Ken Turner's talk July 16 2023 at Porthmeor studios.

 Ken Turner as an artist is an old campaigner, now aged 95 he gave a remarkable hour long talk, standing up throughout and making it memorable by smashing a rather nice bone china cup with a hammer to show how things have a life and change, and then making an action painting, narrowly missing splattering the audience of interested cognoscenti with paint.

Ken  shook the bottle of paint up and down and squirted it out - rather an invitation to Freudian interpretation. One bottle was a bit stuck at first. However, then he made the splurges into something else with a few flourishes of a brush.

This took place in the Borlase Smart room at Porthmeor studios where Ken has a show of large abstractions until the end of July. These vigorous expressions have titles to which it is sometimes
hard to see the connections in the images.

However Ken Turner’s talk was about art and life rather than his exhibition or his lavishly illustrated available book, ‘A Life Being Ken Turner’.
He referred to Heidegger and other philosophers, to the chaotic state of the world, the art world’s deplorable market, and the need for aesthetic education to sensitise people to the forms and experiences they meet and make.

Dyhano asked if another person’s work would do just as well without the Heidegger connection?

Ken invited us to dwell on the importance of the life of things, to value feelings, to see that art can embody all that the artist has become.

The force of his conviction held us involved as participants in the event and its theatricality left an impression that I turned over in my mind as I walked home.

 

 

Lubaina Himid at Porthmeor Studios, St.Ives UK

 Lubaina Himid talking at Porthmeor Studios. May 23rd 2023

 

Lubaina Himid is an engaging speaker - a Professor of art and winner of the Turner prize and no stranger to St Ives, where she said trying to paint the sea from observation was what first showed her the allure of paint. She feels like an imposter since she was never taught how to paint but I don’t think students have been taught any painting techniques on fine art courses since 1970?
Here in the daylight lit high ceilinged studio with no sea view she has felt free of the attractions of naturalism and her love of simplified bright shapes is clear.
She says galleries don’t have such daylight and rarely light shows well.

Most of the large works were from a series called ‘street sellers’ and are destined to be shown in New York.
The images of the black sellers of baskets, shells and ribbons, or chickens, relate to the black figures included in eighteenth century British paintings such as by Hogarth, where often black figures were slaves, included without concern for their plight. Lubaina thinks about what it’s like to be a street seller performing , connecting with passers-by in a different way from shop sellers. It made me think of all those black sellers of stuff I have encountered on Greek beaches about whose lives I have found out so little.
Lubaina often paints the backgrounds before the figures and she operates as if she knows these people. She speaks of dialogue between figures and of moments where decisions are made after which one’s life goes in a direction as a result.
She says the chicken seller, who has no chickens and whose baskets are too open to keep a chicken enclosed is ‘kind of broken hearted’.
We learn all sorts of fascinating and amusing details about various other works, about how this artist is always looking to try out new things, thinking and feeling in various directions like her cast of characters.
Afterwards Lubaina Himid answered questions very thoughtfully.

I noticed she did not pause before telling us about the content to ask what we understood from the images with no further information. I am always keen to find out what I have communicated via images because I hope to get some things over clearly and to hear reactions which can show surprising other interpretations from my intentions.
Lubaina is so successful now and maybe doesn’t care to find out what we understand.
As so often happens I don’t think the wealth of ideas and feelings she puts into her work can be received by looking at it.

The delicious soup afterwards and lively conversations made it a really pleasant occasion where artists and others meet to enjoy art in St Ives.
(It was a pity it started half an hour late with no explanation or apology.)




 

Talk about Barbara Hepworth July 2019

 Talk about Barbara Hepworth,[1903-75],  Porthmeor Studios, St.Ives, Cornwall, UK  25th July 2019.

Sara Matson drawn by Mary Fletcher

Sara Matson gave a lively illustrated talk to a crowded room at the renovated Porthmeor studios, near to the famous Hepworth Garden of sculpture and the Museum now in the house where the sculptor lived.

The Hepworth marble sculpture ‘Magic Stone’ which belongs to the Penwith Gallery in her beloved St.Ives, is being lent to the Rodin Museum in Paris for a large show of her work from November this year to March 2020.

It seems Hepworth’s reputation is gaining much interest worldwide as a pioneer of Modernist, abstract, direct carving, unlike Rodin, who used modelling and casting.

We saw slides of the plans for the show and were invited to see Hepworth’s place in art history and her work’s special qualities as it developed.

Shirley Beck, in the audience, who knew Barbara, was able to tell us how Hepworth campaigned successfully to stop the St.Ives’ cobbled Fore Street being tarmacked and to stop the Island promontory of grass and rocks being entirely made into a car park. Hepworth welcomed children climbing on her sculptures, which are now usually protected from touch except where, as in St.Ives, they are out in public spaces as Barbara gave two to the town.

These aspects of Barbara Hepworth as local to St.Ives and yet known globally were interestingly juxtaposed.

Two Private Views-Tate St.Ives and Porthmeor Studios.

Two Private Views shows- Anna Boghiguian at Tate St.Ives and Amelie Blendi and Jonathan

Michael Ray at Porthmeor Studios.

I had a Tate sandwich, popping out in the middle to Porthmeor Studios to see two artists who had

been in residence. Their work was said to relate to the Penwith landscape but apart from an

inscribed drawing reminiscent of the Rocky Valley labyrinth carving near Tintagel and a murky

video with a tin mine visible, I couldn't see much reference to it. There were a lot of paper

constructions like elaborate origami, some using maps but not of Penwith. There were some lead

weights on nice pink rope.

A handful of artists stood around talking.

A woman had a Bedlington in a nice bright blue coat and said had I dogs as it was showed an interest in me.
I had been out with two dogs earlier. I didn't realise the woman was one of the artists until I the barman told me or I might have gleaned more information.
They had been busy particularly folding paper but to what end?
Maybe the start of an idea that will bear fruit later.

Star of the show was the bar, providing free gin of many types and colours.

I tried one.

I returned to the Tate more cheerful despite the rain.

Anna Boghiguian's work was somehow beguiling. People were wandering around quite interested.

It was clearly about something, about the history of Nimes, about other places, salt, politics,

people, with references to literature, Cavafy, Tagore, Woolf and Nietsche. There was lots to see,

figures made of metal and card, a circular construction one could enter, and a floor covered in salt,

a surprise that was soft and uneven. There were words in English and lots of sketch books. This

artist could draw in a lively way. The paintings were rather mushy looking, sometimes ill defined,

lacking contrast. There were clearly themes, explained by gallery text, although the meanings of

the works were unclear. There was an impromptu feeling to the wooden stands with works on

paper attached. There were big images on cloth or canvas suspended from the ceiling. There was

a studio recreated. I heard that the artist was a large woman with a beard, and I looked forward to

her talk the next day. I had a feeling another look later would reveal more.

Private views are fun, you see people you know, maybe dare to talk to people you don't already

know, and drink alcohol perhaps. No one has time to really take in the work but they get an

impression of it and may return another day. Sometimes the social occasion IS the work perhaps,

as Rikrit Tiravanija worked out. Is Anna B's show any more interesting than the other show? It is,

but it's still a confusing hotch potch of images with no clear focus, just a more personal and

intriguing one with more heart and soul. As a friend said, you need something immediately

attractive enough to bring people back to engage further

Two talks, Lubaina Himid and Nashashibi and Skaer

Lubaina Himid, Turner Prize Winner, talk at Pothmeor Studios, St.Ives Cornwall, 2018

Lubaina Himid speaks well. The moment she began I relaxed into the absolute pleasure of hearing

a well prepared talk by someone who can speak clearly with wit and also was adept at answering

various complicated questions at the end before we milled about with delicious soup provided

afterwards.

Lubaina Himid has taught at the University of Central Lancashire at Preston for a long time and

has been working also as an artist since 1981. Because of this busy life she found her residency at

Tate St.Ives in the 90's, when Mike Tooby was director, very valuable as a space and time for

uninterrupted concentration. She returns to work at Porthmeor studios next Spring and will give

more talks and invite people in to see her work in progress.

Her themes have included slavery, fear and dread, safety and survival, and her media have been

various, including wooden figures and painting on ceramics she found, or on wooden carts or on

drawers.

Inspired by two piece East African clothing called 'tangas', which use text and image, she has

produced work including philosophy and politics and seeking an audience that imaginatively

respond. Often she allows the audience to touch or move elements of the installation. Lubaina

trained as a theatre designer and wants to communicate.

Recently Lubaina was at the Guardian for 3 days, one of the many opportunities now open to her

since winning the Turner prize. She has long collected all the pages of the Guardian that feature

images of black people and she has used them to make work that draws attention to the

unthinkingly insensitive juxtapositions that happen because no one is noticing how the pages work

together.

Lubaina Himid told us that in the past her work was often made for shows in museums, referencing

their collections. Often she considered throwing out works because they were taking up space but

luckily was persuaded to keep them. Now that she is a famous Turner prize winner galleries are

keen to have her shows, allowing greater freedom to work in ways that museums cannot because

they need to be so careful of their objects.

At Folkestone Trienale Lubaina Himid showed 100 life size cut out freestanding figures, each of a

black slave with their real name, their slave name and their circumstances written on them. Visitors

could walk amongst them.

We saw an accompanying slide show of works, often brightly coloured, lively figures, always with

important ideas in the making, with consciousness of dire situations in life, but hopes for people to

work to improve society.

I was very impressed.

Tate St.Ives talk by Nashashibi and Skaer on their exhibition, October 2018

The audience persuaded the organiser that we would rather see the screen images than have light

stream in and that she needed to speak louder.The speakers were introduced by the curator who

said their names so rapidly that I did not get which was which. The speakers had not trained to use

microphones or to be animated and their delivery was tentative and glacier-like.

These two ex Turner nominees work together on projects using other peoples' art to prompt their

responses. I think of this as what Griselda Polock described as 'an avant-garde gambit' and I also

note the trendy a la Tacita Dean use of analogue film, then often translated to digital video.

The artists have the jargon, 'transgression', 'male gaze' etc., they have some ideas, but talking of

symbolic gestures I feel like making one because it's years since I felt so bored and I leave wanting

to scream. I sympathise with the priest at Matisse' Vence chapel who co-operated with them

wearily.

Afterwards I went round the show.

It's an excuse to bring us a lot of interesting paintings from the Tate and elsewhere, Bonnard,

Gauguin, Nash, Sickert, the Lee Miller photo of her in Hitler's bath, etc. The artists have been to

New York to take photos of museum objects at night, to Hongkong to film the ex-British consul and

to Tahiti to shoot where Gauguin painted. They have selected all sorts of art with vague

connections. Their videos are so slow moving that I couldn't watch them through.They have

selected a few  contemporary women artists none of whom are very attention grabbing.

Aaaaarrghhhh!