' Misbehaviour ' at cmr gallery Redruth October 2014

'Misbehaviour' exhibition organised and curated by Katya Rosenburg at CMR Redruth - an Artist collective.

October  2014, Wednesday  to Saturday  12-4, free admission.

Members of CMR invigilated.

There was a lot to see in this show, work from 50 artists, from several countries, which is going onto be shown in London.

I felt quite at home looking at it as I am familiar with themed  political work from the 80's when I was part of Brixton Womens' Work shows. There was a mix of printed booklets, video, participatory stuff and purely visual and there were helpful statements from the artists about their contributions. 

I 'd have liked some work hung lower, some statements to make more sense, some information about the Artists and a printed list of them to take away, but in general it looked good, well spaced, easy to get involved for at least an hour and thought provoking. Someone visiting remarked how you see nothing like this in St.Ives, still dominated by what I call 'Penwithy abstraction', it's an invigorating change to be asked to think and for the artists to be involved in current issues such as the London riots.

Amanda Walsh, from Redruth, had obtained cc tv footage of misbehaving, to understate it, which was shown on a large screen, showing bluish video of night scenes of fighting amongst presumably drunken people in our streets and police dealing with the victims of it. There was some middle of the road bangy music which you could have on the headphones and which may help people to keep watching but I preferred it without the music as it seemed more real, less a balletic sort of clockwork orange thing. It was very impressively unpleasant and current and titled 'Tooth and Claw'

 I wished this could have been in a window to bring in a larger audience, but the danger of attracting smash and grab thieves after the telescreen apart from the fact that the windows are reinforced and frosted made this unlikely.

Next to it Alke Schmidt from London had a work painted on top of that furnishing fabric with a chic pattern of eighteenth century ladies and flowery bowers. Contrasting with that image of bourgeois interior design and comfort were figures of hooded youths, out of doors, the dangerous looking lowest rung of today's society, It was called 'Mind the Gap'- a title which I had used myself, here used with subtle power and wit.

More lightheartedly, Catherine Kontz from London , a composer, had a punch card operated musical box. You could make punched holes and feed your own composition in, turning a small handle, and because it was mounted on a small chest of drawers the sound was amplified pleasingly.

 There was more to it, even instructions on how you might misbehave by not following the instructions. I immediately wanted one if these devices to play with at home.

On the floor below I particularly liked the well drawn images of a smoking seagull and a Heath Robinson diagram of scrumping for apples and making and drinking cider.

Also beautifully drawn, and employing the Grayson Perry tactic of enticing with technique to express something serious, was a drawing of a child being detained while youths stole his bicycle.

There was a turning hanging mobile of paper pistols and shrimps, referring to pistol-shrimps and the noises they make.

There were photographic booklets about the notices in our environment, an opportunity to write your confessions of your own misbehaviour or tell lies about it, something about being gay, references to the troubles in Ireland, many surprises to enjoy in fact whilst showing that artists are doing all sorts of things that are relevant to contemporary life.

CMR exists to show this sort of current work and it was well worth seeing.

Villa Arson Degree Show in Nice Sept 2014

Art from the Arson Villa student show at the Marine Gallery, Promenade des Etats Unis, Nice, 2014

My first impression is how similar this is to say Falmouth BA show, how international is the current contemporary art. There is  video, some so dull you could scream, references to Catalan, Ukeles, odd things on poles, totems, a thing that looks very delicate and works electrically that moves that has broken, a motorbike burnt and lit by a sodium light, the work of Quentin Everte.

The surface of a tyre is being scanned and projected.At first I took it to be a video of the inside of a van with just a crack of light, maybe about immigrants being illegally smuggled in, but it's not, that's my idea for a work.
I apologize for not having the name of the artist.

The first prize the curator tells me has gone to the sound installation, so subtle that I had not noticed it, beautifully installed with pastel lit small speakers above our heads, and now I hear some bells coming from it. Simon Nicolas made it.

There's video of cleaning up after fireworks like we saw at the port a few days before but with it jerky hand held shots of children on a beach, I thought maybe also clearing, but they aren't, and five minutes to watch time code projected, which seems interminable sitting in the dark. Its by Celine Fantino.

The video of a woman  cleaning a floor and then brushing her hair with the dirty brush I am informed is a reference to a famous picture by Caillebotte of workers cleaning a parquet floor.

There is also video of a desert and a pool table with messily painted areas and paint on the balls.

There are pieces of shaped stone in an old display cabinet.

There are rather beautiful photograms of snail trails on black by Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo.

The main difference from the Falmouth show is that this one, in two venues, the larger of which I did not get to, is open for several months so it gets a reasonable audience. Falmouth is only open a week, similarly the MA show, when it's highly likely there will be no refreshments and very little publicity for the artists who have worked very hard in most cases and yet it isn't even shown so that the new students could see it, let alone showcased to any art dealers who might provide future opportunities. Is this because the new cohort will be much the same, no point in letting them see the last lot? There is also a free informative illustrated leaflet  whereas at Falmouth you have to buy a catalogue. Also there is a curator present who is happy to speak to me.

Earlier in the week we had been to the gallery in Nice which shows nineteenth century works. This again was a Europe wide style, of heavy dark interiors, narratives of slave girls and gods, history paintings, admirable in their care and observation, skill and industry, and how different from our age of peculiarly odd stuff. 

What does it mean that the lightness and love of life of the impressionists is lost to us, and what will be next? 

Was there ever thus a mass of similar art and a few things get through, through to be kept and valued, known in the canon, and from even earlier just a few things remain, not valued as masterpieces but merely for their survival, any prehistoric image is remarkable, we don't say one is good or bad.

The contemporary scene is hard work, varied, scrappy, the art seems thrown together in an afternoon, without skill, without coherence, we feel tired, unwilling to read pretentious blurb, ready for lunch.

I find I want some joie de vivre, I've just returned from the intoxications  of Matisse , Bonnard and Picasso, let's find some joy in living now despite the horrors!

It's this that I always find in dance, in jazz, in holidays in hot countries, in flaneuring,  and it insists on getting into my art alongside the douleurs.

I buy one of Sheila Stayne's sculptures, back home  in St.Ives, its to be worn round my neck, made in felt, it's deep blue with orange and pink, a 3D Trevor Bell inspired creation.

Cuckoo Town Guide to ART

'The Cuckoo Town Guide To Art' at the theatre upstairs, St.Ives Arts Club 8pm,

July 29,August 5,12,19,26th- all the Tuesdays. 2014

Tickets £6 from Cafe Art  or at the door from 7.30

www.CuckooTown.com

Shanty Baba and Dhyano have put this intoxicating  cocktail of surprises together and perform with panache and subtlety.

My favourite joke was an explanation of how to sculpt a dog in stone, but it's the way Dhyano tells it of course. His catwalk fashion show is also amazingly hilarious and accurately observed.

Shanty is more low key and his poetic piece towards the end of the show moves into a reflective and gentler mode to complete an excellent evening of entertaining pieces about art and art in St.Ives.  Dyhano accompanies him with atmospheric improvisation on the lovely piano in  which the Arts Club now rejoices.

I  started out thinking the artist called Sean was fiction, particularly as his names is S.Landers, but on checking online I find it's all true. He features in the section on ego.

Terry, Barbara, and many others come into the show, the latter alarmingly giving birth on stage.

There is local reference to our ex-mayor's shop and a competition to make a work of art to be judged by the audience. 

I loved the installation proposed for the Tate, presumably when Nick Serota is next on the Dali Lobster phone he will finalise the arrangements.

Don't miss it. 

You can take a bottle in and sit around cabaret style tables to enjoy a very unusual evening of original humour from these two performers who make a good team.

 I would say its unforgettable, but there is so much packed in that you may need to go twice to take it all in.

St.Ives Literature Festival

Norway Square Blues.

[St. Ives Literary Festival 2014]

Why don’t the poets turn up on time?

We’ve heard a few by the time others arrive

- the late poets.

We’re in a time warp, 

guitars and sunshine,

a very quiet harmonica.

Cliches pile up

especially about women - oh dear

oh no - don’t

I’m cringing apprehensively now.

At least there’s a few here, thanks to the late poets

I can leave less obviously, shuddering,

but, maybe the cliches are a joke,

I’ve got it now

railroads and hound dogs

ok

he’s got it before me, not just bourbon but tea

and everything as he says 

is the blues

or will be.

Peter Fox at Redwing gallery, Penzance

Peter Fox ‘Que Paso’ Redwing Gallery Penzance.

This show is on from April 5th for a month, Tuesday to Sat, 11 to 5, free entry, refreshments available. The Redwing is a gallery for alternative art outside the mainstream and is a large space where Peter Fox and Ros Williams also host workshops for art and craft and have live music, poetry and film. It is a Community Interest Company and has transformed a disused shop into a lively art gallery, in Wood Street, opposite the Crown Inn in Bread Street and at the other end joining Market Jew Street on the corner where there is a light bulb shop, opposite and further down than Peacocks.

At the moment Peter Fox has a solo show; you can always find out their program of events online and on Facebook.

Peter paints and also makes constructions and decorated boxes, all his work having a lovingly hand crafted appearance with great care taken over the surfaces.

I asked Peter where his imagery comes from and it seems he likes to invite images to rise from his subconscious. He is aware of influences such as Mayan art and has since childhood liked some images that recur in his pictures  such as tower. There are comets, strange spotted animals, birds etc.

He likes to use a red sky  and other strong vibrant colours, although on the other hand some of his work is more subdued grey and brown. One work controversially reclaims the swastika as a sign used long before the nazis perverted it.

What I like particularly is the way the symbols and images are placed in the compositions,  implying movement like a dance around the space, probably linked to Peter’s love of Latin American music and rhythm.

There are witty visual juxtapositions of scale or places where a circle could be a ball rolling on an edge or not, a snake may slither in and out of columns or a branch with a bird on it can even emerge from the frame.

I am not aware of another artist using images and symbols like this, in a clear unsentimental way, subtle and  vibrant.

Klee,hamilton,The Vikings, Picasso. Baselitz and co.

Klee, Hamilton, The Vikings, Baselitz & Co. and Picasso

Up to London, by car and train, Russian, Italian, Hubble bubbles on Edgware Rd., crowds, lights, veiled women and rickshaws. My Echo shoe soles disintegrate, Pedyr's spectacles have to be mended with Sellotape, my coat belt buckle gets stuck down by the front seat upstairs on the no 7 bus just when it's time to get off so I am trapped, a lovely Greek meal at Kolossi in Paddington, sunshine and laid back Caribbean buskers by Tate Modern and the lift still isn't repaired , will it ever be? in the Royal Norfolk Hotel.

At Tate Modern the Paul Klee, on it's next to last day is very crowded and must have 300 small pictures to view, in 17 rooms. I am a bit disappointed although there are a lot of works I like, very subtle when I examine them, very finely drawn and beautiful colour combinations. I could have preferred it edited down to a more manageable number, with a few contextual photos of how two world wars were happening in his lifetime, some information about abstraction developing in other countries, about the Bauhaus, music contemporary to Klee etc.

Hamilton, feels easier to process as I remember a lot of the events, but the works that aren't the famous pop collage and the photo of Jagger in handcuffs seem so preoccupied with being stylish. I love the roto reliefs and I enjoy the portrait of Tony Blair as a cowboy with guns, although I think it was more of a saviour complex coupled with being taken over by Bush VIP glamour that led him into Iraq.

A new day dawns and we're off to the British Museum, where enthusiastic officials corall us, detain us and eventually tick off our names as if they used to work for DHSS, before searching our bags but failing to mention that photos are not allowed. There are a lot of very small pieces of jewelry and other small objects, in semi darkness and a slow moving queue to see them, held up by those with audio guides. There are interesting quotes up high in big writing and lovely voices speaking presumably Norse and related languages.
Very little about women until the bits near the end about Odin's wife Sif having her hair cut off by a joking Loki and restored in gold by helpful dwarves, and the lovely white queens with their worried looks from the Lewis chess set, and I realise thence to Lewis Carol.

It's mostly gold ornaments for men of remarkably lovely detail, swords, warships and helmets. Women's jewelry seems to be random stringing of a variety of beads, and their marks of importance are the housekeeping keys.Words we retain from Viking times include 'egg' and 'sister'. One and a half hours later we stumble out into the gift shop, better informed, blinking in the light, wanting to buy something and eat a large lunch upstairs, where I realise I am looking at all the glasses, the decor, the coffee cups as if stuck in a perpetual museum of objects.

I would have liked more and larger video projections of the modern authentic remake of a Viking boat at sea, maybe clips from our previous notions of the Vikings, from Noggin the Nog to wilder adventures, more poetry including sagas in translation.

After eating we went to see the German Baselitz and Co, passing so many other wonderful exhibits we could have enjoyed for free, and delayed to enjoy two recently acquired lino cuts by Picasso, shown in various states as he progressed to the end result, so lively and rhythmic, colourful and dynamic.

The German artists from West and East we viewed from the unfortunate position of visual and mental and physical exhaustion, despite the delicious treat of an expensive lunch and a long sit down. However, even if I had been feeling sprightly I don't think this collection of messily drawn vague stuff could have ever competed with the rest of the museum. These were not the best work by Penck, Richter, Blinky Paloma etc. surely, just an assortment, set against a museum full of marvellous things.

Back to Paddington, guarded by alarmingly armed policemen, with it's ever passing crowds, balm for a flaneur with her sketchbook, with the incomprehensible announcements, the temptations of cheap jewelry, magazines and even sandwiches without horrid mayonnaise, and we'll be back in Cornwall feeling as if these two days have been a week of looking.

Cornelia Parker talking at Falmouth art college.

Cornelia Parker - lecture at Falmouth University , February 2014

The talk had a  title 'truth to materials' to which the artist referred from time to time, whilst showing us images of her work, things chosen because she likes them, whereas she said she has produced plenty of  work she would not show now.

Cornelia said, 'squashing things is my only expertise'. She works in many media, taking an interest in many things, from her famous exploded shed to interviewing Chomsky, to be seen on youtube.

drawing by Mary Fletcher

Some interesting responses came to the questions, which as usual at lectures were kept to rather a short time at the end but were the best part. Cornelia described being an artist as political and philosophical. She was keen on work for an anti - fracking campaign but often her political work was not clearly on one side of a fence as she hopes to have a wide appeal. 

Her work at the V&A using squashed brass band instruments she saw as an intrusion of something working class into that environment but she did not say if the fact that the instruments were clapped out and ruined was part of what she meant to say.

 Equally she mentioned that whereas Gordon Brown cherished the old cracked leather of the old chancellor's red leather case, George Osborne has had a brand new one made with 'fake distressed look' but she did not say if she found this apt for a Tory chancellor. 

However, she admires the work of more overtly political artists like Bob and Roberta Smith and Jeremy Deller.

I always deplore the paucity of political work at the art college shows so hope this encourages more students to interest themselves in the here and now and taking a stand on important issues.

 C.P.seemed to delight in paradox, such as finding a Bedouin family in Palestine who make crowns of thorns to be sold to Christians in Jerusalem.

I  gathered her parents did not understand or encourage her work and that she is a lapsed Catholic.

Whilst showing a rorsach blot pattern Cornelia said they all look phallic, just as I was thinking of womb and vulva shapes.

Cornelia has not made drawings of things for years but takes  photos which are a sort of sketchbook of references.

She is embarrassed to be a Royal Academician and uses her feelings if negative to put into her work, making a work using the many red dots next to the most popular summer show print of a bird and showing this, minus bird image, in the room where all the small works are hung close together.

As I have made two works about red dots and the questions people ask about the success of a show, I fell to thinking that many artists must have also done work on this theme and wondering how Cornelia Parker got her breaks into stardom, but was too slow to ask, fearing that no one really tells us that and that my burning envy of her success is futile.

The artist remarked that some students were bogged down by the amount of theory they learnt before they had even made much art and become accustomed to using their hands and producing ideas in quantity.

I liked her and her quirky work and was surprised to see she is only a few years younger than I am.

Cornelia Parker is apparently creatively open to using whatever she sees around her, such as casting spilt milk patterns between cobblestones, using cold cure rubber, or throwing a meteorite into a lake and putting up a notice about it, making photograms using the light of a match to illuminate the previous spent match, using snake venom and its antidote to make a drawing. The number of ideas was impressive and we should perhaps have asked if she does anything specific to engender them, although she did mention that residencies were useful spaces for new influences and time to ponder.

There is a new book out about her work by Ilona  Blazwick and Yoko Ono, about £20..

Can an artist be successful who does not live in London, or does not wish to jet round the world to take up residencies and exhibiting opportunities?

Did Cornelia have to stick to the one idea about squashing things for a good while before she couldbe accepted as doing other stuff?

Does she survive financially by various means and would she have told us how?

A packed theatre made an attentive audience and I was glad to have been there.

INNterval at Halsetown Inn Feb 2014

INNterval 2-8 Feb 2014 compared with 'The Bridge' on tv.

This exhibition was held at the Halsetown pub, near St.Ives,  in a week before they were to refurbish the upstairs rooms. Hence the witty title.,

Ilker Cinarel  had this bright idea and organised it. He also greeted visitors at the preview which was very nice, and had provided a useful plan of the show and list of the exhibits with remarks about it from the artists. The preview was a very enjoyable occasion and most unusually for an art show had a large area for parking. We, myself and Pedyr, had eaten  downstairs first and so went up to the show feeling quite cheerful and bright.

As often happens the meeting of people we knew and the chat was the most enjoyable part and the art came second. The reference at the entrance to some connection to the actor Henry Irving who lived near here years ago was not in any way connected to by the show, which was  a mixture of all sorts. Maybe the connection helped them get a huge square inchidge in the local paper as a sort of nod to heritage.

My favourite work was two charcoal drawings of a pool table by Michael Broughton , not framed, just put up on the wall. Simply two good drawings with no attendant hype or pretension.

Unfortunately the room was dominated by an insanely bright light and I could not bear to look round the rest of it.

The rest of the show was dimly lit as for a party.

Ilker Cinarel had two walls of drawings of his father which looked good in that they were bold and varied. What he said  in the text  didn't mean anything to me but I could see he was working on something systematically and repeatedly.

Janet McEwan also had repeated images of people in red suits in photos,  apparently a project of substance that could be referred to online.

   

  Christiane Berkhoff  had been embroidering, making a feature of painstaking handwork that takes a long time. You could have a go at this technique, but having a horror of painstaking craft I declined.

Liam Jolly had film of himself endlessly brushing his teeth in the bathroom, and other video and reflections, literally, using ,mirrors, but it needed some help to get the ideas and I didn't ask him about it.

 There were some sweet smelling rotting apples and a dilapidated shopping trolley which had been part of a performance.

There were lots of other things of course, but after an hour or so of sidling round the crowded corridors and rooms, greeting friendly people and noticing who was there we wanted to get back and I was looking forward to the last part of 'The Bridge'

This brings up the contrast between film, the cathedral of our times in its huge work of collaboration, pursued with such excellent control of media, such wonderfully engaging acting, characters and plot, evocative music and moody night scenes, in which the fragility of our contemporary world, so complex, so easily terrorized by extremists, so in need of reform to save the planet from decadent horrors is combined with intriguing alterations from the usual male/female stereotypes, so comfortably watched from my bed with a cup of tea in complete concentration to read the subtitles, so immersive and amazing;  and visual artists, so apt to present something that is only half worked out, struggling after something without anything being clear to the visitor who drops in,  gains a few wild impressions, chats and leaves.

Artists are working without much money, no team of excellence to help like the film crew, and not having had to pass their ideas by powerful people who insist on pace and intrigue, on the work making sense and appealing to a wide audience. 

So, the early evening's haphazard glimpses of fragments of peoples' earnest efforts to continue their addiction to expressing their visual ideas, is followed by the magnificently glamorous and adept film-makers seamless and beautiful production.

Two ends of the spectrum of contemporary art. 

Christmas Coasters in the Arts Cafe St.Ives, Cornwall

The owners of the Arts Cafe had the inspired idea to invite artists to contribute coasters with art work on them for a Christmas display.

These formed a lively exhibition and in a way a snapshot of what art is going on now, contributed with none of the self consciousness of many shows and with all being included.

I didn’t see any of the names of the most famous artists who get shown here.

The ones I include were the photos I took that turned out best.

My own was a joke about how a Hepworth snowman might look. with a stripey scarf.

Angela Elsom also thought of knitting.

Jenny Shaw-Browne 

 and Gazelle did impressionistic paintings of scenes.

James Wood did a formal kaleidescopic detailed design.

Juliette had two images maybe by children?

and an unknown [to me] contributor mounted springs on the coaster.

Marie Keeling used brass fitments abstractly

and Humphrey Hallwood drew a stylish composition  in black and white.

Paul Healey had an elegant collage reminding me of Schwitters

and Mary Hayes had an expressionist dark design, 'Its a cold world without you'.

That’s just a few of them, there were a great many more, many at very keen prices.

Hopefully the Arts Cafe will repeat something similar next year, making dropping in for refreshments very interesting.

A Year in My Studio, exhibition at St.Ives Arts Club

  'A year in my studio'

   

  A solo art exhibition at St.Ives Arts Club , Dec 28 to Jan 3rd, 11 - 4 daily, free admission.

Embrace

This is the first year that I have had a studio outside my house. 

It is at White's Old Workshops, Porthmeor Rd.,St.Ives, twenty minutes walk down the hill , past the sea and Tate St.Ives.

There is a group of studios there and the public can drop in to see our work.

When I was at college at Nottingham in the sixties personal space had been abolished, although you could work where you found a temporary space, and when I did my MA in contemporary art, in 2006 at Falmouth, part-timers were given no space there to work in, so perhaps I felt a bit deprived of a personal space, a room of my own as Virginia Woolf said.

At first I began to be influenced by the seascape but I don't think I have become seduced into commercial tourist imagery. I go on as a flaneur drawing people I see , working quickly to capture their movement as they pass. I also draw at performances of music and dance, most  recently of the Moscow City Ballet.

Moscow City Ballet

15 people I saw in the harbour

New this year has been enlarging the original drawings and collaging these onto canvas to keep the spontaneity of them rather than trying to recreate it

I have liked being out in the town, feeling more part of the community of artists, going out to work. I have painted more but done less film - making.  (See Vimeo for examples)

There have been various political themes that I have used. 

Umanets imprisoned in Rothko

I started an online petition to ask for Umanet's two year sentence for scribbling on a Rothko to be altered, and 129 people signed, one of them Katya from Pussy Riot. 

Paintings about this followed, using Rothko-esque rectangles, which then cropped up as windows, relating to a visit to Sitges near Barcelona, and abstract canvasses, which were an experimental surprise.  Then I used this shape again as  grave shapes in the 104 women piece, 'in sorrow and in rage', which I have shown now as a model shrine in memory of the killing of 104 women in 2012 by their partners or ex-partners, inviting people to place a candle, in this case a symbolic one as St.Ives Arts Club is a wooden 

building in which no naked flames are allowed.

Spare room:spare house

The bedroom tax also demanded some response from me and eventually I used the contrast between Van Gogh with his spare room for Gauguin to visit, and our Tory PM, David Cameron with a spare house. It's a sensitive subject here in a seaside town where there are a lot of second homes, empty much of the year and a lot of poor people unable to buy a first home.

Above us only sky 

As a humanist I wanted to also do something about not believing in God and I used some lines from Ono/Lennon as inspiration and figures I had observed either in town or from drawing from tv when they have discussion programmes.

Exhibiting with Taking Space at Helston Museum, I found four people mentioned there from two hundred years ago and made some pictures, copies of which the museum may use in educational work. The most interesting to me is Joseph  Emidy, a freed black slave, who became leader of Truro Philharmonic and wrote music, now sadly lost.

Joseph Emidy

Also a first was getting a ceramic figure cast in resin and iron. I liked this finish better than the bronze.

Dancer

I have exhibited several times in Redwing Gallery shows in Penzance, which specialise in work outside the mainstream. St. Ives is still dominated by what I call 'Penwithy ' abstraction, a lot of atmospheric texture and marks which allude very loosely to the landscape and seascape of Penwith. There aren't many artists here drawing contemporary people or referencing politics or ideas. There is quite a bit of what I find rather flaky symbolism and myth. So I stand out as different.

Eavesdropper

Next?

I want to see Cornwall as a hub for art, not a satellite of London, but I also want to exhibit outside Cornwall.

I have an idea for a sort of humanist tabernacle made in a wigwam, to celebrate creation without believing in a creator and to be a space for reflection.

I have some film clips waiting to be used.

I keep drawing and observing, influenced by feminism, socialism and psychotherapy, and encouraged when some people really respond to my work.

I painted round the corner of this small canvas partly as a joke about the way some artists continue their landscapes round the sides.

5 on the beach

Art needs to be seen or it's like a TV set waiting to be switched on.

   

Camilla contemplates the scope of youth work

Timothy Spall and Whoopi Goldberg at Sennen cove