Portfolio NW

For the second contribution to the Portfolio NW Artists talking blog, writer and artist Darren Murphy considers the attempt to create a critical framework around the exhibition:

“An interest in dialogue is the main drive behind my work … the conversation [in all its forms] is the integral part of my work.” Darren Murphy (2013)

“A theorist is one who has been undone by theory.” – Irit Rogoff, What is a theorist? (2006)

Through Portfolio NW, the Bluecoat is constructing the framework around the exhibition for critical discussion to take place: Jack Welsh’s text, this blog and a critical writing event to be held by The Double Negative. How, though, can an institution be involved in the development and presentation of work, then expect to have a say in how it is spoken about?

An artist’s statement, such as the extract of my own at the head of this article, is intended for an audience to help them engage with the artist’s work. The artist’s statement is commonly believed to follow this definition, but I see it serving a greater purpose. Statements help the artist understand their own practice; they help the artist place their work within the extended ecosystem of the art world, and help the artist understand why they are doing what they are doing.

My statement explains that my practice is the pursuit of both creating and understanding dialogue. I recently completed a programme of discussion as my contribution to the Manchester School of Art Degree Show 2013; I saw it as the first opportunity to expose the mechanisms of my practice as well as to explore its potential. A question (which remains largely unanswered) was lying below the surface of the discussions: ‘What is the potential of the discursive framework?’ When this question came towards the surface, people opposed it, but rather than answer the question we explored it. We needed to mutually understand what each word meant in order to move forward, yet the experiences of each interlocutor affected their own understanding of the words, and the conversation would often wander. It seemed the potential of the discursive framework was unfathomable, endless. Could it not be a means to an end?

In her essay What is a theorist?, Irit Rogoff questions the theorist and reaches the conclusion that they have become undone by their own research. In a pursuit of understanding the role of theory, the theorist has fulfilled that phrase attributed to Socrates by Plato, “The more you learn, the more you realise how little you know” and placed themselves in disarray. The theorist is one who has become undone by theory. Rogoff’s text dismantles the theorist, and then encourages each of us to do the same with our own practices. She advocates a present where we dismantle the platforms we stand on, a world where we consider the current and the future more than the past, a criticality. Portfolio NW is creating an opportunity to do what Rogoff asks of us.

Through Portfolio NW, the Bluecoat is becoming the framework for discussion; it is providing not only the content for a discussion but the people to have it with and also the venue for it to happen. It is encouraging an exploration of the present and encouraging a critical analysis of itself.

Darren Murphy, recent graduate of Manchester School of Art, has written for and exhibited at a number of the North West’s cultural institutions. His work, regardless of how it manifests, explores the interplay of art and how we regard it.

www.about.me/murphydarren

@bonesmurphy

As the first week of the exhibition draws to a close, here is the final extract from Jack Welsh’s text for Portfolio NW.

The full text is available to read in the Bluecoat and online shortly. Next week marks the start of guest contributions to the blog:

As an institutional platform, Portfolio NW has sought to transcend its own position and consider the wider implications of such an endeavour. By supporting the work of creatives in the region, including writers, it adopts the rightful stance that critical writing is a creative endeavour in itself. This admission recognises that criticism is analogous with the positions occupied by the artist, the institution or the audience within the cultural ecology. Interestingly the Bluecoat’s support of the relationship between art and writing has been explored through an official writer in residence.[i]

Art and criticism operate in a symbiotic relationship. To support a thriving cultural ecology, it is vital that criticism engages with the process of production and dissemination of artwork. The ease of disseminating or accessing content online has gradually led to a democratic shift in how critical writing is consumed. It is a feasible argument that blogging websites, comment boards and social media constitute critical platforms. When choosing the tools in which to conduct criticism, the critic, regardless of their level of experience and on which platform the text will be disseminated, needs to draw on make informed aesthetic judgements that elucidate, interpret, analyse and/or evaluate creative works.[ii]

Critic JJ Charlesworth considers the theoretical problem of undertaking criticism as ‘how to mediate between concrete and individual experience and the wider discursive and institutional cultures that produce the intersubjective constituencies of art.’ [iii] Critics are, usually, not trained as critics; yet this is not a caveat. The knowledge and skills these writers possess have been honed through their own education and creative endeavours. They are already engaged through curating, academia, managing organisations/artist led spaces, working within an institution or making art themselves.

Yet there is universal acknowledgment that critical writing in the region is not yet fully integrated into this process. Critical writing platforms striving to address this, such as The Double Negative and Corridor8 amongst others, are vital in the development of criticism in the region and beyond. In the same manner that institutions such as the Bluecoat support artists, these platforms can offer editorial support, improve writing standards and, crucially, help pollinate the critical conversation in the region.

To inform and expand on this text, a selection of writers, artists and curators practicing in the North West have been invited to contribute to the Bluecoat’s a-n Artists’ talking blog – a prominent online platform dedicated to supporting arts criticism. Each week throughout the exhibition, a new text will be uploaded to the blog. It is hoped that by inviting different contributors, a wider conversation about art criticism will develop, with the potential to cover themes and topics beyond the scope of this text.

Jack Welsh –

July 2013.

Jack Welsh is an arts administrator, researcher and writer based in Liverpool.

www.jackwelsh.co.uk

[i] Poet and performer Nathan Jones held the yearlong post in 2009-2010 producing new written work, instigating collaborations and curating an exhibition and event. It is interesting to note that the Bluecoat plan to engage with critical writing through a similar position in the near future.

[ii] Yet it should be noted that there is no definitive methodology for undertaking art criticism. Interpretations of criticism are plentiful. Theories posited include a return to evaluation based criticism (Elkins, 2003; Carroll, 2009).

[iii] JJ Charlesworth, Critique vs Criticism (2011), http://bit.ly/nh5jQw

Here is the second extract from Jack Welsh’s text:

Irish-born photographer Tadhg Devlin’s recent work is engaged with immigration in relation to the Liverpool-Irish diaspora. The title, 12 Miles Out, references the location of Devlin’s photographs: 12 nautical miles from the costal baseline of Ireland sailing to Liverpool and vice versa. 12 miles is also the internationally recognised distance of state jurisdiction at sea. Read within this context, each fleeting moment captured in Devlin’s photographs at sea embodies a personal limbo between two lands.

As John Belchem notes in his comprehensive study of the Liverpool-Irish, the vast numbers of Irish who arrived into Liverpool entered ”a diaspora space”, a contact zone between different ethnic groups with differing needs and intentions as transients, sojourners or settlers.’[i] Factors such as religious perspectives and economic cycles could enflame both hostility and immigration levels. Ireland’s current economic instability demonstrates this.

The influx bred incredibly harsh attitudes towards Irish immigrants in Liverpool. However when returning home to Ireland, the Liverpool Irish often found themselves marginalised for leaving. Informed by his own relationship with Ireland since leaving in 1993, those portrayed in Devlin’s images have the potential to trigger countless memories for a particular generation of Liverpool Irish. By using Portfolio NW as an opportunity to initiate an archive of those who emigrated to Liverpool in the 1950s, Devlin’s project can elucidate and possibly reveal untold stories of this time.

To those unwilling to look beyond the surface, Dave Evans’ sculptures may appear to be assembled hastily. Working with accessible materials such as wood, paper and thread, his work radiates a refreshing simplicity that might, at first, be misread. However it is the modularity of these elements that activates his work and encourages a deeper reading.

As a science-fiction aficionado, Evans delights in props produced for 1960s Star Trek TV series, B-movies and low budget films. These simplistic creations are gloriously optimistic. It is worth remembering that back in the 1960s, a desktop computer (even if clearly constructed out of moulded plastic and button lights) was a pretty advanced proposition. The history of sci-fi is full of brazen optimism and speculation surrounding the future; the hand controlled gestural interface computers – as featured in Spielberg’s film Minority Report (2002), based on Phillip K. Dick’s 1956 short story – are already tantalisingly close.

Inevitably, predicting the future is an impossible task. Cautious to avoid the obsessive sci-fi ‘fanboy’ paradigm, Evans distances himself, instead investigating how these objects accentuate perceptions of time through their sculptural language. The paper columns, twisting toward the ceiling, are carefully constructed, each crease a deliberate and crafted decision. Joined together, these forms are in a state of flux; one aptly summarised by the philosopher Husserl’s Bergsonian statement: ‘This continuity forms an inseparable unity, inseparable into extended sections that could exist by themselves, into points of the continuity.’[ii] If we look carefully again, are Evans’ sculptures greater than the sum of their parts?

The female figures depicted in Hannah Wooll’s drawings and paintings are, at first glance, familiar. On closer inspection their features are drawn out and often exaggerated or underdeveloped. Noses are jagged. Eyes mismatched in size. There is a naive and natural beauty inherent in these portraits. Often located in forests or imagined landscapes, and sometimes accompanied by tiny creatures, the figures appear vulnerable. There is a sense of contradiction as we meet their piercing gaze.

The manipulated iconography employed by Wooll defies our, perhaps unconscious, desire to witness unblemished flesh; a yearning forged out of overexposure to tabloid culture. Wooll’s works clearly, and playfully, interrogate the representation of the female form in historical painting. In the male dominated practice of painting starting with the Renaissance, women were often perceived as objects in high society portraiture or cast as Biblical figures – in stark opposition to their domesticated status. Wooll subverts traditional iconography, and injects a delicate measurement of kitsch to create mesmerising works that potentially summon a range of often contrasting emotions.

[i] John Belchem, Irish, Catholic and Scouse: The History of the Liverpool Irish, 1800-1939. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), p.2.

[ii] Edmund G. Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time 1893-1917 (London: Springer, 1991) p.29.