Museum Checklist

Go see Jeremy Deller at the Hayward, and take along a friend that doesn’t ‘do art’. I don’t think it’s possible to come away from the exhibition without a fondness for the man. Because, although Deller’s work is mostly collaborative, you come away with a feeling that here is someone totally engaged with life, with people.

Deller says he didn’t want the title to be “Joy in People” but I can see why the curator was keen for this. As a visitor, you go in with an expectation that you are going to be uplifted. Even if not all of it is. You can read the intense (sometimes alarming) writings of young Manic Street Preachers fans. There is a large black wall inscribed “I <3 Melancholy”, complete with melancholic person curled up on the sofa, thinking or reading. There’s the re-enactment of the Battle of Orgreave, a violent clash between strikings miners and police in 1984.

So it is not always about joy, but it is a kind of celebration of people. There are many celebratory things here: banners from parades, brass bands, pop music. He has the curious mind of a documentary maker, but what he gives us is far less masterminded; he’s letting people speak for themselves. He collaborates simply because sometimes other people are much better placed to realise his ideas.

The Hayward is a great space for it, because there is space. The exhibition has a very relaxed feel, indeed you can stop for a cup of tea at Valerie’s Snack Bar inside the exhibition, which I really enjoyed because it’s such a good chance to pause and take in what you’ve been seeing. Also this seems to help avoid fostering the reverent hushed atmosphere you get in many exhibitions.

Deller is totally into pop culture and subcultures and it’s a great chance to examine these familiar nostalgic things within the relative neutrality of the gallery space. It’s fun and it’s thoughtful and it made me want to seek out his work outside the gallery.

David Hockney has a special gift with colour. A line of blue trees sings behind felled logs of orange and purple. A vividness in these works which lead some people to say he’s brought a bit of a fanciable imagination back from California with him. Does Yorkshire really look like this? (Certainly Yorkshire may do well from this - copies of the Rough Guide for sale in the rammed gift shop).

I disagree, though, because Hockney is all about seeing. He’s looked and looked and looked at so many elements of the Yorkshire landscape. His output is overwhelming. He’s truly excited about it, the whole exhibition is a rallying cry of get out there and look! (Preferably with a paintbrush or charcoal, of course and certainly not with a single click of the shutter). It’s enough to drive around and around the landscape, like he did, commit it to memory, then make works later back in his Californian studio.

However, my favourites are directly observed. A room is dedicated to the Woldgate Woods over the different seasons and it feels like you are plungng into the woods as you walk in. The monumentality of a lot of the work is purposefully reminiscent of theatre set design.

Hockney’s excitement and energy flows over into embracing new technology and his iPad works have beautiful energy: you can see wirey weaves of colours making up hedgerows, in others airbrush is used to soften and give depth through trees. He has also managed to exactly match the colours he uses in his paintings; from a distance they look just like his paintings.

The large works have been created especially for the RA; here’s a man who anticipated the crowds and has purposefully created spectacle. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

(Source: royalacademy.org.uk)

So nice to go to something and be mightily impressed. Really, another painter with the mastery and mystery of Richter. Here’s a painter who can paint figures in a flat, thin way, and then go about obscuring them in wildy contrasting ways: colour grids on a slant, they’re not quite pixels, but they nod to them, and OIL, sludge, ALL OVER. How he does this, and not disrupt the cool flat paint below, I do not know. Powerful and clever, and yes, that word, haunting.

Until 11 February, Flowers Cork Street.

(Source: flowersgalleries.com)

Made my way over to Tate Modern one Friday late to get a load of the Richter retrospective. I had high expectations - having seen his portraits at the NPG a couple of years ago I knew how impressive his work can be. What I was not prepared for was this absolutely overwhelming experience. There was a LOT of work to see, and all of it holds this strange unsettling, marvelling power (to different degrees), well it was exhausting.

(c) Gerhard Richter

I was particularly drawn to Seascape (Sea-Sea), 1970, on first look a fairly minimal seascape in black and white. It was painted from photographs, and Richter had reversed the view of the sea at the top in the place of sky. It had power and intensity of its own, drawing me in. I found it hard to move on, and was drawn back to this painting a few times, each time the work was more strange and unsettling… deceptively simple, how did he do it? And that was how I felt, going from room to room, each room overwhelming, each room brilliant enough on its own: it’s exhausting just looking at this work, how the hell could he find the energy to even make it? AND he can seem to turn his hands to anything. He paints in many ways: photorealism, abstract, gestural, minimal, each time reinventing each one, each time being undeniably ‘Richter’.

The experience left me drained - I had to head straight home to recover - even though I went in energetic. He casts a spell, leaving you disorientated, in awe, absorbed, on another plane of reality. What an achievement.

(Source: tate.org.uk)

I went to see Women War Artists, all work from the Imperial War Museum (IWM)’s art collection. The concept was deceptively simple: all the artists were women whose subject was war during the 20th century. Then an exhibition was worked out from there.

However, a problem had arisen: how to display the work of post-1945 artists, those who worked in diverse materials: video, photographs, artist’s books, alongside the work of the pre-1945 artists. For there is a strong narrative that emerges when examining the latter group. World War I was the first time the UK government commissioned official war artists, and they weren’t really up for getting many women involved. By World War II, they were a little bit more enlightened: they commissioned women but would rather they covered women’s work, rather than the front-line of conflict. The exhibition also brought together women artists who worked independently, which had its advantages - after all the original aim of the official art was propaganda.

A Shell Forge at a National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London, 1918, oil on canvas by Anna Airy

Anna Airy, commisioned by the IWM  in 1918, was unusual in that she captured men’s workplaces. However, the accompanying text noted that her commissioning agreement was ‘unusually stringent’, with ‘penalty clauses for any delay’. Considering these restrictions, her strong, atmospheric, glowing painting of a shell forge at Hackney Marshes is even more impressive. In 1919 the British War Memorials Committee rejected her painting of munitions girls leaving work - even though it was they who approached her to paint it. She subsequently destroyed the painting.

Eleanor (Erlund) Hudson has two lively drawings in the exhibition: Forces Canteen (1942) and Forces Canteen Kitchen (1943). The War Artists Advisory Committee bought the latter one; they were not interested in the former as it showed men relaxing off duty.

Forces Canteen, watercolour and conte on paper, by Eleanor (Erlund) Hudson, 1942

Even as recently as 1982, when Linda Kitson was the first woman artist to be commissioned to accompany soldiers into conflict (during the Falklands war), she was not allowed to travel on a naval vessel on account of her gender. The exhibition was not arranged in chronological order, and her sketches worked well with the earlier drawings and paintings. However, most of the later works of art did not come off so well. Fiona Banner’s artist’s book All the World’s Fighter Planes didn’t have much power, stuck in a box with an overly explanatory label. Sophie Ristelhueber’s photographic work didn’t make any sense at all in this context, accompanied by a huge text panel which must have been size 11 font and at belly height.

With the benefit of hindsight, I put forward this idea: 2 exhibitions of 4ish months each, rather than 1 of 9 months. The first one would cover the first and second world wars, the second one the opening up of methods and concepts that followed. You would get to see more of the collection too.

The exhibition was rounded off by a hugely moving video by Mona Hatoum (Measures of Distance - taped conversations and slides from 1981). While I was there, I noticed other visitors didn’t spend time with this one, again perhaps because it’s such a different gallery experience to looking at the earlier paintings. It demanded time and patience.

A member of staff told me - you must see ‘Shaped by War’, about Don McCullin’s photographs. So I did but I didn’t stay long. What a contrast to the previous exhibition: bold, bright orange to set off with his black and white photographs, it certainly grabbed the attention. Here was something exciting! it was saying. McCullin is a very famous and accomplished war photographer; his photographs are necessarily arresting.

Unfortunately this exhibition was too gooey-eyed over his celebrity to be able to show off these photographs in the best light. His cameras, passports and press-passes all in shiny glass boxes; maps detailing his travels; his own image and quotations scattered everywhere; his life ‘Shaped by War’ was offered up as something to be in awe of.

At its worst, it veered towards ‘poverty porn’. Turning away from the giant faces of his subjects staring out at me, I caught the end of each subject panel telling me what prize he had won next.

It’s not too extreme to say I was appalled. Surely the IWM should know better than this? Surely its remit is to use these photographs to illuminate us on stories of war, rather than on one man’s dazzling career? At the end you could even talk to him, his arrogant face on a touch-screen. Aaaagh! I didn’t, but let me tell you, I did submit a comment.

(Source: iwm.org.uk)

Away from the chaotic streets of Istanbul, and in the more familiar post-industrial habitat of the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, we entered the cool space of Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), 2011.

It was a warehouse full of exciting ideas, with 5 sections themed thus: Untitled (Abstraction), Untitled (Ross), Untitled (Passport), Untitled (History) and Untitled (Death by Gun).

My favourite part was listening to a teacher take a very intelligent group of kids round the Death by Gun section. Huge subject for these kids, but he did not shy away from making them think, asking them questions and accepting a whole range of answers. I have no idea where these kids came from - they sounded American, maybe an international school.

This huge show is impossible to cover comprehensively, so here are a few personal highlights.

Dani Gal’s simple idea of collecting vinyl relating to historical and political events was very effective: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tigershungry/6223923433/in/set-72157627848127670/ This is an ongoing collection and ranges from the pompous, to the optimistic, to the downright chilling.

Wael Shawky got his own back on Team America, coming up with something even more Team America than the original: unsettling, amusing, and all in Arabic. These Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Files actually tell the story of the first Crusade 1096-99 from an Arab perspective. He uses 200 year old puppets in his beautifully lit and thoughtfully shot film. I didn’t know anything about the subject at the time, but was no less captivated.

Bisan Abu-Eisheh collected personal belongings left behind from bulldozed houses from Israel’s West Bank. Carefully laying these out, cataloguing the number of former occupants and playing a simple film of a house being knocked down was understated and very powerful.

I was reeled in watching Akram Zaatari’s film Tomorrow Everything Will be Alright. Most of the action involves watching a conversation play out on an old typewriter. Like web chat, only with… a ghost… an old lover? It certainly felt dangerous.

Very much appreciated this one too: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tigershungry/6224447866/in/set-72157627848127670/ by Hank Willis Thomas.

With thanks to Tigers Hungry for the photographs

(Source: 12b.iksv.org)

The intrepid MC has been venturing further afield, treking around Europe in search of culture. This is the first of 2 travel specials focussing on contemporary art. There is something very special about seeing contemporary art in other countries (particularly on a grand scale). The experience always seems to leave more of an impression: a signpost in my mind.

Tomas Saraceno’s Cloud Cities at Hamburger Bahnhof is all about experience. We were on holiday, in a playful spirit, and this totally suited our mood.

He calls these bubbles ‘biospheres’. Saraceno initially trained as an architect and these ‘spaces containing life’ are influenced by early utopian visions of architecture such as those of Buckminster Fuller. However, wasn’t this space a complete adventure playground? It certainly inspired my friends and I, ‘swimming’ on a layer of air in the upper part of a bubble, synchronising into parachute-jump style formations, entertaining fellow gallery visitors below. It took us out of the everyday.

At the Architektonika exhibition, in another part of Hamburger Bahnhof, we had to remember that we were back in the world of the White Space and that these pieces were not interactive. All that minimalism, there was some lovely stuff here by Carl Andre and Dan Graham, but the fact that we couldn’t just step into it made it seem so dated. Bruce Nauman’s Room With My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care (1984) was brilliant: more than mere representation, it seemed to actually be that place from that dark corner of your mind. This photo only gives you a clue http://www.flickr.com/photos/tigershungry/6224413882/in/set-72157627848127670/

With thanks to Tigers Hungry for the last photograph

(Source: hamburgerbahnhof.de)

Thoroughly enjoyed a recent visit to the recently souped-up SS Great Britain in Bristol. It’s a far cry from the partially interpreted ship that I visited as a child. I suspect they kept a couple of the mannequins, but that’s about it.

Explaining conservation work and making it a part of the visitor experience is a contemporary idea and it works superbly here. Visitors can now go ‘underwater’ to see the iron hull, kept in a very dry enviroment (20% relative humidity if you want to know) in order to preserve the ironwork. It’s hot and strangely claustrophobic but visually very interesting, and has that feel of letting you in ‘behind the scenes’ which is always a bonus to museum geeks.

The interpretation is imaginative: your ticket to the museum is a replica of an original SS Great Britain ticket, bringing you all the excitement of embarking on a voyage of adventure. Before you board, you go through a museum, which takes you backwards through time, stopping off at key points in the ship’s history. Lots of excellent stuff here, including a nice film taken on the ship on rough seas, and a realistic interactive where you can have a go at steering the ship yourself.

Once on board, you’re free to explore. There’s nothing to read in terms of signage (to make it look more realistic) so you choose from 4 audio guides: 1st class passenger, 3rd class (steerage) passenger, the ship’s cat (for kids), or a rather techy guide for ship enthusiasts. There’s no set route either which I favour, so it’s easy to go at your own pace. Inside the dimly lit kitchen, there is a lot of attention to detail. I suspect the dining room is far bigger than it would have been historically. It can be hired out for weddings and other functions, so who can blame them? As an independent charitable trust the added income is essential.

Medicines in the doctor’s cabin

(Source: ssgreatbritain.org)

I was thinking about this theme recently. Firstly at the Barbican Centre’s fantastic Watch Me Move show, a hugely ambitious exhibition covering everything about animation. Well not everything, that’s impossible, but it really tried, going for quantity, breadth, over depth. There was next to no interpretation. If you wanted to find out about a director/artist, or how one of the films was made, you’d have to make a note and go and look it up yourself later.

This was obviously a conscious decision so that, freed from panels of text, visitors could simply watch. I really enjoyed it, and saw many great things. It’s up to me now to try to remember them.

At the other end of the scale, we have QR codes. I don’t have a smart phone, but I’m betting one day, when I’m brave enough to part with the money and responsible enough to look after it, I’ll progress into owning one too. QR codes are no good without them, but if you do have a smart phone, how many times have you scanned the code to gain… more?

Museums and galleries are turning to use them on labels and interpretation. See this recent example at the Whitechapel Gallery:

At my place of work we’ve started to experiment with these on labels by works of art. So, I turned to my tech guru friend (who has special ‘future sight’) to ask her opinion: “They’re just barcodes”. She doesn’t think people bother with them. She has a smart phone and just photographs things she’s interested in.

(Source: barbican.org.uk)

Museum fans! Apologies. I feel I’ve been neglecting you. MC has been out and about enjoying the summer, but never fear, today it is pouring with rain outside and I am back, tucked behind my laptop where I belong.

The other week I visited the National Portrait Gallery’s Portrait Prize with a lovely bunch of esteemed colleagues which is always a good idea because portraits always seem to inspire different reactions. I felt I knew a bit more about my friends from their tastes and insights.

So why do I say the problem of the portrait? Because I think we may all have slightly different definitions. For me, a portrait has to go below the surface, and this is incredibly difficult. Yes I would expect technical competence, and some kind of likeness. But most of all, I would expect a portrait to reveal something more about the sitter, something the artist, in all her insightfulness, can draw out. Some there did not manage to do this. There were post-modern noises made, displays of knowledge of reams of art history (ahem… second prize winner). There were examples of the usual grappling with the photographic aesthetic, causing viewers to marvel at the technique, for sure, but only some of these revealed beyond that surface.

There were some stunning pieces though (as well as ones that just left all of us cold). For me the more modest, less shouty ones were more thoughtful and special, like Matthew Schofield’s Six Decades:

(c) Matthew Schofield

(not ideal way to view it but it gives you an idea - all the exhibitors’ work is reproduced on the NPG’s website, below). And there seems to be a very varied selection this year. If you go there, you’ll surely find something that tunes you in.

Abi by Nathan Ford, 2011. (c) the artist

(Source: npg.org.uk)