Contemporary art sketchbook walk, week 5

Outside Bethnal Green tube station, this war memorial, marking the deaths of 173 people in a crush as they descended to shelter in the tube on 3 March 1943 -

First stop, Maureen Paley, where these drawings were made in the flickering light of Gillian Wearing's puzzling but absorbing film -

Juxtaposed canvases, each "A Day of Toil", by Ida Ekblad at Herald St -

I didn't "get it" but quite liked my image, which is of a piece that's installed in a corner -

Round the corner to Campoli Presti, past the bullet-hole window at the corner of the building -

The exhibition, by fictional artist Reena Spaulings, uses colours from the Late Turner exhibition and a robot floor cleaner, what japes! -

What's missing is the robot's brush marks...

Coffee at The Gallery cafe on Old Ford Rd, then to The Approach: an installation called Who Buries Who by Amanda Ross-Ho -

Finally, another puzzling show, "Fracking" by Jose Rojas (at Vilma Gold); it contained this piece, Earth and Sun, made with two obstetric models -

A hasty rendition at the end of an intense day -

Another large sketchbook

It started with a tiny picture by John Piper, cut out from some art magazine or other, years ago -

The "little picture" is a screenprint: "Near Newcastle Emlyn, Cardigan", 1968. The Tate has a copy; you can make an appointment to go see it.

I thought it would be fun to extend the colours and marks beyond its edges, a process that hadn't appealed to me before I started playing with pastels (and with painting). This is how it's evolving - I leave the book open on the work surface and add a little bit whenever I pass it -

Adding blocks of colour - paint, tissue collage, ink

Pastel marks

Cutting through several pages to move the starting image further along in the book

Another page: revelatory cut-outs, more blocks of colour

The third page, very much in progress

The little landscape can be reached by travelling through the pages

The marks I'm making feel somewhat "thoughtless" so I'm researching Piper  and his landscapes, and keeping an eye out for other types of marks -

Work in progess, Finsbury Park tube station

Pia Fries, "o.T."1995, 65 × 100 cm (via)

Too many good things

A busy schedule mixing events, exhibitions, socialising, and daily domestic duties has left little time for reflecting on the things I've seen and done in the past week. They are in danger of slipping away altogether, so to try to stop that happening, here is a list with a few pictures. Research, analysis, re-living will have to happen later...

The view from higher up was different again (via)

Opera - Marriage of Figaro at the ENO - I loved the stage set as a thing in itself, but am still not sure how the cattle skulls relate to the story. And the chairs were good for the action, but perhaps a teeny bit gimicky. My horde of old opera programmees turned up those for performances in 1997 and 2001, so it was high time to see it again. The music is still floating around in my head.

Exhibitions - second viewing of Anselm Kiefer at the RA - and I plan to go yet again.

Child no 98. Chris Titmus/Hamilton Kerr Institute/Fitzwilliam Museum Photograph: Chris Titmus/Hamilton Kerr Institute, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge(via)

Silent Partners at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge - excellent, so informative about a little-known subject, artists' use of mannequins.

Several east-end galleries, a pretext for drawing there than to see the exhibitions themselves.

Islington Art Society autumn show (opened by the director of the National Portrait Gallery, no less).

An "imaginary portrait" by Moyna Flannigan

A talk - "Portrait in Printmaking: Why contemporary artists make portraits in print" (Moyna Flannigan, Tom Hammick, Alessandro Raho) - at the Soane Museum. With a view of the exhibition, Face to Face: British Portrait Prints from the Clifford Chance art collection (open till 24 January)

Reading and Q&A - Jane Smiley at London Review Bookshop, promoting her latest "Some Luck" - it's been hailed as the Great American Novel ... "but not in America", she pointed out. I so admire the variety in her work - and the compelling story telling.

Poetry Thursday - two short war poems

Two short poems about a long war, one by Siegfried Sassoon and the other by Edward Thomas, two well-known British "war poets".

In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)

BY EDWARD THOMAS

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood

This Eastertide call into mind the men,

Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should

Have gathered them and will do never again.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917) was one of six sons born to Welsh parents in London. He wrote his first poems in 1914, at the urging of Robert Frost; Six Poems was published in 1916.  While Poems was being prepared for press in 1917, Thomas was killed at the battle of Arras.

The General

BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON

“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said

When we met him last week on our way to the line.

Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,

And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

“He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

. . . .

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) served in the Royal Fusiliers 1914-17, receiving a Military Cross in 1916. He was wounded in action in 1917, after which he refused to fight any more. "I believe that this War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it," he wrote in his letter which, at the urging of Bertrand Russell, was read in the House of Commons. The poet Robert Graves intervened on his behalf, arguing that Sassoon was suffering from shell-shock and needed medical treatment. In 1917, Sassoon was hospitalized - rather than being court martialed.

War Poems on the Underground have been in place since 20 October on Tube and Overground trains and at special station sites - over 3000 posters in all. They are the works of six British, Italian, Austrian and French poets: Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney, Siegfried Sassoon, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Georg Trakl and Guillaume Apollinaire. They concentrate on the ways we "said goodbye to a whole epoch" and on themes of brotherhood and reconciliation.

A tale of two cities

Early Saturday morning I set off for a meeting in York.

Above, the revealed facade of the revamped King's Cross Station ... turn around and you see St Pancras Station and/or the Great Western Hotel -

Concourse at King's Cross

 Two hours later, sunlight was slanting through York station -

By mid-afternoon, the city was packed with Saturday crowds ... some of them were (still?) in Hallowe'en costumes -

In the quiet area behind York Minster is the Treasurer's House, which Frank Green restored, then gave it to the National Trust in the 1930s with the proviso that everything must be kept exactly as he left it -

 Of course there has to be a photo of York Minster -

 I love a magnificent clock, don't you?

Dusk falls earlier and earlier; time to go home.

A closer look ...

... at my porcelain-dipped, heat-set-pleated textiles, using a macro setting in not very good light. 

I was looking for shadows -

 but found the delicacy of the textile's frayed edges -

 strange shapes -

 contradictions -

and amazingly-preserved texture, for example this net -

I've signed up for a ceramics class in the new year, but before I make more of these, I need to figure out what they're "about". 

Miles apart

Murals near Hackney Road, east London

Hackney Road itself

Covent Garden tourist market

Reflections of the market (disco ball)

Old books of interest

1738, and 1813

Found in Spitalfields market, being sold for £1 each ... three books printed before wood pulp was used for paper - the sort of books that are good for making "new" paper from, and for cutting up and re-using in various crafty projects.

Wood pulp started to be used for paper in the 1840s. Before that, rags were used - and it was mechanical spinning, with the potential for production of more fibre and cloth and rags, that led paper to become cheaper. By 1900, chemical pulping processes (= acidic paper) were the dominant means of production. The Fourdrinier machine, patented in 1801, allowed continuous rolls of paper to be made, a process that was central to industrialised paper making, which in its early days used cotton or linen rags, mechanically beaten to pulp.

The books of sermons include a considerable human investment in making the paper, sheet by sheet (they were printed 16 pages to the sheet). And of collating the folded signatures.

Signature marks at the the bottom of the pages helped to get pages and sections in the right order

The leather covers are crumbling, as they might after more than 200 years. The sermons are probably of little interest nowadays, but I hope at least one real copy is safely tucked away in some library.

The "sermons preached upon several occasions" are by Robert South (1634-1716), who was known for his combative preaching (he grew up in Cromwellian times, and served under kings). The sermons were collected and first published in 1692, with a second edition in his lifetime in 1715.

South's sermons are not to be confused with the collection of almost the same title by John Wesley, founder of Methodism (you can get Wesley's Sermons on Several Occasions as an "enhanced e-book"). Wesley (1703-1791) was always very vocal about ordinary people being excluded from the church, and preached in public places - he is said to have preached 40,000 sermons and travelled 250,000 miles.

Pilgrim's Progress ... there must be zillions of copies of any or all editions of this classic book still around. Bunyan (1628-1688) started to write it while imprisoned (for unlicensed preaching). First printed in 1678, Pilgrim's Progress has never been out of print and has been translated into more than 200 languages. Along with the Bible, it was considered suitable for reading on Sundays in strictly sabbatarian households. Does it still appeal to the ordinary person? You can watch Yorkshire Television's 1985 serialisation (113 minutes) here.

My 1813 version has "copious notes by W Mason" linking passages to scripture and doctrine, and a prefix of "The life and death of Mr John Bunyan". Along with its foxing and whiff, I plan to make it into paper, someday. But I'll keep the title page - look what's on the back of it -

The front cover is missing, but the back cover has more names and dates -

Orange wrappers revisited

Back when I first started blogging (2006), blog stats weren't available. Looking back on them now, I find that most posts got 2 or 3 views ... sometimes double figures ... How are these figures calculated, are these "direct hits" in some way, rather than if someone is scrolling down the page?

Of the first 100 posts, the high achiever, with 133 hits, is this one -

http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.co.uk/2006/01/orange-wrappers.html

To celebrate that historical moment, here are some orange wrappers that recently entered my collection. They are few and far between these days.