Compromise or compromised?

I came across this short but conscience-stirring article by David Berridge today, in which he reflects on the rise of 'embedded' art writers. http://www.axisweb.org/dlForum.aspx?ESSAYID=18146

I mention this as a writer who works closely with a gallery on a 'review group' that tries to encourage critical writing and discussion about its exhibitions. And as a writer who also writes marketing materials. And an artist who risks alienating her peer group whenever she reviews exhibitions....

There is an increasingly fuzzy line between writing about art for marketing purposes and writing about art for critical purposes. As I'm all too aware, I sit right on the fence that runs along it.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Evening of contrasts in Devon on Friday night, punctuated by a hasty fish supper eaten on a bench overlooking Plymouth's Sutton Harbour. I'd just been to the opening of a new print exhibition Up Close at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in Bovey Tracey and was about to see Hannah Silva preview her new performance work Opposition at the Barbican Theatre.

Opposition: A Little Political Speech Opera is a work in progress: a move from Hannah Silva's more low-key voice- and text-based performances to a theatre production including props, choreography, music, lighting and effects. It showcases her playful, fast-talking, cut-up vocal technique to comment on the emptiness of modern political speech. An interactive show, it asks the audience to take ownership of significant quotes from famous politicians that pop up throughout the script. It was funny, rivetting and occasionally biting. It was also completely topical, including Twitter feeds and recordings of that morning's devastating news of the Japan earthquake. 

Meanwhile back in the parallel universe that is the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, time stands still. There is still only one gender that really matters and the rest of us clear up after them. For Up Close, the pristine gallery is host to work by over 30 artists (mostly women, oddly enough) along with individual wall texts telling us what they love about the printmaking process and how inspired they are by nature. It's beautiful, buyable work, competently done - and some of the subject matter stretches beyond tired old landscapes. But, as a whole, the show feels unambitious and stifling.

It's organised by a venue concerned with the promotion of craft and craft education, so maybe I shouldn't expect too much focus on new ideas or difficult questions. (Though the show Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution in Plymouth has plenty.) Up Close is, I'm afraid, just a little bit too concerned with keeping everything nice. It's almost as if it wants to pretend that the last couple of years of economic, social, political and environmental turmoil never happened. After that, Hannah Silva was quite a tonic.


For details of future performances of by Hannah Silva, visit www.hannahsilva.co.uk

Up Close runs until 25 April 2011 at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Riverside Mill, Bovey Tracey, Devon TQ13 9AF  

The less said the better?

Barry Sykes Popular Problems #3

A flying visit to Plymouth to see three current art shows. Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution is a touring exhibition from Craftspace that celebrates the often-painstaking processes of creative making.

Amy Houghton Cardigan Study

Amy Houghton's spooky animation is a highlight; it shows a child's knitted cardigan being unravelled by unseen hands. My own preoccupation with measurement meant Sue Lawty's Calculus was also a draw. Consisting of hundreds of small, weathered stones sorted into groups and arranged rhythmically on a gesso surface, it contrasts human time (and counting) against geological time. Neatly summing up the show's 'slow' theme, it demonstrates the investment of care and skill required of makers - a requirement that rarely correlates to market value. It's a pity that such lucid visual statements had to be weighed down with so many wordy panels and labels. The texts would have been much less obtrusive on a photocopied sheet.

On to Dominion by Angela Cockayne, a solo show which documents the artist's diverse responses to the mythical and natural histories of the sperm whale. Informed by Melville's Moby Dick and Philip Hoare's Leviathan, Cockayne's work also powerfully communicates that strange mixture of awe, primordial connection and brutal commerce that defines humankind's relationship with the whale. I found individual objects in the show potent and intriguing, but was also overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of different ideas in such a small space. My instinct is that, with a good edit, this collection of work could say much more.

Angela Cockayne Yoke aka I must stop making things

After this deluge of ideas, it's something of a relief to encounter the Barry Sykes exhibition at Plymouth Arts Centre, where there's lots to think about but plenty of space to think in. Sykes specialises in the kind of playful, light-touch art that people often assume is just a throwaway joke - but there's real substance here. He has a fertile imagination and razor-sharp curiosity about the way the world works.

I enjoyed The Charter or Terms of Engagement an official-looking document which highlights the uncertainties (and the freedoms) that artists experience when working outside traditional institutions.  Popular Problems is a group of concrete-based sculptures (pictured top) that I found totally compelling, if hard to explain. I looked them up later on his website and discovered they were inspired by an adhesives marketing exercise, which only made me love them more.

And finally, as the theme for today seems to be 'less is more', I should mention The Least Most (The Most Least?) a film documenting Sykes' visit to a tattoo parlour to get the tiniest possible tattoo. A dot.

Barry Sykes: Recreate a Nervy Pistol (An Early Retrospective) is at Plymouth Arts Centre until 27 February 2011

Angela Cockayne: Dominion is at the Peninsula Arts Gallery until 5 March 2011

Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution is at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery until 9 April 2011

Exeter gets animated

Down to the city centre at the weekend to catch Isca Obscura, a giant animation projected on to Exeter Cathedral as part of the city's annual Animated Exeter festival.  Created by Tundra* with a haunting score by Beth Gibbons (of Portishead), it drew on local history and mythology, including the devastating blitz of 1942 and the gory legend of St Sidwella, whose blood supposedly became the wells that fed the city's water supply.

There are animation-related events and exhibitions at various venues throughout the city until 26 February. Read my review (and others' reviews) of Landings: Reviewing the World at Spacex here.

Art as social project

West Town Farm, 13 February 2011

This Sunday, I spent a few hours at West Town Farm in Ide being shown around by organicARTS co-ordinator Christine Duff.  This arts and education project has been going for about six years, providing access to an organic farm for anyone who wants to support or learn more about sustainable agriculture.

It's led to spin-off projects such as Love Local Food, a mobile food shop, and the Community Environment Group which works with people with mental health issues. They have also revitalised a once-failing dairy farm, encouraging its development as a community and environment resource and helping to access money that has funded footpaths, orchards, volunteer workers, a beef herd, pigs and bees - amongst other things.

Founders Christine Duff and Jo Cotter are artists, and were bemoaning the fact they've had very little time to pursue their own practice and 'make' things. At the time I nodded sympathetically - it's often true that artists who are the most capable and outward-looking end up spending the least time on their own work. But, on reflection, I think they might be worrying unnecessarily. You only have to look at someone like Suzanne Lacy to realise that Christine and Jo have never stopped making things.  They've been making  huge, complex, creative, meaningful, amazing things for years. It's simply a matter of how you frame the work of an artist.

By contrast, lots of object-like things are made at and for organicARTS by artists, students, local schools and community groups.  I made my own Observatory as a site-specific piece for the farm in 2009, and I loved working there.  But I will also admit to feeling that there's something pointless about adding to the world's accumulation of stuff  in a place where there's so much real work to be done. To my mind, West Town Farm calls for a little less artistic romanticism and a little more artistic activism.

On the case with Off The Hook

Sally Howkins Law, Probability and Risk (2010) Two digital photo frames showing randomized stills.

Finally managed to install Sally Howkins' video work Law, Probability and Risk in the window of local clothing store Off the Hook. The project is an offshoot from an earlier collaboration between Exeter's independent traders and an artist-led curating project Found Space. The proprietor of the Off The Hook wanted to continue his association with visual artists and asked Found Space to help.

It's been a delicate balance finding a piece of work that can hold its own in a busy shop window, while working round the business requirements of the owner and manager of the store.  Even after the success of our earlier project Stowage, I have some misgivings about placing artworks in the retail environment. I like the idea of taking work out of the gallery into the real world but, unless the work is made specifically for the location, the outcome can be an odd hybrid of art and window dressing. Sally Howkins has been very generous and open-minded in loaning her work for this slightly experimental purpose.

Dealing with notions of probability and crime detection, Law, Probability and Risk also looks at the narratives left behind when we touch a surface.  It celebrates the unique identity of individual human beings and questions our reliance on probability in making important decisions about people’s lives.

Seeing double

Duplicity (2010)

I've almost resolved a piece of work called Duplicity: three mirrors paired with found zoological texts to make little sets of wings. Then arranged in a flock on the wall, a bit like traditional flying ducks.  It's been sitting in my studio as an idea for months, but I've only just worked out a way of displaying it properly.

I think it's about perceptual construction and scientific dissection, but it also plays off a theme of translating three-dimensional movement to 2D surfaces that often crops up in my work. Except this time it's the other way round - the two-dimensional diagrammatic wings are taking flight with the help of mirrors.  There's a kind of trickery to it - hence duplicity - but also doubling, as in duplicated.

Three pieces each 15cm x 15cm x 15cm
Mirrors, ceramic tiles, found texts