Unobtrusive Measures at Schwartz Gallery and George Orwell's "Good English"

(Installation view. Image courtesy of Mark Selby)

Unobtrusive Measures at Schwartz Gallery should win an award. That the award ought to be something along the lines of "most surprisingly good exhibition given a hopelessly rubbish press release" need not put you off a visit to Hackney Wick.

Case in point:

"In the strong and consistent rhetoric within anti-techne sectors of culture, the potential loss of physicality and hence humanism, is offered as the primary concern. The endpoint of this narrative replaces the body into binary script; our ultimate transcendence into the virtual and the loss of nuance in direct, physical interaction. Communication transmogrified through the unobtrusive measures of technology."

Why this reliance on pseudo-mystical, utterly meaningless language? Why do curators feel the need to explain, thereby justify, the work of their artists with painfully constructed paragraphs?

Back in the press release it's all blah, blah, blah; more arty bollocks speak about the work of the involved artists, and to close:

"In the exhibition itself, you will not engage with this materiality or experience the works in the method through which the artists would normally intend. Placed within an interior sealed cube in the gallery space, the works will be converted, co-opted and quite dictatorially subsumed into my own installation, intervention and curatorial direction; ironically, a hugely obtrusive act. Though they may still be observed and recorded through the glaring lens of a series of CCTV cameras and monitors, the viewer will be placed on the outside looking in. Frustrated, excluded or voyeuristic-ally enthralled, the experience is still a physical one, only not with the intended object but the mediating apparatus of an unobtrusive measure."

I recently reread George Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language", and there's one bit in particular that reminded me of the uncanny ability artists and curators have to turn plain old English into what Orwell calls "modern English". Here Orwell translates a passage of "good English" into "modern English of the worst sort"

Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

These days, exhibition texts, press releases and artists statements are so uniformly badly written that I often wonder whether some genius techie hasn't created a website (circulated amongst art students, naturally) to translate good English into modern English - an Orwellian babelfish.

Anyway, I'm rather a way away from where I wanted to be. Which is a discussion of the show. Which is kind of my point. There's something about all this nonsensical nonsense that detracts from the exhibition itself. I almost didn't go to the show because I was so put out by the incomprehensibility of the press release. Luckily, I did ultimately drop in, but I now find it difficult to discern whether I'm so pleased with the show because my expectations were, well, let's just say I didn't have any expectations, or because the show was actually good.

If not great, the show was certainly interesting and, dare I use a sure-to-annoy-Orwell-expression, thought provoking. What with Elevator's recent Vanishing Point and now this Unobtrusive Measures, the Hackney Wick galleries are displaying a remarkable willingness to tussle with some rather heavy critical ideas: what is art, how do we judge what art is if we can't see it, how does the context of a gallery space inform the way viewers think about and engage with art. All interesting stuff. And indeed, I find that I'm far less inclined to be critical of the work on display when the ideas propping up the show are explored with such panache.

I feel also like I have to admit a vested interest. I don't actually have a vested interest, but I'm in the middle of organising my next SALON (LONDON) exhibition and one idea I initially toyed with involved putting on an exhibition no one could actually visit. I decided to do something else in the end, but it was gratifying to see someone else wrestle with similar thoughts.

(Installation view: monitor detail. Image courtesy of Mark Selby)

Essentially, when you enter the space there's just a big plywood box. A big plywood box and five TV monitors wrapped in smaller plywood boxes. That's it. You take it on trust that all the works are actually inside the big plywood box and that the representations on the TV monitors are indeed faithful. It's difficult to make out the quality of all the works on display, but some appear to have potential; some more than others. There's something about Adam Dix's two paintings I find attractive, but he's like a less good Andrew Hollis. One of the monitors shows a flaming pink pile of who knows what, which I gather is by Ismail Erbil and turns out to be Turkish tea glasses among other things. Faye Peacock's sound piece is rather clever in that she rang Mark Selby, the curator and also builder of the 'unobtrusive measure', i.e. the plywood box and CCTV cameras and monitors, and recorded their conversation without informing him she was doing so. 

Having only just finished reading the accompanying text for the exhibition, I'm a bit disappointed to note that the curator was primarily concerned with the validity of actual versus secondhand observance, instead of simply playing with the idea of staging an exhibition that people can't see. It's not that I didn't like the exhibition, because I did; but I want to be free to make my own interpretation, my own reading. I don't want to be laden with art speak bullshit before I even set eyes on the work. Artists and curators: if you cannot tell me what your show is about in plain, good English, please don't tell me at all. Have the courage and confidence to let the work speak for itself.

super-hybridity, frieze magazine

Recently a friend pointed me in the direction of the September 2010 issue of frieze Magazine. I'm in the process of putting together my next SALON (LONDON) show and as it's all about bringing the artistic works of different disciplines together she thought that I might find frieze's take on 'super-hybridity' of some use.

Apart from the direct relevance to the work I'm doing on the exhibition, I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the point of art criticism in the contemporary art world; naturally, thinking about theory has been a big part of that process. I'm not entirely convinced by the relevance or utility of critical classification in art today - remember altermodern? exactly - but it still makes for a fascinating point of entry.

Jorg Heiser's phenomenon of super-hybridity attempts to explain the increase of artists who work across a vast spectrum of cultural contexts at an extraordinarily fast pace: it ropes in ideas of globalisation, digital technology, the Internet, and capitalism. So far, so not that interesting. There's something rather dull about trying to apply a post-rationalised, top-down framework on an existing structure of working, especially given that it tends to omit a lot of practitioners. Perhaps, though, that's what critics are for: they dream up the theories while the artists get on with making work.

Despite my own theoretical qualms, the discussion on super-hybridity is saved by its participants: Ronald Jones, Nina Power, Seth Price, Sukhdev Sandhu, Hito Steyerl, and of course Heiser.

Even though there isn't necessarily anything here that's changed my way of thinking or practising, I love the spirit of the discussion. It is so refreshing to see a genuinely interesting, relevant, and intellectually demanding piece on art theory free from obfuscating and hermetic nonsense. The fact that it appeared in a relatively mainstream art magazine gives me hope for the future of publishing.

I've pulled out some of the bits I found most interesting/intriguing/stimulating:

�Immersion, entanglement, affectivity, sudden rupture and repeated breakdown. In the realm of digital circulation it�s no longer about anybody being represented by something else - a culturally inflected image, for example - but about an embodied, dynamic continuum of bodies, sounds, images, actions, and audiovisual politics of intensity. These relations are aesthetic since they have to do with the senses, and they are political since they govern or channel feelings, perception and thus possible reactions [a nice tie in with a lot of the Dave Hickey stuff I've been reading]. The 1990s were about decoding and understanding these relations but now it�s more about how to be immersed without drowning, or to be embedded without falling asleep and happily surrendering control of your feelings to a pervasive military-entertainment complex. I wish that we could leave the discussion about hybridity behind though; it drags one back into hermeneutics and hapless discussions of origin. It's inadequate for trying to come up with perspectives." ~ Hito Steyerl

"We have arrived at a point where critical theory is being called upon to answer a basic question: what is the continuing relevance, value, and productive potential of criticality or oppositional knowledge? The art world, from my vantage, is in a rather tight spot. I'm not sure how long we should grant artists special dispensation just because what they are producing is merely worthwhile." ~ Ronald Jones

"Given our current situation, where art has had such little effect on a world facing truly wicked problems, what I am proposing departs from relativism, the ambiguities of Postmodernism and fashionable pessimism for a new post-critical perspective. Bruno Latour has recognised why criticality has run out of steam. Post-criticality means an engagement for artists and designers with proactive strategies triggering entrepreneurial - not necessarily in the business creation sense - interdisciplinary, innovative and attainable solutions to our collective challenge; discrimination, corruption and starvation to name only three..." ~ Jorg Heiser

"Nobody in this discussion seems to be opposed to or even impressed by mixing, merging, dislocating and recombining stuff. That's what people seem to be doing quite casually now. But there seems to be several opinions as to how to go about it. Engaging with the world. Sure. But is the world anywhere else? Does 'out there' mean beyond the sphere of aesthetics and the art world? As Nina said, and I agree with her, this realm is hopelessly entangled with the dynamics of financilisation. The realm of perception is heavily militarised, too, as Sukhdev noted. For me, that's real enough: a military-financial-art-world hybrid if you like. But let me take one step back and suggest the waning of opposites - such as real/representation; engaged/critical; object/subject - is an important part of the situation we are discussing. Haacke's piece [Rhinewater Purification Plant (1972)] is great. But I can't disentangle it from a gesture of criticality, just as the art world is dependent on the realities of speculation and the labour of artists as shock workers." ~ Hito Steyerl

"Critique is sexy! As is allowing things to speak for themselves. The theory-speak supplement that is implicitly demanded by exhibitions seems to create a need for neologisms and catch-all terms, regardless of whether there is any desire for them, or underlying them. Exhibitions with no signs, labelling or printed information, such as 'In-finitum', at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice in 2009, permit an immersive and truly engaging aesthetic experience, in which the thoughtfulness of the curating is properly revealed...The new is frequently dull and often turns out not so new after all. Trying to keep up with the speed of exploitation may be fun, but it doesn't eradicate the fact that the art world is frequently trying to catch-up to capitalism itself. Without critique, ethics and politics, this game is doomed to enter into an echo chamber of linguistic creative destruction in which every neologism is ultimately boringly equivalent to every other..." ~ Nina Power 

Bonnington Square, Kinetica Artfair, and Snowdrops at the Chelsea Physic Garden

I've been in a bit of a London funk lately. Too many rotten Vyner/Redchurch Street art shows and not enough genuinely inspiring new stimulation. This is why I live in London, after all. It's supposed to be home to the best of everything, but of late it feels as if I've seen it all before.

Nothing like a weekend full of new adventures and a return to some old favourites to nip this pessimism in the bud! 

First up: Friday night dinner at the Wapping Project. I'd been to the Wapping Project before, so it's not exactly new, but my first visit was so long ago that I'd forgotten how brilliant it is. The interior is so cool and the food was wooooonnderul. Really, really delicious. Service was impeccable, very friendly. If you haven't been here before, scoot to Wapping ASAP. It will make you feel happy to live in London.

photo by Purple Cloud.

I'm one of those sorts of people who clips out interesting articles from magazines or newspapers and files them away for later use: places to visit, books to read, music to listen to, whatever. 

I must have filed away a newspaper piece on Bonnington Square neigh on three years ago and this weekend was the first time I managed to get around to actually visiting. I don't know all that much about the history, but Bonnington Square is an interesting place given that it was a community of squatters in the 80s and most of the housing is still co-op owned today. There's a tranquil community-run cafe, The Bonnington Cafe, where we had a cheap and delicious lunch (braised fennel!), and the sweet gardens which were taken over in the mid 90s. What's up with the slightly creepy, beckoning hand atop the garden gates.

Saturday early evening I swung by Kinetica Art Fair at P3. It was difficult to look at things properly because the place was so rammed, but there were only a few pieces I really liked. I'm not entirely sure why this piece was at a fair featuring digital and kinetic art, but I admired its elegance and simplicity. Anya Gallaccio's Cast was a cast bronze acorns nestled in a box full of real acorns. Intended as a comment on today's disposable culture, the purchaser of Cast is invited to plant the real acorns, leaving behind only the cast bronze. A simple, thoughtful idea beautifully executed.

But the work I found most to my liking was Alex Posada's The Particle. The piece is all about the creation of our atmosphere, but perhaps it's best to just watch a this little clip I recorded instead of me trying to describe what the thing was like. 

Sunday was all about Galanthus - that's Snowdrops to me and you. I love the etymology of the name: in Greek, gala means milk and anthos means flower. Milkflower. Isn't that lovely. 

The Chelsea Physic Garden is only open to the public from April to October, but they occasionally open for special events in February to show off their winter shrubs and bulbs. The Garden is one of my favourite places in London. I used to visit often when I lived in South Ken, but I get over a lot less now I live on the other side of town. Opened in 1673, it's the oldest - and probably most wonderful - botanic garden in London. I love that it feels all hidden just behind Royal Hospital Road. How many people must walk past and not even know it's there. It's small, but beautiful and very good for curious folk like me because as it's a physic garden - most of the plants are or were grown for medicinal purposes - there's an awful lot to learn. If you missed out this weekend, there's another Snowdrop fest this coming weekend. Tickets are �8 and worth every single penny.

poor Griselda

A Tale from the Decameron by J.W. Waterhouse

If there�s one good reason why the major public museums ought to stay free, it�s so I can pop in for a half hour or so whenever I�ve got a half hour to spare. Unlike the monumental Louvre, which calls for a more serious approach (at least one glass of wine for every 45 minutes of browsing), the National Gallery�s manageable size and free-entry policy means that a once a week breeze through isn�t just doable but downright enjoyable.

I know where my favourite pieces are and I know the best routes to get to them � e.g. I always stop off for a woozy sigh of delight in front of the Wilton Diptych before heading round to dally in front of The Arnolfini � but sometimes when I�m whizzing round, I notice a new piece, or at least a piece that I think is new. Yesterday afternoon, I noticed lots of works I hadn�t seen before but when I investigated further to see whether there was a list of curatorial changes and rotations to confirm my suspicions, I was greeted with mostly blank stares. �Oh yeah, the curators are in most mornings moving things about here and there,� I was told by one friendly information assistant. Not so helpful, then.

Excepting the wonderfully serene feeling I got from wandering through the Sainsbury Wing, the highlight of yesterday�s jaunt was a series of three fifteenth-century (1493-4) Italian paintings on the tale of Griselda which were supposedly displayed in a Sienese palace.

I love the characters in the panels, the nod to Botticelli�s women and the peculiar animals set into the foreground. I love the zoom technique where the arch in the first panel becomes the setting for the second and third panels. I love that the viewer is intended to read the paintings as one would read a story � from left to right, with multiple incidents from the narrative occupying the same panel. As with most paintings, the digital reproductions simply don�t do them justice.

Incidentally, the story of Griselda is rather amusing. If you�ve read Chaucer�s �The Clerk�s Tale� it may sound familiar, but I know it from Boccaccio�s Decameron (the Decameron is a stonking good read and would make an excellent Christmas present, or if you haven�t read it, do yourself a favour a purchase a copy immediately!).

The story goes a little like this: the lovely lady Griselda marries the Marquis of Saluzzo, Gualtieri, who turns out to be quite bonkers. In order to test her wifely devotion, first he declares that both of their children must be put to death and then publicly renounces Griselda for a more noble woman. Little Miss Perfect is wounded by her husband�s actions, but patiently accepts his wishes and goes to live with her father. About twelve years later � TWELVE YEARS! � Gualtieri announces that he�s got another grande dame and wishes Griselda to return to him as a servant in order to prepare for the wedding. So far, so creepy. Griselda returns only to be introduced to Gualtieri�s new bride, a twelve-year old girl. Griselda wishes them both well, at which point, ta da!, Gualtieri reveals that the girl is really their daughter and not his bride-to-be. Gualtieri tells Griselda that the whole thing was one insanely ludicrous plot to find out whether his wife was as faithful as all fourteenth-century wives ought to be. They then live, presumably, happily ever after�

Frieze!

Sometimes I have a sneaking suspicion that London is run by an underground group of art-loving, booze-hound, film-going foody types given that last week saw Frieze Art Fair, the London Restaurant Festival, London Film Festival, and London Cocktail Week vie for Londoners� admittedly limited attention spans.

I managed to make it to a fortified wine tasting event as part of Cocktail Week and dinner at the Criterion as part of the London Restaurant Festival - both were excellent.  But I drink sherry and eat out all the time: Frieze happens only once a year (thank god).  The tent in Regent�s Park is already well on its way toward being dismantled, but people will be talking about the art, the sales, the inexplicably impossible waiting times to purchase a coffee for, oh, the next three days.  I don�t know what it is about London that so encourages cultural ADD, but if the last few weeks have been anything to go by, it�s all but impossible for any one thing to hold public attention for more than seven days. 

Anyway, I digress.  The thing about Frieze is that if you�re not buying you have to be absolutely ruthless.  I stomped around the fair in two hours on Friday afternoon, daring something to spark my interest.  That said, the object that most took my fancy was a beautiful, dark-grey worsted wool suit worn by one of the eighteen-year old sales monkeys at Victoria Miro, though I have a sneaking suspicion it wasn�t for sale�  Funnily enough, my other favourite works were also at Victoria Miro�s stand.  I�d forgotten that Alex Hartley was represented by VM and it was a pleasant surprise to see two new works on display.  I first saw his work at a solo show at the Fruitmarket in 2007.  I love the way he integrates photography with sculpture and installation alongside larger buildings and architectural concerns.  In many ways Hartley works as an architect would in that he scouts for the perfect location, but then transforms the site not with a literal building, but by taking photographs and then transforming the photographs with low-relief sculptural elements added to the surface of the prints.  Hartley�s been working on a rather conceptual project for the Cultural Olympiad, which perhaps explains why he�s been off the radar for a bit, so it was a nice surprise to see a few new pieces.

At Plan B, I spotted a new Adrian Ghenie and though it was a decent example of his work, it wasn�t half as spectacular as the pieces on show at Haunch of Venison last year.  Not sure what happened there�

Bortolami�s stand was lovely, full of pieces from Brooklyn-based artist, Richard Aldrich.  I�d never heard of Aldrich before and spent a bit of time perusing previous exhibitions.  His work looks a bit hit and miss, but I think Bortolami did a superb job of curating his pieces for Frieze.  There�s a rather charming  �slide painting� where a blank canvas is broken up by a single, back lit 35mm slide.  There was another large Aldrich canvas which I loved: a pale, peachy salmon-coloured wash takes up most of the canvas, punctuated by a little wall of turquoise and something like a stone-circle at the bottom of the frame.  I don�t know what it is or what it�s supposed to be, it�s not the most exquisite piece of work I�ve seen, but it�s confidently done and quite captivating.  I stood looking at it for a good 3 minutes, which in Frieze time is a bloody eternity.

Another piece I loved was a set of works by Julius Koller for Galerie Martin Janda.  Slovakian artist Koller, again someone I�m relatively unfamiliar with, has a bitty, almost anthropological approach to making art.  The series of six objects, created between 1966-78 from what I can deduce, ranged from a marked-up loo roll, to a stamped piece of paper, to an intricate drawing of a town scape on a piece of found paper and was completely captivating � like finding a time capsule from a lost civilisation.  Koller died in 2007, and I later found out that the entire collection of works was bought by the Tate for their permanent collection.  It's amusing that I like so little of the Tate's collection, yet their buyers (at least one, anyway) clearly have good taste.

Perhaps my favourite piece, though, was a work called 'when what was when' by Claire Harvey at Amsterdam-based Galerie Fons Welters.  An entire wall had been given over to a display of small glass slides, each featuring an oil-painted figurative character.  The whole thing was slightly surreal and a little bit bonkers: one bit of the display consisted of a foot-long wooden shelf piled up with sand and an egg nested in the sand next to one of the little glass slides.  But the piece was also whimsical and clever � the slides were stuck to the wall with white tack and many of the figures seemed to interact with the very material fixing them to the wall.

There were a few other pieces that I liked (some images below), but nothing really took my breath away.  Having said that, the quality of the work this year was definitely better than last year. But to be honest, Frieze really isn�t about quality; it�s all about the money, baby.  And given that people will be talking about sales figures for at least the next two days, no doubt this year�s Frieze will chalk up to be a totally massive success. 

a top tenner

One significant benefit of keeping a blog is that, unlike a kitten or a tomato plant, it doesn't actually die if you neglect it. Not that it flourishes either, but at least it doesn't develop abandonment issues and simply stop calling. Or whatever. I've been too busy, blah, blah, blah, to write here lately and what with organising the Filling Station feast and the SALON (LONDON) Secret exhibition, working at my mag job and trying to finish my PhD by the end of September, regularly updating here has sadly been relegated to the bottom of my list of priorities. Thankfully, the lovely art team at Spoonfed have included RoWS on their top-ten London art bloggers list and kicked my ass into gear about posting here again.





It's funny because a lot of other bloggers I know say they go through periods of not posting because they haven't got anything to write about. This is most definitely not my problem: in the last few weeks I've experienced my first F�te Nationale in Paris, rocked out at my first party in a fire station, seen the Nederlands Dans Theater TWICE, had my bike rescued by three firemen in a big fire truck, cooed over baby goats at the Lambeth Country Fair, danced my legs off at Lovebox, sipped a Campari and soda on top of Hannah Barry's car park cum sculpture exhibition in Peckham, spent three glorious days at Secret Garden Party, checked out the latest in digital art at the Creators Project, learned about the Complete History of Food with Bompas and Parr, hit up a bowling alley in West London, been mesmerised by Antony Gormley's Breathing Room III at the White Cube, printed my own t-shirt with the super cute Hit + Run boys, seen Toro y Moi jam out all bass-heavy-like, and tasted earl grey and victoria sponge ice cream made with liquid nitrogen. Quite a backlog, right? Right. So, I'll endeavour to get back on a semi-regular posting regime.  Especially seeing as this Saturday I'm going to Glyndebourne to see Don Giovanni, followed by the boys' -  my mates who run the We Are Not a Rock Band music blog - summer warehouse party in Hoxton. Mozart meets electro/disco! Even I don't understand myself sometimes.



To the power of fun.

I cannot be dictated to by a watch

Eeeek. I haven't been writing here nearly as much as I've wanted to. I love writing. It's one of the things I, you know, do, but I'm sort of leading four different lives at the moment and something simply must give. Not that I'm complaining. Life number three is CJ as art curator, where I run SALON (LONDON), a nifty little thing I started last year to organise exhibitions and indulge my love of finding, nurturing and promoting young artists. You'll probably remember me going on (and on and on) about the first show/project/extravaganza last September.

Well, I'm pleased to say that SALON show number two opens tomorrow (whoa!). I've been working on this project since last October just after the first show closed so it's really exciting to have it opening at last. It's a fantastic exhibition - we did the install today and I don't think I've ever felt so proud - sometimes everything  comes together in a way that completely surprises you. The concept is strong, the space is perfect and the work is beautiful. 

As I was sweeping up at the end of the day, thinking about how much hard work I put into these shows, I started thinking of all those people grafting away at something they didn't really enjoy in the hope that all their hard work would pay off later. The best thing about doing an installation is that your hard work is  almost immediately rewarded.  Having said that, even with all the months of preparation, if not a single one of Noemie's photographs sells or not one critic reviews the show (or reviews it unfavourably), I get to stand in the middle of the space at the end of the day, look at the work on the walls and think I did this. I made this happen. I can tell you, there ain't no feeling quite like it.

The show opens tomorrow night at 7pm and runs until 6 July at 97 Clerkenwell Road.  If you're in London, do come down.

ps there's a really lovely preview piece of the show over on Spoonfed.

too busy for words

but aren't these images lovely? Je te presente Veronique Pecheux.