The shambles of art and religion at ICA

Art and Religion

6 April 2011

£12 / £11 concessions / £10 ICA Members

Art historian James Elkins states that contemporary art is deeply suspicious of faith yet welcoming of spirituality and the sublime. After centuries of a close and symbiotic relationship between art and religion what has happened in recent times to so change the way artists’ work might deal with religion? Why does it seem more controversial for a contemporary artist to explore their faith rather than critique religion? Art used to be commissioned largely for religious places but what kinds of artists are approached now? Work inspired by the faith of the artist is often found in outsider art, how is this accepted and understood in the context of contemporary art more widely?
In the lead up to Easter weekend we look at the relationship between religion and contemporary art in an evening of discussion featuring Mark Dean, artist and Church of England curate, Fabienne Audeoud artist and writer, James Brett founder of the Museum of Everything and chaired by Brian Dillon UK editor of Cabinet magazine and a research fellow at the University of Kent.

James Brett (of The Museum of Everything) - in effect - saved the event. He was so well prepared, funny, knowledgeable and - of course - professional. His slideshow and talk about religion in outsider art were illuminating.  Mark Dean did have things to say too, but he spent too much time trying to justify his own belief in God. (why?) Oh - and Fabienne Audeoud simply did not have a good day. She was so preoccupied with her own experience and her own understanding of religion, that she did not really have time to put art into equation too.

African art does not exist.

Religion is only what the words in the bible say.

What is spirituality? (with 10 mins remaining to the end of the talk)

Working with passion: Atsuo Okamoto and Eleanor Vonne Brown

Passion is infectious!

 

 Atsuo Okamoto has got a  "Forest" at the Chelsea College of Art parade ground - a stunning display of his stone carvings. 

“Stone keeps huge memories inside, since the planet came into existence. I feel that stone is the most romantic and intellectual object on the earth.” 

I ran into him a few times at Chelsea foundry recently. He is happy to talk and he is curious. As a result, I have already been to Camberwell foundry with a few new ideas, that I feel so... hm...  passionate about.

 Eleanor Vonne Brown runs X Marks the Bökship, which is a publishing project space for independent publishers. She gave us a talk about publishing, editioning, projects, fairs, etc. I did not realize how much was out there!
Revolver Publishing
Print Matters Interest Group
Byam Shaw Library of Art
 etc.
So refreshing to listen to somebody dripping with knowledge and joy about what they do! Bags of inspiration!

Alvaro Sanchez-Montanes, Andrew Friend and others at I Am Solitary@Gift

 

Gift gallery is holding a group exhibition I AM SOLITARY.

Their first exhibition only happened about a year and a half ago. Gift featured a large group of young artist's: many of them were fresh graduates from Chelsea MA Fine Art. Honey Im.  Xenofon Kavvadias. Reiko Matsubara. Andrew Salgado (also in this present show). And others.
Here's some of the bits I liked in this show:

 Lindsey Bull has dreamlike painted illusions almost asking for psychoanalysis.  

 

Grace Kim is showing large glossy prints of monocolour images, that look like life-after death stills from Paranormal channel. The prints are highly reflective: they blur the boundary between me and her and the work.

 
Alvaro Sanchez-Montanes photographs "desolate landscapes" of almost "unnerving tranquility". I saw no contemplative isolation in them. I was drawn by their echoing silence. Their coldness. The air of absence, the air of abandonment.

Andrew Friend is a fascinating one. Device for Disappearing (at sea) sounds and looks functional and useful. It's there between reality and imaginary, true and pretend, literal and metaphorical.

Beautiful things, art as a message and displaced reality of Abigail Box @ Degree Art

 

 

 Abigail Box is showing her surreal paintings of displaced animals/locations at Degree Art.

As I walked in, I had this bizarre feeling that I really liked what I saw. Even before I read the press release about existence, perspective and belonging, I was attracted by the aesthetics of the paintings - they look like something I would really like to have on my walls (dear Abigail, would you fancy a swap, please!). They are bright and white, eclectic, gently disturbing (but not so freaky, you would need to keep kids out of the room). User friendly.

Every time I see something pleasing to my eye, I feel guilty for liking it.  Can aesthetics of an artwork stop the viewer from reading into the message?  Grayson Perry said, in one of his lectures this autum - he is an artist and he makes nice things. Sure, his work deals with complex and sensitive social realities. But - God! - it is beautiful too! It gives me a tingle. Reading New Scientist gives me a buzz too. But surely not for the aesthetic beauty of it! It does often deal with complex and sensitive issues, with displacement and existence. However, we would all agree that New Scientist is not a piece of visual artwork. I do not buy it for an aesthetic experience.

A work of art encountered as a work of art is an experience, not a statement or an answer to a question. Art is not only about something, it is something. A work of art is a thing in the world, not just a text or commentary on the world. (Susan Sontag, On style)

DegreeArt.com Presents:
'A REALITY OF THEIR OWN'
New Work by Abigail Box

12a Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG
3rd - 31st March 2011 12-6pm DAILY
Private View Thursday 3 rd March 2011 6-9pm, R.S.V.P. vj@DegreeArt.com

A Reality of their Own is not only an iridescent-like juxtaposition of imagery, but also an examination of the spectator vs. the visual vs. our known reality.

Abigail Box's recent work forms part of her ongoing exploration into the curiousness of existence and toys with the contradiction involved in feeling both a sense of belonging and displaced.

These visual analogies are harmoniously presented and allow the spectators to ask themselves questions regarding their affiliations with their space, cohabitants and themselves.

A Reality of their Own catalyzes this experience by introducing wild animals into a series of human environments to provoke a fresh and inquisitive perspective onto something familiar. Attempting to reflect on our everyday surroundings along with our conventions and behaviour and in part making us feel outside what we consider our own space.

The work approaches the difficulties associated with confronting and comprehending our own reality through a remarkably captivating blend of painterly techniques and collaging of found imagery.

www.DegreeArt.com - 020 8980 03395 - vj@DegreeArt.com 
12a Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG

Alicia Bock: prints for Japan.

 

There are some beautiful beautiful limited edition prints by Alicia Bock. Proceeds will be donated to Red Cross relief efforts in Japan.

Time out. Drawing.

On a bad day, I can fill a sketchbook: I can draw myself out of a problem and into a problem. I use drawing to think, when linear thinking - brainstorming and list-making - does not help. Thinking with the right side of the brain? It is a very relaxed and fluid process - similar to automatic writing.

I had one of those days today, that resulted in excessive drawing.

Coincidentally, I ended up at Clayton Merrell's  lecture in the evening. I had it my diary, but when I got there, I could not remember what it was going to be. Well - it was about... drawing. Bingo! It was an hour an a half of names and slides of artist who draw. He divided the area into 6 bonkers groups reflecting the diversity within the category:
messed-up neo-realist mannerism
freak folk
cartographic remixes
dirty abstraction
labour-intensive conceptualism
complex generato-techno structuralism.
Each category was illustrated by about a gazillion of artists. A continuous flow of drawings.

Just what the doctor ordered.

Cornelia Parker: continued again.

One more of her thoughts:

 I want the work to reflect what the viewer is as a person. So if you are a cynic, you'll think they're all fake and you'll spend the time thinking about that. If you're quite happy to accept them at face value, then you're off on another planet somewhere else. (C.P.)

Cornelia Parker, compulsive hoarding: continued.

 

I have just had a bust pipe in the basement, which caused substantial flooding. As a result, I had to get rid of bags and bags of damp rubbish. So much of my compulsive hoarding!

After the last post, I picked up my Cornelia Parker books and I found that bit where she talks about hoarding:

I had filled my house up with junk and the gutter was the next available space left to make work in. I used home as a studio for along time so any space is potential space for making work. On the ceilings, underneath the carpet. That is why I did a lot of things suspended from ceilings because that was the only available space. That, and the gutter outside.

With my basement half empty now, I will not be needing a gutter soon :-)

Denise Hawrysio @ Camberwell

I do not usually write about things that happen at college (I should, shouldn't I?).

Yesterday we had a talk by Denise Hawrysio (here is a link to more info from Margaret Cooter) and I was also lucky to have a tutorial with her afterwards. She is such a nice person! It was great to see her cringe about some of her early work - don't we all :-) It was great to have a chat about explaining/not explaining the work to the audience. She gave me a great confidence boost!
Oh - and I love her last altered book project "Spotlight". On the whole, most of the work she showed seemed to be about setting the conditions/rules for the work to appear and then displaying the result: cutting out faces, letting prisoners fill the books, allowing chemical reaction to erode the pages.

Great website from Olafur Eliasson

A minute of silence.

Justinas Marcinkevicius died today. My generation grew up with his poetry.

When listening to this recording of him reading his own poetry, I could not stop thinking about what Susan Hiller said about voice. The physicality of voice. How the soundwaves touch your ear drums and make that sound meaningful. How his voice - this voice of the departed - can still physically affect us. Cause and effect. Across time.

Beyond photography: Clarisse d’Arcimoles @ Degree Art

At the moment Degree Art has got a fascinating exhibition by Clarisse d’Arcimoles. Worth a trip to the East End.
Clarisse is a photographer, but the exhibition was not exactly what I expected of a photography exhibition. It is not one of those perfectly lit, high gloss, expensively framed, large format selection of land/city/seascapes, that fill the art fairs. Clarisse's work is intimate and homely. She recreates and documents the past (no wonder I loved the show). There are photos from her family albums (a kind of now and then arrangements), there is the story of the last resident of the demolished block of flats, there are her travels in India. I had an impression, that Clarisse functions first as an artist, and then as a photographer. I will certainly be keeping my eye on her.

Since graduating from Central Saint Martin’s just over a year ago, d’Arcimoles’ work has been enthusiastically received with exhibitions and awards in the UK and internationally. She is currently exhibiting in Newspeak: British Art Now Vol. II at the Saatchi Gallery. Clarisse d’Arcimoles immortalises, revisits and re-imagines through her work, taking memory and the passage of time as her material. Through this conflation of the past and present the results fluctuate between emotionally charged relics and documentary objects. D’Arcimoles’ delicate handling of her subjects challenges authenticity and artificiality in a bid for both nostalgia and reality.

Clarisse d’Arcimoles: Un-Possible retour and other recent works will include new and recently acclaimed photography, film and installation by d’Arcimoles. Un-Possible retour is a photographic series in which the artist reconstructed snapshots from her family photo albums. The works share the simultaneously poignant and comic atmosphere of The Good Old Days, a sustained investigation through notebooks, photography and film, into the life of Jimmy Watts, the oldest resident of the Market Estate in Holloway, demolished last year. The film will be shown in a reconstruction of how the artist displayed the film in Watts’ flat, custom-built for the exhibition. 16 impressions sous plastique is a collection of self-portraits of d’Arcimoles in a series of hostels and hotel rooms while travelling across India. The intimate environments are generic yet personal in their brief occupation, defined by the detritus of previous tenants or sterile anonymity, accompanied by unlikely commentary and recommendations. These celebrated works will be accompanied by new and previously unseen works.

Normal paranormal: Susan Hiller @ Tate Britain

I am not the kind of person who would sleep in the fairy rings when sober. I would also not seek aliens or ghost voices. I do not believe in full moon or the twelve signs of Zodiac. I like science and all the nerdy things that come with it.

Susan Hiller's exhibition at Tate has ghosts, dreams and all other otherworldly things: an unusual vehicle for the ideas. If Hiller intended to create a tension with that - she succeeded well for me - I am still struggling trying to consider her dream maps without an irony.

Other than my struggle to deal with the paranormal - the show is beautifully curated: a remarkable feast for eyes, ears and mind. Starting with the burnt paintings (which is what I was going to do with my last year's work), onto the wave postcards, the fire, through to the Freud's cabinet, the auras (yep, I like even those), the bottles. What I loved most, is the pieces where her past as an anthropologist comes through: artefacts collected and documented, arranged and ordered. Now they highlight that,what has always been there, but got lost between the familiar and stagnant meaning associations. She creates imaginary taxonomies - or our desire to make sense of things creates imaginary taxonomies - that otherwise would have not been grouped together. Well - I need to read more about her systems. Fascinating!

This is her older interview.

This major survey exhibition at Tate Britain will provide a timely focus on a selection of her key works, including many of the pioneering mixed-media installations and video projections for which she is best known. It will be the largest presentation of her work to date, providing a unique opportunity to follow her exploration of dreams, memories and supernatural phenomena across a career of almost four decades.

The exhibition is curated by Ann Gallagher, Head of Collections (British Art), Tate, with Sofia Karamani, Assistant Curator, Tate Britain. The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue published by Tate Publishing.

London Art Fair: Aliki Braine's altered landscapes for big walls.

Big landscapes! That Australian man would be oh so happy! Except that Aliki Braine's landscapes are punched, so I am not sure how they fit into the category of "lovely pictures".

Aliki is interested in how a photograph can be transformed into an object and uses destructive techniques to disrupt her otherwise pastoral landscape images. Often cutting, drawing with ink or punching holes into the negative her violation of the pristine surface of the photograph forces the viewer to look towards the texture of the photographic paper and opens up a new understanding of the photographic process and image making. For Aliki the hole puncher acts in much the same way as a painter's brush, enabling her to make a mark on her photographic canvas. (From Troika Editions website).

PS I have just realized, that I really do like artwork with absence.

London Art Fair: Sankeum Hoh pearls up the language.

Sankeum Koh at Hanmi Gallery. There is something about things that look like language, but we cannot read. A possibility of language. Removed language. Empty shapes. Fired books.

Sankeum KOH’s works involve the meticulous assembly of pearl beads or steels balls to create an illusion of blurred texts, sourcing from newspaper columns, books, and poetry. Koh transforms the literary words into fragmented visions. She draws upon the viewer’s frustration of not being able to read the cryptic codes leaving the viewer to question what it is they are actually ‘reading’. Her works aim to challenge the validity of such texts in newspapers and question the dogmatic approach of its readers.

London Art Fair: Clay Ketter, Klaus Staudt, Valeria Nascimento.

Clay Ketter had a few impressive pieces called Golf Coast Slabs. Very powerful pictures, that look like abstract photographs at first. On a closer inspection it becomes clear, that they are actually traces of homes: the homes swept away by the hurricane Katrina that hit the American Gulf Coast in 2006.

His work on the surface has a beautifully minimalist aesthetic, but the real interest lies beneath the layers in a "truth to materials" approach and the perfection of the process.

Klaus Staudt. Loved it! Reminds me of this fog.


Valeria Nascimento plays with porcelain (like me, then!)

London Art Fair: Diana Taylor and Rowena Huges

Diana Taylor and Rowena Huges must have been my favorite. Diana seems to be working with memories and fragmentation. Unfortunately, I cannot say much about them: the ladies at Room Artspace did not happen to be the talkative ones (hm... except with each other).

London Art Fair: Tony Charles and Deb Covell at Platform-A Gallery

Platform-A must have been the friendliest gallery at the London Art Fair. It is such a pleasure to talk to people who are willing and interested to talk about their work and their gallery.
Uh - not every stand at LAF was like that. What is it with some of the people, that they cannot be asked to respond to human interaction?

Anyway,
First I noticed Deb Covell's work on the wall on the left. Her pieces are small scale and they have an air of insignificance about them. Delicate. They are called "PLY" series. These collages are detritus of larger paintings. As such, they are invested with complex material history. Deb Covell attempts to bridge the gap between the ordinary and familliar with and often idealistic quest for beauty and purity. (the last few sentences are not mine - they are taken from press release)

Tony Charles had his work on the floor. He is interested in the ultimate fragility of something apparently permanent. For this piece, Tony had the floors removed from a house for demolition. He harvested rust and steel powder, which he then stenciled onto the floor. At the end of the day, he said, the pattern will get hoovered up. The ultimate ephemerality!

"Hidden Spaces" sketchbook exhibition: sharing a vitrine with Grayson Perry.

Everybody knows Grayson Perry. Even my daughter (10) knows the potter who looks like Alice (in the Wonderland) and makes vases with penises. OK, she may not be an average ten year old. She does get dragged around galleries a bit. However, it did impress her, that I had to share a vitrine with the Grayson Perry!

Danny has assembled this really interesting exhibition of sketchbooks, that were shown at Camberwell for a week. I brought in mine just as he was arranging the others, therefore, I had a chance to flick through some amazing - I mean really amazing - and creative sketchbooks.

Dannys own sketchbooks are quite remarkable. He uses old books and works on top of them: a kind of pamplicest. Stephen Cooper's and Janet Bradley's sketchbooks are very "there": bright, bold, full. Natalie Yaxi brought bound volumes of junk mail. Grayson Perry, Christa Harris and me contributed "pocket" sketchbooks, used for casual notes and scribbles. I flicked though Perry's book yesterday. It was full of Jesuses and Marys and churches. A few rabbits on the bikes, a few babies, a few pretty girls. A hint of darkness. A fire. Some writing. It was not much different from his ceramics. However, I am tempted to say, that I enjoyed the sketchbook more, than his vases (and I do love his ceramics!). Is it because it is so much more immediate? More personal? Like looking into the person? Like getting to know the person.
(I suppose aesthetics of the work is the same, but content changes from personal to public).

Hidden Spaces Exhibition
For most artists sketchbooks have been spaces in which to rehearse and experiment without the pressure
of the outside world. This removal of audience creates a non judgemental, safe environment which
stimulates explorative play which in turn can feed the creative process. Many artists have told me they
consider their sketchbook work as important as final published works yet have never exhibited or shown
this work before, this still surprises me. The purpose of this exhibition is to bring together sketchbooks from
a range of successful practitioners that for the most part have never been exhibited.

1 Danny Aldred
My sketchbooks represent a process centred around the enjoyment of collage and the final completed
books on the most part have inadvertently become finished pieces in their own right. As a child Brian
Eno described his enjoyment of collecting fossils from the beach and described this process as ‘beyond
thinking’, when I am collecting material and making my sketchbooks I can relate to this comment.

2. Janet Bradley

3 Stephen Cooper
This selection of some 60 drawings is taken from a total of 300 drawings executed over four consecutive
days in Paris. The project began on the Eurostar journey from London and was completed during the return
journey. The drawings shown here were made in my hotel room, many between 2 and 4 in the morning
when I deliberately worked in complete darkness and was unable to view the paper. The subjects come
from memory and are concerned with science, brain function and consciousness. I have made drawings
in hotel rooms across the world for over 15 years but never “blindly” in this way or as intensively. They
represent a synthesis between collaged images and the process of drawing and thinking - a kind of collaged
drawing. I am interested in the unity of this process. My intention is to publish my drawings in various hotel
rooms in a series of books as well as to use them as a basis for a new body of painting installations.

4 Margaret Cooter
Crossing through, I become the last and only person to read this journal - having written it more than 10
years ago. The viewer is spared the moans, fears, doubts, exhortations, and trivia; dissolved or cancelled,
un-written, they are buried but have been ceremonially honoured. The insights, plans, ideas live on,
elsewhere; all content has been transformed.

5 Egidija Čiricaitė
My favorite sketchbooks are not the project books, but the handbag sketchbooks used for random thinking,
drawing and visual experimentation. I compile them using whatever is available at hand at that instant:
pens, soot, menus, weeds, tickets, etc. Those sketcbooks imprint the moment; they are directly linked to
the past through the existencial traces of the time and space where they were produced.

6 Andrew Foster
A sketchbook for me goes beyond an object, a sketch or a finished piece. Its simply about an attitude to
visual exploration. Its a place where you can allow yourself to visually be sick, without any pressure, pre
conceptions or boundaries from yourself or others. Its an intellectual space to play with intent.

7 Christa Harris

8 Charlotte Knox-Williams
I stopped making sketchbooks, and instead re-applied the principles or functions of these across my
practice. This folded drawing is a part drawn from a wider inter functioning conglomeration of work that
includes film, text, performance and installation.

9 Grayson Perry

10 Stewy
The selected sketch books were created in Toulouse, France in 1994. Between life drawing lessons I
explored the streets for three months making pen and ink architectural drawings, collages, photos,
collecting, food packaging, wallpaper scraps, tickets etc.

11 Natalie Yiaxi