How I Work

Another day, another exhibition. The Leeds Open, at the Leeds Art Gallery on the Headrow.

The youngest artist was born (according to the caption) in 2008. I can only wish that many of the otherwise-assumed-to-be-adults could claim the innocence of extreme youth. Actually, the about-2year old’s painting was interesting, which saved the day.

The most notable thing about this exhibition was the appalling curating. I’m all for the ‘Small Western Room’ school of hanging, floor to ceiling and corner to corner, but Leeds is neither one thing nor the other. Its a mess.

And so too are most of the frames, unsuited to the work they contain. There is elsewhere on these blogs a discussion about professionalism and the artist. Well, professionalism includes choosing and using frames which allow the work to live and not kill it; and it includes mounting the work properly, straight and centred within the frame.

The one outstanding piece was a sculpture of a rhino made out of plastic watering cans and cable ties. Now you know how I think, as well as what I think.

The New Art Gallery, Walsall, was my next venue. If you haven’t been there, go. A brilliant, focused, gallery.

I found it a few years ago (it wasn’t lost), along with Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Bilston Craft Gallery. In my opinion these institutions have a lesson for nearly every other gallery and museum I have visited.

The staff are interested, awake, communicative and helpful. Any one of these virtues would be a plus in some places.

They have also heard of the term ‘interaction’. Sculptures are not so precious that they can’t be touched (well, some anyway). Good information for children and the investigative adult. Good coffee shop (important) in some. Children in pushchairs allowed. Well, you get my drift.

Walsall, which specifically hosts the Garman Ryan collection of Epstein’s work tother with a good representative collection of 20th century art, has the Taylor Wessing photographic prize touring exhibition, together with another exhibition ‘Behind the Mask’ with work by Halim Al-Karim, Glenn Brown, Nae Bunthita Indhawong, Faye Claridge, Hew Locke, Eleanor Moreton, Boo Ritson, Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, Zhang Xiaogang.

Go.

19 August, Birmingham. I’ve come to do the rounds of some of the art exhibitions, in particular Steve McCurry’s photographs. These are stunning/amazing/worrying/frightening etc depending on the subject and your/my reading of them.

What interests me these days in exhibitions (in addition to the obvious) is framing and display. I walked through some of the modern galleries in BMAG, most of the 20th century work is unframed, hung on white walls. The next room has coloured walls, poor lighting, a heavy 19th cornice, huge marble door surrounds, and all the usual visual encumbrances of traditional galleries.

In one such room is a full size reconstruction of Jacob Epstein’s ‘Rock Driller’. Ignoring for the moment the fact that the figure is made of resin and has the wrong material look of the original, it is positioned so that it can only be seen against a series of doorways in perspective recession, and any amount of confusing background material.

In the same gallery is a Peter Lanyon framed in a heavy browny/grey moulding with a gilt line which ‘rings’ off the blues and greens in the painting (‘Offshore’, 1959).

The McCurry images are presented in two ways. The very large prints are panel mounted, unframed, and work well. The smaller (say A1 for reference) are glazed with a black frame. Why? The difference in presentation suggests that there might be another difference that we should be aware of. But there probably isn’t.

His print ‘Beggar Woman with Shadow’ (Kabul 2002) resonated with me because I have been working with shadow for the past couple of years, both photographically and in paint.

More on frames, later.

A quote from McCurry: “You can’t get hung up on what your ‘real’ destination is. The journey is just as important’.

Just So.

‘I like your work’. This is music to my ears, the unsolicited appreciation of effort.

A chance meeting with a near neighbour (how often do you see your neighbours? I lived in an apartment in London for 2 years and never saw 90% of the residents) who had seen my work in the Harrogate Mercer exhibition.

Should I feel so pleased that people a; see my work and recognise it, and b; comment on it? Yes, I think I should, any of us should. Otherwise the purpose of exhibiting is lost behind a curtain of self-effacement, which surely isn’t healthy.

We are faced with the economic certainty of fewer galleries willing to take work, fewer patrons, and less public money to fund opportunities and exhibitions. At the same time there will be more ’emerging’ artists as some of the newly redundant from both private and public sectors become self-employed painters and jewellry makers and ceramicists.

Its going to get more crowded out there, and our business credentials are going to be important. So the more people who say ‘I like your work’ the better it is.

Cornelia Parker Perpetual Canon

I went to Gateshead today, walked to the now-being-demolished World Famous Car Park in Gateshead, then across the Big Green Bridge into Newcastle, had a coffee and sandwich and made my way to the Baltic.

Top floor, Viewing Box, Cornelia Parker’s Perpetual Canon. The one with the squashed musical brass band instruments.

This work is quite different seen from the elevation of the Viewing Box, different that is from the normal ground view you get when walking into the main gallery.

When you look down from the mezzanine level you see the instruments (they are flattened, and hung from nylon wires in a circle, how wide, 10 metres perhaps? They are lit from the centre of the circle by a single lamp, which casts shadows of the suspended instruments onto the walls. It also casts shadows of the audience, as they walk in round and past the exhibit.

What you see extra from the high view point is a different effect of the light on the instruments – the far half are seen as lit, the near half are in silhouette, a different level of dramatic effect from that at ground level.

The other thing that you see is a ring of reflection/refraction of the light bulb off/from the nylon suspension cords, which give the effect of a halo hovering above the ring of brass. Did you intend that, Cornelia? Its very good. Serendipity perhaps, and serendipity is also very good. I allow it in to my work, a lot.

If you go, also be aware of the contribution the floor makes, and also the ‘cap’ of the top of the gallery that is in your eye-line. These peripherals are all part of the complexity of seeing Perpetual Canon in this location, and perhaps nowhere else.

Postscript

Last night, Beeb 4 documentary about the Freud museum in London. (Note to self: never work for a small museum).

Today, same exhibition as above, a photogram of a feather CP found in a cushion on the couch in Freud’s study.

I have many found feathers, but regrettably none have been near anyone famous.