Books in Bronze: Friday 13

 Friday 13 must be a good day for burning books!

This was my first attempt at bronze casting and I am pleased - oh, so pleased - with the results: the detail, the colours, the mutilation!

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!

Time out. Thinking. Modern British Sculpture at RA

I finally made to the Modern British Sculpture exhibition at The Royal Accademy. I have read and heard very mixed reviews about it: certain areas underrepresented, some obvious artists omitted, jumpy, sketchy. BBC has an interesting video here. However, I went there not for the fundamental overview of British Sculpture. I have been feeling "stuck"for a little while now. Going to this exhibition was my attempt to plunge into something different.

So what did I make of it.
I did enjoy it. So did my kids, aged 6 and 11. We had audio-guides. I can only assume that we were the right audience for the exhibition: a bit educated in arts, but not experts on sculpture.
Jaob Epstein, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Anthony Caro kind of steal the show. I thought the pairing of Epstein's Adam  and Henry Moore's Snake was fantastic. However, I felt like the next room (the one with Phillip King) would have benefited from an Anthony Gormley figure, that would have put Epstein, King and Gilbert into a different kind of conversation (anyway, where was Anthony Gormley?) Three Forms were well set against the backdrop of Chinese ceramics - so painterly!The Duck Weight,  neo-sumerian (below) looked unbelievably modern.  Early One Morning was beautifully filling the room.  Anish Kapoor was missing. I finally liked Richard Long. The last two rooms were a bit crowded for my linking. Gary Webb, Martin Boyce, Rose Finn-Kelcey. Richard Wentworth was showing film Making Do and Getting By, a Selection of Everyday Encounters 1970-85, - a currious documentary of everyday sculptural inventions, which cast a completely new light onto the whole exhibition.

"1968. Un-titled." is out

Yesterday a took my fired book to the LCC gallery. Everything looked so professional in the big white gallery space! Including my work. It was just standing there. Quietly standing. Just quietly being itself.

Alicia Martin: overflowing books

Alicia Martin does installations of cascading books. These are the more understated work : all that tension of crack splitting apart and busting open.

Selina Swayne: floating books

Recently I came across those floating books by Selina Swayne. I seem to have missed this Floating Exhibition on Serpentine in 2006.

Very evocative, aren't they? I would like to find out more about what is behind the installation.

ESSAY. Biblioclasm. Araki Takako.

Look what I have found! Araki Takako!

Araki Takako is an internationally acclaimed ceramic artist, particularly well-known for the "Bible" series on which she has been working for more than twenty years. Araki is an atheist, but her father was a Zen priest. The prolonged and painful death of her brother, a faithful Christian, from tuberculosis, focused her doubts on the value of religion. She sees the bible as both a symbol of Western culture and a symbol of the vanity of Christian belief. Her obsessive metaphorical work sparked by her brother's death serves as an eulogy on the powerlessness of faith. The brittle decaying Bibles are composed of layers of thin fragile clay sheets which she has silk-screened with text. Their decaying fragility contains its own message that ultimately the Word is ephemeral. Araki devoted herself to the family profession of flower arranging until 1952 when she began to study painting. From 1960 to 1961 she studied sculpting in New York before returning to Japan where she studied in different pottery centres. Her reputation for sculptural ceramics was established in 1979 when she received the grand prize at the Japan Ceramics Exhibition.

I find her work very powerful. That same feeling I get when looking at Oscar Munioz videos. She produces a statement without being aggressive.
There is stillness and a meditative quality in Araki's ceramics.

Frieze Sculpture park : Sanchayan Ghosh

I love the idea of a visitor walking away with a small piece of artwork. Not just a memory of it, but an actual piece. And if it is something as beautiful and delicate as Shola flowers!

Sanchayan Ghosh did put a note encouraging visitors to take A flower. Did he realise some people would be clearing his lawn by a bagfull?



An act of destruction

or an intended result?

He says: the work aims to interrogate ideas surrounding nationalism and identity. I say: it reflects on the ideas of greed and consumerism, unfortunately.

Frieze 2010: Conrad Shawcross and my nerdy intellectual self

Conrad Shawcross totally appeals to my nerdy intellectual self.

Frieze 2010: inappropriate sculpture by Alicja Kwade

Alicja Kwade is represented by Johann König Berlin. They were such a friendly lot!

Alicja's sculpture consisted of glass sheets and three candles: one lit and two unlit. The candles are cleverly placed on both sides of the glass. As the viewer walks around and watches the candles and the reflections, the unlit candles seem to become alight (from certain positions).

One of the candles was slightly further out. The gallery had only a small space. The visitors kept kicking the candle over. The girl kept putting it back into the very very particular location. She explained, that, possibly it was not the most appropriate installation to bring, considering the size of their space.

I am please they brought it, though. i have never heard of Alycja before, but I have now had a look at her website and I really like what I saw. I will keep my eyes open for her work.