Exhibition Launch Party!

Against Nature: The Hybrid Forms of Modern Sculpture'

I went to the opening of 'By Leafy Ways: Early Works by Ivor Abrahams' and 'Against Nature: The Hybrid Forms of Modern Sculpture' tonight. The exhibition had so many good artists; Louise Bourgeois, Jacob Epstein, Julio Gonzalez, Max Ernst, Hans Arp etc. but somehow it didn't seem to make much of an impression with me.

Leeds Fine Artists

I offered to help Heather Jones, a third year, with her performance piece at Trinity Church yesterday. The exhibition was put on by fifteen of the third years, all of whom displayed their work. The exhibition was to explore the human condition, however the context of the previous Church of England space automatically gave all the work a religious connotation. For some peoples' work, I think this added an extra dimension, as Kimbal Bumstead's performance piece explored ideas of dehumanisation, which linked well to religious connotations. However for other people, such as Eloise Kerr and Lucy Huddart, I could not help but think the religious connotations drowned their work or made their pieces almost unnoticeable, which they do not deserve to be.

The central location of the exhibition space was good and I am sure that accounted for some of the vast numbers of visitors. Also Lorraine's publicity was obviously well executed and Kimbal even had his performance written about in the Leeds' Metro! Richard Bell wants our year to get into groups and put on an exhibition, so this has shown me how important well directed advertising and a good location are if we want to attract a big audience.

Out of the Ordinary: Spectacular Craft

I went to see the Out of the Ordinary; Spectacular Craft Exhibition at the V&A a few days ago. I can't state how impressed I was at the level of skill within this exhibition. Furthermore all eight of the artists seemed to offer a different area of expertise; carving, welding, sewing, animation, even modern technologies such as laser etching, which first came to my attention after the October 2007 issue of Creative Review, which had laser etched the structure of a crystal into the black, glossy cover. Another reason why I believe the exhibition struck such a chord was because the artists had mostly used cheap materials, such as nails, paper, thread, dust- all very accessible to the average artist. The artists were also all highly imaginative, which in this modern art industy and artist-as-businessman role can sometimes can be lost. For instance, Susan Collis' work played with the idea of the mundane and familiar with paint-like splatters sewn onto a dust sheet and Yoshihiro Suda's hyper-realistic wooden flowers and weeds.

Susan Collis- 'Craft in my mind, has that 'good' label and that's what draws me to it. To make something look bad, dirty or stained using these processes that are usually deemed to be good and worthy, to jumble up the two.'

Better days (2006)
Dust sheet, embroidery thread

The oyster’s our world (2004)
81.3 x 38 x 58 cm
Wooden stepladder, mother of pearl, shell, coral, fresh water pearl, cultured pearls, white opal, diamond

Untitled, (Rawl plugs), (2007)
Jasper, black onyx, red carnelian, garnet, brown goldstone

Paint job (2004) 160 x 45 cm
Boiler suit, embroidery thread

'Paint Job' is typical of Collis' deceptive work, as the boiler suit initially looks like it has a collection of careless splashes and stains upon the fabric of the worker's overall. However, in fact, these splashes and stains have been meticulously stitched onto the material, replicating the typical accidental and spontaneous marks. Collis, similarly to Suda, also enjoys playfully positioning the works in overlooked areas of an exhibition space, which heightens the likelihood of the viewer misreading the works. The deception within her artworks constantly forces the viewer to recalculate and reconsider the work, which is something the modern day, 'culture vulture' doesn't do.

Yoshihiro Suda- 'Simply, I want to know how detailed I can make it, how real I can make it. This is an old-fashioned way of thinking, to make something so naturalistic that it looks like the original. It is not the fashion now, to observe something and make it very skilfully, the idea itself is very deep. To make this kind of copy, the technique is very important. There are no goals as such, just that I can make it better next time.'

Suda's work was incredible. I often work with a variety of different woods so I can only appreciate and envy the painstaking detail in the work. What I also liked about the Japanese artist is that he chooses native plants commonly found in the city where his work will be exhibited, so his webpage showed a great variety of plants! The idea seems so simple and almost unconsidered yet by placing the plants in unexpected areas of the gallery space, the viewer automatically reads more into the skilful work.

YOSHIHIRO SUDA, Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2004

It is such a shame that craft seems to be so dismissed within the art community and it is for this reason why I try to focus craft elements into my work. I absolutely love the Jerwood Metal and Wood exhibitions, as the artists seem to have such a connection with their materials, which I believe is necessary if the work is going to really promote the concept.

Louise Bourgeois Exhibition

When I went home for the weekend, I visited the Louise Bourgeois exhibition at the Tate Modern. I absolutely love her work, as she has associated herself with several different artistic movements and has explored a variety of materials, so her exhibitions always offer a motley of really interesting artwork. The infamous Spider was exhibited outside the Tate Modern. The spider is a reoccuring theme, as Bourgeois believes the spider symbolises both 'a predator and a protector, a sinister threat and an industrious repairer', which according to the artist is 'an eloquent representation of the mother'. She also associates the spider, with the process of sewing, spinning and weaving, with her own mother, who ran a tapestry restoration business. Furthermore, it ties into Bourgeois' current use of fabric.

Bourgeois's career spans seven decades, though there is clearly several themes, forms and motifs, which characterise her work. I was especially impressed with the scale and ambition of her environments, the cell pieces. These large installations are meant to act like tangible manifestations of psychic space. They had a confined yet reflective quality, due to the metal net around the cell, and the collection of objects, which Bourgeois displays around the installation; such as hanging chairs, mirrors, family tapestry etc.

'Cumul I'

In the early 1960s, Bourgeois created a series of sculptures made from malleable materials, such as latex and plaster, which all had the appearance of an organic matter. Later these organic sculptures went on to reveal a much more phallic or biomorphic form, which added a more obvious sexual dimension. Most of Bourgeois's sculptures were either skewed or slightly off-balance, giving them a fragile/vulnerable quality, which is rare in masculine artwork.

In Cells (Clothes), 1996, Bourgeois' themes are amplified to the point of becoming a habitable space, with circular boundaries delimited by old doors, brimming with objects, as in a warehouse of memory or an 'oneiric Wunderkammer'. The double-edged title signifies both the building block of an organism and a prison, and this installation can likewise be taken as protective or isolating. Here the work's interior could only be glimpsed through cracks in the doors, and the presence of clothing, hung on metal structures or resting on chairs, assigned the viewer the shameful role of Peeping Tom. The humble, ephemeral materials (such as clothing and underwear) and deliberately coarse items (e.g., heavy cloth) depart from the subtle refinement emphasized in certain recent marble and glass pieces.

I particularly liked her work, Red Room, which was an area, enclosed by a spiral of old, rusted doors, which had had the door handles taken off. In this space, Bourgeois displayed a jar of pennies, an hourglass, spools of red thread, and red latex sculptures of hands holding each other. The work related to her mother, who had worked in a tapestry repair shop. However, the numerous spiral motifs were placed in the installation to emphasise the tension that occurs in families, between intimacy and loneliness and estrangement. I thought this piece was extremely effective and I liked her use of spools of thread.

'When I was growing up, all the women in my house were using needles. I have always had a fascination with the needle - with the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair the damage. It's a claim to forgiveness. It is never aggressive; it's not a pin!'

Dean Clough, Halifax

After Chris Taylor's recommendation, I went to visit the Dean Clough Centre, in Halifax, West Yorkshire. The building was once home to the largest carpet manufacturer in the world, but the size of the building (2/3s of a mile from end-to-end) was very daunting, even for modern day standards. The building was regenerated in 1983 and began its gallery programme in the mid 1980's. The small town's architecture was reminiscent more of Bradford than Leeds, especially the buildings surrounding the mill. However the signs of industrial decline were more prevalent, as there were a lot of abandoned sites and buildings, which have yet to be demolished or regenerated.



During the walk around the nine galleries, I was particularly struck by the collection of metal sculptures; especially Anthony Caro's 'Table Piece', Sahaja's 'Homage to Vajrasatva' and Tim Noble and Sue Webster's 'Happy Snappy'.

I particularly liked Sahaja's three works, named 'Darkness of Wisdom', 'Projector Majic' and 'Eater of Flesh Demons', that were from the series 'Homage to Vajrasatva'. The sculptures were all made from collected rusty metal that had been welded together to portray the 'wrathful deity of Vajrasatva'. The found pieces of aged metal were arranged to depict Hindu demons, yet the seemingly jumbled composition of scattered scrap metal, transformed this heavy material, as the work looked energytic and vibrant. I also loved the different colours that you could see in the rusted metal; browns, oranges, reds, greens etc. This is definitely a material I would like to use in my work, as it would allude to the old machines in the mills and the idea of time gone by. Also, I think rusty surfaces have a very strong aesthetic quality.

Ralph Gratton's screenprint, 'These are the fences- this is the grass', was also very clever, as he had collected a mass of images of grass and fences and had adjusted the tones of the photographs, so that they were reduced to just black and white. The simple reduction of the images made for quite a bold and powerful design.

However the image that really stood out for me was Bill Brandt's, 'Back Lane, Dean Clough'. The photograph shows the iconic Halifax mill in the background, with the factory itself situated on the right, with three parallel rail lines infront of the building and three children playing in the street. In my opinion, this has to be one of the best works I have seen that has tackled the issue of portraying industrial Britain. The image successfully depicts the mill's omnipresence, whilst the children on the right of the image, remind the viewer of the worker and his living conditions.

Bill Brandt, 'Back Lane, Dean Clough' c.1960.