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.

Forthcoming Exhibition: 'If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words Then Why Can't I Paint'

Please read this bit, even if you don't make it through the rest of the post...

Only A Few Minutes From The Station, - You Know
It Makes Sense...

I’ve alluded several times to my old doubts about maintaining creative momentum or producing work of any real value, (to me, at least).  It now feels like I really can put all that to bed and just get on with it into the long term.  I have no remaining doubts about painting as a valid mode of expression.  More importantly, I’m agonising less about my own work.  If a painting isn’t very good, I’d better just get on with the next one in the hope of solving any perceived problems.

Anyway, - enough with the navel gazing.  As the pile of completed paintings grows it seems only natural to look for opportunities to expose them to the world.  A while back I set myself the aspiration of exhibiting at least some work during my 50th year.  Pleasingly, that’s now reaching fruition and it feels like an important next step.  It must be getting serious, - I've even had a postcard made, (Thanks to my good mate and noted graphic designer David Weight for helping with that by the way).

Indigo Octagon is a small collective of West Midlands artists whose exhibition ‘If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words Then Why Can’t I Paint’ takes place @ The Works Gallery in Birmingham in November, (All details above and on the I.O. Facebook page).  Having had a little contact with I.O. member, Shaun Morris through his own artist’s blog I was really pleased to be invited to exhibit along with him, Chris Cowdrill, Craig Underhill and Andrew Smith, (sorry Andrew, - I couldn't find a link).  For myself, it was particularly gratifying to be invited on the strength of the work alone.

Shaun Morris, Oil On Canvas, 2012

Whilst it just goes to prove the power of all this online malarkey, it was still great to actually meet Shaun in person, when I went over to Birmingham to leave my paintings at his studio this week.  It was interesting to see his work in the studio, including one of his impressive Motorway paintings and some of the studies he produced during his recent Scandinavian expedition.  You can see examples of both in his recent blog posts.

Shaun Morris, Oil On Canvas, 2012

The opportunity to access artwork online cannot be underestimated but there really is no substitute for seeing it for real.  Please come and have a look for yourself next month and find out what all these thousands of words are really all about.

Oh, and I’m Tweeting now but that will only make sense if a few folk start following me.

Playlist 6

Abiding infatuations with Folk Rock, electronic sounds and music from my youth still dominate my current listening.  This month’s highlights included two pink things, a prince and the next stage of human evolution.

‘Espers III’, Espers

This is not as intense and inward looking as the majestic ‘Espers II’ but not much else is really.  There’s more light and air in these songs and, if that one evoked candle-lit stone chambers; this is more like a stroll through woods and meadows.  As before, these slow to medium paced pieces feature gorgeous melancholic folk melodies of a dying fall and Meg Baird’s tender vocals combine beautifully with layers of predominantly acoustic instrumentation.

Whereas songs on ‘II’ tended to climax in passages of acid meltdown, here the psychedelic element comes from fuzzy, distorted electric guitar runs threaded throughout each piece.  Reviewers habitually liken contemporary Acid Folk bands to Fairport Convention and it’s probably fair to say that, amongst their peers, Espers come closest to the spirit of that band in its prime.

‘The Marble Downs’, Trembling Bells & Bonnie Prince Billy

I can live without Will Oldham’s work as BPB but have a lot of time for Alt. Folk, improvising song wranglers - Trembling Bells.  Actually, this recent collaboration makes loads of sense.  If Espers epitomise grace and poise, The Bells can tend more towards the ramshackle, uproarious and declamatory.  Their ‘more is more’ aesthetic easily absorbs Oldham’s tuneless warbling and portentousness into a big, barmy stew.  Lavinia Blackwall’s vocal chops challenge him to raise his game in their duets whilst Alex Neilson’s song writing reaches new levels of frankness and eccentricity.

Although TB generally work out of a North Country folk idiom, often referring to hymns and brass bands, this album confirms that their wider project is to discover just what song as a form can get away with.

‘Wonky’, Orbital

Orbital, - Still Illuminating The Dance Floor

It seems that, of any musical interest group, the electronic/dance music constituency are least tolerant of any act deemed behind the cutting edge of fashion.  After their 90s heyday, Orbital fell foul of the apparent Moore’s Law of accelerating novelty and diversifying sub-genres dominating the field; making this year’s enjoyable comeback album ‘Wonky’ a brave move.

Despite clear intentions to claim contemporary relevance, the album is misnamed.  There’s little of the genuine off-centre wonky aesthetic that held sway a couple of years ago and reworking old favourite ‘Satan’ into the dubstepping ‘Beelzedub’ feels like an attempt to jump the last bandwagon but one.  The manic Dancehall style female vocal on the title track also feels like mere bolt-on street cred.  What are present, however, are the things Orbital did so well originally.  ‘Wonky’ has plenty of their trademark lush, complex, rave-friendly techno constructed from entwined layers of rhythm and melody.  If not a new blueprint, it’s still a joy.  ‘New France’ is a trancey tonic for anyone who remembers that brief period when smiles ruled the dance floor.

‘Pink’, Four Tet

Prolific laptop maestro Keiran Hebden’s back catalogue includes work with the band Fridge and collaborations with Jazz drummer Steve Reid and Burial amongst others.  This latest bulletin under his solo Four Tet alias continues his recent move away from the hideously labelled ‘folktronic’ style toward a more dance-orientated sound.  Actually, it’s a compilation of twelve-inch releases from the last two years but works fine as an extended listen.  There is an increased functionality to these rhythms but Hebden can still make programmed music sound warmly hand crafted and incorporates plenty of his favourite chimes and woody percussion.  ‘Pinnacles’ is built around a jazz sample whilst a track entitled ‘128 Harps’ will come as no surprise to Four Tet connoisseurs.

‘Ringer EP’, Four Tet

Kieran Hebden, Aka Four Tet

Here’s where Kieran Hebden’s progression towards the dance floor first became apparent in 2008. These four tracks are his most Techno releases and possibly his best work.  With a cleaner, more polished sound than we’re used to; they refer to the ambient tradition, Kosmische sounds and glitchy minimalism by turns.  I have an impression of light dancing on water and moments of sheer limpid beauty whilst listening to them.

‘The Tomorrow People Theme’, Dudley Simpson

‘The Tomorrow People’ was a sort of ITV youth rival to ‘Doctor Who’ and a favourite show of my early teenage years.  The acting was terrible and the budget apparently very low, but I loved its weird futurism and 70s grooviness.  It had a great title sequence with a synthesized theme second only to The Doctor’s own in my view.  This kind of stuff tends to be appreciated by enthusiasts of the Ghost Box and Trunk labels and all things hauntological.


'Here's Little Richard', Little Richard

The Artist Still Known As Little Richard

You don’t need me to tell you this is great, do you?  Recorded in 1957, it includes ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘Long Tall Sally’ and proves that everything we ever really needed from Rock & Roll was there from the get-go.

‘Careful With That Axe Eugene’, Pink Floyd

We’re so used to associating Pink Floyd with huge spectacles, epic internal schisms and a license to print money, that it’s easy to forget how pioneering they once were, - and how high their standards.  This is what happens when middle class white boys get right out there.  There are various recorded incarnations of ‘CWTAE’ but I always return to a clip of them doing it live in 1973.  It’s full of atmospheric tension, Waters sounds downright psychotic and the old cigarette in the strings stunt and oversized Perspex drum kit just add to the magic.  That's a perfect title too.

‘Procol Harum’, Procol Harum

Procol Harum.  You Just Couldn't Get Away with This Today

Richard Wright’s keyboard work was a vital component of early Pink Floyd and hearing it reminded me of this other band of the period with a terrific organ sound.  It’s all over Procol Harum’s eponymous first album and, of course, ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’, - the debut single that made their name.  Although it’s totally over-played, I still love that particular anthem and it’s now packaged on the re-release of the ‘PH’, as is the equally stately ‘Homburg’.

That neither single was originally included speaks both of the band’s song writing confidence and the importance of stand-alone singles in the late 60s.  The album itself is full of good stuff and demonstrates that their range included bluesy guitar work, and concert party pastiche as well as the arty solemnity they’re usually remembered for.

‘Trio Sonatas For Organ’, J.S. Bach (Performed By Robert Quinney)

Johann Sebastian Pulls Out The Stops

After all that proggy organ work it seemed only right to revisit a possible source.  Certainly, Procol Harum openly constructed ‘AWSOP’ around a piece by Bach and many of their contemporaries had at least a modicum of classical training.  Bach’s organ pieces sometimes sound a bit flashy and bombastic but these are far more reflective.  I generally prefer Baroque music to that of the Classical or Romantic periods and while Bach is sometimes disparaged for imposing Equal Temperament and a sense of order on Western music, I always respond to the formal architecture of his compositions.

Painting In Preparation: 'Shut 2'

'Shut 1', 2012

Things slowed up again slightly with my paintings since I completed ‘Shut 1’ a few weeks ago.  Any loss of momentum can unnerve me because of my old habit of losing heart with my work, stopping altogether, then eventually trying to make a completely fresh start each time.  Pleasingly, this process of self-sabotage seems to be a thing of the past now and I have a clearer sense of the whole process as a larger ongoing activity.  Slowing no longer has to mean stopping and it’s easier to rationalise the times when taking care of other business, or just succumbing to yet another school-borne virus, snarl things up temporarily.

Study For 'Shut 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper,
60 cm X 45 cm, 2012

Anyway, though it’s taken a while, I have a clear idea for the next painting in development and am close to the point of buying the wood, building the panel and getting stuck into the early bread and butter stages.  Last year’s tendency for paintings to jump straight out of a well-resolved sketchbook study has become slightly extended this year and ideas are now evolving through larger, paper-based pieces also.  It’s something else that slows things a little but, hopefully, deepens my investigation too.

  

The piece will constitute the next step in the ‘Closed’/’Shut’ series that has occupied most of this year.  Once again the composition and any vestigial remnants of subject will derive from my reference photos of industrial shutters.  The source is actually the same shutter that seeded ‘Shut 1’ but it takes on a completely new character through a closer viewpoint, - resulting in an asymmetrical, less regular composition of vertical bands this time.

'Together 1', 2011

This painting will also lack the conscious ‘all-overness’ of previous shutter paintings, focussing more on the distribution of differentiated individual motifs across the picture plane.  This reflects the increased visual importance of the elements of door furniture, graffiti and surface detail in the photos.  The collaging together of discrete elements feels like a little closer to the approach I used to compose certain paintings last year, - ‘Together 1’ in particular.

It also relates to my interest in Fiona Rae’s painting.  I’ve had a reproduction of one of her pieces pinned up for a long time now and keep harking back to the way she incorporates multiple characters, symbols and appropriated motifs into nominally abstract compositions.  I find it most appealing when such elements are scattered with clarity across a relatively open field and like the kitsch, Pop aspects of her work.  That is something that’s beginning to creep slightly into ‘Shut 2’.

Fiona Rae, 'Ringworld', Oil, Acrylic & Glitter
On Canvas, 2001

Fiona Rae, 'Moonlight Bunny Ranch',
Oil & Acrylic On Canvas, 2012

Fiona Rae, 'Rodeo', Oil, Acrylic & Glitter
On Canvas, 2001

As with the Paul Morrison pieces I saw last week, Rae’s work clearly shows the importance of digital graphics software in its construction. The relatively low-tech collages she uses to develop ideas also please me.  Those have a real glam factor with sequins, glitter, butterflies flowers and feathers all vying for attention.  It’s great to see Rae knowingly embrace such a girly aesthetic, whilst operating as a serious, grown-up painter of real relevance.

Fiona Rae, 'Untitled (Tokyo Popeyes With Japanese
 Paper)', Mixed Media On paper, 2004

Fiona Rae, 'Untitled (Value Coordinate No.1 With
Architect Grass)', Mixed Media On Paper, 2005