Eastside Projects, Birmingham

I visited the Eastside Projects  exhibition on 14th October 2015 with tutors and fellow students from  years one and  two    BA/Diploma of HE Fine Art. 

This is a very interesting exhibition of contemporary painting and sculpture by artists including Gavin Wade, Yelena Popova, Haim Steinbach, Charlotte Cullinan and Jeanine Richards, Amalia Pica, Nathalie Du Pasquier and many others.

I found the whole exhibition very inspiring,  but my favourite piece of work is Cornelius: The Collectors Case by Yelena Popova.  This is made up of seven aluminium frames, ten paintings, and mixed media on linen in a very ingenious design that holds many treasures but can be folded up compactly for ease of transport.

Fiona Banner:  Exhibition in The Ikon Gallery, Birmingham

I visited this exhibition in The Ikon Gallery on 14th October 2015 with fellow students from years 1 and  2 

BA/Diploma of HE Fine Art. 

Banner's work in the exhibition includes a life-size tower scaffold in glass, (see image 1), a four metre high stack of encyclopedias,(see image 2), a 1920 baptismal font, a film of a Chinook helicopter and two mechanically operated wind socks in a kind of dialogue with each other.

Much of Banner's work references a play between language and object, the limitations of language and the struggle to communicate.
The font has a double meaning as a baptismal "font" and the "font" referred to in text!
The artist tells us that the  glass scaffold  is important because a tower scaffold is often used as a tool to erect works of art and is normally then taken away. Banner in this way makes it part of the work.

I enjoyed seeing this exhibition but my favourite piece of work was the wind socks in conversation because in one of my modules last year I made something with a very similar meaning. I got two people to choose a topic and have a conversation for about 3 minutes while making the sort of expressive hand gestures that people make when they are trying to convey something that they feel passionate about. I made a film showing just the two pairs of hands and without the sound the gestures looked very earnest and realistic. I think this was partly due to the fact that the two participants after the first few seconds genuinely completely forgot that they were being filmed!

Image 1                                                                                          Image 2

                                                               

Agnes Martin:  Exhibition in Tate Modern

I visited Tate Modern to see the Agnes Martin exhibition on 4th October 2015

The artist Anne Wilson has described  Martin's work as follows:  "The colour in Agnes Martin's work can be like the colour of rock at dawn, at midday and at sunset, depending on where your perceptions are when you see it."

This is a major exhibition of Martin's work and has to be seen to be experienced. Some of the paintings are in oil and some in acrylic but they all seem to have the ability to evoke a meditative response. I particularly liked some of the larger 6ft x 6ft paintings especially "White Stone" and "Grey Stone"which are made up of graph-like squares. A lot of the work is in soft pastel colours, mostly white and  light shades of blue and red and I think this contributes to the feeling  of quiet serenity in the paintings.

The exhibition examines the two distinct periods that define her career, her early work up to 1967 using biomorphic form  and her later work which began in the 1970s, when she adopted a template of vertical or horizontal stripes and this remained her style for the next three decades.   Her work has been described by the critic Marion Ackermann as "modest in form and subtle in colour though with an immense presence and powerful energy that almost takes physical hold of the viewer."

I came away from seeing this exhibition feeling that with Martin's "quiet and serene" work I had experienced something different from the strong gestures and bold colours of many abstract works of art that I had seen in the past.

The National Stone Centre, Derbyshire 

I visited the National Stone Centre  on 26th September 2015. The main attraction for me was the Millenium Wall which was built to commemorate the millenium and demonstrates the traditional craft of dry-stone walling with examples of walls from all over the United Kingdom.

The centre offers courses in Stone Carving,  Dry Stone Walling and lime rendering. 

Barbara Hepworth

 Visited Tate Britain on 21st September 2015 to see Sculpture for a Modern World,  a major exhibition of Barbara Hepworth's work which traces her growing international success.

Hepworth was a leading figure of the international art movement in the 1930s and one of the most successful sculptors in the 1950s and 1960s. 

After doing a course in stone carving about four years ago I found I had  a passion for working with sculpture in stone. I had  wanted to see  at  Hepworth's work for quite some time and it was a great pleasure for me to be able to see so many of her sculptures in one place. I was particularly intrigued by her very figurative sculpture of Madonna and Child 1954. She has said: "Working  realistically seems to release one's love for life, humanity and the earth. Working abstractly seems to release one's personality and sharpen the perceptions, so that in the observation of life it is the wholeness or inner intention which moves one so profoundly,"

  

Richard Long: Time and Space

Friday 18th September 2015:    Went to The Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol to see the Richard Long 
Exhibition called Time and Space.

Long emphasizes simplicity in his work, which relies on nothing more than the artist's own body and          
the natural environment--a coming together of a place and a moment in time.                                              

This major exhibition focuses specifically on Richard Long's work from recent years, offering an opportunity 
to consider how his work is situated today. It marks an important moment to celebrate a career spanning six decades. He is recognized as one of the most important artists working today.                                              

He makes a work of art in the place he chooses, with the materials that are there, on the slope of a              mountain, high under the sky--a line of stones if there are stones lying lying about, or if the place wants a      circle he makes a circle. Where there are no stones , he can walk up and down the path as often as             possible to make a line visible.                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                  
One of his major works in the Arnolfini is Muddy Water Falls.This is a design which covers the whole of one wall in the gallery and was created by the  artist himself using mud from the river Avon.                                                                                 
I have been fascinated by Long's work for quite some time, but particularly when I found an image of 


         A Line in Ireland

He has made work at various times  in several different parts of Ireland but this particular piece appeals to me because it was       created in 1974 and sited in an area that I am very familiar with called The Burren in County Clare.                                                                                                 

                                      
                                  
                                  
                                                                                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Saturday 17th October 2015         Visited The Mead Gallery at Warwick Arts Centre to see an exhibition called :

Making It: Sculpture in Britain 1977-1986

Making It is a substantial exhibition and represents the work of over 40 artists. It is the first exhibition
to bring together the work made by the 1970s and 1980s artists working in the UK who began to receive international recognition for practices which shared a revived interest in the sculpted object, in materials and in new ideas around making.

The works exhibited were incredibly diverse and all very interesting but my attention was particularly drawn to the following:

Gastropod's Dream (1985) by Peter Randall-Page reflects the artist's interest in the study of natural forms and organic matter and the emotive effect of nature on the individual. His work investigates the relationship between outer appearance and internal structure, between surface and volume. Randall-Page is famous for his large scale stone sculptures many of which can be seen in public places. His work appeals to me because of my own interest in stone as a material my ambition to create some more sculptural work in stone.

Gateway of Hands (1984/1991) by Glynn Williams. This piece of work was originally two hands carved in Lancaster stone which in 1990 were sliced into sections, reassembled and cast in bronze. The work is concerned with messages evoked by the gestures of hands. The work appeals to me because of my love of stone as a material for sculpture and I have in the past carved a pair of hands in Cotswold stone.

Making It (1983)  by Julian Opie. Opie used flat pieces of painted steel to created some everyday objects, mostly carpentry tools, at an oversized scale. I liked this work because it is an interesting way of showing the relationship between two and three dimensional work and between painting and sculpture.

Postcard Flag (Union Jack) (1981) by Tony Cragg is an image created from an assemblage of brightly coloured, found plastic objects made into a huge Union Jack. The work was made in the same year that Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer, a year when the air was full of Royalist passion national pride.
I like the work because because of its simplicity in the making but also because of its relevance for debates on the subject of national identity
George and the Dragon (1984) also by Tony Cragg appeals to me because it  is an amusing way of using what to me is a very familiar material; that is,  pipe fittings which are used in underground drainage systems!
The other objects he has used are domestic items and the combination of these different objects depict  an opposition between the contemporary and the traditional.

Friday 16th October 2015:                Visited  Chatsworth   to see the exhibition      Beyond Limits

This is an exhibition of post-war and contemporary British sculpture and included three works by one of my favorite sculptors:   Barbara Hepworth

Also in the exhibition were works by Kenneth Armitage, Sandy Brown, Reg Butler, Anthony Caro, Lynn Chadwick, Geoffrey Clarke, Stephen Cox, Tony Cragg, Angus Fairhurst, Barry Flanagan, Anya Gallaccio, Antony Gormley,  Damien Hirst, Thomas Houseago, Allan Jones, Phillip king, Bryan Kneale, Richard Long, Sarah Lucas, Bernard Meadows, Henry Moore, Eduardo Paolozzi, Simon Periton, Marc Quinn, Conrad Shawcross, Gavin Turk, William Turnbull, Mark Wallinger, and Bill Woodrow.

Apart from the Hepworths my favorite piece of work in the exhibition was: Pair of walking figures-Jubilee by  Lynn Chadwick. (See image 1).This is cast in bronze and depicts two figures, one male and one female as they stride forward. Chadwick has always been intrigued by movement and in many of his works has explored figures in motion.. He has also conceived a simple but ingenious distinction between his male and female figures. Men are depicted with rectangular heads and the females with triangular ones! 

My second favorite piece of work was a stunning  sculpture by Sandy Brown called: Temple.(See image 2).

Brown is a ceramicist and this particular piece of work was created as a temporary installation especially for the gardens at Chatsworth. Involving arches, columns and more than 5000 handmade tiles this work is a celebration of colour and creativity.

Although I am not a big fan of Antony Gormley I was impressed by this sculpture called: Big Gauge 11.(See image 3). This work is made in cast iron and consists of 16 blocks similar in size to those used in building houses. This is an abstract piece of work and differs from the  previous sculptures  I have seen which are made from casts of his own body.

In a very prominent setting  was one of Henry Moore's monumental sculptures: Three Piece Reclining Figure: Draped.(See image 4)). I have admired Moore's work for a long time and seeing this stunning piece in "the real" and was a real treat.

 Seeing this major exhibition of "best of Britain"  in the very impressive grounds of Chatsworth which has been described itself as "a vast sculptural intervention"was a great experience and source of inspiration. 

                                                                      

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Image 1

Image 4

Image 3