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8 Juneau/Projects/:
Woodcraft Folk at f a projects; Take Over: Artist Residencies
Programme At Pump House Gallery; Anri Sala's Dammi i colori
at Tate Modern |
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Juneau/Projects/:
Woodcraft Folk at f a projects
Address:
1-2 Bear Gardens SE1 9ED
Dates: 11 January - 10 February
Times: Tuesday - Friday 10am - 6pm, Saturday 12 -
5pm, Free |
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Visitors to the Woodcraft Folk are greeted after a few seconds of silence by recorded singing and an ambient instrumental accompaniment. The sound is triggered by a motion sensor nestled among customised musical instruments and a Marshall amplifier set as if for a gig. There are percussion cymbals mounted on sawn-off tree branches and a pair of guitars, one shaped like a beetle and the other a stag's head. These trademark motifs of the Juneau/Projects/' aesthetic will be familiar to many viewers, as will the conjunction of the primitive and the technological.
In one sense this show is easier on the viewer than some of the artists' previous presentations. It shares the same iconography of cult, countryside and gadgets, but many items are displayed in isolation so that they can be considered in their own right. There is a humorous pair of Doctor Martins painted up with a rural landscape and a framed-up collage of a stag goring someone made with magazine cuttings and pressed flowers. But in another sense the arrangement makes the show more problematic. For despite the effort to establish the autonomous status for the objects and present them as a static, museum-orientated product, there remains an overwhelming sense that what is on offer is not, in fact, the artwork. The shoes are worn, the instruments damaged through use, and many of the works look functional, as if to suggest their status as props within a performance that is over. Nor though, do they quite attain the status of an archive. For the exhibition does not make clear what kind of performance they belong to and photographic documentation of an event is conspicuously absent. As a result, the viewer is left with a feeling of disappointment at having missed out on something that would have been participatory and a lot of fun.
In his recent publication Art Time and Technology Charlie Gere suggests that one of the key roles of art in an age of real-time technology (the internet, email, video conferencing and so forth) is to keep our human relation with time open. He argues that real-time technology threatens to close this relationship with the result that memory and human interaction could become marginal forces in the attempt to shape the future. Gere's anxiety about technology, his concern with the importance of time as well as his belief in the transformative potential of interaction find striking parallels in the Woodcraft Folk. In the back room there is a set of woodblock prints mounted on the wall. The prints depict rural scenes of a pre-industrial England: there is a falcon taking off from the forearm of its handler, a fisherman, a shepherdess caressing a pair of lambs.
Their innocence aside, what is significant about this choice of images is that something is happening in each of them. This is a countryside where people do things, live from the land and are employed for themselves rather than for the benefit of other people. A comparison with William Morris is inevitable but unlike Morris, Juneau/Projects/ have worked collaboratively with a real rural organisation from whom the exhibition takes its name. Thus through research, engagement, performance, the project proceeds with an aesthetic of small gestures that build bridges between urban and otherwise disenfranchised rural communities. In engaging with its communities, it entertains the possibility that there are alternative ways of thinking about the countryside to those propagated by the leisure industry, an unlimited source of bed and breakfasts, pony trekking trips, and gift shop staff. Those that don't get it perhaps need to get out a bit more and find out what people really do, but make sure you arrive on time.
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Take
Over: Artist Residencies Programme At Pump House Gallery
Address:
Battersea Park, SW11 4NJ
Dates: 17 January - 18 February
Times: Wednesday - Sunday
11am - 5pm, Free |
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Artists need space. Hem them in and they seize up. Set too many parameters - themes, deadlines, budgets - and the creative essences which are the vital ingredient of their work will evaporate.
That's the theory, at any rate. Give an artist unlimited money and an airy loft and they might well end up sitting on their arse for six months. Which is why it is probably a good idea that the Pump House Gallery have given their five residents just a few weeks to get something done.
I drop in on 'Take Over' on that very windy day when people are being killed by falling branches. Perhaps because of this, two out of the five have decided that it's safer at home than at the Pump House, which is, after all, in the middle of a park full of trees. On the ground floor, the geeky, unassuming Jon Ford lays bare his obsession with the Pied Wagtail. This isn't a particularly rare or attractive bird, but it has nevertheless provided Ford with material for a rich archive of drawings, video stills, text and audio. What's fascinating about the project is the way it has developed, using the bird as a starting point, in line with the artist's totally idiosyncratic logic. There's a tangential, Pynchonesque quality to Ford's research, which takes in folklore, poetry and diagrams of obscure mechanisms. U-boats are involved, somehow, as are typewriters. This is a strange journey that combines the esoteric and the technical. Imagine a cross between Borges and Kes and you're in something like the right territory.
Upstairs Pil and Galia Kollectiv are busy cutting costume patterns in green felt. Unlike Ford, who has surrounded himself with every possible source of inspiration for an as yet uncharted adventure, they've decided to focus on preparations for a single work. They're planning a revival of Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet. For those of you not already familiar with this landmark of vegetal art, its first incarnation was as an experimental work by Waw Pierogi of the deeply obscure and no doubt painfully cool New Jersey synth-band xex. The performance will be held at Conway Hall in March.
On the second floor Robert Stone is approaching his five week tenure rather more loosely. He's going to do some paintings, and perhaps a large watercolour, if that's what the programme says (and it does). It seems like he's got the plum space, anyway. Higher up in the building with plenty of light and nice views, it feels like some portion of an ivory tower - an artistic fantasy come true. I can imagine drinking endless cups of tea and occasionally dabbling on my palette. Very nice. Fiona Jardine, who will be creating a 'site-specific sculpture and performance' based on Diogenes and David Kefford, who 'reconfigures ready-made, found and second-hand objects' are the ones who got scared of the wind. In the end it doesn't matter: that's part of the beauty of a residency. The artists come and go on their own timetables, and you're as likely to happen upon them taking a fag break as putting the finishing touches to some masterpiece.
DS
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Anri
Sala's Dammi i colori at Tate Modern
Address:
Bankside, SE1 9TG
Dates: Ongoing
Times: 10am - 6pm daily,
Friday & Saturday until 10pm, Free |
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Short films are necessarily on a loop in art spaces. Sod's law has it that you'll miss the beginning, particularly when pieces have a linear structure. Imagine the consternation if cinemas projected the last reel first.
This video is a documentary, sort of, and needs to be seen from start to finish in that order to get a full sense of the quiet dramatic power that lurks beneath its LoRes visuals. Unfortunately, the leader is a bit short, so what seems to be the introduction gets mixed up with the end credits.
We first see a lighted window in a shadowy, non-descript tenement block and hear music from within. A car briefly illuminates the walls, revealing a surprising patchwork of vivid colours. The car passes and they fall back into gloom. Now the camera is moving, looking sideways. Facades as bright and varied as jellybean assortments meet earth and rubble where the pavements should be. Arc lights on the cruising vehicle bleach out the leafless trees in the foreground and catch wan-looking dogs snuffling about wooden gangplanks that link the doorways with the road. In the background, block after block is saturated in technicolor.
It must be the dead of night because there's nobody about. We find ourselves wondering where we are exactly. The first sign we see, FASTFOOD, doesn't narrow down the possibilities much. Beneath the makeover, this place could be a part of Moscow, Beijing, or any number of other metropoli. There is little sound besides the soothing voiceover that's been with us from the outset, ruminating on how colour has been put to work to revitalise the heart and mind of an impoverished city.
Although we aren't specifically informed of the fact, we are being shown around Tirana. Our dulcet-toned narrator is Edi Rama. Sala and Rama spent time in Paris together as artists. After returning home, Rama was first given the post of Minister of Culture, and later elected as Mayor. Though his meditations on the soundtrack are mostly confined to the positive effect of the painting project on the city, his efforts have been massively more far-reaching than that. To read his biography is to scratch one's head in disbelief.
He has initiated the construction of roads, schools, parks and playgrounds, the restoration of buildings, the installation of power cables and water mains in outlying zones, and, more controversially, the demolition of acres of unregulated buildings that were the focus of smuggling, prostitution and drug dealing in the city. These projects have generated employment and a sense of hope in Tirana, and even inspired other places in Albania to follow his lead. Rama is seen as a hero by most, but has inevitably made enemies along the way. To date he has survived two assassination attempts.
This video is Sala's crystallisation of his friend's dizzyingly intensity. Perhaps this is why he feels the need to add the text to the beginning/end asking himself if he actually knew such a man or merely dreamt it.
We cut to daytime, and the hush is broken by the rhythm of chisels on concrete. A packed orange bus crowds the screen for a moment. People hurry back and forth across gangplanks, serious faced, getting on with the day. Above them, painters paint. A montage of buildings, with motifs that hint at a number of designers. Some seem to resemble the odd-shaped Hundertwasser apartment buildings in Vienna, though this might be a trick of the colour scheme. The camera closes in and pans, blanketing us in orange, then blue, then grey where the brushes haven't reached yet.
PH
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Recommended
Tillmann
Terbuyken: Folded Shadows at The Hex
Don't
miss this exhibition of new sculptural work by young Hamburg-based
artist Tillmann Terbuyken. He will be artist-in-residence at
The Hex for one week, producing and installing work for the
exhibition. The Hex is a project space located in the spare
room of a flat on the Pembury Estate, Hackney.
AM
Address:
27 Sandgate House, Pembury Estate, E5 8JH
Dates: 28
January - 11 February
Times: Saturday & Sunday
12 - 6pm or by appointment, Free
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LAST CHANCE TO SEE
Sergej Jensen: La chambre de la peinture at
White Cube
Jensen
has inserted a window in the gallery wall, through which visitors
can look out onto the street beyond and passers-by may glimpse the
interior space. This together with wall to wall carpeting gives White
Cube a domesticated, warm welcome feeling like never before. Working
with fabric off-cuts Jensen's creates muted and minimal canvases
that adorn the walls; suggestive titles give narrative, fictional
and art historical, to marks and blemishes in the material.
RL
Address:
48 Hoxton Square, N1 6PB
Dates:14 December -27 January
Times:
Tuesday - Saturday 10 - 6pm, Free
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Matt
Frank's Fooooom!!! At The Economist Plaza
In
the middle of the Economist Plaza sits Matt Frank's 'Fooooom!!! 2007',
a shiny, white 3D version of an explosion from a Lichtenstein painting
or Batman comic. He explains that 'Within the context of the Economist
Plaza the cloud expresses a moment of inspiration and self-knowledge
- a 'brainstorm''. Very utopian, sadly it will just get used as an
ashtray again by a load of dumb city boys. Bet it looked great in the
snow though.
AL
Address:
25 St.James's Street, London SW1A 1HG
Date: 24 January - 9
March
Times: 10am - 6pm daily, Free
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Mark
Wallinger: State Britain at Tate Britain
'State
Britain' is an exact and meticulous reconstruction of Brian Haw's protest
against the Iraq War on Parliament Square prior to a change in laws
introduced in 2006. Haw began his protest in June 2001 and has remained
stationed outside the Houses of Parliament ever since. However, since
the passing of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act of May 2006,
Haw's once sprawling demonstration has been significantly reduced in
size. The law prohibits unauthorised protests within a one square kilometre
radius of Parliament Square. Taken literally, this exclusion zone bisects
the Tate Galleries, positioning State Britain half in and half out
of its jurisdiction. Haw's demonstration shows us what we don't want
to see, the harrowing and violent imagery of war, death and mutilation
which spares no one; its easy to see why Tony didn't want it on his
doorstep and can only be viewed with the same morbid grotesque fascination
as a car crash. However, it is Wallinger's position in all of it that
is most difficult to fathom. In delivering to the Tate an exact replica
of a vehement protest, Wallinger has created a complex and moving work,
visually and philosophically loaded to the hilt.
RL
Address:
Millbank, London, SE1 9TG
Dates: 15 January - 27 August
Times:
Everyday 10am - 5.50pm, Free
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Good
Riddance and Detourist at MOT International
Can
getting-rid-of be as progressive and constructive as adding to? 'Good
Riddance' brings together artists who, through a wide range of media,
including sound, film and text, focus on taking away as a means of
constructive making. Running concurrently is 'Detourist', a series
of ephemeral public realm interventions by Leo Fitzmaurice. The interventions
have occurred in London, Liverpool, Shanghai, Stavanger, Berlin and
Zurich and may only last minutes before they are absorbed back into
the urban fabric. The have been documented by Tim Machin in a series
of posters.
RL
Address: Unit
54, 5th Floor, Regents Studios, 8 Andrews Road, E8 4QN
Dates:
3 Februrary - 10 March
Times: Friday - Sun 12am - 5pm, or by
appointment, Free
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Ice
Trade at CHELSEA space
Ice
Trade features new works by Bernd Behr, Geoffrey Farmer, Lone Haugaard
Madsen, George Henry Longly, Thomas Kratz and Florain Roithmayr. The
exhibition title references the 19th century trade in ice between Northern
Europe, North America and the sub-continent which existed before the
development of artificial refrigeration. This trade features in Henry
David Thoreau's 'back-to-nature' classic 'Walden' and provides a point
of departure for the works in this show.
AM
Address:
Chelsea College of Art & Design, 16 John Islip Street,
SW1 4JU
Dates: 24 January - 3 March
Times: Tuesday - Friday
11am - 5pm, Saturday 10am - 4pm, Free
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Credits
Images
Juneau/Projects/
Action Objects, 2007
Mixed Media
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of f a projects, London
Robert
Stone
Work in progress
January 2007
Pump House
Anri Sala
Dammi i Colori 2003
Video 16 minutes
Tate
© Anri
Sala
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| © 2006 Artvehicle. All rights reserved. |
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