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: 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