Picasso the soap opera
This had the lot – love, fame, tragedy, octopuses.
Shock revelation – artist responds to life.
I hope to go back for another look. I didnt leave feeling as energised as I have done after other Picasso shows.
Despite the materialist pedagogy of the exhibition (which wasn’t uninteresting – just banal) seeing Picasso’s work always offers glimpses into the interplay of internal and external stimuli – conscious and unconscious forces in his work.
Fran Stafford and John Barraclough
For the first part of these enquiries I had to listen to the audios whilst on the move and couldn’t take notes and when I returned to listen again I had run out of time and they were unavailable.
From memory, neither speaker was describing any aspect of the art world that resonated with my little corner of it, while they both described their own wide ranging approaches to getting art seen. Fran Staffords seemingly inexhaustible energy and Barracloughs teenage fanzine enthusiasm for communicating was fairly humbling, and both seemed quite well connected which counts for so much in the competitive market place that is the art world. Im sure I would have benefited from a second listening. I wonder why there is a time limit on these audio files.
Sam Wilkinson
I made a point of listening to the second part from Sam Wilkinson whilst taking notes. Whilst the art that she chose to illustrate her business practice looked very slick the idea of attempting to sell my labour to property developers through an ‘ameliorative’ art broker to adorn their shopping centres as a kind of Unique Selling Point does not inspire me. I was waiting for her to explain exactly what happened to the ‘homeless people’ of Leicester who ‘inhabited (the almshouses) in a way that was less than ideal for a commercial developer’ if Insites Art takes pride in being ‘considerate and thoughtful’.
Thats not to say that I thought the research undertaken by the artists in her examples didnt sound very thorough and worthy although I couldn’t see evidence of the artist making a connection between the almshouses and their historic role in ameliorating poverty.
Plus before I sound too principled and worthy I have completed several contracts to make stone sculpture to a brief for Muf Architects that adorn commercial space (Science Museum), housing developments (East Hackney Estate) and public space (Altab Ali Park, Whitechapel and Commercial Rd, Mile End) that involved close collaboration with a range of contractors and local organisations. There was just something about Wilkinsons presentation that I found personally uninspiring. And I kept wondering how much risk the clients and contractors are really prepared to take in allowing the artist a free hand.
Helen Chadwick
It took me a while to get beyond the weird trancey crashing orbs in the frame and the sound speed that exaggerated the speech into a parodic bourgeois drawl of the various talking heads and Chadwick herself. However once drawn into Chadwicks orb I was mesmerised by her vision and felt my entire understanding of art evolving.
She was intrigued by her own work in an un-selfconscious way
Of her ‘Oval Court of Mutability’ she says they are ‘oracles of myself…divining how one feels about things’. That in itself is a wonderful thought that helps and validates my own efforts to understand my work.
There is a moment where she observes her hands in the skate fish and describes a
“begging and bowing gesture” which to me is an astonishing, tender and powerful insight into her own work. ‘Divining’ meaning from behaviour.
Over and over she asks herself ‘why?’ and answers the question.
On seeing ‘Cacao’ in the gallery for the first time she says
“but is it art?”
and answers
“I really dont know…because it’s a phenomenon”
She asks herself
“who am I”
and answers with Viral Landscape, synthesising body cells and land art.
Of the compost piece she says its
‘something to contemplate beyond the trivial. The changing – its cyclical’
as though she is learning from her own creation. Where much art seems to say
‘here is what I know’
Chadwick seems to say
‘lets see what I can find out if i make this’.
The evolution of her work from one exhibition to the next is mesmerising. Ego Geometria Sum and her description and explanation seems to me a perfect body of art – exciting, adventurous, tender and exploratory.
One of the commentators speaks of her
“rigour of thought, of representation” of which I was left in awe.
My understanding both of contemporary art and of how I see myself as an artist has significantly shifted as a result of watching this short film.
Rachel Whiteread
I like Rachel Whiteread’s monumental work. But I visited her show at Tate Britain and was in and out within half an hour. I hoped for some insight from this film into her inner process but where Chadwick asked why and answered, Whiteread barely asked and never answered, beyond
“I became fascinated by the parquet floor”
“…preserve the quotidian”
“…give authority to unwanted things – you know”
“its very nice to find a line”
“stopping (things) in time”
BUT WHY?
Perhaps like Henry Moore she is afraid to analyse the forces beneath the surface in case the creative bubble is burst. It occurs to me that both his and her work resembles a skin or surface that is inflated to bursting point due to the inner forces remaining unaddressed.
In fact her work takes the inner space of objects and renders it as surface.
She says
“I kind of like the way things get their place in this world”
but offers no analysis. Sadly I was left thinking wow all she does is cast stuff, draw a bit and print. Except she employs a printer.
John Dewey said
‘an artist is compelled to be an experimenter because he has to express an intensely individualised experience through means and materials that belong to the common and public world. This problem cannot be solved once and for all. It is met in every new work undertaken. Otherwise an artist repeats himself and becomes aesthetically dead’
(Dewey, J, Art As Experience, Penguin, New York, 1934 p150 2004 edition)
I currently think of Consciousness having evolved from pre-conscious stages and like all evolution it doesn’t discard its causes and stages. They remain in, underpin, influence and cause ‘modern’ consciousness. Indeed, early cave painters were modern humans (and it now seems, Neanderthal) and their work marked the dawn of individuality that we have pursued to a kind of end and now yearn for some kind of return to the herd state from which it emerged. What has evolved in our species? Our intellect, our technologies, or our individuation? This sculpture is about my interest in probing the layers of our consciousness, it’s relationship with the unconscious and instincts, and the data that flows between the layers. The deeper one probes, the further back one travels, the more the archetypes are common, and the thinner the membrane between our ego and the universe becomes. Also, given the current trajectory of human technologies, and continuation of the species for a sufficient length of time, we early 21st Century humans shall eventually telescope backwards into a kind of primitive.
I had the idea of staining stone with iron oxide (ochre), the pigment used in rendering the hands and prey of palaeolithic peoples on cave walls as a gesture of super-temporal communication and to represent the continuum of the human experience and our drive to individuate. The magic and mechanics. Which is the stronger drive behind the human experience?
I mixed the ochre with hydraulic lime as a fixative and added water to make a wash. I applied the paint in dabs watching the porous stone soak in. Of particular interest was what would happen at the border, the ridge between the exposed material and the honed surface. I was worried that it might absorb across, obliterating the outline. However it barely went beyond a millimetre in places in a fascinating sort of osmotic fashion. I repeated the process 5 or 6 times through the day until the ochre formed a consistent colour.
I was pleased with the result. It allowed me to imagine falling backwards and fitting through the aperture or portal (it reminds me of cartoon characters that smash through walls leaving a self shaped hole), – a visual aid to help meditate on the layers within the unconscious that lie beneath the honed surface of our daily, conscious state.
Ochre (iron oxide powder), lime, water on sand blasted portland limestone
I select the stone and cut it up on the saw. I think of this as stretching the canvas. I remove the saw whip marks from the surface and hone to 400 grit on a slow speed to avoid burning the surface.. This brings out the sediment and will allow the template rubber to stick.
I take a photograph self portrait, send it to myself, print it on a photocopier, trace it onto sandblast resistant rubber with biro and carbon paper, cut around the tracing with a Stanley knife and separate the positive and negative material.
Throughout this process I work quickly resisting and rejecting exactness and craft, allowing for a purity of expression, error, inexactitude and their consequences to evolve an uncontrived and authentic end product. Like a game of Chinese Whispers there are simplifications and exaggerations. Im rebelling against the precision of my training as restoration stone carver and mason where tolerance is stifling. Just as i’m rebelling against my training by combining natural stone with cement, concrete and iron. I spend no time measuring and looking for ratio and proportion in millimetres. As I work on the photocopy i notice asymmetry in my own body of which i was previously oblivious. My stance in the photo is also asymmetrical – at which point I might have contrived to retake the photo attempting a more formal symmetry. However my intention is to present the subjective human, not some objective ideal.
Next I stuck the rubber sheet onto the honed limestone, set up the sand blaster and pulled the trigger.
At this point things become chaotic. The black abrasive grit quickly fills the workshop, limiting visibility. The aim is to avoid the grit and compressed air getting under the edges of the rubber and lifting it off, blurring the finished outline. Its hard to see what effect the abrasion is having. I don’t have a sand blasting cabinet that improves control. The intensity of the process is exhilarating and exhausting. Im getting better at fine tuning the various taps on the compressor to achieve the right balance between the flow of abrasives and the air pressure.
The abrasive erodes the soft lime matrix of the stone revealing the fossil fragment. I dont want to burrow to far in to the soft areas. Im learning what effect the blaster has on the material. I am looking for a balanced finish. I peel away the template. I jet blast the stone. Im pleased with the result. In fact Im exhilarated.
Stonemasonry Rule Number 1 Do not mix iron, cement and and limestone.
Wipe with damp cloth or mist with water to oxidise iron filings.
JON WHITBREAD ART 