REVIEW: Brian Griffiths, The Invisible Show

Published: ART REVIEW, 15th February 2012

Contrary to the suggestion of its title, the work in Brian Griffiths’s new exhibition at Vilma Gold is far from undetectable to the human eye.

Filling the white-walled space are five large metal-framed cubes, each structure variably titled Small Invisible, Medium Invisible or Large Invisible (all works, 2012), draped in layered, sewn canvas: Frankenstein tents that reach up towards the relatively low ceiling and bulge across the gallery. Overbearing, they constrict and prescribe the visitor’s movement; and at 2m high, they also prevent the average spectator from seeing over them. Their forms create narrow corridors around the room, forcing the viewer to traverse the works up close. The metal frames are orange with rust, while the pieces of canvas are old and worn: mottled with bruiselike spots, sunbleached patches and faint paint specks.

There is something worryingly abject about their appearance. The cloth tones are fleshlike: pale pinks and a yellowish beige, while the heavy, flaccid folds of cloth at times hang like loose skin. Occasionally deep vermillion stitching scars the fabric like deep, raw wounds; roughly mended patches appear like plasters covering a sore.

This tactile, anthropomorphic quality calls to mind a moment in H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897), from which the show takes its title: the novel’s protagonist, Griffin, an invisible psychopath, is killed by an angry crowd. Dead, his body once more becomes visible, trampled, wounded and bruised for all to see. In a similar vein, the sculptures’ coarsely woven material evokes the bandages Griffin (Griffiths?) uses to hide his transparency.

Seen in another light, the damp and worn marks upon the canvas surfaces hint at a past of utility at odds with the sterile rooms of the gallery. These tents seem displaced, evocative of refugee camps and abandoned houses. Their presence is sinister. What is it, the viewer is forced to ask, that these large canvas cubes cover? Is it something too horrible for us to see?

Yet these large structures are also potentially exciting and playful, suggesting childhood dens made from sheets and a kitchen table. The smell of the thick canvas is nostalgic of wet camping holidays or intrepid sea journeys, experienced or imagined. The narrow corridors constrict, but also incite curiosity and adventure.

I found myself instinctively kneeling on the floor and peering eagerly between folds to get a glimpse inside. When I succeeded, I found an unexpected warm orange glow, the gallery spotlights penetrating the canvas cube structures. These initially ominous objects in the end offer a place of refuge, each tent a void and surface to be filled with fabrications and illusions.

The sculptures of The Invisible Show differ from what one might expect of Griffiths’s work. They are far more minimal and abstract than Griffiths’s previous work. His gigantic plaster panda head installed on a Gloucester Road Underground platform in London as part of the 2007 Life Is a Laugh installation, for example, or his early cardboard control-room installations, reminiscent of the slipshod aesthetic of the old Thunder Birds sets, or Beneath the Stride of Giants (2004), Griffiths’s large ship-like sculpture composed of bits of junk furniture.

Yet the underlying thread of play juxtaposed with trepidation present in all the above remains. These seemingly plain, slightly grotesque tents open up and take the visitor to a world of endless imaginative possibility, both of horror and delight.

LINK: http://www.artreview.com/forum/topics/brian-griffiths-the-invisible-show-vilma-gold 

Brian Griffiths: The Invisible Show is at Vilma Gold, London to 19 February

REVIEW: Julia Oschatz – Below is Flat Up There

Palagkas.Temporary’s most recent exhibition space is the Old Pimlico Library. A building filled with disregarded shelves, books long gone, tables upturned and still speckled with pastel mounds of chewing gum; glass panels giving view to laminated office desks no longer occupied. 

German artist Julia Oschatz, who created an entirely new body of work for this exhibition, was not presented with the plain canvas of white walls and clear floors, synonymous with the modern gallery. But rather a space saturated with remnants of its past. This teaming, however, has resulted in a wonderfully integrated show, where location and art enter into delicate dialogue.

Oschatz has created work sensitive and empathetic to its situation. Large cardboard structures reach in precarious shapes up into the ceiling, and curve to form hallowed caves in the children’s reading area, where tiny red plastic chairs still populate. Constructed roughly, silver tape and staples left visible, the physical weakness of each momentous object is made apparent.  As a result, so too is the vulnerable fate of the rooms they occupy. 

Embedded within these installations and scattered lopsided on the floor are old TV sets displaying videos of Oschatz’s performance art. Across each convex screen moves an odd creature dressed in loose plane grey clothing, with large clumpy blocks for feet and various bulbous, featureless heads: some spherical, some tubular, others loosely resembling a rabbit. 

In most, this mute, mysterious animal enacts fruitless actions: scrubbing the floor aggressively with a broom covered in black ink, frantically tying knots in a long rope, spilling ping pong balls over the floor. Predominantly playful in tone, there is also a disarmingly sinister undercurrent. In these moving images the viewer witnesses both mania and the creation of chaos to no clear purpose. The futility articulated highlights the fruitlessness of these previously long unused rooms.

While the re-presentation of performance art in film format can often dampen the mediums effect, (as many art theorists have argued, a large part of performance art’s power lies in the physical presence of artist and audience together in a particular temporal moment), here it only adds.

The TV screens enforce a barrier between audience and creature, rendering the viewer utterly helpless to the bizarre, destructive actions of Oschatz’s fantastical protagonist: a sensation particularly poignant considering the many library closures across the UK this year, despite frequent and substantial protests. 

Yet through these videos, Oschatz also offers a glimmer of hope. Each screen presents a documentation of her live art, thus making this somewhat dilapidated space fulfill its original purpose. Through the work shown in ‘Below is Flat Up There’, the Old Pimlico Library is, delightfully, made an archive once more.

REVIEW: Barry Flanagan at Tate Britain

Published: LONDON CONFIDENTIAL, 8th November 2011

"Barry Flannigan at Tate Britain Review. Thalia Allington-Wood's interest is sparked by the artist's early works."

Never much of a fan of Barry Flanagan’s famous bronze Hares (the large-eared leaping creatures of his later work that provided the artist with financial security and public popularity), I held slight trepidation attending this exhibition. Yet Flanagan’s ‘Early Works’ from 1965 – 1982 are a delight: subtle, but incredibly powerful.

If unaccustomed to the objects of Flanagan’s early years, Tate chucks you right in at the deep end. Walk through the entrance of this exhibition and before you stands ‘Aaing j gni aa’, an abstract, somewhat ridiculous sculpture of bulging shapes made from different coloured fabric packed tight with sand, one with a singular flower poking out of the top. It is an object that would sit well in a contortion of Serge Danot’s wonderful children’s TV show The Magic Roundabout.

Needless to say, it is not advised to search for a particular meaning behind such work. Flanagan’s art is precisely about confuting such cultural practice. His work playfully scrambles codes and alters perception.

Take ‘4 casb 2 '67’, in which towering monoliths in brilliant blue stand solidly rising from the ground, a large thick rope winding between them. These trunks provide all the expectations of traditional sculptural columns: they are weighty, overbearing and solid. Yet step closer and these qualities are suddenly undermined. Made from canvas filled with sand, their form is malleable; the tubes stretch at the seams, struggling to contain the grains within. The columns are, in fact, tentative and vulnerable.

Likewise ‘June 2’ 69’, a large work in room three, sticks two fingers up at standard artistic language. A large rectangle of fabric, thick and roughly cut with frayed edges, is propped up by knarled hazel braches. The materials used to create a traditional painting are presented and fulfill their usual functions – the wood still holds up the canvas as would a frame, and the canvas is still stretched by the wood to be visible to the viewer. Yet the supporting wood, normally hidden behind a painted surface, is now the focus, becoming drawn lines dividing the image.

In similar vein, and a favourite of mine, ‘untitled (carving no. 13/81)’ makes hard lime wood look like soft clay squeezed by a human hand. Flanagan’s work subverts what one expects from the sculptural form.

Hugely influential upon his work was author Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), who wrote ‘Ubu Roi’, later championed later by the Dadaists and Surrealists as the first absurdist drama. The word ‘absurd’ befits the work of Barry Flanagan quite aptly. 

In ‘Ubu Roi’, provocative Papa Turd wipes a soiled toilet cloth over his guests’ dinner in the first act. ‘Heap 4’, a smaller piece by Flanagan consisting of long, flaccid, fabric tubes in green, purple and yellow draped over each other in a pile, resembles something not far from the name of Jarry’s farcical character.

Despite complementary colours, ‘Heap 4’ made me rather nauseous, and it is this feeling of stomach turning which gets to the heart of Flanagan’s brilliance. His work holds a wonderful tactility that is a force to be reckoned with.

Hessian, rough wood, sand, rope and unpolished stone: all the materials Flanagan uses are raw and sensory. When rope digs into tight sacks, as with several of the pieces on show, images of bound flesh are evoked and ones hairs crawl. A pale washed canvas with a delicate spiral cut from the center and hanging down loosely like an apple peel, conjured images of flayed skin. 

There are moments of wonderful humor too. Such as ‘Poem for the Lips’, a work on paper whose stream of letters make ones mouth contort in pouts, goldfish like, when read out loud; and ‘A Nose in Repose’, a carved stone loosely resembling the human snout, resting proudly on a Jenga formation of wooden blocks.

When I entered Tate Britain on a recent windswept Sunday to see this show, the entrance of John Martin’s apocalyptic paintings was clustered with hubbub and bustle. However, Flanagan’s work should not be missed. It is a truly wonderful exhibition, full of evocative work, and deserves to be far more populated with curious visitors. Martin’s fire and brimstone there might not be, but sometimes slow-burners are all the more rewarding.

LINK:  http://www.londonconfidential.co.uk/Arts-and-Entertainment/Art/Barry-Flannigan-at-Tate-Britain-Review

FEATURE: Dennis Sever's House

Published: LONDON CONFIDENTIAL, 2nd November 2011

"The Haunted: Dennis Severs' House. Thalia Allington-Wood discovers a gem in east London."

Standing in dark, shadowed, shuttered room of the seventeenth century, my companion and I are awe struck. We have been whirled into another time and my Converse trainers feel glaringly out of place.

The air is thick with the smell of tobacco and the burning of tallow candles. Two dead pheasants hang against a dark paneled wall and the embers of a fire glow orange in an iron hearth. The room we are in is in disarray. A chair is upturned, a glass of pungent port spilt, seeping a dark bloodstain on a white tablecloth covered in crumbs.

We are in Dennis Severs' House, nestled down a narrow street in East London. Painstakingly recreated to its original state and resurrected for the public every Sunday afternoon and Monday evening. Food of the period is cooked and left steaming, footsteps patter from hidden speakers, clay pipes are lit and left to issue smoke as you wander across 100 years in eerie silence.

The people who keep Dennis Severs' House running don’t wish it to be called a museum. None of the dry explanatory notices or neutralizing effects of modern exhibition displays are found here. This is a place where, rather, the past comes alive to startling and evocative effect.

A ticket (which must be booked in advance) will let you slip from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, between domestic privilege on the main floors and poverty in the attic.

Wandering the house on a blustery grey Monday evening, one can’t help but feel like an intruder. Wooden floorboards creak as you peer among belongings; bottles of liqueur line a table; wax sealed letters rest on a mantel piece. Alarmingly, we find the symbol of the Freemasons scratched frantically into a wall (Sherlock Holmes would have been proud).

Upstairs, we enter a ladies bedroom, where the scent of oranges stuffed with cloves and coffee that sits slowly bubbling below a candle on a small wooden table fills our nostrils. On the bed, the indent of last night’s slumber remains on the pillow, the covers are thrown back. A black cat eyes us suspiciously, flicking its tail.

Continuing our adventure, we push back laundry that hangs to dry in the rafters, reaching the top of the house. Cobwebs hang thick on a threadbare poster bed, a pan of fresh piss at its foot. An ink-splattered desk sits in the corner: old volumes teeter upon it in a pile.

Many museums could learn a thing or two from what this magical place is doing. Entering this house is like stepping through Alice’s looking glass into another world, or driving head first into the pages of Charles Dickens. These rooms belong to the London of Little Dorrit, Bleak House and Oliver Twist: melancholy streets, dingy and grime filled, as Church bells chime ominously. This, surely, is how to capture the imagination of school children (and adults) to the wonder history has to offer: to make the past tangible and real.

It is incredible. I could spend hours and hours here.

Unfortunately, however, our time is up. The front door swings wide and we are thrust back into modern London. A black cab rolls past, as our ears retune to the grumble of traffic and the jaunt of Brick lane.

Yet, walking along the cobbles of Folgate Street, the clatter of horse hooves and the rattle of iron wheels from Dickensian history continue to echo in my ears. Dennis Sever’s House is a place you will find hard to forget.

LINK:  http://www.londonconfidential.co.uk/Arts-and-Entertainment/The-Haunted-Dennis-Severs-House

REVIEW: Phyllida Barlow

Published: LONDON FESTIVAL FRINGE, 20th October 2011

Phyllida Barlow’s exhibition at Houser and Wirth in Piccadilly closes this Saturday. So make haste – flag that cab or top up that oyster card – it’s blooming brilliant.

Huge, striking sculptures fill the gallery’s many spaces, demanding interaction and attention.

In the main room, an abstract sculptural forest reaches up into the ceiling. Large blocks with the appearance of concrete stand upon thin poles: craning your neck at these vertiginous objects feels intimidating and precarious.

Yet these seemingly heavy, dangerous blocks are in fact polystyrene. Like tricks in a joke shop: rubber plastic piles of vomit bought to horrify flat mates, Barlow’s work plays and deceives.

Materials are rough and ready. Smeared paint and slapped on concrete proliferate in the work on show. You can feel the process of making ooze from each artwork.

Many of the pieces feel as if landed from outer space.

In an upstairs room ominous and large painted plywood objects clutter the space, toppling and tumbling across the floor. In the attic, giant “pompoms”, as Barlow calls them, populate: bursts of garish multicolor in an otherwise shadowed hollow. Playful yet some how poignant. There is a sense of loss and neglect in their random placement.

Without subject or narrative, Barlow’s sculptures are visceral entities to experience of your own accord. What ever that accord may be, the art in this exhibition cannot help but arrest.

Highly recommended.

Until 22 October 2011, Hauser & Wirth London, Piccadilly

Link: http://londonfestivalfringe.com/general/post/?p=13097

TRAVEL: Scandinavian Islands

Published: PLANET CONFIDENTIAL, 4th August 2011

"Aland is tranquility defined: Thalia Allington-Wood gets giddy over swimming with salmon"

In 1854, Robert Edgar Hughes, English eccentric and man of the cloth, decided on a holiday to Aland, the main island of the archipelago between Sweden and Finland, and the central destination of my trip.

It was an odd choice. In choosing Aland in the year of 1854, Hughes had chosen the scene of a war. For in 1854, the Battle of Bomarsund, part of the action in the far-off Crimean War, shook the woods of this small outcrop of land.

Standing with the red Notvik tower and its remaining canons to my left, where shells were fired and rifles shot between the French, British and Russian, it is difficult to imagine the smoke and shouts, the billowing fire and the ‘hurly burly of shells passing’, which Hughes’ diaries describe.

Instead, the sky is clear and quiet the sun shines brightly, flowers are in bloom, a cool breeze blows from the sea, its water glistening and calm.

Hughes would have been disappointed. I, however, am in raptures. Aland is beautiful. Breathtaking even.

Despite his barmy pastime of packing a knapsack ‘freighted with wine, biscuits and condiments’ and heading in search a ‘splendid scene of havoc’, Hughes got one thing right at least. Aland, lush and wild, is the perfect location for a break filled with picnics.

I’m going to confess straight away: I fell in love with the place.

From Stockholm we took the over-night ferry: a giant boat that consumed 30 tons of fuel on an average journey and was capable of 32,000 horse power, yet was controlled by the smallest joy stick known to man. While a pleasant mode of travel, with sunset views over the archipelago, for those of you who would rather avoid an evening of mirror ball bedazzled dancing to cruise ship crooners, the two-hour ferry is a good alternative.

Stepping from the deck on to Aland soil is like shedding weights off your shoulders. Think of all you associate with the word metropolis: traffic, crowds, concrete, rush hour. Aland and the surrounding islands are the antithesis of all these.

Rush hour here consists of seeing another car on the road. In Mariehamn, Aland’s only town, and home to 11,000 of the total 28,000 inhabitants who live across all the islands, rush hour maybe consists of ten fellow road users. Local buses and ferries from island to island are frequent and free. Time passes at what ever pace you wish. Stress is a concept one can’t imagine existing.

While Mariehamn is quaint, with a museum and art gallery to keep one entertained, the real joy of being here is the outdoors: be it on land or water.

As such, for the first two nights, we staying in a small cottage set into a wood of evergreens. The setup was functional and nothing luxurious. But waking up, wooden rafters above your head, to a stroll through the trees, pines crunching beneath your toes as the high morning sun casts long shadows, down to a deserted cove for a swim, just you and the salmon, is an altogether different kind of luxury and one my city worn self soaked up like ambrosia.

The real way to explore land has to be by bicycle, easily rentable for around 10 Euros a day. This is place perfect for leisurely peddling. Winding paths, with only minor hills to climb, take you past forests, meadows filled with long grass, red wooden windmills, and glistening waters frequented by swans. Elk and deer roam. Each day we saw proud antlers raise their heads from the fields and bound through the grass. Poets beware. You will find it difficult not become instantly whimsical after a few hours exploring.

For water expeditions, my favorite boat trip had to be out to Kobba Klintar, a pilot station for guiding in coming boats through the rock filled water, now out of use. It is accessible either by private boat taxi for about 20 Euros return or on a kayak excursion. From the red rocks of this jut of land, covered in yellow and blue lichen, boats enter the horizon. First merely a hazy spot before their masts loom into view and protrude against the blue skyline. There is a museum, a small café, and the water is clear, practically saltless, and wonderful for a swim.

There is much more I could wax lyrical about: Kastelholm Castle, the beautiful saffron infused Aland pancakes to be eaten at Pettas bakery, saunas and ice cold sea dips before delicious dinners at Havsvidden (the place to stay if you’re looking for top end, jaw dropping accommodation), and, of course, I can’t forget to mention the beer. Stallhagen, Aland’s very own, with 13 different products ranging from Hunungsol, a delicious honey beer to Dunkles, a drink that gives Guinness a run for its money. The brewery offers tours and tastings in, again, beautiful surroundings.

My last morning came round all too quickly, spent at the wonderful Hotel Nestor (highly recommended) on the island of Korppoo. I dragged out my final morning swim for as long as I possibly could, the water gleaming, a white rowing boat gently rocking from the small wooden jetty, the birds singing…

People here look ten years younger than they are for a reason. These Scandinavian islands are food for the soul and I, for one, advise any to put them on their summer menu.

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Travel/Aland-is-tranquility-defined

REVIEW: Takashi Murakami at Gagosian Gallery

Published: LONDON CONFIDENTIAL, 2nd August 2011

 "Takashi Murakami Review: Thalia Allington-Wood visits the Gagosian Gallery… it speaks for itself"

STANDING in the anesthetically pristine space of Gagosian’s Britannia Street gallery, two achingly large breasts bulge and loom above my head.

Nipples covered in smooth white material, both fleshy sandbags strapped together with a garishly purple belt. So voluminous are they, the lithe body supporting them threatens to topple dangerously under their weight.

At five foot ten, I have to admit, looking at such objects from below is a novel experience. Rarely do I feel dwarfed by a pair of female mammary glands. I certainly have never felt Lilliputian by a pair resembling computer animation come to life. Large enough they could flatten me into a pancake.

But this is the artwork of Takashi Murakami, popular Japanese artist extraordinaire. Whose smiling flowers adorn limited edition handbags; who covered a condom packet in precious stones in collaboration with Pharrell Williams in 2009; who placed an anime style sculpture of a squat naked king in the coronation room at Versailles. An act that, of course, met with French public outcry, but was somewhat genius in my opinion. A larger culture clash would be difficult to find.

I don’t know why I expected anything less.

‘3m Girl’ (2011), made from fiberglass reinforced plastic and steel, is the artwork in question. A towering, hideous display of cartoon fetishism: red high heels, stockings, tightened straps, dog collar, pointed gem riddled nails. All are present; as large spangled eyes and a miniature nose bend down to greet you.

No one has ever accused Murakami of being subtle. This is a work, like all the others in the room, which shouts its subject matter loud and clear.

Sex and fantasy anyone?  We’ve got it in spades.

In the past I’ve always found Murakami’s work incredibly entertaining. He has a sense of humour, without doubt. Anyone who titles a seriously polished and incredibly large sculpture of a gold penis, ‘Mr. Big Mushroom’, and a matching gargantuan silver vagina, ‘Mrs. Clam’ (both 2011). Each of their fronts are adorned with smiling faces resembling Pac-Man, which are guaranteed to bring on a smile.

But beyond this light entertainment, (the laughs are often easy ones), his work seems somewhat hollow. It’s the same feeling with the work of artist Jeff Koons, to which Murakami is constantly compared. Reproducing everyday objects on a grand scale or many times over is all very well. My magpie instinct can happily find enjoyment in Koon’s giant metallic balloons for a time. But then what? Usually one walks away profoundly unaffected.

Takashi Murakami’s work at the Gagosian show failed to alter my opinion. As spectator I felt respect, occasional delight, but also dissatisfaction.

Respect because with Murakami’s work comes technical brilliance. Standing in front of ‘Nurse Ko2’ (2011), a life-size three-dimensional sculpture of a scantily clad nurse, cross-shaped, blood-filled syringe in hand, is to experience the uncanny valley in reverse. So much like a computer animation does she appear, your eyes can trick you into momentarily believing that she is in fact two-dimensional: a visual slippage both unnerving and impressive.

Delight in ridiculous moments: staring up a giant matron’s frilly skirt, her knickers wedged between two stupidly spherical buttocks, for example, while in the serious environment of a contemporary gallery. Murakami’s work is a colourful, fiberglass assault on the eyes: garish, playful, frequently bordering on ludicrous.

Disappointment due to lack of profundity: these renditions of cartoon sexual fantasies, with tiny, slender proportions and large, violet-coloured, doe eyes, titillate, but to little effect and say little in return. If the show makes any comment at all, it is on societies long held desire for unrealistic, pornographic imagery.

By adopting, in two paintings entitled ‘Shunga: Gibbons’ and ‘Shunga: Bow Wow’ (both 2010), the erupting, vein bursting, members found in Shunga, a style of Japanese erotic art that reached its peak of popularity in the Edo period (commonly dated between 1603 and 1868), Murakami reminds that sexual art of the past has flung the stone as far from reality as the similarly phantasmal and illusory images of the contemporary Japanese graphics his work most frequently employs.

But this is hardly a groundbreaking exposition on sexual desires or the sex industry.

In moments of cynicism, especially remembering that Gagosian is a power force of a commercial gallery, this show can seem to merely audaciously play into the hands of Murakami’s large army of collectors. Murakami’s work sells extremely well; his supposedly erotic work, even better. ‘My Lonesome Cowboy’, for example, sold at auction in 2008 for a whopping fifteen million.

Works that prompt deep contemplation you will not find at Gagosian; a laugh you may. If Murakami wishes to provoke, he fails to do so. The pornographic nature of the work is never shocking. His work is art of ambivalence.

Takashi Murakami
June 27th – August 5th, 2011

Gagosian Gallery
6 – 24 Britannia Street
 WC1X 9JD
 02078419960
 Tues – Sat: 10am – 6pm

Link: http://www.londonconfidential.co.uk/Arts-and-Entertainment/Art/Takashi-Murakami-Review