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.

Burning Man: London Decompression

Built in the Nevada desert for just one week a year, Burning Man is the mother of all festivals. I've been meaning to get there for years, but situations always conspire against me. This year though, it feels like I've lived the experience vicariously through friends who went out to Black Rock City, so on Saturday I joined them all at the London Decompression party - a re-union run by Euro-burners for UK based burners to party together again and reminisce over the seven days on the playa.

We arrive early at a small warehouse just off Kingsland Road in Dalston, to be greeted by a gaggle of dear old grannies in a gazebo who check our tickets. These were only publicised to community mailing lists and strictly limited in number to keep the party small and sociable. Like Burning Man itself, it's all about participation - all the performers, DJs and crew are volunteers who have bought tickets. A group of fire spinners are putting on a show in the front yard as we head in.

Inside, the warehouse has been kitted out into four main areas. The first room holds a comfy chill out tent, behind which is the tea shop. You can't miss it, because it's right next to a metal sculpture with flames blasting out of the spouts of four kettles. Next door is the Quixote Cabaret, with a small curtained stage, lots of coloured tendrils hanging off the ceiling and a brilliant 'draw your own' seaside style photo-board. On the walls hang maps of Black Rock City - the open circle of camps that made Burning Man festival 2009, laid out in geometric postcodes in the dry Nevada lake bed.

The first thing that really hits you about this party is the costumes. They're out of this world, or to be more precise straight off the playa. With human mirror balls, aliens, animals and steam punk face paint, the whole party's like a cross between a regency ball, a reunion of extras from Mad Max and a 70s disco in space. Glowing EL wire is everywhere, woven into glittering costumes, and in one case crafted into a Donnie Darko style bunny on a baseball cap (apparently it's worn partly as a safety measure to prevent you getting run over by art cars on the playa at night). If you've forgotten your costume that's no problem - you can hire one for a £5 deposit at the entrance.

The main dancefloor is the jungle room, where we spend most of the time bouncing to tunes and swinging on ropes suspended from the ceiling. DJ Debo is the first to get the party quite literally swinging, playing a mixture of bouncy house and techno. There's also a ball pit, into which I am disgorged by a fabric fallopian tube (another costume concept - the theme of this year's Burning Man was Evolution).

After a bounce we venture into the furthest room, a sweltering cul-de-sac decked out like a Bedouin tent with low lighting, sofas, space invaders consoles and a stage for bands to play on. An afro-headed, mo-sporting DJ called Dillon is bringing the funk to the dancefloor in the sweat inducing heat.

When we return to the jungle room, DJ Jurassik (Supatronix/ThisIsBreaks.com) is really enjoying himself, pumping the dancefloor with funky party breaks. The swinging ropes have been replaced by a fetish artist, performing in front of a huge crowd. Due to its nature, Burning Man is a magnet for all manner of creative eclecticism, as the costumes and various art installations around the venue also testify. Toby Lyons is next up on the decks. He's a wizard at the controls, mashing up some bad boy electro and breaks before pulling out into party style d'n'b, much to the joy of the crowd. 

While the stunning outfits and decorations are the first thing you notice, the main thing you take away from the party is the openness and warmth of everyone there. Throughout the night we are gifted lots of nice things and get chatting to everyone we bump into. As we do, I realise why this night is a decompression - everyone has stories about the playa, comparing notes from around this massive festival. No-where else, I'm told, can you be in the middle of a festival of 50,000 people and yet feel completely isolated, caught up in a dust storm with the nearest other human being hundreds of metres away in the distance. Very different to a tiny squat party in Dalston then - I can see why burners take a while to re-adjust on their return to civilisation.

Image by VJ Meno.

Review for Spoonfed.