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

BLOG: "Filtered Out: Antony Gormley"

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

 

"Filtered Out: Antony Gormley"

 

Last month Manchester Art Gallery revealed their latest purchase: Antony Gormley’s Filter.

Walking up the stairs of the gallery’s modern extension the life-size male figure hangs horizontally above you, face looking down, threatening to come crashing upon your head.

Made of cut steel rings welded together, Filter comments on the mechanical analogy between our biological body and machines, and the construction of our exterior self by mass-produced culture. High street clothing, changing trends, cosmetics. Just as the shell of Filter was manufactured, our appearance is also a product of mechanical processes.

The holes of the steel rings allow you to see the interior of the body, the heart of steel balls it contains, and the sky outside the glass roof of Manchester Art Gallery. It is a body completely open to its environment, it is involved and part of the space it hangs in.

The steel complements the metal framed and glass interior of the stairwell. You project yourself onto the sculptures human form and feel the tension, the vulnerability, of such frozen suspension.  Is he hovering, flying or falling?

However, though I am a fan of Gormely’s work and like Filter, I couldn’t help feeling that it would have been smarter if Manchester Art Gallery had made a more original choice of artist.

I am not insulting the piece or that, as with much of Gormley’s work, the figure is based on the artist’s own body. Rather that Antony Gormley seems to be on slight overkill right now. His Angel of the North stands tall in Gateshead and his instillation Another Place populated Crosby Beach, Merseyside a few years ago. Soon his piece One and Other will preside on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth. To put it bluntly, Antony Gormley is everywhere.

While this does mean that Filter is a safe purchase, and it undoubtedly places Manchester Art Gallery more prominently on the map in terms of contemporary art. Maybe, just maybe, a work by a different modern British artist would have provided more national coverage and provoked more response. Rachel Whiteread? Marc Quinn? There are so many to choose from.

Antony Gormley’s Filter threatens to be so familiar to viewers that it fails to be exciting. Audiences know Gormley’s work and expect to see a passive figure of some description. Filter becomes just another Gormley.

Galleries in Manchester need to show that they are pushing boundaries and providing new work, new artists. They need to offer art and artists that are not associated with nearby artistic hotspots such as Liverpool.

Sometimes jumping on the bandwagon is not the best option. The Gormley Express in particular. Especially when your suitcase contains a £80,000 grant from The Art Fund and a mass of potential.

Manchester Art Gallery

Mosley Street, M2 3JL

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/

Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm.