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

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.

FEATURE: Art Roundup 2009

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 15th January 2009

"Art Roundup 2009"

2009 may be looking like a rather dim year, with the economic crisis engulfing businesses like I eat chocolate. My suggested remedy to the tightening of purse strings, unsurprisingly, is to seek out some art exhibitions – they are free after all.

Art is good for the soul. To aid my point I have thoughtfully Googled some suitable quotes: Tony Blair stated that, "Dynamism in arts and culture, therefore, creates dynamism in society." Not only this, but the medical profession agrees too – the BBC caught University College Hospital chief nurse supporting their, quite expensive, art collection because, “A healing environment is crucial to a positive patient experience”. So there you have it: art is socially dynamic, positive medication with a decided lack of uncomfortable side effects (unless you decide to purchase some, that is). Whoopee, time for a healthy injection of the forthcoming Manchester art scene…

Manchester Art Gallery begins their 2009 programme with a golden and glittery firework bang. Ten Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, opening in February, will showcase some of the world’s most important da Vinci drawings and thus promises to be a sure success. The famous renaissance mathematician, inventor, writer, architect and painter, (quite an impressive CV one might say) produces drawings with subtle strokes, great anatomical knowledge and a wealth of feeling.

Manchester Art Gallery will also be showcasing work from British artist Paul Morrison, whose highly stylized, composite landscapes will include a new black and white, site-specific wall painting specially commissioned by the gallery. The first major exhibition of twentieth-century female surrealism: Angels of Anarchy will be shown here later in the year.

Another show being whispered about is Urbis’s State of the Art: New York, which brings new and commissioned work from emerging New York artists to town in April. While Gallery Oldham’s The Art of Japan in February will display some particularly beautiful works by the great Japanese potter Shoji Hamada and a wealth of prints and decorative art objects, collected by Blackburn cotton magnate Thomas Boys Lewis.

The Whitworth continues its endless wallpaper displays and retrospective of Walter Crane, which if you haven’t seen is definitely worth a visit. Before revealing, rather exciting this, Subversive Spaces: Surrealism and Contemporary Art. A show that promises the surrealist greats Salvador Dali and René Magritte, alongside dark rooms and disturbing installations by internationally acclaimed German artist Gregor Schneider.

Cornerhouse gets all evolutionary on us with Interspecies, an exhibition organised by the Arts Catalyst on the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and concerned with the human species' superiority over other animals.

Meanwhile the Manchester Museum will be orchestrating their rather bizarre ‘hermit’ artist in February, when a chosen artist will permanently reside within the museum and create work that responds to the collections, the environment and questions of sustainability. The results of which are sure to be intriguing.

The Chinese Arts Centre showcases work by Eric Fong in Seeing Beyond until 5 April. His work explores the experiences of health and the body alongside different medical approaches, while Manuel Saiz addresses the identity of the artist and their interaction with the audience in Private Party. Keep Out at Castlefield Gallery from February. Not forgetting our new found favourite, the Artland Gallery, which has an exhibition of war photography from Iraq at the end of January.

Phew, 2009 is set to be an art-saturated year in Manchester, and if all this doesn’t manage to cure financial tension, do pop down to Manchester Art Gallery on 28 March for a special 'stress-less’ day of free activities for the family. With classical music performances, workshops, creative activities and 'tranquillity art tours', I'm sure the University College Hospital would approve.

Link: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/Art-round-up-2009

PDF: Art Roundup 2009, Manchester Confidential, 15th January 2009

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

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 8th December 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FEATURE: The Ethics of Displaying the Dead

Commissioned (unpublished due to timing): MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, May 2008

 

The Ethics of Displaying the Dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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