Staffordshire University Fine Art – Ali Gibson

Berlin 23rd to 26th February 2015

I am just back from my first visit to the city of Berlin to take in the sights and soak up the art scene.  It did not disappoint. We walked for miles and hours, enjoyed the underground which was easy to navigate and maximised every moment possible during the day to see as much as we could. The highlights are detailed below and some great thoughtful links to my current line of inquiry.

ME – Female Artists from the Olbricht Collection. – QUEENSIZE

Now this was quite possibly the best overall round show that I have ever seen from a selected group of artists.   There were so many of the artists were relevant to my work, so to see real examples of their work was superb. The advertising shows a painting by Elizabeth Peyton on which I did an earlier essay comparing her to Marlene Dumas.  I was aware her paintings here small but to see one in the flesh is always quite a different experience.  It was a veritable who’s who of women in the art world.

The title of the show, taken as a bed reference to encompass life, death, dreams and nightmares, birth and decay, in short identity…. Our innermost being and innermost needs, our desires and passions.  To quote, it’s about how we see ourselves and how others see us, and asks whether there really is such a thing as the specifically female view.

I was delighted to see a Dawn Mellor example (well 2) and I realised where I was going wrong last year. The painting is executed brilliantly in terms of its painterly technique but then it gets disturbing as the eyes scale is exaggerated and the skin has her scrawled handwriting upon it, sending a powerful political message of ideas of beauty and glamour, complete with the fag hanging out her mouth and blood soaked skin.  I could do better with last year’s work by sabotaging and improving it by doing something similar to it at some point.  Highlighting the glamorised idea we are told to consume and the harsh reality of failure.

Most harrowing and equally most compelling was the video work by Nathalie Djurberg portraying religious male figures and the naked women made of armature and clay being devoured by them. Haunting and playing on dark folk takes it judders through one disturbing scene after another before it begins all over again.  Bravo.

Kathe-Kollwitz

When I saw the work by Kathe Kollwitz, especially her drawings of mothers and children in the Berlin slums moved me to tears. It is not often you get such a physical emotional response to work so I came away after the experience with mixed emotions.  She was the wife of a doctor in a deprived area and she depicted the world she saw around her.  I can draw a personal connection here with her.  Her warmth and humour also comes across and so it is with total honesty that the work screams at you, this is real life, this is normal and yet it should not be, we are intruding, it is a personal story and yet it is universal.  The major decisions and the propaganda are made far from here but they are left to make do any way they can to survive and look after their own.  The profound extremes of the reality of life for the families of working class people who in turn became the family of soldiers and the fall out of dealing with losing husbands and sons in the war and the grieving process, the lessons to the next generation unheeded and the need to carry on.  They are deeply sensitive and emotional, and bring home the personal truths to history books that are written in a general way that cannot possibly begin to deal with the individual.

She was political and brave and a woman before her time, and of her time.  The visit will remain with me for a very long time.  Some things touch you forever.

Hamburger

Not a title you can forget easily.  I was disappointed with the work on display as part of the exhibition area was between shows.  There was a lot of Joseph Bueys and conceptual art on one side and on the other there was Warhol and very similar to Liverpool Tate which I saw recently, Cy Twombly had a three large paintings and I spent some time on them, having investigated where I am at present in my practice, it is far too inverted and erratic but great to see in the flesh.  Also, I don’t think I had seen a Rauschenberg in the flesh before either.

The star of the show was undoubtedly Ansel Keifer.  There were 3 works and each, very different were top quality.  I had looked at him in the first year so it was a delight to see them here.

Schwules Museum

The Schwules museum is a LGBT venue and its show was about Porn and also included work by the photographer Leonard Fink.  We went to assist Laura with her work as there were parallels for her to explore within the exhibition but what interested me in terms of my practice was in the advertising and branding of the show they used the bright neon pink as a backdrop. It confirms to me when dealing with feminist issues as in the case of the ‘feminist porn book’ the background was bright pink and the text in yellow and smaller font in white. So we have a formula and an agenda here. There was a lot of work by Annie Sprinkle in the show and I especially enjoyed the pack of cards featuring various women.  I had been on her website before so it was great to see she is still flying high long since having been famous for allowing spectators to see inside her vagina back in the day. The show overall, was humbling, sensitive and joyous, to see a subculture reflect upon itself, to explore its own identity and how it has changed and become more mainstream since the start of home video back in the 80s.

There were just my own personal highlights. There was so much to see and such a limited time. Berlin as a city felt comfortable to wander through and great value of money with an excellent café culture.  I hope to be back.

I feel for the first time this year that I have taken a big leap forward.  I have been working hard on the neon pink paintings until I have built up a small collection. I was taken very much by what one of the lecturers said about the a4 paintings appearing to look like penguin books, because of their 2 inch mount on the MDF, as such adding to their presence as objects of value and intellectual discussion.  Also, by having a number of works they appear to talk to each other.

So I have a number of A4 paintings using text, Feminism GSOH, Feminism LOL, Discourse is Ours, The F work (which I like because it has value as feminism but also a swear word, highlighting our embarrassment at ownership of it, and its issues.

The whole presentation of the works centres around the semiotic square, deeply philosophical and dealing with polar opposites, I have used it to address the issue of identity in its most simple of ways of presentation.  4 simple squares spray painted on with a quality masking tape have produced such a crisp clear line that I am really pleased with the process results, something I had not achieved in terms of finished with a low cost tape, but also, in terms of their intellectual, conceptual level, hot pink against blue, i.e. female/male and white against black to address race issues. So overall, its about indentity and I thought I great starting point to address issues of feminism now.  I feel these paintings as a collection work for the various reasons:

Hot pink is so symbolically loaded with the issues of what is it to be a woman, historically and in the present day, but also, it is used with fully loaded irony with regard to our embarrassment with feminist issues which are relevant to everyone in society so hot pink is a metaphor for our rejection as a society of uncomfortable truths and our embarrassing of the sexual liberation in which we see ourselves as in control and embrace all that is pink and fluffy.  A strange irony.   So with all that deep symbolism, thankfully it is also striking in terms of presentation of the paintings.  It grabs your attention.

The text paintings work as they are not totally obvious, you have to work to understand their messages.

The best combination, is the discussion between the paintings of the blue semiotic square and the Post Feminism work, which of course, is a loaded phrase because we call it post feminism but the uncomfortable truth is that the issues are still there, they have just moved on with modern day society issues.

So I have for the first time a body of work that has wit, makes the viewer work, a theme, my own voice and are visually attractive.

To move them forward I now want to do more pieces in a larger scale to push the same issues that work but to add in a figurative element beyond simple text paintings but I can see the most successful part of this has been the testing in the exhibition space as an assemblage and the conversation between the works that leaves the viewer searching and enjoying the twists and turns of the narration at whatever level of knowledge, critical or otherwise, they will get something from it that will leave them thinking.

So finally, I have a detailed direction, I now just need to refine it, push it more but I know I am onto something. A good day indeed. It has been painful to get to this point.

I have been busy in the studio today working on 4 new 60x60cm square boards and 4 rectangular boards 60x70cm.  I want to continue to develop my smaller test pieces so felt it was time to move up another scale. It is time to start taking some braver steps.  I have been thinking a lot about the HOLLYWOOD style signage and building text into a painting landscape in that manner.

I have also been working on the neon pink text paintings.  They need white text and not black as this fits better with the pink colour, mimics advertising to women in soft tones.  It is also quite a playful way of moving on the traditional text painting that is dealing with feminist issues.

I feel I am beginning to get somewhere now. By jettisoning the subject matter of magazines quotes I am refining my word content and beginning to really take ownership of the paintings, with my own voice.  I am aware it is high risk but I have to try.

I think this is a pivitol point.

The Whitworth reopened this weekend following the extension being added to the rear.  It was great to go and see what it is like now and it was not disappointing.  The work on display by Cornelia Parker I especially enjoyed, I was disappointed not to see Shattered Matter which I was hoping for, but the other works on display did not disappoint at all.  They are so conceptually strong and were a demonstration of how to do it.  Fantastic stuff.

Also of interest were the curatorial decisions now that they can show more of their collection in a larger space.  The portraiture area was disappointing, not in content but in terms of the display and the need to pick up leaflets detailing who had done each particular piece of work.  As it was the opening weekend, people were lifting the cards for each wall and not putting them back in the same location, causing confusion to all.  And yet, there was some good conversations going on there, especially between the Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud work.

I was much taken with the work of Mary Kelly which was a text piece on feminism that is a greenhouse. A great artist to look at further.

Manchester should be proud of having such a museum on the map. Bravo.