Daniel Kitson, Keep, Northern Stage, Newcastle

A full house is presented with a minimal set;

a table,

a chair,

and a lamp illuminating a filing cabinet with numerous drawers

Kitson, in his usual slightly twitchy and awkward fashion, reveals his plan for the evening - a 2 hour show with no interval in which he will share with us the contents of the filing cabinet behind him. He goes on to explain that he conducted a systematic review of the contents of his house, going through each room and cataloguing every item he found. Each item has been written on an individual card and then filed in the cabinet according to the room the item was found in.

We will spend the evening listening to Kitson reading aloud the 20,000 individual cards.

He then offers us a get-out-clause; he will go off stage for a short break allowing us to "leave now if this isn't your idea of a good time, go to the toilet now because if you exit during the performance you will not be readmitted."

After a very long 5 minutes, Kitson re-entered, took out the first drawer from the filing cabinet and began reading aloud;

"A brown plastic plant pot with a plant in it, a brown plastic plant pot, a brown plastic plant pot with a plant in it, a large broom, a small broom..."

You get the picture. 



I begin to think that it is probably a blessing that this didn't turn out to be a date night as planned before my said date became ill. I did however, feel rather concerned that the friend who now joined me may be regretting accepting my offer of a night at the theatre. I genuinely think it is going to be a long and tedious evening. 

As Kitson makes his way through the cards he is quick to discover that there are numerous misplaced items and unexplainable disruptions to his accurate filing system. Inevitably these prompt Kitson to abandon his initial plan and the evening becomes one in which he fumbles through a myriad of seemingly unrelated anecdotes and stories about his failing memory, unreciprocated love and the ups and downs of living alone. 

Over the course of 3 hours (a little longer than expected and by which time I was relieved that I had made use of the facilities before the performance), Kitson takes us on a circular journey, tapping into all manner of emotions, and neatly linking the end of his gig with how it started off.

Call him what you will; comedian, storyteller, artist, performer; he does it all, and he does it all very well.

Basquiat - Rage to Riches

This fascinating documentary is concerned with the prolific artistic outputs of Basquiat and the substantive ways in which it embodied and reflected breakthroughs in music, poetry, and a new type of expressionism in modern art.

The story of his art is intertwined with the story of his life. Basquiat's two sisters Lisane and Jeanine give their first interviews for a TV documentary and talk about their brother and his art for a TV documentary. There are numerous contributions from friends, lovers, fellow artists, the most powerful and legendary art dealers in the world such as Bruno Bischofberger, Larry Gagosian, and Mary Boone. They discuss the cash, the drugs, and the pernicious racism which Basquiat encountered and fought against on a daily basis. The main way Basquiat used to fight this racism was through his art. 

In a 1983 campaign which long predates Black Lives Matter, Basquiat used his art as part of a protest movement following the beating to death by NYC transit cops of a friend of his - Michael Stewart.

"In this film, these are only some of the many stories that give shape and insight into a life which was constantly torn between public acclaim and personal pain, the bold confidence of has greatness as an artist and the secret fear he would be regarded a flash in the pan, between a deep desire for fame and money but an even deeper resentment that his work was being transformed into a commodity. Basquiat's relationship with drugs and the role they played in his life, work, stellar rise, and fatal crash - is sensitively and insightfully explored."

Joseph Grigely

I was recently introduced to the work of Joseph Grigely, an American artist who works in a range of media including sculpture, video and installation. When Grigely was ten he was involved in an accident and he became profoundly deaf. He has since used this to fuel his artistic practice, commenting that he “want[s] to take people inside the experience of being deaf and share it with them.”




St. Cecilia 2007, paper

Grigely regularly communicates with other people by writing on scraps of paper and napkins. He collects these records of his daily conversations, and organises them according to different systems such as their size or colour.




167 White Conversations 2004
© Joseph Grigely

"When people who do not know sign language talk with me, I explain that I am deaf and ask them to write – a mode of communication that is simple without being simplistic, and generally inclusive. But what gets written is often quite unlike writing in the usual sense: there are gaps, crossed-out words, drawing, lines, all of which looks less like writing that it does talking on paper. It is by using these scraps of paper on which people have written notes, names, or phrases in order to 'converse' with me that I make much of my art, using such scraps of conversations to make wall pieces, books, and table-top tableaux that all take as their subject matter the ineluctable differences between speech and writing, and reading and listening."



The Information Economy, 1996, mixed media


https://www.artsy.net/artist/joseph-grigely

https://www.wnewhouseawards.com/josephgrigely.html

https://scpt209.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/joseph-grigely/

A weight off my shoulders

I've not been blog-posting as regularly as usual as I have been, and continue to be consumed by some pretty bog-standard 'life' duties and some that are part and parcel of being a self-employed artist.

As the end of January looms, you may notice that the self-employed become a little more weary-eyed and are buried in paperwork. Yes, the end of January is the tax-return deadline!

I am delighted to announce that today I managed to submit my records for the 2016-2017 financial year.

Here is my proof

I'd like to wish good luck to those who are going through the turmoil that is the HMRC Self-assessment tax return submission process. I'd also like to report that the internet submission was operating very efficiently today, so the process was relatively painless compared to previous years. Thanks to HMRC if you have made improvements with the website.

Elizabeth Friedlander

I was recently introduced to the work of the artist, designer and typographer, Elizabeth Friedlander.

Friedlander was a Jew, born in Germany in 1903 who studied typography and calligraphy. She designed headings and lay-outs for Die Dame that were published by Ullstein. It was this magazine work that impressed Georg Hartmann of the Bauer Type Foundry in Frankfurt and led him to invite her to design a typeface.



The typeface was initially called Friedlander-Antiqua, but became known as Elisabeth- Antiqua since Friedlander was a recognisably Jewish name, and this would be inadvisable in the current political condition as Hitler had just come to power.



The anti-Semitic laws that were introduced in Germany meant that, as a Jew, Friedlander was refused the permit required for her to continue to work in Germany. She moved to Italy where she was able to work on the condition that she was not politically active. When severe Italian Antisemitic Laws were introduced Friedlander had to flee and so she obtained a Domestic Service permit for Britain. After a period of working as a domestic servant, she got work in the design field.





"By 1942 she was in charge of design at Ellic Howe's black propaganda unit, where she produced forged Wehrmacht and Nazi rubber stamps, false ration books, and so on, while at the same time carrying out freelance commissions."



Once she had decided to settle long-term in Britain, she worked on the series Britain in Pictures, produced patterned papers for Curwen and Penguin Books, created decorative borders for Linotype and calligraphy for the Roll of Honour at Sandhurst. She was responsible for many of the designs of post-war Penguin Books.



The current exhibition at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft presents the story of the work of Friedlander. The show includes rarely-seen works from the artist’s compelling career including type design, wood engravings, decorative book papers, maps and commercial work.

http://www.ditchlingmuseumartcraft.org.uk/event/elizabeth-friedlander/

Simon Morris - Pause paintings

Artist Simon Morris is interested in geometric abstraction. This covers object based paintings, installations and collaborations with other people. Within the context of the paintings, it allows him to think about how to make a geometric image in a way that allows him some opportunity to set the parameters of what these paintings are going to be but also let him make a painting where a system or formula helped him make decisions about what to do next.



He enjoys the unpredictable nature of this way of working. He uses black because it is a reductionist colour and focuses the attention on the pattern as opposed to the colours. I also enjoy working in this way - perhaps because I feel confident that I know that I am producing something even if I do not know what I am producing! Getting a balance between chaos and control is the challenge.



Pause 4.5 (2006) and Pause 5.5 (2006), are part of an ongoing series of paintings that have been produced by following a mathematical system.

Artists as curators on Front Row

Monday's edition of Front Row featured a discussion about artists curating exhibitions.

This coincides with the opening of two exhibitions curated by artists, namely Shonky : The Aesthetics of Awkwardness at The Mac, Belfast and Paul Nash & the Uncanny Landscape at York Art Gallery.

John Stezaker has curated Paul Nash & the Uncanny Landscape at York Art Gallery, an exhibition which in which Paul Nash’s groundbreaking inter-war landscapes which transformed the genre of British landscape painting are exhibited along with works by Stezaker.

In Shonky : The Aesthetics of Awkwardness, the artist John Walter has brought together international artists and architects to explore the nature of visual awkwardness.

John Walter and Jill Constantine, curator and Head of the Art Council Collection reflected on what artists can bring to the curation of an exhibition.

When asked how the process of curating for an artist is different to that of a curator, Jill Constantine remarked that artists tend to adopt an intuitive, immediate, emotional and personal approach whereas curators tend to look for thematic and interpretative material and do a lot of research in order to contextualise.

John Walter recognised that as an artist, he can use his practice as the starting point to make the exhibition, perhaps choosing to to show out of fashion or less popular work. He explained that in the current exhibition at The Mac, Belfast he used the fourteen artists in the show to make a bigger picture. It was encouraging to hear Jill Constantine speak so positively about artists curating exhibitions. She was quick to dismiss the idea that artists that curate make random choices, and did not think that they undermined the position of curators.



To listen to the programme visit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09cvwx7

Introducing sound artist Victoria Karlsson

London-based sound artist Victoria Karlsson contacted me after she read one of my blog posts about my investigations into voice-hearing. We skyped today and discussed both of our practices and found some interesting connections.

"Victoria Karlsson is interested in the emotional and subjective aspects of sound and art. Investigating sound as both an inner and outer experience, she explores how we think about, remember, dream about sounds, and how this influences our experiences of sounds in our everyday. 

She is currently undertaking a PhD Research Degree at University of the Arts, London. Her practice based research, with the working title of "Mapping experiences of inner sounds " investigates sounds in thoughts, asking if we hear sounds in our minds, what they mean to us and where they come from.


The research aims to create a body of work defining our understanding of “inner sounds” - sounds we ‘hear’ in both our conscious and unconscious mind, similar to, but different from an inner voice. While the term is positioned hypothetically at this stage, the aim of this project is to research experiences of inner sounds with a view to producing a working definition of its meaning. Through practice-based research, the project aims to investigate strategies of articulating and making inner sounds audible, and develop a language to externalise and map experiences of inner sounds. While inner experiences are often explored within artistic practice, this projects specific focus is on experiences of inner sound, where this sort of exploration has not been attempted before.

As a sound designer on several live art events, Victoria creates sound environments that evoke alternative words and explore our experience of different spaces. Working closely with the director, performers and set designers to ensure sound becomes an integral part of the performance environment."

We discussed all manner of sound-related topics including:

- whether you can ever communicate what is in your head
- we tend to hear about people having negative auditory hallucinations, but some auditory hallucinations can be helpful
- how we can attribute sounds to different emotions and states

Akala at The NewBridge Project as part of Hidden Civil War

On Saturday I was fortunate enough to listen to Akala speak at The NewBridge Project as part of the Hidden Civil War programme.



I must admit that a few weeks ago, the name Akala meant nothing to me. I apologise now!

"This fiercely independent artist has performed in over 30 countries, released 6 albums, two books, presented the seminal Life of Rhyme for Channel 4, founded The Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company and has been a tireless voice for education and social justice in the UK and all over the world.

Akala is a MOBO Award Winning artist, an outspoken rapper, spoken word artist and writer. In 2008 Akala founded the Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company (Ian McKellen is a patron), a touring troupe performing Akala’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s work. His aim was to underline the similarity between the plays and the poetry of the best rappers, or, as he put it, “the lyricism that transcends all the revenge-tragedy, Tarantino violence”.



The ‘Doublethink’ diaries is a collection of dystopian poetry, the lyrics taken from the Doublethink album and selected other writings from one of the most interesting, informed and challenging voices to emerge from the British music scene in recent years. ‘The Ruins Of Empires’ — an epic poem and graphic novel features illustrations by Tokio Aoyama and follows ‘The Knowledge Seeker’ through the course of human history, via astral travel and multiple re-incarnations, in an attempt to discover the causes of the rise and fall of empires."

The event was sold out, additional tickets were released and there were people on the day coming into the gallery hoping that they would be able to get to see Akala in action.



For me, one of the best things about the Hidden Civil War programme is that it is attracting people who would not normally be contemporary art gallery visitors. I often go to art events and look in the room to see the same faces and wonder whether as artists we are just talking to other artists. But as I scanned the project space on Saturday, I was delighted to see many new faces I did not recognise from the art scene, and talk to a bunch of people who were new to NewBridge, but genuinely wanted to come back after this, their first experience. Surely that alone is an achievement in itself.

As for Akala, he spoke with passion, intelligence, wit, and responded to questions in a thoughtful and open manner. Politicians sure could learn some things from him!

Artist makes a cutting statement on ‘poisonous’ HMRC

By NADIA VIDINOVA, 

19 December 2015 

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/artist-makes-a-cutting-statement-on-poisonous-hmrc-1.916473

A Dundee-born artist has staged a creative protest against a decision to stop her working tax credits.

Boo Paterson, 44, has made a paper-cut artwork out of the benefit rejection letters which arrived after HMRC deemed her freelance art business “non-commercial”.

The piece shows two vultures gorging on one of her much-publicised artworks, a paper-cut depiction of the Glasgow School of Art’s Rennie Mackintosh building, which was devastated by a fire in May 2014.

Boo explained that this represents the government “destroying freelancers and small businesses”.

She said: “HMRC decided to stop my Working Tax Credit, based on an audit of three random months they chose in the year, claiming my business was ‘not commercial’.

“But they gave no reasons as to how they reached that decision, making it impossible to appeal.

“I really relied on working tax credit to allow me to buy food and heat my home while I establish my art business, which is only in its first year.

“But HMRC seems to despise artists unless they’re multi-millionaires.

“I wanted to turn this poisonous decision and the paper it was written on into something creative.

“It makes me feel slightly better about not being able to afford food any more.”

Boo Paterson now lives between Edinburgh and New York but visits Dundee regularly to catch up with old friends.

Her work is currently being exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy Open Exhibition.

An HMRC spokesman said: “We do not comment on identifiable tax credits applications.”

Painting in Time Symposium

Today's Painting in Time Symposium at The Tetley Gallery in Leeds proved to be an excellent way to pull together and scrutinise some of the thoughts behind, and issues surrounding the exhibition which ends tomorrow.

The exhibition has been co-curated by Sarah Kate Wilson and stems from her practice and PhD research at The University of Leeds.

Speakers for the symposium were drawn from a network of academics, curators and artists. Each presented their research on painting and its relationship to time. 

Dr. Joanne Crawford’s paper focused on American abstract art in 1952 where painting’s role became one of the deferred ‘revolutionary moment’.

Through her own painting practice Nadine Feinson discussed how a painting might be understood to be in motion, despite its material fixity. She spoke about Triboelectric Series 2, a site-specific work made for RIFF/T, an exhibition at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art's project space BALTIC 39, Newcastle, 11th December 2013 - 2nd March 2014.

"The work explores and utilises the material properties of polythene dustsheets¹ as a painting support and their ability to retain static charge - resulting in the contact-electrification of the painting. The thin plastic, electrostatically charged, is a responsive ‘film’ that clings, shifts and moves on the wall. It responds to touch, rubbing and buffing, to atmospherics in the exhibition space, gravity, and the weight of paint. Holes in the surface, drafts, and moisture – all these things shorten its ‘life-span’. As paint is applied, it stretches, puckers and falls into holes, so that paint is deposited on the wall underneath: the polythene creating its own repertoire of ‘gestures’ in the wake of painting activity.

A number of paintings on polythene are made, one after the other, in the same space. As each painting is finished, it is discarded, leaving behind paint marks and gestures on the wall where the plastic has torn – these then become reconstituted into the painting that follows."

http://www.nadinefeinson.com/paintings/20134-triboelectric-series/series-2--notes/

California-based Curator, Sinead Finnerty-Pyne examined the act of viewing and exhibiting painting as a time-based experience, posing questions such as 'can artwork rebel against our fast nation society?' She spoke of the current exhibition, Expanding on an expansive subject, that she has curated at Armory Centre for the Arts, California. 

"Expanding on an expansive subject is a group exhibition that explores the expanded field of painting through nine artists’ investigations into painting’s range and potential as a cross-disciplinary medium. The exhibition presents a unique model, a group exhibition displayed as individual solo projects that unfold (or expand) over the course of time, offering the possibility of an exhibition as a temporal experience. Since May 2014, Expanding on an expansive subject has featured six-week projects by Margie Livingston, Analia Saban, John Burtle, Liat Yossifor, John Knuth, Kendell Carter, and continues through November 2015 with shows by Kate Gilmore, Sarah Kate Wilson, and Constance Mallinson. While each artist’s approach to the discursive nature of painting is unique, the exhibition as a whole asks how painting today is distinct from its art historical predecessors."

http://www.armoryarts.org/exhibitions/2015/expanding-on-an-expansive-subject-part-7-kate-gilmore-pushing-paint/

Artist Kate Hawkins’ paper set out to explore durational modes of address and spectatorship in relation to contemporary painting. With reference to her work included in the exhibition, Hawkins discussed explorations of mourning in art from Picasso's Weeping Woman to Chris Ofilli's No woman, no cry.

She explained how her paintings in the exhibition were painted when she was pregnant, and struggling to come to terms with what she thought was going to be the end of life as she knew it. Hawkins believes that an artwork should exhibit tenderness and love to the viewer, and commented that the spectator should be treated as an equal.

The theatricality of the work is enhanced by the three-dimensional supplements that are added to the two-dimensional surfaces. 

Dr. Catherine Ferguson talked about how paintings make time in relation to history.

Natasha Kidd, used Huberman’s text ‘Take Care', 2011, to discuss how her new work in the exhibition Painting in Time was set loose in the world, what it wants and how it behaves or misbehaves.  She talked about how an instruction to attend to the work was essential in order to keep it alive and her curiosity around the word “care” in relation to the systems she makes. Kidd is interested in "unlocking the artwork as static". She used her contribution to the Test Run exhibition at Modern Art Oxford as an example of how an artwork can provide access to the creative process and to demonstrate her interest in learning.

Curator and artist Sarah Kate Wilson used the rainbow as a figure, and presented a case for painting as a time-based medium. She discussed how viewing paintings during World War 2 was an event as one artwork per week was removed from the mines where they were being kept for safe keeping, and made accessible to the public. Similarly, in his work Act III, Daniel Buren made an event of viewing an artwork as his positioned a painting on the  stage of a theatre and the audience were forced to pay attention to this artwork as nothing else happened on the stage. Wilson used Jutta Koether's 'Hot Rod' to illustrate how painting can be a social space, and cited Oscar Murillo's work as a way in which viewing painting can be a performance.

The symposium concluded with a question and answer session involving all of the days speakers, and was chaired by Dr Joanne Crawford.

It really was a fascinating event to complement the varied and exciting exhibition, with lots of very interesting and inspiring people both in the audience and as speakers. 

Artist Eileen Cooper talks about the position of women in the art world

Wednesday's Front Row (BBC Radio 4, 7:15pm) featured an interview with artist Eileen Cooper, the first woman to be elected Keeper at the Royal Academy of Arts. 

Coinciding with her new exhibition, Hide and Seek at the Royal Academy of Arts she talks about the position of women in the art world and discusses some of the difficulties faced by women artists and, more specifically, women artists with children.

http://bbc.in/1QamfdZ

Susie Green artist talk

Tonight's postgraduate artist seminar was with Susie Green. In an essay about her practice, Susannah Thompson describes Susie as "a polymathic practitioner working across fine art, design and music". She spoke openly and honestly about not always knowing what she is doing, her desire at times to make the audience feel uneasy and her thoughts on selling her work.

The presentation or display of Susie's work is well-considered, leading us to discuss the links between presentation styles used by artists and the methods used in shops. The way in which someone navigates themselves through a gallery space is of importance to me, and I pay close attention to the space existing between works, relationships between pieces and the position of the viewer in relation to multiple elements. Similarly, visual merchandisers focus on how to direct the consumer through the shop, the positioning of key products in prime locations, and how to attract the viewer to promotions and selected items. 

http://susiegreen.co.uk

Jez Riley French

A couple of weeks ago, sound artist Jez Riley French gave an artist talk at Newcastle University. He spoke very honestly and openly about his approach to making work and shared his working methods with us. He brought along a number of different microphones that he uses to record his work.

I found it remarkable to listen to the sounds of structures such as bridges, particularly so as he does not edit the footage in any way.

Following his teaching at the University, Jez contacted me asking whether he could provide a link to my work.

Here is a link to his post which includes a little mention of my artwork!

http://treasure-hiding.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/newcastle-visit-further.html

Jez' website is

http://jezrileyfrench.co.uk

and his blog can be seen at

http://jezrileyfrench.blogspot.co.uk

Fiona Banner, WP WP WP at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The title of the exhibition, WP WP WP derives the sound of helicopter blades in motion. In the current exhibition at Longside Gallery, Fiona Banner has suspended two sets of Chinook helicopter blades from the ceiling which rotate in opposite directions to each other and vary in speed. Although the top speed is not enough to produce real vibrations in the space, the presence of these structures moving is powerful and mesmerising. Despite the absence of the rest of the Chinook aircraft, one gets an impression of the weight and size of these flying machines. The elegance and precision with which they spin, carefully programmed to skim past each other without touching, can be likened to the wings of a beautiful creature such as a dragonfly, so it seems wrong that these blades are the force behind these potentially dangerous vehicles.

The grace with which the Chinook aircrafts can move is demonstrated in the film Chinook (2013) in which Banner documents the dance-like quality of Chinook flight at military air shows. Removed from their military function, the Chinook follows an acrobatic and beautiful routine intended to impress viewers and show off its agile possibilities. As the tannoy announces the end of the performance, the audience applaud and the Chinook dips its front and raises its back, its own way of taking a bow. This emphasises the notion of the Chinook as an entertainer.

The windows of the gallery space in which the Chinook blades are installed are covered in UV reductive vinyl which obscure the view out of the gallery onto the picturesque scenery of the Bretton Estate. At seemingly random points within the vinyl, small parts of the vinyl have been revealed to create shapes of 'full stops' in a variety of fonts. Only when peering through the full stops can one see the view properly. This rather subtle intervention focuses ones attention on Chinook, but also links in to Banner's ongoing preoccupation with language, and the title, Ha-ha,(2014) links to her interest in the way walls or other boundary markers are set in a ditch so as not to interrupt the landscape.

Wp Wp Wp (2014) is a wall drawing that establishes its own rhythm and flow through the repetition of this simple word.

Another video, Tete a Tete, (2014) documents two motorised windsocks interacting with each other, reminding me of the precision with which the Chinook blades relate to each other. Outside the gallery, a single motorised windsock moves in isolation; a lonely cry for companionship.

For more information please visit http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/fiona-banner-wp-wp-wp

In Conversation: Daniel Buren and Tim Marlow at BALTIC

In a previous blog post I wrote about one of the current exhibitions at BATIC, namely Catch as catch can: works in situ by Daniel Buren.

I was pleased to be able to get the opportunity to hear him speak in general about his work, and more specifically about the current exhibition at an In Conversation event at BALTIC last night.

The exhibition has been running from July to October, and although I have only been in Newcastle for a few weeks, and therefore have not witnessed more drastic changes in the artwork over the seasons, I have been able to see how viewing the work at different times during the day has an impact on the artwork.

Tim Marlow spoke about how the two different site-specific artworks relate to an audience in different light conditions.



In Summer, the light shines into the upstairs gallery from outside, and the work inside is illuminated and activated. In Autumn, when it is dark outside, the light from inside the gallery radiates and the coloured window panels of the building are illuminated, allowing an audience outside of the gallery to enjoy the work.

Buren was asked about what made him choose to use a diamond pattern for his work on the facade of the building; 20 Diamonds for the Façade: work in situ. He wanted to reference the strength and structure of the mill building. As much as I like stripes, I am pleased that Buren has widened his work to include other patterns as it becomes less predictable and repetitive. I feel that the non-linear striped works often seem more playful and pleasurable.

This is certainly the case for the work Buren installed for Monumenta 2012 in Paris's Grand Palais.




http://www.designboom.com/art/daniel-buren-monumenta-2012-excentriques/

In his article for the Guardian, Adrian Searle writes about Buren's work and enjoyment:

"The 2012 Monumenta site-specific commission in the vast, airy nave of Paris's Grand Palais is like being plunged into a pool of coloured light. Daniel Buren is the fifth artist to take on the annual Monumenta project in the belle epoch Grand Palais, originally built for the 1900 World Fair. It is a far more daunting site than Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. If the scale doesn't get to you, the architecture does.

A canopy of hundreds of horizontal circles, each touching the next, some larger, some smaller, some a little higher, some lower, fill the space. Each open steel O is stretched with a membrane of translucent plastic film, either in blue, yellow, orange or green. These are supported by black and white vertical posts, so many that they become a forest, half-drowned in colour and shadow.

Buren's colour choices are determined by the fact that these are the only colours the film comes in, and the order of his colours is dependent on the alphabetical order of their names. He works with the given. Even the height of the canopy is determined by the minimum ceiling heights of Paris apartments.

The building arches above, visible through and between the abutting circles, which veil the sky beyond. Being here has a submarine quality. You feel in the depths, shoaling and drifting with fellow visitors beneath the huge volume of contained light and space above. I'm like a fish down here, gulping coloured air.

Rather than "contesting" the architecture or "challenging" the viewer, to use the banal phraseology of museum types, Buren's work is at the mercy of the light from the Paris sky, the scudding clouds, the slanting sunlight as it enters the building.

At night, the space will be swept by roving spotlights, and. all the while, rotating audio speakers send sound roaming through the nave; voices in many languages counting and running through the alphabet, to the odd snatch of tinkly music. The sound is fairly unobtrusive, but I'd be happier without it.

The overall effect is quite magical, but does Buren do more than decorate the space? It is all very ambient, and very pretty (not a word I often use in a positive way) but, the longer one stays, the more the visual complications of his project multiply. The posts take on the colours of the light, which sings along their vertical edges. When the sun is out, the world is reflected upside down above us, and the circles of light projected on to the floor come into disconcertingly sharp focus.

Beneath the building's central dome, Buren has made a clearing, where little circular mirrored podiums reflect the roof and sky beyond. You can stand on these dusty mirrors and examine the pattern of blue film he's fixed to the top of the dome. You can also catch a view of your own crotch.

For some, such inadvertent pleasures may provide the main attraction. But let's not underestimate pleasure. It is at the heart of Buren's benign art. He's had dinghies with striped sails racing on Grasmere, made art from bunting and awnings, and turned buildings inside out with visual conundrums. There's logic in his method and eccentricity in his choices. That said, his practical, pragmatic approach makes other artists' aesthetic choices and decision-making appear somehow arbitrary by comparison.

Buren's art always makes me feel he truly enjoys what he does and gets a great deal from pitting himself against limits and constraints.

The architecture almost always consumes whatever is in here, whether that's exhibitions, art and trade fairs, planes or train locomotives. Last year, Anish Kapoor inserted a gobsmacking behemoth, looking much like a daunting sex toy.

But it isn't so much the building that is a challenge, as what the previous four artists have accomplished here, all of whom have been highly established male artists. The best has been Richard Serra's 2008 Promenade, a work that still lives in my head.

Next time, Monumenta has to be given to a woman. Nevertheless, Buren's project makes you very aware of the act of looking. It is not at all monumental in the way some previous projects have been. It is a work dedicated to visual and corporeal pleasure – the not-so-simple pleasure of being here. It almost had me dancing for a minute, except the song in my head was The Windmills of Your Mind, a deeply eccentric song which, I recall, was composed by a Frenchman."

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/may/09/daniel-buren-excentriques-grand-palais/print


Back to the in conversation event, Buren was very clear to state that to create beauty and harmony is not his main goal, but in the work for the BALTIC, he did try to balance the colours. There is a rationale behind the order of the colours on the ceiling, namely them being arranged alphabetically.

He has a definite opinion about the role of the photograph, and clearly distinguishes between the artwork and the photograph as a souvenir. His approach to photography is that his photographs are never exhibited or sold as artworks, and when photographs are used, they are framed as documentation or act as mementos or souvenirs such as postcards and posters.

The final question to him was whether he has a real desire to produce a piece of work in a specific location, and if so, where. His simple answer was no, but then went on to explain that he feels it is dangerous to develop ideas for a specific location when permission has not been granted because it places the artist in a tricky condition if they have got their hopes up so much and fought so hard to get the site, but then to be told they would need to make compromises to the work. Buren explained that if he was offered a commission and was given restrictions that he couldn't meet, then he could turn down the commission, but if he had approached the site asking for permission and which they granted, only then to be given restrictions, this would be more difficult to decline, or it would be totally devastating for the artist.

Karen Guthrie

Today's Visiting Artist Lecture was by Karen Guthrie, a freelance artist and film-maker, working on independently generated and commissioned projects solo and in collaboration with Nina Pope and their company, Somewhere.

Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie live and work in London and the Lake District respectively. After studying together at Edinburgh College of Art they completed MA's in London and began working together in 1995.

Their early career was marked by technological innovation combined with a socially-engaged and inclusive sensibility - for example, their live online travelogue A Hypertext Journal (1996) was an influential precursor of the blog.

In 2001 they formalised their collaboration as the not-for-profit arts practice Somewhere, their current work spans public art and film-making, and their focus remains on the widest possible application of creativity to enrich and inform public life.

Karen began talking about the fact that when she began her artistic career she was conscious that she didn't have a story to tell, and was an observer of others.

Along with her collaborator, Nina Pope, Karen has worked on numerous projects with other people, and they have produced films that document the lives of different groups.

"Jaywick Escapes is a documentary feature film which was shot in the Essex coastal town of Jaywick, England. Once the favourite holiday destination for London’s Eastenders, seaside Jaywick is now 'officially' the poorest place in the UK, suffering from unremittingly high levels of crime, unemployment, dependency and family breakdown. Yet, this decaying seaside resort casts a powerful spell over its inhabitants, drifters whose reasons to escape here are revealed in this darkly intimate portrait.

Shot across over a year, this sensitive film follows a handful of recent Jaywick arrivals as memories from their past holidays start to collide with the present. Contrasting with exquisitely shot footage of Jaywick’s extraordinarily characterful town-scape – a colorful homage to British DIY ingenuity despite its decay – are gritty observational scenes of the lives lived behind the closed doors of each seaside shack."

Guthrie spoke of how the film does not necessarily focus on 'big' events in someone's life, but the everyday "fringe stuff" that is where we lead our lives.

Her most recent film, The Closer We Get, "is a powerful and exquisitely-shot autobiographical portrait of loyalty, broken dreams and redemption told by its director, reluctantly-dutiful daughter Karen, who takes you under the skin of the household she returns to for this long goodbye.

Karen's mother Ann suffers a devastating stroke that brings her daughter back home when she least expects it. But Karen isn't the only one who returns to help care for Ann in the crisis: Her prodigal father Ian, separated from Ann for years, also reappears. Armed with her camera, Karen seizes this last chance to go under the skin of the family story before it's too late, to come to terms with the aftermath of the secret her father had tried - and failed - to keep from them all, and to find that Ann's stroke has in fact thrown them all a life raft.

With candour, warmth and much unexpected humour, Karen’s role as family confidante, busybody, therapist and spy brings to her audience both a compelling story and a unique portrait of contemporary family survival."

It seems that, just as her previous projects have given hope to the people she has worked with, working on this film has brought the family together, and despite the challenges of working crazy hours, juggling various commitments, and witnessing upsetting truths about people she loves, in making The Closer We Get, Karen has developed a relationship with her Mum that she would not otherwise have. This shows the true power of art.

http://www.somewhere.org.uk

http://thecloserweget.com/film-blog

Ana Bidart

Once again, my good friend Gary alerted me to an interesting artist to investigate. 
Ana Bidart is "interested in drawing: its possibilities but most of all its impossibilities."

I have only seen her work on Behance, but will do more research and hope to share more of her beautiful and mesmerising work.

https://www.behance.net/anabidartstudio




Impractical data series




Impractical data series




Impractical data series




On going drawing




Colour separation




Colour separation

What Makes an Artist an Artist?

by Jillian Steinhauer on March 20, 2014

http://hyperallergic.com/115627/what-makes-an-artist-an-artist

The question of who, exactly, is an artist — what that word means, who defines herself by it — has always been a tricky one. All sorts of surveys purport to the tell us the number of artists in the US, from the government census to independent initiatives, but the terms of the discussion have never been entirely clear. Are artists self-defined? Must they make money off their creative work (a certain amount)? What kinds of creative work count? Can you be a professional artist if you spend 30 hours a week doing something besides making art?

Each survey defines “artist” in its own way and then moves on with its results, but a new study in the journal Poetics takes up the root question itself: “Who is an artist? New data for an old question,” by sociologists Jennifer C. Lena and Danielle J. Lindemann. Lena and Lindemann look at data collected in the 2010 Strategic National Arts Alumni Project surveyas a means of exploring the confusion over who or what constitutes an artist. As they write in their abstract:

In this study, we explore the ‘‘professional artist’’ as the outcome of an identity process, rendering it the dependent rather than the independent variable. In their responses to the 2010 Strategic National Arts Alumni Project survey (N=13,581)—to our knowledge, the largest survey ever undertaken of individuals who have pursued arts degrees in the United States—substantial numbers of respondents gave seemingly contradictory answers to questions asking about their artistic labor. These individuals indicated that they simultaneously had been and had never beenprofessional artists, placing them in what we have termed the ‘‘dissonance group.’’ An examination of these responses reveals meaningful differences and patterns in the interpretation of this social category.

Specifically, Lena and Lindemann home in on a group of 3,816 respondents to the SNAAP survey who said they had worked in the arts but never been professional artists. Now, of course, there are plenty of arts jobs that don’t involve the actual production of art, yet the pair identified many writers, architects, musicians, photographers, and more — that is, people who create artistic products — that fell into this group. “Clearly, for many respondents, there is a disjuncture between ‘work as a professional artist’ and ‘work in [artistic occupation],’” the pair write. Why?

They go on to examine various possible answers: the SNAAP survey specifically states that teachers do not qualify as artists, a distinction to which a number of respondents object; designers constitute a fuzzy “boundary group,” with some of them identifying as artists and others not; people have faulty memories. But Lena and Lindemann’s strongest contender, and the one on which they put their money, is the idea of embeddedness and cultural capital — that people who grow up with artist parents or relatives, attend specific arts schools (rather than just programs), and work mostly in arts-related jobs feel more comfortable identifying as professional artists. “There is something that arts graduates get in their lives, through their connections with other artistic individuals, that contributes to the salience of their ‘artist’ identities,” Lena and Lindemann write. They continue:

We hypothesize that highly embedded art world members experience less ambiguity around their identity as artists, while those who only entered art-centered environments in their graduate training years experience more difficulty identifying as professional artists. Seeing one’s self as a professional artist is an achievement that compares to entering other elite status groups, in that advantages accrue to those with the implicit and explicit knowledge of group conventions, attitudes, habits, and ways of being and can remain beyond the reach of even those who are trained to belong.

Lena and Lindemann readily acknowledge that there’s lots more research to be done and that their conclusion is far from absolute — some people purposefully choose not to be embedded, for instance, and although the paper doesn’t mention this, it seems plausible to me that some people may associate the term “artist” specifically with visual art. But the sociologists are right in pointing out that if organizations want to target artists, and if governments want to use research data to shape policies geared towards them (both of which are already happening), it might help to first figure out who an artist is.