07/03/2010 by bakary.

I have found exhibitions at the British Library to be long and laborious to get through in the past… and so I had cleared a few hours in my diary for this one.

But this time, it was more of a case of ‘less is more’. Points of view: Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs was well laid out and you could easily absorb the images without fearing information overload.

I liked the fact that right from its beginning, photography was seen as art. Photographic pioneers  took time to composed their shots and also realised that photography could play an very important role in documenting life. Or that it could play an active part the day-to-day life, such as identifying and recording criminals. But mug shots are one thing… the French guy who thought that criminals could be identified by their physical features may have gone a bit too far.

There was an opportunity to see photos of the Prussian war and of London past and present; you could play with early prototypes of 3-D glasses; see how popular photography started with mass processing and competitions; there was an example of one of the first x-ray images.

But the images that made it for me were the “Norfolk Broads” photos from Peter Henry Emerson. A stunning piece of photo documentary. The images so well composed, so beautiful and so telling of an age and a way of life.

Well done the British Library! We want more of the same please.

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22/02/2010 by bakary.

I came across this exhibition by chance. I’d never been to the Hoopers Gallery before and was given a warm welcome on arrival, which made up for the miserable drenching journey.

And to be honest, I’d never heard of Gina Glover either but the review of Liminal World I read caught my eye. “A gorgeous antidote to our fast-paced life” (copyright Steve Pill, Metro).

Glover uses a pinhole camera which requires long exposures and this gives her images a very distinct feel: the figures blur a little, colours blend together slightly. They look like images from dreams.

A simple object commanding the image such as Blue Bench or Yellow Hut. Or we’re faced with a landscape which draws you in and captures your imagination such as The High Road, Storm or France Profonde. Lovely stuff.

The exhibition continues downstairs with Pathways to Memory 1986-1999 but these works are different, more biographical. They’re good images, well taken and composed. Family members and familiar objects in her garden. Not for me I’m afraid. And I’m sorry I saw these last as it took away from my enjoyment of Liminal World.

Liminal World is on at the Hoopers Gallery until 5 March. FREE.

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14/02/2010 by bakary.

Yep, another exhibition visited on its last day. Determined not to miss this one, I was there at opening time and I only had to share the exhibits with a handful of people, which was surprising and delightful.

The GSK Contemporary, Earth: Art of a Changing World exhibition was held in what I understand was the old Museum of Mankind. Located at the back of the Royal Academy of Arts, 6 Burlington Gardens, I felt, was a bit of an awkward space for contemporary art pieces.

Obviously, the main attraction there as far as I’m concerned was “Amazonian Field” (Antony Gormley). This was the third time I’ve come face to face with this work; I adore those terracotta figures. Packed together, they filled the room they were in, a few of them almost creeping out. Staring at you, it seems that there is a lot they want to tell you. Going down to their level (lying on the floor), you’re almost overwhelmed by their presence.

The overall theme of the exhibition linked art to climate change. Is art jumping on the climate change band-wagon I wondered? Can “Amazonian Field” for example be successfully linked to climate change now (the work was made in 1992 when climate change was definitely not in the news)? Gormley himself apparently was intrigued to see how the work could be reinterpreted. Is it valid for artists to have a voice and for their art to reflect their views? Is Art still Art if it has a ‘political’ point?

Some pieces, like”Kings of the Hill” (Yael Bartana) or “Heart of Darkness” (Cornelia Parker), do make you think of the (negative)  impact we have on the world. In the first one, men play with their big cars, wasting petrol and destroying the environment just for fun. In the second one, we see the remnants of a forest fire, a controlled burn which got out of control.

Other pieces were enjoyable just for being themselves and certainly did not make me think about the big issue. I particularly liked “It’s My Island I”: a video in which Finish artist Antti Laitinen builds his own island in the Baltic sea. I could have spent a lot of time staring at “Tide”(Darren Almond), a 567 digital clock display ticking away. And I still don’t know what to make of “100 Years” (Kris Martin). This small golden sphere is due to explode a 100 years from its creation (2004). Really? Why? How will we know if it did? Pointless? And then there was “Doomed” (Tracey Moffat), a video collage of movie disasters. This was supposed to explore our obsession with disasters… Chilling clips which made me drift away to think about the tsunami or the even more recent earthquake in Haiti. And if anything, it reaffirmed my belief that The Towering Inferno is still one of the best disaster films of all time.

GSK Contemporary, Earth: Art of a Changing World certainly raised some questions; but may be not the questions it was setting out to do.

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07/02/2010 by bakary.

The Sacred Made Real at the National Gallery was my first venture in an art gallery so far this year.

The reviews were alluring and tantalising. Referred to, simply, as the best exhibition of the year, when it opened in 2009. There was a lot to like… only a few pieces were shown in each room. Each piece therefore was given the space to breathe. Each piece important enough to command your undivided attention. The lighting low and subdued; encouraging the audience to whisper or remain silent. These are objects of devotion normally seen in churches and there was a reverential silence in each room.

In 17th-century Spain, religious art got the realism treatment… whether it was meant to shock, I’m not sure… but realism brought a much needed oomph to the Catholic Church. You were no longer just praying to an icon; you were face to face with a living person, whose very pain and sadness was there for you to see.

The austerity of the works in sharp contrast with some of the goriness on display. The severed ‘Head of Saint John the Baptist’ certainly proved a hit with a couple of children in the room at the same time as me; the blood on the severed neck hinting at the fresh decapitation. ‘Christ on the Cross (’Cristo de los Desamparados’)’ invites you to reflect on the pain which Christ suffered but if you have any doubts, his shadow on the wall will refute these as you see him pulling from the nails; his body slumped forward, helplessly.

The Culture Show’s review of this exhibition drew our attention to a couple of pieces, ‘The Virgin of Sorrows (Mater Dolorosa)’ and ‘Dead Christ’ and these were indeed fabulous in their realism… but ‘The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception’ was one of my favourite pieces. The detail of her drapery and her face meant that you had to look twice to reassure yourself that it was a statue you were looking at, not a real person. As for ‘Saint Francis Borgia’, I simply could not hold his gaze.

Yes, the standard of the works on show was extremely high… but this exhibition was a success because the curator got it spot on. They didn’t want you to simply visit this exhibition; they wanted you to experience it. Simply astounding.

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14/12/2009 by bakary.

I read this week that the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts is now the most visited exhibition of a living artist there.

The galleries were certainly very busy on the day I was there. Luckily, I’d purchased my ticket for the first slot of the day in advance. The queue was already big by the time I got there and it was bigger still by the time I left. But the people who queued, in the rain, would certainly agree that it was worth it.

From one gallery to the next, people were enjoying themselves. Children (and there were a lot there!) were trying to work out what things were and how they worked. Older folks were having fun.
 
 
 
 
  
 
The only two people I overheard who were clearly not having any fun were two die-hard Royal Academy fans… who decided that this was the sort of exhibition that people would say they liked, just because it’s trendy to say so. They’d also decided that there was nothing new there.

Well… everyone is entitled to their opinions, of course.

The thing about Anish Kapoor, I find, is that he makes you marvel at the simplest things. Be it the shape, smoothness or the idea behind each of his works.

The exhibition booklet states that Anish Kapoor’s “exploration of form and space and his use of colour and material have profoundly influenced the course of contemporary sculpture.”

Take Yellow for example.  Literally, we have a coloured indentation in a wall. But the density of the colour and the smoothness of the hole make you stare for ages. You can lose yourself in there.

Non-objects reminds you of those mirrored galleries at funfairs. And yes, they are fun. But they also confuse you and trick you. Where are you? What exactly are you looking at? “I make these works because I feel this is a new spatial adventure. To make new art you have to make new space” (Anish Kapoor).

And Svayambh plays a trick on you too. At first, you find yourself looking at the huge block of red wax. And then you realise that slowly, very slowly, it moves. It moves across five galleries and through the classical doorways, up and down tracks, all day long, leaving wax along the way. When you read the notes, you find out that Svayambh roughly means ’self-generated’ in Sanskrit. And that’s a concept which is dear to Kapoor’s heart. The idea that you, as the artist, come up with the concept of the work… but the art makes itself. “Self-authored sculpture.”

 And then there’s the crowd-pleaser, Shooting into the Corner. Ushered into a small space, people chat with anticipation for the moment when the canon is loaded. Every 20 minutes, a reverential silence descends on the room as the crowd watch the canon being loaded. And bang. Approximately 20 pounds of wax is fired into a corner of the Small Weston Room. The wax piles up into the corner. It’s fun and messy. It’s also violent. And again, art creates itself.
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

Tall Tree and the Eye merges the old (the Royal Academy building) with the new (shiny spheres). And similarly, it also tricks you into bringing the sky )and the clouds) and the earth together. It allows you to explore and play with shapes and reflections. The spheres look like they’re attached to each other randomly… but the perspectives and reflections are no coincidences.

I loved it.

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29/11/2009 by bakary.

How it is by Miroslaw Balka is the latest controversial exhibit from the Unilever seried at Tate Modern.

‘Like its predecessors, it it innovative, bold and challenging‘, says Tate Modern.

You’re invited to walk into a huge container, where you are supposedly engulfed by darkness. A fun thing to do? A way of confronting your fears (do you want to walk into the unknow)? A disappointment?

The container is 1000 x 1300 x 3000. Walking into it for the first time is disconcerting. You can’t quite see. Figures are coming towards you. You don’t know when you’re going to reach the end. Are you in danger of hurting yourself or others?

Once you’ve reached the end, you realise that in fact it’s not totally dark. The best thing however is watching people entering the container, dark forms against the light.

I came out and left it a few minutes before going in again. Shouldn’t have done that. You can quite repeat the first experience. It’s not as dark the second time round and you are aware of where the end is.

Still… it’s fun and a bit disorientating at first.

How it is by Miroslaw Balka is on at Tate Modern until 5 April 2010. FREE.

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28/11/2009 by bakary.

True to form, I made it to the British Museum on 22 November… on what was the last day of The Power of the Dogu exhibition.

I must admit knowing nothing about ancient Japan or Dogu. But I’d seen a review of the exhibition and found these small ceramic statues attractive and intriguing.

They are crude, simple representations of the human form. Some clearly represent fertility and could have been intended to help secure safe childbirth. Other were found buried next to infants; child mortality being rife at the time. A few are known to have been buried in the community ground when it was time to abandon the village, suggesting a nomadic lifestyle.

Embellished and decorated, plain and crude. Whatever they are, these stunning clay statues are truly fascinating and I guess part of the attraction is not knowing for certain what their purposes were.

One of the reviews I recently read suugested that influences of the Dogu can be found in the work of artists like Picasso and Ernst. I can see that. I can also see that they are not dissimilar to wooden statues used in rituals in Africa. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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26/10/2009 by bakary.

The recent Corot to Monet exhibition at the National Gallery wasn’t very exciting, sadly.

There was a bit about how the Barbizon school was responsible for moving art towards realism. Suddenly, painters were making nature the subject of their paintings.

Jean-Francois Millet extended the idea from landscape to figures. His paintings were reflecting real life: peasant figures and scenes of peasant life, for example.

The previous trend was for painters to incorporate a sense of poetry into their works. They used their imagination and memory to work on pieces, sketching outdoors and working on the paintings back in their studios. What we have as a result are poetic paintings with few realistic details.

‘Beauty in art is truth based on the impression we have received observing nature’ (Corot).

Boudin taught many Impressionists to paint outdoors and they famously took hold of the concept of painting in situ. ‘The Beach at Trouville‘ by Monet even has grains of sand and shells embedded in the paint surface.

And that’s about it. Many paintings and little substance. And a few paintings which failed to justify their presence in the exhibition. Still, it’s always nice to spend some time in an art gallery…

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16/10/2009 by bakary.

The One And Other art project on the Fourth Plinth, in Trafalgar Square, came to an end on Wednesday. It’s only been a couple of days but already Trafalgar Square hasn’t been the same.

One hundred days, with one performer an hour twenty four hours a day. I only managed to catch about five minutes most days on my way to work. And I always made sure to look at what was going on and who was doing what.

I was there for the last change over. Pink balloons giving way to red balloons.

And yesterday, they started to dismantle things.

Thank you Mr Gormley. It’s been fun.

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15/10/2009 by bakary.

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to post about the Colour Chart exhibition!

This was my second visit to Tate Liverpool. It’s a nice space and they have some good exhibitions there but obviously, it’s a bit of a distance away so I rarely make it up there.

The Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today  exhibition, which ended a little while ago now, was all about taking “the commercial colour chart as its point of departure, addressing the impact of mass-produced colour on the art of the past sixty years” (Tate Liverpool). Put like that, it makes sense. Colour is everywhere. Look around you now, how much colour is there around you? Everyday, there is colour around us. Even on a grey day. Colour influences the choices we make and our mood, e.g. ‘hey, the sky is blue, let’s go for a walk’, how we select what to wear on certain day to reflect our mood or think how often we choose food according to its colour.

To say that I came out and started looking around me with a meaning may be taking things too far… but I’m certainly more aware of what’s around and how things look and how people want things to look. I also got a few creative ideas to keep me going over the next few months. All I need now is some time to work on those colour projects!

The exhibition however was a bit disjointed and I found it hard to see how one bit linked to another.

Oh… and the cafe next door is fantastic…

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