Words and Pictures - do they go together?

“_{Text’ was an exhibition at St.Ives Arts Club to accompany the May Literature Festival organised by Bob Devereux 2012.}

  

_{The works used words in a variety of ways - Bill Bolger made a poster denouncing abstraction as pretentious but using either a copy of Kandinsky or something very similar that rather undermined his point because it was such a lively, enjoyable example.}

 _{Brave though in St.Ives where just up the road, at The New Millenium, Trevor Bell’s large sumptuous abstracts, sometimes on shaped canvasses, offered an experience of being immersed in colours and shapes for those who can swim in such waters. However he accompanied the show with a video in which he paradoxically announced that words have nothing to do with art.}

 _{Back in the Arts Club there were many words, mostly quietly used, needing time to muse over, a lot of grey subtlety.}                                    

 

Russell Hedges used the gestural qualities of hand written illegibility

_{while Sally Macabe preferred the attractive visual look of typeface.}

 Karen Foss used lines about spring plus colours and shapes dancing all over the space

_{and Bob Devereux achieved a balance of the text and the shapes and colours complementing one another.}

 I  had a painting of the St.Paul’s anti-capitalist protest incorporating a political banner and a notice of the dates of the protest camp, so documenting it.

 _{I also documented, with a spiral form and thoughts written quite small within it, how I had felt about childlessness as a part of my life. I tried to attract with the form and colour and then embed a meaningful reflection in words, rather as Grayson Perry attracts one to the ceramic form and then up close you encounter something else about his life.}

  Pauline Devereux had embroidered words about violence on a scarf next to a statement about her enquiry into suicides. 

 Continuing sad themes, Roy Ray had two black framed montages about young men killed in war, very stylishly beautiful but also clearly communicated and eloquent. 

 _{Zara Devereux used language made more mysterious by being in French and combined with subtle tones and gentle allusions which were hard to understand.}

 _{John Higgins was clearer, with an atmospheric image of storm and lighthouse and words introduced to add something about a steamship on the Nile.}

_{Nicola Higgins was more cheerful with a collage of delicately painted details referring  lightheartedly to experiences of Italy.}

 _{Lastly, John Clark was commenting about culture old and new, about our sense of reality, about love, providing rather a lot to read and photographic images in negative.}

_{Do words always dominate if they are used, whatever the relative scale or degree of fuzzy focus?}

_{Can image and text balance and add to one another? Aren’t some words  always needed in the label, in being told about the context, or meeting the artist in person or in a book?}

_{Do dealers sell the image of the artist, often in words, as much as the artwork?}

_{Some artists want to be vague, to suggest, to leave a lot to the viewer to imagine or complete - perhaps they are vague themselves and don’t want to commit to anything?}

 _{I want to be as clear as I can, to communicate my ideas as simply as I can.}

Nederlands Dance Theatre 2

NDT2     Nederlands dans Theatre   Truro Hall for Cornwall March 2012

‘Gods and Dogs ‘ choreographed by Jiri Kylian

This first dance was fast moving, the performers using strange ungainly attitudes and unusual movements with amazing skill, fitting the melody and rhythms of the Beethoven based soundtrack. There were also unusual additions such as a twitchingcurtain of long strands and a projection of the vivid image of a wolf or dog above the dancers’ heads. I hadn’t the least idea what it was about. I’d decided to watch the whole program and see what I thought before reading the notes, only to find no explanations at all in the notes. It was a great display, received with enthusiasm by Truro’s audience. The screamers were here  in the back row which makes it sound very exciting and I thought the dancers looked almost surprised by the wild enthusiasm.

‘Deja Vu’, Hans van Menen, followed. My companion asked me if we’d seen it before.

The music, by Arvo Part, was again the focus, with dancers often mirroring one another, more fluidly this time.

‘Solo’, also choreographed by van Manan, was the most beautiful of the works, 3 men appearing by turns, each with their own style of movement, dancing closely with the Bach violin suite, and at the end all on stage together. They were all marvellous dancers but Jianhu Wang was my favourite, there was something so infectiously bouyant and easy about his jumps and twizzles.

Lastly came ‘Cacti’ by Alexander Ekman, also danced to lovely classical pieces by Haydn, Beethoven and Mahler. In this the dancers had square plinths to move on and around and to move the positions of, which they did, wittily appearing from behind them so we saw a head or arm etc. They also had cacti of various shapes,which they moved about, the word cacti was used in lights at the sides and a voice made statements about the post modern which also conveyed the pretentiousnous of the art world. Men and women wore similar costumes, very simple as in all the pieces NDT2 danced in this program. The dance was witty and the whole thing was absurd in a lovable, zany way.

As so often in dance I was left very impressed by the level of performance and the number of inventive ideas. In the non dance visual arts there is often so very little to see as if artists have not put in the effort or actually seek to bore the audience.

In dance it is still sufficient to move to music in a way that totally absorbs the audience in a delightful collaboration, a total concentration of audience and performer that leaves me refreshed and invigorated despite my arms aching from applauding. Also I find myself still wanting to wonder about the meanings. I find ideas for ballets as yet unformed are germinating in my mind. There’s a lot choreographers could use, I’d love to colaborate with one, or I might just use the ideas in my paintings.

I’d love to see the other repertoire of NDT2 and hope they visit us again soon.