Burn the Furniture to Heat the House - Joe Shaw - Lime Street

Burn the Furniture to Heat the House

Joe Shaw

Burn the Furniture to Heat the House brings into relief the brief glimpse of stability that occurred between two defining moments: the fall of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In this optimistic time, a disconnection formed between the precariousness of the world and ourselves, and we became complacent, imbued with a false sense of security. The sculptures in this exhibition are about the abrupt end of this complacency, the surge in ad hoc/insecure modes of living, a scrabble for resources, and the artists’ place within all this.

Joe Shaw (born 1990, Mansfield, Notts) is an artist based in Newcastle upon Tyne who makes performative sculptures and installations. His works use recognisable, everyday objects and often plastic or low quality materials to comment on the mechanism of disposability built into post-millennium society. Shaw’s lo-fi aesthetic and materials draw attention to the increased precarity surrounding modes of employment, housing, politics and our natural environment. The sculptures are used as a vehicle to both scrutinise the art-world and spoof fragile masculinity using a language of dry wit and black humour.

http://joseph-shaw.com/

Testing Situations | Experiences of dementia, assessment and art

Over the last year, artist Charles Harrison and the Testing Situations team have been touring around the UK to learn more about people's experiences of being tested for dementia.



The Catalyst: National Innovation Centre for Ageing. 

Testing Situations presented an exhibition of learning from the tour featuring artworks from Clive Smith, Dan Moxam and a newly commissioned film titled 'Margaret' and supporting imagery by film-maker Harry Lawson. 

The main event featured presentations from project lead Charlie Harrison, social scientist Emma Harding and collaborator Mhari McLintock followed by screenings of 3 artistic films made by, or in collaboration with people living with dementia. 





The afternoon session included a participatory workshop and group conversations with around 60 attendees, both individuals and groups from North East.



I didn't attend the event, but saw the exhibition, and was particularly moved by Harry Lawson's body of work about his late Grandma, Margaret, during her last 4 years living in residential care. The film includes footage taken by Geoff, Harry's father of Margaret in her bedroom and scenes from the rest of the care home that was later filmed by Harry. It shifts between tender, intimate interactions between Margaret and Geoff and more routine observations of life in the residential home. As the UK population is living longer, more people are living in residential care, and this film gives an insight into life in a residential home. 

I felt privileged to witness the loving scenes between Margaret and Geoff, in which Geoff gently strokes Margaret's hands and tries to make her comfortable. I was gripped by the Geoff's patience and care in the way he spoke and handled his Mum, and though highly personal, the film did not seem invasive.

The more general shots within the home give a good impression of the rapport between Harry and the residents. Harry is happy to engage with the residents, some of whom make a point of being on film. As I watched one woman ask Harry if he would like her to introduce herself on camera and then go on to tell a little story, I notice that I'm smiling, for the residents are being treated respectfully as individuals who are valued.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/testing-situations-at-the-national-innovation-centre-of-ageing-newcastle-tickets-84623227351#

https://www.charlesrobertharrison.com/testingsituationsblog

Front Row - 'Risk series'

Wednesday's episode of Front Row was the last in the 'Risk' series; a series questioning the importance of risk-taking in art.

risk

NOUN


1. A situation involving exposure to danger.

1.1 in singular The possibility that something unpleasant or unwelcome will happen.

1.2 with modifier A person or thing regarded as a threat or likely source of danger.

1.3 usually risks A possibility of harm or damage against which something is insured.

1.4 with adjective A person or thing regarded as likely to turn out well or badly, as specified, in a particular context or respect.

1.5 The possibility of financial loss.

In a number of interviews with people involved in the arts, Front Row has been investigating the extent to which risk is essential to creating great art.


Questions asked include


What is artistic risk?

What are the emotional risks of using your life as your art?

Why is diversity in the arts seen as risky?

What happens when artistic risk fails?

In what ways are artists risky?

How do you decide if a risk is worth taking?

How has risk changed in the past 10 years?


To mark the end of Front Row’s Risk season, the panel created the Front Row Risk List - what they believe to be the 10 riskiest artworks of the 21st century.


They considered all aspects of risk such as:


putting your reputation on the line
putting yourself in physical danger
is it always a good thing to risk offending people?
how does gender play a role in what's risky?

To view the results please visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f07w

Cut and Paste exhibition at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art , Edinburgh

This was the first ever survey exhibition of collage. It gave a comprehensive review of collage in all its forms, including cut, glued, stitched and stapled paper, photography, stickers, scrapbooks, botanical specimens, patchwork, Cubist and Surrealist artworks, films and more. The exhibition started with books published in the 1500s with flaps stuck into them and ended with digital photographs made a few months ago.

Kurt Schwitters
Mz 229:Hot Water, 1921

Hannah Hoch

Untitled, 1924

Hannah Hoch

Astronomie, 1922

Jacques Villegle

The Jazz Men, 1961

Peter Blake

Museum of the Colour White 2, 2001

I left the exhibition with a real desire to do some cutting and sticking! It seems that technological developments have had a major impact on the history of collage and the direction that it is going. It seems there has been a move away from the more traditional means of collage (cut and stick) in the artists using collage in the present day, instead preferring to use photoshop or digital means of creating layers. I believe there is still a need for the more physical and tactile collage, and so I have been encouraged to carry on with the collages that I am creating. 

Nika Neelova - EVER - The Tetley Gallery, Leeds

EVER was a solo exhibition by the Russian-born artist Nika Neelova at The Tetley Gallery in Leeds. Neelova presented new and existing work that responded to, and was in dialogue with, the building's unique art deco architecture.

'At the centre of the exhibition is a new large-scale sculptural installation in The Tetley's atrium. Connecting with the building's past, it recalls the restoration and transformation of the atrium into a gallery space and incorporates original materials such as parquet floor tiles and oak panelling salvaged from The Tetley building.  Featuring these discarded architectural fragments, the installation creates a transitional space depicting, and derived from, places that once existed. For Neelova, it takes the form of a 'landscape in ruin', presenting different layers of reworked and reimagined architectural, sculptural and geological artefacts.'

 

In the old office spaces that surround the atrium space, Neelova installed a number of existing geological and architectural sculptures. The Lemniscate sculpture series is made from reclaimed wooden bannisters. Neelova has repurposed the bannisters and fitted them together so that they each become a continuous form.







Neelova's architecturally focused work benefits from being displayed in a gallery with its own unique architectural features and likewise the gallery benefits from her work as it naturally emphasises the context in which it is displayed. 







My criticism would be that there is too many repeated versions of the same idea. After seeing a couple of forms made from bannisters, I no longer gain from seeing a different variation of this theme. 

Sounds Like Her - Gender, Sound Art and Sonic Cultures at York Art Gallery

'Curated by Christine Eyene, known for her enquiry into feminist art and her research on sound art from an African perspective – Sounds Like Her sets out to broaden existing approaches to sound art and challenge the Eurocentric and patriarchal frameworks that have informed the discourse on sound art practice and continue to dominate the mainstream today.

The project brings together six women artists, each exploring sound as a medium or subject matter: Ain Bailey, Sonia Boyce OBE RA, Linda O’Keeffe, Christine Sun Kim, Madeleine Mbida and Magda Stawarska-Beavan.

Collectively the selected works represent sound in the broadest sense, exploring voice, noise, organic and synthetic sounds, rhythmic patterns, sonic structures and visual materialisation of sound. The result is a varied exhibition of mixed media bringing together audio, immersive installation, painting, print, drawing and video.'

Having read about Ain Bailey's The Pitch Sisters, I was disappointed not to experience the work within the exhibition. The work, in part, 'responds to the line: "The preferred pitch of a woman's voice is A flat below middle C" from the 1985 film, Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue. The work seeks to present what a female sonic universe would sound like if women's voices indeed vocally hung around an A flat below middle C. The installation is a circular layout of speakers playing the voices of 46 women performing the note.' I managed to find a link to a stereo recording of the work on the British Music Collection website. 

https://britishmusiccollection.org.uk/composer/ain-bailey

I must admit that the element of the exhibition that I was most attracted to was the way in which the walls had been painted and the design of the catalogue. The colour choice could be said to be rather feminine, and given the title of the exhibition, GENDER, Sound Art & Sonic Cultures, I was reminded of one aspect of my Undergraduate dissertation which commented on how the context affects the reading of the work. In this context, the work is displayed in a gallery with delicate pastel shades - is this trying to emphasise the femininity of the work? 

David Batchelor - My Own Private Bauhaus at Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh

There are a selection of artists who produce work that always manages to delight me and fill me with joy. David Batchelor is one of them. No matter how bad a day I have been having, seeing his work makes me smile, cheers me up and makes me feel more positive. Simplicity is underrated. An enjoyment of colour, form, shape and surface is what I get from looking at the work. I cannot help but feel an urge to go to the studio and make work. Thank you David Batchelor - you are a star! May my own work move people and bring happiness to others in the way that your work does for me.

'My Own Private Bauhaus’ is an exhibition that marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius in 1919.  It is, in Batchelor’s words ‘a phrase that has been hanging around the studio for a few years’ and pays tribute to the movement through Batchelor’s personal appreciation of the square, circle and triangle.

Since he began working with colour, over 25 years ago, Batchelor’s installations, sculptures, paintings, drawings and photographs have been characterised by simple shapes and regular forms. But, unlike the pure geometry of the Bauhaus, Batchelor’s forms are, he says ‘often damaged, bent or broken; and the colours, while vivid, are neither pure nor primary.’ Batchelor’s work pays tribute to the geometric abstraction of the 1920s, but is also characterised by improvisation, informality, humour and what Batchelor describes as ‘a distrust of formal ordering systems and regulated theories of colour’.

My Own Private Bauhaus is the artist’s collective title for a wide variety of small sculptures, paintings and drawings that sit together on long, shallow, wall-mounted aluminium shelves. Made from plastic offcuts, shards of glass, found objects, metal mesh, tin tops, timber, concrete, gloss paint, spray paint and adhesive tape – individual works are arranged in irregular rows. Together they represent the diverse output of Batchelor’s practise and the interconnected nature of his colour-based work, whether it is two- or three-dimensional. 

The exhibition also includes a number of large paintings made using poured commercial paint on aluminium panels. These Colour Chart paintings become virtual sculptures with precariously colourful, off-circular forms balanced atop schematic, plinth-like bases. In turn; several smaller sculptures in the exhibition, made from the discarded tops of the tin cans from which the paint was poured, refer back to the paintings.'

https://www.inglebygallery.com/exhibitions/7132-david-batchelor-my-own-private-bauhaus/overview/

Cheeseburn Open Weekend July 2019 - Simon Hitchens in the gallery

I spent another excellent weekend working at Cheeseburn Open Weekend. The grounds looked stunning, with the colourful flowers in full bloom and the grass as lush as ever. The glorious sunshine added to the joy of the two days.

Based predominantly at the main reception with Tia and Ell, I had the pleasure of meeting and greeting hundreds of visitors to Cheeseburn, and the satisfaction of seeing them leave with huge smiles and many positive comments. There was plenty to keep people happy, even without the art!


This weekend saw the end of the Simon Hitchens exhibition in the gallery. His intricate drawings in the 'Thinking Beyond Rock' collection remind me of spirographs. They have been created by tracing the shadows of a rock over the course of an entire day. Every 15 minutes Hitchens traces the line of the shadow cast by the rock, and over the duration of the day as the shadow moves, the lines track the movement of the sun.

Simon explains, “The natural world is an endless source of inspiration to me, and a direct tool I use to create my work. For example, the current body of work I am pursuing requires sunlight as the source for image making, drawing shadows cast by a rock between sunrise and sunset. The resultant drawings are unique in time and space to a given location on the planet, recording the relentless rotation of the earth beneath our feet.”

http://cheeseburn.com/

http://www.simonhitchens.com/