Archive for the ‘contemporary art space’ Category
Open Studios (via Whistle Art Stop)
Have you seen this blog that reports on the setting up of a new art space in Haltwhistle (wherever that is)?. If you live many miles from there the blog is an interesting account of what they are doing. If you live somewhere near you can go go and take a look at their open day. I’m wondering about whether it is near enough for me to go.
via Whistle Art Stop
ArtReview: Summer 2011
In the new ArtReview there is a short article by J J Charlesworth about the new contemporary art venues in the UK, including
Nottingham Contemporary
The Hepworth Wakefield
and the Turner Contemporary in Margate (no photo as I haven’t visited it yet).
The Turner and
Jerwood spaces are just two of the latest additions to a process
that began, in the southeast, with the refurbishment of Bexhill’s
elegant 1930s modernist gallery and auditorium, the De La Warr
Pavilion, in 2005, followed by the rebuilding of Eastbourne’s
Towner Art Gallery in 2009. Meanwhile, all across England, a fleet
of shiny new art-barns have recently opened or are about to
open: Nottingham Contemporary, the Hepworth Wakefield,
Middlesbrough’s MIMA, Colchester’s relocated Firstsite.
The name of the game here is regeneration, a game
everyone in the English regions has been desperately keen to play.
He doesn’t mention The Public in West Brom’ probably because it is not strictly a contemporary art space,
but it was clear at my recent visit there that it was all about regeneration. A walk into town confirmed this all the more. I couldn’t get away from notices about who was funding what and about efforts to improve the area. There were even banners or posters about the local police. I had begun to expect ‘Big Brother is Watching You’.
In the article, Charlesworth argues that updating the cultural infrastructure forms an attempt to attract affluent residents. I can imagine that this may be so for Margate more than I can for Wakefield, or West Brom’ and I wouldn’t necessarily put Nottingham in the same ‘need for regeneration’ category. Whilst he mentions all the new contemporary art spaces, and there’s a really good photograph of The Hepworth, the article is more about Margate than the other venues.
Nevertheless, the regeneration and ‘inward investment’ (for Nottingham) themes are evident, and I agree with him that
while art can help
create a vibe of cultural rejuvenation in a place, changing people’s
expectations of where they live, it can do very little about more
substantial issues of investment, infrastructure and economic
development. So the danger is that while millions are spent on
ambitious arts venues, this distracts from the more substantial
problems faced by places such as Margate. Because real
infrastructure, rather than ‘cultural’ infrastructure, does count.
future investment will be needed just at a time that it is likely to be switched off!
The Public: Owamya?
In the Black Country “How are you?” is “How am you?” or rather “Owamya?”
We took our son Joel to The Black Country, to Sandwell General Hospital West Bromwich, for an A.C.L. operation, and waiting, we visited The Public. (It was famous in the UK when it was built, for being late and way over budget. No Public city is bad Public city, we’d heard of it and sought it out.)
It’s an art space and not an art space. they call it ” a creative, community, cultural and business space in the heart of West Bromwich…Sandwell – today one of the most deprived areas in the UK but with a long history of creativity, innovation and community pride which changed the world.”
There are exhibitions as well as interactive galleries:
My interactive drawing on a touch screen
my wife Dawn's interactive drawing
Judith, one of the staff (she’s wonderful) showed us some of the exhibits, and explained some Black Country slang, using one of the interactive pieces (a fridge magnet type activity – all the interactive things reminded me of games and that reminded me of how much game and play is part of what ‘creativity’ means).
Judith explains that 'fust' is 'first' in Black Country lingo
“Fust” is first and “bist” is been: “hows he bin?” “he bist fine” (?)
When I saw one of the words I couldn’t resist an homage to Barnett Newman (I continue to want to see abstract painting in art spaces)
vir heroicis sublimis (not)
Sorry, corny I know.
The exhibitions included Out of this Universe, featuring models, costumes and props from Dr Who, Star Wars, etc
Exterminate!
In the Best Light: Maurice Broomfield, industrial photographs
and, The Art of Invention: From the Frank Cohen Collection, contemporary art including some paintings! (No abstract paintings though. Is it that because there are none in the Frank Cohen Collection? Perhaps it is because they are thought to be less relevant than figurative work? In the ‘about’ section of their website I read: “The Public also has a role in making the arts more accessible to a community which traditionally has low participation in the creative industries”. I would argue that abstraction is particularly relevant and accessible in this industrial context.)
The industrial photographs were magnificent. To me, they seemed to capture the hope and excitement of industry at the same time as its monotony and false promise. The images somehow looked both modern and dated at the same time. My pictures here don’t do the setting justice. Whilst the whole downstairs does have this pink colour pervading everything, here I didn’t perceive it the way the digital camera does. In fact, there was lots of daylight and the photographs looked great. These were also the nearest thing to abstract paintings.
The work from the Frank Cohen collection included some interesting sculpture
Patrick O'Reilly, Quiet Desperation 1996
Patrick O'Reilly The Leader Speaks, 1995
The Patrick O’Reilly sculptures were witty and spoke to my feelings of alienation in a (post-)industrial world, but visually rather unsatisfying. I felt similarly about the Till Gerhard painting
Till Gerhard, Wochenendhaus, 2004, Acrylic on canvas
It was interesting (not witty) and I looked at it a lot. I got that the painterly marks could be sinister and associated the red with blood and the pink shapes with internal organs, possibly the wire from the boy’s microphone resembling intestines, or certainly something unpleasant. I felt like I should be able to work out why the eyes were obscured with an unpleasant red mark, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure if the fir-tree was growing or cut, a Christmas tree and maybe the coloured marks suggested that it was decorated. Lots to look at yet, in the end, I felt unsatisfied, like I wanted to find something in the paint to enjoy but found my enjoyment was repeatedly barred. I felt slightly sick. Perhaps that was intended. I didn’t like that experience very much. Though I did go back to the work again before we left… and I don’t always do that!
Another painting I didn’t like:
Steve Canaday, Double Death Honk, 2002, Acrylic on canvas
though again, I have been thinking about it since, so it must have done something. What I have found myself remembering is the bland grey ground on which the painted objects are placed, and working out how he achieved that with acrylic paint. The exhibition notes tell me that Canaday’s work is an example of the LA based practice called “Bad Painting“. What I thought was most bad (I mean it in a bad sense) was that again any enjoyment of the paint I may have hoped to experience was thwarted. I also had the impression that the artist gained no enjoyment in painting it.
Even though my wish to see abstract painting was unmet (painting has become a marginal activity it seems, and abstract painting even more so) I am glad I saw this work.
The Public is well worth a visit, even the cafe is reasonably priced, most unusual.
On leaving, we missed out on the tea-dance, mostly because we didn’t have our dance shoes with us (Joel was ages yet in recovery). Apparently as many as 100 people turn up to dance every other Wednesday afternoon, and being keen ballroom, latin and sequence dancers ourselves we would have enjoyed that too!
