Art that isn't looking away #1: Upstream Color

So if I don't want art to look the other way, what could it be looking at? I'm not advocating didactic or propagandist art - just art that's made in awareness of place we find ourselves in now. Shane Carruth's film Upstream Color, which coincidentally I saw very recently, may be a good example.

So much has been written about it (see below), I don't need to start over, except to mention the way the film references materiality as part of a wider shift in consciousness. We see all sorts of analogue technology: printed books, hand written notes, cassette decks, vinyl records, gold coins. Meanwhile, the characters are constantly - almost obsessively - touching things. The narrative and ideas are conveyed more through sound, music and imagery than words. This sensuous world seems to feature as a counterpoint to or defence against the increasingly blurred boundaries between our 'true' selves and the digitised, biomedical extensions we're engineering.

Upstream Color trailer


Short essay on Upstream Color by Dr Matt Hayler of Exeter University


Reviews of Upstream Color 
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/jonathan-romney-on-upstream-colour-come-on-in-the-water-is-dazzling-8792730.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/04/the-cautionary-rhapsody-of-upstream-color.html

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/aug/29/upstream-color-review

Looking the other way

Charlie Godet Thomas Unfurl

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says for once and for all: yes, climate change is really happening ... when we are facing rising sea levels and more frequent extreme weather events... when the global population has almost exceeded the resources needed to sustain it in fossil fuels, food and water...  when the gap between rich and poor grows larger daily ... what should art be about?

Artists will make the art they have to make. But curators, selectors, funders and buyers - they decide what kind of art is pushed to the fore. What gets the exposure and the backing, the gallery space and the broadcast time.  In Exeter, two recent - and accidentally related - exhibitions highlight a growing taste for a more old-fashioned type of arty art. Consciously or unconsciously, opinion-formers in contemporary art seem engaged in either a silent scream of existential denial, or blatant complicity with the affluent elite.

In both exhibitions there's an over-riding concern with materiality - the physical substance of the works rather than their context or meaning. At Spacex, Lucy May is showing wax sculptures that have the colour of viscera and the form of baroque decorative embellishments. They are delicious yet slightly disgusting, full of movement yet still.  Alongside this work, Lisa Watts is creating live art in the gallery as part of her research project Skittish.  This work will unfold over the coming weeks but, at the opening, Watts talked about her ideas growing spontaneously out of a response to materials, and specifically not from any issues or political stance.

At the nearby Exeter Contemporary Open, there's work by nine artists selected from a national competition.  It's not thematically curated but you'd never know it. The work is accomplished and interesting but, as far as I can see, none of it is about much apart from its own physical qualities. The strangeness of one material set against another, the humour of correspondences, the fascination of repetition, colour and pattern...

"The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, no desire to express, along with the obligation to express." 
Samuel Beckett from the Duthuit Dialogues as quoted by Charlie Godet Thomas in the Exeter Contemporary Open 2013 catalogue.

I have no problem with this sort of work - in fact I get great pleasure from it.  But there's also a part of me that thinks it's the orchestra playing as the ship sinks: distracting us from the environmental disaster that's unfolding around us, keeping us occupied while the very last of our public services are ransacked for profit.

At this point in time - this very critical point - is there really nothing more important with which to fill our galleries than stuff about stuff? Whose agenda is that serving? Or are the problems we face so huge we actually can't look them in the eye any more?

Skittish (Lisa Watts and Lucy May) - Spacex - 28 September–23 November 2013

Exeter Contemporary Open (Charlie Godet Thomas, Rachel Busby, Rebecca Ounstead, Max Cahn, Julie Price, Anne Deeming, Malina Busch, Oliver Tirre, Hannah Mooney) - Exeter Phoenix -
19 September–2 November  2013

The price of everything and the value of nothing

intoLACE featuring work by Andrea Stokes and Helen Snell

When I see a price next to a piece of art, I can't help myself: I stop thinking about what it might be trying to tell me and start thinking of it as a commodity.  I become much more concerned with whether it pleases me, whether it's worth the price, whether it's something I might want to own and use.

Artists need to earn a living, I know. And earning a decent living from your work isn't incompatible with artistic credibility. But I see far too many shows in Devon where curators act more like retailers.

In my opinion, intoLACE at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton fails to successfully negotiate this - admittedly  tricky - territory.  Based in a town famed for its lace-making, the gallery is the former home and studio of artist Thelma Hulbert, who died in 1995.  The show and the setting offers a great opportunity to consider women's labour, women's creativity and the perceived value of women's work in society over time.

The flagship piece, Andrea Stokes' installation Net Curtains succeeds brilliantly in this respect. Over two days, under the guidance of the artist, some 25 local women transferred a drawing onto every single window of the gallery. Inspired by traditional Honiton Lace the drawing weaves over the entire gallery, creating the illusion of net curtains and making the building feel domestic and intimate. Significantly, the women were paid £250 each for their work.  I assume the artist took a fee too. But, as a temporary installation, the work itself has no price tag.

Equally, a series of fabulous intricate life-size in drawings of lacy stockings and tights from a series called Bluestockings by Catherine Bertola are marked not for sale.  

But work by other participants is presented as an odd hybrid of serious art and homewares. In Helen Snell's case, the same sculpture is shown four times in different sizes and materials. There's a bit of arty bluster about imperfect copies and subverting the idea of an edition, but it's rather undermined by the fact each has its own different price point. And exit through the gift shop please to buy Imogen Luddy's quirky plates and cake stands - just like the ones you saw in the gallery.

Please understand that I have no problem with applied arts -  with makers basing their practice on sound concepts, or with the public acquiring beautiful, individual and creative pieces for their homes.  What troubles me is the muddle we're in here between meaning and selling. It's like IKEA trying to persuade you to buy a wardrobe by quoting Deleuze. It makes the artists' statements sound like pretentious and ultimately insincere sales patter.

I lay this problem at the feet of  the curator, not the artists, who all seem to be producing very sound work.  A bolder over-arching interpretative statement, a more rigorous editing of work (to avoid the feeling of a shop display) and the production of a separate price list would all have gone a long way to giving this exhibition the credibility it deserves.

IntoLACE 14 September 2013 - 02 November 2013 at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton and Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Bovey Tracey.

The mechancial versus the magical

Flight data 1ame7c21 - GPS co-ordinates on paper roll (2013)

I've been installing work for ' Drawn Together' at the Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton. Curated by Sara Dudman, this show brings together a number of approaches to drawing which have a technical or mechanical orientation, from architectural sketches and CAD drawings to botanical illustration and hand-drawn process pieces.

I'm showing my prototype 3D printed flight The Geometry of Air, which is concerned with the transition of a durational, ephemeral drawing in space (a glider flight) to a tangible, fixed object.

The Musgrove Gallery is a great space because of the diversity of its audience and its incredible footfall, but it does require work to be a little more explanatory and accessible. So I've taken it as an opportunity to include an aerial view of the location of the glider flight, the complete GPS data set on a roll (which creates its own beautiful, rhythmic pattern on the paper), the digital working drawing, and the 3D print itself.

I'm always wary of explaining too much and leaving no room for the audience to think or wonder. Explanation can crowd out the magical ability of art to make new and intuitive connections. At the same time, I'm entranced by the process of making images and models from numbers and want to share this with an audience.

It's turned out to be an interesting step in relation to my related R&D project Solid Air, as one of the issues I'm thinking about there is how to contextualize and interpret such work for curators and audiences. I've enjoyed this opportunity to push at the rational side of the project, not least because it invites a more oblique approach next time.

'Drawn Together' runs until 11th November 2013 - Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton, Somerset TA1 5DA  
http://www.artforlife.nhs.uk/

The public and the private city

"A view can belong to you, even if the land itself doesn't...". Something I've written about This City's Centre 1: Window by Blind Ditch, which is showing at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter until 22 September.  http://www.a-n.co.uk:81/interface/reviews/single/3691005 …

Hands-on versus hands-off making

I became an artist because I liked making stuff. And for a long time after I graduated that's exactly what I did. I drew, I painted, I assembled things. I made photographs and videos. I brought together exhibitions and even studio spaces. 

So it's a bit disconcerting to look back at the past 12 months and realise I have mostly been initiating and project-managing the making of stuff by other people. I have taken data collected by a glider pilot and a bird biologist and asked a programmer to help me visualise it. Worked with engineers to fabricate sculptures out of virtual models using a high-tech process I only just understand. And collected environmental data using  expertise and technology borrowed from Plymouth University. Even my recent publication about bananas was made partly from appropriated imagery and actually printed by another artist.

It's a perfectly respectable mode of operating  for a professional contemporary artist, so why do I occasionally feel like a fraud? After all, I've brought about number of new things that wouldn't have existed without me. What's more, the collaborative networks of expertise and ideas that came into being to serve these projects undoubtedly make a far bigger impact on the world than any of my paintings.

I suppose I'm very conscious that, in the popular imagination, hands-off artists are often seen as 'not real artists'. Like many people, I admire the time, commitment and talent that goes into the mastery of a skill such as printmaking or casting. So sometimes I'm a bit embarrassed to have to say, "no I didn't make that with my own two hands".

However, I know that unless I'm prepared to restrict my ideas to the craft skills I do have, I'll sometimes have to accept the role of commissioner or collaborator instead of maker. That said, I badly miss making stuff. Perhaps it's time for a new hobby - one that involves canvas and paint?

Not of this world

At a recent talk at Exeter Phoenix, artist Charlie Tweed was asked by an audience member to rate his powers of creation against those of God. I can't imagine your average video artist inciting such big questions. The enquiry seemed a little odd at the time but, in fact, there is something beyond the human going on in Tweed's work for his current show 'I Am Algorithm'. Through it, we are almost looking back at ourselves from somewhere beyond.

Made largely of appropriated images, sewn together in cut and paste narratives, the thrust of his work sits in a highly contemporary space between ecology and technology (and rather, like writer Tim Morton, he seems to suggest there is no boundary between the two). It is also somewhat posthuman. We're shown many images that were made possible by humans but have been created by machines. (The synthesised voice that accompanies them underlines this.) It's all housed in a spaces built of what look like black roofing panels, which emit a strong industrial odour in the summer heat.

This isn't an viewer-friendly exhibition. Coming across like a series of monotonous, relentless corporate videos gone wrong, it's actually too much to take in one sitting. Quite a contrast to the work (from the Notes series, I think) that won the 2009 Exeter Contemporary Open. This had  a lighter, more humorous tone, despite its sinister undertow.

In 'I Am Algorithm', Tweed seems to have entered a darker, more intense place. There's lots to admire, but not much to like. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

I Am Algorithm -  Friday  19 July 2013 - Saturday 31 August 2013, Exeter Phoenix, Gandy Street, Exeter EX4 3LS
www.charlietweed.com