Louise Colbourne

Landscape at Dungeness

2012-01-17T03:48:00.000-08:00

In the catalogue for the Graham Sutherland exhibition at Modern Art Oxford, George Shaw links Sutherland's landscapes to memories of the 70's sci-fi drama Children of The Stones.

'The Children of the Stones helped me to identify more than a passing concern with the British landscape and the ancient presence of man and beliefs....but what is most compelling is the sinister atmosphere, the sensation of a world beyond ours...'

Visiting Dungeness recently, I thought about the dark brooding landscapes of Sutherland's paintings, and The children Of The Stones. This bleak and desolate location is also full of a sense of other-worldliness through it's space, structure and the incidental remains of past human activities, pass-times, industry and creativity.

Graham Sutherland

2012-01-01T06:35:00.000-08:00

An Unfinished World
Graham Sutherland at Modern Art Oxford
works on paper curated by George Shaw

Dark Hill 1940 water colour and gouache on paper

Little Mountain Study 1944 water colour, pencil and chalk on paper

'The concluding episodes (of The Changes )- set amongst the rocks of a Welsh quarry, which uncover the power that holds nature and the progress in balance- prefigures my interest in the concerns of the Neo-Romantic movement and Sutherland's work of the 30's and 40's in particular. Similarly the ITV series The Children Of The Stones helped me identify more than a passing concern for the British landscape and the ancient presence of man and of beliefs....Sutherland himself wrote somewhat mysteriously in 1973, conjuring up the ghost of Arther Machen, the Welsh author and mystic,in whose dreams and nightmares time dissolves and the ancients come calling: 'If I could barricade myself within a ring of rocks I would be pleased.'

George Shaw from the Sutherland catalogue ( Modern Art Oxford)

Pipilotti Rist, Emma Hart and Tacita Dean

2011-11-23T07:01:00.000-08:00

PIPILOTTI RIST's Eyeball Massage at the Hayward is a visceral, bodily, cacophony of earthly delights. Intensely visual there's almost too much to see! After waiting for years to see an over-view of Rist's work in this country I found myself wishing there was less of it all at once, but it was well curated and I loved the dramatic differing scale to the projections and installations.

Beautiful and sensate the experience was indeed a good eyeball massage.

EMMA HART's To Do at Matts Gallery was a truly unique experience, it was a bit like entering a raucous alien zoo! The sounds added to the anamorphic quality of the sculptural camera and tripod combinations. This installation really did turn the tables on to the audience, in a literal way, as some of the cameras were constantly recording the gallery and it's visitors. Also there were instructive statements that guided the on-looker towards certain directions or contemplations. I found it to be a compelling and ground-breaking combination of lo and hi-tech with an edgy sense of humour.

TACITA DEAN's Film at the Turbine Hall is an ode to the comendable work Tacita Dean is doing to campaign to keep the medium of film alive and appose the onslaught of the digital. This film is given Cathederal-like status in the form of an enormous, elongated, portrait-format projection at the Turbine Hall, and is simply called Film.
I admired the statement of it more than the actual visual impact, I found myself thinking of it as a kind of billboard advertisment for the beauty of film as a pose to actually engaging with the purity of the medium: it's quality of light, colour, form and subtle movement.
Maybe I should make another visit.

Rebecca Warren

2011-10-21T05:12:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Warren at Maureen Paley Gallery (currently showing)

"Warren's sculpture remains alien to postmodernism. Not only does it call attention to the expressive marks of the artist's hand, but it evades literary meaning: her sculptures cannot be read...Fundamentally, the avoidance of finish in Warren's work implies a swerve away, not only from form towards formlessness, but also thereby from meaning towards the ruin of meaning....
A sculpture may remind us of a human body but that does not necessarily mean it represents a body: a sculpture may mimic a female form or a male form but does sculpture really have a gender? It is probably more likely that we treat the person as an object than the object as a person, but in neither case is our behaviour based on any reality but that of our own desires. The intricate evasion of meaning in art is of value because it makes the object into a mirror.."

Fragments by Barry Schabsky for Rebecca Warren Serpentine Gallery Catalogue 2009

In my studio

2011-10-21T00:37:00.000-07:00

Detail of video projection on to oil painting on paper, on hat stand. (30 x 150 cm)

Unfired clay (35cm x 17 cm)

Bronze (15cm x 7cm) and cardboard box (200 x 30 x 20 cm)

Printed paper and plasticine 30 x 20 x 7 cm

Becky Beasley and John Stezaker

2011-09-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

Two Figures in Dense Violet Night,
A conversation between Becky Beasley and John Stezaker,
Lido Projects 17/09/2011The talk Between Beasley and Stezaker centered mostly around the theme of materiality and the act of looking. Stezaker is obsessed with the possibilities of the 'image' as a channel for pure looking and not as a readable signifer. He finds looking at Becky Beasley's work to be a visceral, optical experience due to the quality and subtlety of her photographic prints.Stezaker's use of Photography is very different to Beasley's. He uses found photographs to act as material for simple decisive collages. Because of an intense dissatisfaction with any mark he made when painting or drawing, he discovered the only way he could be happy with an image was when it almost happened itself, by accident, and collage gave him that possibility.The pieces in the show were chosen with the horizontal and diagonal cut in mind, which make a strong link between the works. Stezaker's collaged prortraits nearly always have a vertical cut and his landscape's a horizontal cut. Beasley's Curtains, although drawn pertain to the verticle cut and the floor sculpture, Stumbling Block has a horizontal cut.Becky Beasley said of Stezaker's work that she found it intensely physical to look at, the act of looking at the work registered on her eyeball like a cut itself.

With Becky Beasley's work we are hovering between looking at, and seeing the materialty of the form. In her photographic prints, such as Curtains there is an opaic quality which acts as a filter, removing the form from it's solidity, which enhances the minute subtle terrain of the print itself. Very understated and reflecting their actual dimensions with-in the real world Curtains are rendered mute of their potential symbolism or narrative possibilities to become pure visual matter.

Two Figures in Dense Violet Night

Over four consecutive weekends,Becky Beasley hosted four conversations between two artists and two artworks. The artists included Michael Dean, Anne Hardy, Claire Scanlon & John Stezaker. The event took place at LIDO, Electro Studios, Seaside Road,St Leonards on Sea.

Nunhead Open

2011-09-09T04:39:00.001-07:00

Big Screen at Latitude

2011-07-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

From Slapstick To Horror

This year's screening was a huge success and was much appreciated by a wide reaching audience of art enthusiasts and general passing revelers. We showed the screening twice and then a film by Jim Hobbs entitled A CLEAR DAY AND NO MEMORIES: a film and sound collaboration with Seattle band Kinski, originally produced at Jack Straw Productions New Media Gallery in Seattle. After that we showed Mordant Music's re sound-tracking of Un Chein Andalou, newly commissioned by the BFI, and then DJ Harry K showed a new piece of cinematic montage with soundtrack: 'The World Keeps Turning'.

screen still : 'Table' 2006 Katherine Eastman

screen still: 'Harry's haircut' Harry Pye and Gordon Beswick

And then thanks to the exciting mix of eclectic music and moving image by DJ Harry K, we enjoyed a party until the early hours of the morning!

ALSO

Artists selected to show a specially commissioned piece as part of LCA included Delaine Le Bas (here pictured 'in conversation with Anne Hilde Neset and Louise Grey) as well as Alice Anderson, Graham Dolphin, Andy Harper ( the winner of the LCA prize this year) and Maslen &Mehra

From Slapstick to Horror at Latitude

2011-07-10T05:21:00.000-07:00

Jim Hobbs and Louise Colbourne are screening a revised version of From Slapstick to Horror as part of the Latitude Contemporary Art programme this year on the 16th July. The screening includes a selection of artists film and video works that show intense physicality on screen, ranging from the comedy of slap-stick through to more demanding performances and scenarios that are more closely aligned with horror.

This screening will also include a section of vintage cinematic footage from films spanning the years from 1930 to the present, with a live soundtrack accompaniment by DJ Harry. We will also preview Mordant Music’s new score, commissioned by the BFI, for Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s 1929 surrealist

classic Un Chien Andalou

Some of the artists included in the programme are:

Dennis Oppenheim Bob Flanigan

Philip Hausmeier Katharine Eastman

Eddie Peake & Iñaki Estrada Torío Laure Prouvost

Jenny Baines Andy Parker

Gordon Beswick & Harry Pye Zoë Brown

Phil Taylor Liane Lang

Juliana Cerqueira Leite Michael James Jones

Raquel Felguerias Kate Street

Richard Whitby
Paul R Jones Mark Prendergast

Mordant Music with Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí

Image: Zoë Brown, Dad 2005

Sarah Angliss

2011-07-06T06:12:00.000-07:00

At 'Speakey Spokey' a Brighton based art salon/poetry/performance event, held each month at the Latest Bar...

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Speaky-Spokey/172338949480161?sk=wall

..I met Sarah Angliss, performing with Spacedog on her Theremin a piece called Stooky Bill

http://www.sarahangliss.com/spotted/stookybill

I was interested in the links between Sarah's Theremin performance, her interest in early electronic sound and my interpretation of Loie Fuller's Serpentine Dance from the 1890's. At about the same time in history these activities were exciting audiences with the mystery of science and the illusion/sound of new cybotic future possibilities.
I have since filmed Sarah performing on the Theramin alongside a backing track from Willow's Song (Whicker Man). I have now edited the two films together to make a piece called The Midday Sun At Midnight. It will be screened at the Latitude Festival's Big Screen in the woods on the 16th July.

Rose Wylie

2011-07-06T05:46:00.000-07:00

I visited Rose Wylie's studio at her home in Kent.

Here's a link:

http://visitingstudios.blogspot.com/2011/07/rose-wylie.html

Trisha Brown

2011-05-04T06:16:00.000-07:00

Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark

Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s

3 March 2011 - 22 May 2011

Barbican Art Gallery

Performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson, choreographer Trisha Brown and artist Gordon Matta-Clark were friends and active participants in the New York art community, working fluidly between visual art and performance.

Featuring sculptures, drawings, photographs, documentation of performances and mixed media works, the exhibition focuses on the intersections between their practices and explores their shared concerns – performance, the body, the urban environment and found spaces.

I was particularly interested in Trisha Brown's work. It was great to see original film footage Man Walking Down The Side Of A Building.

The live performances held at the gallery throughout the day gave us the chance to witness Brown's architecturally challenging dance-actions, such as walking horizontally around the gallery walls.

The cross over and sublimation of dance into art and vice-versa are looked at in great depth in Andre Lepecki's book: Exhausting Dance 2006. He he investigates performance and the politics of movement by looking at the work of key choreographers, performance and visual artists as well as theorists from the last 30 years.

In chapter 4 (Toppling dance) Lepeki's looks at Trisha Brown's piece called 'It's A Draw/Live Feed', which was carried out as a live drawing performance in a Museum in Philadelphia. The drawing/movements were viewed by the audience via a video link in another room.

"During the performance of It's A Draw/Live Feed the space of Brown's dancing drawing explodes in a series of dizzying explorations between genres, between focal points, between confounding positions and certainties about spectatorship, authorship, artistic disciplines, documentation, original, copy, presence, liveness, dance and art."

Andre Lepecki

Slapstick to Horror

2011-02-23T02:36:00.000-08:00

Jim Hobbs and Louise Colbourne screened a selection of video clips and 16mm & 8mm film to include works by 20 artists and film makers as part of the Physical Center programme, above is a selection of stills from:

Fall 1, Bas Jan Ader, 1970. Busby Berkely, Footlight Parade, 1933.

K. Jayne Parker, 1989. Drunken Master, staring Jackie Chan, 1978

Physical Center

2011-01-19T06:33:00.000-08:00

The piece I will be showing as part of the Physical Center Exhibition will involve a re-enactment of Loie Fuller's Serpentine Dance (1890). It is performed and filmed on site at an ancient hill fort and burial ground on the South Downs and will be shown at the Guest Project space.

studies for Physical Center exhibition piece

2011-01-05T11:57:00.000-08:00

Sculpture drawings

2010-12-02T02:16:00.001-08:00

Yvonne Rainer

2010-12-01T01:19:00.000-08:00

This November the BFI Gallery presents an exhibition dedicated to the work of the legendary American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, Yvonne Rainer (b.1934) whose practice is amongst the most influential on the newest generation of video makers and choreographers alike. Yvonne Rainer's work examines the balance between the political and the private in everyday life. After exploring innovative ideas in bodily movement, she went on to develop these concerns in film.

The exhibition features three of Rainer’s works in the BFI Gallery (until 25th Jan) and is accompanied by screenings of her seven feature films to be shown in the BFI cinemas.

There is also a curated programme of artists’ works which will include films from Rainer's Five Easy Pieces series (1966-1969). The artists featuring alongside and inspired by Rainer's work are Yael Bartana, Köken Ergun, Michel François, Laurent Goldring, Mircea Cantor, Katinka Bock, Sonia Khurana, Florence Lazar, Bea McMahon and Su-Mei Tse. The screenings are at 13:00 on 4th and 5th of Dec in the Studio a the BFI, Southbank.

Stills from Yvonne Rainer's performance 'Trio A' 1965, and photographs of performance by L. Colbourne 2009

Louise Bourgeois Symposium

2010-11-15T01:33:00.000-08:00

Louise Bourgeois Fabric Work symposium 13th November

Griselda Pollock started the talks off by discussing the emerging possibilities for female artists today. She called for more of an acknowledgement of the history of feminism to be seen as a part of Louise Bourgeois development and success. She stated that feminism should be seen as a field of opportunities and not a solid object in history.

The next speaker was Meg Harris Williams, who spoke very eloquently of Bourgeois and her working process in a psychoanalytical way, referring to her childhood and family relationships. Harris Williams said of bourgeois that her art making was a constant growing and learning experience, one of constant 'becomings'.

Phyllida Barlow was a humerous speaker and connected to the actual 'stuff' of the art work as a pose to the politics or psychoanalysis behind it. She talked of Bourgeois relationship to the theatricality of her work, not just in the arrangement of things but also in the use of materials. Barlow mentions the 'constant future potential' in the gradual unraveling of themes and materials that are rooted in the history of Bourgeois art. She was always able to make the work appear new and full of potential. Barlow also spoke of earliest encounters with Bourgeois work and how the thing that struck her was the scale of it. Barlow's own practice has a great deal to do with the sheer scale of the work, but she said that for her it's not to do with making a grand macho gesture but 'wanting to reach up to the unknown'.

in my studio

2010-11-10T08:08:00.000-08:00

in my studio

2010-11-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

Cardboard box and un-fired clay,from a series based on Louise Bourgeois drawings of hair.

“Hair is omnipresent in Louise Bourgeois’s early drawings and paintings, luxuriant, sensual, even self-erotic.”

Robert Storr

Juliana Cerqueira Leite

2010-11-04T02:36:00.001-07:00

Juliana is showing three sculptures at the current Saatchi Gallery show:

Newspeak: British Art Now.

Juliana's sculptures are often made by a physically demanding activity,this piece is an inflated latex cast of the form that is created by burrowing into a huge block of clay (finger gouges are clearly visible). Her work engages with the history of figurative art, challenging notions of the body as static and reformulating figurative representation.

Louise Bourgeois fabric work at Hauser and Wirth

2010-11-04T01:59:00.000-07:00

Friday 12 November 2010, 6.30 pm

Talk led by Curator Germano Celant

Saturday 13 November 2010, 10 am – 6 pm
Symposium
Speakers include: Phyllida Barlow, Briony Fer, Mignon Nixon, Claire Pajaczkowska, Griselda Pollock and Meg Williams
Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, Wilkins Building, University College London

serpentine dance

2010-10-26T02:37:00.001-07:00

Juliana Cerqueira Leite, Jenny Baines and I met for a chat about ideas for the Physical Center project.

I told them about a plan I had to re-create, in some sense, the Serpentine Dance by Loie Fuller (1890). What interests me is the simple way Fuller created performances involving moving coloured lights and swathes of fabric with low- tech devices, such as gel filters and arm extentions. She amazed audiences, at the time, with an illusion of the movement of flight and was one of the first to create images and experiences that hint of a cybernetic future.

In the studio

2010-10-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

Nunhead Open 7 Art Exhibition

2010-09-09T05:49:00.000-07:00

Nature is the Chruch of Satan is to be screened at The Nunhead Open Art Exhibition, which is now in it’s seventh year. The Exhibition will be held at The Nunhead Community Centre and is linking with the film festival by encouraging artists to enter work on the theme of film.

Nunhead Community Centre,

56 Nunhead Lane

SE15 3TU

10- 12th September 12-5pm

Nature is the Church of Satan at Latitude 2010

2010-07-23T02:36:00.000-07:00

Nature is the Church of Satan

by Louise Colbourne

A collection of short film and video including work by Zoë Brown, Dryden Goodwin, Louise Colbourne, Paul Burgess, Kate Street, Jenny Baines, Jim Hobbs, Matt Hulse, Vicki Thornton and Semiconductor.

Together these films and videos show an edgy side to nature and the landscape, revealing an intense atmosphere and the potential to evoke a response both outside and within.

This programme was screened at the Latitude festival in the woodland area on the 20 x 30' Big Screen. Also showing was Tim Simmons landscape photography and a selection of film and video work selected by Ben Borthwick. All were projected from a shack built by David Blandy as part of his installation in the woods called 'Crossroads'.

During the festival in the Lavish lounge daily 'Artists in conversation' events were hosted by Louise Gray, Anne Hilde Neset and Ben Borthwick, who also curated the Latitude Contemporary Arts programme this year with Ami Jade Cadillac from Lavish Ltd.

In our discussion were (from right to left) Louise Gray, Ben Borthwick, Mode, Matt Hulse, Vicki Thornton, Paul Burgess and Louise Colbourne.

We were reminded of the solitude that nature inspires, and that our relationship to the landscape can be very intimate within its vastness.

The rhythmic flow and pace of the programme is quite important,the physicality of movement, timing, pace and structure of the individual pieces in 'Nature..Satan' influenced how the pieces were placed in order..

The sound was a very physical element to the work, especially for Vicki Thornton who laid letraset on to 16mm film stock which created the interference sound on her film 'Orchestra of Antimatter'. Matt Hulse's 8mm film 'Sine Die' has a soundtrack made up of a collage of folk samples from around the world which added to the 'Whicker Man' feel of his emotive and spiritual piece. Paul Burgess was inspired by the 'evil spirits in the woods' that surround the town of 'Twin Peaks', by David Lynch, and for him the sound element of the work was an important and evocative element.

'I liked the diversity and sense of freedom in your selection, and also the humour. But altogether the films worked well and I thought brought a powerful extension to the experience of those 'going into the woods'. Matt Hulse

'I saw one of the late screenings of the programme and it was really interesting seeing the films in that context late at night, I was also really pleased with the sound quality too. I think my favourite part was seeing the sun in the Semiconducter piece not long before the sun actually came up!' Vicki Thornton.

Projection stills in order from top: 'Gaze' 2010, Louise Colbourne. 'Heliocentric' 2010, Semiconductor.

With thanks to:

Latitude Contemporary Arts

Lux

'In conversation' photographs courtesy of Lucy Brown

Devil's Dyke

2010-07-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

This is a 16mm film taken on location at Devil’s Dyke.

The polystyrene ball (1 meter diameter) rolls down

the hill until the wind mechanism on the 16mm

camera runs out in about 30 seconds.

Whitstable Biennale

2010-07-05T03:56:00.001-07:00

Nature is the Church of Satan, screened in the hut at the tennis courts, next to the beach in Whitstable on the 3rd of July 2010.

SHELF at Whitstable by Jim Hobbs

2010-06-29T02:58:00.000-07:00

An exhibition of works that considered the 'shelf'.
The exhibition included a piece I made of a video animation of photographs taken of a performance based on Yvonne Rainer's 'Trio A' 1965

Just Like That

2010-06-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

Family Phenomenon (louise colbourne)

Louise Colbourne and Jenny Baines presents

Just Like That a film and video event of new work by selected artists around the theme of humour and self parody.

Virginia Woolf said that when she wrote Orlando, she wrote it quickly and with a sense of fun - for her it was a 'holiday from writing' and an opportunity to make a parody of her usual writing style.

The artists’ response to this way of producing and presenting work is illustrated in this screening, resulting in a diverse and interesting collection of new films and reworked previously unseen footage.

Artists:
Jaye Ho
Kate Hawkins
Jenny Baines
Emma Hart
Louise Colbourne
Paul Burgess
Keran James
Vicki Thornton
Sepideh Sali
Juliana Cerqueria Leite
Eddie Peak
Oliver Bancroft
Harry Pye
Michael Wedgewood
KundE
Carali McCall
Julie Rafalski

Studio 1.1 Gallery, 57a Redchurch Street, E2 7DJ,
13th September 2009 from 7pm – 9pm.