Warp x Tate, 6 December 2014

How could you not be excited by Warp x Tate? Pioneering electronic music label teams up with top UK art institution for a night inspired by Jeremy Deller’s 'Acid Brass'. What a setting for a party. What a perfect way to see the re-hang of the newly refurbished gallery. As the day drew nearer, it became obvious that I was not alone. Twatter and Facewaste were abuzz. Asking around, it seemed that everyone was planning on going. This had the taste of a big rave, albeit it likely to be an above-board and respectable one.

By Friday afternoon @Tate was sending out cautionary tweets about limited capacity. I bolted out of work at 5.30pm on the dot, raced down to Vauxhall and hurried over the bridge. By 6pm the queue was already snaking around the block from the ramp to the lower ground, while the front steps were littered with groups of people. We made it in by quarter past, dodged the secondary queue for the cloakroom and headed up the stairs to see what was going on. 

The lights were out in the busy central hall with projectors casting Warp videos onto the walls. At the far end, a blown up version of Deller's Acid Brass spider map filled the space between two colossal columns. In front of this, Patten was onstage, emitting disjointed noise and geek cool. Unless you were crushed into a fairly small sweet spot at the front, though, the sound from two tiny speakers was quiet and echoey: lost in the cavernous hall with drinks queues longer than Mark Wallinger’s 'State Britain'. Instead we set off in search of Warp installations dotted around the newly rehung galleries.

First stop: Hudson Mohawke's 'Summer of Love' in the 'The Chapman Family Collection' room. It's packed with people wandering between the faux-African Macdonalds sculptures, chatting and posing for Instagrams, as an oil wheel projector casts psychedelic swirls onto the roof above. A short loop of ambient electronica pulses through a couple of small speakers on the floor. It’s a playful environment, which works well, but Hud Mo’s Dazed video made to preview the installation does a better job of evoking the spirit of 1987.

Just outside the door, a studio light has been set up to illuminate Deller’s original Acid Brass spider diagram, hung in a corner next to a colossal Peter Doig. Here we can read about the original 1996 performance, which saw a brass pit band playing acid house anthems. The diagram describes links between the two, tying the rave movement into a wider cultural context of pit strikes, electronic dance music and the North. I love this piece and can’t wait to hear the embodiment of it later. The rest of the room contains some Wolfgang Tillmans photos, a Fiona Rae painting, a rather nice black and white Keith Coventry and some large panes of crushed flowers which appear to be leaking down the wall. On behalf of the old Tate, I'm slightly shocked. This bodes well.

Having lost my friends, I leave the 1990s and time travel back towards the 1980s. I’m immediately be blown away by a Bill Woodrow junk sculpture, a life-size elephant head on the wall with AK47s for tusks, standing guard over a village-meeting-style circle of smashed car door windows. Its ears are maps of Africa, torn from large-scale Atlases. Rejoined by the group, we pose for photographs with the epic wall trophy and follow its sad gaze across the room to Mark Wallinger's ‘Where There’s Muck’ - the word ‘Albion’ spray painted in giant Tory-blue letters directly onto the wall, over a tableau of burnt wood, with a worker figure on the central panel. The date is 1985. Exciting stuff. We pose for photos with Barry Flanagan’s ‘Leaping Hare’. It lends itself well to narrative.

Floating further back in time, I'm drawn by the sounds of electronica, past a startling late Francis Bacon triptych and Richard Long's photograph of 'A Line Made by Walking', into a room of 1960s collage and bricolage sculpture. Anwar Jalal Shemza's 'Chessmen One', 1961, is a revelation of Islamic modernism. I love the Paolzzi, as always, and Burra's drawing-cum-photomontage 'Keep Your Head'. I didn't even know he made them. Through a doorway, Henry Moore's shiny, domed 'Maquette for Helmet Head' pulls me towards it like a magnet. I thought I knew Henry Moore, but this whole room is a physical rediscovery for me. Over the years his work has become flattened in my mind, by successive 2D reproductions and sketches. This is a powerful space to be in though, with all its myriad angles, air resonant with form and the ehoes of vintage synths from next door. Modern British sculpture might have it's associations with Britten at al but perhaps it should be displayed more frequently with early electronica in the background.

The 808 and 303 tribute room runs parallel to this one and features the two legendary synths on plinths at opposite ends of the room. They're not plugged in, but the plinths have movement sensors on them. Someone tells me that every time you pass one you add or remove a layer to the track which loops through the speakers on the floor. I never work out the exact configuration. Around the room are black and white photographs by Chris Shaw, one of the few British contemporary photographs still making good work in this tradition. Each is scrawled with their own quirky title in black pen. They're juxtaposed with prints from 1960s Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, whose impressionistic blurs of Tokyo nightlife have enjoyed a significant reappraisal in the West of late. The gritty aesthetics complement the raw sound. 

By this point we’re gasping for a drink so we decide to try my luck at the slightly quieter downstairs bar. There's still a huge queue outside, trickling through a barrier of security guards in ones and twos. One half of The Blessings (as I discover when I speak to him later) is playing some pretty tasty off-kilter beats next to the bar. He gets a few people moving, but it's hard to galvanize a dance floor bisected by a 15min drinks queue. Unable to take our drinks anywhere else, we elect to re-watch the Dazed videos in one of the screening rooms.

Back upstairs, we head in search of Melancholy. I find myself in Martin Creed's light room, which for some reason has a crowd barrier running through it. Taking the right fork I find myself channelled, in slowly strobing light, towards a closed door in the next room. A group of people is sitting in my way. I step over them to duck out of the channel. Later on I find out that this was the queue. Apparently, at it's peak people were waiting for Creed's light to go out and trying to push into the queue, only to be caught in the act as it flicked back on again. 

The last stop on the installation trail is Rustie, in the Turner wing. I find it by accident, following the sound while misdirecting a friend towards the 808 tribute room. It's the best sound I've heard all night. It draws us down the corridor lined with Turners and into a room with two speakers. There are no beats; only resonance, high and bright. People are sitting, walking around or staring intently into oily sunbursts and thickly textured rural scenes. When sound in our room fades, I realise it's getting louder in the opposite alcove. We migrate accross. There are another two speakers here. A group dressed in black, some with beards, join me. I head back into the corridor between the rooms, sound washing between them, and watch 'Hannibal Crossing the Alps'. The music is reaching euphoric cresendo. In the room I've just come from, a large man with a serious beard throws his arms into the air in semi-ironic elation. He's framed by a huge golden, greeny-brown painting. It's beautiful. We keep chasing the sound down the corridor. It's 10 channels in total, split between 5 rooms, in and out of which we wheel and glide. I could spend all night here, but it's 9 now and time for the main event: Jeremy Deller's Acid Brass Band. We head back to the main hall in anticipation.

Halfway towards the front we hit a wall of people and pause to drink newly acquired ciders, which we’ve now realised are cheaper than beer. It's as crowded now as it was at the start. Eventually, a figure in baby blue suit jacket pops up onstage, folllowed by another, and another. All carrying shiny brass instruments. The crowd whoops and cheers. As they strike up, we start to dance. We've been waiting all night for the opportunity. On the grand stone walls around us, scenes of dancing crowds in warehouses strobe and flicker. The people around us are fairly static, so we form a chain and start snaking towards the front. Reaching a impasse by a roped off artwork we stop and introduce ourselves to the people who's space we've invaded.  They're much more lively. It's all smile and grins as we groove through the set. The band are clearly having fun too, especially the conductor, whose manic grin and enthusiasm remind me of that guy who always climbs up on the speakers at the front to really let loose. 

When the set ends someone near us starts a joky chant of "One More Tune!" But it's all over. We drift out of the cavernous hall, out onto the grand steps, littered with people smoking and donning coats. Out into the night. The iron railings around the building are plastered with bikes, strapped on at jaunty angles. Waving farewell to my friends I weave through groups of fellow ravers over the river and back towards the station. I catch the eye of the guy boarding my train with me and we sit next to each other to loudly compare notes on the night. It feels like 5am in the morning. 

I get home and go to bed with the ghosts of artworks flashing on my retinas in the usual place of hi-hats and synths echoing in my ears. It’s 11pm. 

Review: Estuary – responses by contemporary artists @ Museum of London Docklands until 27 October 2013

Between the glass cube offices, new footbridges and luxury flats, you can still see the ghosts of industry etched into the regenerated landscape surrounding the Museum of London Docklands. A pair of navy gray cranes tower like dinosaurs over the dark, placid water of India Quay, cabins level with the Docklands Light Railway that sweeps past from Canary Wharf to Limehouse. 

Leaving the train, winding down the ramp to ground level, I get the first taste of the estuary that I’m here to discover. A rusted barge bloats like a dead whale under the stout, round legs of the overhead rail, seemingly incongruous, beached out of time. 

I walk along the quayside, past the cranes, to the end of a Victorian warehouse conversion, bikes chained to balconies above wooden loading ramps, a row of chain restaurants offering the same bland choice as every dockside redevelopment from Portsmouth to Liverpool. By the water sit a gaggle of branded deckchairs, a small tent and a man with a guitar attempting valiantly to bring some cheer to this strangely sterile space.

The Docklands museum itself is at the end of the row. It’s a beautiful building, outside and in. Heavy wooden roof beams brace the ceiling, propped up by near-petrified pillars and bare,  sandy-coloured brick walls. Through the gift shop entrance there's an open-plan café, with plenty of comfortable leather arm chairs. It’s full of families, here for the fun-looking kidzone signposted with cartoon graphics that lead away to the right, and a youth group watching videos on laptops. 

The exhibition I’ve come to see is 'Estuary – responses by contemporary artists', in gallery space to the left of the café. The low-beamed ceiling echoes with the sound of waves, seagulls and clanking iron; video soundtracks ebbing and flowing in a gentle wash. 

I’m drawn directly to Jock McFayden’s horizon spanning landscapes, which seem to open out directly onto the estuary itself. Barley rippling foregrounds mirror equally blank skies. Caught between them, skeletons of cranes and concrete buildings squat the horizon, denying the flatness. Next to these Michael Andrews appears to have transplanted a section of the estuary onto the wall, stained with river sediment and washed with tides, hazy figures fishing from a groyne at the waters edge, boats blending into the land. The whole exhibition embodies this blurring convergence of land, sea, sky and industry: channeling that strange liminal zone between Greenhill and Whitstable where London meets the sea. 

My reverie is interrupted by a cacophony of clanking iron to my left, where I discover '51 29'.9' North - 0º11' East' by the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, documented on video in 1985. Amid a boneyard of rusted barge hulls, three artists in sou’westers bang, clang and blow torch a variety of makeshift objects, detritus reclaimed as percussion. The tide rises around them and darkness falls. A glorious temporary reclamation from atrophy.

Andrew Kötting’s ‘Jaunt’ is a jolly bricolage of the sounds and scenes encountered on a riverboat from Southend Pier to Westminster in 1995.The voices of locals characters intersperse with the commentary of the captain, stories told in estuary accents, giving us context to cognitively map the length of the river mouth.

The journey is reversed in William Raban’s ‘Thames Film’. It overlays original film shot in the 1980s with archive footage and photos of the shipping industry, breathing monochrome life into the ghost that haunts the rest of the exhibition. Engravings, paintings and maps extend our vision further back; to the cuckold hangings along the 17th century riverbank lined with watermills and Peter Bruegel's hellish vision of death by shipwreck, beyond ‘hope’ (the actual point at which ships returning to harbour would deem themselves as beyond harm). There are also visions of leisure, bathers past and present paddling below the concrete wall of Canvey Island funfair.

Contemporary visions of industry are to be found in Peter Marshall's Thames Gateway, photographs of telegraph poles, new-build housing estates, scrap yards and short stretches of road. This absurdity of everyday banality is echoed in Simon Robert’s Southend Pier, palm trees lining the road in throwing long californian shadows over the asphalt car parks, the coloured loops and spindle metal towers of a fun-fair, pier stretching away into the distance.  

Distance is also the focus of John Smith's 'Horizon (Five Pounds a Belgian)', a mesmerising seascape projected in HD onto the entire wall of a beam-lined screening room. The camera, our view, is looking out to sea, water, sky and their division the only defining features. A soundtrack of waves washes in, the same wave on loop or continuing waves in the same spot, it's hard to tell from the regularity. Every so often the film changes with one of these waves, not the frame or viewpoint, just the time of day, of year, of tide. The soundtrack bears no relation to the agitation of sea on screen, whether dark and white flecked or mill pond calm, it washes on like clockwork. Intermittently the shuffle pauses to allow a scene to unfold: the slow passing of a cargoship on the horizon; the playful tacking and jibing of a fleet of dinghies; a man and his dog on the invisible beach between us and the sea; a seagull emerging from fog; a lifeboat crew laying flowers, heads bowed in respect, before breaking the spell of voyeurism as they wave directly to us. How long did Smith spend on the beach to get this footage. Could one tiny stretch of coast really be so entertaining? It certainly held my attention for a good long while.

Relaxed, like I've had a day at the seaside, I leave the gallery in search of a coffee, feeling as if I've travelled much further than Canary Wharf this afternoon.

Central St Martin’s – MA Fine Art Interim Show 2011

Matt, Tom and I went down to the Central St Martin’s interim show at Coin Street in the OXO Tower last week, on the invite of my friend Mike Marcus. As with most student shows, especially mid-terms, the work was mixed and patchy, but brilliant in parts.

Vasilis Avramifis

In the first room I was particularly fond of a large clay wheel, set on rollers on an easel and Vasilis Avramifis’ dreamlike landscape-come-still-lives reminiscent at of both 14th century religious paintings, Max Ernst and Glen Brown.

Over in the main building, an empty warehouse, an enterprising artist was selling conceptual art for 50p a sheet. Typed out each slip of paper was a short, cliched, abstract statement. She was raking it in.

Upstairs Tom and I spent some time discussing linguistics (his specialty, not mine) in front of Kate Barsby‘s word art. We were also mesmerised by her video of unfulfilled urges, like the hands that never sharpen the pencil they’re holding with the sharpener that they keep toying with.

Josephine Declerck’s candid documentary shots of young Eastern European male squatters around London  were well complimented by a series of the buildings they've lived in. On the film front there was a very well shot religious ceremony in Pakistan, but it was too dark to see who made it.

Mike Marcus

We finally found Mike on the top floor, with a work that was quite book related – he’s composted a bible, a Torah and a Koran in glass vitrines to the point at which they’re no longer distinguishable. He’s not yet had any death threats.

London Art Fair 2011

London Art Fair in Islington marks its territory in the crowded London calendar with a focus on paintings, print and sculpture.

Andrew Curtis - New Empire (Josiah Warren)

Matt and I were gifted tickets by Hoxton gallery Payne Shurvell. Matt’s particularily fond of Andrew Curtis‘ ‘Wild England series’ – grainy black and white photo prints of Suburban gardens, over which non-native trees are blacked out by ‘Whity Jet’ paint the pigment of which comes from fossilised monkey puzzle trees. Curtis is a print maker for high profile artists such as Hirst, so when he’s making his own work with his wife they like to be a bit more rough and ready.

We also had a good conversation with Jealous Editions, whose enterprising business model involves working with tutors at the various art schools to identify emergent MA fine art students. One Jealous Graduate Prize winner from each school has screenprints made of their work to be sold in affordable editions. The system appears to be very effective, with an interesting selection of work on display alongside more established artists.

Sarah Tse

One of the Graduate winners is Sarah Tse whose drawings have also been noticed by Woking-based collector Chris Ingram. Chris’ contemporary collection already includes Suki Chan and Haroon Mirza, who last week one the Northern Art Prize, so I’d keep and eye on her!

Tom Leighton @ Cynthia Corbett

Other highlights for me included the Danielle Arnaud gallery and Tom Leighton’s digital photomontages of sprawling imaginary urbanscapes at Cynthia Corbett. In the project space, Hamni Gallery from South Korea had some rather mesmerizing iRobot-style kinetic buddhas by Ziwon Wang. Hanmi are about to open their first gallery in London on Maple St, near the CG offices, and figures remind me that The Kinteica Art Fair is coming up next week.

If there was one thing I could take home (other than a Ziwon Wang robot) it would be one of the Eduardo Paolozzi prints from FAS Contemporary, complete with Wittgenstein quotes. Paolozzi is my favourite of the Modern British Artists, who were visible everywhere at the fair thanks to the current RA show. For me Paolozzi’s circuit-board like designs and pop cultural assimilation anticipate the electronic information age in which we now live. His brilliant mosaics light up my journey every time I catch the tube from Tottenham Court Road.

'Where Three Dreams Cross' at the Whitechapel Gallery

To survey 150 years of photography from across three countries is an impressive feat. When these countries are as vast, diverse and complex as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it seems like a mind-boggling task for the curatorial team of When Three Dreams Cross - directed by Indian-born photographer, writer and curator Sunil Gupta.

The result is over 400 images from 82 photographers who have been born, lived or worked in these countries – displayed across three rooms of The Whitechapel Gallery. Between them, they cover a huge diversity of photographic styles and myriad perspectives of life in the subcontinent.

Subjects range from the iconic – Ragu Rai’s portraits of Mother Theresa and Tanveer Shazad’s press photos of the Supreme Court Crisis in Pakistan are instantly recognisable – to the everyday. The marginalised are represented, such as in Munem Wasif and Ayesha Vellani’s brilliant series documenting the lives of rural workers, but they also represent themselves – in amatuer pictures taken by the children of Sonagachi (sex workers) in the slums.

As the titles suggests, the three dreams are crossed. Rather than segregate photographers by nationality, the works are grouped into five themes: The Portrait, The Performance, The Family, The Body Politic and The Streets. Chronology is also eschewed, with works by individual photographers from different eras and countries grouped alongside each other.

The intention seems to be to deflect a linear historical reading of the images and instead focus our attention on the connections between them. The initial effect, however, is to render you slightly bewildered upon entering the exhibition. This feeling is enhanced by a scarcity of contextual information about the artists and works on display, as well as, in my case, an inadequate cultural syntax for religious symbolism, caste and Bollywood history.

As you progress through the rooms though, you begin to see for yourself the emergence of a South Asian photographic tradition, apparent through the imagery and pre-occupations of the photographers. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the show is seeing how contemporary artists are acknowledging, adapting and subverting their own photographic or cultural heritage. Prashant Panja's 1990s series King, Commoner and Citizen is displayed alongside 19th century photographs of Maharajas dressed in all the finery of their traditional ceremonial clothing.

The most curious object I found was the Hijras – an album of eunuchs photographed in their saris and moustaches during the 1880s. It’s displayed near Asim Hafeez’s magazine style snapshots of contemporary ladyboys in Karachi, which claims back self-representation of the ‘third sex’ – an unfamiliar concept to our diametric western understanding of gender.

Despite its challenges, if you’re at all interested in photography or the history, culture and people of the Indian subcontinent, then this is a rewarding exhibition with plenty to get your teeth into. Coming between Indian Highway at the Serpentine last year, and Saatchi’s upcoming mega-show The Empire Strikes Back, I suspect it will retrospectively be seen as an important step in the establishment of a South Asian photographic canon.

Where Three Dreams Cross is at the Whitechapel Gallery until 11th April 2010.

Reviewed for Spoonfed.

Decode: Digital Design Sensations at the V&A

Despite this being the decade we’re all meant to go digital, exhibitions that really engage with the subject still seem few and far between. With this in mind, Decode: Digital Design – the V&A’s latest show in collaboration with digital veterans onedotzero – couldn’t be better timed.

Entering the transformed Porter Gallery, you pass through a swathe of grass-like LED stalks that flicker on and off in response to your movement, to find yourself in a corridor lined with monitors. Across their screens flash rotating and repeating patterns, generated by creatively written computer code. Each work is labelled with a combination of three categories that distinguish digital approaches to design: Code, Network and Interactivity.

The challenge with this exhibition is that many of the screen-based works could easily be displayed on a home computer. While innovative, some of the code-based work appears to be little more than a clever screensaver. Other works like We Feel Fine – Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris’s visualisation of live status updates from around the world – are freely accessible online. By putting these displays in a gallery environment though, Decode gives us the space to explore, compare and contemplate them.

Moving further in, the work evolves into larger installations that rely on communications technology and interactivity. The work that really stands out is that is that which demands to be displayed in a gallery or live context. Simon Heijens’ Tree and Lightweed animations, which respond to wind monitored by a sensor outside the gallery, are a real highlight. As is Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Make Out, with its hundreds of videos of kissing couples sourced from Youtube rippling across the wall.

My favourite of these was Ross Phillips’ Videogrid, made of panels containing a repeating second of video recorded by groups of visitors on the other side of the screen. Together they make a quirky, transient display that leaves you feeling like you’ve shared something with those around you.

As a whole, whether you're marveling at a computer simulation of flight paths or throwing virtual paint over screens with your arms, Decode leaves you feeling like a big kid in the Science Museum’s Launchpad. For the £5 entrance fee that’s well worthwhile. There are also further works situated around the rest of the museum and, for digital enthusiasts, there’s a concurrent exhibition of early computer art, Digital Pioneers, in Rooms 90 and 88a.

Decode: Digital Design is at the V&A until 11th April 2010.

Reviewed for Spoonfed.