Playing at the Serpentine Gallery

I've never been to the Serpentine before, but have wanted to for years. Especially for the 2010 pavilion by Jean Nouvel, which I thought was brilliant. 

This year's however did not disappoint. Designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, the large white matchstick like climbing frame is a complete joy. It transcends the boundaries of space, shape and design to present a completely unique approach to the interaction of people and place. You can admire it, climb it, get in it or simply admire it. What's great is how it complements the exact shape of the gallery behind it; you can just make out the outline of the building through the bold white structure. The fact that people are encouraged to climb up it and sit with a treetop vista highlights the sense of play at work in the design.

Inside, sadly, the premiere exhibition of American Sturtevant's work, a retrospective of 1970- now, does not match up to the pavilion. Leaps Jumps and Bumps showcases everything that's wrong with modern and contemporary art, it's boring, uninspiring and not even controversial. Apparently her rip offs of Warhol screen prints and Duchamp doors call into question authorship of art work: the eternally dull question of what is art. The row of blow up dolls in the window should be playful and arresting but instead they contribute nothing to the overall display. Credit where it's due to those responsible of the design and installation of the video pieces in the show. Old television sets stacked on the floor and projectors swirling images around a circular room that force you into the piece as its projected on to you achieve everything Sturtevant does not;a playful  and stimulating experience.

I also loved Fischli/Weiss piece, Rock on top of Another Rock. The Norwegian duo  have created this witty piece to question both art and nature: where does one end and the other begin. It's rocks, it's outside, it's nature. But it's an impossibly positioned rock, on top of another one. Led by their humour they have cleverly and- it has to be said- beautifully presented the natural as the artificial.

Overall impression of the Serpentine is outside 10/10, inside 2/10.

Blue trees for City of London Festival

No better way to cheer up my walk through the city on a dreary Thursday night than the blue trees installation. 

 In order to force people to stop and notice trees in the city and realise their worth, artist Konstantin Dimpoulos has coloured the trunks of trees in three sites a vivid cobalt blue.

It's an unresting and unsettling feeling to see something so familiar altered. It was like walking through a dream or surrealist landscape.

These beautiful sculptures will be around until after the festival.

http://www.treesforcities.org/about-us/20th-birthday/the-blue-trees-of-london/

Saints Alive

You're never left with nothing, you're left with minus. In conversation with Michael Landy

Michael Landy rose to fame with as a YBA in the mid-1990s with his installation 'Break Down'. In a disused C&A department store on Oxford Street- a victim of financially hard times in the centre of consumerism- Landy systematically documented his every possession, then destroyed every single one. This radical art work ridiculed possession but also got the the heart of sentimentality; his mother was too upset to stay and watch her wedding photographs be destroyed an had to be escorted of the premises.

After a long series of similar wild installation pieces, then a significant absence from the scene whilst Emin is ever the tabloid favourite and Hirst is making millions, Landy has crashed back with his Saints Alive exhibition at the National Gallery.

Following a succession of artists such as Bridget Riley, Ron Mueck and Peter Blake, Landy was asked to take up residency at the gallery. Weird for him in many ways by his own admission as he has neither painted before nor had a full time job before.

What struck Landy most profoundly about the collection he was asked to respond to was St Catherine's wheel. He found 13 of these in paintings and wondered what they were and why they weren't highlighted. This spurred him on to discover the stories behind the saints, unlock the symbols to reveal the tragic stories of their martyrdom. 

Landy said that You're never left with nothing, you're left with minus in relation to the debts he rang up following the destruction. But it is a profound idea that has resurgence in Saints Alive. The stories of the saints are today largely forgotten, St Apollonia pulling out her teeth to rid her of her cursed beauty, St Francis if Assisi inherited the wounds of Christ, the stigmata. Even though they are forgotten, we are left with paintings not nothing and a largely secular society- a minus if you will- rather than nothing.

Landy's kinetic sculptures bring the stories of the saints to life for a 21st century audience. See doubting Thomas prodding the wounds of Christ and St Michael wrestle the devil. His main focus throughout the creation if these sculptures was the Catherine wheel. Originally he wanted to create a huge one that rolled around the gallery picking up visitors. At least that might have worked, most of Landy's sculptures in ironic Landy style keep breaking down and returning to the workshop. Whilst of course it was an eventual aim that these sculptures would break down- just listen to the racket as St Jerome beats his chest with a rock- I'm not sure even the artist anticipated the quite so frequent Break Down of his sculptures. Like he says, you're not left with nothing, you're left with minus, in this case an installation in constant need for repair.

Vermeer & Music

A popular and easy criticism to make of the Vermeer&Music exhibition on show at the National Gallery until 8th September 2013, is the distinct lack of Vermeer paintings. Certainly the show may be lacking in volume, but considering there are only 19 known Vermeer paintings in the world, five isn't so bad. Who can blame the gallery for using the snappy, big celebrity name of Vermeer, rather than simply calling it Music and the Golden Age of Dutch Painting, which would an altogether more apt title.

Overlook the poor titling however, and the exhibition is joy. The work if Vermeer and his contemporaries is incredibly noisy if you're willing to look closely enough and this exhibition, though extensive use of  musical instruments displayed alongside the paintings allows us to hear what has been silently captured in an image.

The Academy of Ancient music have teamed up with the National Gallery for this exhibition and are performing original 17th-century musical scores on original 17th-century instruments in the exhibition space. The overall effect of which is bewitching.

The concert, at the time Vermeer was painting, did not refer to a large dance hall, but simply a gathering of friends in the home who would play music together. The lead would strike up his instrument and play the first few notes of basso continuo, which in baroque music means bass-line. This carries melody and the rest is improvisation. What this means is that no singular performance if the same piece will ever be the same. The selection of vanitas still lives displayed in the first room of the exhibition really capture this idea of music as a moment, ephemeral, to be savoured but cannot be kept.

More intimate than a concert, was the music lesson. Rarely could young men and women spend so much time alone together than under the guise of musical tuition. 

Johannes Vermeer's The Music Lesson from the Queen's Collection captures perfectly this intimacy. Whilst it seems innocent enough on first glance, the artist reflects for us in the mirror above the virginal the young woman plays, a tender exchange of a loaded glance between tutor and pupil. The warm sunlight streaming through the sash window engulfs the young pair in a balmy, amorous glow. If further and direct allusion to the pairs romantic involvement were needed, it can be read directly from the virginal 'MUSICA LETOTIAE COMES MEDICINAL DOLORIS', music is the companion of joy, the medicine of sorrow. 

This exhibition has also provided the National Galley the opportunity to show off the work of the scientific department. On loan from Kenwood House, Vermeer's Guitar Player has been thoroughly examined whilst in the National Gallery. The findings show that it is still on its original canvas and from the same period as Woman Seated at a Virginal and A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal from the National Galleries own collection.

Seeing these three paintings if similar subject and size displayed together is a real and rare treat. Whilst the two paintings with virginals show the young woman engaged both with her craft and the viewer- the women peer out at us, placing us in the position of tutor and therefore probably love interest- the guitar player glances away. Her attention has been caught elsewhere and we are left to wonder what we can't see rather than dwell on what we can. What this display of the three paintings reveals therefore is Vermeer's acute understanding of both the relationship of tutor an pupil, and of painting and viewer. His pictorial devices that make us want to cross the yard and climb through his lit windows to the woman inside, have also made us want to strike up the harpsichord and join in the lesson.

This exhibition is alive. There's so much energy and noise and romance that its nice to catch a break. My favourite painting in the exhibition isn't a show-stopping Vermeer, nor a unique ivory lite, but a tiny oil painting by Carel Fibritus. This tiny canvas depicts a market square in the early morning. The vendor can be seen yawning just behind his instrument wares. Shuffling along the dusty street alongside the gentle water of the pond are a mother and daughter walking together. If you listen carefully the peace is broken only by the merry chiming of the church bells. In this case, depicting silence is as powerful as depicting music. 

Helmshore Mill Textile Museum

Helmshore Textile Mill is nestled in the dip of one of East Lancashire's many valleys, where it has stood for nearly 250 years, a period for most of which it was a working textile mill and the hub of the local community. Today it serves as a lasting reminder of the hard slog faced by hundreds of families who spent their lives working in the regions booming textile industry; it really was grim up north...

The textile industry in Lancashire and throughout the North West of England, has a colourful, promising story with an ending far from happily ever after. It is a story which starts in the 1700's, a period of great exploration, discovery and an English gentry besotted with the 'East' and the 'exotic'. Before this of course, wool and cotton were woven into useable cloth by families in their homes by skilled hand-spinners and handloom weavers, as it provided a useful second income. Wares would be woven as time allowed and sold to the passing trade of chapmen, who would walk their packhorses through the villages and then sell the cloth on markets in nearby towns. There was no industry ruling the lives of people in rural areas, just families getting on with such ‘cottage crafts’. The East India Company was formed, with royal blessing of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I, on 31^st December 1600 and was set up to control the trade with India and China. By the 1700’s, this industry was vast and expanding across Europe, with the Dutch East India Company being the largest of its kind. Not only did these companies import new and exciting goods, such as tea, spices and even the humble potato, export was also big business. In the year 1701 around 2 million pounds of raw cotton was imported from America and the West Indies, much of which was spun into cotton and sold on to India.

As the demand for cotton and wool fabric began to swell, not only in the UK, but throughout the rest of the world, the cottages could no longer cope. By the late 18^th Century, vast changes were sweeping through the UK, taking the Lancashire cotton spinners with them. The Industrial Revolution had arrived; violently knocking cottage crafts, the homemade and even the villages out of its way. In order to survive, families must follow and go from skilled crafts people to mere cogs in well oiled machines. Such a fate awaited the families of Helmshore when, in 1789 Higher Mill was created by the Turner Family, wealthy textile merchants from the Blackburn area. This mill was primarily concerned with the production of wool.

All members of the family would be roped in to the production of this wool. Firstly, the raw wool fibres are carded to stretch them out in order to spin them into yarn. This was often a job for children who would be provided with carding brushes to pull the fibres apart. The carding brushes used, which Helmshore Mill still had original examples of, were made from tough, spikey teasels that were shipped in from the continent as the hotter temperatures made the European examples hardier than ours. Once the yarns had been spun and a woollen cloth hand-woven, the wool making process got really gruesome. Whilst children as young as six could be made to card the raw fibres, children even younger were necessary for the next part of the woollen cloth making. Being such a starchy fibre, the wool was required to be doused in ammonia before it had a marketable texture. Human urine was used as it was cheap and ammonia rich. The mills would provide local people with ‘piss pots’ which they would be paid one penny for once it had been filled. The phrase ‘not a pot to piss in’ literally means someone is so poor that they can’t even fill a piss-pot for a penny.

At Helmshore, the wool cloth would be washed in urine by large machines powered by the waterwheel. Seeing this in action was really exciting, but also showed off just how cold and loud conditions were for those working long days in the bowels of the mill.

Following this process the wool fabric was washed off and hung to dry on the Lancashire hillsides. As the finished cloth was sold by weight however, it wasn’t always completely dried out in order to make it heavier!

Not very much later, the cotton trade really took off in Lancashire and Whittaker Mill at Helmshore was added to the original Higher Mill. A most impressive demonstration of the cotton weaving process on an original working ‘mule’ machine, really showed off the vast scale of the cotton trade in Lancashire. In one demonstration run, about a meter of cotton fabric was woven, to think there were around 50 million of these machines in the UK at the peak of this industry really put the scale of the cotton trade into perspective.

What Helmshore Mill really excelled at though, was telling the story of the people who were behind these machines and what their daily lives were like. It is a fantastic place and I’m really looking forward to many happy working days there myself. Let’s hope there isn’t trouble at’mill!

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

The exhibition 'A Pre-Raphaelite Journey: Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale' is being shown at the Lady Lever Art Gallery from 1 June - 4 November 2012

Now at the Watts Gallery, Compton, until 9th June 2013

What a fabulous exhibition! I had the privilege of having a preview of this exhibition and a guided tour from the curator, Pamela Gerrish Nunn, a few weeks ago. Now in full swing and open to the public, this fabulous show is well worth a visit. It is the fist time Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale's work has been exhibited in over 40 years and Pamela's astounding research has pulled some brilliant and little-known examples of her work from private collections certainly into the catalogue if not the exhibition itself.

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872-1945) was a celebrated artist in her own time, working not only as a traditional painter working with oils, but as a designer of stained glass and as an illustrator. Rejected thrice by the Academy following her art education at the Crystal Palace School of Art, she was finally accepted in 1897; quite an achievement at the time. She was also a highly accomplished watercolourist and worked on many commissions for flower books. What is most charming about her work however, is that much of it celebrates nature and is very accurately captued. Fortescue-Brickdale focussed not on the standard Pre-Raphaelite way of doing this through moralising or history genre painting, but by inviting fairy folk into her canvases, The Little Foot (above) is a fine example of a painting of a shy nymph.

Fortescue-Brickdale painted many marvellous watercolour portraits, such as this fine example below. It is a portrait of fellow artist Winifred Nicholson (nee Roberts), wife of artist Ben Nicholson. Testimony to the hard times of women artists being recognised for their work in the early 20th century, Nicholson is pictured gazing absently from the painting and from her occupation of reading out of the picture space, away from the viewer and out of the gallery. Her mind is very well occupied simply with her imagination alone. Around her of symbols of femininity in the blush-pink roses and the domestic setting. The couch is covered in William Morris fabric; a nod to the trends and fashions of interior décor gone by.

 Portrait of Winifred Roberts (1913)

 It is the vibrant luminosity of Fortesque-Brickdale's work however, that makes it really appealing. in June is Dead (1915), the dying cherub shrouded in the heavy foliage of late June, marks the end of midsummer and the onset of late summer and autumn. The radiant colour and effective use of light give the piece an odd melancholy.

The summer is over and the rains will come; something we can very much empathise with in the 'summer' of 2012! 

The Dairy

Tucked away neatly behind a large Victorian block of flats in the heart of Bloomsbury, there was once a dairy. As of today, this vast and unique tardis is the contemporary art exhibition space of prominent collectors Nicolai Frahm and Frank Cohen.

The opening event was a knockout. Guest were served White Russians in milk bottles from a milk float and gorgeous salted caramel ice cream from Nina's traditional ice cream van.

The actual exhibit that has been selected as the premier for this swanky new art gallery however doesn't quite live up to expectations. John M Armleder was invited to use his pieces in Frahm and Cohen's collections as a starting point to create an installation that filled the Dairy. Some aspects are brilliant and achieve the its aim to 'retransform art into a functional structure, merging aesthetics and function, contemplation and entertainment' the bar that's actually just a piece of art puts the visitor on edge and asks us to redefine the space we are used to, the window that holds the same pattern as the wall through which you can just see tyre plantpots identical to the ones around you indoors juxtaposes what is art, what is design and what is home.

The Dairy's old fridge is quite a masterpiece and it is in this space that the Dada movement which inspired Armleder and led to his association with the Neo Geo and Fluxus art movements can best be seen. Stuff. Shoved on to shelves in some spaces or eerily sparsely placed on shelves, stuff is piled onto the old fridge shelves. A taxidermy weasel, vases of flowers turning to death, fairly lights and TV sets are shown side by side. In this space Armleder has annihilated art and at once created it. These things question meanings of art, collecting and display an if those factors can be questioned- what is even the point of the show? It is an intelligent attempt at existentialism that Sartre couldn't have done better at.

However, the large glitter canvases and disco balls hanging in the reception area really don't add anything to the overall coherence of the installation. They are noticeable because they are unnoticeable. Visible because they might as well be invisible. It's a real shame that something bolder and more thought provoking couldn't have been done with this space. Then again, maybe it's annoyance at the the lack of proportion and awkward placement and sizes of the art in this space that Armleder wants us to feel. It's exactly the sort of thing he's after.

Regardless of the installation, this brand new art space is incredible and well worth a visit.