Small oil paintings on paper

Landscape at Dungeness

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

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

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! It was well curated with 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

Rebecca Warren at Maureen Paley Gallery 

"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

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

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

Big Screen at Latitude

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

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

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 new piece to be screened at the Latitude Festival's Big Screen in the woods on the 16th July.

Rose Wylie

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

Here's a link:

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