Tuesday, June 20, 2006

images from 'dysfunctioning'







Work completed by Lucinda Holmes in the Centre for Drawing, Wimbledon School of Art

Monday, June 12, 2006

'Dysfunctioning'


12 – 16 June, Centre for Drawing, Wimbledon School of Art, Merton Hall Road.
Open to the public Tuesday 13 June 3-4pm, Thursday 15 June 3-4pm
Private View Friday 16 June 4.30pm – 6.30pm

I am exploring the act of drawing as a negation, more specifically an act that covers textual information within diagrams. I am interested in how theses acts of deletion change the reading of pre-existing printed diagrams. What is the relationship between the mark and the ground, when the line is already in the ground and the mark is a covering of the same colour and value as the ground? In the Centre for Drawing I am exploring how to display these drawings and their relationship (through placement) with their context and each other.

Lucinda Holmes
Currently studying MA Fine Art: Drawing, at Wimbledon.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Banks Voilette

Maureen Paley, Herald Street, London
2 June – 23 July
I really wish I had seen the performance. According to the press release “Stephen O’Malley and his band sunnO))) [played] on stages, with the focus involving a singer named Attila Csihar in a sealed coffin, on vocals throughout”. Downstairs is the remains of the performance with shiny black stages dirty with dust stuck to dried beer and perhaps sweat. There are more remnants on the floor a battery, bits of paper, and more dust. As you go in right in front of you is the coffin that the singer must have been in, there was a piece of paper with words on it, but I couldn’t understand it. Upstairs all the musical equipment has been cast in salt, but it looks like it has been frozen and is covered in cartoon ice dusting. It was almost as if the band had been zapped by an alien and all that was left was their inorganic equipment was frozen in the process. There were also drawings of the band from photographs but you could see anything of them. They seemed to work like advertising posters in a concert hall. Fascinating show.

Richard Forster, Cell Project Space,

258 Cambridge Heath Road, London
20 May – 25 June 2006

This show didn’t really do it for me, or maybe I am just missing the point all together. In the central room were chair frame like things that were painted shiny pink and cream. They were on and surrounding glass with a floral pattern cut into the surface and an arrangement of luminous tubes on top of it.

Anthea Hamilton, ‘Athens’

IBID PROJECTS, 210 Cambridge Heath Road, London
21 May – 16 July 2006

Anthea Hamilton transformed familiar objects into what looked like ritualistic or totemic sculptures. I found myself wondering ‘well in this religion what do snooker balls represent of mean?’ Hamilton’s work had a real weightlessness and delicacy to it. The way I walked around the gallery was changed by the floor being sanitized by lots of white tiles covering it and a foot up the wall. It did seem a bit like a bathroom, but I was when I first entered unsure if I was allowed to bring my uncleanness into this especially pure space. I do have a bit of a thing about things you can get in stationary shops, so I especially loved the Olympic rings in cello tape. Transforming, collecting and balancing seem to be very important in Hamilton’s work.

Tamsin Morse

One in the Other, 45 Vyner Street, London
11 May- 18 June 2006
Sometimes I get a bit self indulgently dismissive of painting; this show temporarily stopped it. Tamsin Morse paints people less mountain scapes, that initially look normal but then you realise that sections of the mountain seems to be floating. Their cool pinky colour reminded me of Cezanne’s Mount St. Victoire. Though unlike Cezanne that paint is applied in tiny colourful dots, the physicality of the paint is not something Morse celebrates. It is sort of a Romantic sci-fi landscape where the world is lit but there is no warm sunshine.

Dr Lakra at Kate MacGarry

9 June – 15 July
I didn’t find Dr Lakra’s tattooed objects not disturbing enough. I sort of felt that the embellished images should start to bleed, in a similar way to how shrines (often in India) have apparently started to produce blood, or is it milk? It was almost like looking at a collection of anthropological specimens, or outsider art. It was also too clean. I wanted more mess and goo.

The Wrong End of the Telescope

10 June – 9 July, Three Colts Gallery, Bethnal Green
Open Fri, Sat & Sun 12-6
Artists Anna Boggon, Silke Dettmers, Helen Maurer

It is an absolutely stunning show, linked by a dolls house view of the world. Personally, I didn’t feel any connection to ‘homeliness’; dolls houses are not homely, they are surreal, slightly scary but fascinating. Anna Boggon’s wardrobe dolls house room was consuming. I spent ages looking at it kneeling on the ground still unable to work out what was really where and which way up. It reminded me in retrospect of Leonora Carrington’s paintings, where this feminine world is suddenly disrupted by some weird addition like a giant sunflower. Helen Maurer’s objects on an overhead projector, which make an image, were great. I loved the way that something so tiny and delicate seemingly had so much power as it was projected to life size on the wall. I liked Silke Dettmers box with a window in it. I found it strangely disturbing as it didn’t allow me the pleasure of a tiny world inside; from within inside the box someone could watch me, but I could not see them.

Brett Cody Rogers ‘That Void/What Void’

May 18 June 18 2006
Luminous drip paintings that I found not ugly enough

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Crust and Dirt

Crust and Dirt's Instant Drawing Machine
Opens at The Drawing Center New York, 17 June -22 July
PV 16 June 6-8pm

Friday, June 09, 2006

You'll Never Know: Drawing and Random Interference

A Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition
25 March - 18 June Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston
29 July - 24 September Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea
30 September - 19 November The Lowry, Salford
1 Dec - 7 Jan 2007 The New Art Gallery, Walsall
13 Jan - 25 Feb Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle

Artists: Anna Barriball, Anne Bean, Ian Breakwell, Paul Cassidy, Stephen Cripps, Layla Curtis, Ian Davenport, Tracey Emin, Dave Farnham, Jem Finer, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Mona Hatoum, Claude Heath, Rebecca Horn, Tim Knowles, Tania Kovats, Henry Krokatsis, Richard Long, Alice Maher, Cornelia Parker, Steven Pippin, Damien Roach, Ed Ruscha, Keir Smith, Keith Tyson, Marl Wallinger, Klaus Weber, John Wood and Paul Harrison

The Passing Clouds, Dalston Presents

Monday 19 June 06 8pm
At The Passing Clouds Foundation, Corner of Kingsland Road and Richmond Road, behind Uncle Sam's Pub.
tube Old Street/Liverpool Street

Performance by Mat Cahill "Together we Can Work It Out!"

Video Short by Justin Virdi "An Ugly Woman From Chorley"

Both approaching their work from a background of drawing.

Free Range

Went to the Design week opening last night. I was shocked by the huge amount of space available and the streams of students there. It quite literally took up the whole of the street!!!

Next week is the start of the photography weeks. I am hoping that there will be as much energy as there was last night.

PHOTO WEEKS Opening: Thurs 15 June/ Show: Fri 16 June - Mon 19 June
Opening: Thurs 22 June/ Show: Fri 23 June - Mon 26 June

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Postgraduate Drawing Shows

Wimbledon School of Art
MA Fine Art: Drawing
Private View Friday 8th September
Saturday 9th - Thursday 14th September (except Sunday)
10am - 8pm Saturday 12pm - 4.30pm
Merton Hall Road, London, SW19 3QA

Camberwell College of Art and Design
MA Drawing
Wednesday 12 - Saturday 15 July 2006
Wednesday - Friday 10am - 8pm; Sat 10am - 4pm
Drawing is at Wilson Road, London SE5 8LU

Princes Drawing School Postgraduate year in Drawing (Oct can find exact dates)

Friday, June 02, 2006

notions of drawing

Jose Abad, Corinna Till, Melanie Titmuss, Simon Wess, Michael Schwab, Naomi Kashiwagi, Renata Fernandez, Naoko Tagai, Helene Kazan, Serap Isik, Izzie Hall, Sian Robinson, Heather Crowther, Dana Brintz, Nicola Pomery, Christina Mitrentse, John O'Connell

Private View Thur 8 June 6-9pm
CIP House, Exhibition Space Passage 133 Peckham Rye Lane Peckham SE15 3SN

Thursday, June 01, 2006

The Reliance + Seventeen

Until It Makes Sense; Drawing as a Time Based Medium curated by James Brooks
3 May – 10 June
Seventeen, 17 Kingsland Road, London E2 8AA

Caroline Achaintre, Anna Barriball, Wolfgang Berkowski, James Brooks, Susan Collis, Christopher Cook, Graham Dolphin, Amande In, Des Lawrence, Jason Martin, Guillaume Pinard, Emma Torkington.

This is an exhibition of works by artists who use drawing to explore duration of time. Including the pencil frottage works by Anna Barriball, which though the fill the entirety of the page, but the flat plain is broken up by trace of the contact with the surface which the paper was pressed against. It was interesting to see Caroline Achaintre’s drawings, which made me wonder about their relationship to the woven rug works that I saw at the Showroom last year. Susan Collis work ‘The Oyster’s Our World’ which stood unassuming in its placement in the gallery space, had really classy secretive presence, with is double take, as what looks like paint splattered is in fact inlayed corals, pearls and diamonds; I need to go back and look at ‘100% Cotton’. Chris Cook’s series of framed watery drawings at the back of the gallery investigated simply the properties of the materials and the process of making repeated marks. Looking at Chris Cook’s work I was reminded of practicing letters at school getting the right form of letter and comparing the process of production of each letter to how it looked, and how it looked in comparison the last. I am definitely going back for a second look; as I don’t feel that I have done everything justice. I did want there to be more of a presence in the centre of the gallery space, but this may not have been appropriate for this exhibition. This show is only on until 10th June.

Disintegrating Hand and Other Works Alex Pollard
27 April – 18 June 2006, Reliance, 2nd Floor, 336 Old Street, London EC1V 9DR

A new space run by the same people who run the Approach. Light with conventional white walls, open plan but intimate. The exhibition was liberated free and fun. When I first went in I was struck by the wall drawing where the ruler and the pencil that drew the line were still there. Later to discover that they weren’t really. The majority of the work looks as if it has been made from drawing materials such as old rulers, rubbers and pencils, but they are bronze or plaster that has been painted to look like these objects. These objects, which aren’t what they are, make up animals and paintings, but reference other artworks in the process. Very interesting show, in a great new space.