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

TRAVEL: Egypt's Red Sea Coast

Published: PLANET CONFIDENTIAL,  22nd May 2011

"Red Sea R&R: Thalia Allington-Wood swims, relaxes, drinks, relaxes...er...relaxes then relaxes"

Say the words Egypt and holiday in the same sentence and you’re likely to be met with a raised eyebrow. Yet the placards and rallying cries that surge Cairo’s streets and our news pages are a far cry from Egypt’s Red Sea coast.

So much so, in fact, the reporter in me was a little disappointed: bar a few stickers exclaiming ‘We Love Egypt: 25th January’ on local taxis, signs of revolution were non-existent. I did, once, get to pass a military post: a military post, that is, where soldiers and locals were enjoying a good game of cards and a smoke.

I had no choice it seemed, when touching down in Sharm El Sheikh, but to put on a sunhat, slap on the sun cream and truly have a holiday.

“Weather as you would expect, clear skies with a ground temperature of 35 degrees”.

This isn’t very unsual. It has rained once for the past two years in Sinai, meaning tooth, named for the fang like shape of this Egyptian peninsular. Prior to that, our guide informed, the soil last quenched its thirst in 1999: welcome, dear readers, to a land of eternal summer.

This continual scorching is reflected geographically: harsh, arid, and, of course, red, earth stretches as far as the eye can see. As the girl to my right exclaimed, leaning her heavily perfumed self over my lap to look through the window: “It’s like landing on Mars”.

Yet it is not just for the florid, rusty landscape that I quote my fellow passenger. For the resorts of Sharm El Sheik and Hurghada, (my second destination), are slightly like being on another planet, a very new planet. Thirty years ago nothing was here. These hotels have practically been airlifted in, if not from outer space, then certainly a planet of luxury holiday production lines.

This is not a criticism. If you’re looking for Egyptian culture, then the Red Sea is not the place for you. That the resort’s corner shop has an Aldi sign hanging above its door says it all. Yet culture is not the aim of being here. What is, as I quickly learnt, is relaxation, with a large and capital R: to wash away worries in crystal waters and bake away cares.

Off growling roads, lined with pyramid casinos and the obligatory Starbucks and MacDonald’s, both Ghazala Garden Hotel in Sharm el Sheikh and the five-star Makadi Palace in Hurghada, certainly know how to help you succeed in this task.

Porters swoop, doors are opened, the next glass brought before you’re half way through your first. A companion once found himself with three gin and tonics, so fast did the waiters preempt his beverage desires.

This is not the all-inclusive package nightmare of square pools and concrete high-rises. Rather, architecture displays Middle Eastern influence: wooden trellis, pointed arches and impressive domes.

In Ghazala Gardens no building is higher than tree level, small pools are interlinked, and winding paths lead to small accommodation blocks. Balconies are given seclusion by the reaching flowers of Bougainvillea and Jacaranda trees. Makadi Palace, though much bigger and fully booked when we stayed, miraculously manages somehow to create the same atmosphere of quiet and privacy.

The rooms are spacious and the beds capacious. I don’t think I’ve ever slept in one three pillows wide and then some. Décor is pleasingly neutral, with treats for nibbling on arrival and imaginative towel decoration: my favorite being a crocodile with TV remote in jaw.

Both have their own stretch of beach, where looking out over an aquamarine horizon, waiters bring ice cold drinks to your sun bed. Life is tough here when impersonating a vegetable.

To avoid becoming a complete baked potato, the Sinai desert is a short excursion and well worth it. Be it via hair raising Quad bike or stomach jostling Jeep Safari. Auburn and terracotta hews fill sandals and crunch beneath feet. Fiery monoliths tower out of the ground, with jagged tips meeting paint box blue. The Bedouin herd their camels across the sands. It is stark and beautiful.

Yet, the true highlight of coming here is, unsurprisingly, the water itself: the turquoise blue one never believes on postcards, warm and calm. The many shallow waters and coral reefs make the Red Sea a top diving destination and perfect place to come as a beginner.

We took a snorkeling trip (highly recommended). Jumping of the boat into the deep we saw a Broomtail wrasse, a multitude of Parrotfish and stingless jellyfish, an eerie boat wreck and thankfully no sharks, before heading off to ‘Paradise’ for lunch (no joke - it had a sign).

A bay on a most desert like desert island where we did some more of that prime occupation, relaxing, before cruising back as the sun descended: the Red Sea truly turning the color of Vermillion.

The resorts of Sharm El Sheik and Hurghada are void of anything that remotely resembles a museum, art gallery or authentic ancient market. But here is a destination where sunlight streams be it January, July or October, where that warm gust of air, hitting your cheek as you exist the plane, is a given. Where beaches are perfect for a wind down. Where a world of underwater delights waits to be explored.

And order seafood. Never have I attacked so many meaty prawns of shockingly large proportion. My mouth waters at the memory.

LINK: http://www.planetconfidential.co.uk/Abroad/Red-Sea-R-and-R

FEATURE / REVIEW: Spencer Tunik's Naked Pictures of Me

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 19th July 2010

"Tunick’s naked pictures of me: Thalia Allington-Wood goes to the Lowry to look at herself naked in the Spencer Tunick exhibition"

About two and a half months ago I volunteered for Spencer Tunick’s ‘Everyday People’ at the Lowry.

I queued, I shivered, and I bared all for the camera. It was a great experience. However, when I went to see the exhibition last weekend I came away feeling disappointed.

When Tunick began photographing nudes in public places, he and his models worked against authority; the volunteers risking arrest for their nakedness. These pictures in their very nature were audacious and opinionated. This is inevitably sterilised in his recent work, which is organised, authorised and heavily staged by a troupe of extra hands.

So if no longer making a statement of rebellion, Tunick's work needs to be visually arresting. Yet prints that are two small to create any impact and with dull colours line the Lowry’s walls. The underwhelming delivery seems at odds with the vast amounts of money spent on such a commission.

Though never a massive fan on Tunick’s work, (I took part out of curiosity rather than admiration), I do find some of his work striking, even moving.

His early photographs in Montreal 2001, for example, have a sense of immediacy. Bodies pile up along a street into the distance, the image is grainy; it feels as though the artist has stumbled across the bodies he photographs rather than orchestrating them.

Similarly, I like the images from his series in Dusseldorf 2006, where people pile beneath large oil paintings, their poses responding to the painted figures. They remind one of the background story of a painting, the life models, the studio of the artist.

However, the impact of these works, and others, can be easily lost in the vast sea of his back catalogue. Tunick’s work now has almost a commercial quality to it. Though I’m sure not intentional, their sensationalism, the type of coverage received by the press, means his work can feel like advertising for a location be it Sydney, Mexico or Manchester.

I was aware of this machine-like quality to his work when I signed up, but hoped for an image that made one stop and look at the body in a different manner. I wanted to watch skin stop being skin, in a shape not normally seen, in a setting and composition that was beautiful.

Sadly I did not find this at the Lowry.

I do not regret the nine hours I spent in the freezing cold, absolutely starkers. It was a lot of fun and I’m not a fan of our bodies being pent up, tantalised, and idolised. It was nice for flesh to be flesh and nothing else for a while. I really felt the ‘liberation’ so often voiced by participants.

Tunick does not convey this experience in his photos. Nor necessarily should he. Hunched, wind pinched naked bodies are unlikely to convey jubilance. However art should always say something. It need not be loud. It need not even be clever. But it need be something and something interesting. Looking at these images, even with the bias of seeing myself within them, ultimately I don’t think they have much to say at all.

Everyday People by Spencer Tunick is at The Lowry until the 26th September.

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Arts/Tunicks-naked-pictures-of-me

FEATURE: The Experience of a Spencer Tunik

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 3rd May 2010

"Nude for art, the naked truth: the experience of being naked during Spencer Tunick’s art gatherings in city locations"

In the darkness of Sunday 2 May at 2.30 am, I find myself standing in a long line of strangers waiting to participate in Spencer Tunick’s ‘Everyday People’. Come 11.30 in the morning, nine hours of intermittent nakedness later, I walk home from Piccadilly feeling exhausted but elated.

Becoming naked in front of hundreds is not initially, to most, a desirable thing to do. Yet, and I’m reiterating many previous and fellow participants in Tunick’s installations here, it feels great.

Nakedness and bodies within our society are judged daily. Take everyone’s clothes away and it is remarkable how instantly the memory of social ideals and inhibitions disappear. Rather than make one feel more insecure of personally disliked body parts, seeing the difference in everyone’s bodies and realising that even though you are naked, no one is really looking or caring about your body’s appearance, results in indifference, confidence, even pride in oneself. Being naked in front of other people and other people’s nakedness very quickly becomes mundane, natural, and enjoyable.

So all the clichés of this experience are true (sorry Jonathan Schofield no holocaust references here I’m afraid - see the other Tunick article on the homepage for the reasons behind this comment). Our ice cold, goose pimpled, wind bitten buttocks were indeed ‘liberated’, so to speak, from the confinement of social decorum.

In a society obsessed with the projection and construction of identity, through clothing, jewellery, hairstyles or face book, influenced by the presentation of aesthetic ideals in the media, Tunick’s installations provide rejection of this. Being naked became an experience of anonymity and equality.

Jonathan is right in the comment after his article about viewing as an outsider the Tunick event. There he describes the experience as un-erotic. In society the body is rarely conceived separate to sex. Our bodies are inherently fetishised by their concealment and the titillation revealing clothes embody; nakedness is consigned to the bedroom. However, remove this and place bodies in a sterile, surreal situation and what you are left with is flesh that is utilitarian and banal through normalisation.

Tunick's work is subversive: these bodies are naked in urban environments where nudity is prohibited. This is where any feeling of liberation comes from as a participant.

But Tunick’s work is not about the experiences of his volunteers. Our emotions of freedom, or what have you, are merely a positive bi-product of the situation created in the making of his art. They should not define how his images are viewed.

Beauty, softness, or for that matter, loneliness and fragility is not to my mind the focus of these images. To understand these images in such a manner buys into our social obsession with the individual, the self and the body.

Tunick’s images are not about the individual or identity. Look at the images and you see a sea of nakedness in which each volunteer serves as a shape, creating patterns and formations in the space. In Tunick’s instillations, the human body is a texture, comparative to the concrete and brick of the surroundings.

Despite being whipped by freezing winds at 6am and suffering excessive sleep deprivation; all the participants I spoke too would once again wobble their flesh in fun defiance of social convention. I can't wait to see how the artworks turn out.

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Arts/Nude-for-art-the-naked-truth

NB: Clio Euterpe is a pseudonyme used for this one article.

REVIEW: 'The Walls are Talking' at The Whitworth Art Gallery

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 8th February 2010

"The Walls Are Talking: Wallpaper, Art and Culture, Thalia Allington-Wood on the Whitworth Art Gallery going to the wall"

Wallpaper is decorative and domestic; it is chosen by a homeowner to alter their private space, to create a specifically desired atmosphere and display their character.

Wallpaper is by no means a neutral medium, and it is its power and poignancy that the artists of the Whitworth’s new exhibition draw upon, manipulating and subverting its connotations of home, comfort and identity.

The show begins in the Whitworth’s South Gallery, which has been plastered with conceptual artist Thomas Demand’s ‘Ivy’ wallpaper. Demand has turned the room into a leafy enclosure; the walls merge into the park that extends outside the large windows flooding the space with winter sun. It feels like entering a secret garden: mischievous, innocent, and playful. Sensations that prove uncomfortable and disturbing when considering the piece is inspired by a child murderer’s lair.

Artist Lisa Hecht uses wallpaper to present the home as a place of imprisonment, with the pattern of an unforgiving metal fence. The viewer would become enclosed within Hecht’s papered space, the sky blue background connoting a freedom beyond the walls denied to those inside.

As well as a possible prison, the home is often depicted through these wallpapers as a place where appearance is a mask covering a darker, more vulnerable reality. Rosemarie Trockel’s wallpaper depicts a photograph of Trockel’s sculptural piece ‘Egg Curtain’, the hanging hollow eggs symbolising the female fertility and birth of children expected within the home, but also the fragility of this celebrated norm, so easily smashed, so often unobtainable.

Catherine Bertola’s subtle and tactile piece ‘Beyond the Looking Glass’ highlights the pretence of ideal domestic life, and the deception that lies behind many a perfect family. Bertola, using ash collected from her own hearth, creates a 19th century floral pattern, in which the flowers peel off the four walls, some scattered on the floor. The title, recalling the sequel book to Alice in Wonderland, suggests functionality. This is a domestic space beginning to fall apart before our very eyes. Similarly, in Erwan Venn’s visual installation, flower patterns fall from the wall to the sound of smashing cutlery.
Virgil Marti, Bullies, 1992-2001Francesco Simeti, Arabian Nights wallpaper, 2003

Other artists, such as Francesco Simeti adopt traditional 18th century designs to highlight modern political issues. ‘Arabian Nights’ inserts photographs of Afghan refugees into romantic painted landscapes, commenting on the many disrupted homes caused by war. In another, a pattern of acorns suggesting birth and growth are contrasted to photographic images of men removing toxic matter in white protective clothing. These images of death, contamination and poison framed by elaborate borders, suggest the pain and disruption that is found behind the façade of many a seemingly perfect domestic situation.

Though this all sounds heavy going, and pain and trauma certainly reside behind the decorative appearance of much of this wallpaper, comedy is also to be found. David Shrigley is a sharply funny as ever, while Sarah Lucas’ ‘Tits in Space’, in which cigarettes are repeatedly coiled into two pert cones, might be a comment on the sexualisation of everyday objects but comes with a healthy pinch of salt.

Many of the pieces would have benefited hugely from covering a larger space; much of the wallpaper is displayed on canvas frames. The truly garish and hallucinogenic effect of Vergil Marti’s luminous flowers and high school bullies would be truly overpowering and oppressive if slathered over an entire enclave; the disorientating nature of Damien Hirst’s kaleidoscopic butterflies impressive rather than just pretty. This highlights the technical problem of wallpaper as art: once plastered onto a wall, the only way to remove wallpaper is to destroy it, and one does not destroy a Warhol lightly.

The range and versatility of the display is impressive. The artists use wallpaper to manipulate domestic spaces of comfort into places of fear and anxiety. Wallpaper becomes a medium for social critique and current motifs of modern thought. Though not many would suit a comfortable living room, the wallpaper to be found at The Whitworth is certainly wallpaper to make you think.

6th Feb-3rd May 2010, Whitworth Art Gallery


LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Arts/The-Walls-Are-Talking-Wallpaper-Art-and-Culture

REVIEW: Facing East and Artist Rooms at Manchester Art Gallery

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 4th February 2010

"Facing East and ARTIST ROOMS review: Thalia Allington-Wood recommends the latest Manchester Art Gallery exhibitions but she doesn't love them"

‘Facing East’ is an explosion of vibrant colour and bold artworks that you could dismiss as merely playful. You get pieces such as Takashi Murakami’s manga style mushrooms with wide circular eyes and Chen Lei’s ‘Big Kiss’, a sculpture of a small child, kissing a polar bear that balances from his lips.

Yet under their bright extravagance lies unexpected sincerity and meaning. Yue Minjun’s garish painting which features a group of identical men, skin a luminous pink, laughing uncontrollably. Rather than humorous, this piece is disconcerting. The wide grinning mouths, with rows of identical white teeth and fathomless black interiors, are intimidating. This becomes significant in light of Minjun’s use of Christian Renaissance iconography.

Laughter in the Renaissance was considered a dangerous activity, signaling potential influence from the devil; open body orifices were how the Devil accessed the soul. These men are symbolic of everyman but also demonic, they sport small horns upon their heads, bringing the moral identity of the viewer into question.

Sprawled across the gallery floor lies Bharti Kher’s life-size elephant, whose body is covered with sperm like bindis. Bindis are traditionally worn by Indian women to signal their married status and thus, indirectly, their ability to respectably bear children. The sculpture is thus paradoxical; the elephant’s position suggests it is dead, though the pattern that adorns it signals life and birth. What is first an artwork of death becomes one of hope.

This exhibition does however pose a problem; there is a lack of connection between the artworks. The exhibition’s name places emphasis on location. Yet loose geographical proximity could produce a dangerously colonial generalization or ‘othering’ of these artworks.

To group three countries with such different cultures together in one room under the heading ‘East’, is to fail to provide the viewer with a clear understanding of the cultural background or significance of each. ‘Facing East’ is the exhibition equivalent of a pick ‘n’ mix bag: somewhat random and lacking coherence, but also highly enjoyable.

Walk into the adjoining room and you will find the work of Ron Mueck. Mueck, originally a model maker and puppeteer, produces hyperrealist sculptures of human figures that are technically incredible. Standing above the miniature ‘Spooning Couple’, it is amazing to view the tiny, slightly overgrown, toenails of the woman’s feet, the individual hairs that protrude down the man’s legs, the wrinkles that adorn their eyes.

Mueck’s work, like that of ‘Facing East’, also contains an element of play. Entering the room you are confronted with a giant naked man, sitting in a position that suggests both surprise and fear at your presence; his knuckles white from gripping the edge of his stool, his lips pursed, his body leaning backwards. Mueck’s sculptures create a believable presence, while simultaneously being utterly fantastical. It feels like being surrounded by fairytale characters.

They are also highly emotive on a very guttural and sensual level. The subtle body language of the spooning couple suggests discontent and distance despite their close proximity to one another; the giant man, despite his size, evokes human weakness and vulnerability.

I left, though, uncomfortable, feeling that not much else lay behind these impressively executed sculptures. Mueck’s use of scale manipulates the viewers’ emotional response very specifically, yet there is no apparent imaginative or intellectual meaning, no subversion or argument behind these feelings, other than that these models look remarkably, eerily real. Does this matter? Maybe not.

After all, I liked these sculptures and enjoyed viewing them, and that could be all that really matters.

Facing East: Recent works from China, India and Japan from the Frank Cohen Collection and ARTIST ROOMS Ron Mueck. 4 Feb – 11 April 2010.

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Arts/Facing-East-and-ARTIST-ROOMS-review

REVIEW: ExInked Exhibition

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 26th November 2009

"ExInked exhibition: Thalia Allington-Wood questions whether getting a tattoo of a spiny lobster on your back is really a good idea"

Heralded as a ‘social experiment’ to celebrate Charles Darwin’s bicentennial birthday, this exhibition organised by art co-operative Ultimate Holding Company will certainly leave a mark on you, particularly if you're one of those who have volunteered to take part.

Getting something permanently inked upon your body is not to be taken lightly, especially if it is a rare type of fungus.

The concept? 100 endangered species. 100 drawings. 100 tattoos upon 100 volunteers. The result? 100 ambassadors for animal conservation, each with their very own permanent reminder of disappearing wildlife.

Each species is available for one person only. The tattoos are free. To be a volunteer an application must be filled in, with a preference of three choices and a statement to support the application.

The exhibition itself is simple and effective. The drawings, each on a plain piece of cartridge paper, are displayed on a lit table in the centre of the room. You look down at the images, as if into a museum cabinet. The drawings are presented like dead butterflies rather than as artworks hanging upon a wall; a reminder of the future that remains for many of the animals shown.

The ink illustrations are delicate depictions that recall old encyclopaedias and scientific nature drawings. Meticulous and precise. From corn flower to spiny lobster, water vole to tadpole shrimp, long-horned bee to golden eagle. The variety is a stark comment on the pervasive damage being done to species in the UK. Three conservation groups, the Marine Conservation Society, Buglife and The People's Trust for Endangered Species, were all involved in creating the exhibition.

All this is very comfortable and conventional until we get to the tattoos. Ultimate Holding Company has enlisted the expertise of Ink Vs Steel to tattoo the volunteers live in the exhibition. It seems rather sinister, certainly masochistic, to watch people have a drawing of a scarlet malachite beetle being scratched into their flesh with a needle.

Similarly, despite being undoubtedly a worthy cause, is it a good reason to get a tattoo? What does an ink drawing on someone’s back, which will remain for the most part underneath a T-shirt, really do to help conservation?

Getting something permanently inked upon your body is not to be taken lightly, especially if it is a rare type of fungus. When walking around the exhibition, it did feel slightly like people were shopping for a free tattoo rather than supporting the preservation of endangered species.

I just hope that the people raising their hands for the ‘boring millipede’ or ‘erratic ant’ have thought long and hard about the fact that tattoos are often judged to represent their owners.

Whatever the results, ExtInked is certainly contentious. Let's just hope the species last beyond the tattoos.

ExtInked, 108 Chapel Street, Salford, M3 5DW, 10am-6pm, until 29 November. Tattooing commences on 26 November at 7.30pm.

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Arts/ExInked-exhibition

REVIEW: 'Buy Art Fair 2009'

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 25th September 2009

"Buy Art Fair: the review. Thalia Allington-Wood visits the Buy Art Fair and swept away by its scale, ambition and moments of real talent"

The hum of conversation echoes around Urbis’ open plan space, glasses chink, tickets are ripped, packets of red circle entry stickers sit impatiently in art dealers pockets, cheque books quiver. This is Manchester’s Buy Art Fair, the biggest commercial art fair outside London. Temporary walls busy with paintings. Corridors pinned with prints. Alcoves and alcoves of artworks. This is a not only a fair, but a bloody maze as well.

A book carefully carved, the middle scooped out, echoes the geographical representations of hills and valleys. The sculpture visually presenting what a book will do to the mind when read: create a landscape.

There is, as with most art fairs, an awful lot of tack. Glamorous Marilyn Monroes, puppy dogs and a glittery Che Guevara. But with tack comes variety, and art to suit all tastes. From misty seascapes to abstract graphics. From water coloured European hill towns to subtly comic illustrations. Need something to hang on your wall? This is the place to get it.

With a bursting bank balance, I would have purchased one of Isabel Rock’s fantastical and inventive illustrations from her Country Gentleman series, showcased by Bearspace. Manipulating period portraits from the Sporting Gazette and Agricultural Journal, Rock creates images that belong in a disturbing Alice in Wonderland adventure. Refined men with monocles suddenly find themselves gallivanting on a long legged bird, their trim hair now flowing freely in the wind. Sirs that shake hands stiffly are beheaded and wildly bearded.

I would also happily have walked home with a piece by Mathew Holding, to be found in Corridor 8’s exhibit: bright graphic montages of modern architecture; simple and stunning. Variety, as it happens, also brings in some truly good pieces of art.

Big names are available if you dig deep enough. In both the fair and your wallet. A wonderful Henry Moore print can be yours for £3000 from Jan Peters. Women reclining their scratchy, voluptuous, etched bodies in open landscapes. Or alternatively one of Jeff Koons well known Balloon Dog’s could stand proudly in your home for a total of four grand, courtesy of Opus Art Gallery.

Walk up to the third floor and you’ll find The Manchester Contemporary, a more spacious and relaxed affair, in which twelve leading UK contemporary galleries take to the floor and provide some real gems. Including a specially commissioned project by Nathanial Mellors, The Tip-ex Block/Play Below Zero. A candid sculpture that is created by the process of deletion and correction. In striving to eliminate, art is created.

Here the gallery Nettie Horn displays some great work from the artist Kim Rugg. Meticulously collaged Guardian newspapers and iconic cartoon magazines, Rugg plays with the trust people place in words and complacency with which the news is accepted. Guardian becomes ‘aadeGhinrTu’, an article paragraph becomes streams of single letters, a front page picture a haze of colour. Journalistic media is amalgamated into bizarre and unreadable formats. Using the same concept, one panel of floral wallpaper sheds its blossom onto the exhibitions floor. The wallpaper, often the purely functionary in an exhibition, is given life.

Both Bureau and Castlefield Gallery also impressed. Mit Senoj’s delicate paintings of figures pieced together with thorny coloured shapes and petals. A book carefully carved, the middle scooped out, echoes the geographical representations of hills and valleys. The sculpture visually presenting what a book will do to the mind when read: create a landscape.

The sheer size and quantity of work on display at Buy Art Fair is overwhelming. You will need to leave a solid afternoon to get through it all, but it will be worth it. You will find beautiful work, tame work, subtle work and thought-provoking work. Amidst the bustle there are gems.

Buy Art Fair is in Urbis until Sunday 27 September.

REVIEW: Andrew Lim 'First Step', Chinese Arts Centre

Published: MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS, CityLife, 15th June 2009

"Function is made Aesthetic in Andrew Lim's 'First Step' Installation"

SITTING on a shelf above you as you descend the toilet stairs of the Chinese Arts Centre, Andrew Lim’s ‘First Step’ is conspicuous. ‘First Step’ does not shout ‘installation art’.

It waits, merging into and becoming part of its environment, until you realize the everyday objects you are looking at are not at all in their usual setting, or fulfilling their usual function.

This is, somewhat surprisingly, precisely the point and aim of the work. Using objects that are linked to the construction and maintenance of the site, Lim creates art that connects and communicates with its habitat.  

Using a set of rules devised for each installation out of which the artwork grows to its logical conclusion, Lim’s work is literally produced by the space it fills.  

Self-determined structure  

The result is unknown till construction, when the limitations of the location and the nature of the materials join to produce a self-determined structure.  

In ‘First Step’, Manchester based Lim choose his materials based upon the technical aspects of changing over exhibitions; the storage, re-decorating, hanging and assembling of work.  

As such, First Step is an artwork made up of objects formerly used to put together and arrange other artworks.  Function is made aesthetic.  

The artwork itself, made up of ladders and headphones, is simple and effective. Silver ladders curve around the space, spine like. Their rigid and straight lines joined to make a soft, organic form incongruous with their individual appearance.  

Noise of construction  

Headphones hang from the ladders, evoking the noise of construction, and the previous artworks they made audible.

‘First Step’ comments of the side of art exhibitions we as viewers don’t get to witness and does so with subtle eloquence.  

It is a shame it is not placed somewhere that might draw more attention. For it’s staircase location, along with its discreet appearance, means it could be easily missed if you’re not on the look out.

Until September 9.  

Chinese Arts Centre,  Market Buildings, Thomas Street, Manchester, M4 1EU (0161 832 7271)Mon-Sat 10am – 5pm and Sun 11am-4pm

LINK: http://www.citylife.co.uk/news_and_reviews/reviews/10016616_function_is_made_aesthetic_in_andrew_lim_s_first_step_exhibition 

REVIEW/INTERVIEW: Jessica Tsang at the Chinese Arts Centre

PUBLISHED: Manchester Evening News, CityLife, 15th June 2009

JESSICA Tsang, the new Breathe artist in residency, sits working on a metal frame the shape of a palm tree as I enter.

The live in studio space of the Chinese Arts Centre is filled with the work she made while away at The European Centre for Ceramics, in The Netherlands.

When talking to Citylife about her work, Jessica Tsang told of her present fascination with 2009 as the bicentenary of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work 'On the origin of Species'.

How this year, the public receive a not only “a moment of saturation of information but also a re-presentation of his work”.

Glazed coconut

It is an interest that becomes very clear when looking at her work. ‘Earth Rising’, a large ceramic dome on a metal stand, dripping and part covered with glaze, presents (or re-presents), the earth as it is seen from space.
The dark glaze like the shadow that falls over half the earth at any given point; the glazed coconut that hangs mid air symbolising the ever-rotating moon.

As Jessica said, the image of the rising earth “was the first time man saw, and was able to understand, earth as a whole entity”.

Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest is also present in Jessica’s art, though it should be noted that Darwin is not the driving force – rather a dialogue that ‘pulls together’ the theories and thought processes behind her recent creations.

Models of rabbits

‘The Universe where Rabbit versus Fox’, a personal favourite of mine, depicts 3d ceramic models of rabbits and foxes, on a flat clay shelf made up of a spectrum of coloured circles.

Jessica explained that the “colour in the piece, comes from a scientific model of how genes flow through a population”.

The animals, on the other hand, can be understood to symbolize the prey and the predator, the battle for survival between species. 

In her other work, coconuts feature heavily, as the “plant equivalent to the animal side of the work”.
This is because, as Jessica Tsang notes, “coconuts are the most successful plants in spreading between countries and across continents… they span 26 degrees north and south of the globe, thousands of miles apart”.

Saturn's ring system

In ‘Coconut pile’, they stand upon one another like a totem pole.
Made by filing the coconuts with glaze and burrowing them in sand; the glaze then “exploded out and made rings of coloured sand”, which surround the shapes like Saturn’s ring system. 

This touches upon anther theme within Jessica’s work: the dialogue between sculptural forms and the painted surface. The glaze literally paints the coconut and sand. It is a piece that arises out of experimentation and is self-determining.

During her residency, Jessica wishes to take upon a more research-based approach to her work, and ideas are already beginning to take formation.

Animal stampedes

Documentaries on the South Pacific, and Easter Island’s tribal and sculptural history, have prompted thoughts of filling the studio with sand.
While a sequence of small images, potentially depicting human objects and animal stampedes, might take shape, furthering her exploration of “migration and movement within nature”.

Whatever amounts from Jessica’s residency, it is sure to be both interesting and aesthetically arresting.
I enjoyed the simple yet fragile quality to her work, and her experimentations with materials, surfaces and the boundaries between sculptures and their frames. It is an Open Studio to look forward too.

Chinese Arts Centre. Breathe Artist in Residency May 21- August 21.  Open Studio August 13-21.
Mon-Sat 10am – 5pm and Sun 11am – 4pm.

LINK: http://www.citylife.co.uk/news_and_reviews/reviews/10016617_jessica_tsang___breathe_artist_in_residence_with_a_passion_for_darwin_and_coconuts_

REVIEW: 'The Social Lives of Objects'

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 3rd June 2009

 "The Social Lives of Objects: Thalia Allington-Wood is disturbed by the mermaids at Castlefield Gallery"

Walking into The Social Lives of Objects is like entering a curiosity shop. Objects from around the world, unexpected and delightful, stand on shelves, tables and plinths. Manipulated, adapted and skewed, the sculptures and multimedia images of this exhibition are simultaneously comic and disturbing.

The artwork playfully examines our relationship with material objects by distorting them and provoking our expectations. Two brushes are placed together and initially look like a set of false teeth, a tennis racquet is filled with gridded glass, another re-strung to have a circular hole in the middle. The objects are everyday yet utterly surprising in their new forms. Their associations are altered, their signification changed.

All the objects used by artists Hilary Jack, Lisa Penny and Dallas Seitz have been found, whether in charity shops, skips or on eBay. None of them are new, they each have an individual past, a previous life, and it is this that the works seek to explore and articulate.

Hilary Jack’s wonderful ‘Centaur Departs Damaged Herd’ comprises of carved Kenyan springbok, standing upon a variety of salvaged wooden tables. Protruding from their bare heads are gnarled and forked branches, antler like. The composition of wood in its natural form, joined and moulded to the manufactured products it serves to make, tells the story of the sculptured springbok’s happening. Once tree, now sculpture.

Dallas Seitz’s work is far more disturbing and uncomfortable. He mutilates objects embedded in family history (taxidermy animals, bones, teeth, a voodoo bust taken from his grandmother’s bathroom) into ominous, mythical and gothic sculptures. Rather than replicate and explain the objects' histories, Seitz creates new ones that maintain respect for their past. The most off-putting element is the pleasure they give the viewer.

In one, a mermaid skeleton is created with the tail of a fish, goat bones and a modelled human head. This mermaid has in no way emerged from a beloved Disney flick. Another, ‘Voodoo Princess’, shows a, now politically incorrect, plaster sculpture of a beautiful black woman. Her eyes are replaced with those once belonging to a doll, teeth are hung around her neck and within her hair, coral earrings adorn her, their aesthetic mocking and highlighting the grotesque nature of her other appropriated accessories.

Seitz’s work creates strong emotions if nothing else; horror mixed with fascination, fear with admiration. They highlight our love of the strange and obscure, our interest in all that is opposed to the norm.

Interspersed among these is the work of Lisa Penny, whose collaged pieces reiterate the repetition and borrowing that takes place within history, trends, and object associations. By placing images together, removing them from their original context, or cutting out part of their composition, Penny forces us to look at them in a new light. Like all of the artists in this intriguing and clever exhibition, Penny challenges and reorders the meanings of individual objects and in doing so highlights the associations that fill our daily discourses.

The Social Lives of Objects, Castlefield Gallery, 2 Hewitt Street, Manchester, Wednesday-Sunday, 1pm-6pm, until 19 July, free, 0161 832 8034, www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/The-Social-Lives-of-Objects

PREVIEW: The Cutting Room Experiement

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, May 18th 2009.

"Dream yourself crazy: Thalia Allington-Wood previews The Cutting Room Experiment on 20 June. Will it really be ‘the biggest audience generated event in the world’?"

Selling itself as ‘the biggest audience generated event in the world’, The Cutting Room Experiment promises and aims to deliver much. Organised from their website (cuttingroomexperiment.com ), Cutting Room proposes twelve outdoor events/performances to fill their new public space in Ancoats – this is a handsome, monolith dominated square designed by Dan Dubowitz next to St Peter’s Church.

The idea is simple. You, the public, propose events. You, the public, vote on which proposals you think are best. You, the public, gather in hopefully large numbers and perform the 12 events you have chosen. There are very little restrictions and you are free to do something as silly or poignant as you wish. The events must involve mass participation. As Cutting Room state ‘think about a collection of people in a space, at one time, all doing something together. That's what the Cutting Room Experiment is all about’. Sounds fun.

The suggestions so far, hint at our desire to revert to good old childlike play. The most popular events include Space-hoppers, creating a huge brightly coloured ball-pool, (like indoor adventure playgrounds for under 7’s), and the world’s biggest game of ‘Twister’, and why not? I used to love my Space-hopper. I just hope someone suggests party bags and sandcastles to make the day complete.

If there is one qualm with Cutting Room’s ‘user generated event’: it’s the affiliation to ‘Flash Mobs’.

One of the most entertaining and crucial aspects of ‘Flash Mob’ events is the creation of chaos. Often performed in large and very busy public spaces - train stations, shopping malls, busy roads – they are organised like secret operations, and executed as such. They occur for a few minutes, suspending the daily routine. Then the participants disappear as if nothing had happened. They serve to highlight the monotony of everyday life and provoke response through fun and preposterous antics shrouded in mystery.

To have 12 of these events in a single day, all in the same designated space, seems to dilute the fun, mischief and surprise ‘Flash Mobs’ achieve.

But maybe I’m being churlish.

Overall the ‘Cutting Room Experiment’ (and it does use that word Experiment) is going to be bloody good fun. Its success depends entirely upon people becoming involved and participating on the day. 200 people doing the dance routine to Michel Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ would be visually arresting, 2 people doing so would not.

Ultimately The Cutting Room Experiment is offering a day of public art, made, performed, and chosen by the public. So let’s get people staring, dancing, laughing and looking gobsmacked on the streets of Manchester.

If you have an idea that you might want to turn into a Cutting Room spectacular then you need to get it in by 29 May. You can do this by posting it on cuttingroomexperiment.com.

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Entertainment/Events-and-Listings/Dream-yourself-crazy

BLOG: "Graffiti: time to wave a white flag?"

Published: 'Art City' Blog, MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS, May 2009 (no longer online)

"Graffiti: time to wave a white flag?"

The other day I found myself staring, perturbed, at the Manchester Police website. Not being particularly paranoid about local crime, I was unfamiliar with their crime busting updates, which proudly announced that the police are “winning the fight against graffiti”.

Now not only is it slightly ridiculous that this was the ‘big news’ from Greater Manchester’s police force, capturing a dastardly drug dealer would have been more impressive, but it also highlights the public sector’s continually negative response to Graffiti.

The refusal of local councils and the government to curb their repressive policies on street art confounds me. Of course some antisocial ‘tagging’, (merely writing a signature on any available public property), is not particularly aesthetic. But when Graffiti is well executed it can be thought provoking and beautiful. The results can provide our streets with bursts of colour and inspiration.

Inspector Mark Davis’s remark: “There is nothing artistic about the daubing of graffiti. It is pure vandalism and has a negative impact on the lives of nearby residents” is, in many cases, simply not true.

I wonder what Inspector Davis would have to say about ‘The Arrival, Contemporary Urban Art’, the new show at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke on Trent. Featuring internationally acclaimed street artists such as Banksy, Adam Neale and Candice Tripp, it is the perfect case study for Graffiti as a respected art form.

Banksy’s once controversial, now coffee table, images are sold for thousands and are displayed in galleries across the globe. Apparently even Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have acquired one, surely showing consumer appeal.

Examples of the talent present in Manchester was showcased last year by the Upper Space Gallery, and can be seen on many a Northern Quarter corner. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but then what art is?

Expressing creativity in public spaces is something art is no stranger too. Continually commissioned, public art is actively endorsed as producing positive effects upon a community; promoting pride within inhabitants and economy via visitors.

Graffiti is a crime because it is unlicensed public art. If this changed, the creative ability of many would be encouraged, and their talent given a purpose.

Berlin is famous for it. America’s welfare policy in the 1930’s paid painters to decorate airports and libraries. Diego Riviera’s murals cover Mexico City, and are one of its biggest attractions. While in India adverts are hand painted on houses and walls, filling the streets with a mass of vibrant images.

That we are complacently bombarded with visual imagery does not need to be said, billboards, posters and huge TV screens fill Piccadilly already. I would rather see a mural than a printed advert for soap any day.

Street art should be utilized not penalized and given artistic recognition. Even the police force could find use for it…

For example Candice Tripp’s work ‘The Arrival’, part of the Stoke on Trent exhibition, depicts a young girl peeling herself off a white outline of her body. It would be a very efficient advert for road safety. Covering the side of a building with the ominous warning to not drink and drive, it would provide a vivid reminder of those being put at risk.

'The Arrival' Contemporary Urban Art

7 February 09 - 10 May 09

The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery

Bethesda Street, Cultural Quarter,

Stoke-on-Trent, ST1 3DW

http://www.stokemuseums.org.uk/

Monday to Saturday 10.00am - 5.00pm, Sunday 2.00pm - 5.00pm