Welcome and Guest Blogging
Hi there! This is just a quick post to say hello and welcome to any friend who may have popped over from Blackwatertown today. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I've guest blogged about boats, horses, family and Pavarotti on the great Blackwatertown. Go over and have a look, if not for my humble offering then for the host of other guest writers, not to mention Paul, the main blogger and editor.
Take care!
K
Dear me
Dear, dear, dear, dear me.
Killian, what is going on here? Not good enough, not good enough! Fallow might be a good idea in agriculture, but in blogging it's plain lazy.
I never thought I would write this, but it has come to the point when I don't even want to log into my blogging account for fear of becoming truely mindful of how long it's been since my last post and how many readers have rightfully fecked off.
Commitment is what I need. Perseverence, descipline, application.
As many a middle-of-the-road blogger would ask, what do you think?
Sing me out Deep Pruple!
The things filling my bandwidth
This blog has taken quite the hit recently. Its author recently logged in and was more than a little shocked to realise that there were no posts at all uploaded during February. That has been the result of two things. The first is that I currently have two jobs, one of which is copy-writing. So basically, I more or less blog for the better part of my living now, hence reluctance to also do it as a hobby. I suppose I must get used to the new configuration of my work/life balance and find a space in there to do what I love.
The second reason is I've been seeing a lot less art, reading a lot less, and watching a lot more of this type of thing:
New Art: Clusterbomb @ Patriothall Gallery, Stockbridge
This is my review of Clusterbomb at Patriothall Gallery WASPS for The Skinny. 3 Stars!
Notwithstanding the occasional guidebook erroneously, and rather hilariously, describing Stockbridge as ‘bohemian’, it’s probably fair to say that the area’s art scene is bland and commercially focused. That’s why this independent exhibition of drawings and paintings by Edinburgh College of Art graduates should be particularly welcomed.
The unifying concern – ‘the excessive clustering of imagery’ – is simple and there is no burdening the visitor with spoon-fed textual reflection. This decision has worked out well for Clusterbomb: many of the paintings are so replete with lively symbolism and tackle such thoroughly contemporary referents, from kebabs to Lego, that formal explanation is unnecessary.
Emergent themes are food supply, violence, fear and waste culture. Matt Swan’s Anonymous Dorito Henchman with a Green Cape showcases the inventive mix of fast food, vanity and pure fantasy that makes up his bizarre and intriguing work. Jamie Kinroy tackles the stress and breakdown of social life in the face of consumerist capitalism, and in the likes of Hard Times 2 his use of colour and logo echoes multinational corporations.
Bobby Nixon’s Black Paintings convey the growing sense of fear in the contemporary urban environment, again referencing the logos and junk food that are staples in the big city. John Brown’s playful deconstruction of bodily parts in Twitland complements the more serious contributions.
Contrasting with all this detritus and dysfunction is Alex Gibbs’ lonely Suburban Living, With Trees, whose clinical, manipulated landscape still hints that we are looking at the other side of the same coin of human agency.
There is more that can be done here in terms of refining the concept and honing the various responses, but this is nevertheless a good, low-budget exhibition from promising new artists. Clusterbomb’s inventiveness and critical engagement with contemporary themes is admirable and the show is certainly worth seeing.
Royal Weddings, etc.
April's big UK wedding is drawing up a few contradictions and various other plainly weird things. Apparently it isn't actually a 'Royal' wedding in the strictest sense anyway because nobody getting married is a king or a queen or even a Prince of Wales.
And then there are the commerative plates with no faces, the Facebook ranting bishop, and the erroniously applied 'Peoples Wedding' in some of the papers. Great socialist slogan, folks, but seriously? I guess royals have people and people have royals just as people have a collective identity and workers rights.
Anyway my favourite thing I've seen so far in connection with it was in today's guardian: a trilogy of graphic novels, retelling the love story from the points of view of William and Kate separately, before a third and final installment. Some of the usual grumbling, pseudonymed commenters at the bottom of the article seem to think it the ultimate about turn in relation to the press committment after William's mother's death not to obtrude into Royals' personal business. Erm, what, do they think the script writer and artists had to follow them around on scooters and stick cameras in their faces and bribe corrupt butlers to pruduce this? Hokum!
You can read the article here.
Here is creator Rich Johnson energetically discussing his field:
Turner in January: some thoughts on the Vaughan Bequest exhibition, Edinburgh
Odd things happen artwise in Edinburgh (and I suppose in Dublin and London) in January.
Some years it’s difficult to decide whether the Vaughan bequest of 38 of Turner’s watercolours and sketches is a blessing or a curse for the National Galleries. On the one hand, surely this is perfect, conservationist ‘Cream Egg Syndrome’: once a year, strictly exclusive to January, and for the rest of the time we’re supposedly left wanting. On the other hand, despite its mandatory brevity, this exhibition has a perennial tendency to be repetitive and incentive to do anything interesting with it is potentially lacking.
2011’s Turner is in the exhibition space downstairs by the Scottish collection. This soporific bunker doesn’t lend itself favourably to the appreciation of art at the best of times and the Turners are exhibited in vaguely chronological order without significant curatorial invention. However, one of the twists of the bequest itself is that Vaughan collected the works with the intention of representing all the main periods of Turner’s artistic development, and he passed these pieces on to Edinburgh with the same thought. What results is a coherent collection of sketches and paintings which makes sense as a set, so we may forgive the National Galleries’ staff for keeping their interpretation largely in the background.
Best known among the collection are probably the energetic, lightening-emblazoned watercolour The Piazzetta, Venice (pictured) and the endlessly absorbing, ethereal Heidelberg. But other highlights include the study of colour relationships in Harbour View and the breathtaking little watercolour Loch Coruisk, and among his blue and grey wash sketches, Lake Albano.
You can’t help but feel for the curators having to roll these works out year upon year in January, and a certain fatigue seems evident. But this doesn’t stop Turner in January from being one of the quirkily fabulous treats of the Edinburgh calendar.
You have until 31st January (or you'll have to wait 11 months!)
Childish Things at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
The theme of this second collaboration between The Fruitmarket Gallery and curator and scholar David Hopkins is undoubtedly seasonally appropriate. Just as the joy of a childhood Christmas can have a dark underside, so Childish Things scrutinises the process of children’s play through its artefacts and reveals a disturbing picture indeed.
Rooted in Dada and Surrealism, this powerful exhibition explores its theme through several media, drawing on the physicality of play, whether the interactive play of a puppet show, the artist’s ‘playing’ with the medium of film, or toys themselves. But crucially, Childish Things acknowledges the embeddedness of play in our social and psychological worlds, to complex and disturbing effect.
The toy-like pieces exhibited range from found objects such as Paul McCarthy’s Children’s Anatomical Educational Figure to stitched doll-like figures in Louise Bourgeois’s narrative piece Oedipus. Jeff Koons’s Bear and Policeman is striking in its reproduction of a junk shop knick-knack in exquisite, monumental scale. Decontextualized, the piece is imbued with a garish menace and the original impressions of friendship and cooperation are lost to ambiguity and threat. Susan Hiller’s An Entertainment, a large-scale, four-screen projection of recordings of Punch and Judy shows, places the viewer within the frightening, abusive world of the show with terrifying results.
If Childish Things has the propensity to draw out the uncertainty, darkness and even violence of childhood, then there is redemption of sorts in Helen Chadwick’s Ego Geometrica Sum. Chadwick’s work harmonises the artist’s body with objects and shapes from her life in a consciously geometric fashion, rationalising and ordering seminal personal experiences.
It would be wrong to say that Childish Things is predominantly dark. As appropriate to its subject matter, there is a great sense of energetic fun. Don’t be afraid to see it; just be prepared to scratch the surface a little.
Review of Edinburgh Art Fair
This piece was first published on The Skinny's website, 1st December 2010. There are lots more art previews, features and reviews there.
The dilemma with the likes of the Louvre, MoMA and the Vatican is that one is so bombarded with masterpieces that perspective is easily lost. How many Caravaggios or Warhols is it possible to meaningfully digest in an afternoon’s ramble? Like listening to ten great operas simultaneously, it’s fabulous white noise.
Edinburgh Art Fair also overloads, but lacks masterpieces. The fair is a chance for commercial galleries to showcase their collections and ideally make a few sales. But it’s easy to see how the commercial focus hinders meaningful engagement with art.
With an impressive sixty-five galleries exhibiting the work of over a thousand artists, most galleries have brought the optimum mix of works for commercial purposes. There is often little coherence within a single gallery’s stand, never mind throughout the event as a whole. Lack of context tends to drown individual pieces and an unfortunate result of the aesthetic overload is a tendency for more garish, ridiculous works to stand out.
Conversely, Glasgow School of Art graduate Ryan Mutter’s three paintings grab attention precisely because of their paucity of colour. Exhibited by the Contemporary Fine Art Gallery Eton, War Machine (pictures) shows a darker side to Mutter’s interest in Glasgow’s industrial past. The same gallery also brings us several of Peter Howson’s paintings, similarly interested in industrial society but on an individual, idiosyncratic level, contrasting with the impersonal gigantism of Mutter’s featured works.
The near-ubiquitous Ronnie Wood’s nostalgic rock scenes make an appearance, and at Peebles’ Breeze Gallery Bob Harper isn’t far behind with more intimate celebrity visages.
Overall, the fair leaves you feeling aesthetically starved. Perhaps this is the overload effect. It’s surely also due to the fact that events like this often seem less about art and more about interior design, business talk and Chelsea boots.
Edinburgh’s mysterious leaf people
Local Edinburgh news has been alive with curiosity and speculation over the appearance of a number of leaf sculptures along the Water of Leith. The artist remains unknown, but clearly is playing with our fascination with the 6 Times series of sculptures erected in June by Antony Gormley. The figures appear to be interacting with Gormley’s sculptures, mirroring the behaviour of hundreds of city walkers since the summer.
The individuals below - the Parent and Child and the Student/Teenager/Homeless Man(?) – all appeared in Stockbridge recently. People by and large have been charmed by them, but you have to admit there’s something horrifyingly creepy about them too, or at least there will be when they come alive! Or maybe they used to be alive and they have since been horrifyingly transformed into a mute, leafy prison.
Okay, I’ve clearly been watching too many horror films to go with the standard ‘happy families’ interpretation. On a serious note though, this is a welcome addition to the art of the area since Gormley’s contribution. The honeymoon period with the latter has passed and we’re getting bored. The leaf figures are the most interesting intervention to date, and there have been several, from bikinis to "I Love Leith" T-shirts.
And, quite frankly, this latest feature is more interesting than Gormley anyway.
Edinburgh Journalist Wars: the gloves are off
Today’s Edinburgh Evening News carries a story on its cover about Edinburgh Council’s Outlook series of local kinda community newspapers. Michael Blackley lambastes the freesheets, calling them “propaganda” and rallying local readers to pressure the council to “pulp ‘Pravda’.” Apparently the populist Evening News would divert the money saved into buying school books for the city’s youth, thus holding the council to ransom by implying some sort of anti-education stance manifested in the publication of the Outlook series. I must say I find this whole angle particularly right-wing despite its ostensible stance as Defender of the Kiddies’ Maths Books. The comparison is totally arbitrary.
It’s becoming clear that a huge financial bite will be taken out of UK councils, so all of this may be entirely academic in a year’s time anyway, with Outlook scrapped altogether and an unholy haemorrhaging of the school system looming.
I can’t help feeling like the Evening News is playing spoiled child here, attacking a little brother so, despite said sibling's revenues coming in a little more easily, from the public purse. My bias is that I’d like to see as many publications as possible because I’d like to have as many writing options as possible! And I’m sure all the good chappies working for Outlook will be delighted to see this little ‘Scottish Kiss’ from the Evening News which effectively calls for their outright redundancy. Happy Humbugging Christmas lads.
Maybe the council should re-evaluate, especially in light of the Cameron-Osborne-Clegg clippers chopping their way northwards, but the Pravda reference irks me to the core. Public-equals-communist is a lazy, below-the-belt rationale that insults our intelligence. Great reading! Am I overreacting?