Bag of bones.

^{The films of Pedro Almodovar are so bizarre that they have a way of dropping back into my mind at odd moments. Many of the films that I have seen are extraordinarily sympathetic to women,women who like me are insane, idiosyncratic and teetering precipitously on the edge!}

^{Recently I watched ' Flower of my secret' which, apart from being wonderfully funny and beautiful to watch recalled some rather interesting work by a Chinese artist,Lin Tianmiao in an exhibition at the Asia Society New York. The underlying tenet of her work seemed to be about restraint, about desire for freedom from the constraints and confines of expectation, about breaking free. In contrast to many of her earlier works which are in white the final work in the show was in glorious colour, a rainbow of silk threads wrapping a series of bones.}

^{Freedom at last but all that is left is a carcass...picked clean!}

^{http://asiasociety.org/new-york/exhibitions/bound-unbound-lin-tianmiao#exhibitionhighlights}

Out of Sorts!

^{I managed to pop in to see Judy Chicago's exhibition 'Deflowered' at Riflemaker, Beak street between the ridiculous demands of Christmas preparations. To be honest I was as much struck by the gallery as I was by Chicago's work. The building had originally been a brick kiln in the 17th Century. Now with its walls lined in wood and dark rickety stairs it felt like a cocoon, far from the bustle of Soho just outside. The exhibition is on three floors with the ground floor displaying Chicago's Corvair car bonnets in sprayed acrylic. Hard and shiny with their bright symbols of feminism; cats, butterfly wings,and female body parts these large works sat rather incongruously in the rough unpolished space . I rather like the way this juxtaposition sets off little trains of thought which go beyond the gallery and the work shown. It is this discordant twist that I continue to search for in my own work...that is when there is time to contemplate beneath and beyond the glittering Christmas cheer.}

 

 

Body pod. Constructed Drawing.

Stuffed!

^{Another delicious treat this week, a trip to Paris for the day! Fuelled with coffee and croissant my daughter and I wandered through the Marais to visit the Musee de la Poupee which was showing a special exhibition of ' Baby Boomer ' dolls. http://museedelapoupeeparis.com/?lang=fr}

^{I am not sure that our gales of delighted laughter were altogether appreciated by the young French girls on the front desk but we could not contain ourselves in front of some of the displays! Particularly surreal was the cabinet recreating a scene on the beach, over 50 baby dolls, swans, hanging rattles, oversized fish, sandcastles and shells caught in peculiar juxtaposition against the backdrop of a menacing sea!}

^{How wonderful then to wander from here to the magnificent Pompidou Centre where I came across Dorothea Tannings work from 1969 'de quel amour' ( by what love) http://www.dorotheatanning.org/life-and-work/view-work/work-119/ . Stuffed, slumped, sagging,drooping. And on the next floor a work by Barry Flanagan 'Casb 1 '67' a sewn sandbag, a cut off cone, another slump of weight about 4 foot high only just holding its form, sinking into the floor.}

^{There is definitely something that resonates with these stuffed, bursting 'bodies', something that makes me gasp and want to explore these ideas in my own work.}

^{Or maybe I have just remembered that I must get in that turkey stuffing in time to stuff the big bird!!}

Don't Give Up

Untitled Constructed Drawing

<sup>Fractured and disconnected thoughts have all collapsed in on me this week and given me no space to breathe. It has taken three weeks to finish a piece of work that could have taken a day.

It was this sense of fragmentation and the threatening disintegration of the body that so touched me in the work of Alina Szapocznikow. A exhibition of her work, 'Sculpture Undone 1955-1972' is on at MOMA New York until the end of January.

Yet it is artists like her that inspire in me the determination not to give up. After all these little scraps and scrapings, bits and pieces may one day make up a whole...or do I mean hole!

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1241</sup>

Judy Chicago comes to London!

Untitled Constructed Drawing Detail
Photo Robert Taylor

^{In the dimly lit recesses of my mind, whilst deciding on my itinerary for my second day in New York, I recalled that some of Judy Chicago's work was to be exhibited in London over the winter. Chicago, one of the leading feminist artists of the 1970's has not had her work shown here since 1985. I also recalled that her seminal work 'The Dinner Party' was permanently housed in The Brooklyn Museum, how could I resist the temptation to fit this in to my day even though it meant braving the New York subway. Sitting rather nervously on the edge of my seat I followed the stops on the yellow 'N' line on the MTA subway map from Times Square to Eastern Parkway. And oh I was not disappointed! The Dinner Party is beguilingly dated now in the 21st century but is nevertheless an extraordinary piece of work. Skilful, thought provoking and celebratory it is a paean to women from pre historic times to the 20th century both mythical and actual.}

^{http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party/}

^{With two new exhibitions just open in London Chicago continues to be a women to admire. Experimental and productive over four decades I for one am keen to see both these shows and learn from her determination and industry.}

^{http://www.riflemaker.org/s-next-exhibition}

^{http://www.benuri.org.uk/public/?event-details=29}

 

First of the favourites

...and oh my!! If I haven't got anything to say after three days in New York gorging, guzzling and stuffing myself with art works I never will! What a feast!

Through the haze of jet lag here is the first of my favourites at the Guggenheim.

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/nows-the-time-recent-acquisitions

bTucked away Presence 2006-2007, coloured pencil and acrylic on canvas by Shirazeh Houshiary caught me by surprise. I had been introduced to her work some months ago by an intuitive friend who could see connections to my own work The drawing was so mesmerising that I returned to sit in front of it four times. The wall text described Houshiary's work as 'contemplative' and 'sublime' with its fine pencil marks in blue caught and floating on a matt black ground. I had a looked at her work closely on her website http://www.shirazehhoushiary.com/ but as always the digital images failed miserably to show the depth and beauty of the real thing! Still worth a look though.

bottle
pencil on paper
drawing
anna mortimer

Off to New York!

I am at the moment the mistress of the unfinished sentence, the fragmented thought, the 'I have nothing to more to...'

 

 

Untitled Fragment

..but with a trip to New York this week I am hopeful...for something to say!

Butterfly Brain!

This morning I read the winner of the Open Category of the Annual Poetry Prize in the newspaper, Stillborn 1943: Calling Limbo by Derry O'Sullivan translated from Irish by Kaarina Hollo. There was something inherently moving about the way the poet, with undramatic grace wrote of the stillbirth of his baby brother. A moment of immense pain wrought with an intuitive touch, disturbing and haunting.

I wondered, as I felt like the old woman who lived in a shoe, whether I would ever be able to tether my butterfly brain to work with so many distractions, so many other demands on my thinking. Maybe this fractured way of working, this running from studio back to kitchen in borrowed snatches of time, allows that lightness of touch and intuitive mark of pencil on paper to be read below and beyond the mere surface...I hope so but butterflies only live for a day don't they?

Artists Surgery ooh ouch!

An 'Artists Surgery' (ohh, ouch!) at Smiths Row, Bury St Edmunds faced me again with my lack of courage. Talking through my work with Rosie, the delightful mentor, I saw rather too clearly the elephant trap that I had fallen into the past year. Oh dear, it is not always easy to be confronted by the harsh reality even when the hand that offers the bitter pill of truth is as soft and gentle as hers!

One of the artists that Rosie mentioned was Susie Macmurray

www.susie-macmurray.co.uk/

I could see why when I researched her work as her use of repetitious processes are similar to my own but she has evidently been a lot braver than I.

So it is back to the drawing board for me with a new determination to keep pushing my work forward....fearless experimentation...

 

 

October Drawing Detail
Pencil on Paper

 

 

 

...well experimentation, yes but there is always going to be faint-heartedness and fear...

Lack of courage

Listening to the Radio in the idle way that I do when I am cooking or doing something else I heard someone say that in his opinion beauty would be more highly valued and sought after over the next five years. I found my self thinking about this in relation to seeing a video of Marina Abramovic preparing for an exhibition in 2010 at MOMA in New York. At the age of 64 her energy and single mindedness are extraordinary. Her work moving and challenging.

The video showed clips of some of her earlier performance pieces many of which involved

self flagellation which brutally pushed her body to extremes. The main body of the video however followed the planning and performance of The Artist is Present. This was a work beguilingly simple yet of epic proportions.

Performed over three months the artist sat almost motionless in a chair for over seven hours and invited people to come one at a time and sit opposite her for a few minutes. During that time in silence the artist and the viewer would exchange gazes. The video showed that for many of the participants this was a deeply emotional and moving experience.

There seemed to be in this work a desire by Abramovic to make a vital connection between herself and those who took part. The almost animal ferocity of her earlier works provided a stark contrast with this later work where there is an essence of beauty both visual as well as visceral.

 

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/.../The_Goddess_of_Art_Marina_Abramovic

I feel challenged by that complex mix of beauty and ugh! In my lack,my lack of courage I will learn from this great mistress of her art.

 

 

Constructed Drawing.
 Photo by Robert Taylor

                      

a cicatrice

'a small cicatrice had been made on the memory; a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined'. Graham Greene The Heart of the Matter

I think that in my working practice I am seeking both a way to find relief for the ache as well as a way to explore and identify that ache. An ache which is hardly a searing pain but that nevertheless demands attention, demands to be addressed. A clamorous, insistent noise wanting a voice.

October Drawing Detail

...the thing about edges at the Estorick

Tucked away in Canonbury the Estorick Collection of modern Italian art is a scented haven of fresh garlic, herbs and delicious Italian coffee mmmm! And of course some rather lovely art!

Currently showing is a small collection of work by Bruno Munari, My Futurist Past. The two downstairs rooms displayed a selection of his works on paper, collages some of his 'mobiles' and amusing assemblages. The best however was saved until last, suspended alone in an upstairs room. Concave-convex is a 'spatial environment' created in 1946. A hanging wire mesh object is carefully lit, the shadows creating beautiful and mysterious projections onto the walls. On the far wall, whether by accident or intention ( my friend and I could not agree on this point) the shadow 'falls' off or is cut by the edge of a screen which is covering a window.

http://t.co/oZ1hBwn1

I really loved this. It felt like a moment of shock or jarring which caught me off guard and made the work somehow less visually pleasing and more thought provoking.

Of course I do have a bit of a thing about 'edges' so maybe that was it, intentional or unintentional, like the aroma of garlic which crept up the stairs, this unexpected creeping away of the shadow on the wall.

Killer Whale

Jacques Derrida wrote in Memoirs of the Blind ,

'It is as if seeing were forbidden in order to draw, as if one drew only on the condition of not seeing, as if drawing were a declaration of love destined for or suited to the invisibility of the other...'

I am almost certainly quoting Derrida wildly out of context but in my thinking about abstract drawing this resonates in a space where otherwise words cannot find a place. The great space of personal memory.

This afternoon the beaching of a Killer Whale on the beach at Shingle Street, its large carcass inert and powerless on the outgoing tide. The sucking shingle,voices in unison.

Such memories the stuff of drawings.

Photo Robert Taylor
Constructed Drawing.

Mind the Gap!

 

I read an intriguing book review this morning written by Ali smith. She was writing about a new translation of Camus’s L’Etranger. Maybe it is obvious but it hadn’t really occurred to me that a translation could so dramatically alter the meaning of a text and change the whole tenor of such an important literary work. In her review Smith talks about the way this particular translator listens beneath the literal meaning and ‘permits, an original edgy strangeness in the prose itself… ’ Ali Smith  Writing on a tightrope The Times Saturday September 22 2012.

 

A response to the image on my blog last week set me thinking again about the gap between seeing and perceiving ; the gap between intention and interpretation. These are thoughts that worry and disturb as well as excite as after all isn’t it that very mystery of the gap that makes the whole process of making art so compelling?



Ohh...and looking too!

Constructed Drawing
Photo by Robert Taylor

 

 

Autumn dis ease

Drawing this week, the lone spherical shape in a softly worked pencil space, a square set within a larger rectangle…a hovering.  The shape is barely there but evidently there, a literal effacement of line through the rubbing of cloth on paper .Yet the end result an abstract drawing which has physical presence and strength.

This gives me some hope in the face of loss, a loss of purpose and direction….an autumn dis ease.

 

Yoke detail.

Spiders webs

 

 

A beautiful friend who had been present at the opening of The Bloomberg Commission: Spazio di Luce by Giuseppe Penone http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/the-bloomberg-commission-giuseppe-penone-spazio-di-luce inspired me to look up his work.

Then this morning the garden festooned...'A Web Spectular'!!!

Autumn Webs

Autumn Webs

Natures own tactility... but hers just a gossamer touch...and for me pencil on paper again this week...

Inside and out...

Women talking together interweaving their listening with a layering of thought.Searching for words, watching body language,picking up clues.

Multi tasking as usual.
Two conversations this week and an email exchange have touched upon the desire to find a voice for that illusive, intangible thing that lies below the surface.The search to find a way to express something that will resonate beyond just the written word or stroke of a pencil on paper or stitch sewn into cloth. The longing for connection...inside to out.

feather the nest

 

I read that even the great Rothko agonised over this one, seeking partnership for his work through the eyes of the viewer.

Solace in art

Following a difficult week of rejections I sought solace in the library. Reading about the struggles of other artists, particularly those I admire...I have to admit they are usually women...brings comfort.

The Eye's Mind:Bridget Riley Collected Writings 1965-2009 Ed. Robert Kudielka gives a wonderful insight into the thoughts behind both Rileys work and her working practice. In one of the interviews she reflects on the loneliness of being an artist, its inevitability;

' ...I seldom talk about the things that really matter. You cannot take away the energy, it's a very internal thing. All artists have part of themselves that they can never share with anyone else.' p.30

Slip 2 Detail. Textile Drawing.

And out of this silent inner space comes art.

Visitation

Untitled Drawing 13

 

 

I saw Bill Viola's video work 'Visitation' shown at The Crypt of the Carnary Chapel at the Norwich School a couple of weeks ago. Sitting in the darkness I could feel the dis ease of the friend sitting by my side, her sadness was palpable. The whole experience has continued to haunt me.

I have been  reflecting over how Viola's interpretation of the big/universal questions/issues about 'life' sink into such deep places for the viewer. He seems to face with unerring bravery the pain of many human emotions and some how introduce into that place an element of beauty and the sublime. A kind of paring back and a stripping away which cannot but fail to move.

Man and his sandwich.

Sitting in the Tube I watched transfixed as a man tore open the packaging containing some rather unexciting sandwiches. His gaze was unfocused. His face, lined by age bore no signs of emotion. He was absorbed in his own world,totally disconnected from his fellow passengers.The actions of his hands were extraordinarily slow, almost ritualistic. The movement one of resignation but also of pleasure, a savouring of the moment.
I am not sure exactly what it was about him that made me feel so profoundly moved.Perhaps he made me reflect about lost and squandered time. Or maybe I just felt excluded from his inner world and sensed again my own isolation.

Untitled Drawing 1

...or maybe I just fancied a sandwich!

The Emperors new clothes

It maybe the smarting of recent rejections from various 'opens'/artists opportunities that has made me rather critical of the showing of Yoko Ono's work at The Serpentine, London.
A few weeks ago I  went to The Serpentine  anticipating something special. It was however with a sense of bewildered disappointment that I left some three quarters of an hour later.
The show is made up of various installations, videos and poems both old and new. Cut Piece (1964) remains a powerful video work of some depth confirmed by the shocked and absorbed expressions of those watching. Ono's latest work, including the interactive #smilesfilm and Wish Tree are in my opinion dated, wishy washy, and vacuously sentimental.
The little brochure produced by The Serpentine claims that, 'Ono has influenced generations of artists..' and that 'she is a pioneer of conceptual art...' mmmm that maybe so, who am I to comment?What I must  question though is why yet again we have to be fooled by the Emperor's new clothes?
Anyway best to see for yourself and add your smile to create the 'global string of smiles covering the planet' ( Yoko Ono To The Light Serpentine Gallery Brochure 2012 ) ...I think mine is just a grimace!

Poem

Untitled Drawing 8

The following poem was written by Ian Buckley in response to seeing my work at Salthouse Gallery in May.

Cradles of thread

net stitch, bag stitch

grids, pockets, matrices –

step down to

the moving spawn

seeds ready to solve

their own codes;

things becoming, before

light finds them and hides them.

Intensity of eye

to wait on the substance,

watch how radiance begins

between fibres

and listen

' Your work is deeply unfashionable but it is pure poetry...' MA Tutor Norwich School of Art 2010.

Instacrit Show RCA 2012

‘To grow small by degrees, and beautifully less’  Everyman’s Thesaurus Revised Edition 1971.

A trip to London this week gave me a chance to see some of the final year shows at the RCA and with that an invitation to contribute to Instacrit, ‘ a live commentary on Show RCA 2012′.  Visitor’s were invited to email a concise description in 20 to 70 words of any work in the show. I had already picked out Charlotte Brown’s beautifully spare work and so I sent in the following:

‘White, black; soft, hard; light, heavy; open, shut; translucent, opaque; silk, wool; paper, lead; caressed, pressed; hand, machine. Inheritance: less gives so much more.’

Charlotte Brown’s Blog

As always I was drawn to that same pared down, stripped back quality that I search for constantly in my own drawing and writing.

Untitled Drawing 7

Longing...

After a fallow period the desire for drawing, the longing to feel pencil on paper becomes irresistible. And so a fresh start in the studio this week.

Somehow connecting with this the chance to see four of Bill Viola's video works at The Sainsbury Centre Norwich.
http://www.scva.org.uk/exhibitions/current/?exhibition=93"

'Catherine's Room' comprising five video screens is a slow, sensual depiction of the passage of time. No drama, no theatrics but beautiful to watch. Whilst 'Ascension' is shockingly dramatic and literally left me gasping for air. A fully clothed man in cruciform shape falls into deep dark water.The amplified sound of bubbling and gurgling water adds to the sense of horror, yet I could not look away.

There was an immediacy and tactility about these works that recall the act of drawing, tapping in to that point of longing.

Picking a way through.

This week I have started to pick my way through the 'stuckness' that always seems to beset me following an exhibition. Over time I have learnt that it is only in the making of work that I can find my way through the pain of silence.

 '... we are involved with a dialogue with our medium...material is a means of communication. That listening to it, not dominating it, makes us truly active, that is:to be active, be passive.'
Anni Albers,'' Material as Metaphor,'' in Selected Writings on Design.

'bag'

Tuning in , listening, holding in the stillness...something is whispering out there.

Tracey Emin at Turner Contemporary

Turner Contemporary on the Margate coast is a wonderful gallery space.It is cleverly designed to keep the eye mostly focused on the works of the artist(s) on show but nevertheless paying homage to the ever changing seascape framed by the vast windows.http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/tracey-emin-she-lay-down-deep-beneath-the-sea
Although I much admire Emin as a woman for her honesty and guts I was yet again disappointed that her work is so self referential and dare I say it unsubtle. The show was cleverly curated. A small selection of nudes by both Rodin and Turner shown alongside those of Emin suggested a broader reading and greater depth.
Mmmm that is as maybe  but it still begs the bigger question... I for one am still puzzled as to why Emin has been afforded the accolade of showing in this great space especially so closely followed by her show at The Haywood?

Come on Tracey, have a generous heart and give some of your other fellow women artists a chance!

Effaced

Doldrums.

The great pageant of boats moving up the Thames today to celebrate the Queens Jubilee is in some contrast to my own feelings of stagnation and lassitude.
Being in the doldrums inevitability follows an exhibition. The same old questions...nag,nag,nag.

Basket...case.

The usual silence answers.

Sir Nicholas Serota at 'Baggage'.

Promises are in the end just words aren't they.

 Many words were spoken to me during the week of 'Baggage'. Many of these will pass into the deep recesses of  memory. I can only hope that for the speakers it will be mental images that will remain, little visual mementos of the work they have seen.

Ephemeral postcards.

A visit from Sir Nick

' Unique'; 'Fascinating'; ' Unusual'; ' Bizarre but Beautiful' are some of the comments made by a small but steady stream of visitors to my exhibition 'Baggage' now in its fifth day. As always one of the nicest things about putting up a body of work for public show is meeting lovely, interesting people, not the least of whom was Sir Nicholas Serota on Friday evening. He spent about fifteen minutes in the gallery quietly looking at the work. I felt greatly honoured and privileged. ( Photo to follow next week! )

Although apparently according to one elderly lady ' this is not work that people in St Ives are looking for' there is, it seems to me, an intangible thread connecting my work to this place.

Shrink

Baggage's final choices...

Final choices made this weekend over a couple of the works to be shown in 'Baggage'. These last minute decisions are influenced by a myriad of incidental things....a serendipity, a happenstance....

Hive

PINA is a film about German choreographer Pina Bausch who died in 2009.
www.wim-wenders.com/movies/movies_spec/pina/pina.htm
The pared back simplicity of the choreography expressed the most profound emotions. The back drops, strange and dis-quietening served to enhance the extreme physicality of the dancers bodies.
What an extraordinary, mesmerising experience watching this film turned out to be.

Wild and Funny....Louise Bourgeois

'Pelt 3' completed this week, the final piece ready for the show in St Ives... and so a little treat in the shape of a brief trip to London.
Walking from the tube through the leafy suburbs of Hampstead where the Freud Museum is situated is like waking into another world. Then to see some of Louise Bourgeois' works in the context of her long years of psychoanalysis was wonderful.www.freud.org.uk/.../louise-bourgeois-the-return-of-the-repressed-/ There were lots of very serious writings, scribbled notes on backs of bits of card and paper but honestly I could almost hear her chuckling.
She is so wild,funny and bizarre it is hard not to come away smiling!

Ruck

Counting Down.....Baggage's 'Grand Finale'!!!

Pelt (detail)

Some weeks ago I saw the Mondrian Nicholson In Parallel  at The Courtauld Gallery www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/.../mondrian-nicholson/index.shtml
 It is a beautifully curated show, subtle and understated, highlighting some of the ways in which each of these artists had been influenced by the other.

 One of the most exciting things about the final preparations for an exhibition is drawing all the threads together to make a cohesive body of work. As sometimes happens at this moment an idea for a new work surfaces.

Taking photos of some of my bags for her blog  http://fed-fed.tumblr.com/ Helen used a sheepskin rug as a backdrop to the work entitled 'Pelt'. This intuitive response sparked a chance collaboration and the making of a new ( as yet unfinished ) 'grand finale'!

Pelt

Preparations for 'Baggage' 1.

Prize

 

 With just over 4 weeks to go until my exhibition in St Ives my poor brain is fizzing. The 'word' connections fed by my ancient Roget's Thesaurus, snippets of passing conversation and snatched shreds of reading are now coming together to form a cohesive whole.....or a set of disconnections.
Ordered today some 'Pink Candy- Stripe Paper Bags'.....http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pink-Candy-Stripe-Paper-Bags

 why? why not?

Sewn in.

One of the issues the film The Skin I Live In directed by Pedro Almodovar disturbingly explores is how we make judgments based on what we see. Does the exterior, the outside , the casing, the skin give us the real essence of someone or something? Or is it the unseen the hidden inside that makes someone or something what it is?
What gives us our identity?

Hem

 Constructed textile drawing.

The uncertain edge between beauty and menace, further disconnect.

Misty Easter Day.

pick-up line i

                                                                                
 Wrapped, unwrapped, bound and unbound. Unseen and seen?
On Easter Day a misty walk by the sea we talked about uncertainty....

Chiffon....

Chiffon has at its roots a number of meanings;
French chiffe : rag; Arabic shiff : sheer; Middle English chippe : chip,shard,fragment.

I have been using it as an alternative fabric to silk organza for the past couple of weeks. Its frail, limpid, translucent qualities are highly evocative and sensuous.

Drawing No.43

The final results a betrayal of its fragility.

..hollow stomachs

As a child I loved the little Observer's books and still have a small collection of them. Sea and Seashore published in 1962 has some delicious illustrations. My favourite pages are of  the 'sea squirts' and the 'sea anemones' which are delightfully hand drawn and coloured . The sea anemones are from the Coelenterata Family which is Greek for 'hollow stomachs'. Structurally simple they nevertheless have great beauty and some rather exotic names!

Gooseberry sea squirt,

Golden Star sea squirt. 

Dead men's fingers.

Beadlet anemone.

Snake-locks anemone.

Wartlet anemone.

 

Cast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pared back, pruned, clipped, reduced, peeled.

Word search.

I have been looking at words again this week,text to add to my textile drawings. It is a quest for the arbitrary, the furthering of a disconnect which seems to occur anyway in the making of the work. A chance happening that taps in to an oddness which cannot quite be put into words,thus making that search another odd and whimsical exercise.

Hong Kong Birds

   Photograph by Michael Murton

Packet

Constructed drawing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scars of time.

Bodycloth Lessons on Limberg a short film by Rhian Solomon in The Crafts Council's touring exhibition Block Party http://blockparty.org.uk/ explored the relationship between cutting skin and cutting cloth.
The skin's remarkable capacity to heal and repair outdoes that of cloth.Yet so much is written into and onto skin bearing witness to the passage of time.Scars as silent markers to memories.

bias

snap

.

Hanne Darboven and the passing of time.....

Ironically, with barely half an hour to spare and time passing rapidly by I popped in to see the Hanne Darboven exhibition at Camden Arts Centre.
http://www.camdenartscentre.org/exhibitions/?id=101222
Much of her work is concerned with the passage of time which she records through large series of drawings, mathematical equations and musical notations. The deep notes of a church organ echoed throughout the space repeating the same refrain.This compelling 'sound drawing' accompanied a group of framed musical scores each with their own little confirmation card.

It was the obsessive repetitiousness in the process of making that connected with my own way of working.

Press

 Pencil on paper

Yoke

Hand Constructed Drawing

Goldfish in Hong Kong

 

 Goldfish in Hong Kong.

Photo by Michael Murton

A photograph of goldfish in plastic bags hanging in a market in Hong Kong sent to me by a friend this week reminded me of some paintings that I did 10 or more years ago. It is an odd thing that when making work how old themes and ideas return, unbidden yet transformed into something visually new and different. I like the way that this somehow takes me by surprise.

 

 

 Husk.

 

The bag a throwaway, an insignificant thing drawing as much attention to itself as to the thing that it contains!

Medical Specimens?

 Occupy 2

Even before I began to enclose some of my constructed drawings in bags there were connections between these works and medical specimens preserved in jars. There is for many of us a fascination with the strange, eclectic and wonderful choices that are found for example in The Wellcome Collection, London http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions.aspx and The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/.
The body parts trapped for examination, odd little somethings separated from the whole giving them an entirely other life and other meaning.

...last chance to see the Lygia Pape at the Serpentine Gallery!

The Lygia Pape exhibition was made more beguiling by its contrast to the David Hockney which I visited the day before.http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2011/03/lygia_pape.html
The Serpentine on a freezing cold morning was an oasis of calm and quietness with Pape's thoughtful, thought provoking and challenging work filling the white spaces.
Of particular interest to me were her spare woodcuts and ink drawings. They demanded a long and careful looking which left me feeling somehow rewarded and enriched.

I suppose that this quality of meditative looking is something that I seek in my own work and value in the viewer who takes the time to give more than a passing glance.

The Death of Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning died at the end of last month, she was 101 years old!She was probably the best known of the female Surrealists. The last time I saw one of her works exhibited was in the 'elles@centrepompidou' a couple of years ago. The work was titled 'Chambre 202, Hotel du Pavot'
http://www.dorotheatanning.org/life-and-work/view-work/work-132
Its stuffed figures recalled again the work of Louise Bourgeois.
I don't think that these connections are coincidences. The influences of these great women artists work at many levels not the least as an undercurrent of thought or a pulse of visual memory. Then unbidden they weave their way into my own works, both unrecognised and recognised.

Golden Spider Silk

In London again yesterday, this time dropping in to The Victoria and Albert Museum to see the Golden Spider Silks.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/g/golden-spider-silk/
This new display is of a cape and shawl woven from the silk of the Golden Spider. The silk is extracted from the spiders spinnerets, 24 spiders being harnessed into stocks each morning! Louise Bourgeois would have loved this, the stuff of macabre dreams which I feel sure would have fed into her work!
On reflection my own work this week seemed to anticipate the workings of a organic creature spinning undisturbed in a dark corner of an attic.