Glasgow International is happening online, right now

The art festival Glasgow International (Gi) had to cancel and has curated a set of seven different artworks available online for the duration of the festival (until 10th May). Some are special commissions, some works were made long before the pandemic hit, but all artists would have been taking part in the festival itself, and the works represent a taster of what would have been available to see. While I understand that Gi want to mark the period when the festival would have taken place, it feels needlessly restrictive to have made this very interesting set of works available only to take them down after two and a half weeks. Time seems arbitrary now. I barely know what day it is, let alone the date. Why not leave them up until the end of lockdown or the end of May at least?

I was a bit late to the party but I’ve just finished watching/listening to them all and wanted to highlight two that resonated with me.

The first is Yuko Mohri’s Everything Flows – distance, 2020. Mohri has taken Yasujirō Ozu’s 1953 silent film Tokyo Story (which I haven’t seen), and has spliced together scenes devoid of human presence. What we are left with is a ghostly compilation of images which suggest humans through their absence. The city continues to function, ships move through water with purpose, but seem to be operated by remote control. Robotic railway station signs indicate platforms and train times to no one. Clothes on washing lines blow in the breeze and shadows on the walls of cramped interiors hint at human life, but each time, the film cuts out just before the figure comes into frame. It’s a tantalising series of almost-moments, which chimes well with having experienced a quiet, deserted central Edinburgh over the last month or so. There’s a strong sense of people watching the goings on from the high viewpoints over the city. Lanterns look like eyes. A moth bashes against a light, a fragile reflection on the futility of existence in this silent world.

Victoria St, Edinburgh looking empty on 25 April 2020

Urara Tsuchiya’s Give us a Meow, 2019, is my other pick of the bunch. This one surprised me – from the cover image and the title I didn’t think I would like it. But the 9 minute film is captivating. It tells a fragmented story, set in the rural idyll of a cottage and the countryside around it. We follow the escapades of a glamorous Asian woman who dons an impressive range of sexy outfits including animal print catsuits, fluffy negligee, powder blue and baby pink fur coats. The costumes are all made by Tsuchiya and are highly influenced by drag, adding to the fascinating confusion around the identity of our protagonist. She dances, applies makeup, takes selfies and does the ironing. It’s a surreal and humorous mash-up of the extremes of femininity, typified by one excellent shot which briefly flashes up, showing a pair of legs clad in high-heeled boots, sticking out from behind twee floral curtains. I took a screenshot which is probably not allowed, but who knows the rules of a digital art festival. Maybe this is part of a process of the democratisation of image-making, taken to a new level.

Still from Urara Tsuchiya’s ‘Give us a Meow’, 2019

For me, in a time of lockdown, it seems as though the character in Give us a Meow is attempting to recreate the experience of being in a nightclub within a completely incompatible setting of ‘home’. She dances like no one’s watching. She even has a little cry in the bathroom, picks herself back up and heads out again, an experience I’m sure we can all relate to. Seeing her vulnerability when navigating a cattle grid in heels is beautiful and moving and funny.

There’s also a fascinating, sinister aspect reflecting on the voyeurism of the film. She appears to be alone, but is not – she breaks the fourth wall repeatedly to interact with us, casting glances directly at the camera, creepily/seductively waving at us from the toilet seat. In the moments filmed outside, with her dancing by the side of the road, the film is shot from the perspective of someone watching from a car window. We are there, but it feels like someone else is there too. This also resonates particularly now – we rely on our cameras more than ever for interaction and attention, but constant rumours circulating about hackers in Zoom calls and sessions on Houseparty make us paranoid about who else might be watching. Tsuchiya created the work last year, but it feels more relevant than ever now.

So, that’s my take. I know there’s so much content out there at the moment, it can be overwhelming. I know that digital art events don’t appeal in the same way as the ones in ‘real life’, which can take you to different corners of your city and have a physicality to them that can’t be recreated on screen. But these artists have created something really interesting. What worked for me may not work for you – see what you think and let me know in the comments, or DM me on Instagram @encounters_art. I’m always here for a conversation about art!

Performance Live: The Way Out review

It’s raining heavily outside, and a soaked through, frightened, hooded figure stumbles upon a grand pair of wooden doors. They open automatically, and seem to offer an alternative to the storm, and whatever else is lurking outside that troubles our protagonist. This is how The Way Out, Battersea Arts Centre’s offering for BBC Culture in Quarantine, begins. I promise you that if you like imaginative, surreal adventures and need an escape from this covid-consumed world (as I did yesterday) you will fall down this creative rabbit hole and not look back.

There are a number of references to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and in many ways this is a modern retelling, one that celebrates the talent that Battersea Arts Centre has to offer as well as the transformative power of creativity. But before we make our way to experience the performances, we first encounter the enigmatic Omid Djalili, our guide and master of ceremonies. His existential musings on pathways, growth, entrances and exits hover between philosophy and riddle. As our journey through this old town hall with crumbling walls and labyrinthine corridors continues, he is increasingly likeable and intriguing.

*The work incorporates some of BAC’s art installations, such as Hope, by Caroline Russell (2019)*

We begin as curious but detached observers, audience members, pondering how it is possible for a body to become fluid in the way that Botis Seva’s does in his performance of Quick Sand, performed alongside what seems to be a broken hourglass, its sediments hardened to the floor. As we venture further into the warren, we enter different worlds, a deep sea chamber where drag artist and opera performer Le Gateau Chocolat reigns supreme, singing a lonely siren song to the luscious, pulsating backdrop of a string trio. As the journey continues, its sinister edge, probably imagined by our own suspicions and scepticism, slowly gives way lightness and joy. We enter the cabaret world of the Cocoa Butter Club and we realise we are now participants in the show. There’s a performance of “Young Hearts Run Free”, one of my favourite disco classics which is poignant and joyful in equal measure. It’s a party and a crazy one at that, the kind of night when time warps and you don’t realise how late or early it is, or how it got to be light outside?

*Botis Seva working magic with his movements in Quick Sand*

The building is in many ways my favourite part of the show. It transported me, kindling memories of similar places I’ve been or known – art venues like Summerhall in Edinburgh (which is currently crowdfunding), nightclubs, the backstages of theatres, the burlesque house from The Simpsons, Shangri-la at Glastonbury, and even certain dark, decrepit corridors of my Midlands secondary school. The film is about 40 minutes long and is taken in a single shot from around head height, making it as close to immersive theatre as TV can get. You are the one journeying through the maze. And wow, it feels good to be traveling through and exploring a hive of creativity and weirdness. While watching I vow to myself not to take these experiences for granted again.

Come As You Are is a heartfelt poem written and performed by Sanah Ahsan, resplendent in a bright yellow suit and standing in centre of what seems to be a yellow brick road. It’s a nod to another memorable, psychedelic adventure into another land – except it is made from flowers and not bricks. A road made of flowers sums up the paradoxes of this wonderful piece of theatre, this story. It’s bizarre, fun and seems impossible and yet it works because of all the paradoxes woven into it. It is a beautiful escape, so perfect and so utterly needed for these times that it’s hard to believe that it wasn’t planned for a quarantined world (it was filmed in January).

This flight of fantasy took me out of myself for a moment. Hopefully, on the other side of this stationary journey we are all undergoing, we can emerge, like the character from The Way Out, with our hoods thrown back, ready to embrace the world, each other and ourselves.

Layers of a life

There are some artworks that become wedged in your heart. You carry them with you, and mostly they lay dormant. Then occasionally they will surface from nowhere, reminding you of something you saw, read, felt years ago. For me, one of those objects is something I saw at Found, an exhibition curated by Cornelia Parker at The Foundling Museum in 2016. I must have loved it at the time, because I bought the catalogue, and that hardly ever happens.

The piece in question is by John Smith and is unassuming and profound in equal measure. As someone who believes in the necessity of encountering art in the everyday, it’s exactly the kind of work that chimes with me.

*John Smith, Dad’s Stick, c.1950-2007, wood and paint, 23 x 2.7cm*

It’s difficult to know how to describe Dad’s Stick – it hovers part way between art piece, art object, tool, item, artefact. This stick belonged to the artist’s father and was used to stir paint pots for around six decades. Then, towards the end of his life, Smith’s father cut through the stick. This act revealed a cross-section of multiple layers of paint, each covering over the other, like the concentric rings of a tree. It’s a wonderful thing: documenting changes in taste, memories of rooms, snapshots of different projects, a humble memorial preserving a life story, or multiple stories. In the Found catalogue, Smith reflects that looking at the colours of the stick took him back to his childhood, “the greyish green of our 1950s kitchen cupboards and the bright orange that covered the walls of our hallway in the 1960s.” (p.122). Smith created a film to accompany the object which was also shown in the exhibition. You can see an extract of it here.

Perhaps this object resonated with me because my own childhood home had this layering too. My mum, a good seamstress with an eye for interior design, made our own curtains, and as I grew up, she covered over the childish Alice in Wonderland fabric in my bedroom with a more teenager-appropriate material. My parents don’t live there anymore, but I wonder if the current inhabitants ever puzzle over the faint colours and shapes they can see through the fabric in certain types of light. Or they may have got rid of the curtains entirely – I’ll never know.

The flip side of Dad’s Stick is the rooms themselves. Most houses have multiple layers of paint, wallpaper, and questionable decor that exists below our current surroundings. Buildings have stories, and ghosts, in their very walls. Their history is a layered patchwork of the different lives played out in their rooms.

This feels more prevalent than ever while we are all confined to our homes. I live in an Edinburgh tenement flat, part of an old stone block with one side facing the street and the other overlooking an enclosed courtyard at the back. Muffled voices through walls, the frenzy of a washing machine from the flat next door, the occasional footsteps in the hallway are all part of the daily routine. They were always there, but noticing them, and their closeness, is unavoidable now. I see people smoking out of their windows, they see me moving from room to room, chasing the sun as it graces different parts of the flat throughout the day, we watch people hanging out their washing and cats prowling in the overgrown backyard.

Being at home all the time has reminded me of these layers of lives and histories we live alongside and we contribute towards. Artworks like this one can help us process these situations, reminding us we are all part of the layering process, reassuring us that people lived here before, and they will again once we move on.

Gormley and Eliasson: perception and perspective

At first glance, it might not seem that there is much that connects the art of Anthony Gormley and Olafur Eliasson. Two weeks ago I would have summarised Gormley’s work as largely figurative, heavy, often made using metal and other industrial materials, and sombre in tone, while I tended to think of Eliasson’s as abstract, colourful and using a range of substances, natural and artificial, to playful effect.

Before visiting their recent exhibitions in London two weeks ago, the only thing that connected them in my mind was the fact that both shows were exceedingly busy and popular. This was based on the huge volume of posts I’d seen on Instagram, combined with an article in the Guardian in which gallery-goers expressed their chagrin that other people were getting in their way of enjoying art (more on that later).

Both exhibitions surprised me, starting with the Gormley. Although I’ve always enjoyed his work when I’ve come across it, I’ve often thought of it as fairly repetitive (frequently based on his own body) and ubiquitous. His sculptures are scattered across the country, in high-profile installations from Gateshead to Merseyside. In Edinburgh there are six Gormleys standing in a short stretch of the Water of Leith. But the Royal Academy show demonstrated how his artwork is much broader and more varied than the ‘universal’ self portraits we are frequently exposed to in his public art. His best works challenge how we perceive space, and how we perceive ourselves and each other through art.

For instance, his Lost Horizon (2008), presents us with a familiar sight, multiple forms of Gormley’s body in cast iron, but in a different way. Bodies jut out at all angles and surround us, defying gravity and playing with our senses. The work isn’t ponderous, it’s fun. Seeing the exhibition on the last day meant that the room was packed with people, making it difficult to tell the sculptures from the live bodies that surrounded them.

Art and life intermingle in *Lost Horizon I* (2008)

Some of you might look at that photo and recoil at the number of people in the room. Yes, both exhibitions were busy. But part of experiencing art is noticing how others experience it: seeing other people react to and interact with art is one of the things I find most interesting about it. This aspect was what really made me see the connections between the two artists’ work. Humans play a major part in activating these artworks and making them resonate.

Visiting the Eliasson exhibition mid-week and during the day, I experienced it alongside a large school group of teenagers. Their interactions with Your Uncertain Shadow (colour) (2010), brought the work to life for me: they danced, flicked their hair, and had fun with it. One criticism that has been levelled at the show is that it’s a little gimmicky, but it is indisputable that this very quality makes it a good entry point for young people. And in turn, they remind us that we don’t have to be so serious all the time when it comes to art.

My fellow guests brought Your Uncertain Shadow (colour) to life

As well as having moments of levity and playfulness though, both exhibitions experimented with their visitors’ senses of fear and disorientation. Walking, sitting and lying beneath the Gormley’s colossal Matrix III (2019), 21 intersecting weighty steel mesh cages that contrasted satisfyingly with the Academy’s gilt cornices, felt genuinely daring. Cautiously making my way through the 39-metre fog tunnel of Eliasson’s Din blinde Passager (Your blind passenger) (2010), I wondered whether this immersive journey through colour and light would ever end (is this what they speak about when they say you see a white light when you die?!) Both were enormous, immersive, visceral and tinged with danger.

Walking underneath *Matrix III* – not for the faint-hearted

Alongside the colossal, statement-making art of these two big budget shows, there is also an exploration of vulnerability which makes them more than a bombastic celebration of these highly successful artists’ achievements.

Eliasson’s work is centred around the environment, focusing on absence as well as presence, and soberly examines the loss of elements of our natural world in an era of climate crisis. Installations remind the viewer of the magic of the everyday: rain trickling down a window in Regenfenster (1999), the different effects that occur when light and water meet are made manifest in Beauty (1993) and Big Bang Fountain (2014). The ghostly imprints left by glacial ice melting into thin washes of colour in the Glacial currents series (2018) were almost haunting.

*Glacial currents (yellow, sienna)*, 2018

While Eliasson’s work focusses on the vulnerability of the planet, Gormley takes us back to ourselves once again. Starting the journey in the courtyard with Iron Baby (1999), at the end of the show we encounter ourselves once more, in Pile I (2017) and Pile II (2018). Stacks of simple, earth-coloured clay, huddled on the floor and without a plinth to protect them from the metal grates beneath, these small works are the hardest hitting of all in their unassuming fragility. We contemplate ourselves, our earthliness and our mortality.

Full circle: we encounter ourselves again as huddled lumps of clay

In very different ways, both artists are helping us to make sense of ourselves, our present, and heightening our awareness of our surroundings. That kind of lesson is worth braving a crowded exhibition for – and who knows – you might even feel inspired by those you have been thrown together with on your journey of discovery.

Belfast’s murals

Last weekend was my first visit to Belfast, and I spent some time looking at the city’s famous murals. I wasn’t there for nearly long enough – there are hundreds of murals scattered throughout the city and I only managed to walk around the Falls Road and Shankill Road areas for a short while. But what little I saw I know will stay with me for a long time.

A section of the International Wall, which addresses global struggles

I wouldn’t presume to even try and talk in detail about the context here, but the murals are deeply embedded in years of complicated and violent political history. Public art is always a reflection of power struggles: who is represented and who is left out is a political issue. This is even more true in the case of the murals, which have sprung up over decades, and are for the most part created by people who live in these communities, rather than by artists brought in from outside and commissioned to make work.

The subjects of the murals vary hugely, but many of them commemorate the victims of The Troubles. In a conflict fought at such close quarters, even the smallest of exposed façades becomes a canvas for stating the allegiances of the area.

Signs and symbols: the crown dotting the ‘i’ of Shankill denotes the area’s allegiances

I was shocked to learn that thousands of lives were lost in the violence, and perhaps just as surprising was that neither me, nor any of the people I was with (Scottish and English) had learned anything about the conflict in school, even though it is very much in living memory and an important part of both British and Irish history.

The Bobby Sands mural is the most photographed in Belfast.

It’s a moving and hard-hitting experience, but walking the streets and engaging with the murals as a tourist is one of the ways we can learn about the city’s difficult past in an accessible way. It’s also an important reminder that images, signs and symbols are always laced with countless different meanings, and it is worth taking some time to try and decipher them.

Images of solidarity using the colours of the Irish and Palestinian flags, situated on the International Wall

‘National Gallery, London’, by Jean-François Rauzier (2018)

I keep on thinking about a remarkable work I saw as part of Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage at the Modern last week, which I didn’t include in my review. The work was made in 2018 by Jean-Francois Rauzier (b.1952) and is called National Gallery, London.

At this stage I will admit that I may have been predisposed to think favourably of the piece. I worked at National Gallery for around four years, and the bonds I form with places dear to me don’t tend to fade away casually. This work recreates some of the place’s grandeur, its abundance, then mashes it up and reimagines it in the most striking way.

The composition is made up of thousands of different photos of the National Gallery, with around 3000 works from the collection digitally stitched together (hence being part of the ‘Cut and Paste’ narrative). The National Gallery’s architecture has been futuristically transposed, its famous long vistas and arches lined up across the base of the work, while the broad white borders that cut horizontally across the centre give the impression of a multi-storey building, packed to the rafters with paintings in a dizzying salon hang.

National Gallery, London is one of Rauzier’s “Hyperphotos”, which he began creating in 2002 and which combine the feeling of a panorama with microscopic detail. While it may not be evident from my own photographs of the work, snapped during an exhibition visit, each painting is reproduced with pinpoint accuracy, astounding detail and clarity. Getting up close to the work, the viewer can pick out any number of famous, recognisable and well-loved paintings. For me, finding some of my old favourites was like searching for the faces of long lost friends in a crowd.

I found George Stubbs’ *Whistlejacket* (1762), a painting I loved as a child, taking pride of place in the centre.

One of the special things about the National Gallery is that in the action of walking through its rooms, the visitor goes on a pretty comprehensive journey through the history of Western European painting from c.1250-c.1930. Within that broad narrative, each painting tells an individual story, and captures something of its own historical moment. With the help of wall texts, written by curators and educators, we as viewers use clues to decipher that story, such as the subject matter, the style in which it is painted, the life of the artist, or through the artwork’s history as an object itself (who it was painted for, who has owned it throughout the centuries).

Even though I am lucky enough to be familiar with some of the works photographed by Rauzier, I felt as though I needed hours, if not days, to look properly at this artwork and the paintings contained within it, just as when you visit an art gallery you know it won’t be possible to absorb everything before what a friend of mine calls “museum back” kicks in and you need to sit down in the cafe.

A wall of paintings by Titian (1490-1576). What’s not to love?

There is so much life packed into every single artwork, and the more you learn about the history of art, the more remarkable it is that here, Rauzier has piled a major chunk of that sumptuous and fascinating history into one single work, exercising his own curatorial and architectural choices along the way. He tells the story in way that would almost be legible in one glance, were it not for the sheer weight of all that’s packed into it.

As individuals, we create and take our own meanings from artworks, and our experience of art is informed by our own stories, which is certainly one of the reasons why I found this work by Rauzier so fascinating, and why I know I’ll keep finding things to say about it even after I’ve hit the ‘publish’ button for this blog post. Whether or not you are interested in art history, it is impossible to deny that Rauzier’s futuristic retelling of it is a visual feast, albeit an overwhelming one that is impossible to finish in one sitting.