My review of The Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture at the Saatchi gallery on the Aesthetica blog.

A new feature and a new review on the ItchyCity site.

Hepworth Wakefield

On pulling into Wakefield Kirkgate station the information that there has been a multi-million pound Contemporary Art gallery - intended to contend on the cultural world stage - built in the city seems to be a bad joke. This side of the city, while riddled in history and cultural association (it was birthplace of the gallery’s namesake Barbara Hepworth and contemporary Henry Moore), ain't pretty, or particularly thriving. 

But over the past years these have been the prime locations for new cultural endeavours and the Hepworth is hoped to help do for Wakefield what the Turner Contemporary is for Margate and what the Baltic has for Gateshead and the Nottingham Contemporary for Nottingham. The immediately local, lucrative regeneration potential of cultural investment, both financially and artistically, is now well understood and proven by past success.

The focus for me today, however, is the gallery itself. Set on the banks of the river Calder, David Chipperfield Architect’s (the same company responsible for the recently opened Turner Contemporary) have constructed a building that, in the words of the current director of the gallery, Simon Wallis, has a “highly sculptural appearance” that “echoes the clarity and power of form in Barbara Hepworth’s works.”

This is undeniable. In housing what is now the largest purpose built gallery space outside of London the designers and architects have produced a stunning building that, despite its blockish concrete construction, is as majestic from the outside as it is seamlessly functional from the interior. Tall ground to floor windows complement the exhibitions while also revealing an awareness and sensitivity to the surrounding natural and industrial landscape. Perhaps the mark of a great building, and indeed a great gallery, is one that concentrates on blending the emphasis and concentration between looking out and looking within. The permanent exhibition as well is perfectly cohesive and well placed throughout the gallery’s ten rooms, four of which are given over to the temporary exhibition which is currently Hot Touch: a collection of wonderful, but often baffling, sculptures by Eva Rothschild.

While the gallery has only been open for two months, the crowds are no doubt  emblematic of the success and popularity which will follow the gallery through the approaching years. And with any luck it will fit Simon Wallis’ brief of “play[ing] a part in keeping talented artists in the region and allowing opportunities for valuable international dialogues”.

Quotes  from Aesthetica Magazine, Iss. 41, p. 98.

The hypnotizing geometry of a plant in a breeze.

Quayola

   Soon to be collaborating with him

Jamie XX

I NEED tickets to this. 

Dramatic form

In addition to my post yesterday, the editing of Etcetera also drew my attention to another aspect of writing form, particularly that of drama.

The original function of script is of course to be performed; monologue, dialogue and didascalia function to provide a score for actor. But of course that is not always our sole interaction with a dramatic text: often it is primarily read with the inference of it's physical interpretation and performance no more acute than if we were reading a novel. For this reason it seems odd that there are not more scripts written with the primary intention of being read rather than performed. The form would require a slight tweaking, but the affect is often a resounding success.

There is of course the famous example of Circe, Episode 15 of James Joyce's Ulysses. At the other end of the scale lies the weekly short play that was printed in the Guardian's Weekend magazine in place of a column. Somewhere in between we find a couple of Julian Barne's short stories which are constructed entirely from dialogue, although without attribution or stage directions.

Theatre, while obviously suffering often debilitating cuts in the recent months, is a medium that is still thriving behind our proscenium arches, but often I think it is overlooked in the places that it can be most gratifying. One such place is print: if publications like Etcetera publish scripts intended for reading it opens up new opportunities and directions for the form and it's audience. But I also think it is overlooked in more obvious places. For example, there is a surprising deficit at Literature festivals which, while having the resources and facilities to stage theatre, often don't. This seems, to me, to be frankly bizarre.

There is no reason for this to be confined to drama either. Each artistic medium can benefit from a mingling of form, an intertextual and intermedium combination that is even less fractured than prose poetry or performance art. There is still much to be attempted.

On good form

I've been quiet for a while. This is pretty much solely down to my Etcetera endeavour. It requires SO much work and attention, but has been a huge amount of fun and has taught me a great deal. I can't wait now until October when we can really release it to the new students and give it the following I think it deserves!

One thing however that has come to my attention during the piecing together of the project is the differences in emphasis that various artistic mediums receive. One of the primary intentions of Etcetera was to provide an outlet for all types of Art; it was one of the numerous benefits of publishing online that we could share music and film as well as other mediums more suited to print. Consequently, we've had a good look at what mediums are more popular and what mediums people respond to. Incidentally, they're not the same.

Poetry, for example, resolutely comprises the majority of our submissions, perhaps a third. Yet in the public domain poetry receives very little attention with pitiful print sales and a reputation of being inaccessible or uninteresting. We also receive a large number of photography submissions. It seems to be popular among students, but equally photographers comprise a large part of our twitter followers, as do visual artists. The whole thing is curious; it suggests that poetry is made to be written and not read, an outpouring of emotional disjecta membra intended as a medicinal exorcising of spirit.

Not all is lost however, the very fact that we receive so many verse submissions means that there's a great interest under the surface, Etcetera will hopefully provide a suitable platform for expansion.

I very much hope the same is true of film, music and written drama which I don't think get enough exposure in this type of frequent publication, particularly not as an original form. A conglomerate of culture can only be a good thing for an artistic community and I only hope it encourages people to create and experiment.

The mutilation of Marina Abramovic and other stories

Very soon, less than two weeks away, is the opening of The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic. Needless to say the title is somewhat misleading; Abromic is not, and never has been, dead. Her life, however, does often play with the boundaries between the two in performances that invariably involve the eye-watering infliction of self-harm or, more frighteningly, the infliction of harm upon her by others.

While I think much of her performance is extreme, I can't help but be drawn to the core of the work and the justification or intention behind it. Some of her early work, such as Rhythm 2 and Rhythm 10, are fantastic and fascinating explorations of the human body, the divided self, performance, art and numerous other totemic subjects.

Clearly her life has uncompromisingly been handed over to her performance art, which she rather typically believes should not be diluted by any deviation from reality, hence her designation of the make believe in theatre as a "black hole". She even admits that she hates theatre and performance. All the more reason, she believes, to immerse herself in it to avoid the banality of comfort. Bit intense.

                                                                 A face to make you cry?

Some of her more risque performances have involved her masturbating for seven hours under the floors of the Guggenheim in New York. Another involved lying on a cross of ice whipping herself until she bled before standing to cut a five pointed communist star into her stomach. But it is not all sensational sex and violence; in 2010 she performed The Artist is Present in which she sat in the atrium of MoMA while members of the public took turns to sit opposite her. She however, was deep in meditation offering nothing but a gazing face prompting a mixture of reactions from her viewers. A brilliant collection of which are available on the tumblr page 'Marina Abramovic made me cry'

Ripe material, perhaps, for a stage play. Whatever your views on her performance art it is hard to resist the safe hands that the stage play has found itself in. Directed by Robert Wilson and narrated by Willem Dafoe the credentials are convincing, but add to this a score written by Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons and you're guaranteed a bizarre and provocative evening.

The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic runs from July 9 to July 16 at The Lowry, Salford.