Rubbish

Noble & Webster – Nihilistic Optimistic at Blain|Southern, London

10 October 2012 – 24 November 2012

Nihilistic Optimistic is Tim Noble & Sue Webster’s first major solo exhibition in London since 2006. Featuring six large-scale works, the show builds upon the artists’ sustained investigation into self-portraiture, further deconstructing the relationship between materiality and form which has been so intrinsic to their practice.

http://www.blainsouthern.com/exhibitions/2012/tim-noble-and-sue-webster-nihilistic-optimistic

Video on the Guardian website featuring the artists discussing the show: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2012/oct/06/nihilistic-optimistic-noble-webster

Two key British artists working (together) with trash showing in London whilst I was visiting for the V&A conference was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. After trekking across London from South Kensington to Bethnal Green to see the Susan Collis show at Seventeen and then round to Oxford Circus to fight through the tourists all on lunchbreak, I arrived at Blain|Southern to be confronted by My Beautiful Mistake (2012) in the gallery entrance. In the main gallery are five works typically constructed and lit, dating from 2008-2009 (Nasty Pieces of Work) through to 2012 works. As mentioned in their video (link above) about the work, these pieces featuring the artists together and separately are autobiographical in nature, subconsciously referencing their personal relationship degradation through their work.

My Beautiful Mistake is the only work not projection lit (in classic Noble & Webster style to form portraiture shadows from the assemblages) and is lit from outside natural light through the windows and ambient gallery lighting.

The materials the artists employ are discarded objects – mainly wood offcuts, piece of furniture and tools, although interestingly the tools aren’t identified as such in the material list in the gallery handout. Stepladders form the base structures of the sculptures and dismantled, cut up wooden materials are carefully assembled although in quite a rough, haphazard aesthetic. Saw dust is scattered on the ground to give the impression of the work made in situ.

These works are the ones Noble & Webster are famous for, and I’m not too sure about other works they might have in their back catalogue, but do wonder what they might be making to create these offcuts and discards if it’s not these works themselves, how they gather the materials and how they select the items for use in each sculpture. There must be a formal criteria for selecting particular pieces to create particular shadows in profile, but in sourcing these materials do they keep everything they would normally discard in everyday life; the tools and furniture that become obsolete in their day-to-day activities, or do they find abandoned items in and around where they live or pick them up cheap from flea markets? I will have to found out more.

Artists Working in Museums at the V&A, 12/10/12 (Part 2)

The Museum Environment as the Content of Artistic Production

Calum Storrie (Exhibition Designer)’s paper After the Delirious Museum covered his approaches and style to exhibition design with case studies.

James Putnam (Independent Curator)’s paper The Museum as Medium paraphrased Marcel Duchamp’s “The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act,” and suggested that not only does the spectator add to the work but also deforms it. {utnam cited:

Duchamp’s portable museum Boîte-en-valise http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1999/muse/artist_pages/duchamp_boite.html

Joseph Cornell’s Romantic Museum http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1999/muse/artist_pages/cornell_romantic.html

Andy Warhol’s Raid the Icebox where he took on the role of the curator and reorganised the collections, bringing out everyday itesm from storage and discarding the more “precious” items http://edu.warhol.org/app_aw_raid.html

Jospeh Beuys’ vitrines containing artefacts from performances http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-untitled-vitrine-t03825

Michael Asher naming the lobby of MOCA in LA Museum of Art after himself

Filmmaker Peter Greenaway’s exhibition on the human body which featured nudes in vitrines

Fred Wilson’s juxtaposition of objects in museum collections in Mining The Museum such as slave manicles next to colonial silverware http://www.artsjournal.com/flyover/2009/10/fred_wilson.html

John Cage’s Rolywholyover A Circus exhibition at MOCA, LA in 1993 with displays on wheels that were moved everyday for a new daily perspective.

Richard Wentworth’s Questions of Taste at the British Museum in 1997 which positioned collected rubbish from the street alongside items in the museum’s collection in vitrines, labelled and museumised with the precious artefacts and comparing function such as a coke bottle next to a terracotta vessel. http://www.jamesputnam.org.uk/inv_exhibition_04.html Putnam noted that the British Museum threw the collected rubbish away shortly after the exhibition and only found this out when Wentworth contacted them to exhibit them in his solo show at Tate Liverpool.

Mark Dion’s Thames Dig http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dion-tate-thames-dig-t07669

Plus various projects Putnam has curated at Freud’s house including:

Sophie Calle http://www.jamesputnam.org.uk/inv_exhibition_07.html

Sarah Lucas http://www.jamesputnam.org.uk/inv_exhibition_09.html

Tim Noble & Sue Webster http://www.jamesputnam.org.uk/inv_exhibition_21.html

Martha Fleming (Artist, Curator, Researcher)’s The Science Lesson mentioned the following in her paper:

Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, Section Publicité (1968-72) http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag97/belgium/sm-belgm.shtml

Artist Placement Groups’ current show at raven Row: The Individual and the Organisation http://www.ravenrow.org/current/artist_placement_group/

Nina Simon’s The Participatory Museum http://www.participatorymuseum.org/

She also discussed the the artists’ role in museums; the typology based on the museum hierarchical infrastructure and relational epistemology. She also asked; when does the artist working in the museum (as an outsider) become just working in museums (as an insider)?

Museum Employees as the Content of Artistic Production

Bettina Von Zwehl talked about her residency project Made Up Love Song working with a visitor assistant at the V&A http://www.purdyhicks.com/exhibitions.php?opt=p&aid=17

Zandra Ahl presented The National Museum Stockholm and I – a critical examination into her censored project at The National Museum Stockholm where she was invited to make a response to the institution. Her video work Nationalmuseum och jag was shut down after the opening night http://www.futuredesigndays.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=572%3Azandra-ahls-movie-qnationalmuseum-och-jagq-no-longer-part-of-exhibition-at-nationalmuseum&catid=1%3Aweekly&Itemid=85

Neil Cummings presented Victoria and Albert Bicentenary which was a recap from the future on the V&A’s role in a world of iCommons, disbanded Arts Council England, radical transparency, transactional aesthetics, spectatorship overwritten by agency and engagement, economies of attention and the Ware of Attention. http://www.neilcummings.com/

Artists Working in Museums at the V&A, 12/10/12 (Part 1)

I attended the first day of a 2-day conference at the V&A entitled Artists Working in Museums

http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/1966/artists-work-in-the-museum-histories-interventions-and-subject-3204/

This conference will bring together artists, curators, historians and museum professionals to explore the history of the artist as museum professionals, the museum environment and archive as the content of artistic production, the hidden subjectivity of the many artists working in museums and galleries alongside their practice and dynamic roles they play in 21st century museums and galleries.

Speakers include: Charles Saumarez Smith, Susanna Avery- Quash, Calum Storrie, James Putnam, Martha Flemming, Zandra Ahl, Beatrice Von Bismarck, Teresa Gleadowe, Sally Tallant and Neil Cummings.

In collaboration with the Museums and Galleries History Group.

Histories of the Artist as Museum Professional

The keynote paper was from Charles Saumarez Smith (Chief Executive, Royal Academy of Arts) on The Artist as Curator: General Thoughts. He raised some historical but also very current problems within higher education as to whether art students should be taught art history alongside practice or purely taught how to make art. He outlined a 19th century shift to combining the practice and study of art and also a late 19th century shift in the role of the curator which called for more professional qualifications for curating over ability to paint. Cantering through a more recent history, Smith also mentioned the artist as their own curator and that the role of a curator relationship in these instances is more akin to a sounding board for the curatorial decision making of the artist.

Christopher Marsden (Senior Archivist, V&A) presented a paper on Godfrey Sykes and his studio at the South Kensington Museum

Marsden’s interests appear to lie within the realm of architecture and he talked about museums as socialist buildings, Oscar Wilde’s testimony that museums should be accessible to the working class, truth to materials and two architectural approaches of building the shell first then fitting the contents in and building the interior fit for purpose and then decorating.

Susanna Avery- Quash (Research Curator – History of Collecting, National Gallery) spoke on The significance of the Artist as Director: the case of the National Gallery

This paper covered some similar ground to Smith’s keynote on artist as curator but focussing on artist as museum director. She examined the practice vs theory argument histrionically in recruiting a director. Artistic ability vs scholarly/critical expertise and artists vs experts (professors or dealers) has been a long standing debate of this key appointment, and noted as a contradistinction to continental practice at the time.

Art is Rubbish: Recycling materials and ideas

Last week there was an exhibition in Leeds entitled Art is Rubbish http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk at Flannels which is a department store and cafe-restaurant. On the top floor is an odd little exhibition space run by Leeds City College. Art is Rubbish was organised by design consultancy WPA Pinfold as a “chARiTy” event to raise money for Aid to Hospitals Worldwide.

The exhibition title blatantly playing to a 20th century tabloid view of “modern art is rubbish,” made me suspicious. Then I checked out the website.

I didn’t recognise any of the artists on the bill, which in itself isn’t anything unusual, especially presuming it was a student show and these artists might not have shown ever before.

But the work was strangely familiar. http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/#art Here are a few of the instantly recognisable ones:

John Atkin – Union Jack http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/assets/img/gallery/a… (Tony Cragg http://www.henry-moore.org/images/o_postcard_flag_union_jack_0_0.jpg )

John Atkin – To a ‘T’ http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/assets/img/self-port… (Andy Warhol)

Stuart Morey – No Oil Painting http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/assets/img/self-port… (Julian Opie)

Richard Hurst – Work in Progress http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/assets/img/self-port… (Banksy – Cardinal Sin http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16197214 )

Kerry Kane – QR Codes http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/assets/img/self-port… (Scott Blake – Barcode Portraits http://www.barcodeart.com/artwork/portraits/index.html )

Myles Pinfold – 24 Carat Gold Dustbin http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/assets/img/gallery/a… (Sylvie Fleury http://earthandi.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/goldenbin.jpg )

Emma Rutherford – A Bright Idea http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/assets/img/gallery/a… (Allison Patrick http://the3rsblog.wordpress.com/ )

Hayley Wall – One I Made Earlier http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/assets/img/gallery/a… (Yuken Teruya http://www.yukenteruyastudio.com/ )

Simon Henshaw – Ubiquitous http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/assets/img/gallery/a… (Joseph Cornell / Jasper Johns)

A Brooke Pinfold & Sue Kirsch – Chair of Nails http://www.artisrubbish.co.uk/assets/img/gallery/a… (Man Ray http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/%27Cadeau%27_by_Man_Ray%2C_iron_and_nails%2C_Tate_Modern.JPG ) – Ironically these artists claim to have been inspired by Duchamp’s Fountain as opposed to more obvious works.

I wonder how and why these artists/students have been encouraged to make and sell works that are so heavily “inspired” by other well-known artists? The old idiom that nothing is new and all ideas are eventually recycled, reappropriated and reproduced is true to a certain extent, but these are examples in the extreme. Have their tutors encouraged a copyist approach or simply not pointed out the striking resemblances and “accidental plagiarism” of what their students are making? I’m not sure which is worse.

Currently reading: Susan Strasser – Waste and Want: The Other Side of Consumption (Berg Publishers 1992) with comments by Gunther Barth and Wolfgang Erz

http://www.ghi-dc.org/publications/ghipubs/annual/al05.pdf

(This paper preceded Susan Strasser’s book Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, Owl Books, NY, 2000.)

Hartmut Lehmann introduces Strasser as “engaged in research on the history of what modern society discards as useless: Müll, garbage, trash, debris; those ever-growing piles of waste that modern society produces; piles of waste that have become a serious environmental problem, but that distinguish our age most clearly from previous ones.” (p.3)

As a historian, Strasser’s paper is described by Barth as an “historical enquiry into waste and want” and by Erz as a methodological approach.

In defining waste in her opening gambit, Strasser outlines the following definition: “Waste” suggests not only useless consumption—squandering, extravagance, and indulgence—but dissipation, destruction, and death; the last a verb form often associated with the American war in Vietnam, where “to waste” meant “to kill.” Waste means decline, as in “wasting away.”

Waste and want is garbage meets consumer culture. (p.5)

Strasser cites Mary Douglas, in Purity and Danger (London, 1966), describing dirt as a cultural construct and as matter out of place. (p.7)

Strasser asks: In addition to the essentially archaeological questions What is in the trash? and How has that changed over time?, we must ask what has stayed out of the trash. (p.8)

In terms of the process of discarding, Strasser proposes: “As a normal household process, disposal may be understood to involve the literal, spacial interface between the private and the public.” (p.8)

In economic terms: “Described as a problem of poverty at the beginning of the century, garbage is now understood as a problem of affluence. .. Poor people waste less than the rich.” (p.9)

On product disposability: “Disposable products, designed to be thrown away after brief use, constituted another new kind of trash. The concept was inaugurated with paper shirt cuffs and paper collars, which first appeared during the cotton shortage of the Civil War; the collars were almost universal by the 1870s. [..] A new concept of disposability extended far beyond paper products. Chewing gum was disposable food; cigarettes were disposable smoking devices.” (p.18)

“Economic growth is fueled by waste—the garbage created by extravagant packaging and disposables—and by the constant change that makes usable objects obsolete and creates markets for replacements.” (p.21)

In his response to Strassers’ paper; Probing Urban Waste: Comments on Susan Strasser’s “Waste and Want,” Gunther Barth considers the roles of concept, urgency, attitudes and artefacts. He also discusses the etymology and definition of junk: “Mathews’ Dictionary of Americanisms, which traced the noun to the Congressional Globe, February 23, 1841, defined junk as “miscellaneous secondhand or discarded articles of little or no value.” (p.23) And also the origin of the French poubelle: Eugene-Rene Poubelle and his 1883 decree. “It required that garbage be put out for collection in galvanized metal containers in the French capital. [..] The new garbage can, derisively called poubelle, has of course immortalized the prefect’s name.” (p.26-27)

Ecologist Wolfgang Erz draws upon Strasser’s paper to discuss wasteland which he defines as, “Land that is not in use for production (even though it may be productive), also called idle land or fallow land—Ödland, or sometimes Unland in German.” (p.29)

His assertion “Wasteland is always a highly valued ecological asset for nature conservation” is that “Wasteland has an ecological and recreational value as open space in urban areas, in addition to its critical value as habitats for a diversity of otherwise disappearing species of animals and plants.” (p.30)

Erz makes four observations of a development of wasteland analogous to waste caused by production and consumption:

(1) Wasteland increases in periods of wealth and affluence and through actions (or non-actions) of prosperous groups in society.

(2) Wasteland is reduced during periods of economic depression.

(3) Attitudes about the meaning of wasteland to society are based “on a distinction between things belonging to no one and things belonging to someone.”

(4) The opinion of wasteland is changing due to different land-use cultures–producer and consumer cultures in a broad sense–in the context of changing social ideas, revealing the conflict of economy versus ecology observed today (in the particular case of wasteland showing a slight trend toward ecology). (p30-31)