The Main Man - Robert Hughes

Art as commerce is taken for granted these days, it is the product of a self-fulfilling prophecy encouraged even by artists, the very people who are meant to uphold its integrity. What is great about Robert Hughes perspective on it all is that he took into account the history of over 30 years of the relationship between money and art.
The 70’s budget filming which caught the frisson between Robert Scull and Rauschenberg was a magic moment. Delirious with rage at the mark up of his work auctioned off by the unscrupulous collector, R said something like “You should at least send me some flowers,”. This Sotheby’s auction in 1973 was marked as an unequivocal turning point shaping our art world today.

The thing is with Hughes, is like all 70 year old men, he has come to an age were things are ’not like it they used to be’ generally. Yet, his final words of warning, that art constantly has to justify its’ own purpose, and if the soul purpose is to respond to the commercial market, it will die, are telling words from a wise man. One day Hirst, Warhol, Koons could be out of fashion. You never know. It might happen. And then what will the collectors be left with? Sand in their hand. If you buy for pleasure at least you will always have something.
Compare this to the collapse of investment banking companies who have debased the financial market, and a clear analogy can be made.

But it is not all gloom and doom. Who knows about the New York art scene, but the London one is still banging with up and coming artists that create subtle work with multi-layered meanings, skilful and inspirational. Take Hackney Wicked, and Hackney in general as an exciting area of budding culture. The fact that the council are compulsory buying, rent has increased, and office blocks are making their way there in the event of 2012 is another matter.

Words of comfort are this. If you assume that art is good because it is put in a swanky gallery with a large price tag. You are wrong. And you are also an ar**hole anyway, with the personality of cardboard. Yes it is unfortunate that money can distort or dictate what is put on display and revered. But the one thing you have is your own judgement; your own response to art and that is what you can be true to. If you set out to look for worthwhile art (in your own opinion) you will find it. There is enough of it out there in London to be satisfied.

All photos credited as: Installation view: Tony Oursler: High, Lisson Gallery, London 3 September, ­3 October 2008. Photo: Ken Adlard. Courtesy of the artist and Lisson gallery

Tony Oursler portrays a growing 21st century phenomena in a witty and sometimes dark surrealist manner. Delving into the cheap industries built around our modern life, polluting our society and our brains, the ‘quick fix’ highs that are part of everyday existence.

The Lisson Gallery has placed key old works alongside 16 new ones to present Oursler’s fantastic ‘all senses covered’ spectacles in the right context.

From Internet gambling, downloading girls on your mobile, to cigarettes and beer. A load of seedy junk, is summed up in Scratch which projects four film snippets rotating on three white panels. Someone scratching out an instant lottery card, a finger repeatedly pressing the delete button on a keyboard, a tongue swallowing some sort of prescription pill and a hand rearranging a sad lot of possessions which amount to a couple of keys, one family photo, some cigarettes etc.

These anonymous hands represent anyone’s hands.Mr Joe Blog’s hands, whose life is mundane and should really get out more.

The brilliant Winston,Camel,Salem,Marlboro is an arrangement of different sized columns each with a cigarette projected onto them, burning and un-burning. The ever-present addiction of the ‘three-minute-fix-life-killing’ beauty that is the modern day cigarette. Here it is in all its’ oversized glory. The unfaltering stupidity of the cheep fix exposed.

Sex and seduction too is part of our throw-away society. Cropping up in 121 a huge Magnum ice cream being seductively licked by tongue and lips (sex as advertising fodder), or Cherry Nokia a mobile phone with scantily clad girls prancing around (sex as a quick moneymaking scam). Remote, tacky and unsatisfying. Or the bizarre. Liquid, is a video of a woman with red liquid poured down her throat till she chokes and ungracefully splurts it out played in rewind on a loop. Or perhaps this film is more to with consumerism.

Consumerism is an issue constantly tacked by artists; here Oursler puts a sometimes eerie and sometimes cheeky spin on things.
Money talks or at least the queen does on a projected oversized ten pound note. “Fair exchange is all I ask” she garbles, “increased tolerance slowly over time”, if the queen could talk on a tenner I’m sure this is exactly what she would be saying.

But this is not the full story. You can’t neatly put these works pigeonholes without untidy bits falling out.

Interwoven in this general premise are some works that are perplexing and incomprehensible. Take ASL; floral wallpaper with a ghostly clown figure projected on it - talking in random broken sentences, a separate projection of an ear, and on the wall behind the huge profile of a woman’s green face also talking. Are they having a conversation? If they are only they can understand it. Oursler poses these questions with no real answer. Perhaps this conversation has no meaning and that is the point or not the point. If that makes sense. Perhaps as humans we search for meaning where there is none?

His use of projectors gives his work a purposely-illusive quality. If you walk in front of a projector your shadow breaks the picture up, it is all a front, a hallucination, a sham. Exactly like these cheap highs.

Is this possibly a comment on today’s subversive art too? There are several collages, which combine painting on wood, scratch cards, photos and LCD monitors. Beer fizzes up on one while the painting suggest money; one has the eBay logo and words from an email site painted on them and uses imagery of someone eating food seductively.
These are painted with the standard of a GCSE student – surely a purposeful thing? Is art not about consumerism too? Physically cheap products are combined to create what we call art and are sold for millions – perhaps the biggest con of all?

Ominously called the House of Pain, and nothing to do with the Irish hop-hop band, Rousson has created a shed constructed out of individual canvases.
Most of the canvases are paintings done in the typical style of a different iconic artist, Picasso, Warhol, Pollock etc. Fontana, for instance has a slash through it, which ironically creates a smiley face. Or they are a painting which someway depicts the artist’s character or stereotype. As Rousson explained, taking drugs or having affairs with their models is the stereotype these artists have.

The blurb to the exhibition states that Rousson, ‘ironically debunks’ these modernist artists, ‘casting them as self-obsessed bricoleurs’ (‘DIYs’?? to the non-cheese brigade) ‘who’s great works echo the “low” aesthetics of amateur home improvement projects.’

But if this is really what Rousson has set out to prove this is not an aggressive enough a way of presenting it. It comes across as more of a pleasant pastiche, and Rousson’s own painting style is submerged within his subject’s style making it difficult to see whether the imitation is his own progression of the style or a direct take-off.
I overheard someone mentioning that ‘House of Pain’ could mean ‘House of Bread’ which the stable at Bethlehem was referred to at some point. This is going a little far for a collective collage of modernist paintings, some vaguely soft porn, but still, a nice idea.

The house has a slightly underwhelming appearance, and the concept is a little vacant, but still, perhaps this is the whole idea.

Fake Moon trajecory - Simon Faithfull

The Big Chill Festival has made the most concerted effort out of any festival to include a comprehensive and well-organised cultural program alongside the music. Stages in collaboration with the ICA and projects with the Roundhouse Theatre are new this year, comedy is central to their program and for many years they have had an Art Trail. And this year it was awarded a grant by the Arts Council.

Which is why, sent on a mission to inspect the art, Art Sleuth ended up going to two festivals in two weekends. Fine. Apart from an unfortunate camping location next to a bunch of 30-somethings who had clearly never been to a festival before and were making up for lost time by playing very crap house music loudly until 6am.

It is also unfortunate then that with all this efficient cultural programming there was little of what we would call ‘free-spirit’ about the whole thing, apart from the unscheduled Ibiza music in the campsite area. With the Secret Garden Party still fresh in the mind, which was a health and safety officer’s nightmare, but in a good way, it couldn’t compare.

The Art Trail was only open at night probably because most of the works were film or light based. The darkness hinted at a certain ambience, with the trail laid out in the woods - but it was almost too well laid out. There was no feeling of ‘stumbling’ across art in the woods, more of a feeling of being shunted round a museum exhibit. But perhaps this would have been different if you were there at two in the morning without crowds of people.

Highlights included the Fake Moon by Simon Faithfull, which made a path across the main stage each night and was visible from the art trail perched on a hill facing it. The angry house was a nice touch too. It got noisier and louder as you approached it. But they could have made it a bit angrier looking, as it was, it looked like something you could buy straight from Homebase to keep you lawnmower in.
‘Stable’ was a brilliant film by Kathleen Herbert documenting horses left to free to roam at night around the silent corridors of Gloucester Cathedral. At first the horses seem superimposed in the unnatural environment. Then you start to see that in their total grace and calm about the whole situation, grazing on the stone hallways and clopping up stairways, that their ‘monastic’ personality seems to fit well with the ethereal environment. Spiritual even, some might say.
Elsewhere there was the House of Fairytales associated with Gavin Turk and Deborah Curtis which included a puppet show which was a take on a Becket Play, swapping Duchamp, Joseph Beuys and Warhol for the main characters.
Juneau Projects’ interactive instillation was a great piece of theatre in itself, as it had been overtaken by children thoroughly enjoying themselves playing band instruments connected to a computer game in a sort of amalgamated version of Guitar Hero and Zelda. Incredibly harmonious as you can imagine.

The ICA was running the show in the Mixed Media tent on Sunday with a documentary on gipsy music donning colourful costumes, a random shouting woman that was not very captivating until people started getting involved with the shouting. The main act Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry doing ‘dub action painting’ while Adrian Sherwood laid down some heavy beats, was totally awesome. The paintings are going to be auctioned for Amnesty international so keep your eyes peeled.

Aside from the art Bill Bailey was absolutely hilarious. And as you will hear from anyone, The Mighty Boosh were a little disappointing apart from the Moon’s rendition of “99 problems but the Bitch ain’t one”. A healthy proportion of Dubstep and the incredibly chilled Leonard Cohen, who really is the dude, finished off the weekend nicely.

© Stuart Semple

A LOVER I DON’T HAVE TO LOVE
Acrylic, Paint marker & Household Gloss on Canvas
179 x 122 x 8 cmNote: all hand paintedNO silkscreen

© Nathan James 2008. Super Duper Oil on Canvas

Stuart Semple has curated a group show aptly named MASH UPS that opened on Tuesday night with The Subliminal Girls playing indie rock and wine flowing in the Kowalsky Gallery, the DACS gallery space in Farringdon.

Showcasing young artists with a similar message of late-noughties anxiety towards mass culture, using a mish-mash of different media, their art ties in nicely with Stuart Semple’s neon pop-art revival paintings. Two of which are exhibited here.

The new artistic generation of today like all mid-twenty-odds are the generation teetering on the edge of the new ‘communications world’. As Semple explains, “this generation is unique as it’s the last generation that will remember before the home computer, mobile phone, music video, mass marketing and instant archive that is the internet.”

Casting a nostalgic eye on a simpler time, when lime green cycling shorts were all the rage, Nicky Carvell uses life-size cutout images of East 17 boy band supreme as the focus of her work. Poor Brian who’s tragically humorous act of running over himself by his own Merc is immortalized in her work Peace from the East (Brian ran himself over).
Here, posing with hand on goatee, with his oversized baseball hat Brian is laid flat on the floor half covered by a large asymmetrical shape distinguished as the car by a Mercedes sign.

Heartthrob Tony is the subject of another work, where he can only be described as having been disemboweled – that is if multi-coloured tubes descending from his mouth are his internal organs. Nice. Who knows maybe this is what his insides really look like?
Smash hits would probably have something to say about this if it was still going.

Elsewhere there are the spaced out digital videos from Adham Faramawy, the industrial collages of Piers Secunda and the ‘post’ pop art paintings of Nathan James. All have used neon colour, which is a noticeable trend for artists right now, especially used in paintings. It is as if neon paint had just been discovered, like when day-glow fabric was invented – suddenly everyone wants to use it. Certainly this must have a connection to the nu-rave fashion trend, although it is just about coming to an end (well certainly if you live in Shoreditch it must be) it is alive and well in contemporary art. And as a 80s’/early90s revival, nu-rave brings us nicely back to what this exhibition is all about.

Secunda’s work uses only molded household and floor paint. Here the chunky pieces, bright pink, green and blue, are hung up on what look like coat hooks. Suggesting the absence of a core substance - the bits of paint being the veneer to something no longer present, his work suggests loss, but also a release from the normal restraints of painting. Interestingly Racheal Whitread has some of his work in her collection and you see a connection between their thought processes.

Nathan James’s paintings have the graphic design details in some areas like Fiona Rae’s recent stunning work, with stylized portraits of pouting women (perhaps Koons?) and Lichtenstein-esc cartoon letters running in the foreground. Very now.

A group show which sings to today’s generation of retro loving cyber hippies.

MASH UPS

16 July - 12 September 2008
Post pop fragments and détournements
Curated by Stuart Semple

Monumental outdoor sculpture from the Hannah Barry Gallery.

Opening tonight (Monday 14th July- 6-8pm):

14 - 20 JULY, open daily 12noon - 6pm
Level 10 , Peckham Rye Multistorey Car Park, 95A Rye Lane SE15 4ST

Michael Allen, James Balmforth, Tom Barnett, Thomas Brock, James Capper, Nathan Cash
Bobby Dowler, Christopher Green, Oliver Griffin and Henry Stringer, Nicholas Jeffrey
Shaun McDowell, Robin Shepherd, Matthew Stone, Edward Wallace

Guys….

Gay Bingo the East End phenomenon which has been going for three years now (at the T Bar and Old Truman Brewery in Shoreditch) is doing an art influenced session this Saturday at the ICA.

Here’s what they say:

The ICA is delighted to present the underground extravaganza that is Gay Bingo. Hosted by cult drag performance artist and raconteur Jonny Woo, expect to be wowed with songs, dancing, fabulous gutter couture and, of course, lashings of bingo – aided and abetted by Ma Butcher on the number cruncher and DJ John Sizzle on the decks.

A very special art theme is the name of the game at this one-off spectacular at the ICA, with art influencing the music, performance and bingo calling. So dress up and be prepared for some fierce art attack competition from a very glamorous crowd.

Saturday 12 July 2008

Doors 6pm, Bingo 7.30pm until late

Comments below - please let me know what you think if you make it.

Ernesto Caivano has mastered the art of the understated. His sketches on canvas or paper are simple white backgrounds with thousands of fine lines etched in minute detail using ink or pencil. This is a guy with a lot of time on his hands.

His large works, taking over three panels, could quite easily be made by him having put a massive load of iron filings on the canvas and then drawing round each tiny little one of them. It looks like this too because the patterns they form are created in a way as if a magnet has been dropped at the center, splaying them outwards in a circular form. In order to take them in properly you are required to go right up to the canvas and peer at each little spec.

Japanese influences are clear in his work, although in his previous works it is more apparent as there are more figurative forms, more birds and plants and so on. In this exhibition it seems there is a reduction to bare pattern, lines and linear shapes.

Colour comes into play only in one series of works. Here six or so inky multicoloured thin lines cross the white canvas at diagonals forming triangular shapes where they meet.

There’s something really sublime about his work in a way, but the thing is with Caivano is that there is not much excitement to it all. All would look very nice in my minimalist kitchen (once I buy it) don’t get me wrong, but there is something a little bit too inoffensive about it all.

Maybe I am not getting the big picture. The description which accompanies this exhibition talks about “two tragic lovers…separated and transported into a woodland realm….Versus (the Knight) and Polygon (the Princess)”. I am, however, leaving this exhibition a skeptic.

Ernesto Caivano
Caressing Future Polygon
2008
Ink and graphite on paper
9 3/8 x 6 3/8 in. (23.8 x 16.2 cm)
© the artist
Courtesy Jay Jopling/ White Cube (London)

The Stuart Shave Gallery has moved from its trendy East End roots to Central London.
Never mind all this economic down turn, that I can’t afford to buy bacon anymore attitude. And I mean bacon rashers not Francis Bacon, by the way.

For a fair few galleries over the last couple of years the lure of Mayfair and Fitzrovia, its classy surroundings and convenient location, has broken some of the hardcore Bethnal Greeners.
These two districts are on the up when it comes to Contemporary Art.

Does this mean you’ve made it as a gallery? In the old-fashioned sense of it, you have. You are upgrading, upsizing or whatever. But is it at a cost? Does it make the art you are exhibiting seem less edgy and exciting because you’re not looking at it in some dive Saatchi mite have found something 10 years ago? Have you moved too far from where the artists you are exhibiting are producing their art?
A question I leave open.

Stuart Shave architecturally, is a smart gallery. Using the continuing white cube effect, similar to Parasol Unit actually (although smaller and not so dominating, more of a cosy space) it is a chic and well planned.

Last night I went there for the opening of the Barnaby Furnas exhibition. The American with a graffiti background now turned good boy.

Three different series of paintings made up the show.
There are some deeply black paintings, Rothko style, dripping with thick and moody colour.
Then there are his Flood Paintings, which are textural works, beyond straight painting. They are produced from methods including burning holes in the canvas, scraping into the surfaces and saturating the canvas with paint as it is suspended at various angles producing dripping effects. Either abstract or with figures in them, sometimes involving religious icons.

Famed for his passionate ‘action’ paintings, the third series takes a different turn into somewhat uncharted territory for Furnas.
The Rock Concert series focuses on reducing the images of famous rock bands on stage into geometric, stylised compositions.
Reminiscent of 1910-20’s painting like The Futurists or David Bomberg, such is the reduction of form into shape and pattern that the end result is a filter effect like what you would see if you took magic mushrooms at a Joy Division concert. Or perhaps, just before you where about to faint at a Joy Division concert. Whatever. I am seeing patterns!

Nu –rave luminous oranges, pinks or greens fill each of the huge canvases in this series and disco balls come centre stage in the electrifying light show. Some of the singer’s heads are painted several times producing a basic motion effect. Lighters, hands, advertising banners, all in minute detail bounce your eye around the painting.

So different from his angry emotion ‘full’ paintings these are cool, tidy paintings of special effects rather than feeling.
This exhibition sees Furnas move from his violent and moody works to (dare I say it) a lighter ‘fun’ type of art. And personally I think you shouldn’t knock a bit of fun.

Barnaby Furnas
Stuart Shave/Modern Art
23-25 Eastcastle Street, London W1
27 June – 27 July 2008

Barnaby Furnas
Untitled (Flood), 2007
Urethane, dye and dispersed pigment on linen
244 x 183 cm / 96 x 72 ins

Barnaby Furnas
Rock Concert (Joy Division), 2007
Urethane, dye, pigment dispersion, coloured pencil on linen
264 x 427 cm / 104 x 168 ins

Barnaby Furnas
Before the Cross III, 2006
Urethane and dye on linen
First panel 76.2 x 62.9 x 3 cm, second Panel 79.4 x 62.9 x 3 cm
2 parts

Courtesy the artist and Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London
Copyright Barnaby Furnas, 2008

also check

http://www.stuartshavemodernart.com/furnas/big/FURNB-00069.jpg

for Rock Concert image

You want to see conceptual art with a serious message?

Mona Hatoum presents real conflicts existing in our world today yet embodies her own personal narrative through her extraordinary art, in a sincere and accessible way.

Here at the Parasol Unit a particularly flash gallery, a most incredible space in fact, selected sculptures and instillation pieces made by her over the past 12 years make a powerful exhibition.

Much of her work reflects her background, some work comments on the issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and some on more generic worldwide feelings of insecurity, displacement and fragility.

Feminine, personal, and full of colour, Mobile Home II (2006) is a structure consisting of suitcases, furniture, handkerchiefs attached to moving wires. Relating to the relocation of families it is also probably partly a testament to her own displacement from Lebanon in the 70’s when she had to start a new life in Britain as the civil war broke out.

Nature morte aux grenades (2008) consists of a variety of pretty pastel coloured glass objects in hand grenade shapes arranged on a steel trolley. These objects could be a decorative ornament on your mantelpiece, but for their sinister forms. Their colours and arrangement on a surgical trolley seem to relate to Damien Hirst’s cabinets full of glass bottles and colourful pills - although his work focuses on a death, but not on war.

Hatoum has tried to disconnect herself from Saatchi’s ‘crew’ in the past, refusing to sell him works at the height of the art surge in the 90’s.
Being 10 years older than most of these artists and focusing on differing issues most her art has an entirely different outlook. Yet perhaps in this piece, which is new, some influences have snuck in?

Undercurrent (2004), a floor instillation, is a squirming mass of thick electrical wires extending from a woven middle into a radius of stark yellow light bulbs.
It is a cold and collected piece distinctly different others in this collection. Using only metal and harsh lighting. You see no colourful emotion or Hatoum’s own personality warming this piece. It relies on the hard facts of material and form to stir up anxiety in the viewer. You can’t quite place exactly what the instillation is representing, yet you can see it is a tense, uneasy and fragile object – the middle being a metal woven rug-like thing, (but not the most comfortable of rugs) with fragility exhuming from it. You might accidentally step on one of the light bulbs for instance! Something makes you think of torture, possible death from electricity or other such things. The domesticity of the household light bulbs, the idea of a rug gives out to other unnerving possibilities, and ultimately the fragile nature of comfort.

Totally eerie is the mobile hung in the middle of a small room lit so cut outs of soldiers and stars rotate around the walls of an otherwise pitch black space.
I say eerie not because it makes you feel slightly tipsy after a glass of wine. No. But because the simple imagery of the night you get from it is not a nice cosy night. It is a scary, war-torn night where childhood consists of nightmares.

Her repeated creations of the maps of the world using the ‘Peters Projection’ (a map made from accurate landmass, rather than from a western perspective) in different surfaces (cotton, rice paper and a household rug) spell out issues surrounding world territories.

Surreal yet purposeful, her work is a fusion of moral interpretation and artistic expression.

In fact if there is one exhibition you should see this month this is it. And that is because you will get something profound out of it.

Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art
13 June – 8 August 2008

Mona Hatoum
Nature morte aux grenades, 2006-2007 (detail)
Crystal, mild steel, rubber
95 x 208 x 70 cm
Photo credit: Marc Domage
Courtesy the artist and Jay Jopling / White Cube, London
Copyright Mona Hatoum 2008

Mona Hatoum
Undercurrent, 2004
Electric cable, light bulbs, computerised dimmer unit
Diameter: 372 9/16 in. (Diam. 950 cm)
Photo credit: Mattias Givell
Courtesy Jay Jopling/ White Cube (London)
© Mona Hatoum 2008

Mona Hatoum
Static, 2006
Steel chair, glass beads and wire
40 3/16 x 22 1/16 x 27 9/16 in. (102 x 56 x 70 cm)
Photo credit: Daina Moussa
Courtesy Town House Gallery, Cairo, 2005
© Mona Hatoum 2008

Mona Hatoum
Globe, 2007
Mild steel
Diameter: 66 15/16 in. (Diam. 170 cm)
Photo: Ela Bialkowska
Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano-Beijing and Jay Jopling/ White Cube (London)
© Mona Hatoum 2008