Art I like - Idris Khan

 The Devil's Wall is the name of Idris Khan's show at the Whitworth in Manchester (till 13 May). The three dark round objects represent the three pillars that Hajj pilgrims throw stones at; words in English and Arabic are sandblasted into them, falling into the centre. Sandblasting: an aggressive act, leaving delicate traces -

The words are stamped on (that's a lot of stamping!) with oil paint - again, this represents the throwing of stones against the pillars - using stamps to stamp out feelings -

The lighting throws unexpected shadows -

Close-up of the overlaid music

Waiting for the artist to appear and tell us more about his work -

He started by saying his work was about loss, abstraction, repetition, and appropriation; about bringing everything to the surface. The run-through of his work and career, and his stories about the pieces, was edifying;  one thing led to another, and everything knitted itself together into the overall "story". On doing an MA: "you think you come in with a good idea, and leave with another [different!] one". More underpinnings: returning to the same thing every day (eg prayer rituals, music practice). Returning to a certain  point in life.

Some of the meat of the evening was in his generous responses to questions. What sticks with me is: to keep making work you believe in - understand what it is before you show it - take it through to the end, even if it doesn't work. Also, he believes that "the first thing the viewer wants to see is a very beautiful image." Yes!

"Lines of thought"

In a warehouse beside a canal is the Parasol Unit, a foundation for contemporary art. You ring the bell to be let in and find a nice place to sit and read the catalogues -

 Out back, shared with Victoria Miro gallery next door, is an oasis (complete with crow's nest) -

and pond with Yayoi Kusama's floating mirrored balls, which drift in the wind and clink together softly -

The Lines of Thought show, which is on till 13 May, has works by 15 artists from the 60s to today - Helene Appel, Hemali Bhuta, James Bishop, Raoul De Keyser, Adrian Esparza, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Jorge Macchi, Nasreen Mohamedi, Fred Sandback, Conrad Shawcross, Anne Truitt, and Richard Tuttle.

Partial view of ground floor; image from here

The exhibition continues upstairs -

My favourite piece, by Jorge Macchi, who has also done some tricky things with maps and words and suchlike -

Image from here (..."poetry and mystery meet")

It's hard to put into words why I find this piece so satisfying -- but hey, that's why I'm blogging, to know what I think when I hear myself talk!  So here goes...

What I see [let's start with the easy bit, the description] is a postcard of two equal-sized blue rectangles - presumably the sea and the sky. Immediately their meeting point becomes the horizon. Metal springs hold the piece to the wall -- suspend it in tension, hold it in suspense against the wall, both extending the horizon line and making it finite -- but because the springs are coiled, they hint at the infinite extent of the horizon, if only they could be drawn out far enough to make them as straight as the line they are joined to. The horizon connotes a definite demarkation, yet an unattainable place -- it's always moving ahead of you. Sometimes, for instance when you are in a forest, it disappears. The horizon could be seen as a non-place (you can't actually go there), and yet it's not nowhere. The metal springs seem to me to be torturing the very concept of the horizon, putting it on the rack, making it fit the rack-master's idea of truth. Alternatively (or perhaps, "also") the message could be that a horizon can be as wide as you want. It's up to the viewer to decide.

Wordless Wednesday

Book du jour - islands and lakes

This time, a real book - a small notebook bought at Paperchase and filled up with threadwork (aka sewn shapes). I wanted to capitalise on the common response to seeing embroidery - the irresistible impulse to turn it over and look at the back - as this impulse would propel the reader through the book, and perhaps provide some surprises along the way. The idea of islands came to mind, as a group of them (an archipelago, lovely word!) would be separate on one side of the page and joined on the other side, not recognisable as islands at all, and the thread shape might morph into ... something else ...

After stitching a few islands, I felt they were starting to look all the same, so did some looking in an atlas and drawing - these may or may not be recognisable as Mediterranean islands ... recognisability doesn't matter!

Same process with the lakes - observation lends variety to the stitching. These are Canadian lakes. The lakes might have islands within them - or the stitching might cross from side to side (on the reverse), just as the stitching between islands crossed "underwater".

 To make the book more interesting, some other mapping features can be added - lines of latitude and longitude, either drawn or stitched - or contour lines on the islands. Rivers running into the lakes? Circles, for cities? Lines to indicate scale (miles/km) or the mysterious 1:50 000 or similar.

A further use for the stitching was for rubbing, which shows the stitching on both sides of the page. Here are some rubbings of two pages at once - to make this work (for the rubbings to be interesting, rather than random) the sequence of images needs some thought. But I'm not very interested in the level of contrivance.

I seem to be rushing into doing without too much thinking.  Which is no bad thing, at the moment - it's the doing that is generating the thinking; the writing about the process is helping me decide where to take it next.

Book du jour - using lots of ink

 All weekend I've been investigating graphite and ink (again; still!) - and getting back to the "journey lines". First is the large sheet of black paper which was splattered with some india ink that was left to dry, and then I put some lumpy things - actually cardboard letters saved from another project - under it. Top left says 11.45 and by the time I got to bottom right, 12.28. If the paper had been any larger, drawing a line across it would have meant moving my body, not just the arm. The letters made lumps in the lines, but not discernable shapes.

Seeing how the graphite slid over the ink, I wanted to see if ink would slide over graphite. On the left is a lumograph (china marker) crayon, covered in ink; on the left, rubbing with 9B graphite. These are on a smaller scale and more densely rubbed, so the letters do "read". Both are covered with ink and the ink rubbed off before it dried, as it looked as though if the ink dried it would completely cover the marks.

 The china marker looked ugly but the graphite shone up a treat against the dark background. From then on it was a matter of trying out various papers and removing the ink from the graphite before it dried. This is black paper - well, actually grey - showing unremoved ink on the right -

 Rather than drawing horizontal lines I found a piece of fabric I'd printed last year with journey lines in puffa paste. The raised surface was great for rubbing, and letters could be put on top of the fabric. Once one side of the paper was inked and polished, I did the other side; by then the graphite was "harmless" - it didn't come off and make the fabric dirty.

 To protect the fabric around the paper edges I put down a layer of tissue paper - this didn't interfere with the impression of the lines. After some happy hours listening to Radio 4, I had samples on black (grey) paper, white paper - both about 90gsm; the tracing paper that comes in a pack, which is more like onion skin; tissue paper; moon palace paper (bottom); and lower right, pearlescent paper rubbed with wax candle ... not exactly a mistake, but something I probably won't repeat -

The ink makes the paper look burnt, especially the thinner paper in the way it goes crinkly - and it feels like stiff, thin leather.  Either the ink, or the graphite, or perhaps the frequent washing, is hard on the hands - makes your skin too feel like stiff, thin leather.

The playing with "technique" [let's call this repetition  Process...] is fairly mindless - apart from needing to be on the alert for unexpected things that could lead elsewhere. I could have been more deliberate about forming words with the letters, or making the papers of a size to use for a book. Perhaps that will come next with fresh paper and more ink (my supply is now used up!), or perhaps these papers will undergo further punishment and turn into something else ... something as yet unimaginable.

"In loving memory"

The applied lead letters haven't survived the test of time -

Museum of childhood

Part of "The Value of the Paw" by Cathie Pilkington - her (rather disturbing) sculptures are throughout the museum, till 7 May -

 1845 spelling game -

 Teething rattles -

... and much more! Open daily, 10am till 5.45, nearest tube Bethnal Green. Free admission; it's part of the V&A - you can search the collection here.

Fabricated spaces

This image in the SAQA art quilt weekly newsletter caught my eye not so much because of the quilt (by Diane Savona - see more of her work reusing clothing here) but because of the extra factor of its presentation - as an installation, the closed boxes feeding the viewer's imagination - and making me want to see more ... and to find out, why the boxes?

The show, Consuming Boundaries, is at Perkins Center for the Arts, Collingswood, New Jersey through May 12, 2012.

"Weaving a fabric tale of womanhood" says this article - it includes a video of the show, in which Diane Savona explains the boxes - each represents a female artist ... Mimi Smith, for example - she of the steel wool peignoir - with brillo pads coming out of her box. "History is here in the boxes that we're building on." And then there are the hidden things... Brilliant!

Diane Savona's installation; image from video

Also in the exhibition, Susan Benarcik evolved her installation pieces to be collapsible. Ana B. Hernandez' piece is called "My head in the clouds" and involved family and friends ruffling fabric and attaching fishing line. Maria Anasazi wanted to make a 50-foot long book - attaching pages, and reused fabric, to an industrial grid by weaving and stapling.

Maria Anasazi's "book"; image from video

(Another sort of "fabricated space", I found in my search, is the simulated locales created by the military for training purposes - whew!)

Book du jour - graphite

This rather geographical-looking bit of rubbing is inspired by the sublime graphite works of Guiseppe Penone. It didn't start out with any geographical intent, but as experimentation - how to get different shinynesses on black paper. The geographical aspects - maps of counties or types of vegetation - revealed themselves, and now I'm thinking how this can move from "map" to "book", from small to large-scale (local to global?)...

My samples are A4-size; Penone's works, shown at Haunch of Venison last year, are rather larger -

Another great use of graphite is Tracey Rowledge's Surface at the Jerwood a couple of months ago - an entire wall densely covered in graphite.

It seems the simpler the finished work, with such "rich" materials, the more associations it carries.

In my quest to discover why graphite is shiny, I have discovered that the harder forms (like pencils designated "H" rather than "B") have corresponding larger proportions of filler: clay and wax. (This varies from brand to brand.) Graphite is carbon and its structure is flat hexagonal plates which slide over each other - this makes it a good lubricant. Carbon isn't a metal but has some metallic properties, including shine. However, some people insist graphite is dull. Are they getting mixed up with charcoal, which is almost pure carbon? Why are they different, anyway...?

Going back to the dictionary definition of graphite: "A soft, steel-gray to black, hexagonally crystallized allotrope of carbon with a metallic luster and a greasy feel, used in lead pencils, lubricants, paints, and coatings, that is fabricated into a variety of forms such as molds, bricks, electrodes, crucibles, and rocket nozzles. Also called black lead, plumbago."

And from the information here, we learn that it comes down to the allotropic form - the geometrical arrangement of the atoms. Apart from the crystalline graphite and diamond forms, there is also an amorphous form, found in smoke and soot - and charcoal.

Zoe Leonard at Camden Arts Centre

Zoe Leonard's show, Observation Point, seems very sparse, but I found it conceptually satisfying. One room has monochrome photos of the sun (photographers do not recommend shooting into the sun, and Leonard is a photographer). They are unframed and each is held on the wall by a substantial nail at each corner.

I was also intrigued by the "hidden extras" in the room with "Survey" -- the bits of tape left on the foamcore that, covered with sheets of glassine, tops the table on which the 6266 postcards are displayed, and the holes in the wall from the display in the previous exhibition, which Leonard chose to leave rather than have restored and painted out. Subtle additions to the visual experience.

The differing heights of the piles of postcards, and the cards themselves, from all eras, was so satisfying I rather missed the point - fortunately a review of the show makes it clear: " Survey (2009) is a table featuring stacks of 6266 postcards of the Niagara Falls, each one plotted as though on a map, so that the postcards are placed in the relative position to that of the photographer who took the photograph. This treatment of a clichéd subject powerfully reminds us that perspective outstrips nearly all else when it comes to seeing and understanding the world, and that others’ perspectives and images have a radical influence on our own. " The use of postcards brought to mind Susan Hiller's Rough Seas - a rather different use of found postcards!

The show is on till 24 June - do go on a sunny day if you can, as the third room is a camera obscura. You can lounge in a bean bag and watch traffic go by - upside down. It's yet another way to change your way of looking at things.

Zoe Leonard's Analogue project (1998-2007) consists of photographs charting the disappearance of handmade signage from city streets, tracking the disappearance of photographic film’s unique language at the onset of the digital age. Some of this work was seen in London in the Deutsche Bourse photographic prize show last year.

From Analogue; image from here

Underground erasure

Success, according to Tapies

Untitled; image from here

"My activities have never had anything to do with the idea of becoming famous or achieving success. I have always been concerned with getting people to listen to me. In everything I do ... my aim is to make people listen. I want to communicate the things that I love and in which I believe, because I think that people can derive a general benefit from them. What I really want is success in a philosophical sense: I want people to grasp something of the ideas and hopes which I express in painting." - Antoni Tapies, in "Conversations with Antoni Tapies", by Barbara Catoir

The yellow, and the red stripes, reference the Catalan flag; when this was painted in 1971, Catalonia was controlled by Franco's regime. Image from here

More images of Tapies' prodigious output here.

Book du jour

The "ghost children" idea evolved from the urge to use the fancy edges of childhood photos "somehow" - I was thinking vaguely of erasure of memory. Photocopies made lid-up (to get the black background) emphasised the framing. But inking-over beloved people in treasured photos was simply not a possibility, even in the photocopies, so I started by waxing the figures and frames and blacking out the background. It really wasn't going anywhere that could be part of my project, but one last attempt - using the figures in "ribbon books".

The simplified shapes of the tracings allowed waxing onto rice paper, after which I (carefully) wet the paper in the waxed areas and inked the dry bits, so that the ink would be grey rather than black around the figures. Wouldn't you know, I managed to get half the figures upside down on the strip... Next attempt, adding some rubbings with wax ... and then some attempts with just rubbings (losing interest in the idea...)

Having got this far with photos, wax, and ink, I came across this photo (by Alexandra Beier) illustrating a review of Paul Farley's latest volume of poetry, in a Sunday paper -

It has the "dark clouds clearing" qualities I'm trying to incorporate. (And having found this interview with Paul Farley, I'm definitely going to read some of his poems!)

Where...

... in London is this?

(But more to the point - what's behind it?)

A closer view of the decorative dragon on the sinuous handles -

In case you're nearby ... it's underneath the north end of Waterloo Bridge, between the two sets of stairs that give access from the Embankment to the bridge.

Art I like - Mira Schendel

A Brazilian artist working with language, Mira Schendel's show of work from the 60s to 80s at MOMA in New York in 2009 included language-based work by Argentinian artist Leon Ferrari. " They produced their works in the neighboring countries of Argentina and Brazil throughout the 1960s and 1980s, when the question of language was particularly central to Western culture due to the central role taken by post-structuralism, semiotics, and the philosophy of language. Although their drawings, sculptures, and paintings are contemporary with the birth of Conceptualism, they are distinctively different." The show travelled to Spain and Portugal.

"Tangled Alphabets" at MOMA, New York, 2009

I came across her work in The Drawing Book (her name spelled Schindel) and was intrigued -

The monotypes she made in 1964-5 were "printed by pressing talcum-powdered rice paper against an oiled pane of glass...Schendel used her fingertips to create the resulting ghostly inscriptions. These could be viewed from either side, incorporating the wet street scene or gallery walls into messages that are pointedly emptied of narrative meaning, instead focusing on a sensual experience of words." They tie together language and mark-making -

Monotypes - from a 2009 mini-retrospective in London

A brief overview of her life here mentions her "drohuingas (little nothings)" - sculptures made of knots of paper. This video mentions the link of the word "knot" to the idea of word or verb -- "the words are knotted in speech like chords."

Japanese paper; image from here

Equally sculptural are her "trenzinhos (little trains)" - a simple accumulation of papers - her interpretation of the meaning of nothingness -

Japanese paper and nylon; dimensions variable. Image from here

She used Japanese paper mainly because of its transparency and because of the philosophical connotation that the paper represents nothingness.

In the late 70s she started working on "toquinhos (little things)" - which hang from the ceiling and create shadows - floating signs waiting for a meaning to come -

Letters and symbols on acrylic; image from here

Finally, some typing -

1975; image from here