Supersilent with John Paul Jones: Birmingham Town Hall, 14 November 2012

It’s been an eventful few days, with all the interesting stuff happening in Birmingham.  Not so long ago, despite living in Leicester, my social life focussed largely on nearby Nottingham and I enjoyed discovering more about what lay both on and under the city’s surface.  Now, it seems that my attention has shifted slightly to Brum and, after several years’ absence; I’m reacquainting myself with that town also.

Birmingham City Centre Today, (Photo: Unknown)

The main reason for heading west was the invitation I received to include paintings in the current exhibition organised by Indigo Octagon.  I’ve already posted in anticipation of that event and will post my account of it very soon.  Separately, however, I headed along the M6 the other night with a friend to hear Norwegian Improv/Electronic ensemble - Supersilent at Birmingham Town Hall.

Birmingham Town Hall, (Photo: Dave Madden).

Supersilent is highly regarded in Avant-garde music circles, not least for a rigourous, no rehearsals; no pre-planning; no contact beyond the music-making, stance.  However, it has a darker, even vaguely Rock, aesthetic than many older improv. stalwarts.  This is due, in part, to slick, minimalist presentation, (impassive graphics, tasteful light show, dry ice, etc.), and partly through having a somewhat saturnine member named Deathprod, (Helge Sten).  The current incarnation scores even higher in that regard by including ex-Led Zeppelin bassist and all round muso – John Paul Jones as an honorary member.  In fact, with Sten on sick leave from Birmingham, Jones became the main focus of the evening, proving himself quite capable of functioning in a contemporary Free Jazz idiom.

Supersilent With John Paul Jones, Moldejazz, Norway 2011, (Photo: Unknown)

As must occur amongst regular collaborators, and despite the improvisatory approach, there is a typical Supersilent sound.  Most pieces follow a quiet, loud-then -quiet-again routine, pursuing a dialogue between profoundly alien, midnight-sun atmospheres and passages of chaotic, visceral racket evoking terrifying events deep in dark forests.  For this performance the spooky keyboards, muted trumpet and free drumming were marvellously augmented by Jones’ massive bass vibrations and haunting vocal intonations by drummer Arve Henriksen.  Employing a beautiful and unusual 12 string bass, Jones also injected subtly ornate high-string embellishments in counterpoint to all the low-end stuff.

After an impressive opener, mounting to a massive dissonant climax, our ears were properly attuned to an alternative sound world of shifting aural environments.  It also became apparent that, with its high-ceilinged, Neo-classical grandeur, yet deceptive intimacy, the venue was a perfect setting for Supersilent, contributing considerable acoustic richness.  With music of this kind one must remain in the moment and immersed in pure sound.  Consequently, whenever a riff or groove started to emerge, at least one member of the trio intervened to mutate the sound in a new direction.  There were online hints of a little pre-show rehearsal but I’ve no idea if this was merely a sound check or a concession to the new boy.  In fact, the trio’s exchanged glances of inquiry, nods of approval and gestured instructions to the mixing desk suggested there were still huge elements of the unknown in the unfolding material.

Supersilent In Birmingham, (Photo: Kevin Hewick).

Naturally, the deep listening demanded by such music can prove exhausting and the duration of individual pieces and the overall set were well judged.  If there was a slight loss of impetus around two thirds of the way through, that slack was taken up effectively before the end.  The set concluded with a shorter encore that really showcased Jones and was the closest the music came to any semblance of bass funk throughout the entire evening.

Stale Storlokken & J.P. Jones, Sonar, Barcelona, 2012, (Photo: David Broc).

Exiting the Town Hall amongst the demographically, (and cheeringly), baffling audience, it occurred to me that, (Rock legend worship aside), the only real unifying factor between us was a hunger for real musical sustenance.  Supersilent and John Paul Jones served up a banquet.

Aki Onda, (Photo: Makiko Sasanuma).

Respect is due also to support act Aki Onda.  His improvised set of layered and manipulated cassette field recordings, played through numerous Walkmans, (Walkmen?), was both fascinating and engaging.  Apologies to him for crashing the start of his performance, then sitting directly in his eye-line. 

It's Malala Day

I've already posted my responses to the shooting of Malala Yousafzai and threats made to the life of Hina Khan by the Pakistani Taliban.  The plight of these young campaigners for the right of girls to access education has received global attention and I now learn that today has been designated as Malala Day.  You can read a really enlightening article on the importance of this from the perspective of a British woman of Pakistani heritage here.

Malala Yousafzai, (Photo: University Hospitals, Birmingham).

There is an online petition for Malala to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize which you can sign here.  Today would seem be the obvious time to do it and, regardless of what you think of such awards, it's a chance for people of all cultures to stand up to the bullies.

Hina Khan, (Photo: Unknown).

It occurs to me that, aside from the important issues around them,  this is all far more than any schoolgirl should have to cope with.  I guess I've been engaged by the whole thing because, every day, I go to work and see girls of many different backgrounds just getting on with their studies and being cheerfully crazy with their friends.  Here's hoping Malala can find time and space to focus on her own recovery and, before long, she and Hina, (and indeed any fellow campaigners whose names I don't know), might just get on with all the stuff other teenage girls enjoy.

An Evening With Will Self

I went to Leicester University the other night to hear author Will Self discussing his new book, ‘Umbrella’ [1.], as part of their ‘Literary Leicester’ festival.  Self is a familiar, often controversial figure within the British cultural scene and enjoys an international reputation for both his fiction and journalism.  He’s adept at playing the media at its own game and is regularly observed performing his cynical, ex-junkie of letters routine across multiple platforms.  The fact he also appears possessed of a brain the size of a planet and habitually delivers material that is as perceptive and well crafted as it is challenging, makes this more amusing than irritating.  He appears equally comfortable appearing on populist T.V. or demonstrating intellectual rigour and a formidable mastery of the language to an academic or broadsheet audience.  He’s by turns withering, engaging and sardonically amusing.

Will's Shelves, (Photo: The Guardian/Karen Robinson).

Plenty of attention was paid recently to the somewhat surprising nomination of ‘Umbrella’ for the Man Booker Prize for fiction, - eventually losing to second-time winner Hilary Mantel’s Tudor Novel, ‘Bring Up The Bodies’. [2.]  That Self’s formally experimental and self-consciously Modernist novel should be judged alongside supposedly more middlebrow offerings, or be included in the fatuous beauty pageant at all, has been described as “a category error” by his own wife, journalist Deborah Orr. [3.]

Certainly, the man himself was quick with a swipe at historical fiction of, “say, the Tudor period”, before making genuinely interesting points about how Modernist literary tropes like magic realism, stream of consciousness and multiple voices might actually be closer to real experience than the more conventional modes; (for instance, third person narrative), typical of less elevated writing.  It was intriguing to hear an author with such a palpable love of words explain his belief that humans don’t generally think verbally, and certainly not in the manner of much contemporary fiction.

On reflection, his distain for Mantel’s work sounds slightly misplaced.  I’ll accept it’s not mere sour grapes as I’ve no doubt Self is sincere in his understandable aversion to the infantilisation of a culture expressed through prizes and award ceremonies.  One might inquire why then, he chose to collude with the aforementioned category error.  It’s possible the whole thing was a bit of a lark to highlight the contrast between comfort literature and the hard stuff.  Certainly, his amusing approach to the official photo might  affirm that, (I do wonder if the chosen form of his name, Will Self, itself might actually signify that his entire public persona is all a huge, knowing gag).

Will Self's Single Handed Elevation Of The Novel Form,
(Photo: AP/Lefteris Piterakis).

Where I find Self to be slightly unfair is in ignoring that Mantel herself has, in her Tudor novels [4.], used a somewhat more experimental approach to form than is common in much historical fiction. If she has extended her writing beyond the normal constrains of genre, this surely represents some kind of intellectual advance.  Ironically, Self’s reading, complete with character voices actually reminded me slightly of Mantel’s own inhabitation of her own protagonist’s internal monologue.  Whilst clearly not operating at Self’s own Joycean altitudes, her books caused at least one reader of my acquaintance to describe them as a really interesting if rather demanding read.  Ultimately, perhaps Self chooses to forget that who’s cleverest or which work is the most worthy, are all relative.

A Tall, Thin Author With High Standards, (Photo:
Telegraph/Andrew Crowley).

I can agree that the Tudor soap opera is an account that has been over-rehearsed and that to be endlessly reacquainted with the same events can be dispiriting.  But the lurid events of that period undeniably mark a fulcrum in British history with a legacy that is still felt today and it seems arrogant to assume that, because I know something, so must everyone else.  Also, where Mantel does find new ground is in relating events from the viewpoint of Thomas Cromwell, - a man whose own story is often overlooked.  We must make a clear distinction between the study of History and historical fiction as entertainment but, as I’ve previously discussed, the two strands may inform each other perfectly successfully.  My own experience of HF as a gateway drug to more serious study convinces me of that.

Keeping Tabs On Will Self In Flaneur Mode, (Photo: Casey Kelbaugh).

Self was keen to validate his use of stream of consciousness in his current work by claiming that his perception of the world is largely in the moment and that references in the past tense must, in most cases be little more than reconstructed false memory.  At the same time, I noticed the word ‘Psychogeographic’ was used with some abandon during the discussion of his recent work.  My understanding of the term is that the interaction of present experience with multiple pasts, (including subjective or reconstructed memory), is a potentially important element within the approach.  Self’s own supposedly Psychogeographic writing, including ‘Walking To Hollywood’ [5.] and 'Psychogeography' [6]; has actually been dismissed by Iain Sinclair as not actually in the true spirit of that tradition at all.  It does suggest that, as Self himself demonstrated, one writer’s real deal may be another’s weak gear.

This post is admittedly compromised by the fact I have yet to read ‘Umbrella’ or indeed ‘Walking To Hollywood’.  I do know that I want both Will Self and Hilary Mantel, (and Iain Sinclair), on my shelves and suspect that context is all and horses really are for courses.

(I enjoyed the hour we spent in Mr Self's company and, on the off-chance he might actually read this one day, - must apologise for my own woolly thinking, mangling of the language and probable misuse of punctuation.)

[1.]:  Will Self, 'Umbrella', London, Bloomsbury, 2012

[2.]:  Hilary Mantel, 'Bring Up The Bodies', London, Fourth Estate, 2012

[3.]:  Deborah Orr, 'For A Moment I Really Thought My Husband Had Won The Booker. But No!', The Guardian, Friday, 19 October 2012

[4.]:  See Also:  Hilary Mantel, 'Wolf Hall', London, Fourth Estate, 2012

[5.]:  Will Self, 'Walking To Hollywood', London, Bloomsbury, 2010

[6.]:  Will Self & Ralph Steadman, 'Psychogeography', London, Bloomsbury, 2007

If A Picture Paints A Press Release...

I've already mentioned the group exhibition in which I'll be participating later this month in a previous post.  The opening is just a week away now, so here's another reminder by way of the official press release.  A rather splendid accompanying booklet has also been produced including images and writings by the participating artists.  Physical copies will be available at the exhibition but you can also view it here.

PRESS RELEASE

Indigo Octagon Presents

If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words Then Why Can’t I Paint

The Works Gallery, Birmingham

Tuesday 13th November to Friday 23rd November 2012

‘If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words Then Why Can’t I Paint’ is the inaugural exhibition by Indigo Octagon, a loose collective of Birmingham based artists, designers and makers. The exhibition is eclectic, bringing together a diverse range of work by 5 Midlands artists. The show has a sense of a ‘mix tape’ aesthetic, ideas and themes presented in the work of one artist being taken on in the work of another.

In Hugh Marwood’s mixed media paintings for example, inspiration is taken from the layers of graffiti and writing to be found on urban surfaces, the walls and boarded-up windows and doors that the artist passes on his many walks as he considers the psychogeography of the city of Leicester. While a form of writing is collected and re-presented in Marwood’s works, it is, by contrast, obscured in the abstract paintings of Harvey Smoke, which take as their starting point the artist’s autobiographical writing painted onto the bare canvas. Smoke then paints, pours and builds up over time, a complex series of marks, colours and shapes that, in revealing themselves, bury the originally, now secret, text.

Craig Underhill’s sculptural ceramics reflect his interest in evoking the feeling of landscapes that he has travelled through. He is influenced by the visual effects created in these landscapes by human action, in particular the often overlooked physical marks, structures or patterns that are the traces of everyday life, and which are revealing, in various ways, of our relationship with the natural world. The direction and development of Underhill’s work is strongly affected by his interest in exploring materials and techniques. Like many ceramicists he is fascinated by the aesthetics and characteristics of materials, the ways they are

transformed by artistic, and other, processes.

A direct link with Craig Underhill’s slab-built vessels can be seen in the dark shapes of the cast concrete columns beneath the M5 motorway at night, as depicted in the atmospheric and psychologically-charged paintings of Shaun Morris. The sodium light that spills from the motorway above, cutting through the black void of night, reveals shards of the landscape below, and in so doing brings the English Romantic landscape hard up against the lessons of post Abstract painting. Images and the painting process battle it out, with the large areas of depthless black set against more representational elements that create a dynamic illusion

of space. Illusion is further explored in Andy Smith’s painted photographs. Patched-up, neglected buildings, a carelessly daubed steel bollard, painstakingly painted over by the artist, seamlessly blending the printed and painted surface. There is a playfulness in the seemingly banal non-subjects, the neglected detritus carefully rendered in paint.

A similar sense of care for the forgotten and overlooked can be seen in the illustrations of Chris Cowdrill. Weeds, wild flowers and plants intertwined around an ugly wire fence are beautifully drawn. A blackbird perched on bare winter branches evokes the atmosphere and texture of winter with great precision and clarity. Cowdrill’s illustrations invite us in to look more deeply at the nature that insistently, quietly, asserts itself around us.

Join Indigo Octagon at the Private View on Friday 16th November from 6-9pm. Refreshments will be available, you can meet the artists, and there will also be a musical performance by artists Andy Smith and Shaun Morris composed in response to the exhibition, as well as live music by local up and coming band, Box Of Knives.

Hope to see you there...

Thoughts On Fiona Rae

I've had a week to reflect on my trip to Walsall to view Fiona Rae's exhibition of paintings 'Maybe You Can Live On The Moon In The Next Century'.  I described the trip in my last post:  here are some more thoughts about the actual work and Rae's practice generally, (in no particular order)...

• Fiona Rae is one year younger than me.  Looking at her achievement, I wish I’d got properly stuck into my own painting earlier.

Fiona Rae, 'Moonlight Bunny Ranch',  Oil & Acrylic
On Canvas, 2003

• Like anyone of our generation, Rae must reflect, daily, on how accelerating technological change has altered human perception over our half-century of life.  Her work certainly reflects it.

• Half a century further back, the breakthrough of Cubism first took full account of the World through a moving eye and shifting viewpoint.  In the work of an artist like Rae, painting explores a world perceived through multiple screen views, heavily mediated information streams and atomised attention spans.

Fiona Rae, 'The Woman Who Can Do Self Expression Will Shine
Through All Eternity', Oil, Acrylic & Gouache On Canvas, 2010

• We exist amid random image overload.  Rae celebrates the fact whilst preserving the most valuable gift painting has to offer, - the opportunity to take one step back and reflect on our current state: to reconstruct the moment thoughtfully.

• A life lived online assimilates all forms of human expression, high or low, altogether, all the time.  Rae constructs paintings from any and every imaginable type of motif.  The high art brushstroke coexists with the illustrator’s solid black outline: drips and splashes live alongside diagrammatic precision: kitsch Bambi deer and cutesy pandas float in passages of abstract expressionism: signs, symbols, characters and typefaces jostle for attention but withhold any coherent narrative.  Everything, altogether, all the time, - and glitter!

Fiona Rae, 'I Really Longed For This', Oil, Acrylic & Gouache
On Canvas, 2010

• Fiona Rae is a fantastic and elegant colourist, - she just can’t help herself.  Behind all that juxtaposed material, each painting establishes it’s own unifying mood of hue and illumination.  Like most interesting painters today she knows the value of synthetic hues and the importance of industrial surface coatings, Pantone swatches, RGB and CMYK colour values.

• The last century was made in America.  This century is being made in East Asia.  Fiona Rae was born in Hong Kong and often remembers travelling in Japan.

Fiona Rae, 'Press My Buttons To Give Me Food And Love', Oil,
Acrylic & Gouache On Canvas, 2006 

• Nothing takes overall priority in Fiona World.  Motifs rise to the surface of, and are reabsorbed by, coloured grounds almost immediately.  Spatial illusion morphs into picture plane and back again.  Each part seems to eat and be eaten by it’s neighbour.

• Viewing a Rae is like listening to the cut & paste music of, say, Flying Lotus.  Things appear, briefly fascinate and are cancelled by the next, unrelated event.  Nothing’s remembered afterwards: it’s all new again each time you return.  Somehow, a kind of grasshopper’s logic is achieved: a new world view is established.

Fiona Rae, 'My Favourite Puppy's Life', Oil & Acrylic On
Canvas, 2006

• These paintings emerge from multiple small decisions.  There is no unified compositional scheme.  The world each one inhabits appears to extend beyond the canvas edges.  They might be screen grabs from an ongoing continuum of information.

• I love the evocative titles Rae gives to her pictures.  Her web site's pretty good too.

Fiona Rae, 'Grotto', Oil, Acrylic & Glitter On Canvas, 2005

• Fiona Rae is a twenty-first century painter.  Painting is a twenty-first century medium.  Hooray for Rae!

Fiona Rae: 'Maybe You Can Live On The Moon In The Next Century'

Fiona Rae, 'Maybe You Can Live On The Moon In The
Next Century', Oil & Acrylic On Canvas, 2009

We had some lovely sunshine last weekend so I zoomed off to see Fiona Rae’s paintings at the New Walsall Art Gallery.  I’ve been looking at her work a lot lately in connection with my own work so it’s a fortuitous coincidence that the show recently transferred from Leeds to Walsall.  I’m ashamed to say it’s my first visit to the gallery and my first impression was that it’s amongst the more striking of the newer Art palaces, primarily because of it’s imposing five-story presence.

Walsall New Art Gallery

The gallery’s striking Brutalist block presides over an open square and redeveloped canal basin, typifying the brave new aesthetic that held sway in Blair's Britain just prior to the more recent economic collapse.  Such zones of misplaced optimism already look rather lost amidst the boarded shops and pop-up discount outlets that constitute our new urban reality.  Many of their stylish waterside apartments already seem eerily lifeless, - suggesting that harsh realities descended before anyone could even finish the first box of coffee filters.   Nevertheless, a striking modernist edifice being constructed opposite the gallery did intrigue me with its pleasing proportions, seductive dark-toned surfaces and achingly self conscious grid of square window frames fading from yellow to orange.

Having negotiated the steel band in the gallery foyer and glanced at a Damien Hirst exhibit, I climbed the building, pausing at stages to take photographs of the panoramic vistas from its windows.  I was particularly pleased by the sun-lit view diffused through drawn blinds that immediately recalled images by Gerhard Richter.

Gerhard Richter, 'Stadtbild M3 (Townscape M3)', Oil On Canvas, 1968

Fiona Rae’s show ‘Maybe You Can Live On The Moon In The Next Century’ covers work from the last twelve years and is a real thrill for those yearning for galleries full of ambitious, relevant, contemporary painting.  Like Paul Morrison’s work that I saw in Sheffield recently, Rae’s painting engages wholeheartedly with the inescapable changes wrought by digital technology on how we now assimilate images and interact both with the world of information and with information about the world.  Simultaneously, it’s fully committed to the potential of painting and the ways in which this ancient medium might still be amongst the most vibrant.

“Taken together, Rae’s paintings offer a dazzling inventory of the possibilities of paint: every colour and shade, every density and mode of application: brushed, dripped, drawn, stencilled, straight-ruled.  Thick and chalky, or thinned to a point of evanescence.  In her art Rae pays homage to the history of abstraction, from Miro to Kandinsky, to Jackson Pollock and Morris Louis – although none of these painters ever displayed quite Rae’s on-canvas exuberance and eccentricity.” [1.]

Fiona Rae, 'Tokyo Popeyes', Oil. Acrylic & Glitter
On Canvas, 2004

Fiona Rae, 'Angel', Oil & Acrylic On Canvas, 2000

  

The multiplicity of motifs and strategies on show in a room full of Rae’s might become enervating if it weren’t for their joyous good humour and sense of visual adventure.  Each painting seems to immerse the viewer in a chaotic dance of swirling sensory stimuli and imaginative possibilities.

“Helping us gain a steady, unambiguous grip on her paintings is evidently not Rae’s chosen primary task as a painter, which remains to reply – as exhaustively as possible – to the query: what is a painting and how can it be made?”  [2.]

Fiona Rae, 'We Go In Search Of Our Dream...', Oil & Acrylic On Canvas, 2007

The hour I spent with Rae’s paintings really cheered me.  I’m still processing the thoughts they triggered so I expect this mental thread will extend into another post.

Fiona Rae, 'Bold As AWild Strawberry, Sweet As A
Naughty Girl,' Oil & Acrylic On Canvas, 2009

[1.] & [2.]:  Gilda Williams, ‘You Balance The Picture In My Head:  On Fiona Rae’s Paintings’ in ‘Fiona Rae: Maybe You Can Live On The Moon In The Next Century’, (Exhibition Catalogue), London, Leeds Museums & Galleries/Ridinghouse, 2012.

Take Good Care Hina Khan

I recently put my head above the parapet to comment on the shooting by the Pakistani Taliban of schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai.  I've never wanted this blog to become a polemic for any particular point of view but sometimes you have to speak out, if only to maintain your own sanity.

Hina Khan, 14  (Image: Aljazeera)

For that reason, it's only fair to mention the ordeal of Hina Khan, - Malala's fellow teenage campaigner for female education.  Recent news reports indicate that she is now effectively a prisoner in her own home after threats by the same fanatical psychopaths.  This has included having a red X painted on the gates of her home.

The Gates Of Hina Khan's Home (Image: Al Jazeera)

This is not about criticising anyone else's culture or faith.  If you must follow a deity, it's none of my business.  I'm also aware that many people around the World feel indignation at the hypocrisy of the West.  Unfortunately, bullying is something else altogether.  Billions of people of all faiths and nationalities prove it's perfectly possible to praise their chosen God without threatening or attempting to murder schoolgirls.

Hina Khan With Her Mother (Photo: The Times/Robin Pagnamenta)

To the cowards behind these actions, - you only bring disgrace on yourself.  If there are valid reasons for denying girls the right to learn, then prove it through reasoned debate.  Until then,   these girls are braver than you'll ever be.