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’.

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.

COMMENTARY: 'Manfred on the Jungfrau' by Ford Maddox Brown (1840-61)

Published: STUDENT DIRECT, April 2008

Ford Maddox Brown was one the most important influences in the Pre Raphaelite movement. It was his accuracy in portraying the physical elements and subjects of his work, as well as the bold use of colour he employed, that captivated artists such as Rossetti, Hunt and Millais and that can be seen beautifully in ‘Manfred on The Jungfrau’.

The painting depicts the momentous scene of Byron’s poem Manfred, in which a hunter comes across the man in question, who tortured by his incestuous relationship with his sister, over education and explorations into dark magic, decides to throw himself off the mountain peak and end his life:

My bones had then been quiet in their depth;
They had not then been strewn upon the rocks
For the wind's pastime-- as thus-- thus they shall be-- In this one plunge.-- Farewell, ye opening heavens!
Look not upon me thus reproachfully--Ye were not meant for me-- Earth! take these atoms!

Thus the painting depicts a terrifying moment of tension and fate, the conclusion of which we are unaware of unless we read the poem. Manfred stands on the very edge of the icy cliff, inches away from sure death. Brown's work captures this single moment beautifully, and thus hits the viewer with striking force. Far away on the horizon we see the outline of a Cathedral city, the location and source of all Manfred's troubles. It hovers in mist, indefinite and mystical. A large contrast to the desolate surroundings we see in the foreground, which are depicted by Brown in clearly defined colours and lines. It is here, in natures most harsh and unforgiving terrain, where the weight of Manfred's actions can utterly consume him.

The painting is said to be the first Brown did in the open air, a method he would use from then on. This results in the wonderful bright light the painting exudes. The paleness of the sky seems to soar above you, while the whiteness of the snowy summit emphasises the daunting height at which Manfred stands.

Brown’s contrasting portrayal of the two characters, Manfred and the Chamois Hunter, may also, as critic Kenneth Bendiner notes, suggest a ‘sympathetic attention to the lower classes’ (The Art of Ford Maddox Brown, 1998, p.99). The spatial, atmospheric and dramatic relations between the two characters are stunning in their explanation of the poem. Manfred, the aristocratic, is hysterical and at odds with his surroundings. The extreme red of his dress emphasising the passionate struggle and fear that surges within his mind. His knees bend at the sight receding below him, while he claws his hair like a madman. The hunter, whose vermilion trousers balance the paintings composition, is on the other hand dressed in furs suitable for the wintry conditions. He appears calm and collected, not wanting to surprise the man before him and as a result watch him fall to his death. He is the heroic rescuer while Manfred is the ruined man. It shows the viewer the rational versus the chaotic and leaves us in no doubt of which is the better.

When you stand before the painting, you sense the vertigo Manfred must feel when he states: ‘I am giddy’. Your stomach surges with fear that he might fall, one moment of unbalance is all it would take. You yearn to know if the hunter will reach him in time. To go away reassured. Such is the skill with which Brown has interpreted Byron’s words and rendered the scene. The alarm it instills continues even once you have left the Manchester Art Gallery.

COMMENTARY: 'Autumn Leaves' by John Everett Millais (1856)

Published: STUDENT DIRECT, April 2008

In continuation from last weeks look at Ford Maddox Brown, the focus now falls on John Everett Millais, one of the three main figureheads of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and an artist greatly influenced by the work of Brown.

Millais was an astonishingly talented and early blooming painter, joining the Royal Academy when he was just ten years of age. Known for having an amazing visual memory, as well as hand and eye skill far above the average, his works seem to offer a completeness of composition and style not often found. He is said to have commented on his method: ‘I have painted every touch in my head, as it were, long ago, and have now only to transfer it to canvas’ (Raymond Watkinson, Pre-Raphaelite Art and Design, p.46), which is an ability that I at least find incredibly difficult to comprehend.

Autumn Leaves, which was placed within the Royal Academy exhibition the year it was painted, portrays an idyllic and inviting image. Four young girls, all still within childhood, clear the expanse of grass behind them from the fallen leaves. Their similarity in appearance and demeanour suggest that they are sisters, cherub like and innocent. Their dresses suggest poverty rather than opulence. The sky is bright and clear, glowing a magnificent gold over them and lighting their hair like halos. The darkness of the background makes the air seem as crisp as the dried leaves, which you can literally hear crunching under the girl’s feet when you stand before the painting. It is serene and still, a frozen moment, the leaves falling from the eldest girls hands poised mid air, in the act of floating through the mist.

It is a painting seeped in mortality and reflection. The setting sun and dying leaves suggest the passing of time, of closure and death. This is event more apparent with their juxtaposition to the youth and beauty of the four girls, which contrasts to the decay around them. It is almost as if they are the spring that is born out of winter, bursting anew from the bonfire they are building. The apple in the youngest girls hand, holds connotations of the apple from the Garden of Eden, and the cause of original sin; the sin that brought us our mortality. It tells us that the girls are fated to die just like the leaves, and reminds us that we too will all come to an end.

As an artwork it is slightly different to the typical Pre-Raphaelite style, the brushwork is broader and softer rather than hard and pointed. This works perfectly, however, with the autumn dusk, glowing light and silence of the rural setting. The colours, all harmoniously warm, contrast to the harsh and bright colours of Millais earlier work.

As was the aim of the Pre-Raphaelites, Millais projects a meticulously correct visual account of the subject and setting. Each element is painstakingly depicted - the fabric of the young girls dresses, the heaviness of their skirts, the different textures of their hair. The rural setting is shown in intricate detail; each leaf seems individual. Millais’s documentation of his subject feels as immediate as a photograph, despite the time and effort they must have taken to achieve. Autumn Leaves is a beautiful and moving image to observe.