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 

Gabriel Orozco at Tate Modern

Black Kites, 1997. � Gabriel Orozco. Courtesy Tate Modern.

When TJ and I arrived in Paris last October for our 20-hour Nuit Blanche art bender, we readied ourselves for the eve ahead with a can of coke and a cigarette. Sitting in the square outside the Pompidou, TJ noticed a camera on a tripod a few yards away. Obligingly, I went over to investigate. There were signs taped down in front of the camera instructing readers of said sign to pose for a self portrait. A camera remote sat nearby for just that purpose. We excitedly snapped a few too many silly poses before skipping off into the white night, but frustratingly, I never found out who the artist was or what the project was, or even whether the thing was an arts project at all.

On our way to Notre Dame, I remember we pressed our faces up against the glass walls of the Pompidou to reveal the secret of the shadows we could barely make out while walking past. In a large room, we saw a fan whizzing around with rolls of white toilet paper elegantly swooshing down like a rhythmic gymnast�s ribbon. We saw a Citro�n DS with the middle cut out, then smushed back together like an oreo cookie without any filling. We both recognised the car but, between the two of us, we couldn�t manage the artist�s name. When the press release for the Gabriel Orozco show at the Tate Modern went round, the images clicked and I realised whose work we�d seen through the Pompidou�s windows.

I want to like this show. But I don�t. It depresses me. It�s like going on a first date with someone whose photos you�ve only seen on Facebook. Online, he�s not half bad; a bit pretty, witty messages. But when you�re across the table at The Ambassador, his prettiness is nice enough and his chat�s alright but by the time the starters have been cleared away the conversation�s flagging and relatively pretty just isn�t good enough. It�s not that this show is offensive or tedious or really, truly horrible, but that it�s empty. Like my terrible blind date metaphor, it�s empty but trying to hint at meaning through tired clich�s.

Relativism�s such a pain in the ass. It�s done the art world little good. The nightmare that is post modernity resulted in an approach that says it doesn�t matter what�s �good� or �bad� because everyone�s opinion is equally valid. I�m open to being wrong, but this strikes me as a load of old hair-loss replacement bollocks. Sure, we don�t all have to agree on what�s �good� � there would hardly be a need for art if that were the case � but criticism by its very definition must assume that some works of art are more worthy than others. Contrary to relativistic dogma, it�s a critic�s job to make judgements, but the increasing power of institutions and PRs means that most �criticism� tends to be expressed as art history or back-slapping positivity. Not that either of those are intrinsically bad � I love a good bit of back-slapping positivity and I love being excited about things � but reading the newspapers, magazines, and even blogs, you�d think that every single art show was an absolute masterpiece.

I�m getting a little side tracked.

One of Orozco�s more visually striking pieces, Black Kites, is a human skull with a drawn on black and white geometric pattern. The skull is wonderful to look at, briefly, but it has no power as a work of art. It solicits no emotional response, no feeling; it�s like looking at a trinket in a curiosity shop. So you can understand why I�m not comfortable when critics and curators say things like: �the skull, an organic reality, engages with and parries the attempt of the artist to impose a system, a sense of regularity and order.� Why do people still write like this? What does �organic reality� even mean? Here the truism holds that clouded language denotes clouded thought: such a statement entirely neglects the fact that nature has its own set of systems and rules, its own order. A black and white pattern isn�t �reason� to the skull�s �uncertainty�.

I look at Black Kites and I see a skull with a pretty pattern on it. That�s it. Nothing more. It doesn�t make me think about life, art, death, desire; but what Dave Hickey calls 'scholastic post-minimalism - "fast art" designed for the institutional, white-box quick-take.'

With so many of Orozco�s works, the concept or process has been privileged � chopping the middle out of a Citro�n DS and putting it back together, tracking down matching yellow scooters to photograph them as a pair, filling a chess board with nothing but rooks, displaying an empty shoebox, taking photographs of the steam of breath on a piano, extracting amusing phrases from obituaries to write out on banners � to the detriment of the visual effect of the physical work.

There�s nothing here to look at. In effect this exhibition is a promenade piece: it�s contemporary art that�s the product of a society with no attention span. You can amble through the entire show without stopping to pause for a single sustained look.  Hickey again perfectly encapsulates my desire for more than just food for thought: �I want an image that I can keep looking at, some kind of sustained eloquence, an image that perpetually exceeds my ability to describe it.�

This probably isn�t the place to get into a discussion about the importance of beauty, and I mean beauty as something that provokes a physical response, not simply as a box-ticking set of aesthetic guidelines, but art needs more than surface tricks to mean something, to move someone. It�s no good if you look at the work, aren�t moved, then read the explanatory text and feel more intrigued by the conceptual underpinnings of the work rather than the finished piece itself. This art has no power.  Orozco�s pieces aren�t persuasive. They don�t demand my attention or evoke a physical response. Witty though much of his work may at first appear, to me it just isn�t interesting.

the art of looking

I�ve lived in Hackney Wick for near on one month now. Given that there�s a superb place for weekend breakfasting within a ten-minute walk and one (only one!) grocer�s shop that sells a lone copy of the weekend Financial Times, I�ve got everything I need. Yes indeed, I�m smitten. Walking around on a blustery Saturday morning, full of potato cake and poached eggs, I love that there�s a quietness to the place but also a feeling that artists and musicians are buzzing away in their fashionably dilapidated warehouses, getting on with the business of making stuff.

Excepting the briefest of visits to Hackney Wicked, I�d never been to any of the Wick�s well-known galleries. I knew there was a show on at the Elevator Gallery that I'd quite like to see, but I couldn't for the life of me find the damned gallery. A kind-hearted man took pity on me and pointed me in the direction of a large red door. The door turned out to be an elevator � ah ha, the titular elevator! � and I went in and closed the gates before pushing #5. There�s no sign in the elevator to tell me what floor the gallery�s on and the lift isn�t moving. I pull back the gate on the other side only to reveal a wall of bricks. Humph. It�s all rather disorientating. Finally, I realise I haven�t shut one of the gates properly and eventually end up at the top of the building. I�ve guessed right and the gallery is indeed on level five. I feel I�ve accomplished something before I�ve even seen the show. A nice way to begin.

I�m already aware of the show�s premise � that the art is concealed within the fabric of the gallery � so I�m chuckling at what looks like dried apple slices or oyster mushrooms stuck to the corner of a partition wall. An invigilator asks me if I�d like to enter the gallery�s competition � prizes are awarded to those who correctly identify the most amount of "actual" work. I take the sheet of paper, pay my pound and take a look around.

It takes me only a few minutes to decide that I won�t enter the competition after all. I've realised that it's not a competition so much as it is a catalyst, a provocateur for looking. A different show I recently attended was comprised of a half dozen works, lovely, delicate paintings, but they neither demanded nor captured my attention. I felt I'd seen all I was going to see after a matter of minutes. The careful construction of the Vanishing Point show means that such an approach simply isn't possible. Here is a show that demands you pay attention, but not a passive sort of attentiveness, like watching a TV drama, but an active and engaged sort of attention - in this show you almost have to make the work yourself. I think the only show I've been to recently where I experience a similar demand was Kit Craig's show at Arcade. I don't think I completely understand Craig's work or what he's trying to do - perhaps part of the reason I find it so striking - but here is an artist who clearly grasps the importance of creating work that demands your full visual attention.

Back at Elevator, the competition masks what must be the gallery�s aim of keeping visitors in the space for a little longer, and incentivising them (how one feels about this is another matter altogether) with prizes for the most works correctly spotted is another clever ruse to get people to really look, instead of take the tickboxyeahseenit approach to gallery hopping.

As with any group show some work is better than others, though this one perhaps more difficult to judge given that you aren't always sure what's work and what's paint dripped down a wall during the last exhibition install. I stumbled upon my favourite piece quite accidentally. I went to grab a press release from a pile on a desk tucked into a corner. There was a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches on the pile, but when I went to move them out of the way I noticed movement - inside the box of matches was a tiny video of a burning bonfire. Extraordinary.

Not all of the work was as wonderful, but it�s exciting to see a different attempt to explore that ever-tedious question - �what is art?� � by equalising everything and forcing the visitor to give door handles, mop buckets and sound installations the same level of visual consideration. Refreshingly, we aren�t asked to make a judgement as to what is or isn�t good art, but instead to think about the framework that is the process of looking at art.

Perhaps it�s a bit cheesy, but as I was heading out of the gallery I noticed a little blue toy car on top of a red bollard just outside the building. It was so striking and lovely that I had a good chuckle when I realised I�d assumed it was part of the exhibition. I�m not suggesting that art is everywhere if only you bother to look for it, only that it�s good to be reminded of the importance of looking in the first place.

Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals

Canaletto's The Entrance to the Grand Canal, looking West, with Santa Maria della Salute, about 1729. � The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, gift of Sarah Campbell Blaffer (56.2).

Monday evening as I strolled up to the National Gallery on my way to view the recently opened exhibition, Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals, I was struck by a rather amusing coincidence.

Work is being done to the front fa�ade of the National Gallery and a wrap around the scaffolding sees a Credit Suisse-sponsored scene that imagines Trafalgar Square as a Venetian lagoon.  "Canaletto Comes to London" it proudly proclaims, but the funny thing is that only a few weeks ago the art world was up in arms about similarly sponsored billboards in La Serinissima herself.



Venice's famous Ponte dei Sospiri (a name coined by Byron who romantically suggested that prisoners being led from the interrogation rooms on one side of the bridge to the prison cells in the Doge's Palace on the other side, would sigh at their last sight of the beautiful city while making the crossing) has of late been covered in huge ads for Coke, Chanel, and Bulgari.  In a city like Venice, always fighting a battle between the built environment and, well, the environment, such ads have been common sources of raising restoration funds.  But the current slew of advertisements, such as those surrounding the Bridge of Sighs, are different: they aren't about the city, but the brand footing the bill.  At least with the old ads, one might come to some idea of what the original building looked like.  Not only does the Bulgari ad completely obscure the Bridge, but it succeeds in enfolding the architecture of the city into a kind of gruesome ad campaign. 

 

Image by Davers

Having said all this, I found the National Gallery's ad particularly amusing because it highlights the hypocrisy of the gang of talking museum heads who signed an open letter to Giorgio Orsoni, the Mayor of Venice, and published it in the Art Newspaper.  Given that their museums and exhibitions are funded by BP, Ernst & Young, Credit Suisse, etcetera, on what grounds, I wonder, do the museum heads protest Orsoni�s decision.  Just because his corporate advertisers get more visual impact for their buck doesn�t mean we aren�t dealing with the application of precisely the same principles.  Given the National Gallery's Venice-themed wrap-around (which admittedly isn't half as bad as the ads on the Bridge of Sighs), perhaps it's unsurprising that Nicholas Penny has opted out of the open letter.  To be clear, it�s not that I�m all in favour of selling off beloved city landmarks or national art exhibitions to the highest corporate bidder.  Simply that the hypocrisy of museum directors with their pleading open letter on the one hand, but only too happy to accept cash from BP et al (as long as the logo placement is subtle) on the other hand, drives me bonkers. 

As for the Canaletto show, it's surprisingly good, and I say surprisingly as someone who adores both Venice and Canaletto.  I tend to find the exhibitions at London's major museums - especially the Tate �disaster-zone� Modern - utterly pointless and so attend with suitably lowered expectations.  Venice is one of the most visited cities in the world, so its regular appearance as the subject of blockbuster exhibitions is no surprise: it brings in the big bucks.  But despite its overwhelming popularity and resulting theme-park trappings, Venice has a subtlety only to be found once one diverts from the Grand Canal.  Amusingly, I know a lot of people who don�t like Venice but I maintain that they either haven�t been with me or they haven�t been in the off season.  Possibly both.  Venice is incredibly beautiful, picturesque to the point of being grotesque, but it won�t give you anything for free.  You have to go exploring, get lost, go for a swim, get off the Rialto and into Cannaregio. 

It amuses me to think that in many ways, twenty-first century Venetian tourists are Canaletto�s heirs: making view pictures with their Minoltas and Canons instead of hog-hair brushes.  The purpose is one in the same: wealthy tourists want a memento to remind them of their visit to this most beautiful city.  In the eighteenth century, one might have bought Canaletto�s Entrance to the Grand Canal: Looking East (1744), whereas now one can snap a quick pic of the same scene on the Number 1 vaporetto chugging down the Canal.  Just because the former is part of the Queen�s collection of art doesn�t mean that the self-styled snap is any less precious...

Canaletto. The Entrance to the Grand Canal, looking East, with Santa Maria della Salute, 1744. � 2010, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

So, Canaletto�s paintings are beautiful � Venice at her loveliest, most golden, most unearthly � and the Grand Tourists head home with proof of the pudding, but what�s actually rather refreshing, even challenging, about the curation of this show is that it doesn�t rest on such an unexamined approach.  In fact, the exhibition title gives it away � the star of this show isn�t Canaletto, but Venice � and the comparison of Canaletto with his nephew and prot�g�e, Bellotto, as well as later view painter, Guardi, provides an illuminating juxtaposition to the differing approaches of the veduti painters.  It�s tempting to use a Goldilocks analogy when considering the three: Bellotto too cold; Guardi too hot; Canaletto just right, but that hardly does justice to the subtleties of their styles.  Canaletto�s later works are the easiest to take in, the most obviously beautiful, but such unchallenging beauty quickly wears thin.  The Goldilocks analogy is particularly apt in the Bellotto room: one fascinating pairing has another of Canaletto�s scenes depicting the entrance to the Grand Canal sandwiched by two different attempts by Bellotto to paint the same scene.  Of course, it�s impossible to tell whether Bellotto was making a concerted effort to distance himself from his uncle�s technique � quite likely � but neither painting has the harmony or the gorgeous diffused light of Canaletto.  One attempt is too harsh, the other is too soft and Canaletto�s sits in between and sings.

But despite the beauty of Canaletto�s works, Guardi steals the show � while his images display all the hallmarks of view painting, his work feels less constrained by the demands of the genre or the whims of tourists: the lighting is stronger, less diffused and tonally there are more greys and browns, instead of the jewel tones omnipresent in Canaletto.  A few of Guardi�s pieces look as if finished with India ink: thick, swift, black liquid brush strokes define window frames and architraves, where Canaletto is softer and more forgiving. 

Guardi. The Lagoon with the Torre di Malghera, around 1770�80. � The National Gallery, London

Guardi. The Grand Canal with the Rialto Bridge from the South, about 1780. � Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Widener Collection. 

There�s something compelling and refreshing about the wild looseness of Guardi�s paintings after Canaletto�s over-idealised, disneyesque portraits of La Serinissima at her most clich�d.  Though the city may be affectionately referred to as eternally serene on account of those familiar, sweeping vistas, Venice's history is one of turbulence and violence, and for all its fairy-tale beauty Canaletto�s work serves as a reminder that at the end of the day, in the world of art at least, the interests of money reign supreme.

a sleepless night

This piece first appeared in The Architectural Review.

Having grown up in a sprawling American metropolis, for me the best feature of many European cities is their easy navigability.  Paris is a particularly wonderful city in which to stroll and for one evening every year, during the Nuit Blanche festival, this quality is exploited and the city gets a dressing up with installations and events, glittering jewels on the wrists of a beautiful woman.  Nuit Blanche is one night when the city is entirely given over to the pleasures of wandering and of discovering.

Nuit Blanche is an idiomatic French phrase that literally means �white night�.  It�s often used to express the passing of a sleepless night, whether because of an uncomfortable mattress or one too many turns on the dance floor.  In the case of the first Saturday evening in October, Nuit Blanche refers to the all-night arts festival established by the forward-thinking Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delano�, in 2002. Delano� has done much to bolster Paris� cultural life: he is also responsible for the annual Paris Plage and the V�lib cycle hire scheme, both much loved by Parisians.

As for Nuit Blanche itself, every year this 12-hour festival � from 7pm to 7am � takes on a different theme.  This year saw less a theme, more a concentration around certain geographical hubs � Centre, West, East � to allow visitors more opportunities for ambling.

For its ninth year, Nuit Blanche was curated Martin Bethenod, director of Venice�s Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana.  The backbone of the programme consisted of 40 invited artists, but like any good arts festival, a fringe programme has also sprung up and many artists and galleries use the exposure to organise their own installations throughout the city.

Given that the festival takes place during the hours of darkness, it is hardly surprising that so many of the installations experiment with light.  Of these, the most effective was Thierry Dreyfus' deceptively simple light installation inside the Notre-Dame de Paris.  Dreyfus� piece, Offrez Moi Votre Silence, was remarkable for its ability to force a new reading of a familiar building.  Switching off all city lights around the church�s exterior, Dreyfus installed a series of internal floodlights which dimmed and brightened in a gentle rhythm, like a lung breathing inside the Notre-Dame.  When viewed from outside, the church was dark save for the glowing stained glass windows.

Perhaps Paris� most famous lighting designer, Drefus made an eloquent comment in a 2005 New York Times interview which coincided with the reopening of the Grand Palais: �What is the sense of lighting buildings at night to show what you see during the day? You have to bring another dream.�  The installation is testament to the strength of Dreyfus� vision.  On this evening the Notre-Dame feels different: less like a space for sacred worship, more a place to appreciate the power of secular creation.  Dreyfus� breathing light lungs have transformed the overwhelming grandeur of the church into a space that feels far more unified, serene, and familiar.  Shock and awe has been replaced by feelings of profound calm and composure: it�s a remarkable transformation.

C�leste Boursier-Mougenot, of recent birds-in-the-Barbican fame, exhibited an older project, Harmonichaos from 2000.  One of the perks of Nuit Blanche is that you get to snoop around buildings not regularly open to the public.  Boursier-Mougenot�s comically-sinister, harmonica-playing hoovers are installed in a salon in the beautiful H�tel de Lauzun, on the banks of the Seine.  A private townhouse, the H�tel was constructed during the reign of Louis XIV and its ornate and rich interiors have seen hardly a change in the following centuries.  The sumptuous room where Boursier-Mougenot's hoovers are displayed serves as a delicious foil to the late-80s aesthetic of the old hoovers, and the weezing whine of the harmonicas creates an atonal, modernist kind of symphony. 

Respite from the demands of this sleepless night were provided by Louidgi Beltrame�s enlightening film about Gunkanjima, screened in the �cole Nationale Sup�rieure D'Architecture in Belleville, an area increasingly known for its community of up-and-coming artists in eastern Paris.  At 5am, Beltrame�s hypnotic film of Gunkanjima�s ruined buildings was most welcome.  In all honesty, it�s difficult to judge the accuracy of my response to the film given the circumstances, but it was exactly what was needed at the time: slow-moving images of a dystopian-Disney fantasy, a coal-mining island long since abandoned.  Off the coast of Nagasaki, the island was populated by workers from 1887 to 1974 and then left to crumble thereafter.  Beltrame�s camera makes no ideological or moral statement; it only shows what�s left of this bizarre island, which resembles the ghostly remains of a depressing work camp.  The pull of the place is undeniable and Beltrame has done a great service simply in bringing it to light.

Though not as successful as it might have been given that the space was too small and that a gaggle of teenagers seemed to have used it as a bed for the night, Fay�al Baghriche's piece, Snooze, brought Nuit Blanche to its end.  A pitch-black room in the H�tel d�Albret was filled with 300 alarm clocks resting on shelves lining one wall.  The clocks ticked away all throughout the evening, until at precisely 7am, the alarms all went off in (near) unison.  While the noise of the clocks wasn�t quite as deafening as I expected, the idea of trying to arrive on time for an alarm clock to go off is playful and amusing.  As is the notion of the alarm clock as an Alice-in-Wonderland-type symbol: 300 alarms go off and one turns from night-time dreamer back into day-time doer. 

changes

This morning I found out that my sweet, bonkers cat, Seven, died.  It�s difficult to articulate without sounding over the top, but I loved that creature and it�s all rather distressing.

Seven

Even still, these things happen.  Without wanting to sound like a Hallmark card, I know it�s part of the cycle of things and perfectly natural, but it�s still terribly sad.  Rather curiously, I wrote most of this post last night and it�s all about change.

Here goes.

There�s something about the changing of the seasons, but particularly the transition from summer heat to autumnal chill that always brings on a bout of self-reflection, a stock take of the past year.  I think it�s because I�ve spent nearly every October of my life starting a new school year so this month, far more than January, always feels like the true beginning of the year, the time to make new goals and assess the progress of previous plans and resolutions.

So. Where am I this October?  For the first time in twenty-odd years I am not starting October as a student.  On Monday I submitted my thesis to the examinations office so now it's just a few months of waiting while the examiners scribble furiously in red pen throughout the margins and then, after that's done, the viva.  Post viva, I shall be Dr. Crystal Bennes and none the wiser for it.

The nicest thing about finishing my thesis is not that I have my life back, for I seem to be busier than ever, but rather that the feeling of work never ending has vanished. Sure, I still have lots to do, but there's no longer the relentless little fairy of academia sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear that I should be working whenever I'm doing anything that isn't working. I can tell you, it's absolutely liberating.

Other news, other changes: I'm moving. From Clerkenwell. To Hackney Wick. I've spent the better part of the last week and a half freaking out about this, but now I'm rather giddy. I like change. It excites me.  New environments spur new thinking and, though I love Clerkenwell, I think the stimulus provided by new people and a new part of London will more than make up for the loss of such a central location and such great restaurants.  Plus given Hackney Wick's proximity to the Olympic site, it's going to undergo an interesting metamorphosis over the next few years and being a part of that is bound to be interesting.  The only thing I told myself I really couldn't live without was a top-notch breakfasting spot within a ten-minute walk of chez moi.  Luckily, the brilliant and delicious Counter is exactly that.  Their breakfast is one of the best in London. Make the pilgrimage. You'll thank me.

My new place in Hackney Wick

From breakfast to snack food. Or so it would appear.  Ai Weiwei's new installation of 100 million hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds has just opened in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern.  Let me waste no time: I don't like it. At all. Given that I tend to loathe most of the TM's blockbuster exhibitions, perhaps this isn't all that surprising, but I loved Miroslaw Balka's aircraft hangar of a blind-man's box and was expecting something equally sensational from Weiwei. 

More than that I was expecting something provocative, a statement piece, for lack of a better phrase.  Instead what I've been given is a work entirely without context desperately trying to carve out meaning via the artist�s reputation.  An oceanless beach of sunflower seeds does not a statement make.  No doubt the problem lies in the fact that Weiwei is so well known as an agent provocateur, an artist whose work so disturbed the smooth facade of the Chinese government that he was beaten by the police for investigating the student casualties of the Sichuan earthquake.  This is not the challenging, affront of a work one expects from such an individual, let alone artist.  It is a work with an imposed framework of meaning which supposedly enables the viewer to understand it, but only serves to distract from the fact that there is no significant meaning. 

Ai Weiwei's installation in the Tate Modern. photo by Loz Flowers

The sunflower seeds only work when one reads the accompanying text that explains each seed was individually hand painted by artisans in the workshops of Jingdezhen, where imperial porcelainware used to be made, workshops which have become increasingly commercialised.  Or that sunflower seeds were the snack-du-jour during the cultural revolution when other foodstuffs were scarce.  Conversely, I also don't want to accept the reductive viewpoint that I should enjoy the work as it is: something kind of fun to play in.  Perhaps this is unfair, but I expect more from an artist with Weiwei's reputation.  This could have, and should have, been an opportunity for both artist and institution - especially given that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee recently proved the threat of poor relations with China wasn't deterrent enough to award the Prize to a Chinese citizen - to create a truly provocative, forceful, and gripping piece of work.  100 million sunflower seeds is not challenging, nor beautiful, nor moving. It's disappointing. Now maybe if those seeds grew into 100 million sunflowers...

Dreamlands

This piece first appeared in the Architectural Review

The eponymous Dreamland of the Pompidou�s recent exhibition refers to the Coney Island theme park, forerunner to the Venetian canals and Egyptian pyramids in modern-day Las Vegas, built in 1904, burnt down in 1911 and never rebuilt. This is a thoughtful exhibition on the nature of architectural dreamscapes within societies with ever-increasing amounts of leisure time. It covers a considerable sweep of history, from the turn of the twentieth century in New York to modern-day Dubai, and many well-known names appear: Archigram on the instant city, Scott Brown and Venturi on Las Vegas, Koolhas on New York.

But the exhibition turns truly provocative when lesser-known names materialise, particularly in the section themed around the concept of copy and paste. It�s nice to see a new generation of artists playing with Susan Sontag�s observation that tourists photograph unfamiliar places as a kind of unthinking defence mechanism, to cope with the unfamiliarity of being in a new place. Seung Woo Back�s photographs of familiar monuments transported to unfamiliar locations raise the important question of whether context matters, despite the fact that the images are not staged but taken at Aiins World theme park in South Korea. Is the Eiffel Tower still the Eiffel Tower if it isn�t in Paris? The answer seems obvious, but take perhaps a more culturally loaded monument, say, the Elgin Marbles, and the question becomes more difficult to answer. Woo Back, along with the vivid, staged images of Riedler Reiner, exploits the illusory nature of theme parks for maximum visual impact. Their images directly confront the idea of the theme park as a self-contained, miniature version of the entire world and make one uncomfortable with the premise of theme parks as a replacement for genuine architectural exploration.

Seung Woo Back, Real world I no.01

Seung Woo Back, from the Real World series

Riedler Reiner

Riedler Reiner

Most of the work in Dreamlands poses a direct challenge to the idea that architecture is a lasting achievement. Not that this is in any way belittling to its subject, for the exhibition celebrates the temporal and the transient in both man and his environment. For what is man if not temporal, unstable, changeable? Certainly, we respond to the monolithic and the conspicuously permanent in buildings � the art in the exhibition demonstrates that as well � but we must also be aware of this most human need for adaptation and change. This is taken to its most eloquent and literal conclusion within Yin Xiuzhen�s clever series of portable cities: a miniature, physical, plush toy representation of an entire city, in this case New York, stitched into a suitcase. St�phane Couturier�s beautiful photographs of fa�ades also consider the temporal nature of urban environments: how we simultaneously construct and destroy within the urban environment. Scaffolding is just scaffolding, but in this context it represents its own kind of dreamscape as a promise of the future.

Yin Xiuzhen, Portable Cities, New York

St�phane Couturier, Barcelona, Avenidad Parallel #2

St�phane Couturier, from the Melting Point series

Dreamlands responds to JG Ballard�s challenge of the endless leisure and frantic consumerism of western spaces and mirrors the central theme of Jem Cohen�s excellent 2004 film on shopping centres, Chain: no matter where you are in the world, the typology of these spaces adheres to the same function and the same aesthetic. These visions of falsified utopias, while depressing in their original purpose, make for fascinating viewing within the context of a museum space, itself a kind of �dreamland�. Shopping malls and theme parks both represent a loss of traditional spatial and geographical reference points: here we have the crux of globalisation.

While the instinctive reaction to all this is to suggest that architecture has some catching up to do, how does one create a localised utopia? Utopias and dreamlands by their very nature are generalised, universal ideals. Throughout this exhibition the imaginative responses, demonstrated by artists and architects alike, to these faceless, falsified utopias suggests that it isn�t so much the representation of the dreamland that needs re-evaluating as it is the very ideals of Western society.

kingfisher

Even if I'm not tired of London, perhaps I'm tiring of not being tired with London. One can only preach the gospel for so long without becoming tiresome. Indeed. Nevertheless, it's lovely to be home. Thailand might be rocking, but at the moment, tis for all the wrong reasons.

Up first: Tuesday and la Newsom. Saw Joanna Newsom live for the first time on the first night of her two-night run at the Royal Festival Hall. I've listened to the new album start to finish twice today. Though I hadn't given it a proper listen before the gig, it hardly mattered. Such a beautiful woman. Beautiful voice. Beautiful harp. Beautiful everything. If you haven't got the new album, you really ought to, especially if you've always found her slightly-off putting. Personally, I loved Ys, but I gather that it's not to everyone's taste. With this new album, Have One On Me, she's moderated those medieval, bardiac impulses (to some extent a forced moderation - she had surgery on her vocal chords last year) and her voice is cleaner; those dramatic, vocal affectations are almost entirely absent. Though it flirts with the mainstream the new record is still bizarre, but bizarre with substance, not just bizarre in style. There's a strong narrative arc, though free of Ys's conceptual mythology: the new songs are firmly grounded in reality and all the more powerful for it. Even if the break-up narrative is one we're all overly familiar with, it's the mark of a master craftsman who can make the overly familiar novel and nostalgic all at once.

Wednesday: I went to the preview of Artangel's new project, Smother, developed over the last nine months with artist Sarah Cole and a bushel of young parents. To be honest, I found the whole experience completely mystifying which is rather mystifying in itself as Artangel produced Roger Hiorns's, Seizure, one of the best exhibitions I've ever seen in London. I think it's meant to be a loose, performance-based meditation on the problems/experience/anxieties of being a young parent, but all we saw was a rather wonderful, 65-degree wedge, Alice-in-Wonderland-style house and a few people wandering around, ostensibly 'doing' things: moving a mattress, screwing about with a stereo system, straining to reach a balloon floating on the ceiling. No idea what any of this had to do with the raising of problematic progeny, but then again, I was only in the space for 10 minutes or so: I kept feeling that if I stayed just a little bit longer, I might see something which would then make everything make sense. We could see a pair of feet lacing up ice skates downstairs and were certain that if we just waited a few more minutes we might get to see the lady skate around, but instead we were shepherded out. Rather disappointing, but perhaps worth a second look.

 
Smother by Kevin Dutton

Thursday I intended to witness the wonderful Simon Barraclough go all psycho poetic interpreting Hitchcock's Psycho, but instead I rather unhelpfully got the flu.  I slept from about 6pm on Thursday until 3pm on Friday. I don't think I've ever been so pleased to have the flu before, though. Just as I was ready to start googling symptoms of malaria I came home to find my flatmate on the couch sneezing into a box of man-size Kleenex. When I went to India, I got ALL the shots and took the malaria pills until I realised that a) they made me horrid sick and b) there weren't any mosquitoes in the Himalayas. Didn't even cross my mind that there might be mosquitoes on the beach in Thailand. I've only been an all-you-can-eat buffet once before, and that was strictly in the service of art, not for the pleasure of blood-sucking insects. Evil creatures. So when I went all feverish less than a week after my return from the 'land of smiles' I was cursing myself for negligence and praying to the manes not to have malaria. Thankfully, I was well enough by Friday evening and so headed to the Tate Modern for their ten-year celebrations.

Friday saw, No Soul for Sale, what the Tate Modern is calling the maniacally hodge-podge jumble-sale of a 'festival of independents' happening in the Turbine Hall. There were concerts (ticketed) happening as well, but we didn't have tickets for those and so had to find solace in the post-modern bouncehouse on the mezzanine level, which we happily discovered on our way out. The bouncehouse (hello, this is the Tate Modern and there's no way in hell a bouncy castle is going to be called a bouncy castle within such hallowed, institutionalised walls. obviously). To allow for full disclosure, we didn't really give the fair our complete attention. We sauntered in and immediately felt overwhelmed. There were people everywhere, the demarcation between the galleries/exhibition spaces was unclear and poorly defined, and the whole thing was just mostly incomprehensible. Some lady pointed us toward a miniature bouncy castle (yes, another one) and started reeling out some yarn about the recent discovery of the mini-castle (we were supposed to pretend it was 2050 or something) serving as evidence to justify the argument for the existence of domesticated cats (who were, you see, extinct in the future. but the future was now...). This kind of art makes me angry and rather depressed. Even more so when it's displayed in what's supposed to (hahahahahahaha) be the pre-eminent venue for the display of contemporary art in this country. This crap should not be sanctioned by The Big Boys. But even in the claustrophobic crush and disorienting disarray, I managed to find at least something that made me pause. Rapha�l Zarka had a lovely piece on the 220jours gallery stand. I think the premise of the 220jours stand was to see whether the remnants of previous works or exhibitions could themselves become works: interesting enough. Zarka, who is best known for his skateboarding series, showed a lovely series of posters, Catalogue Raisonn� des Rhombicubocta�dres, documenting all the rhombicuboctahedron used by the artists in previous works. Of course, I can't find an image anywhere, nor did I take one, so you'll just have to take my word for it.


good times in the bouncehouse

Pause. Brief interlude for dancing. Thank god for dancing.

Saturday I went to (gasp!) South London to visit my friend's gallery, Platform 1, which is sweetly located just off platform one at Wandsworth Common Station. Platform 1 is hosting an exhibition by Mobile Studio, a young London-based architectural practice. The exhibition is not really an exhibition so much as it is a public consultation: an opportunity for the attendee to become artist and offer a possible solution to an intriguing problem. The gist is basically this: in the 1950s Erno Goldfinger built a caretaker's cottage on the grounds of a Wandsworth school, the cottage was demolished illegally a few years ago, and the responsible developer was recently ordered to rebuild the cottage exactly according to the original footprint. Bit bonkers, right? So Mobile Studio have taken it upon themselves to question such an action and to involve the public in thinking of other ways the space might be put to better use or at the very least to question the decision making process. The public is encouraged to submit proposals for alternative plans for the space. Some local school children took up the challenge with gusto: one of the most amusing proposals was from a Cody, aged 15, who wanted to build a giant gold statue of a hand with the middle finger flipped up. A man after my own heart, really. In case you're curious, as I know you are, my proposal was for a museum of demolished/destroyed buildings.


Goldfinger's cottage...
 
Sunday, how do I love thee. Sundays are for sherry and speakers turned way up but also for work, of course. Thankfully this work entailed a meeting which involved Exmouth Market and brunch. With a friend, I'm organising a rather spectacular event for the London Festival of Architecture. Things are starting to come together and it's all unbearably exciting. I won't say much for now, but it's all going to kick off in Clerkenwell the first weekend of July. As always, stay tuned...

beauty is not the only fruit (or why the Pope no nothing)

The Pope seems to be one of those figures, a little like the Queen, that people just can't resist. He summons: you come. That sort of thing. And so when he summoned 300 or so artists from all over the world for a meeting to discuss the state of contemporary art and aesthetics, they came.

It's not altogether surprising that while the rest of the art world has moved on, the Papal court is still stuck in the Renaissance. To be fair, I'm not that surprised, given that the Catholic Church's hold on art was never as strong as it was during the Renaissance. And what art it was! Certainly some of the most beautiful works of fine art ever created were done so because of the Church's patronage. The gorgeous frescos within the Vatican itself are testament to this, as is the nearby Galleria Borghese - one of the most splendid museums in Rome, if not the world. We'd most likely not know of the brilliant Bernini were it not for Cardinal Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, who was one of Bernini's earliest patrons.

Having defended the Catholic Church far more than I intended to, I still find Pope Benedict's comments during the symposium somewhat limited. Essentially his holiness brought these artists together to urge them to get back to beauty. He told the artists, 'You are the custodians of beauty: thanks to your talent, you have the opportunity to speak to the heart of humanity, to touch individual and collective sensibilities, to call forth dreams and hopes, to broaden the horizons of knowledge and of human engagement.' Sure the sentiment is nice, but the view is especially limited. As I'm sure we're all aware, beauty is not the only fruit...

The idea that beauty is the most appropriate force for inspiration and positive change is ridiculous and limited. Let me bring the following works of art to your attention:

As even just the four works above demonstrate, there are a hundred ways to be moved by art and only one of them is beauty - if anything, beauty is one of the most superficial emotions provoked by art. It's beautiful, but so what? What moves you about beauty? What about beauty makes you think differently about the world? What is so profound about artistic beauty? As Conrad says so well with his idea of the 'fascination of the abomination' sometimes it is the terrible, the awful, or the sublime which elicits the most profound thoughts. Or maybe it's something that you can't quite put your finger on - this is what people talk about when they break down in raptures over the Mona Lisa - certainly not a 'beautiful' painting.

Maybe what the Pope really means by 'beauty' is actually 'nature' or 'truth'. This is something the eighteenth-century writers speak about a great deal. They don't say that art should be beautiful, they say that it should imitate, yet surpass nature. The best art is recognisable as something true, but which manages to surpass mere empirical truth.

A piece I love by Canova - the statue of Cupid and Psyche - illustrates this well. With the exception of mythic Cupid's wings, the figures resemble humans, but their sculptural perfection surpasses nature - these lovers will never age - and I think there's something in that which moves people. It's not necessarily the beauty that moves you - though this is certainly a contributing factor - it's the melancholy that comes from comparing the imperfection of love in real life with the perfection of Canova's two lovers. They will never argue, never part, never do anything but stay locked in each other's embrace for eternity (ignore the fact that this is sort of creepy, really...) and that's part of what moves us, it's not just that the statue is a thing of beauty.

So I guess if you're an artist and you want to get into heaven, paint pretty flowers or clouds or whatever, but if you want to provoke some kind feeling in the viewer, you're going to have to try a bit harder.

i can burn your face

'To burn a face' is a slang expression used among spies

for the threat to expose another agent's identity.

It's funny how spectators of art so often take 'truth' for granted. If someone whacks a shark in a box of formaldehyde and says it's art, we believe that not only is it a real shark in real formaldehyde, but also that it's real art, provided it's in a gallery setting of course. If an artist says that the ashes in a pile in the corner of the gallery resulted from a wind shelter they exploded with a hand grenade, we believe that as well. It wasn't until I went to check out Jill Magid's show at the Tate Modern that I realised how much we were willing to accept at face value.

Though Jill Magid's exhibition at the Tate Modern is in the little gallery on level 2 and hasn't been promoted well or reviewed much, it's the most interesting exhibition I've seen in the TM since Cy Twombly's exhibition in 2008. As a viewer, I'm very intrigued by the idea of Magid's work, her commission with the AIVD - the Dutch Intelligence and Security Agency, the country's secret service - and the restrictions placed on the artist about showing the work, but the very nature of the work itself made me surprisingly sceptical.

It's a very small show, but it took less than 5 minutes of wandering around before I begin to wonder whether I was being had. Was this exhibition a true reflection of the artist's actual experience or was it simply that a very clever individual had dreampt up a fantastic conceptual framework which resulted in some pretty words scrawled in neon light. I've since done a bit of research and it seems that Magid did have a commission with the AIVD and worked with them from 2005 to 2008. Under regulations - which similarly exist in parts of the UK - stipulating that new buildings must provide an element which engages with the arts, usually a public sculpture, she won the commission. It sounds like an initially forward thinking AIVD hired Magid to find the 'human face' of the organisation, only they got a bit more than they bargained for. She carried out her commission by meeting privately with a number of agents and collecting personal data about them and their experiences working as agents in the secret service.

In fact, Magid herself requested to be vetted by the agency and was eventually granted security clearance. Her exhibition speaks strongly of her own desire to be part of 'the secret' and to act as an agent herself. Though no matter how close she got and what kind of access she received, what happened next only demonstrates how clear the divide is between 'us' and 'them'. In 2008, Magid was set to show the results of her commission at a gallery in the Hague, though the day before its opening, a group of AIVD agents showed up (sounds more like a film than real life!) to vet the work. Magid also gave the agents a copy of the manuscript of her novel - which she wrote in lieu of a report about the experience - which they later returned in a heavily edited form.

AIVD edited page from Magid's novel

When Magid complained to the AIVD that the censored manuscript was no longer publishable, they brilliantly suggested that she show the manuscript in a one-time only exhibition, after which it would become the property of the Dutch government and not be published. What else do you expect when you undertake a commission for a secret service agency. Having said that, I think Magid, and the exhibition side-step the problematic issues surrounding permissions and secrecy beautifully and imaginatively. As Magid was obviously not allowed to reproduce photographic images of the agents, she had to think of another way to visually represent them. One of the ways she did so was to visualise language as a series of neon signs - these are words or phrases the agents said during their interviews - which are then written in neon in her own handwriting.

Exploring the negative imapact of a highly intrusive surveilance society is one of the most overused tropes in contemporary art - it's usually presented in a screechy, obvious, in-your-face manner. Magid's work makes the same statement but uses an entirely different pack of cards: the message is so subtle and refined - mixed with an unexpected longing to be on the other side - that it takes until long after you've departed the exhibition to figure out what the real message is all about.

PS While you're at the Tate, make sure to check out the Miroslaw Balka's work in the turbine hall. It's great fun!

Miroslaw Balka;s 'How It Is' at Tate Modern (image from London Smoke blog)