges arrive at a selection for Core Gallery's Deptford X 2010 Open Competition?

GC: I can’t speak for the other judges, but If you’re asking me how I chose work. I chose work by my assessment of it’s intentions, it’s sense of context, execution and insight. I did not choose it because I liked it. As I’ve come to understand that I don’t like art. I think of painting as a discourse and not merely as an activity, and I don’t regard it as shopping, either.

Selected Artists | Open submission competition for Deptford X | 2010

CP: What is the significance of 'independent' competitions such as the Core Gallery's Open Competition?

GC: Independent competitions are vital in providing a platform for work that isn’t being shown by commercial or public galleries. This becomes more important as the market seems to exert an increasing influence on public galleries. Peer group approval isn’t the same thing as commodification. I’ve said elsewhere that I think projects like The John Moores/Liverpool Exhibition provide a more comprehensive survey of British painting than just about anything else.

CP: What will you take into consideration when curating the show for ‘Core Gallery’s Deptford X 2010 Competition’?

GC: Bearing in mind that I’ll be one of 3 or 4 people involved in the curating. My immediate response is the audience. I’ll also attempt to hang the work in way that creates correspondence and dialogue between works. I’m also in the (now familiar, but problematic) position of not having (yet) seen the 18 finalists, except as digital images. I’m fully aware of the shortcomings of this method of selection. But this project and others like it wouldn’t have seen the light of day, as the cost of insurance, handling, transport and warehousing would have been prohibitive.

CP: In April 2008 you had a letter published in Art Monthly ‘Can’t get No Satisfaction’ where you expressed concerns about the state of art education in London. You stated ‘We now certificate, rather than educate’. How can the focus of ‘educating’ be restored?

GC: There’s no easy fix, and I suggest anybody who hasn’t already read my letter in the April 2008 edition of Art Monthly and (some of) the very extensive correspondence it provoked, to do so. Also view – ‘Angry students meet Sandra Kemp’ on You Tube. But, I suggest we go back to the ‘drawing board’. I come at this problem as a parent, a tax payer, an ex-academic (I was Professor of Painting at the RCA 1998-2006) and a painter.

Art schools should never have become universities. The primary reason that they became universities was political. We need a serious rethink. The imposition of what is called Taylorism (an American form of management efficiency) in higher education has been a disaster. It is blind to the social value of education. It acknowledges only certification. At what is currently foundation and undergraduate level I think one answer would be to look at some kind of re-invented ‘atelier’ model. A studio based ‘apprenticeship’ that promotes theory through practice, taught by practicing artists. I’m not suggesting we maintain the rather discredited teaching methods of approval and emulation. I imagine this to take place in artists’ studios or collectives, rather like The Core studios or similar.

Spider with Mushroom Soup | 1982 | Oil on canvas |122 x 92 cm

CP: You studied at St. Martin’s School of Art, in 1968 a time where radical thinking and innovation was emerging. Can you tell us about your experience as a student then?

GC: Yes. I was caught up in a ‘cultural revolution’. The driving force behind the education that I received was an inexhaustible curiosity about life and society, fueled by scepticism and affirmed by dissent.

To ask intelligent questions, requires an education. That was why the Tories abolished the ILEA, (Inner London Education Authority). They couldn’t bear the idea of quality mass education. That’s why, still today, the police

behave in an intolerant, violent and abusive manner when confronted by well organised and legitimate demonstrators, whether they be trade unionists or environmentalists.

Head (2) | 1977 | Acrylic on canvas |153 x 92 cm

Education is seen by the establishment as enabling social unrest. So now the state has a monopoly; selling useless pieces of paper at an exorbitant price and calling them degrees. Education is a human right not a commodity.

As a post-graduate I had to deal with the crisis in modernism. I realised that the two principal doctrines of modernism; originality and self expression, were now hollow rhetoric.

The ‘dominant discourse’ was conceptualism. As a student at St Martins I got involved in performance and wrote ‘plays about plays’. But I’d always had this love-hate relationship with painting. So when painting became almost demonised in the early 1970’s; I thought “That’s for me”. I had now learnt not to seek approval. As a painter I cherish the legacy of a ‘conceptual’ education. My generation received, what some regard as the apotheosis of a ‘liberal education’.

CP: What are you currently working on within your practice?

GC: I’ve recently moved back to London. Since I left the RCA in 2006 I’ve been living and working in West Cork. Some years ago I learnt that the artist I ‘wanted’ to be was not the same as the artist I ‘needed’ to be. So now I make paintings about where I am, what I think, what I’ve read and most importantly what I’ve seen. Seeing is a very underrated activity.

Blue Drift |2010 | oil on canvas | 114 x 137 cm

I’m currently making landscape paintings that I regard as synthetic. Synthetic paintings exist simultaneously as object (the thing itself) and illusion (window on the world); the legacy of Manet.

My paintings also refer to modernist painting, particularly cubism and early American modernists like Stuart Davis. I’m becoming more concerned with illusion and apprehension. I want to make paintings that acknowledge both the human and the historic.

Red Drift 3 |2010 | oil on canvas | 114 x 137 cm

I’m also very suspicious of the academic orthodoxy that insists on contemporary landscape painting being acceptable providing it’s uncanny, sublime or abject. I want to make landscapes that celebrate sight and life, before I die.

There are some images of recent paintings on my website; www.GrahamCrowley.com

CP: What is so captivating about your work is your intense involvement and assurance with the medium of paint. Could you describe some of the techniques you employ?

Farm on the Sheep's Head |1998 | oil on canvas | 178 x 152 cm

GC: Yes. I abhor the convention of the artist as slacker convention – the ‘I meant it to be like that’ tendency. Whilst I was at the RCA I abandoned acrylics and started to use oil paint. At that point I had no option, but to learn how to paint. This doesn’t sound that remarkable until you realise that I spent 7 years in full-time higher education and not one of my tutors knew how to teach students painting as a skill. As a student one dared not to ask, for fear of being regarded as reactionary, or worse.The situation is no better today. The teaching of painting technique still has the stigma of the amateur. The ‘romantic’ notion of the artist as ‘free spirit’ staggers on.

Flower Arranging (6) | 1998 | Oil on canvas |178 x 152 cm

Over the last 30 years I’ve employed a variety of methods including grisaille, impasto but most importantly glazing. Glazing has shown me why colours such as Payne’s Gray, Davy’s Gray, Indian Yellow, Transparent Golden Ochre and Rose Dore exist. Glazing is to painting what ‘ambient’ is to music. I’ve always been fascinated in ‘how things work’. I think it’s my ‘diet’ of Meccano, The Eagle and The Boys’ Own Paper in the 1950’s and 60’s.

I have the sensibility of a * ‘rodder’ rather than a poet. I think contemporary practice is becoming increasingly located in the vernacular. It’s important to study every aspect of painting, if only because knowledge presents choice; historical, theoretical and practical. I also consider carefully, the composition of my paintings, as every aspect of a painting carries meaning.

Flower Arranging (1) | 1988/92 | Oil on canvas |178 x 152 cm

* rodder - as in Hot Rod. Someone immersed in the aesthetics of custom car and bike culture. Someone who values the vernacular. See David Hickey ‘Air Guitar – Essays on Art & Democracy’ and the work of Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth. Also check out Matthew Crawford’s ‘The Case for Working with Your Hands or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good.’

CP: In your most recent works, do you feel you have revitalised landscape painting through your use of colour?

GC: Yes

CP: Do you have any forthcoming projects or news to divulge?

GC: I’m currently in a group show of past John Moores Prizewinners in Korea. I have a one man show at Churchill College in March next year and I’ll be giving a lecture about my painting whilst the exhibition is on. I’ve plans for a graphic project; a mix of artist’s book and a semi-fictionalised graphic autobiography. (About 13 years ago I collaborated with Stuart Hood and Richard Appignanesi on a graphic book about the Marquis de Sade). I’m also starting work on some new paintings about South London with reference to The Ash Can School. For some years now, I’ve been fascinated by The Ash Can School (Sloan, Davis, Luks, etc) and their leftist publication The Masses. They were written out of American art history during the McCarthy years; Post-Second World War. They remain almost unknown in Europe and the UK. I’ve also been influenced by the Canadian David Milne.

CP: In a society where ‘modern art’ is increasingly institutionalized and administered, how important are places such as Deptford that have a growing community of artists?

GC: Vital. In the current dismal climate. It's clearly a cause for celebration and a matter of great pride. Here's something that reflects the 'health' and vibrancy of a community. Its projects like this that define Deptford.

It's a matter of recorded fact that 'modern art' has been institutionalised, commodified and is about as edgy as a j-cloth. It should come as no surprise that the rhetoric of modernism has found its place in tabloid journalism.

Contemporary art is a different matter. It's a moveable feast - it's what's happening now, by definition. Contemporary art doesn‟t even look like „Modern art‟. Modern art is a manifestation of an historical movement that has long been in decline. It doesn't speak to me any longer. It has always been an instrument of capital, celebrity and the media. Only now it's also an instrument of 'pikey'* culture. As far as I'm concerned Sky, The Daily Mail (et al), Heat, Simon Cowell and Charles Saatchi can have it. Popular culture was once a celebration of working class creativity. It's now a tool of oppression, and no amount of irony can redeem it.

*pikey. Once used as a derogatory term to describe Irish itinerants. But now a derogatory term to describe the aspirations of the ignorant, materialistic wealthy and the ignorant, materialistic poor, which are the same.

CP: Thank you Graham Crowley, it has been a fascinating interview!

Interview with Enver Gürsev

2010-09-06T19:04:00.000-07:00

It is a pleasure to interview our very own Cor Blimey(ite) Enver Gürsev! He is a painter and sculptor, who studied his BA (Hons) Visual Arts and Sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts in London (2000). Gürsev has a broad experience of working in the arts and has worked on projects such as; ‘The Way We Are’, which brought together the work of displaced and re-located children and young people living in the north and the south of Cyprus.

At present he is an associate lecturer at the University of the Arts London and is an integral member of Cor Blimey Arts Studio Space. I take the time to find out about his upcoming exhibition 'Pleasure Parlour', his motivations as an artist and his role within Core Gallery.

CP: You have been with Cor Blimey Studios for a considerable amount of time, Can you tell us about the development over the years?

EG: I joined the studios that are now ‘Cor Blimey Arts’ several years ago. I saw it emerge from a bankrupt space under a different name, run by a ghastly thief of a man (who took all our rent and never paid the landlord) and who almost managed to get us all evicted, to getting swooped up by Cor Blimey Arts and turned into a serious working studios. We have maintained a collective co-operative atmosphere, with an active role in mainly localised arts events and in the last year, there has been a massive surge of energy in the space, with the arrival of new members, bringing new ideas and pushing for the creation of projects such as Core Gallery, our very own prolific exhibition space within. I feel that Cor Blimey are really on the map now, more than ever before.

CP: Pleasure Parlour at Core Gallery is an Art Festival, celebrating the exotic, the erotic and sensuality within the physical form. How does your work represent this?

EG: The work I am submitting, is true to the elements of seduction with integral statements about what erotica embodies. I employ what might be deemed as traditional erotic figurative imagery, with a personal take on seductive ‘pulp art’. It leans rather nostalgically on my memories of illustrated magazine and comic covers from the 60’s and 70’s for reference. Stark and vivid, with sexy mysterious figures and a spurious longing in their eyes. I think that fits the bill.

CP: How was this exhibition conceived, and can you tell us how you have worked collaboratively with the other artists involved?

Red Nude: 'Pleasure Parlour'

EG: This show began life at an after party in Kelda’s place. We were discussing what we have been working on respectively and we soon found that we had accumulated a similar body of work, which in its essence was very much a celebration of sensuality. Kelda suggested I meet her friend Holly, who has a very interesting way of working with erotica and I in turn suggested we invite Peter Davis, my partner’s father and an astounding sculptor, who happens to also have beautiful sensual forms in his work, to show with us.

Our collaboration has been a very relaxed and remote one, with only a few meetings and very limited contact, mostly via email. This doesn’t mean to say that our meetings have not been intense in the least; they have been concise and very productive with many ideas being presented almost mechanically. I think that when everyone knows what they are doing, things fall into place with minimal effort.

CP: You have been actively involved within ‘Core Gallery’ can you tell us what role you have played?

EG: From the outset, my role with Core Gallery has not digressed much from the one I had previously in Cor Blimey. I am responsible for organising the performances , parties and events, organising live music, as well as the general dogs body, putting up work, making good etc. But I like to think I’m a well oiled cog of an exiting and commited group, and a vital contribution for the smooth running of the gallery.

Exquisite Corpse: After party performances

CP: What is your most memorable experience as an artist?

EG: That’s a really loaded question, as my experience as an artist is very much ingrained into my experience as a person. I guess, if I think about it in terms of creative experience, it’s got to be my entry into the ghost town of Varosia, Famagusta in Cyprus, which is an entire city on the coast that has been uninhabited since 1974.

It’s miles of coastline with abandoned flats and empty grand hotels have haunted me since childhood. I had been researching this place for a number of years, but entry is forbidden as it’s a military occupied zone, which made it all the more mysterious. I gained access, got many photo’s (which are strictly forbidden), nearly got arrested and even had a gun at my head. I went on to create a series of work, of immense importance to me.

Famagusta, Enver Gursev

CP: Previous work that has featured in the show ‘Wilderness’ focused on the abandoned landscape and ghost town of Famagusta- (in the wake of the Greek-Turkish Cyprus war). Would you say your cultural background is imperative to your work? Can you tell us how this has influenced you as artist?

EG: Yes, my cultural heritage has a lot to do with who I am and I think that even if unintentional, it rears it’s little tanned Cypriot head sometimes to have a poke at my very British self. I wouldn’t say it’s imperative in my work, but somehow it is present, especially in my assemblages and installations, made of toys and knick knacks.

CP: What artists are you inspired by?

EG: Victor Brauner, Max Ernst, Wilfredo Lam, Louise Nevelson, Emil Nolde, Eduardo Paolozzi, Austin Osman Spare, Jan Svankmajer, and many Outsider Artists….a good mix of very different styles, many of the old masters and…oh and that guy that painted that massive swan that’s embracing that naked guy and chick on the beach at moonrise….(nah, just kidding!)

CP: You ‘recycle’ unwanted and discarded paintings to use within your work. How does this emphasise your work aesthetically and conceptually? And would you say you are responding to the current economical climate?

EG: There certainly is something to be said in terms of responding to the economic climate, albeit, unconsciously, as by reusing discarded material, there is no doubt one is saving on material and money; imperative for every impoverished artist.

However, truth be told, this is not the only reason I use discarded material. It is simply because my work relies heavily on memory and abandoned spaces and objects. I consider it to be a very poignant statement that by including someone else’s marks and memories, within my own work, I can literally build on someone else’s abandoned thoughts. Re-using someone else’s half finished statements to complete my own in whole. I find this profoundly exciting!

CP: And finally, have you got any upcoming projects or news to reveal?

EG: Yeah, this time next year I’ll be in Hollywood!!!

Thank you Chantelle!

CP: Thank you Enver!

For more informfation on exhibitions click here

Interview with Peter Davis

2010-09-06T17:21:00.001-07:00

I am pleased to interview Peter Davis, a renowned Sculptor who has a long track record of group and solo shows in UK (RA and Barbican). He has been successfully working since 1966 and collectors include the National Gallery of South Africa.

I want to find out; how he embraces sensuality through the bodily form, more about the upcoming show 'The Pleasure Parlour' and the sustainability of his art practice.

September 2010

CP: In South Africa you worked as a furniture maker and Interior/furniture designer, why did you move into sculpture?

PD: My friend, Beryl Jensen, a sculptor in copper, saw my furniture and said I should be a sculptor. I made a piece and showed it to her and she said, “That’s rubbish, try again” until I finally produced a piece she said was “Ok, not good but ok”. Three years later I sold my first publicly exhibited piece ‘Assyrian Wolf’ to another sculptor.

CP: Pleasure Parlour at Core Gallery is an Art Festival, celebrating the exotic, the erotic and sensuality within the physical form. How do accentuate and embrace sensuality?

PD: Every woman has her very best parts and draws attention to them blatantly or discreetly. Men tend to defend on their reputation as athletes or warriors. I treat each sex as they would wish.

CP: Can you tell us about the sculptures you are exhibiting in the upcoming show at Core Gallery?

PD: 'Shoulder Fragment' – Some women have beautiful shoulders!

'Crouching Form' - made from alabaster. Hipbones and back, hidden legs, breast and face!

'Seated Form In Contemplation' – made from stone. This lush form in repose shows no flabbiness and has dramatic hair. Serene knowledge of her attributes

'Hidden Face, Beautiful Hair' -– It’s all in the title.

'Pregnant Woman' – Obviously an attractive exercise in French curves

'Pregnant Torso' – made from Portland stone. You never know what she’s on (unless you look)

CP: In Greek mythology, ‘Pygmalion’ from Ovid's Metamorphoses X was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved of a woman. How significant is the masculine gaze in sculpting the female form?

PD: The artist can devote his whole attention to contemplating women and their ways over a long period without focusing censure and is often favoured in a way not readily available to most people.

CP: As a sculptor do you have a strong visualisation of the end result or is it an intuitive approach?

PD: I always have a strong visualisation and make the piece over and over in my head before starting the actual physical work is pleasurable but not mentally demanding.

CP: Where do you draw your inspiration and what artists have influenced your work?

PD: I love Michelangelo, Brancusi and Jean Arp. I have no idea where my inspiration comes from.

CP: You stated that you work mainly with wood. Is this because there is a higher degree of autonomy over the outcome of the sculpture through the direct approach of carving?

PD: The greatest autonomy is in carving stone as it holds few surprises and mysteries. The same for plastics, but wood which is in a sawn up state can hold surprises. Free form wood is the greatest intellectual challenge and requires the very utmost vision and skill with tools.

CP: How do keep a harmonious balance between the material and form, and how do you let the characteristics of the material hold resonance?

PD: By acute and constant visualisation until you are ready to tackle the piece from all 360 degrees before you even pick up a pencil or other tool.

CP: How important is the accompanying space around the sculptures and is this something you take into account prior to making the work?

PD: Since I have a storage problem I tend to make intricate pieces which are happy in a home an invite handling and close observation. This question has more relevance to monumental sculpture of which I have done none.

CP: you said that “I am interested in creating forms that are recognised instinctively by anyone’’ What qualities ensure a work is identifiable to its viewers?

PD: Since all art (apart from Dadaism) is abstract the qualities which separate it from the banal or the mundane in execution is the quality of the artist ‘I never thought of it like that’.

CP: You have been fortunate enough to sell a vast amount of your work, with over 95 pieces of your sculpture sold. How does the art market compare to when you was first starting out? And what advice would you offer to other artists in creating a sustainable livelihood?

PD: I started in South Africa where the population is very well educated and informed and skill is highly regarded. In comparison in England skill is lowly regarded, something a ‘workman’ needs but a ‘gentle man’ doesn’t. He can get by in intellectual banter.

CP: And finally, Have you got any upcoming projects or plans to reveal?

PD: I am close to 80 years old. I never know what I will be doing tomorrow.

Thank you Peter Davis