Thursday 11 December 2008

REVIEW: 'Christmas Dinner', The Greenroom

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 11th December 2008
"Christmas Dinner at Greenroom"

The Christmas lights are twinkling and the bank balance is fearfully quivering as letters to Santa are carefully composed. You’ve slipped on the ice at least once in the past few days and if, like me, the tree is up already, the carpet has become a pine needle danger ground. Me thinks, this must mean, it be time for a pantomime!

Panto can be a difficult one, a bit like Marmite, people either love it or hate it. Slapstick, raucous running around and a good old sing-a-long in Christmas spirit is not everyone’s idea of a pleasant night out. But Greenroom’s very own Christmas Dinner might well change your mind.

This is the panto I have been looking for, still suitable for kids, but simultaneously wonderful entertainment for those who no longer believe in Father Christmas, or receive Christmas stockings. I am a panto (and Marmite) lover, but in recent years I have to admit that I have found myself lagging somewhat after shouting, “He’s behind you” for the fifth time in a row. This was not the case tonight.
 

Oliver Bray has succeeded in writing an unpretentious, witty and refreshing festive script. Baron Balbus, the wonderfully evil baddy who will kill you with his own tongue, vows to destroy the enchanted forest after being spurned by the spectacularly clothed Dame Lederstrabenaffe (the monkey hat being a particular favourite). As the forest is the home of Fairy Mary and brothers Nelson and Nigel, this is an event that cannot be allowed to happen. Not only will all the forest inhabitants be forced to live in housing estates (as the Dame rightfully exclaims: “Oh no!”) but as Nigel reminds us, we also must remember our love for the trees: “We love the environment,” he ardently exclaims. A Christmas Dinner aided by Santa Claus is, obviously, their only hope of swaying the Baron’s decision.

This story is wonderfully aware of the social construct behind its creation, and that exists past the 'fourth wall' of the stage. Not only are parents welcomed, but ‘mums and mums, dads and dads’ – no sexual discrimination here, thank you very much. The stock characters remain, as do the songs and catchphrases – yet all with a twist for the better.

Food is sarcastically organic, the Fairy likes her tipple a wee bit much and the Dame definitely has a beard. Santa, though still white-haired and red-attired, is magnificently lewd, and sleazily seduces Fairy Mary. The music is cheesy, badly sung and hilarious.
 

Asking you to 'leave pre-conceptions at the door’, Christmas Dinner is a self-conscious narrative frequently commenting on, and battling against, the traditional pantomime structure. References to the contract being formed with the audience are stated; the actors artificially come out of character to express frustration at their constrained roles.

Sound effects and projections are used to great effect. In typical Greenroom style, the snow falling outside an arched window floats upwards, as well as down. The sets are similarly impressive – salt snow floor, an ornate dinner table and a flickering fire all add to the magic of the performances. The actors are clearly enjoying themselves as they perform, improvising and interacting with the audience with skill. They render jokes with irony and smiles, and the audience love it. Adults hiss and boo, laugh loudly, grapple for sweets and clap to Christmas renditions of ‘Eye of the Tiger’. What more could you want? Absolutely nowt.
 

It might not have the big budgets of the larger Manchester pantos, nor be so expertly rehearsed, but that only makes it jollier. This ‘Christmas Dinner’ really is the cream in the pie. It is a ridiculous, endearing and most importantly, a fun, pantomime. A wonderful Christmas treat, expect to have your tummy tickled and winter woes lifted. You should go. Take family, friends, reindeer and a token elf. At only £9, it would be silly not to.



'Christmas Dinner' is on at the Greenroom until the 21st of December.

Monday 8 December 2008

REVIEW/FEATURE:'From Space' shop and Laura White at Castlefield Gallery

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 8th December 2008



"From Space’ shop and Laura White at Castlefield Gallery: Thalia Allington-Wood becomes the princess of single evening art-shopping and Gallery-going"

It’s bloody cold outside and the air is sharp as I walk past Salford station in search of ‘From Space’. The self proclaimed ‘new art and fashion shop’ I have been sent to assess. The Christmas lights and wafts of festive sausages I left behind in Deansgate place further bricks upon my shoulders. Bricks entitled ‘Christmas is looming’ and ‘It really is time to start Christmas shopping’. Maybe, I think, just maybe this shop will be my tinsel covered savior.

Tucked away, ‘From Space’ is an endearingly small but effectively filled shop. The showcase for resident Islington Mill artists, along with other artistic pieces from further afield. This is a place to come for unique, handmade, and sometimes rather pointless items to fill a home, (or the underneath of a Christmas tree). Most at nice and un-daunting prices to boot.

An eclectic array of art lines the walls, to suit many a taste. Andrew Brooks is of particular note. Artist of the forthcoming 'Reality Hack: Hidden Manchester' at Urbis, Brooks’ photographs are surreal and rather beautiful (see review this week). Extremely sharp portrayals of cityscapes, woodlands, derelict buildings and ships at sea, that have been layered and reworked digitally till the colours and light hold an ethereal and mystical quality. They have an unexpectedly euphoric effect upon the viewer.

Also worth a mention is Liz Scrine’s absolutely huge candleholder, the ceramic pipes reminiscent of medieval, Gormanghastesque, scenes, flickering corridors and looming shadows.

‘From Space’ is almost a bohemian lifestyle store. Not only do they wish to sell you adornments for your walls, but to dress you in artistic clothes, supply your bookshelves with artistic books, fill your living room with artistic music, and provide artistic postcards for you to inform your friends of just how artistic you are.

However, it does so in a friendly and laidback manner, without too much self-artistic awareness, which is refreshing. ‘From Space’ is full of gift potential and worth a visit.

Having by now finished my complimentary artistic beer, I head back into the cold night, one art print in bag, for a well wrapped stroll towards another art related drink. This time at the Castlefied gallery, and the preview of Laura White’s ‘If I had a monkey I wouldn’t need a TV’. I can feel my very existence turning into oil paint and gouache.

Now I like Castlefield gallery, it has enough glass windows and white walls to swell my artistic pride sufficiently, and Laura White’s show is terrific. Using the gallery as a studio, the works were made on site and as such the relation between artwork and space is articulated eloquently.

Describing her own work as ‘imagery mess’, White’s art is a modern sensory explosion. Plastic animals, magazine cutouts and household goods that appear to have stepped out of the £1 shop are amalgamated into abstract and unexpected sculptures. Sponges, clothes pegs, feather dusters and suitcases are all present.

Images and objects are removed from their expected location and associations. Advertisements are shredded and mixed with clay to form a molding material; images are projected on to a pile of blowup balls and billboard posters. An Umbrella is filled with photographed animals. A huge media made stalactite hangs from the ceiling.

Laura White’s work is fun. It recalls Bahktin’s carnivalesque: enjoyment and festivity suspending and manipulating the official into freedom. The normal functions objects hold are disregarded, White makes you look at daily commodities from a different perspective.

Sipping some white wine, I catch my reflection in the window and am horrified to find that my art saturated evening has turned me into a Picasso. Wonky eyes not being the look of the season I head home, to do some decidedly non-artistic shopping at Lidl on the way.
 
Link: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/From-Space-shop-and-Laura-White-at-Castlefield-Gallery

Tuesday 2 December 2008

REVIEW: Jan Chlebik, Artland Gallery

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 2nd December 2008
"Manchester and New York: Visit the Exhibition"


Walking into the relatively new Artland gallery, a small, personal and welcoming space, I did not expect to leave so moved.
Jan Chlebik’s photographs are stunning. Black and white prints that capture the emotion and beauty of urban cityscapes. Towers and office blocks become grids, patterns. Car filled streets are abstracted into blurred silhouettes. These are images familiar and alien. Surprising and poignant.
Chlebik’s images express the experience of city life. Of being lost, insignificant, within a sea of people, buildings and production, and of simultaneously being empowered as an individual. Surrounded by opportunity and activity.
This might sound odd as the photographs present a distinct absence of people. Moments of solitude are snapped by Chlebik’s camera lens. Early mornings, quiet evenings. His cities are still, empty and in wait.
Yet in Chlebik’s photographs it is the people in the indistinguishable cars, and behind the many windows and doors that are presented. It is what we cannot see, what the buildings contain. Voices articulated by the city landscapes. Manchester and New York stand side by side. The line of difference between the two cities becomes undefined. The order of the photographs jumbled. Buildings are shown to be the universal motif of human assertions. They express our collective ambition and also our individual routines. They are evidence of our existence. As Chlebik states, buildings and rooftops are ‘a snapshot of life going on, continuous and all encompassing’.
Either sharp, starkly contrasted, blurred or grainy the photographs of Manchester and New York present unexpected and alternative angles on familiar destinations. These different techniques show the versatility of our urban landscapes. In hazy backgrounds, the buildings rise through the mist like phantoms. In some, the solid buildings slice into far reaching skies. Modern Towers of Babel. Roads that carry solitary cars into harsh white distances feature heavily: journeys being made, beginning or ending, images of potential, independence and freedom. Clocks are also prominent. Time is shown frozen, but suggests it’s passing, evokes the visibility of change. Old churches next to glass towers: the collage and layering of historical architecture visible when walking through our streets.
The blurred images, highly contrasted, turn churches and skyscrapers into dark shadows. X-ray skeletons of daily urban existence. Chlebik’s use of light is wonderful. It shines from above, floats or sears ethereal on window pains and streets. In some, the lines are so sharp the buildings are almost returned to architectural graphics. Routine layered by the many streets and tiled by repetitive windows. Home is made surreal.
There is a sense of nostalgia. The Great Gatsby. Romance. Sadness. Hope. Glamour. Loss.  Past and future. All are invoked when standing before Chlebik’s photographs.
They are beautiful and absorbing images. Jan Chlebik’s work makes the minute and huge elements of the city graceful and bold. They articulate a sense of memory. Narrate the possibility present in Manchester, New York, and any urban space. Go and have a look. 
LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/Manchester-and-New-York-visit-this-exhibition

PDF:Jan Chlebik, Manchester Confidential, 2nd December 2008

Tuesday 28 October 2008

REVIEW: 'Antigone', Royal Exchange Theatre

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 28th October 2008
"Antigone at The Royal Exchange"

Antigone is a tale of raw emotion. Loss, grief, injustice, betrayal, loyalty, love and pride impregnate this most harrowing of tragedies. Daughter of the Oedipus, destined to destroy his father and marry his mother, Antigone’s life is one of unavoidable sorrow.

Her brothers Eteocles and Polynices, left to rule the city of Thebes, kill each other in battle, and leave their uncle Creon as leader. Creon, a tyrant, decrees that Eteocles shall be buried with honour fitting to a man who has died defending his city, while Polynices shall be left unburied, ‘to be devoured/by dogs and birds, mangled most hideously’. In refusing burial Creon not only dishonours Polynices, ‘but the Gods below, who are despoiled’ – they are denied a soul that is rightfully theirs.

Antigone, brave and resilient, defies her uncle and buries her brother in full knowledge of the punishment. Creon, outraged at her disobedience, sentences her to be buried. Encased in a rock cave, Antigone hangs herself. Creon's son, betrothed to Antigone, kills himself out of grief, resulting in the additional suicide of Eurydice, Creon’s wife. Thus the Gods punish Creon: he is left alone, having paid for the two deaths he caused. As Tiresias foretells, Creon is forced ‘to make amends for murder, death for death’.

Unfortunately I found Greg Hersov’s production of Antigone at the Royal Exchange confused and unsure of the stance it was taking on the original text. It attempted to place itself both within Greek tradition and the present and it didn’t work.
 
The tragedy begins at dawn and ends at dusk. No violence is committed on stage. The chorus remains, though greatly diminished. Creon is sinful of hubris (overweening pride) and is punished. Antigone is the complete tragic hero. The set is representative of ancient Greece, dry cracked earth covers the floor, a funeral pyre of ash and sticks stands off centre.

Yet the costumes are modern. Non-descript suits, high heels, flowing country dresses that do not marry with the other visuals of the production. Creon delivers his speech like a presidential candidate and the messengers are army-clad soldiers. His refusal of the rightful burial changes emphasis. This is no longer about him shaming the Gods: it’s reduced to an argument about what’s humanly decent or not. The messengers are figures of fun instead of solemn bringers of distress. Several moments of overwhelming grief are stunted with sarcastic and comically delivered lines.

Now first and foremost Antigone is a tragedy. It is filled with awful and unjust events, pain and emotional suffering. It is at no point meant to be funny.
 
An example: Antigone is brought to testify in front of her uncle and Ismene, where she is committed to a terrible death. It is a moment of utter desolation. The sisters are never to see each other again; they are preparing for grief and death. When Creon, in Sophocles’ text, proclaims: ‘Of these two girls, one has been driven frantic, the other has been frantic from her birth’, a poignancy is added to their fate, Creon’s tyrannical rule is reiterated and the grief of the situation heightened. Antigone's death is sealed with his unfeeling observation.
 
This production’s alternative line: ‘These women are lunatics!’ has the opposite effect. All gravitas falls away. The sister’s tears seem ridiculous. Creon becomes a comic misogynist. Instead of being overcome with sorrow, we laugh. The production seems afraid to let the audience feel the magnitude of the tragedy.

The original text, by Sophocles, is subtle but direct. It is an overtly political play, directly confronting the problems and dangers of anti-democratic leadership. It presents the importance of family bonds and honouring the dead. The words and events in Antigone are strong enough to carry this message, to be plainly relevant in any time period. I wish the Royal Exchange production had realised this. I wish it had been brave enough to stick to a decisive and clear portrayal of a heart-wrenching tale.

Despite these criticisms it is still not a bad performance. Audiences unfamiliar with the original, or interested in modern takes on classic texts, may well enjoy this production. It is a well acted, entertaining and engaging take on Antigone. It is important for theatre to revive old texts, attempt to bring them into modern contexts and to take risks. I applaud Hersoy for having done so.

My personal experience was to sit for the one and a half hours frustrated and annoyed. I have a pre-established relationship with the text. I have studied and formed a loyalty to what I think are the original intentions of the play. It is not that you shouldn’t see this production: you should. More that I would not want to go again.
 
Antigone, is showing until the 8th of November.

Thursday 25 September 2008

REVIEW: Ally Wallace 'Stuck Cities', Victoria Baths


Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 25th September 2008
"Ally Wallace 'Stuck Cities' at Victoria Baths"
 
I don’t like to say it, but when visiting Stuck Cities I spent more time marvelling at the beautiful building of Victoria Baths than I did the works of art. That is not to say I wasn’t impressed by Wallace’s instillation, but rather that the opportunity to explore and wander around the beautiful and decaying baths at your leisure is far too good to miss.

Ornate green tiles reach up to the ceiling, while transient light pours through stained glass windows on to impressive stairways. Mosaic fish even swim around your feet. Victoria Baths is a wonderful and fun piece of architecture. Walking around the echoing swimming pools, with the wooden seats of the theatre above and the bright blue paint peeling off the cubicles that line the room, is like being in a sepia coloured dream that is ever so slightly haunted. The emptiness of such a large and delicious space holds sorrowful tints. A building designed to be full of life now catching the sounds of solitary footsteps.

Ally Wallace’s main artwork that accommodates the first class pool is aesthetically successful. The huge square panels of newspaper which hang from the tall glass ceiling utilises and complements the space very well. The columns of text and boxed images of the broadsheets merge into the tiles of the pool and bring out the structural lines of the room. The fragility of the paper, suspended and motionless, emphasises the stillness of the derelict building, once alive and busy with people.

All locally sourced, the newspapers fade and yellow in time - disintegrating and becoming dilapidated just as the building has done. The stories relevant to a precise date or time period have been ‘frozen in the final installation’, the contents turned in to a graphic pattern. All of these elements poignantly reflect the history of Victoria Baths and its own pause in time, unused, empty and awaiting final restoration. The building is in limbo, as are the stories suspended inside.

The simplicity of Wallace’s delicate grid wall creates a wonderful new element to the space, interacting and bringing out the colours and shapes of its crumbling surrounding. Stuck Cities realises the size and height of the room, changes perspectives as you walk around and creates unexpected viewpoints of forgotten corners of the room.

My enjoyment of Stuck Cities meant I wished the exhibition had ended in the swimming pool. Wallace’s other works, displayed in the smaller adjoining rooms, in many ways tainted the impact of the main instillation. His small watercolours and newspaper sculptures seemed void of purpose and ill-thought out. The subtle peaches of the decorative windows captured my attention far better than the rolls of newspaper stuck together with bulldog clips and sporadic daubs of paint. This exhibition survives because of its magnificent home.

You should head down to this rather illusive exhibition (only open this coming Saturday and Sunday) even if installation doesn’t really float your boat. Do it for the baths I tell you, those wonderful baths.

There is an interesting exhibition on the history and renovation of the building, equipped with dated swimwear, audio memories and photos to boot. A magnificent building to explore and an aeratone to marvel at, which with its narrow, deep metal cylinder and red operating dials looks like some form of science fiction nightmare, but is in fact a swish personal Jacuzzi first developed as a treatment for mining injures in Scotland. Excellent stuff, and when you think the developers suggested turning it into a car park.
 

Monday 22 September 2008

COMMENTARY: 'The Hireling Shepherd' by William Holman Hunt

Published: STUDENT DIRECT, 22nd September 2008
"Close Look"
This painting of Hunt’s, one of the major names in the pre-Raphaelite movement, always catches my eye twice. Something about it makes me need to examine the situation, work out what doesn’t sit right. Maybe it is the girl’s suspicious but sultry sideways glance. Maybe it is the bright, precise colours and lines of the assumably soft rural setting. Or it could be the fact that this painting has a story to tell of two people’s relationship; yet we don’t know what it is. Who are they? What are they saying to each other? Why does it feel tainted?

The answer, if there must be one, lies in the title. The Hireling Shepherd is a quote from Shakespeare’s King Lear, in which Edgar sings the tale of a Shepherd who neglects his duty and his sheep. In Hunt’s painting this is portrayed by a lamb wandering off unnoticed into a golden field, potentially ruining a farmer’s crop, while beauty, youth and desire distract the couple. The message of pastoral neglect and its consequences, takes on an extended social critique, when we look closer at the two sweethearts. The girl with her blood red skirt and forthright body language seems to be luring the man away from the right path of action. The apples on her lap, rotting, make her reminiscent of Eve tempting man to sin.

However the quite heavy moral message of this beautiful painting is not immediately obvious. At first we seem merely to be witnessing love. It is only on second glance that we see that this love sits inharmoniously with social expectations, duty and seemingly nature.

It is the sharpness with which Hunt portrays the landscape that empathises this moral. The focus brings out the harsh reality of the situation. The countryside is idyllic; the pool of water by the girl’s feet remains still, yet the image creates turmoil within the viewer; a sense of wrongdoing and future negative consequences.

It is a clever and expertly executed painting that everyone should look at.

'The Hireling Shepherd' by William Holman Hunt can be seen at Manchester Art Gallery.

REVIEW: 'Three Sisters', Royal Exchange Theatre

Published: STUDENT DIRECT, 22nd September 2008 



The Royal Exchange’s production of Chekhov’s classic Three Sisters is absolutely stunning. Not for a long while have I seen a play so smooth and eloquently performed. The set was beautiful and simple, clear columns and shear curtains ensuring no view was blocked. The acting from all was worthy of Chekhov’s poetical language, wrought with emotion. The audience were literally forced into submission, the three hours passing unfelt, as Three Sisters harrowing and sorrowful tale unfolded.


Chekhov’s Three Sisters is a tale of hope and dreams dashed and unfulfilled, of lives disappointed and helpless to their fate. Each character is dissatisfied with his or her present, each longs for a past or future full of glory and happiness. Their lives are confined to a small provincial town in Russia, where the weather and landscape is harsh and unforgiving, society limited and dull, without any prospect of changing for the better.
Three Sisters is a play that portrays with delicate beauty the way humans cope with misfortune and despair – they see at all times ‘in the distance…a gleam of light’.


The sisters Irina, Masha and Olga yearn for Moscow, the place they feel is home, where their roots belong. Thoughts of Moscow are ‘a washed in sunshine’, warm in comparison to the cold wintry present. Vershinin dreams of a future ‘two hundred to three hundred years from now’, when life will be ‘unimaginably beautiful’. While Chebutykin consoles his painful life with the belief that he might not actually exist at all. None inhabit a place they truly call home, either in time or place. All they want is change, change reverting to memory or to the unknown. Anything other than the stagnant and trapped state of the current. Indeed it is not without meaning that the poem Masha repeats throughout begins ‘a far sea shore…’


The lack of movement within the plot (three years pass without change) allows the audience to scrutinise and understand the characters in raw truth. Chekhov portrays the everyday existence of his characters with honesty and humour like no other. None are idealised humans; all have their faults, their selfish wants – yet we come to admire them each for their continuance through individual trials. Even Andrey, when his life has diminished far below his aspirations finds it within him to think of a future where he ‘can see freedom’.


Most poignant in this play is the disharmony of the characters hopes and their reality. Even when a form of happiness seems to glisten within their reach it is dashed from then within an instant. Life is cruel in handing out exactly what is not wanted and thus most hard to bear. What is the respite from such an ‘intolerable life’? Love; what comfort is there? Only, as Irina concludes, ‘that we shall all be forgotten’. All that is to be done is ‘to live our own lives...for none knows anything’.


Thoroughly moving, utterly impressive and refined. One that cannot be missed.

Monday 15 September 2008

COMMENTARY: 'The Storm' by William Etty

Published: STUDENT DIRECT, 15th September 2008 


"A Close Look at Artworks in Manchester: The Storm by William Etty (1829-30)"

I have always been fascinated by how painters manage to capture light and motion. Painters, such as Turner, whose work is full of nature’s ominous dangers, and weathers perilous forms, have always captivated me. It is for this reason that I love The Storm by William Etty. 

He manages to covey the pure terror and force of the tumulus waves at sea. Despite the boat taking up quite a large portion of the canvas, Etty has managed to convey it’s tiny scale in comparison to the vast ocean in which it floats; it is vulnerable and dwarfed by the wave that looms above the two figures, their sail expressing the fierceness of the wind. The painting has a dark undertone and a raw sexuality about it, the woman’s naked flesh glows in the night, stark white, while the rest of Etty’s palate is of warm earthy tones. 

Looking at it you feel haunted by the power of things outside your control, you feel the couples isolation, the motion of the rough water. It is a painting of raw experience, of fear.

'The Storm' by William Etty can be seen in the Main Collections of Manchester Art Gallery.

Link: http://year2008-2009.student-direct.co.uk/2008/09/close-look/#more-497

Thursday 11 September 2008

REVIEW: 'Lord Arthur's Bed', The Lowry Theatre

Published: STUDENT DIRECT, 15th September 2008 


It is lucky they gave a warning, otherwise I would have found myself rather shocked. Lord Arthur's Bed, a play about the lives and trials of Ernest Boulton, Frederick Park and Lord Arthur Clinton MP, Gay men of the 19th century, is rather graphic. Not only do we get full on male nudity, but foe sex, many references to sodomy, shafts, bursting pearly seas (their words not mine) and many other things far too rude to mention.

Not a play for the prude then; but very interesting and refreshing for its natural and unshrinking portrayal of Gay love. Lord Arthur’s Bed is not attempting to shock, rather tell a historical story in all its truth and performed in the Lowry’s Studio, a small and intimate space, the experience felt all the more bare and, well, naked.

The story of Ernest (Stella) and Frederick (Fanny), 19th century transvestites accused of ‘abusing gentlemanly behavior’ and performing ‘unnatural offences’, is told by a present day (fictional) Gay couple – Donald and Jim. It is portrayed as an important turn in the history of homophobic behavior. One of the first trials where publicly being Gay was proclaimed wrong and an offence to the decency of society. The legacy of this homophobia we see negatively affecting Donald and Jim’s relationship. The deeper into the trail the plot gets, the angrier, insure and depressed Jim gets. He talks of the shame he experiences in his desires, how sordid society makes his natural emotions feel and the image of his mothers face when he told her of his civil partnership. It is a play about the power of sex within society, of prejudice and love. How people who are brave enough to outwardly be themselves, are often punished and have been throughout history; especially for being homosexual.

Several things niggled at my satisfaction, which is a shame considering overall it was a tight, successful and engaging performance. The bickering of Donald and Jim got repetitive and rarely developed, the set (consisting of a double bed) was cheap and lacking impact or aesthetics, while the acting at times fell flat or over exaggerated. But these did not ruin a very entertaining and thought provoking evening. As the rather camp Lord Arthur Clinton would have declared – Very well done indeed.


Lord Arthur's Bed in on at The Lowry Theatre on the 11th and 12th of September 

Link: http://year2008-2009.student-direct.co.uk/2008/09/lord-arthur%E2%80%99s-bed/

Monday 7 July 2008

REVIEW: Gwon Osang 'Deodorant Type', Manchester Art Gallery

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 7th July 2008


"Massive Horse Invades Manchester Art Gallery"

Deodorant Type, the new exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery makes interesting viewing. Korean artist Gwon Osang, in his first major UK show, fills the space with imposing realist sculptures that carry the power to confuse and challenge the viewer’s perception.
 

"These layered photographic surfaces give Osang’s sculptures a fragmented and therefore surreal appearance. The expressions and features of each individual model are occasionally skewed and unnatural, their proportions wrong."

In an attempt to move away from traditional sculpting materials and methods, which he finds, ‘suffocating’ and restrictive, Gwon Osang formed his current and signature technique, in which he uses photographs to create a composite image of his models on life size sculpted bodies.

These layered photographic surfaces give Osang’s sculptures a fragmented and therefore surreal appearance. The expressions and features of each individual model are occasionally skewed and unnatural, their proportions wrong. As a result the sculptures found in Deodorant Type are at times eerie, unnerving and intimidating. One such sculpture is an impressive horse mounted police officer, striking, proud and reminiscent of monumental equestrian sculptures of monarchs and princes. Another is that of Graham Massey, Manc muso, best known for his work as part of 808 State and pictured here.

Osang commented that he enjoys the 'contemporary visuality' photography achieves. It also brings an unavoidable realist stance to his work. These sculptures are real people who exist simultaneously and separately to the exhibition space, in the same clothes, making the same face. Osang cannot change them; the camera does not lie. Most of the sculptures featured in the exhibition were created from Osang’s month long residency in Manchester in 2007.

The poses of Osang’s sculptures are all those readily available in society, ads, and media. Osang describes his body formations as ‘very close to me and easily available…found around me or in any civilised city life on earth, through magazines or the internet’. They are positions that we are so used to seeing around us, we become almost unaware of them.

Though Osang states that he does not ‘really want audiences to understand or find something special by looking at my work’, this writer finds Osang’s photographic sculptural portraits an intriguing comment on identity.

In our contemporary society, photographs are the medium by which we assert, read and reproduce our identities. When individuals upload their carefully selected images on to websites and post photos on their Internet profiles, they create a public life and personality for themselves, be it true or false. Through these photos people are placed within stereotypes, judged, targeted by ad companies and others.

Osang in his use of photography for sculptural portraiture uses a medium which has become an expression of our social worth, our status. Osang’s work confronts this - he provides a photographic person, real in size, stance, style and looks: yet we will never understand them. All we create of each sculpture's identity will be a fabrication, a projection of our own experiences and prejudices.

You may think this understanding of Osang’s work utter rubbish. But that's all right as according to Osang, contemporary art means: 'a variety of misunderstandings', that become a 'way of communication'.

Indeed the exhibition’s title Deodorant Type is a pun on a cultural misunderstanding in itself: the failure of multi-national advertising agencies to sell deodorant in Korea due to, as Osang tells us, the majority of Asians not suffering from body odour. So go and become misunderstood and confused by Osang. If nothing else that life size horse is impressive.


Deoderant Type is on until 21 September 2008 at Manchester Art Gallery and is free of charge.

 

Tuesday 24 June 2008

COMMENTARY: 'Bradshaw's Defence' by Ford Madox Brown

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 24th June 2008

Focus on Art: "Manchester Under Attack, Thalia Allington-Wood on Ford Madox Brown's strangely calm depiction of war"

Artist: Ford Madox Brown

What and Where: 'Bradshaw’s Defence of Manchester A.D. 1642', Manchester Town Hall

Date: 1879-1893

Who?

Ford Madox Brown was one of the most important influences on the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Of a slightly earlier generation, Brown was a pioneer in the style and aspirations of the Brotherhood. It was his accuracy in portraying the physical elements and subjects of his work, and the bold use of colour he employed, that captivated artists such as Rossetti, Hunt and Millais.

Wounded men lie face down on the floor or slumped against the bridge battlements with very little expression of pain, and minimal evidence of horrific wounds or blood loss. The sky is pale blue and calm. The river ambles gently under the bridge. Everything feels static and calm despite the obvious confusion of the scene.

It took him a bloody long time to finish. Painting the murals in the delicious and magnificent Great Hall dominated the latter part of Ford Madox Brown’s career. He began work in 1879 and finally finished in 1893. That’s 14 years although he did spend time away completing other work.

Each painting is illustrative of Victorian Manchester and captures different elements of the city's history – from the Romans building Castlefield’s fort, to the expulsion of the Danes, to John Dalton and his gas experiments.

‘Bradshaw’s Defence of Manchester’ was the last painting to be completed and depicts the defence of Manchester from the Royalist assaults in 1642 – the start of the English Civil War. This particular mural probably took Brown the longest, despite it not being his most complex or technically brilliant, as the poor man suffered a stroke and as a result had to paint the image with his left hand. If you look at the green landscape in the back right, it does seem like he’s struggling. Gone are the clearly defined lines and detail we see in the other murals.

Tell me more

Brown’s mural is typically romantic and full of the glorious English sentiment that characterises much of his work. As he often painted outdoors in natural light, it is interesting to see a painting by him which, due to its setting, must have restricted him to working indoors.

Despite this, ‘Bradshaw’s Defence of Manchester’ still maintains Brown’s characteristic brightness of colour. This produces an unexpected and strange image of war, which we often expect to be gritty and blood-stained. Here, wounded men lie face down on the floor or slumped against the bridge battlements with very little expression of pain, and minimal evidence of horrific wounds or blood loss. The sky is pale blue and calm. The river ambles gently under the bridge. Everything feels static and calm despite the obvious confusion of the scene. The Royalists in the foreground are not aggressive or panicked; two soldiers calmly help a comrade from under his fallen horse, while a young man quietly reloads his gun and observes their struggle without obvious concern. This creates a peculiar and uneven balance in which battle, death and anger contrast with brightness, nature and stillness.

Bradshaw looks a bit lonely

Yes, there he is, Bradshaw, standing ahead of the other gunmen who are shielded by smoke, alone and vulnerable but fending off the attacking troops. Not sure if Mr Brown is being entirely accurate here – one man and his musket would definitely not have been able to hold off all those men. The damn thing would have taken far too long to load if nothing else. In fact, if we are going to pull the historic correctness of the painting to shreds, it wasn’t even Bradshaw who defended the bridge at Salford but Colonel Rosworm. However, Ford Madox Brown is not attempting to perfectly document history. Instead, as can be seen in the other murals, he wants to create a dramatic conception of Manchester’s past.

From the very outset of the English Civil War, Manchester was considered a fierce and loyal Parliamentary stronghold. It was one of the few towns in Lancashire not to support Charles I and thus was a lone but stubborn holder of controversial and dangerous politics. Ford Madox Brown’s Bradshaw; the singular man, standing brave and defiant against a whole group of armed men, fiercely defending his beliefs and home, is symbolic of Manchester as a community. The city that remained unassailable. Heroic and glorified.

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/Manchester-under-attack

Tuesday 10 June 2008

COMMENTARY: L.S Lowry, Selected Works

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 10th June 2008

Focus on Art: "Lowry: Is the Old Bugger Any Good?"

Artist: L S Lowry

Who's that?

You mean you live in the North and don't know? LS Lowry, born in 1887, a tall, suited, Lancashire man turned self taught artist has long been a household name. Often thought of as naive, his sentimental sketches and paintings depicting industrial working class landscapes and people brought him ridicule but also fame. He is now considered to be one of Britain's most popular and celebrated artists.

What and Where? Coming From the Mill, The Lowry
Date: 1930


Quintessentially Lowry?

Yes indeed. Here we have one of those industrial scenes the punters love so much. 'Coming from the Mill' depicts closing time at the factories, workers stream out of the gates on to the street and make their way home. The people are puppet like, no expression or individual characteristics bar the different colours of their clothes. Caps and red or dark green jackets throng the crowd. Their feet clad in oversized black boots. This should make the crowd seem like a mass, an organism of 'the people', yet it does not. In this painting, as with most of Lowry's, every figure seems to be alone. Lowry shows us, through his own experience of solitude, that there is emptiness in multitude.

Looking at 'Coming from the Mill' is like creating a story inside your head. Each individual can be taken, their life and activities constructed. In the right bottom corner a horse rears, throwing back the carriage driver in surprise. Two children stand side by side behind a fence, left out and observing others at play. While on the far left someone leans out of a window to talk to a mother below, a baby slung across her back. These characters turn into real people; they and the scene become symbolic of a nostalgic past that viewers remember knowing.

L S Lowry developed a very personal and stylised technique. The composition of 'Coming from the Mill' is linear and graphic, the oil paint thick and his colour palette limited. The buildings are flat, with simplistic white curtains and emotive, sombre ochre and red walls; their diluted and un-solid colour reflects the lack of money within. The buildings create a grid on the canvas and trap the wandering figures within the white roads. This painting is not one of freedom, but necessity and labour. The figures are hunched, head down and exhausted.

What and Where? Man with Red Eyes, The Lowry
Date 1938
Is it Lowry?

Well sort of. 'Man with Red Eyes' is a shocking and disturbing image, and a far cry from the heavily populated and distant figures in 'Coming from the Mill'. A man, worn and angry, stares directly out of the canvas, his large eyes burning with a sore red. The directness and raw emotion of his look arrests you.

Though a composite image, 'Man with Red Eyes' was started as a self-portrait. It was, as Lowry explained, him 'letting off steam'. For eight years Lowry had nursed his bed-ridden mother, simultaneously holding down a full time job and painting in the early hours of the morning. This painting he made right before her death, at a time when he felt frayed and on the brink of breaking. It's not Lowry, but the expression of his internal turmoil.

Lowry depicts this anonymous man with stark and grotesque detail. Small dark hairs protrude from his ears; the skin under his eyes is a heavy and dull grey. This man personifies not only Lowry's pain and grief at the time of its composition, but also that of the downtrodden worker, driven and laden by economic necessity. His brow is deeply furrowed, the unshaven stubble twinged with steel grey.

The man, hard and stern, also appears as though completely naked. He is bare and vulnerable in his anger. The red colour of his eyes, nose and scarf form a centre to the canvas. The scarf is tight as if slightly strangling him, while the overly large black cloak envelops him, overcomes his body, curving his shoulders, repressive. When asked about this painting, Lowry replied, "It frightens me".

Opinions…

On Lowry differ greatly. Many find his work sentimental, the language he speaks too simplistic. Looking at both paintings the subject does not feel real, but distanced. This is probably because Lowry did not depict real places or people. They are composite images, or as Lowry described them 'dreamscapes', created and imagined as he sat, tweed suited, in an armchair before his easel. Hence his rather ambiguous titles such as 'A Lancashire Town'. This makes his work surreal, but also at times frustrating and annoyingly innocent.

Yet people identify with them and come in their hordes to see them. The Royal Academy retrospective exhibition of his works in 1976 broke all records of attendance for a twentieth century artist. His mill scenes and portraits convey a uniquely English sentiment, very much of the industrial period. The landscapes are typical, full of shared associations. The boots and caps, smoke filled skylines and thronging crowds surging from the factories feel familiar.

Maybe the men do look like sticks, the whole painting somewhat cartoonish. Maybe, the industrial subject does not seem gritty enough, the white pavements too unbelievable. Maybe as comedian Harry Hill tells us, you could replicate it age 10. But maybe that's not the point.

L S Lowry was always aware that every painting he did was an extension of himself. He was a man drawn, not to document correctly what was in front of the work, but to show what he saw through himself, his feelings. His paintings were his indulgence, so why should they not be our indulgence too? Buy a poster for your living room, hallway and bathroom, as two loudly indecisive ladies were doing in the gift shop.

Both these works can be viewed in the Lowry, The Quays. 0870 1112020 www.thelowry.com

Link: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/Lowry-is-the-old-bugger-any-good

PDF:

Thursday 15 May 2008

FEATURE: The Ethics of Displaying the Dead

Commissioned (unpublished due to timing): MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, May 2008
 
The Ethics of Displaying the Dead.

Considering the debates and opinions sprouting out of viewers and Manchester Confidential readers on both Gunthur von Hagens’ Body Worlds 4 and Manchester Museum’s Lindow man exhibition (otherwise known as ‘The Bog Man’s Care Bear’), the turn out at the recent public debate discussing the ethics of displaying the dead was rather disappointing. Taking my seat among my fellow 20ish members of the public and looking about me, I saw no raving Christians waving banners, no Pagans wielding pick axes – Emma where were you? Not much sign of life at all.

The debate itself, which took place at the Science and Industry Museum, spread itself over a rather lengthy two hours. Not that I would have been checking the time had the discussion been fuelled by passionate discussion. As it was however, I think the clock edged its way past nine (it started at seven) only because it seemed to take everyone so God damn long to say anything – either that or they all liked the sound of their own voices a bit too much. Nevertheless, despite the tooing and froing, the tangents and the minimal participation, the debate lead by Manchester Museum did raise some very interesting arguments to a very controversial question: Should we display the dead?

Well of course we should. Human remains are a vital source of information. As Rose Drew rather sentimentally and emotively stated in the debate, the dead offer us ‘unvarnished truth of all the things we think are important in life’. Bodies have been used and displayed throughout history, even now the Vatican is displaying a will be saint, while Lenin lies preserved in a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square.

However as Piotr Bienkowski, deputy director at the Manchester Museum, argued rather menacingly (though this may have been for arguments sake), the problem with displaying the dead is that in doing so, we treat them as objects, when in fact they should be treated ‘as if they were still people’, with respect and dignity.

Fair point. When staring into the eyes of a plastinated, but still real, human man in Body Worlds 4, gripping a guitar and leaning back in full swing; or a woman, her skin torn away on the rock behind her (apart from her pubic hair if you’d noticed – pornographic anyone?), are you not left feeling rather uncomfortable? Like maybe this is a step too far? I wonder if on the form Mr Hagens supplied these donors he included a ‘Favourite Hobbies’ section; maybe the lady had a penchant for rock climbing? If not, I do hope the guitar man didn’t have a severe hatred for rock music. Does this then mean this, rather sensationalist, entertainment focused way of displaying dead bodies is disrespectful? These people might have given their bodies to the ‘qualification of physicians and the instruction of lay persons’, but that doesn’t mean they wanted Mr Hagens and his rather creepy leather hat depicting them to the masses as a gambler, or as catching their intestines in a goal save.

It doesn’t help either that Body Worlds has been accused of procuring its bodies, mainly from third world counties such as China, illegitimately. Apparently all participating corpses gave informed consent, but different countries have different understandings of what consent means. How is this censored? When coming to Britain, the bodies were regarded as imports because they were from overseas and thus did not need moral authorization. If we do not have proof that these individuals truly gave their dead body for use, should we display them? If the answer is no, does this not then also apply to the Egyptian mummies which fill our country’s museums, whose excavation and transportation to another land is a deep violation of their beliefs and wishes? Which then brings forward the question of how we value different people? Who should stay and who should go and who has the authority to decide – everything starts getting a bit confudling at this point. 

On the other hand however, if consent was indeed given then what’s the problem? If someone wishes to be cremated, or donate their body to medical schools no one makes a fuss. If we are allowed to do as we wish in life, why can’t we in death? Even if this is joining Hagen’s touring show of curiosities, be it in eternal hunt for fame, immortality or what ever else allures people to sign his dotted line.

Of course aside from all this there is the undeniable fact that exhibitions that display human remains, be it a plastinated human, an Egyptian mummy or shrivelled bog man are incredibly educational. Experiencing human decay, death and our internal workings up front cannot be duplicated by models and books. Modern learning theory tells us that interaction provides a greater resonance within learners. It is the stuff which makes children interested in Science and History, what spurs people to become doctors or anthropologists. Body Worlds makes biology interesting.

Not only that, but it makes learning accessible and available. Provides the opportunity to see and understand death and our internal workings up front in a society where death and the reality of our frailty are locked away, only experienced through computer games and glossy films. The displays of the deceased force us to face our mortality.

Overall it seemed the debates main downfall, apart from being far to pernickety, was offering the public a sideline. When it came to the final vote, there was the choice of yes, no and then a sometimes – copout I think yes. Which was opted for by 14 of the audience- get a backbone guys. The other votes went NO: 3 and YES: 8, so luckily for us fascinated and spectacle hunting members of the public I think bog man is here to stay. While finally a last comment to those who take offence to the display of the dead – wouldn’t it be better if you just didn’t go?

Interested? Then head down to the Museum of Science and Industry on Tuesday 20th May for a talk on the ethics of Body Worlds by Dr Death himself, Tony Walter, Professor of Death Studies at the University of Bath. It starts at 7pm and admission is £5 per person or £2.50 with a BODY WORLDS 4 ticket. Cash bar.

Saturday 10 May 2008

COMMENTARY: 'Miners at Work' by Henry Moore (1941-1943)

Published: STUDENT DIRECT, May 2008 

Henry Moore, the son of a mining engineer, was one of the pioneering and most popular artists of the 21st century. Famous for his large figurative sculptures, this week we focus on a less well-known piece: ‘Miners at Work’, which is displayed at the Whitworth Art Gallery. Moore’s dark and oppressive image holds an eerie atmosphere and tension with the viewer. Created while Moore was a commissioned war artist during the Second World War, it portrays the often forgotten labour, which needed to continually take place in order for the fighting to continue and for life at home to be sustained.

The impact of this image is increased by its size, at only approximately 56 by 43cm it is surprisingly small, however this emphasises the pictures feeling of enclosure. The frame closes in around the image, just as one can imagine the heavy damp earth around the bent over figures. The canvas is broken in to three horizontal tunnels, which tear across the page, one above the other. We cannot see where these tunnels begin or end, or how many there are. We are only given a slice or segment of the expansive underground maze of tunnels and workers. Here Moore forces us to realise the extent of unceasing toil present working in the mines. It feels eternal, never ending.

Moore’s figures in ‘Miners at work’ are abstracted. All of the same build and stance, they turn in to one being, repeated over and over again. They all hunch their backs, crouching in the narrow tunnels. They are void of individuality and work relentlessly. Moore makes them seem mechanic while retaining their organic shapes and associations. We are not detached from them, but connected; one man with piercing white eyes, stares directly out of the canvas, looking at you accusingly. It makes you feel uncomfortable. They are shown as strong and beast like, yet they also seem like children – helpless and lost.

The many different materials, Moore has used in this piece, adds to the expressive rendering of the dark tunnels. Layers of pen, charcoal, watercolour and gauche create a deep and solid darkness; the scratched markings create the rough surface of the mines. The miner’s lamps, tiny in comparison to their huge bodies, emit no light. The darkness is unavoidable; it penetrates their skin, minds and thus filters into our own as we stand in the exhibition space.

It is a moving and strong visual message that Henry Moore depicts. It is oppression, claustrophobia and industrial struggle. It is not beautiful. It is uneasy and opinionated. Definitely go and look for yourself.

Thursday 1 May 2008

COMMENTARY: 'Mirror Image x2' by Anne Desmet

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 1st May 2008


Focus on Art: "Thalia Allington-Wood’s fortnightly dissection of artworks in Manchester: this week Anne Desmet at the Whitworth"
 
What and where: Mirror Image x2 (archways) at the Whitworth Art Gallery
 

Date: 2008
 

Artist: Anne Desmet

Who’s she?

Said to be ‘one of the most original talents in contemporary artist-printmaking’, Anne Desmet trained at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford. Working from home in London, she primarily uses wood engraving and linocut relief to create prints and mixed media collages that display skill and eye for detail. Urban Evolution gives us Desmet’s focus on buildings and urban landscapes, themes which have dominated her work since the early 90s and her scholarship in Rome.

 
Mirror image of what? 

 
Manchester’s Victoria Baths. These are a couple of miles from Whitworth Art Gallery and a place the artist has spent years visiting and re-visiting. Mirror Image x2 Archways is one of 29 pieces Desmet has created at the Baths - the largest body of her work on a single building. Victoria Baths, built in 1906, is an exuberant building completed at the peak of Imperial confidence and civic pride. It comes with stained glass widows, coloured tiles and stunning ironwork. Left to rot – until it won money from BBC’s Restoration series in 2003 - Desmet’s work captures a still moment in development, before the restoration of the building began.
 
Mirror Image is printed twice on the front and rear of a translucent paper sheet and has a wonderfully subtle depth. The wash of powder blue creates liquid light over the room, tiles reflecting water. The two images of the archways mean that the print extends past the restraints of the building. Desmet transforms the space into a sensation: the experience of being within the depicted territory.

Elongated corridors, hidden alcoves, narrowing focal points are all emphasised to make the space seem distant and fantastical. Shafts of sunlight suggest unknown spaces beyond. This morphed perspective is present in many of Desmet’s other prints, the perception of looking down a crooked staircase in ‘Seeds of Change’ or up at a towering marble dome in ‘Pantheon tondo’.

Most poignant in Mirror Image x2 Archways is the sense of isolation that is present in such huge vacant spaces. Looking at Desmet’s work, you experience the echoing sounds, silence and devastating emptiness of this dilapidated building, once filled with noisy life.

So what’s it saying?

 
Desmet explores the wonder of human construction and the close relationship buildings hold with aspirations and desires. This is explicitly evident in her Babel Tower series, which draws upon the biblical account of man’s over-weening ambition. Her artwork ‘Tower of Babel (sandstone)’, with its exposed interior and foundations, shows, as Desmet explains, the ‘vulnerable yet aspirational qualities of towers…and the fragility of human dreams’.

The prints aim to create a fascination with transformation, time and how urban landscapes affect our consciousness and experiences. Our identity is formed by where we call home, our surroundings. Surroundings that hold a historic necessity. They will degrade, be left to crumble: they will then regenerate or be replaced. For better or for worse we are within constant metamorphosis. This is what Desmet’s art examines – architectural evolution in relation to our own natural development. In other words, watch out, it isn't going to last forever.

Is there anything else?

 
Oh yes there is. You can feast yourself on Anne Desmet’s heroic printmaking ancestors. In the next room is City Visions which gives you a role call of big-names, Piranesi, Hogarth, Hiroshige, Sickert, Nevinson and so on. The two shows complement each other perfectly. Definitely go along when you get a chance.

Anne Desmet’s exhibition: Anne Desmet – Urban Evolution and City Visions continues at The Whitworth Gallery, Oxford Rd, Manchester, until 3rd August 2008


LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/Focus-on-Art

Tuesday 22 April 2008

REVIEW: 'What Do You Want'

Published: STUDENT DIRECT, April 2008


What do you want? Is indeed the question posed by the art comprising this exhibition. Its artists, all of whom live in India and are female, seem to demand an answer from the audience. It is a very good question – What do we want when we look around an art exhibition? Well among other things we want to have our perception and ideas challenged, we want to be provoked, be made aware of something unknown to us, to have our emotions stirred.
Tejal Shah’s ‘What are you?’ certainly does this. She investigates the lives and status of male-female transgender ‘hijras’, who are ‘treated as subhuman’ within their society. The work, that uses both film and photography, successfully shows the prejudices, even within ourselves, towards those who do not fit within the expected binaries of our world.


In India, Hijras are considered to be neither male nor female but rather of a ‘third sex’ and are thus discriminated and abused by authorities and members of the public alike. At the back of the gallery space two huge projections stand next to each other playing the same video on slightly different time lapses. At the beginning it shows the silhouetted shapes of women at a window, real and sexual, who then walk towards the camera and reveal their more masculine features. This unexpected turn exposes our assumptions and lack of acceptance of those who are transgender. The images that cover the walls portray each individual hijra, as they see themselves or want to be seen. The results show three very different sides of femininity - the powerful and unreachable seducer, the mother, and the romantic heroine. All of which are identities Indian society refuses them. 

This to me was one of the most interesting of the exhibits ‘What do you want?’ had to offer for it explores the categorisation we are all subjugated to within societies. Our appearance, accents, and views mean that we are each placed within stereotypes by those around us, advertising is sent to your inbox guessing from your age and location what you might be interested in, people hand you a flyer if you look like someone they want at their night, you guess from external elements peoples sexual orientation.

The artists Shilpa Gupta and Shaina Anand make you aware of interesting parallels between India and Manchester. Having been to India myself, I remember the constant feeling of being observed by members of the public, especially as a woman and especially by men. Shaina Anand addresses this with her piece ‘CCTV Social’, in which she explores the similar extent we in Manchester are continually under surveillance. The many TV screens that fill the exhibition space expose the harsh knowledge that there are very few places within our city that you can truly be alone. We are encased by mechanical eyes, which have the power to follow our every movement. Our freedom to do as we please is in fact minimal and is thus is a comparable situation to Indian women ‘living within traditional family structures’.

Shilpa Gupta likewise addresses a lack of control we have upon our life, and its increase through the climate of fear absorbing our world’s climate. In the centre of her room are two tables covered with objects disguised by sewn cloth. These objects are unrecognisable and void of their identity. Before reading the explanation upon the wall, they seem to comment already upon the suppression women experience within India, for although the situation is improving, women are still viewed as largely inferior to men. They belong to men; they are a possession just like the belongings placed upon the tables. Learning of the objects origins however the piece takes on a different meaning. They comprise of confiscated belongings from the airports of Manchester and Mumbai, but we are not told which table displays which location. Thus it states that we are all ambiguous. Unsure of our positions within society, unsure of danger, unsure of identity. Just as we try to interpret the objects, we similarly interpret each other and ourselves.

Returning to the exhibitions title however, what we (or most certainly I) want, is to have art displayed to me in a well thought out manner, professionally, clearly and all in full working order. This is where ‘What do you want?’ fell short of its expectation. The videos of Shaina Anand froze and jumped, two separate artworks that relied upon audio were placed within close proximity to one another, frustratingly detracting from their individual impact and when viewing Shilpa Gupta’s confiscated objects I found the attendant picking them up and moving them from their intended position. Not what I want at all.

Nevertheless I do still recommend this exhibition. The art works all project a voice not often heard, that of Indian women. The art reflects the artists international experiences, the similarities and discrepancies between our culture and their own, and succeed in making us acknowledge that their issues, ‘affect people around the world’.

Sunday 20 April 2008

REVIEW: 'Urban Evolution' by Anne Desmet, Whitworth Art Gallery

Published: STUDENT DIRECT, April 2008

Anne Desmet’s new exhibition at the Witworth is one of the most exciting displays of art I have seen since arriving in Manchester last September. Said to be ‘one of the most original talents in contemporary artist-printmaking’, her work displays a meticulous skill and eye for detail, while managing to capture the viewers imagination.

Working with wood engraving and linocut relief printing, Desmet’s prints, and mixed media collages, explore the wonder architecture can instil and the close relationship buildings can hold with our human aspirations and desires. The linear and graphic element to her work calls to mind the art of Jim Dine, while the layering, repetition and spatial exaggeration apparent in many of her pieces remind one of Esher’s ‘Procession in Crypt 1927’ or ‘Inside St Peters 1935’.

Most of Desmet’s prints centre round buildings that are connected to the past, be it the mythical Tower of Babel, the British Museum or the ruins in Rome. All the work in the exhibition has a wonderful sense of perception, Desmet’s depictions extend past the physical restraints of the building to show the sensations experienced when, say, looking down a crooked staircase in ‘Seeds of Change’ or up at a towering marble dome in ‘Pantheon tondo’. They create a fascination with transformation, time and how urban landscapes affect our consciousness and experiences. Our identity is formed by where we call home, our surroundings. Surroundings that hold, as editor Jonathan Schofield notes, a ‘historic inevitability’. They will degrade, be left to crumble; they will then be regenerated or replaced. For better or for worse we are within constant metamorphosis.

The most exciting and recent is her work created from Manchester’s Victoria Baths, which represents, at 29 pieces, the largest body of work Anne Desmet has made on a single building. The Victoria Baths built in 1906, is an exuberant building made in the peak of imperialistic confidence. Now left to terrible disrepair, Desmet’s work captures a still moment in development, before the new restoration of the building begins. Most poignant is the sense of isolation that is present in such huge vacant spaces (see ‘Mirror Image x1 Pools’ and ‘Light Stairwell VBM’). Looking at Desmet’s work, you can really experience the building’s echoing sounds, silence and devastating emptiness, when it once was filled with many bathing and noisy people.

Anne Desmet’s work is rewarding on many levels conceptually and well as being visually very beautiful. To anyone who has the chance, I strongly recommend it.

COMMENTARY: 'Zephyr' by Bridget Riley

Commissioned (Unpublished due to Copyright Issues): Manchester Confidential, April 2008
What and Where: Zephyr at the Manchester Art Gallery
Date: 1976
Artist: Bridget Riley 
Who’s she?

Named the ‘math book muse’, Bridget Riley is one of Britain’s most famous artists. Born 1931, Riley was a pioneering artist in the Op Art movement of the swinging 60’s. Op Art moved away from traditional forms of representation and focused, not on presenting the subject as it was to a passive viewer, but in creating a thought process with the audience through non-representational geometrical shapes and patterns. Originally from London, but growing up in Cornwall, Riley’s work is heavily influenced by her experiences of nature as a child, especially her more organic wave pieces to which Zephyr belongs.

Zephyr, what on earth is that?

The Greek God of the West wind. Zephyr was the wind of the coming spring and therefore rather a fertile and promiscuous fellow. Notorious for killing Hyacinth out of mad jealousy, when the beautiful and sporting Spartan prince dismissed him and instead chose Apollo for his lover. Zephyr was also reported to have had several wives, including his sister Iris and the Goddess Chloris, whom he married after first raping her. Lovely chap.

Often depicted as a personified winged young man in Classical and Renaissance art, including Botticelli’s famous painting ‘La Primavera’, Bridget Riley’s depiction is ever so slightly more abstract.

Tell me more.

Zephyr, consisting solely of hard lined, ordered waves and painted impeccably with acrylic, is a beautiful and calm piece to behold. The pale matt blue, pink and green curved lines interplay with each other to create a serene composition, (I think here Riley is showing us the wind God at his less rampageous and more gentle breeze blowing behaviour). What makes the piece so interesting is that Riley subject is something normally not visible to the human eye. Wind, like a ghost, is only seen through its impressions on physical objects – trees moving, plastic bags blown down the street; yet her totally abstract image expresses what it is to experience this. It feels like a gentle summer breeze. Looking at the canvas the influence of nature is evident; water, summer and sunlight are all present. The colours and evocative curves emit a warm light, which holds emotional resonance and creates a sense of recognition within the viewer.

That’s odd, why’s it moving?

If you stand a few metres from Riley’s work, the lines and colours merge and pulse before your eyes, like ripples on water. The paint seems to come to life, animated and writhing. This happens because the calculations of space between the lines and curves on the canvas, work to create optical illusions in the eye’s retina. This creates a tension within the piece, the movements of the lines are rhythmical and suggest a continuous movement even once you have walked away – a beating heart. This results in the work of art becoming the space in between the painting and the viewer, the scientific and visual process of optical phenomena, which bestows a visible role and partnership between the painting and the audience. In order for the artwork to take effect, the viewer is needed.

What does it all mean?

Zephyr turns thought in to physicality. Riley produces a physical sensation through her work. It makes your perception change and your body sway with unease. As with other pieces of optical art, Zephyr challenges our way of knowing. It makes us perceive and feel movement and colours that aren’t actually there or happening. The paint and canvas are still, the colours clearly different when standing before it. As Bridget Riley herself explains, her work creates ’recognition of the sensation without the actual incident which prompted it’. Along with her other work, Zephyr attempts to dissect the visual experience, the process of observation.

Standing before this piece in the Manchester Art Gallery is a disorientating and curious experience not to be missed. Bridget Riley plays with the aesthetic of illusion to startling effect.