Slapstick to Horror

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

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

Sculpture drawings

Yvonne Rainer

November 2011 the BFI Gallery presented 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

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

in my studio

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

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

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

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