Serena Korda - Missing Time at BALTIC

"Serena Korda works across performance, sound and sculpture reconsidering aspects of communion and tradition in our lives. Korda is the 2016-17 Norma Lipman & BALTIC Fellow in Ceramic Sculpture at Newcastle University, a two-year residency that culminates in this exhibition.

During her fellowship, Korda has drawn inspiration from her location and the people she has met. She has become fascinated by the sound of stars from the dark skies of Northumberland, only audible with specific radio devices, and the pre-radar acoustic sound mirrors dotted along the North East coastline that attempted to detect the sound of enemy planes up until 1919.

During her research, Korda has explored planetary harmonics using homemade radio telescopes to pick up the sound of our galaxy. The particular frequencies derived from the planets, otherwise known as the ‘Music of the Spheres’, were believed during the Renaissance period to have a direct effect on the human psyche. Inspired by these different ways of listening, the potential healing power of sounds and their use as a way of communicating, Korda has created a series of large ceramic dish-shaped portals that act as sound resonators. Working alongside North East-based a capella group Mouthful (Katherine Zeseron, Bex Mathers, Dave Camlin and Sharon Durant), Korda has created a sound work that plays with the harmonics of each portal and a powerful live performance that touches on invisible forces, consciousness and what lies beyond planet Earth."

It is wonderful that BALTIC is currently exhibiting solo exhibitions by women in each of it's galleries, and with the quality of the artwork and hugh standard of the exhibitions, I really hope that this is not the only time it will happen.

Korda's ceramics are beautiful objects containing patterns and marks that resemble marble while also appearing painterly and washy. I was intrigued to find out that the technique used to form the patterns is Nerikomi, a Japanese technique "in which the clay is stained different colours, rolled into a sausage shape, sliced and rolled back together for a marbled finish with runs right through the body of the dish. Korda then scraped back the surface" to reveal more layers. 

I'm looking forward to going to her sonic performance in March.

Glasgow International - GoMA and Glasgow School of Art

After a day working on the site, we ventured into the city to attend some of the exhibition previews.

COSIMA VON BONIN

WHO'S EXPLOITING WHO IN THE DEEP SEA?

GoMA

Von Bonin’s exhibition Who’s Exploiting Who In The Deep Sea?* brings together a series of works from 2006 onwards exploring the artist’s affection for the creatures of the sea. Working with textiles, music, sculpture, performance, video and painting, her practice is varied and often collaborative in nature.

The artist’s cast of characters are a host of contradictions – approachable creatures who are reminiscent of childhood companions are not what they seem. Weaving together humour with melancholy, these sculptures have ambiguous roles and feelings. Von Bonin is able to use these creatures as agents to explore art history, popular culture and craft, to destabilise perceived constructions of feminism. She has created her own crew to explore the deep sea, where, as an analogy of the human condition it is a true place of the unknown.

The exhibition is co-curated by Director Sarah McCrory and SculptureCenter Curator Ruba Katrib. The exhibition will open in September at SculptureCenter.

www.glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/GoMA

TESSA LYNCH

PAINTER’S TABLE

GoMA

Lynch works predominantly with sculpture and performance. Projects develop from research concerned with the emotional impact of the built environment and the questionable existence of the female flâneur, which refers to a man who saunters around observing society, or ‘flâneuse’.

Lynch describes her new exhibition as an architectural drama: a collection of new sculptural works which loosely mimic the objects, scenarios and histories found on her daily commute. The mundane examination of this regular transition from home life to work life generates a self-portrait, exposing what it is to be a female artist living in this city.

Frequently using performance as an active framework for making, Lynch has shared her commute with writers Jenny Richards and Rhona Warwick Paterson to create a new text and performance work. Similar to how a map allows one to navigate city roads and streets, the text offers viewers a script through which one can navigate this installation.

SERENA KORDA

HOLD FAST, STAND SURE, I SCREAM A REVOLUTION

Reid Gallery, Reid Building, The Glasgow School of Art

Korda has produced a new sound sculpture that combines her interest in primitive impulses, invented tradition and our skewed relationship to nature. Taking her inspiration from the politically radical history of Garnethill (where the Reid Gallery is situated), Korda continues her investigation into ‘thin places’, anomalies in the landscape which were viewed in pre-Christian times as access points to the afterlife. Foraging expeditions on the Isle of Mull presented the deadly potential of some fungi as possible pathways to ‘thin places’. Mushrooms are imbued in our consciousness as grotesque, magic and poisonous. They attract and repulse in equal measure.

Korda is producing a series of sound experiments performed by an army of ‘agitators’ gathered from the communities of Garnethill and Mull.

Supported by Glasgow International, The Glasgow School of Art, Comar and The Henry Moore Foundation.

www.gsa.ac.uk