tryharderfailbetter

A wee bit of news.

2011-06-12T16:38:00.000+01:00

Hey, all. i'm involved with a small project called "Catch." at the moment. Would you like like to be involved with a small project called "Catch.", too? If so, please click this link.

http://thisiscatch.co.uk/

If not, don't. It's not like I'm your mum, you can do what you like with your free time. I'm not saying you have to click the link to see what this new independent publishing co-operative is all about, and maybe get involved, I'm just saying you should.

There'll be some new content on here soon, too, I promise.

Dead Eyes

2011-01-25T21:13:00.000Z

This Game Cheats!

2011-01-18T21:43:00.000Z

Skull glasses.

2011-01-18T21:24:00.000Z

Accidental bottles.

2011-01-15T23:29:00.001Z

Heavy Night

2011-01-15T23:27:00.001Z

New beginnings.

2011-01-13T22:03:00.001Z

Two Months Later

2010-09-30T22:29:00.001+01:00

I can't believe it's been two months since the last time I spouted my art nonsense all over the internet. There's been loads to write about! New exhibtions are popping up everywhere, and the Liverpool Biennial is on! Which is only the UK's best biennial!

It's also the Manchester Weekender, this weekend. I'm afraid I'll have to link you to a much better Arts blog than mine for news of that, as I can't be bothered paraphrasing a load of dates and times for no one's benefit.

Because you're worth it

A shock from the mains.

2010-07-27T13:08:00.001+01:00

I'm sorry but I have no excuse for an absence of this length. It's not that there hasn't been any art to review, as there has. I went to see it, made copious notes, and never turned it into an article. I'm sorry, I hope you can forgive me, maybe we can give things another chance between us?

I hope so.

Groveling aside, there are a couple of good exhibitions on at the Whitworth at the moment. Intuition, is a fascinating, if slightly troubling exhibition of outsider art from the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection. I went to see it a few weeks ago and, well, had some personal issues with the work, and the exhibition. After this I spoke with my friends, who were very excited by the work on show. This made go back and, reappraise is the wrong word, but I went back and looked harder. I know I still have some strong opinions on outsider art, that run contrary to my peers, but I'm not sure what it is I'm basing them on. I made some notes and trying to decipher my scrawl isn't far from how I felt in the actual exhibition. Maybe I was looking "wrong", by attempting to "read" this work.

One of my thoughts on leaving the exhibition is how Outsider Art seems to be a truly modern phenomenon, in the art historical sense of that term. The work here is selected by an institution, the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, and is placed in an art gallery, where it becomes part of the art institution of galleries, dealers and collectors. Something unintelligible to the "man in the street" becomes a feted object and symbol of intense creativity, in much the same way that abstract expressionism, and other radical art movements were. Outsider art couldn't exist without the myth of the creative genius, working alone and unanswerable to the world. The work of Henry Darger or Madge Gill exactly fits this bill.

Outsider art is presented in a similar way to the artifacts produced by foreign cultures. But instead of returning from uncharted geographic territory with trinkets and evidence of different ways of life, totems of different religions, primitive tools, etc., this work is the product of delving into unknown psychological landscapes and bringing back proof of their existence.

The work is presented without the back story of it’s creator, which has the effect of leveling the work, and allowing one to approach it without prejudice. For example, knowing that the artist had a religious intention when making something can colour ones own interpretation of it. With our own cultural markers stripped away we are forced into reacting to it. The information was provided to us in the form a little booklet, which meant you could pick and choose which artists you read about, or ignore it completely. It did have the effect of making the spectator an active participant in the exhibition, as along with the subdued lighting, having to refer to a little missal-like text to make sense of what was in front of you made the experience akin to that of a tourist in a foreign religious site. Very apt considering the work on display.

The very existence of Outsider Art and the unbridled creativity it represents and my inability to understand it, is probably reflected in my turgid and jejune writing when faced with the subject. I suppose my difficulty lies with the labeling this as Outsider Art, not with the artists or the artwork itself, though I’m not sure why. This is a fascinating glimpse into another world, which has stuck with me and made me rethink many of my preconceptions, surely the mark of an excellent and relevant exhibition.

Intuition, is at the Whitworth gallery until January 2011.

Art School Redux

2010-04-13T22:06:00.000+01:00

Hey There! I know this blog is supposed to feature my musings on art and such, but I’m going to interrupt this with a little except from my personal life. I’ve recenty begun a life drawing class at my local college, which incidentally is where I happen to work. It’s also happens to be the most artistic thing I’ve done in months, ever since the TAA debacle, in which I thoroughly embarrassed myself by making shite art. Anywho, it was immensely enjoyable, despite my limited scrawling ability and my (admittedly meagre) skills blunted by my own indifference. But yeah I enjoyed it, and reflected back on how few opportunities to do life drawing at Universtiy. The class was 2 hours and it really flew by. Our model (Devina) also suggested we partake in Tunick’s project in Salford, which I mentioned last month. Ha.

So it felt like I was back at art school for the evening which brought back memories, and when I got home I tuned into Goldsmiths: But Is It Art? On BBC4 which brought back even more memories, as we watched a likeable group of M.A. students prepare for their degree show. I actually applied to study Fine Art at Goldsmiths, back in the day, and sadly didn’t get in, so the corridors and rooms were ever so slightly familiar. Even more familiar was the general goldsmiths experience that pretty much mirrored my own. I watched in fond remembrance as the students rollered the walls white, suffered the indignity of an uninterested crit-group, translated what their tutors said into advice and generally panicked about life after art school. The show wasn’t nearly as confrontational as it’s title suggested, offering very little in the way of opinions on the artists or their artwork, allowing them to explain themselves, for better or for worse. Some of the work was good, and some was confused, and some of it was just rubbish. Which is pretty much any degree show experience. The program was backed with a nice relaxing soundtrack, consisting of soft piano and post rock melodies. It doesn’t appear to be available on the iplayer, so you’ll have to actually tune in next week for the next part.

Speaking of Art school again, one of my tutors from Manchester Met, David Osbaldeston, has an opening on Thursday night at Castlefield gallery, Out of Time (The Light of Day / The Action of the Play). I’ve not seen his work in ages, but the billboard he had in Matt’s gallery a few years back (Your answer is mine, 2006) was really quite superb, and played with the representation of information and opinion, and the way it is presented. He was also an excellent tutor so you should go and check it out!

Oh wait hang on, that Goldsmith’s thing should be repeated on Sunday at 10PM on BBC4.

Links;

http://www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/Default.asp?eKey=333&eP=1

Hot Naked Lowry Action

2010-03-13T18:33:00.002Z

The American artist Spencer Tunick is coming to town to help the Lowry celebrate it’s 10th birthday. I’m actually surprised the Lowry is this old to be honest; to me it feels paradoxically younger and older than this, having very quickly gained a foothold in the cultural make-up of the city. It has already outlived the Urbis, which is strange considering The Lowry’s remote (compared to Urbis’s central) location. This is down to the Lowry having a much more defined and clearer purpose than Urbis, showcasing theatre, comedy, live music, as well as modern and contemporary art and photography.

The Base, Sydney, 2010

The Lowry has done an excellent job of being an excellent platform for the arts, but has never truley stood out. I don’t know if this is because of its “out of town” location means it appeals to suburbanites with estate cars out for the day, or whether it’s focussing it’s attention elsewhere. This is to change though, as Salford joins a list of (only slightly) more glamourous locations such as Sydney, New York, Buenos Aires and, erm, Gateshead, to be made the backdrop of one of American artist Spencer Tunick’s stunning nude installations.
Tunick is renowned, literally world over, for these incredible pieces, in which large groups of naked volunteers pose in eerily still landscapes, usually in high profile, densely populated locations. The effect is to create a river of flesh, and to use the naked human body, for millennia a subject of art, as a material, with which to ‘paint’ on the landscape. The resulting photographs are calming, yet strangely troubling, and serenely raising questions about humans in relation to the landscape, as well as our individuality as human beings.

It is obvious that Spencer Tunick has been strongly influenced by film, as many of his pieces feel almost sci-fi in nature, and suggest our intrusion, interrupting some unknown narrative.
But for this latest project, he claims his inspiration is Salford’s most famous son, L.S Lowry. It will be interesting how this manifests itself in Tunick’s work. Lowry’s work is sometimes seen as a simple celebration of the disappeared industrial north. Lowry’s masses of humanity are shown as part of the landscape, participating in it and changed by it. As opposed to Tunick’s who stand arranged on it, jarring with our expectations for those surroundings. Although both artists examine the human relationship to the environment, they do so in almost diametrically opposite ways. Tunick dehumanises the volunteers in his photographs, presenting them as an anonymous smear of humanity spread across a landscape, while Lowry’s subjects retain it through engaging with their surroundings.

Daisy Nook (1946)

The landscape Lowry painted has almost disappeared, so where is Tunick planning to arrange his nudes? The landscape around The Lowry itself is distinctly post-industrial; all mirrored buildings and improbable architecture, and not hugely different from many other urban locations he has used in the past. Tunicks work is at it it’s strongest when the fleshy human tones contrast strongly with their surroundings, so hopefully he’s got somewhere good in mind, and not just in front of The Lowry.

If I was being really cynical, and I am, I could say that Tunick’s work here is being co-opted as an advert for Salford and the quays regeneration (Mediacity is soon to be opening it’s doors), in the same way Vaseline used it to advertise their skincare products. Hopefully, this isn’t the case, The Lowry will be spurred on to doing more exciting and challenging exhibitions.

Links for you...

http://thespencertunickexperience.org/oldindex.htm

http://www.thelowry.com/ The Lowry

Ron Mueck in the Artist's Room

2010-02-18T20:56:00.005Z

Ron Mueck (b 1958) is a hyperrealist sculptor, who your mum has probably heard of. The painstakingly exquisite sculptures of naked humans in awkward poses are some of the most striking and symbolic pieces of contemporary art to emerge from Saatchi’s influential Sensation show. His piece Dead Dad (1996) made him a household name, and he went on to have his monumental piece Boy featured as part of the Millennium Dome.

Mueck’s work is striking partly due to the scale, and his work is ostentatiously all about size. You find yourself using fractions and scale to describe things in ways you never would normally. And this is exacerbated to great effect by the other striking feature of his work, the realism. The fleshy hues and individual hairs on his ½, 2x and even 10x human bodies are honest and masterly representations of physical and social forms.

Wild Man (2005), is easily the most impressive of the three pieces on display. A bearded and scraggly haired man is blown up to 3x times normal size and is perched, uneasily on a stool, his body tensed and a worried expression on his face. His eyes fixed on something, if you stand in the right place, just behind you. The tension in his body, his nakedness and the title of the piece creates an air of apprehension. His oversized and ungainly body makes the embarrassment and sense of being scrutinized he must be feeling evident in quite a comic way. The comparisons to Gulliver’s Travels are easy and lazy, so I’m going to make them. It also makes our role in assigning judgement to his situation transparent. By diminishing us physically this serves to diminish us morally too.

As Mueck’s work is about the body, about our unconscious movements and intimate moments, it is very easy for almost anyone to relate to. This a strength of the work, and allows for the scale to instantly transport the viewer to exactly where he wants them to be. There is no confusion, when you stand in front of Mask III (2005), you’re instantly thrown back into childhood, to looking up at the warm and kindly face of this black matriarch. Even if, like me, you never knew a kindly black woman as a child and never had this happen to you “for real”, Mueck can still put you back into that moment, whether it’s one from his past of one from your own. Except this moment is frozen, and you’ve got forever to ponder the enigmatic quirks of the soft expression on her giant face. The title suggests that this is one of many personas the artist as a person must take on, so while this may or may not relate to an actual event, Mueck acknowledges that at times he must be the embodiment of motherly warmth. Either way, we experience what he wants us to.

The smallest, and my favourite, is Spooning Couple (2005). In this piece, a miniature couple lie together, but apart. Their bodies “spooning” as if in bed together. You approach them in the same way you marvel at the detail in a newborn baby; their tiny toes and fingers, their hair, their eyebrows, all perfect. Yet their pose suggests something not quite right. They are comfortable enough to lie together semi-naked, but they do not face each other, their tired expressions show them lost in their own thoughts, and makes it clear that we a looking at a delicate and intimate moment. We become unwilling voyeurs, forced to evaluate our own relationships in light of this new perspective on the couple. We have to look down on them, making our emotions and feelings for one another feel childish and inconsequential. In the same way we know a baby will grow up to learn to control it’s impulses and relate to those around it, we feel that of our foetal couple. I felt a pang of guilt about the relationships in my own life, yet was hopeful for them and myself afterward.

These tiny, yet intimate moments which are easily forgotten, puts me in mind of the hit American sitcom Seinfeld. Ostentatiously a show about nothing, it drew attention to the small, everyday moments that made up our lives. This made it, conversely, a show about everything. In the very same way Mueck’s work does this, changing our relationship to a particular moment through his use of scale.

The three pieces in this show are all excellent examples of his work, and the video on show in the room next door gives an insight into the work that makes one of these sculptures (and shows you how each hair is individually sewn into the latex). Mueck is obviously a master of his craft, and a brilliant and exciting one at that.
This is an excellent, though small, exhibition, which I’d recommend going to see at least twice. Go on your own and with your friends (if you have any).

At Manchester Art gallery until Sunday 11th April 2010

Xmas break

2009-12-26T17:36:00.005Z

I'm currently gorging on xmas cheer here at tryharderfailbetter, so I'm too obese and drunk to visit any galleries or think about art. Hopefully I'll have something to say in new year. Yeah right.

Congrats to Eugenie Scrase though, and Matt Clark. A happy ending after all. Matt Clark was well chuffed his new studio had a window after a years of slaving away in the mount Doom below a railway arch. I wonder if the grimy, slightly claustrophic feel his art had will make way for a lighter and airier style? Who knows. But I'll keep my eyes peeled.

Merry Christmas and Happy new year to you!

Pre-match report.

2009-12-14T12:33:00.005Z

The final episode of School of Saatchi is on tonight, bringing this year’s term to a close. I’ll be tuning in at 9 to see who the winner is. If it were about being the best artist, Matt Clarke would be the one packing his bags and looking for hotel rooms in Saint Petersberg, but as it’s about being a personality, It means Saad and Eugenie are still in with a very serious chance. Even though Eugenie still breaks my heart each time she smiles, I don’t think that is quite enough for old man Saatchi, although I’m sure she’d be a winner at gallery openings around the world. Saad also proved he is capable of holding the public’s attention by having a tempter tantrum when Matt Colishaw laid into his work, and his major tiff with Suki. Sam Zealy and Ben Lowe look a little out of their depths, especially after last weeks historical art challenge, and poor Suki’s work is far too painstakingly meticulous. She’ll hopefully do well after the show though, as there seems to be a bit a sea change away from flashy spectacle going on within contemporary art, especially after the credit crunch and financial collapse.

Anyway I’ll be watching, and in the spirit of competition, my odds are, Matt Clarke 2/1, Saad 3/1, Eugenie 4/1, Suki 7/1, Ben about 8/1 and, as some disaster seems to be about to befall Sam in the next episode, he can be the outsider at 10/1.

But what do I know? I thought Roger Hiorns would win the Turner Prize.

Some kind of weird amateur builder.

2009-12-01T23:57:00.004Z

Another week, another episode of School of Saatchi for me to witter about In the same way that the extreme gravity around a black hole distorts the space-time continuum, extreme wealth too, has this curious effect, distorting the perception of reality surrounding it. Just look at Dubai. Saatchi’s unseen squillions have created this weird little bubble of unreality around the six. This time around saw the intrepid bunch of potential-art-superstars make large scale public work, which is about as realistic a career trajectory for the average artist as Eastenders is a realistic portrayal of the East end of London.

The work they produced was pretty good though, I thought, what I could see of it that was distorted through my tears of envy. They were split up into 3 different teams, and in their couples sent to Hastings to make some public art in two weeks. Public art is notoriously hard to get right. Not even a seasoned like pro Gormley can get it right all the time, I mean, how shit was that forth plinth thing? Also, Martin Creed turned up, and then left again (ha).

Suki and Sam made a cool looking geometric looking sculpture out of mirrored acrylic, inspired by radar reflected they saw affixed to boats. Their original (slightly mental considering the time frame) plan was to have one floating out at sea, and one on the shore acting as a turbine powering a telephone link out to sea, which would relay the sound back to the shore, a logistical nightmare that makes my head hurt. In the end they left it on the shore in an old rowing boat. I though this was a bit of a disappointment, as it would have looked pretty serene floating out on the horizon, reflecting light back to shore in the same way like the real ones did with radar. It probably would have been lost in the glimmer of the sea, but if it would have been big enough… Anywho, here’s a pic.

I found the sculpture they made really visually appealing, not sure about the boat though.

Saad was paired up with Ben who made “Ghost Huts” inspired by the net huts on the beach. I thought this was a good looking piece of work that worked very well in its location. It was inspired by a chance meeting Saad had with one of his friends who lived in Hastings. This was the piece that the public liked the most, although it was quite flat as a piece of ‘conceptual’ art.

Nice, but, what more can I say?

Eugenie Scrase and Matt made probably the most, interesting piece. A kind of visual pun, based on the architecture of disappointment, found in zoos, by mocking up an empty and suitably dilapidated animal enclosure. I liked what they made, although probably wouldn’t have got the visual cues as I haven’t been to a zoo in years and years. Knowing me it would have taken sitting on a train a few hours later for me to “get” the piece. I liked their fake rocks though. I liked it before they finished, when it was a just mass of angular shaped wood and grey sacking. I did laugh when Matt said he’d spent more time measuring the doors to the studio than making the piece, although I’d have thought Saatchi could spring for double doors.

This was the piece Saatchi said he liked the most, so my money’s now on Matt Clark. Although, as the voiceover pointed out, Saatchi pretty much went totally against what he set out at the beginning. Like I said last week, what Saatchi considers good work is maddeningly vague. What he considers conceptual isn’t really conceptual either, but that’s for another night.

Sadly for me, Eugenie Scrase was irresistibly good looking in this again. Luckily for you, there was no Emin, so you can have a look at her smiling in the sun as opposed to whatever it was Emin was doing with her face last week.

2009-11-25T18:31:00.001Z

Forgot to mention this on the end of yesterday's mega post. If you want to watch a more hopeful and measured view of the current art scene on TV, I recommend Where is Modern Art now, which is available via the link below.

Its part of the Modern Beauty season the BBC is running, which School of Saatchi is too. In Where is Modern Art now the art historian Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, presents a wander through contemporary art, trying to get a sense if art has changed, or where it might be going. He interviews Anthony Caro, Grayson Perry and Michael Landy. And is worth a look just for this, although Dr Casely-Hayford makes an engaging guide, his enthusiasm and knowledge evident throughout.

You'll have to be quick though as I think it goes down soon.

Click, click, click!

Where's Saatchi?

2009-11-25T00:48:00.003Z

On Monday was the first in a new series about contemporary Art, called School of Saatchi, in which Charles Saatchi, the notorious advertising mogul and art dealer, searches for a new darling of contemporary art to champion. Helping on this quest are Britart bête noire, Tracy Emin, Art critic and TV favourite Matthew Collings, typically preposterous Art collector Frank Cohen, and Kate Bush, a curator who judged the 2005 turner prize, and did not create eighties chart hits, Wuthering Heights and Hounds of Love.

From the get go its made clear this programme isn’t really about art. In case you were wondering, it’s about Charles Saatchi’s incredible ego. Despite him not physically appearing in the show, every other sentence is praising him in some way, extolling his (undeniable) influence on the art world. Everything on the show is defined by Saatchi, even going as far as describing one of the other judges, Frank Cohen as the Saatchi of the North.

The prize is to appear at a Saatchi show in Moscow called Newspeak, which is not to be sniffed at. It’s a better prize than working for Alan Sugar. The format of the show is very similar to that of the apprentice, the group of wannabe art stars are given an unmanageable task to do in a short space of time, and judged on it, and the winner gets the prize. In this though, as the art world is so heavily dependant on networking and exposure, even those who don’t win will be a good few steps ahead of their peers, unlike the apprentice in which the contestants are roundly mocked and spat back out into the real world.

The show starts with an X factor style 2-minute presentation in front of the judges, in an abandoned warehouse. Various “how can that be art?” types are wheeled on and off for our amusement. There’s a guy who copied out War and Peace by hand, and some emails crumpled up into a ball. A couple of painterly painters are rejected too. Each of the contestants is also asked why what they’ve brought along is art, and are looked down on when they fail to answer such a complicated and loaded question on the spot, in front of a judging panel and TV cameras. Tracey Emin shouts down most of them, and already her role seems to be the Simon Cowell of the group, brutally dismissing the contestant’s attempts.

The criteria of what makes good art seems maddeningly vague from the start. Some of the artists that get past this first stage fail to answer this question properly, if at all. When one of the artists reverses the question onto the judges, they completely dodge it. Does the artist’s ability to explain himself or herself really affect the quality of the work? There’s also bizarrely few people at the audition. Considering around 2000 people a year graduate from art courses in the UK a year, and the career of an artist being uncertain at best, why were there only about 20 interviewees? Out of these 12 are selected to go through.

The first task they are set is life drawing, which of course, being conceptualists and not illustrators, they are rubbish at. The judges sneered at the lack of drawing skills they possessed, and I’m sure everyone at home did as well. This is used as a stick to beat them with later on when they are reduced from 12 to 6.

The twelve selected, that get enough airtime for me to form an opinion of, are listed below.

Saad Qureshi makes installations and videos and is from Pakistan. His work reflects this, and he goes on and on about it. He’s naturally charming and is profiled the most. His work is very art school, and not particularly good, although I like his titles.

Eugenie Scrase is the resident love to hate of the group chosen, ridiculously young at 19 and cute as a button, she is there to enrage the viewer by saying things like "there's no need for artists to study Life drawing" and producing "difficult" quasi readymades. Tracey fawns over everything she does, while saying Skills are really important. Where do you stand on this Tracey?

Suki Chan seems to be the most mature and, well, best, of the assembled group, the piece she shows at her interview, called interval II, is beautiful, and has the gods of olympus unanimously agreeing with her. Tracey Emin says it reminds her of things she's seen before, but can't remember who (the answer is Jeremy Deller's Turner prize piece) I think she'll be the winner, but this being a TV Docudrama, probably will drop out or burst into flames or something more exciting than that.

There are three painters in the group of twelve; one of them is dismissed outright. Another, Ben Lowe is an interior designer who hasn't been to art school. He's a normal bloke, nothing wrong with that, I expect him to be presented a fish out of water, a beacon of sanity amongst the “wacky” conceptualists.

Samuel Zealy presents quite interesting sculptures that dance with physical laws, relying on clever tricks, playing with our associations and the functionality of objects. He's the opposite of Eugenie really as Emin hates him. Bit of a likeable buffoon. There’s a fantastic scene where he explains why he made a decision about one of his pieces, and Emin’s face kind of folds in on itself, and she has a face like thunder. As below.

Rhys Himsworth presents a machine he's built that can draw, a pretty fantastic bit of engineering, he also presents a clear idea of what he will do with the 10 weeks with saatchi, which involves perfecting his design. Unfortunately for him, 10 weeks of someone hunched over a computer isn't particularly good television so he gets the boot.

Matt Clark presents a very swish and polished installation, enclosed in a chipboard box, which is very atmospheric, and evokes ideas of obsession and compulsion. He's kind of ripped off Ilya Kabokov though. And I don’t like that.

Saatchi is presented as a kind of omnipresent Lord Voldemort figure throughout, although never shown on screen, he is referenced constantly, and the voiceover constantly reminds you of his wealth, power and influence. Maybe it will turn out he’s been magically grafted onto the back of Emin’s head, like in Harry Potter. That would make for one hell of a finale.

In this first program, Matt Clark, Ben Lowe, Saad Qureshi, Samuel Zealy, Eugenie Scrase and Suki Chan make it through to the second round. One thing I noticed about the winning 6, is they are much more “photogenic” than the losers, and much more “based in the south of England” who I really felt for at the end of the show. To have something presented to you so tangibly close and then whipped away as entertainment feels wrong. I suppose it’s nothing new but that doesn’t make it less cruel.

Although this program is ostentatiously about Contemporary art, it’s really about Charles Saatchi first, entertainment second and Art is probably about eighth or ninth place, after subjecting people to Tracey Emin.

What with the Credit crunch really hammering the price of contemporary art, and lots going unsold at auctions, Saatchi hasn’t really been hitting the headlines. If Saatchi isn’t hitting the headlines he’s losing influence over the “art world” and his particular brand of art loses some of its value.

The last decade in art has been characterized by astronomic prices justifying a frenzied driving up of prices. With the credit crunch and the realization that most people in the world of finance were applying the principles of surrealism to investment banking, by making up impossible shit, there’s been a shift away from the idea that the market is always right. Maybe the work these impossibly large sums bought was in fact a load of old shite? By making this programme Saatchi is perpetuating the idea that this is the art that matters, and the opinion with the fattest wallet is right. And there is nothing else. When there quite clearly is.

Of course it’s not about art, which it isn’t, it’s about a TV programme people will watch. And as if to heighten the bizarrely unreal “art world” the program presents, next week’s task is produce a piece of large scale public art. I shit you not.

Urbis to become National Museum of Footy

2009-11-19T20:59:00.002Z

The National Football Museum is to move from the “spiritual” home of Football, Preston, to the Urbis in central Manchester. The move has been not been popular with Preston City Council who are threatening legal action, which may delay the move, although it looks inevitable. The move is supposed to begin in April 2010, with the museum opening about a year later in 2011. The main reason is lack of funds; the museum just costs too much to run for relatively few visitors, about 100,000 a year. Manchester City council claims they will attract 400,000. No contest, it would seem.

This isn’t wholly unsurprising. Like the National Centre for Popular Music, based in Sheffield for just under a year, before closing, it’s visitors numbers were wildly optimistic, and it was charging about £21 a ticket for a family of four, for something which you can experience by turning on the radio. The striking building it inhabited later became a live music venue, and then Hallam University’s Students Union. Provincial museums always struggle, especially when they are so off the established tourist trail. Going to Preston for a day out is about as appealing as it sounds.

This is a bit of a coup for Urbis, which has always seemed a little unpopular. When the museum of urban life opened in 2002, it failed to draw in the crowds, it charged for entry, and wasn’t about anything. A museum of urban life in Manchester, a small provincial city? What exactly is city life? A video about life in Denton? At some point it changed to wholly showing changing exhibitions, and hosted Channel M, Manchester’s very own TV station. This marked a bit of turning point in Urbis’s fortunes and visitor numbers slowly increased. Despite this, the place still seems to lack focus. I’d have difficultly describing to a tourist what it is. It sometimes shows art, sometimes design, sometimes historical exhibits. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. It has a television studio, and an upmarket restaurant. Occasionally, a gig will be on. It’s neither one thing nor the other. It’s the cultural equivalent of a village hall, a space where stuff happens.

I think the biggest problem with Urbis as a museum, or platform for art or music, is the Urbis itself. Nothing it has shown has been anywhere near as exciting as the building itself, which is a brilliant piece of contemporary architecture. It competes for attention with the exhibits, and wins most of the time.
Where will these exhibitions currently held at Urbis be housed in the future? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone does at the moment. With tougher economic times looming and arts funding on the chopping block, there sadly probably won’t be any exhibitions to house. There’s always Islington Mill.
That it’s going to become the N.F.M. isn’t the outcome I’d have picked for it, personally. I’d rather it had become a dedicated space for contemporary art in Manchester, but that was never likely. Manchester is already synonymous with Football, and this seems like a populist subject to match the mass appeal of the building itself.

The beautiful urbis, as seen on Google Streetview.

View Larger Map

Fission Mailed

2009-11-08T21:03:00.002Z

TAA event thing is on now if you want to go and look at some fantastic work. There really are some fantastic things going down. So if you can fnd your way there and are interested in resisting capitalism and corporatism and all that bad stuff, get yourself there.

The Chomp TV exhibit, which I was part of, looked especially good, thanks to nancy's excellent organisational skills and frighteningly devil-may-care attitude to wiring. The highlights in my opinion were Harry Shotton's fantastic piece, in which a tiny couple in a tiny car consult a TV guide to try and find where they have ended up. Also Lauren Beard's charming country idyll, featuring tiny model mice sat around a dinner table was great too. Lauren usually does 2D illustation, so this is a wee departure from her usual stuff, but it still oozed charm.

The graffitti and illustration which covered every inch of every available surface was of the high standard most have come to expect from TAA. The bright explosion of creativity in this condemned building is akin to the hallucinations said to be experienced by those undergoing a near death experience. The vibrancy and energy even more pointed when you remember that these are people who are doing purely for the love of creating, and to reclaim a tiny frgment of the urban landscape.

The thing I did was a little bit of a damp squib. Well alot of a damp squib actually. I completly misjudged what I was doing and kind of "ballsed up" my sculpture by rushing it. And not planning it properly. And not bringing enough materials to finish what I was doing. And by not really sticking to the brief properly. And all sorts of things. And it looked shite. I apologise to Nancy for this, and to everyone who had to look at it. If I've not ruined my chances of working with her again, I promise I'll try harder next time.

Before I forget;
http://www.laurenbeard.co.uk/ for Lauren
http://harryshotton.blogspot.com/ for Harry
http://www.taaexhibitions.org/ TAA again

Panic Stations

2009-11-03T15:24:00.001Z

TAA thingy opens tomorrow, and I’m very slightly panicked about the work I’m doing and have done and all that. It all still feels quite a long way from completion, and considering that I’m having to assemble most of the piece at the space, and I don’t know where that is yet, and I have to do this tomorrow, this is worrying me.

The good news is though that I sprayed my little triangular shapes at the weekend, and they look more impressive than they did as a pile of badly glue-gunned cocktail sticks. Not loads more impressive, but hopefully enough so they don’t get mistaken for rubbish and thrown away. That’s the benchmark I’m setting myself.

It's an attempt to try and sculpt, or make visible, light itself. As you probably know the light from the TV is made up of three colours, red, blue and green, and these combine to make all the various others. The machine forces shape and colour on this light, so I've tried to make it into a sculptural form.

Failed my driving test. AGAIN.

Plodding onward.

2009-10-27T19:46:00.002Z

Well, I’ve not actually done another 3D mock-up of my piece for the T.T.A. thingy, but I have glued over 1000 cocktail sticks together into little triangular pyramids.

I’m not sure why.

I kind of came to the realisation that I don’t have a workshop with which to make a huge sculpture with anymore, and trying to bash together a load of wood into something coherent in my back yard with little-to-no tools would be even more of a waste of time.

General plan remains the same.

Driving test on Thursday. Wish me luck

2009-10-15T15:36:00.001+01:00

I've been trying to plan the actual physical construction of my piece for the T.A.A. event, which is proving a little harder than I first assumed. My work tends be be on quite a large scale, indeed the last piece I did pretty much needed and entire room to function properly, and when it went to Liverpool, it was a logistical nightmare moving it across country. I even had to break one of the sculptures up for the return journey.

For this project, I won't know where the space is until I have to install the work, I don't know how much space there is, and there might not be any electricity. This adds up to quite a bit of practical thinking, which, in all honesty, I'm not used to. My plan was to throw something together, transport it half built to the space, and then stick it together there, but even simple tools I take for granted like a glue gun or drill are ruled out without electricity.

I had two plans, one being some large scale prints, and the other being some kind of sculptural construction. I've been mulling over this idea of the sculpture for a while, as I like the idea of making a sculpture that will decay over time, or will barely support it's own weight, swaying and twisting and eventually falling in on itself, etc. Messing about in SketchUp last night yielded these results;

Which I quite like, although I went a bit overboard with the old Copy and paste there so the finished result might not be so impressive. Alas the scale is way, way out, if this was actually built it would be about 14 metres high, which is about the height of 7 tall people standing on each others shoulders. So I'll be dong a more realistic one at some point. Considering the practical elements I also SketchedUp this shape

Which shows the elemental unit I'd be using to construct this thing, if I used timber as my material. Problems with timber include, it being heavy and thick, and it might end up looking too well made, and I'd lose the spindly aspect I'm imagining in my head.

Something like the B of the Bang, or tatlin tower, Or some beautiful Sarah Sze type stuff
Whose work I went to see at the Baltic l~~ast November~~ in April, and obviuosly still haven't gotten over. i'm really in love with the idea of a temporary monument to nothing specific, especially considering the recent debate on the subject in Art Monthly.

I'll upload a more realistic SketchUp later on. Now It's time for some lunch.

Apology+

2009-10-13T18:56:00.000+01:00

Eek, It's been like three weeks since I said I'd write a review of the new New Contemporaries Exhibition at the Cornerhouse, and I haven't. I do kind of have an excuse though. I've been busy being asked to make some work for T.A.A., which stands for Temporary Autonomous Arts, and they are a kind of guerilla art movement based in Manchester.

The work they show tends to be of the "underground" variety, Graffiti art, recycled art, large sculptural intervention, small sculptural intervention, etc, etc. I'm working with the lovely Nancy, as part of Chomp TV, which is, in their own words, a fresh, alternative approach to the notion of exhibition space. They use the television as a physical and conceptual device to provide accessible, innovative gallery spaces that can be placed anywhere.

So yeah, I'll try and keep this up to date with any development as and when it happen. And try to write a review of Angels of Anarchy, the new exhibition of work by the women surrealists, which is now on at the Manchester City Art gallery

http://forbiddenartsmanchester.org.uk/ for the T.A.A. guys

http://www.myspace.com/chomptv for Chomp TV

Words, and so on.

2009-09-27T18:41:00.000+01:00

I'm pretty new to this blogging thing, so hopefully I'll figure out how to make a review or article into something appealing to your eyes, and not an insurmountable Berlin wall of text.

The Manchester incarnation of the Becks Futures exhibition is next in my sights.

So hold on to your hats, if you're not wearing one, you really should put one on, winter's coming.

Review; The American Scene, From Hopper to Pollock

2009-09-27T18:05:00.002+01:00

Hi there, today I'm going to be talking about an exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, called The American Scene, Prints from Hopper to Pollock. What the exhibition features is almost a dead giveaway, but I’ll explain it anyway. The exhibition covers (gasp) American Printmaking, from the early 20^th century, to the1960’s, and is the most comprehensive exhibition of American printmaking of this period one could hope to see. The prints are the highlights from the venerable British Museum’s collection, and this is the last leg of a tour that has already had an airing in Nottingham and Brighton. It also feels a little like the Whitworth is trying to tempt back the more MOR type gallery goer, with an entirely 2D exhibition about modern prints, after the madness that was Marina Abromovich, but maybe I’m being too cynical. All very well, but is it worth going to see?

the exhibition is straight to the point, and even goes as far as having it’s “Stars” in it’s title, and they are undoubtedly two of America’s most famous artists, but artists who are primarily painters, who are not renowned for their printmaking. Indeed, it is slightly misleading; if you’re going in expecting lashings of Hopper and Pollock, you’ll be disappointed. There are only two Hopper prints, and not a huge amount of Pollock’s work. That said though, the rest of the work more than makes up for this.

These two stars chronologically bookend the exhibition, which is split up into 12 “chapters” showing the progress of American printmaking over this period. These chapters divide the work up either stylistically, thematically, but always chronologically, so you always have a sense of where you are within the framework the exhibition sets out. This does make the exhibition feel like you’re wandering around a life size coffee table book, and is Unfortunately about as thrilling as this.

The work itself is good, if a little unexciting. Starting out in 1900, we have the work of the Ashcan school, known for its gritty social realism, which is art world slang for stuff that isn’t dead posh. This mainly illustrative work is sentimental in it’s unsentimentally, showing a daily life which is now long gone. This work is interesting insofar as it was the work that informed the next generation or American Artists, the Hopper’s and Pollock’s of the exhibition’s title.

Fast forward a few chapters to American modernism, and the work begins to portray the skyscrapers and industry we associate with American art, and the new type of society American money was creating. Modernism had made its way across the Atlantic with the Armory show of 1913, and the effect here is visible. Hopper’s, Night on the El Train (1918), uses the new psychological space of the city, as a backdrop for his human drama’s to unfold, as well as showing the influence the new technologies of film and photography were having on traditional art. Louis Lozowick’s New York, (1925) uses the straight lines of the city to produce a striking and almost abstract rendering of the metropolis. Charles Sheeler’s Delmonico Building (1926) is a highlight, showing through a bold use of tonality the effect the new architecture was having on the traditional city.

During the next phase we are shown that American art appears to take a step back towards figurative art with the bizarre Satirical Realism (surrealism?) and Regionalism. The Regionalists turned their back on abstraction, and concentrated on homespun portrayals of rural America. Interestingly, that master of abstraction, Pollock turns up here with a bucolic haymaking scene.

It isn’t really until the Depression kicks in, and Roosevelt’s Federal Art Project provides the means for artists to start producing more socially aware printmaking that there is progression. Free from the constraints of the market (much of this work was destined for schools and hospitals), the themes of poverty, the plight of the African American and the harsh working conditions of miners are prominent, and abstraction comes back into play, undoubtedly influenced by artists fleeing fascist persecution in Europe. A new technique, called screen-printing, is developed and is used to great effect by Robert Gwathmay, in The Hitchhiker (1937), which shows the struggle of finding work in the depression against a backdrop of consumerism. The bold use of colour here contrasts the poor world of reality, with the rich world of advertising. American politics is touched upon for the first time and continues into the next chapter, showing the effects the Second World War had on American printmaking, and the patriotic guff that resulted.

Hidden away, on the opposite wall is a short chapter on American geometric abstraction, which includes work by Josef Albers, whose clean, experimental style influenced a new generation of Artists. Albers was opposed to the socially conscious art produced at the time and this influenced the artists to follow.

Then we get to the post war area, which is, to say the least, quite different from that which has gone before. This area is separated from the previous chapter, and one is confronted the two largest prints in the gallery before being allowed through. The grotesque and misshapen forms of Leonard Baskin’s Hydrogen Man, and Man of Peace, two life-size pieces that stare out of their frames, and signify an America grappling with the power and responsibility of the atomic age. These are two of the most interesting pieces in the exhibition, and having them in such an unavoidable and inescapable position reinforces the manifestly necessary issue they confront. Their figurative nature does mark them apart from the rest of the work in this chapter, where Abstract Expressionism’s effect on printmaking is explored.

The work of Atelier 17, a collaborative workshop for printmaking, is the subject of chapter 10, and shows a much more experimental approach. This conceptual approach to printmaking is exemplified by the work of Louise Bourgeoise, and the last series of prints she made before she turned to sculpture shown here is a definitely one of the highlights of this exhibition. The prints themselves show spindly constructions, which echo the modernist treatment of the American cityscape earlier on. These are accompanied by a short statement, which resonates strangely with the image, to produce something, if you’ll pardon the expression, otherworldly.

Pollock’s work rounds off the exhibition in Chapter 12, but, as the guide explains to us “[the abstract expressionists] also resisted printmaking because of it’s associations with the socially conscious WPA” so what is shown are some prints that look quite like Pollock’s paintings. Although it’s nice to see the work around such show stopping and monumental pieces Pollock’s “Action paintings”, it seems a bit of damp squib to have this as the zenith of the period being discussed. Absract Expressionism is the first major art movement to emerge from the USA, so it’s fitting to end the Exhibition with a genesis and a revelation, at the same time.

Curiously absent from an Exhibition of American printmakers, is the most famous American printmaker, Andy Warhol. Although his large scale screen-prints probably would have drowned out any of the other pieces on display. Still, I feel it’s an opportunity missed, as Hopper and Warhol arguably have more in common than Hopper and Pollock.

The exhibition is a good one and well worth a few hours of your time, especially as so many of the artists shown are barely known outside of the US. Although it does show how lacking Amercian art was until the it was lit by the influx of European ideas. The work American Artists were producing appears downright regressive compared to the work that the Bauhaus or Russian Avant garde was producing at around the same time. In fact, there’s almost a correlation between how experimental American Art is, and when Socialist realism becomes the official standard of the U.S.S.R. But perhaps I’m reading too much into things.

The exhibit does suffer a little from feeling like it should be in a museum rather than an art gallery, but this might just be a downside to how comprehensive it is, rather than it feeling lifeless. Which is a good thing.

The American Scene; prints from Hopper to Pollock is at the Whitworth Art Gallery until the 13^th December 2009

View Larger Map