'By The Way' At Bohunk Institute, Nottingham

Work By Julian Hughes (L) & Andrew Smith (R).

A bunch of interesting exhibition/gallery visits all came at once just lately and I’ve already written about a couple in Birmingham and London.  This post is about another, - ‘By The Way’, currently on display in Nottingham’s Bohunk Institute in Nottingham, that I caught up with the other day.

‘By the way’ is a multi-media group show with a nominally ‘Edgelands’ overall theme and focusing on various territories in the British Midlands.  It includes work by two artists that I exhibited with in Birmingham last year, namely Shaun Morris, (paintings), and Andrew Smith, aka Harvey Smoke, (writing), in addition to photography by SianStammers, David Severn, Helen Saunders and Julian Hughes, video and writing by Wayne Burrows, writing by Rosie Garner and a word/photo collaboration between Matt Merritt & Philip Harris.

Paintings By Shaun Morris, ('Black Ground': Far R).

‘Edgelands’ is one of those labels, like ‘Psychogeographic, and indeed ‘Urban’ that threatens to become meaningless through overuse as shorthand.  They can be useful as indicators of a general attitude or approach but are no substitute for interrogating an artwork on its own terms.  Perhaps, in this case, its more revealing to talk about how all the work deals in different ways with situations that are in some way marginal (or marginalised).  Most obviously, this includes Shaun Morris’ motorway-dominated landscapes of personal and local memory, painted from his homelands on the outskirts of Birmingham; Sian Stammers' photographs of an area just outside Nottingham that’s earmarked for development, and Julian Hughes’ photographic mapping of the perimeter of the so called ‘National Forest’, (an area between major Midlands cities which is characterised as much by human activity as it is by trees).

Photographs By Julian Hughes

It also applies to Helen Saunders' heavily manipulated (and fictionalised) photo works and Wayne Burrows' distinctly psychogeographic video/word projects both dealing with layers of history within urban zones marginalized by neglect, dilapidation and changing use.  Burrows is particularly multi-dimensional in this respect, combining pastoral and urban sensibilities intriguingly to explore Nottingham’s lost Sneinton Fruit Market and attempts to regenerate the area around the idea of an apple orchard.

Still From Video By Wayne Burrows

Elsewhere in the show, Matt Merritt (words), and Philip Harris (images) undertake an investigation of the changes, through enclosure and road building, of the areas travelled through by nineteenth century poet John Clare.  Whilst this obviously focuses on changing land use, (in Clare's time and since), it also strikes me that Clare’s own passage through the landscape was the result of his poverty, mental illness and marginalisation from mainstream society.  David Severn also focusses on a population marginalised by economic and political change in photos of the people and places of the now obsolete Nottinghamshire coalfield.  Andrew Smith’s writing, translated onto the wall at an impressive scale, demonstrates his multi-disciplinary approach and explores ideas of identity and the self within the context of apparently marginal surroundings.  It’s a highly subjective approach to the idea of place.

Paintings By Shaun Morris (L.) & Video By Wayne Burrows (R).

‘By The Way’ is a thought-provoking exhibition, both in terms of individual artists’ work but also as a multi-dimensional exploration of an overall broad theme from a number of particular, often highly personal, viewpoints.  It also made me think about the specific ways in which work in different media might be presented.  Sadly, I was unable to attend the Private View and so missed the chance to catch up with Shaun and Andrew, but it was good to see new work from both that I hadn’t seen before.  Shaun’s ‘Black Ground’ painting picks up from where his earlier ‘Stolen Car’ pieces left off and indicates what might be expected from his forthcoming show in Nuneaton next year [1.].  I also see that Andrew now has a blog to showcase his writings and photography.

Photographs By Sian Stammers (L) & David Severn (R).

I was also interested to visit Bohunk Institute for the first time.  It’s a sizable space in Nottingham, within easy reach of the city centre and typical of the kind of artist-run gallery spaces that seem to be proliferating in various places at the moment.  Any initiative that attempts to expand opportunities for artists, in times of dwindling public provision and mounting economic pressures, has to be welcomed.  It also proves that Nottingham is currently leaving my own home of Leicester in the dust as far as provision for contemporary visual art is concerned.

‘By The Way’ continues at Bohunk Institute, 2 Fisher Gate Point, Nottingham, NG1 1GD, until 31 October 2013

[1.]:  Shaun’s forthcoming exhibition ‘Black Highway’ will take place at Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery in January 2014.

Completed 'First Clue: (Untitled)'

No explanation with this one.  Suffice it to say it's the first in a proposed series of clues...

'First Clue: (Untitled)', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper, 45 cm X 60 cm, 2013

Air Of Expectation

Plans

Being

Laid

More Thoughts About Hurvin Anderson

I recently posted about ‘Reporting Back’, Hurvin Anderson’s excellent exhibition at Ikon, Birmingham.  Having made a couple of visits to view it, and had some time to reflect further; here, (in no particular order), are some more observations about Anderson’s paintings:

Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Red Flags)', Oil On Canvas, 2004

• At a time when I have been tentatively exploring ways to augment my own painting practice with other media, it is still wonderful to witness a contemporary artist so wholeheartedly (and successfully), committed to paint.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Imperial', Oil On Linen, 2004

• This is painting for big boys and girls; for people who exist wholly in the modern world but reserve the right to enter into dialogue with a physical artwork; to pay it attention and be worked upon by it in real mental time; not just to be titillated by novelty, glamour or a theoretical mission statement.

Hiurvin Anderson, 'Miss Sylvia', Acrylic On Linen, 2011

• Anderson is unashamed to re-explore the familiar issues of Modern painting.  Not least amongst these are: the old tension between picture plane and illusory depth; the functional scope of brush marks to describe as well as to express and evoke; and the whole, inimical relationship between representation and abstraction.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Livingstone Road)', Oil On Canvas, 2000

• The artist really makes/lets his paint work and is a master of getting across a canvas in multiple exciting ways.  To view his painting is to absorb a catalogue of the material’s potential consistencies, manipulations, extents, application speeds and permitted accidents, (without ever becoming bored). 

Hurvin Anderson, 'Miss S Kieta', Oil On Canvas, 2001

• All of this is done at the service of depicting a recognisable subject or situation.  Even when moving towards abstraction Anderson is mostly stripping back, distilling or exploring the ambiguities of a place into which we could still find ourselves projected.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's: Sitters II', Oil On Linen, 2009

• There’s plenty of evidence of photographic and found sources in Anderson’s paintings but everything is processed through his draughtsmanship.  He is happy to reveal an image’s unfolding by allowing some of its linear underpinnings to remain unobscured.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Double Grille', Oil On Canvas, 2008

• This guy knows his way round the colour wheel.  He handles complementary contrasts and three-primary schemes with varying degrees of saturation, but never crudely.  He balances vivid and more neutral passages with aplomb and also recognises the importance of a strong tonal structure.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Some People (Welcome Series)', Oil On Canvas, 2004

• He’s particularly good with red and green, both together and separately. Recent paintings plunge deep into lush, verdant foliage whilst ‘Some People: (Welcome Series)’ juggles numerous reds with white and subdued cool accents to give Matisse’s ‘The Red Studio’ a run for its money.

Henri Matisse, 'The Red Studio', Oil On Canvas, 1911

• ‘Country Club: Chicken Wire’ is a marvelous red and green painting in which the tennis court’s saturated complementary fields are mediated by more neutrally coloured surroundings.  A fascinatingly delineated wire fence extends across the whole canvas, unifying the whole thing audaciously but conferring outsider status on the viewer.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Country Club: Chicken Wire', Oil On Canvas, 2008

• In the ‘Lower Lake’ series subdued greens are juxtaposed with Indian reds and dull pinks to evoke a more sober British Midlands light.  These are still complementary contrasts though and, in Anderson’s painting, ‘red and green should always be seen’.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Lower Lake', Oil On Canvas, 2005

• Like all good painters, Hurvin Anderson knows when to leave things out and his paintings are full of eloquent lacunae.  Varying degrees of rationalisation or omission are used to active expressive effect, for instance in the ‘Peter’s’ series, where abstracted details float free like selective memories, (again, I think of Matisse).

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's IV (Pioneer)', Oil On Linen, 2007

• Whether peopled with figures or not, the real subjects of these paintings are place and displacement from context.  Artist, viewer and protagonists alike are dislocated, disorientated or disbarred, like aliens, finding themselves at but never fully of a particular location.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's III', OIl On Linen, 2007

• Sometimes I’ve wondered if I’ll just end up simply painting places.  If that should ever happen, Hurvin Anderson provides a great example of how it might be done.

'Reporting Back' From Brum: Hurvin Anderson & Nina Könnemann At Ikon.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Country Club: Chicken Wire', 2008 & 'Untitled (Livingstone Road)', 2000

Approximately a year ago, around the time I participated in the ‘If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words…’ group exhibition, it felt like Birmingham was becoming a focus for some of my more interesting experiences and activities.  I hadn’t visited the city properly for several years and was interested to be exploring it once more and sampling the various attractions, cultural and otherwise, that it offers.  Attempts to revisit shortly after for photographic expeditions were stymied by a combination of foul weather and increasing difficulties with my dodgy old legs.  However, as 2013 has progressed, (and partly thanks to my physiotherapist), I’ve been able to head west increasingly, taking in exhibitions, numerous sites of photographic or psychogeographic interest and commencing a methodical exploration of Brum’s transport infrastructure in the process, (as detailed in various posts).

Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, October 2013

I found myself there yet again with friends the other weekend and, although Birmingham is only a stone’s throw from our own towns, we decided to make an indulgent weekend of it, treating ourselves to hotel rooms, extravagant breakfasts and the chance to escape the humdrum routine for a couple of days.  Many folk make Brum the butt of dismissive humour but it offers much to the visitor, and is still Britain’s second city in my view.  It’s much easier to negotiate (and afford), than London, is far more welcoming, and has a lot less ‘side’ generally.  It may not be elegant or quaint but isn’t without grandeur and actually provides a wide variety of moods and visual experiences that engage me far more than traditional notions of ‘beauty’ or extravagance anyway.

Despite the bleak weather, we spent a couple of very enjoyable days just hanging out and off duty.  The real highlight for me was a visit to the Ikon Gallery to view Hurvin Anderson’s exhibition of paintings entitled ‘Reporting Back’.  I had a hunch this would be a good one but in the event, it exceeded all expectations; taking its place on a short roster of really impressive shows I’ve seen in recent months.  Having viewed it on the Saturday, I returned the following morning to reflect further on the paintings.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Northern Range', 2010 & 'Lower Lake', 2005

Anderson’s origins lie in Birmingham’s Jamaican community, (he is British by birth), although he has acquired an international reputation as a painter since leaving the Royal College of Art in 1998.  He refutes further the wearisome notion that painting is dead, (still being peddled in some quarters), and also the convention that Black art must be clichéd, pigeonholed or superficially ‘right on’.  His work shows a powerful commitment to, and facility with, the medium of paint, but played out with due reference to the context of photographic and appropriated imagery in which we all now float.  Whilst rooted in the tradition, Anderson’s painting feels completely relevant to now.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Red Flags)', & 'Miss Sylvia', Both 2004

Peter Doig, 'Pelican', Oil On Canvas, 2004

I now realise that the art that captivates me most always carries an initial visual/ expressive punch, followed by a slower burn of reflection on the possible themes or theoretical frameworks within it.  I want my mind to be stimulated but never to the exclusion of my senses being seduced.  It’s why I remain wedded to painting, (or some hybrid of it), and why I responded to this exhibition immediately I walked through the door.  The most obvious impression was of the similarities between Anderson’s painting and that of Peter Doig.  Both have a remarkable facility with paint and employ abstract inventiveness within an essentially representational framework, playing freely with the formal elements of picture making.  There is also an original take on the idea of the tropical in both artists’ work.  Anderson is more solemn and rather less theatrical in his approach however, and presents a vision that is very much his own.  My good friend Suzie quite rightly saw correspondences with Hockney and Hopper, whilst I was also reminded of Michael Andrews (a perennial favourite) and the Euston Road tradition in general.  One might even draw some comparisons with Ewan Uglow.    However, Anderson never fetishises the nailing down of an objectivised image in the way that Uglow and the followers of Coldstream did.  ‘A Painter’s Painter’ is a hackneyed label to apply to any artist, and yet…

Hurvin Anderson, 'Miss Sylvia' & 'Imperial', Both 2004

Michael Andrews, 'Good And Bad At Games', Screen Print & Oil On Canvas, 1964-68

The Artist draws fully upon the Afro Caribbean experience, but does so in ways that manage to be particular and personal but also universally human.  Finding subject matter in both his native Birmingham and The West Indies, he repeatedly explores his sense of displacement and disquiet at never quite belonging in a particular place.  This must surely be a powerful theme for any diaspora, and not least for one with a shared memory of the multiple displacements of slavery, colonialism, independence and subsequent migration to these shores.  Yet, as a middle class white man, I gained just as much emotionally and intellectually from these works and they reflect a kind of melancholy loss, alienation or recourse to memory that is easily translatable into any culture.  They may speak eloquently of ‘Black Experience’, (which is not for me to judge), but encapsulate wider Human experience too.  As we viewed the paintings, we decided they reflect the thoughts and feelings of an individual above all, and that there is nothing as limiting or uncreative as a standard account for any culture.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Red Flags)', 2004, 'Northern Range',  2010 & 'Lower Lake', 2005

The locations Anderson depicts are repeatedly imbued with disappointment or melancholy and of access denied or promise unfulfilled.  It is achieved most overtly in his use of visual barriers, parallel to the picture plane, through which various scenes are viewed.  These include fences, gates and decorative security screens, (typical of the West Indies), and play both strong pictorial and powerful psychological roles.  Elsewhere, it is evoked more obliquely through images that subvert the illusions of tropical or colonial paradises and Victorian Utopianism, or depict figures rendered anonymous within a newfound context.  The latter category includes blank faced ‘portraits’ of his sister and nephew, wrapped against the cold in their Canadian home, having undergone (we assume) yet further displacement.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's IV (Pioneer)', 'Peter's II', & 'Peter's III", All 2007

One of the upstairs galleries at Ikon was dedicated to several of Anderson’s ‘Peter’s’ series of canvases, with which he essentially made his name.  Sharing the same basic format, but sitting at different points on the figuration/abstraction continuum, they are a powerful exploration of the psychologically significant location of the Afro Caribbean barbershop (of an implied back-room variety it seems here).  With or without a figure in the chair, these paintings are primarily about a specific arena for thoughts, feelings and memories and somewhere that a marginalized community might enjoy a coming together in safe surroundings.  They seem imbued with the stories and conversations that have unfolded within the space, whilst being formally and pictorially inventive as visual images.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's: Sitters II', 2009 & 'Peter's IV (Pioneer)', 2007

At the risk of yet another industrial length post, mention should also be made of German artist, Nina Könnemann’s delightful video piece ‘Bann’ playing in the Ikon’s Tower Room.  It comprises candid glimpses of smartly dressed smokers grabbing a crafty fag in various corners, doorways and dingy alcoves within the City of London.  Whilst some are shown in the open, others reveal their surreptitious presence only through puffs of smoke, disembodied hands, (complete with cigarettes), reflections or just the discarded butts that remain after their passing.

Nina Könnemann, 'Bann', Video, 2012

Könnemann captures the fluctuating subculture that exists all around us at any hour since the widespread indoor smoking ban took effect and the importance of those snatched private, if damaging, moments in relieving the pressure of modern urban life.  It is poetic, ritualistic and not without humour, (for instance one subject’s double take on spotting her camera or the gloomy woman furtively chaining a second tab in the shadows).  It is also an atmospheric elegy to the grey and geometric corporate world of concrete, marble, steel and glass that these City workers inhabit.  Their rhythmic exhalations of smoke just seem to add to the tarnished silvery miasma in which they exist.

Nina Könnemann, 'Bann', Video, 2012

Leaving Ikon via its well stocked bookshop, I picked up a copy of the ‘Reporting Back’ catalogue as well as books on the work of Beat Streuli and Christiane Baumgartner.  The last two are both artists who caught my eye in the ‘Metropolis: Reflections On The Modern City’ exhibition at Birmingham’s Gas Hall earlier in the year.  It just went to emphasise that many of my most inspiring and enjoyable experiences over the last year have occurred in Brummagem.

Apologies; I Fear I Have Committed A 'Selfie'.

Hurvin Anderson’s exhibition, ‘Reporting Back’, and Nina Könnemann’s video, ‘Bann’, continue at Ikon Gallery, Oozells Square, Brindley Place, Birmingham, B1 2HS, until 10 November 2013.  Both are highly recommended.