Looking at Art group, 17th May

Today we had the second full meeting of the South Bristol U3A Looking at Art group.  We went to the Grant Bradley Gallery in Bedminster, where they are showing the finalists of the RGB Photographic Competition, and a smaller show of 12 prints by a Bath photographer called Colin Powell.  More info about the show on their website here.

There were 12 of us in the group today, and Sylvie Duncan start us off with a well-judged but short introduction pointing out the things we could look for in viewing the images, including subject, form, composition, texture, the use of contracting light and dark, colour/monochrome, the type of paper and printing, and the choice of mounting.

We then spent about 30 minutes having a good look at the images, which were very varied in subject matter, style, scale and effect.  One of the gallery staff came and gave us some further thoughts about the competition itself, and some of the technical issues we could look out for in making our own photographic images.  And finally we had a bit of a free-for-all discussion about what we'd seen and learned.  It was a very useful session, and everyone, even some who started out saying 'I'm not interested in photography",  had things to say and had found things to hold their interest.

I found I really liked the portraits, especially several striking black and white portraits, which were immensely strong in conveying the sense of the person behind the face.  I wondered whether the choice of black and white is the trick here.  We see people and faces around us all the time, always in colour, and very often without really looking at them.  Partly because, culturally, we have been trained not to look closely at the faces of people we don't know: it can be seen as intrusive and sometimes an almost hostile thing to do.  By taking portraits in black and white we remove the distraction of colour - it doesn't matter about hair colour or the clothes being worn.  And we are also allowed to look closely, to really study the face, the lines, the skin quality, the shapes and expressions.  Which we could not do if the real person was there.

I found the several colour portraits less compelling.  I also found that I did not terribly like the  prizewinning image, (shown above,  copied from the grant Bradley website linked above, and by Gareth Iwan Jones).  In the Gallery, it looked less like a colour photo, and seemed to be almost entirely black and white except for her scarf and her very red lips.  I was confused because it seemed to me to be so obviously  contrived, constructed, a posed 'character' rather than an 'ordinary' but real person.  I wasn't sure of the point of this constructed person.

Moreover, its title, "The Third Woman' was obscure to all of us.  Whereas for some of the photos, the caption seemed to be an integral part of the whole, and added meaning, in this case it caused puzzlement but no enlightenment.

Which is something I need to think about for my final project piece(s), for which I still don't have a title, and must do before much longer.

Stroud Textiles

Today a tremendous visit to Stroud and Nailsworth to see some of the work on show in the Stroud International Textiles exhibition and in the accompanying textiles artists studios trail.  Running at the same time is the SITE Stroud artists festival and arts trail.  I went with friends Glen and Tony Eastman, and we tried to see as much as we could,  but the trails extend way beyond Stroud and Nailsworth and there was a lot we couldn't manage in a single day's visit.  However, the weather was fabulous, an especial treat after the relentless rain of the past few weeks, and the towns were in festive mood, probably more because of the sun than the art.  We saw some wonderful work.

First off was the main exhibition, Select Pairings II, Conversations and Collaborations, at the Stroud Museum.  Here the festival had paired up textile artists with other creatives, and invited them to work together to produce new pieces.  The results were exciting and innovative, showing the strength and diversity of individual artists' work, and the sometimes surprising things which can happen when unusual couplings of talent are made.  I liked all of it  but the things which particularly caught my attention included the combined textile and ceramic work where Alice Kettle's stitch drawings on linen were complemented by Helen Felcey's understated porcelain vessels, so the whole thing looked like a table set for a meal. like this....

This image, and more, from Alice Kettle's website here.

In similar vein, I also liked the work by Sharon Blakey and Ismini Samanidou, who combined delicate fabric, printed with semi-legible text, alongside cast replicas of table cutlery, and the imprint of these into paper.  The combination of object, stitch, line and texture was compelling but very simple, and referred, I think, to the memory and ritual stored up in shared meals, shared experiences across cultures.

One example is here... 

The image is taken from Sharon Blakey's MMU website entry  here, where there is more about her work.

Another very interesting pairing was that between textile artist Jane McKeating (website link here) and Jilly Morris (website link here) who works with enamel and drawing as well as stitch.  They produced a series of curled forms, each quite small and embellished with bold drawn or stitched lines and wrapped threads.  My photo doesn't do the work justice but gives a flavour of their collaboration.

There was much to admire in the exhibition, more information on the SIT website here.

Then into Stroud to visit some of the open studios in the textile and arts trails.  There were separate printed guide books for each, beautifully presented but lacking in decent maps, so we wandered about a bit, and managed to completely miss some of the out-of-town venues because the map was so poor, and/or because the signage on the road was unclear.  That aside, the information about artists was good, and we found the main sites  we wanted to see.

The Stroud Valley Arts (SVA) building in John Street was a treasure trove.  I particularly liked the textile studio work, including particularly the felt by Anne Rogers, and the hand printed or hand-painted textiles by Jenny Bicalt.  

I was fascinated by the work of Emily Joy (website here, from where the photo next was copied) who had built a kind of double ended printing machine out of two old-fashioned laundry mangles, one end could take and print type, the other end could print a kind of braille.  

She had used this to print and over print on a continuous loop of paper, so that the text and the braille eventually almost obscured each other, and the meaning (or memory) was distorted and obliterated.  I thought this had big resonances for the work I'm doing in relation to deconstructing and obliterating the text of my old working life.  It also resonated with some of the work seen in the Lost in Lace show in Birmingham earlier this year.  

Upstairs there were several other artists whose drawings and paintings were very striking, including Bill Jones (link here) whose indian ink drawings were very appealing, reminding me of John Piper's Welsh landscapes seen recently in Cardiff; and Zoe Heath (link here) whose small paintings and drawings, some incorporating found objects or papers, and some using script or nearly-script, were quite arresting.   Lots more about all of them and more on the SVA website here.

Heading out of Stroud we made a detour and stumbled across an open studio hosted by Sophia Hughes and Anne James, whose sculptural forms and abstract acrylics, and ceramics, respectively, were well presented in an entrancingly nice garden setting.  Anne James's ceramic dishes and forms were particularly interesting, with soft forms, dusty glazes and the odd flash of gilding.  I liked the simplicity of her work, mostly quite small pieces, understated but unusual.   It was good to have a conversation with her about her practice and new directions.   Details of their work is on the SITE Festival Artists' Trail brochure accessible here.

Finally, we made it to Nailsworth, where I wanted particularly to see the group show in the wonderfully named One Fat Quarter, a delightful old building now converted into studio space used by several textile artists.  Anne Weldon's work stood out for me - stunning white on black appliqué, minutely detailed images of winter trees, translated into stark black and white silhouettes.  One was a triptych on 3 panels with a n image of a stand of grand trees - which I thought much more evocative that the David Hockney Big trees paintings which I saw at the RA in February.   

These are my photos, taken at the show, and don't really do justice to the delicacy of her work.  

I thought her work was truly original, very simple but hugely effective in terms of both direct representation of an image, and evoking feelings of time and place and weather alongside the image itself.  Anne Weldon had also done some tiny b/w machine stitched pictures, and I bought one as a memento of the day, and of her work in particular.

And then home.  All in all, a delightful day, full of surprises, and I came back with my head swimming with images of the work I'd seen.  very inspiring, especially some of the textile work, and a reminder to me that stitch is still an important part of my creative vocabulary, and one I will try to return to over the summer.  

College week 4/1 This week's art news

As part of our weekly art history sessions, Jo is focussing on things that are in the news.  This week it was the Chinese artist Lee Bolin who (with the help of a team of painters) creates works which involve him being painted so that he disappears into the background of his location.  

The paint process is meticulous and skilful, and it is hard to see where the figure sits among the real landscape setting.  His work was featured in yesterday's Guardian.  Here's the link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2010/feb/17/liu-bolin-art-invisible-man#/?picture=359393340&index=9

 He started making pieces of this kind as a protest against the Chinese Government's demolition of various historic buildings, but hos work now suggests a wider commentary on freedom of speech and expression in China, especially for artists like Ai Wei Wei - do you have to blend into the generality?  Or can you skilfully hide among the masses while retaining your unique identity, albeit disguised and invisible? 

We also referred to the Australian artist Emma Hack, who does similar work related to wallpaper and interior decoration, in collaboration with Florence Bradhurst. 

 This too was mentioned in the Observer piece.  Web link is here http://www.emmahackartist.com/wallpaper.php



We also looked at the current exhibition as part of the London Design Festival of work by Am Song, whose huge piece, RedDress invites the viewer to become part of the work, and is some sort of comment on the fashion industry with an enormous red woollen dress spread out on the floor in a huge sports hall.  

I'm not sure I get the point of this one, although technically it is very impressive and must have  been a nightmare to construct.


In both these instances, though, I am left wondering who is the artist: is it the technicians and painters and sewing experts who did the hard work, or the artist who conceived of the idea and who gets the fame?

Bridget Riley, RWA

Today I spent lunchtime looking at the Bridget Riley prints in the RWA Gallery.     http://www.rwa.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/2011/10/exhibition-bridget-riley/

They were part of a bigger exhibition, including work by Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin (of which, more another day).


The Riley prints were especially interesting given that we have been doing two workshops on screen printing.  The most obvious reaction was to admire the extremely skilful registration of the prints, and to admire the large scale of many of these works.   I also very much liked the colour placing and mixing, sometimes obvious and sometimes quite strange  conjunction between opposing and complementary colours, like orange and blue.

There were a whole series of prints based around this swirling, wave-like design:

I also began to wonder about the ownership and creativity of some of the work.  How many different varieties of coloured lines can you produce, and still find it original, and still command enormous prices?

What is the difference between some of Riley's designs and some much more humdrum and commercially produced work, e.g. in wallpapers, wrapping paper, etc?  I know this sounds like sacrilege, but it seems to me that there is a very fine, and often invisible line, between 'high' and 'fine' art, and everyday decent design.



The exhibition also included work by Michael Kidner, another British Op artist of whom I had not previously heard.  His work was also interesting because of the constant tessellations, many of them hexagonal, so his paintings looked very much like old English-method patchwork quilts.

However, I later looked him up on-line and discovered that he actually produced a much more diverse body of work, some rather like Riley, and some more original.  The relationship between both these artists and regular patchwork quilt designs is quite striking.

RWA Exhibitions Sept 2011

During my lunch break today I went to look at the current series of exhibitions in the RWA gallery.  More information is at the link here.

There are several separate shows.  Firstly, a small retrospective of screen prints by Bridget Riley, which I much enjoyed, not least because we have been exploring screen printing at college this week.  It was interesting to see how exactly the prints are register.  The shapes are the recognisable Riley swirls and sweeps, with rather odd mixtures of pure colour - greens and pinks, for example.  I am not sure I really like Riley's works of this kind - the bigger, painted and brightly coloured panels are more gripping, to my taste, but these prints were technically interesting.

The main work on show is the group of paintings by Louise Bourgeois which Tracey Emin added to after Bourgeois's death in 2010.    There is a Guardian review here http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/dec/01/tracey-emin-louise-bourgeois-exhibition 

I liked the Bourgeois paintings, rich colour and smooth line drawings, but I was less than enthusiastic about Emin's additions, which seemed to me to diminish and detract from Bourgeois' work, rather than enhance it.  The overall effect seemed to be rather childish and silly, like rude drawings in the school toilets, and I can't get excited about them.  I'm not sure they say anything useful about sexual abuse or miscarriage, or whatever Emin has added - although others clearly think otherwise.

These drawings prompted a heated discussion in our first Art History session with Jo Kear the other day - at that point I hadn't seen them so didn't join in, but now I have, I would have supported the negative voices....

Next, and in the same room as the Riley prints, was a rather odd selection of landscape works by various artists from the RWA collection called Naturescape.   I'm afraid none of these pictures made a great impression on me, although I am sure they were good examples from the RWA Collection.  They didn't seem to me to fit with the other bits of the exhibition.

And finally, there was a selection of large canvases by Michael Kidner, a pioneer of Optical Art in the 60s.  Many of his works would have been equally comfortable if produced as patchwork quilts, being regularly repeating and tessellating geometric shapes, many hand coloured much like some of my sketches towards quilts done in the 80s and 90s.  The overall effect of some of these works was quite arresting.

Centrespace Gallery

Open Edition was the title of a show of work by MA graduates from Newport College of Art at Centrespace Gallery, a small gallery tucked away in a tiny backstreet in the old commercial centre of Bristol.  Most of the work was screen printing, so of particular interest given our current workshops at QR.


Carly Llewellyn's images were skilfully done prints of items of lingerie - stockings, bras, bodices, in translucent fabrics printed simply in black on white paper.  Neil Smithson's work included some fairly similar items, but using men's ties.  Vicki Hall's mono prints I found especially compelling: they were mono prints, mainly in black or black and red, drawn freehand onto a silkscreen and printed.  The results were interesting as textural studies rather than images or abstract designs, and were mainly printed onto plain cotton calico, some pieces being pieced and patched before printing.  I liked the randomness of the prints, and the way they were mounted in series and groups.   More info and image on the link here

Given that I am vaguely thinking about printmaking as my main approach this year, it is interesting to look at a range of work by emerging artists and students  - to see what can be done using different techniques, to build up a better awareness of what 'works', and to develop my own ideas of what I want to achieve in my own work.