These Silences Are All the Words by Madiha Aijaz at Open Eye Gallery as part of Liverpool Biennial 2018

These Silences Are All the Words is a film installation and series of photographs exploring the public libraries of Karachi, Pakistan, against the backdrop of the city’s changing landscape.



Focusing on librarians who have been working for years in traditional institutions such as Bedil Library, Aijaz tells the stories of an aging intelligentsia.

The backlit photographs show scenes from an assortment of libraries as well as the librarians who work there. One is reminded of the need for visitors to the library in order for the historical knowledge to be passed on.

The lighting in the photographs is exquisite. The dark environments are usually illuminated by beams of light from a window or a highlight from a reading lamp. The long exposure time needed to capture the image relates to the stillness in the image and suggests a slow pace and contemplative atmosphere commonly associated with being in a library.

Practice Makes Practice at The NewBridge Project: ‘the listening room’ – conversation with Jez Riley French

This event took the form of a discussion about the role of located and performance-based sound in the contemporary sonic arts.

Jez Riley French gave a presentation/talk on some of aspects of his work with extended listening along with anecdotes, and he shared some key artists working with located sound including:

Klara Lewis

Signe Liden

Sally Ann McIntyre

Dawn Scarfe

Halla Steinunn Stefansdottir

Julia Holter

Manja Ristic

and Jana Winderen.

This lead us into an open conversation where we discussed topics such as

How does fit recording sit with the idea of nature and the idyll?

The role of misogyny in the distorted histories of sound cultures

The act of listening

I really appreciate Jez' way of working and highly respect his approach to making work. He likes discovering and sharing existing sounds, as opposed to manufacturing his own. He uses a range of microphones including hydrophones, electromagnetic, ultrasonic and contact microphones to record sounds that are beyond our normal hearing capabilities. His use of photography adds another element to the audio rather than illustrating the sound.

Side Gallery exhibition - Childhoods

Today I discovered Side Gallery, a newly re-opened gallery in Newcastle.

"Side is dedicated to showing the best in humanist documentary photography: rich, powerful and challenging work engaged with people’s lives and landscapes, telling stories that often get marginalised, whether they are from the North East of England or anywhere else in the world."

Side Gallery was opened in 1977 by The Amber collective because there wasn’t a venue in Newcastle, at the time, which would show the documentary work it was producing. Over the past 2 years the gallery has been closed to allow for building works to take place. The gallery accessibility was greatly improved, both physically and digitally.

The current exhibition, CHILDHOODS brings together 12 photographers and film makers creating work between 1977 and the present and crossing four continents. The exhibition creates a complex portrait of children’s imaginative lives, the social contexts they deal with and their resilience; of ourselves.

PORTRAITS AND DREAMS, 1975 – 1982, Wendy Ewald
JUVENILE JAZZ BANDS, 1978 – 1979, Tish Murtha
STEP BY STEP, 1980 – 1987, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
SEACOAL, 1982 – 1984, Chris Killip
THE TIME OF HER LIFE, 1984 – 2004, Lesley McIntyre
SHIFTING GROUND, 1997 – 2005, Dean Chapman
DOVANA FILMS, 2000 – 2016, Duco Tellegen
ALL DRESSED UP, 2004 – 2005, Karen Robinson
CLASSROOM PORTRAITS, 2004 – 2012, Julian Germain
WHERE CHILDREN SLEEP, 2008 – 2010, James Mollison
SYRIAN COLLATERAL, 2014 – 2016, Kai Wiedenhöfer
HOME MADE IN SMETHWICK, 2015 – 2016, Liz Hingley

I was particularly fascinated by the series of photographs called Where Children Sleep by James Mollison. He was commissioned to make work engaging with children's rights, which lead him to think about children's bedrooms and how they help children form who they are. Mollison was conscious that he wanted to document children from diverse backgrounds and so the photographs feature children from privileged and unprivileged circumstances. The photographs are deeply moving, made more so by the stories that go alongside them which really bring them to life.

There is a real power to this exhibition. It has the effect of getting people talking. The above series of photographs prompted a conversation between a small group of strangers. We discussed the changes to family values over the decades, differences in upbringing and the subsequent effects on society.

I would urge anyone to go to the exhibition. I would find it hard to believe if you were not moved by what you see.

Jez Riley French visits Newcastle and comes along to Drone Ensemble

I met field recorder and photographer Jez Riley French a couple of years ago when he came to give an artist talk at Newcastle University. We have kept in touch, and earlier this week I met up with him and a group of other artists using sound at NewBridge Studios on his latest visit to Newcastle.



"Using intuitive composition, field recording, improvisation and photography, Jez has been exploring his enjoyment of and interest in detail, simplicity and his emotive response to places and situations for over 3 decades.

Alongside performances, exhibitions, installations, he lectures and runs workshops around the world on field recording and the act and art of listening. He also curates the ‘engraved glass’ label and the ‘a quiet position’ series of online releases / forums exploring the broad ideas surrounding field recording as a primary art of sound / sound art.

In recent years he has been working extensively on recordings of surfaces and spaces (natural and man made) and developing the concept of photographic scores. Jrf is particularly associated with the development of extended recording techniques, including the recording of structural vibrations, contact microphone recording, ultrasonics, infrasonics, internal electronic signals via coil pick-up's and recordings made with hydrophones.

Amongst his key recent works are pieces capturing the sound of the dolomites dissolving, ants consuming fallen fruit, the Tate Modern building vibrating, the infrasound of domestic spaces around the world, glaciers melting in Iceland and the tonal resonances of natural and human objects in the landscape."



His visit coincided with Drone Ensemble's weekly session, and so I introduced him to Joe and the other Droners. We demonstrated our range of sound making machines, and he enjoyed having a go himself.



Jez has invited me to be included in a forthcoming edition of verdure engraved, a regular pdf arts magazine, available to view online or download for free

I will be responding to six questions that Jez has sent me, and this will form part of the interview series that runs throughout the arts magazine.

To see earlier editions please visit

http://jezrileyfrench.co.uk/verdure-engraved.php

Visiting Artist - Melanie Manchot

This week's visiting artist was London based Melanie Manchot who works with photography, film, video and installation as part of a performative and participatory practice.

She delivered an excellent presentation, providing a good overview of the development of her work starting with Look At You Loving Me, a series of portraits of her nude mother, and ending with The Gift which is currently being exhibited at Bloomberg SPACE comprising a four-channel video, photography and a set of objects on plinths.



Look At You Loving Me, 2000, Unique Silver Gelatin Prints onto Canvas


Groups + Locations (Moscow)


‘Groups + Locations (Moscow)', is a series of photographs taken at historic sites in and around Moscow. Based on late 19th century group shots, the work refers to a moment when photography played an important role in the Russian people’s comprehension of what their vast lands and its inhabitants looked like.


Neighbours (Berlin), 2006, Six Diptych: Silver Gelatin Print/C-Print


Neighbours (Berlin) is based on a series of six postcards from 1905/06, found in a Berlin antiquarian bookshop when Manchot moved there in 2005. In the original images, a group of people is depicted standing outside the houses where they live and work. On the back of the postcards the exact addresses are given as well as the date of their production. Taking those as instructions for a new set of group portraits Manchot revisited the six locations to see how those sites exist today, one hundred years on, to which extent history has altered the infrastructure and architecture of this city. The artist then invited today’s residents to participate in a new group portrait. The resulting images are a portrait of the changes inscribed in a city, of memory and history as much as of the individuals who have agreed to participate and become part of an image with their neighbours, who most often are strangers to each other as much as to the artist. The work is presented as diptychs of the original postcard and the new photographs.



Celebration (Cyprus Street)


‘Celebration (Cyprus Street)’ is based on the rich history of public street parties in London’s East End. The film takes the viewer along the street in Bethnal Green, with the focal point being the gathering of the community for a group photograph.

Celebration (Cyprus Street)

To make ‘Celebration’, Manchot worked with the residents of Cyprus Street over a period of six months, collaborating on preparations for the party and inviting active participation in the film. The work engages with the East End as a point of arrival to the capital and to Britain. It acknowledges the waves of migration passing through East London over the last centuries and articulates the current make-up of streets as complex multicultural units.


Tracer

The film tracks the movements of a group of parkour runners as they navigate the route of the Great North Run. The structures and spaces they move through are explored in a physical manner, and a understanding of the architecture and environment is established through their direct interact with it. The film begins and ends with the group of parkourists moving as a swarm, but the main body of the film consists of a number of scenes in which a single parkourist is visible.


Twelve


Twelve is a multi channel video installation exploring the intimate stories, rituals, repetitions and ruptures of lives spent in addiction and recovery.

Over the last two years Manchot has worked in dialogue with twelve people in recent recovery from substance misuse, in rehabilitation communities in Liverpool, Oxford and London. Twelve is directly informed by their personal written and oral testimonies, creative conceptions, and performances within final works.

Single sequences are shot as continuous takes, referencing iconic scenes from the films of Michael Haneke, Gus Van Sant, Bela Tarr and Chantal Akerman – a ferry journey across the Mersey, a car wash, the cutting of daisies with small scissors, the obsessive cleaning of a floor – providing the framework for reflections on remembered incidents and states of mind.

www.twelve.org.uk

Melanie spoke of the importance of working closely with the participants in order to develop an understanding and level of trust that was crucial to producing the work. I admire the way that the work does not make a judgement of the people that she works with.

For more information visit http://www.melaniemanchot.net

The Helsinki Bus Station Theory: Finding Your Own Vision in Photography

I was sent a link to this website this morning and the message it gives seems to apply to everyone, whatever stage of their career, and in whatever they do.

"We are in the midst of sea change — a tidal wave might be more accurate — within the medium of photography. While the lens is still firmly fixed to the camera body, the body itself appears to have imploded. The inner workings — that is, the guts of the camera from Talbot’s days (when cameras were called “mousetraps” by his wife who was always tripping over them) — have changed faster than anyone expected.

The digital camera, the DSLR, has become the new tool for lens-based professionals and artists almost overnight. Everywhere. We all have them now. But the pictures have not changed. Nor have the ground rules for making them. The need for pictures that make a mark on our lives, that give meaning to experience, that park themselves deep in our consciousness, the way new music often does, has never been greater, the appetite for lens-based visual culture stands above most other mediums of communication hands down.

In the art world, photography has stepped forward as the most important art medium of our times. Roberta Smith, writing for The New York Times a few years back, put it this way (and I am paraphrasing here): “In the last thirty years, no medium has had a more profound effect on art than the medium of photography.” This, mind you, comes from one of America’s foremost critical thinkers in the art world.
The Helsinki Bus Station

There is a bus station in Helsinki I want to invite you to see, a bus station just across from Eliel Saarinen’s famous train station. Surrounded by Jugendstil architectural gems such as the National Theater and the National Art Museum, the Helsinki bus station makes a cool backdrop for Magnum wannabes armed with DSLRs and vintage Leicas, you know, ready for anything.

You might find yourself there, one day too.

But getting back to what makes the bus station famous, at least among my students at UMass Lowell, the University of Art & Design Helsinki, the École d’Art Appliqués in Lausanne, Switzerland or the many workshops I give in Tuscany, Maine, and Santa Fe, is the metaphor it offers students and professionals alike for creative continuity in a lifelong journey in photography, the metaphor is provides to young artists seeking to discover their own unique vision one day.

The Helsinki Bus Station: let me describe what happens there.

Some two-dozen platforms are laid out in a square at the heart of the city. At the head of each platform is a sign posting the numbers of the buses that leave from that particular platform. The bus numbers might read as follows: 21, 71, 58, 33, and 19.

Each bus takes the same route out of the city for a least a kilometer, stopping at bus stop intervals along the way where the same numbers are repeated each time: 21, 71, 58, 33, and 19.

Now let’s say, again metaphorically speaking, that each bus stop represents one year in the life of a photographer, meaning the third bus stop would represent three years of photographic activity.

OK, so you have been working for three years making platinum studies of nudes. Call it bus #21.

You take those three years of work on the nude to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the curator asks if you are familiar with the nudes of Irving Penn. His bus, 71, was on the same line. Or you take them to a gallery in Paris and are reminded to check out Bill Brandt, bus 58, and so on.

Shocked, you realize that what you have been doing for three years has already been done, and by someone with far greater fame than you have attained thus far. So you hop off the bus, grab a cab (because life is short), and head straight back to the bus station looking for another platform.

This time you are going to make 8×10 view camera color snapshots from a cherry picker crane of people lying on the beach. You spend three years and three grand at it and produce a series of works that elicit the same comment: haven’t you seen the work of Richard Misrach? Or, if they are steamy black-and-white 8×10 camera images of palm trees swaying along a beachfront, haven’t you seen the work of Sally Mann?

So once again, you get off the bus, grab the cab, race back, and find a new platform. This goes on all your creative life, always showing new work, always being compared to others.

What to do? It’s simple: Stay on the bus. Stay on the f**king bus.

Why? Because if you do, in time you will begin to see a difference. The buses that move out of Helsinki stay on the same line but only for a while, maybe a kilometer or two. Then they begin to separate, each number heading off to its own unique destination. Bus 33 suddenly goes north, bus 19 southwest. For a time maybe 21 and 71 dovetail each other for a spell, but soon they split off as well. Irving Penn is headed elsewhere.

It’s the separation that makes all the difference, and once you start to see that difference in your work from the work you so admire (that’s why you chose that platform after all), it’s time to look for your breakthrough.

Suddenly your work starts to get noticed. Now you are working more on your own, making more of the difference between your work and what influenced it. Your vision takes off.And as the years mount up and your work begins to pile up, it won’t be long before the critics become very intrigued, not just by what separates your work from a Sally Mann or a Ralph Gibson, but by what you did when you first got started! You regain the whole bus route in fact.

The vintage prints made twenty years ago are suddenly reevaluated and, for what it is worth, start selling at a premium. At the end of the line — where the bus comes to rest and the driver can get out for a smoke or better yet a cup of coffee — that’s when the work is done.

It could be the end of your career as an artist or the end of your life for that matter, but your total output is now all there before you, the early so-called imitations, the breakthroughs, the peaks and valleys, the closing masterpieces, all with the stamp of your unique vision.

Why? Because you stayed on the bus.

When I began my photographic journey, I was enamored with the work of Ralph Gibson, Duane Michals, and Jerry Uelsmann. I was on their platforms. Each told me that it was possible to use your mind to make pictures. As a copywriter on the Minolta account (before I became a photographer) I wrote: “What happens inside your mind can happen inside a camera.” I took that credo and made it my own. Not with multiple images like Uelsmann or in sequences like Michals. But it was Ralph Gibson’s images that haunted me.

There was this one picture in particular that I loved of hands coming up over the prow of a boat, which he made in 1970. I had a picture of my foot coming over the prow of a Finnish rowboat the other way, made in 1976. I am sure his image inspired mine even though I wasn’t thinking about it when I made my picture.

In 1989, there was a show in Antibes called Three Masters of the Surreal with Eikoh Hosoe, the great Japanese master, Ralph Gibson, and, humbly, myself. At the party after the vernissage, I told Ralph about my trepidations when I first began photography. He nodded his head and said, “When I first saw your work (this was in 1975 or thereabouts), I had that feeling of something familiar.” But then he was quick to add, “But you know, it didn’t take you long to find your way.”

I had found the difference. Ralph went on to photograph women and walls, color and surreal light. I continued my bus route less haunted, more assured.

So, our best chance of making our voice and vision heard is to find that common attribute by which the work can be recognized, by which audiences are made curious. It can happen early, as my teacher Harry Callahan stated it: you never get much better than your first important works. And they come soon.

At an auction in London at Sotheby’s a few years back, one of my pieces came up for bidding. It shows my upside-down face with mouth wide open on a boardwalk in Narragansett, Rhode Island. When the auctioneer announced the piece, certainly he or she didn’t describe it as a student work, which, in fact, it was. I had made it for Harry’s class.

And that’s why I teach. Teachers who say, “Oh, it’s just student work,” should maybe think twice about teaching. Georges Braque has said that out of limited means, new forms emerge. I say, we find out what we will do by knowing what we will not do.

And so, if your heart is set on 8×10 platinum landscapes in misty southern terrains, work your way through those who inspire you, ride their bus route, and damn those who would say you are merely repeating what has been done before. Wait for the months and years to pass, and soon your differences will begin to appear with clarity and intelligence, your originality will become visible, even in the works from those very first years of trepidation when everything you did seemed to have been done before.

We can do a whole lot of things in art, become ten different artists, but if we do that, there is great danger that we will communicate very little in the end. I say ride the bus of your dreams and stay the course.

In closing, I want to take you to Switzerland where I also teach. Imagine a mountain before you. You see its peak and want to climb up to the top. It is your life’s goal. Start by standing back far enough to confirm it is really there, then head straight for it knowing it will disappear from sight for most of your life as you climb and meander the hidden forest trails that lift you ever higher even as many sections force you to drop down into the mountainside pockets of disappointment or even despair, but you will be climbing soon enough and always headed toward your goal.

There will be those special occasions — and may there be many of them — when the fruits of your labors are suddenly made visible, to be celebrated, when you will again see the peak, only closer now, giving you confidence to step forward ever more briskly and bravely.

At one point the tree line will thin out the way hair on the top of an old man begins to bald away, but the air will be clear and the path sure.

At the top you will delight in what you have accomplished. You look around you and see just how far you have come. But then your turn around and as you do you become aware of mountain peaks far higher than what you had ever dreamed of, peaks that from the distance when you first looked up were not even there, completely hidden from your view.

And now, there they are, huge peaks but your climbing days are done.

You have three choices: You can look up with raging jealousy and end your days in sadness and regret. Or you can look down at all the distance you climbed, become arrogant about every step you took and not have many friends with whom to share your closing days.

Or you can skim the horizon and take in the gorgeous sweep of the panorama before you.If you can do that you will know peace and rare humility.

We do not have to be number one in this world. We only have to be number one to ourselves. There is a special peace that comes with such humility. When you reach this peak in life, you’ve reached the highest mountain peak of them all.

God can’t bless both sides of a football field anymore than she or he should bless one country over another. You can’t be number one without having a number deux, tres, quatro, or funf.

It’s a lesson we are learning back in the classrooms of America I think. I hope. When I see bumper stickers that read: “My child is on the honor roll,” I see all the sons and daughters that didn’t make the list. Tracey Moffatt has a poignant series of works dedicated to athletes who’ve come in fourth place: no gold, no silver, not even bronze. Being numero uno? Stardom is no dream to chase. We just need to be good. And make good work.

So, be the caretaker of your vision. Make it famous. And above all, remember, that art is risk made visible. Good luck and see you out there. You’re going to be great.

About the author: Arno Rafael Minkkinen is a Finnish photographer who resides in the United States. He is the Nancy Donahue Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell."

http://petapixel.com/2013/03/13/the-helsinki-bus-station-theory-finding-your-own-vision-in-photography/

Delta Design by Hans Strand

Photographer Hans Strand submitted Delta design to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2014 competition.

See more at: http://www.nhmshop.co.uk/prints/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-2014/delta-design-wall-print.html#sthash.zjLwGDZ4.dpuf

Stan Douglas at The Fruitmarket Gallery

In an exhibition that is predominantly black and white, the abstract series of photographs Corrupt Files introduce an element of colour into the gallery. These are prints of damaged digital image files that have no visual resemblance to their original image, but remain true as data. 

Notions of representation and abstraction are also referred to in The Second Hotel Vancouver and Hogan's Alley. These large images are meticulously researched virtual sets resembling the sites of East and West Vancouver. In order to make them so accurate, Douglas sourced textures from archival and contemporary photographs. The level of detail is emphasised as the viewer is invited to use a torch to shine spotlights onto the photograph, revealing further depth and detail within the images. 

The artist goes further by producing an app called Circa 1948 with which you can explore the exterior and interior of the two sites that the photographs capture. Using the language of a virtual video game, characters from the two neighbourhoods can be directed to guide you around the rooms of the hotel and the gambling dens of the alley.

This exhibition demonstrates the ways in which technology can be an integral part of the artists artwork, and even though the artist may be using the latest technological advancements, it is for reasons pertinent to the work rather than as a gimmick. 

http://fruitmarket.co.uk

Torsten Lauschmann Artist Talk

This week's visiting artist was Torsten Lauschmann, and I was one of the students who was chairing the seminar that took place after the talk.

Here are some of my thoughts in relation to / as a result of looking at Torsten's work

- Lauschmann often exhibits a work that he thinks is unfinished, and will reshow the work in different exhibitions, sometimes it getting closer to being finished. An exhibition is an opportunity to develop the work and each exhibition marks a different stage in its development.

- His work has been described as "too fast to be photography, too slow to be film"

- Lauschmann thinks that interactive art seems too much like a game

- Interested in failure

"I didn't fail, I just found out how it doesn't work"

Having heard Lauschmann explain the setup of certain works within his artist talk, I began to question how well his website represents his work. For example, on his website, 'Dead man's switch' is a video of a candle. However, when discussed in the artist talk, Lauschmann explained that every time the candle in the video was blown out, the lights in the gallery would come on, thus illuminating the audience and surroundings. In this way, the physical space plays its part in the artwork, yet online, one would not understand how it is actually exhibited. It brought into question the nature of how to document certain works.

Likewise, some artworks work well on the computer screen, but other works may not suit this - how does an artist frame the artwork and the documentation?

For more information about Torsten Lauschmann, visit

http://www.torstenlauschmann.com

Turner Prize Nominees Announced

I am delighted that my friend and colleague, Ciara Phillips has been nominated for the 2014 Turner Prize. 

Once again, Glasgow-based or Glasgow-educated artists feature heavily. Out of the four nominees, three are GSA alumni. Tris Vonn Michell , Ciara Phillips and Duncan Campbell are all shortlisted for the prize, awarded to an outstanding British artist under the age of 50.

Tris Vonna-Michell (Fine Art Photography, 2005) is noted for his semi-improvised presentations, often using slide projections, with an egg-timer to let him know when he has reached his limit. He has been nominated for a solo show in Brussels.

Ciara Phillips (MFA, 2004) is nominated for a two-month project at The Showroom gallery in London, where she set up a temporary workshop and invited artists, designers, and local women's groups to produce new screen prints.

Duncan Campbell (MFA, 1998) is nominated for his presentation at the Scottish Pavilion of the 2013 Venice Biennale in which he screened the 1953 film Statues Also Die alongside his response – a film which featured choreography by Michael Clark and explored the commercialisation of African art.

James Richards is the final shortlisted artist. He graduated from Chelsea School of Art in 2006. He is nominated for his work called Rosebud which was exhibited in Venice.



Read what the papers have to say:

Mark Brown, arts correspondent, The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/07/turner-prize-2014-shortlist-unveiled

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/07/four-artists-shortlisted-turner-prize-2014




Nick Clark‎, The Independent‎

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/turner-prize-2014-shortlist-duncan-campbell-and-ciara-phillips-among-nominees-9330686.html




James Lachno and PA, The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/turner-prize/10812735/Turner-Prize-2014-shortlist-of-nominees-announced.html




James Howe, The List

http://www.list.co.uk/article/60710-nominees-for-turner-prize-2014-announced/