ROYAL ACADEMY- Summer Exhibition

As much as I have read about and talked about it, I have never had the chance to visit the Royal Academy during the Summer Exhibition season before. So it was with much excitement that last week I finally got the chance to go.

And was I disappointed?... pfffftt NO! It was a fabulous experience!!! The rule ‘art is always better in real life’ is even more true when considered with an exhibition that relies so heavily on its curation. I’m not saying that the work wouldn’t work on its own, of course it would, but when all the works were combined in a room, wow! JUST WOW! The summer exhibition is a truly unique phenomenon, whereby art, curator and curation and the work of established, unknown and emerging artists really can interlock successfully.

The first room, Wohl Central Hall we were immediately met by a large Cindy Sherman piece ‘Untitled # 472’, Martain Creed’s ‘Work no.998’ and Garry Fabian Miller’s ‘Cobolt (IV)’.  So even from the first room there was a wide variety of media, techniques and styles.

I am never one to say ‘I don’t like a piece of art’. I try to understand what it is about first. Contemporary art often needs a bit of reading up on afterwards, and Miller’s digital C-type print ‘Cobalt (IV)’ was one of those works.  He has specialized in producing ‘camera-less’ photographs the 1980’s. He works in the darkroom, shining light through coloured glass vessels and over cut-paper shapes to create forms that record directly onto photographic paper. This gives his work a very unique quality. The large print was reminiscent of Rothko’s abstract works, however the medium gave it a much flatter plasma-screen appearance.  

Christopher Le Brun said, ‘there are two ways of showing paintings, and one is the classic orthodox hang with lots of space around every single piece. But here it’s like a battle of the paintings – forty big pictures on one wall alone!’. And yes, the variety of works in the exhibition was immense. The combination of famous and up and coming artists was very unusual but effective. I must say how honoured I felt to see the work of one of my idols, Jenny Saville. I always knew that Saville’s canvases had to be seen first hand because her painterly technique is so important to her and so it was great to be able to get close and inspect each brush stroke, which was beautifully precise yet fluid.

I could write so much more about the summer exhibition. It was a fantastic chance to become aware of new artists, and I certainly have a long list of them to inspire me.

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2011

When visiting Edinburgh in June, I took up the opportunity to visit the ECA Degree Show. And my goodness was I impressed!!

Although my main interest was the Fine Art Department, Animation has always been of interest to me and so I had a good look around their department too. It was a real treat to watch ECA student Paul Rice’s advanced CGI animation ‘Let Me Come In’ which just so happened to be nominated for the Edinburgh International Film Festival also. The twisted version of the fairytale ‘Three Little Pigs’, although disturbing was very captivating. I particularly enjoyed Will Anderson’s humorous yet more traditional animation ‘The Remaking of the Longbird’ and have been following his website www.whiterobot.com and other animations ever since.

There was much to be seen in the Fine Art Department, what, with it being the Degree and MFA shows at the same time, and I found it a very enlightening and really inspiring experience.

Of course if you know me at all you know that I love to see where contemporary painting is going.  The ECA show was no exception. I loved it! There were many students both post-grad and masters practising painting.

I absolutely fell in love with the exquisite paintings and photography by Anna Bernard. She made use of the natural colours of the wood, which she painted onto, and complemented them with her own colours beautifully. This also happened to link into the subject of her paintings. When speaking to her she told me that the wooden barn she had painted was her own at the parents home. Her work explores the comfort of her country farm home now that she lives in the inner city.

Kari Adams’ series of paintings really caught my attention. She sees herself as an ‘artist who appropriates ‘things’ and products- taking them from their convivial structure, rearranging their anatomy.’ To place meaning within the new form. Her innovative use of combining canvases and using them in an unconventional manner really pushed forward her aim to create new forms and images with discordant texts.  

The inventive style of drawing by Thomas Adam was really interesting too. Although the pieces where essentially 2 dimensional their placement around the room, occasionally with props made them work on a sculptural level. I found this quite fascinating.

Don’t get me wrong though. It wasn’t just the painting and drawing that interested me. Fiona Crozier’s work was ‘a series of events in which the viewer was not invited to watch.’ It consisted of earwigs trapped in glass fronted boxes and meat knives. The work had a powerful and shocking effect which pin pointed the irony, fragility and transience of life. She summed up her work with a simple quote ‘Bodies are only empty vessels, ain’t nothing in them. I’m not doing anything wrong.’ Ed Gien 1906- 1984.

Clare Flatley’s work develops processes of solidifying distortions and reflections of objects familiar to us, giving them an alternative, opposite existence. This piece creates a passing point, a self contained gateway, that provides an immersive experience for the viewer but that doesn’t physical lead to a different space, or alter the space around it.

Another aspect which added to the professionalism of the students’ work, is that the majority had personal statements, business cards and even had designed their own websites and online galleries. I would really like to be able to achieve this by next year too.

Every aspect of this degree show was exceptional! The work spoke for itself, and the students excelled!  

Liverpool John Moores Graduate Show 2011

 Well Mr Blog, it’s been a while. I’ve been off gallivanting round the country enjoying being a student on holiday (and looking at lots of art exhibitions of course) and now that I am back I think it’s time for me to stop neglecting you. We’ll have to do some back tracking first I’m afraid though, before I forget everything that I must tell you…

I think I will begin back in May, with the Liverpool John Moores Graduate Show, which definitely gave me food for thought. There was a wide variety of work in different media; sculpture, installation, films. There was also the special honour of  having the help of Lorenzo Fusi (curator of the Liverpool Biennial 2011) to curate the exhibition.

The evening of the exhibition was buzzing. It was fantastic to see so many people taking an interest in the show! And the new arrangement of the Fine Art Studio really worked to give each piece its own viewing space. Fusi clearly had a lot of input in the development of the works and created a very simplistic and effective floor plan. My only criticism would be that the lack of labelling of the works and rule against business cards, may have been detrimental to the main purpose of the graduate show. In my opinion it should have been an opportunity for people to discover new upcoming artists from Liverpool. A graduate show is not only the marking of the end of a university course, but also a spring board to the new level of professionalism. As a JMU student myself, even I had difficulty deciphering whose work was whose. On later conversations, I discovered that this was a fear of some of the students, and yet it was missed. On a very serious note, as a student next year I hope to be very much involved with the show, and feel that this lesson needs to be learned by myself and by others in this upcoming year.

On saying this I otherwise felt optimistic about the growth of the John Moores Art Department. The multitude of work sited in all areas of the building was inspiring.  From the Fashion Studios, to Interior Design and Fine Art, there was something to evoke a feeling of pride and excitement in all the people who visited.  

On entering the Fine Art room visitors were instantly confronted by a collection of CCTV cameras and the sight of themselves on a screen. This gave the viewer a feeling of invasion or intrusion of their personal space, an uneasy impression of ‘Big Brother’.

A sculptural piece I particularly admired was a group of drawers, each filled with new and old make-up each with a description such as, ‘imperfect’, ‘used’, ‘salvaged’, which can, in turn be used as a metaphor to describe the women who have used such products. More pressure on women again? Still going to wear my make-up tomorrow though.

The interactive wall, where visitors were encouraged to write their feelings was predictable, as per Renshaw Street. It is all too easy for people to use this vehicle of expression for cheap comments and not in a serious, artistic context.

I must mention that, as a painter, I was disappointed by the lack of paintings in this particular show. I often worry to myself that painting becomes overlooked as a contemporary art form with the arrival of such technologically advanced media. But there is plenty of time to discuss this in a later blog.