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.

'Limbo"

‘Limbo’ at The Coffin Store, Walsingham Place,

Truro - March 28 to April 14th 2013

Subtitled “The first Biannual, forming a blueprint for a future biennale’

I suggest its not just conceived, instigated and supported by Joseph Clarke, Samuel Bassett, Jesse Leroy Smith and Neil Scott but also chosen by them?

Its not that easy to find the place, there’s rather a small notice behind a few arty looking people hanging about in front of it.

The first exhibit is a sculpture by Tim Shaw of a figure on fire, which someone we knew had told us about, saying it was based on a soldier on fire in Iraq, but I don’t know if I would have realised that unless I’d been told.

Its not really got enough space  and I am most moved by the title - ‘What God of Love Inspires Such Hate in the Hearts of Men’.

It turns out there is quite a lot to see in the show. Unfortunately its freezing cold, but after a while, finding things that interest me and getting into conversation I forget about that for a while, but its tough for those invigilating or working there.

My attention was caught by Alban Roinard’s video in black and white with words spoken in Cornish and subtitled. Its all about death and the sea and a child and remembering and its saying something that I linger to take it in again and try to learn how to pronounce a few of the Cornish words from my husband , Pedyr Prior, who can speak them. The sound is a bit low despite Jesse Leroy Smith noticing and coming over to turn it up with the remote.

A large area upstairs is given over to various artists painting from photos of famous people, but at first I don’t get what its about at all.

 Having spoken to Richard Ballinger we get into a lively conversation about suicide and include personal experiences, my online ‘Umanets petition’ protesting about the sentence of the Rothko scribbler, how and why Rothko killed himself, and how the TAap group put in a proposal for this item to be in the show. It fits well with being in a coffin store.

Its the conversation that is engaging and gets me to linger and look at the paintings and think about the subject and the fact that the paintings are being created on the spot.

There was a lot more. 

Unfortunately two electrically powered projections were not working.

 I presume one of these would have been the slide show documenting some of the many artists in ‘the south west’ which is an odd phrase to use if the future biennale is to be Cornish. 

There was neon, hanging things, paintings, sound [too loud for me] and  other video. There were socialist slogans on the rafters, which I was delighted to see. I don’t suppose the coffin makers did them?

This show made an impact and was quite a surprise just off Truro’s shopping area. 

Will it lead to a ‘Cornish Biennale’? Sounds exciting.

If so will I and many other artists in Cornwall hear about it in time to get involved? - I say this as I didn’t hear about this one until it was about to open.

Will there be a less male list of exhibitors?

Will there be more signage to get a few passers by to find it?

Anyway, well worth the trip and an inspiring spurt of energy in the art community.

'In The Dark Times' cmr Redruth Dec 2012

In the Dark Times - cmr - Redruth. December 2012

Members of cmr were invited to send in ideas for this show and then to attend a meeting at which those present spoke about their proposals, some of which were as yet very unformed. Following this the curators, Liam Jolly and Duncan Hopkins decided what to show and how and did the work of installing it.

On returning to invigilate I noticed that the rota had not been filled so the show had not been open as advertised, and another time I would suggest participants should be required to commit to this before their art work is accepted.
The temperature in the building was very chilly even after the two inadequate heaters had been on for several hours.

These practical matters are very important for the professional production of shows that people will bother to come to see and be happy to spend some time looking at. Interestingly there was no provisions for buying work,such as receipts etc. although some works were priced on the list provided.

As the work was installed with nowhere separated off for the invigilators to sit, we became part of the installation, two people in camp chairs, holding onto our warming cups of tea, sitting close to the heater, like two bivouacing squatters in the semi darkness, waiting for someone to come in.

At the entrance there was a shiny paper grotto to walk through which reminded some of one there used to be in a department store in Redruth. However this one contained a framed print that said 'Bomb the world', by Stuart J.Blackmore.

This encapsulated the contrasts of the show.

Jonathan Hayter's light show was a delightful visual ballet of shapes and colours, like being able to walk into a Bryan Wynter 'Imoos'.

In another room a dramatically lit mud-covered book lay on top of bundles of twigs. I didn't know what it meant. More mud books by Francesca Owen hung from a ceiling and Peter Ward showed bundles of sticks recalling a set for babes in the wood or red riding hood.

There was more about fairy tales and masks, dressing up - picked up in my ceramic figures of a New Year Bear talking to a Fairy. 

Alice Mahoney showed a rather creepy torn part of a toy bear and kit for a bear tamer.

 Ilke Cinarel’s video combining a naked man sitting on a toilet with images of children and their voices seemed similarly to hint at something unwholesome whilst recalling 60's graphics, Hockney, ‘found film’ on The Old Grey Whistle Test on t.v.?

Sara Bowler had been running mask making sessions in preparation for the closing 'Saturnalia' 

and I had invited the public to send in baubles expressing how they felt about Christmas, which resulted in a small but unusual and varied display and raised the issue of how we react to being in the grip of our culture and gained useful publicity in the local papers for the whole show. I was able to put inside a bauble shape my poem about being a humanist “It’s our Christmas Too”.

I also showed a previous collaborative piece in which people contributed Xmas tree pictures and words about their use of this custom. These had been made into bauble-like cubes to examine and re-arrange.

Duncan Hopkins had a painting in which a dark figure was behind colourful streamers. Towards the end of the show, following some unexplained bother, this was replaced by Charmaine Honeychurch's thickly painted “Calm after the storm”, the title of which may have referred to this event obliquely, which used gloriously gestural thick paint in a wintry palette. 

Ron Ford also had a whole wall of wintry and autumnal landscape modules showing his studies of the Gorran Gorras area, painted very dry and sparse and glowing attractively in the dim light.

Jayne Anita Smith had also used a mask and a strange masked figure in her paintings and sculpture, the latter shown under one of those domed glass covers that clocks sometimes have. Her paintings were small and benefitted from being shown with plenty of space around them.

“In the Dark Times” was a show swiftly put together and showed the way in which this artists’ group can be fairly spontaneous and show a variety of work that has not had to go through the many hoops that often intervene when artists make applications. Some of the work may be a beginning rather than the resolved result of long study, but it’s still interesting to see it. The curators had produced a well exhibited show, giving care and respect to each art work.

CMR is building a reputation for having something current and unusual to offer, worth being aware of in the sense that whilst at Falmouth on the MA course I heard people say that Redruth was the new St.Ives.