Jeff Cox - What's going on?

The Stone Space, Leytonstone, E11

A most enjoyable exhibition of Jeff Cox's small abstract/figurative paintings in an intimate Leytonstone gallery.

http://thestonespace.wordpress.com/

Damien Hirst - Tate Modern

With a Damian Hirst exhibition you obviously go with pre-conceived notions, it's easy to jump on the conservative bandwagon and dismiss him but his work is interesting and profound, all about life & death and beauty, often represented by butterflies & ugliness, represented by cigarette butts. His most iconic work is probably the shark, ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ although I prefer Pharmacy which reminds me of a Donald Judd minimalist piece. It is especially effective here as you enter it from a room kept humid to support butterflies flying around living out their life, you then progress from the heat of the butterfly room to the cool of Pharmacy, cool in both senses of the word.
  
'A Thousand Years' must also be mentioned. Within a glass box a life cycle is played out. Maggots hatch, develop into flies, then feed on a severed cow's head while other flies fly around and either meet their end in an insect-o-cutor or survive to continue the cycle. It's the artist playing God and it is amazing, horrific but amazing. The randomness of life and death, it seems so unfair, but that is how life and death works I suppose.

There's always going to be bits you don’t like as well. His spin paintings don’t do much for me and I didn’t bother with the diamond encrusted skull as there was a big queque and it's not my favourite. Without the artist the diamonds are still worth enough for an ordinary person to retire on whereas with the shark for example there is no value without Hirst’s creative flair and ideas.

Government Art Collection: 12 From No 10 selected by Downing Street Staff

Whitechapel Gallery
The forth in a series of five exhibitions of the GAC at Whitechapel and the first chosen by 'ordinary people', in this case staff at 10 Downing Street. Each previous show was chosen by the 'great and the good' but unfortunately this one suffers in comparison and is just a little bit dull. It lacks the curatical flair of that selected by the artist Cornelia Parker or the interesting comparison of the selections of MP's to your prior assumptions of them.

To be fair there are some interesting pictures that caught my eye, I especially liked these photos by Seamus Nicolson which show ordinary, everyday situations of urban life. By the use of the darkness of the night and the artificial light of the shops they produce a beauty that you wouldn't expect.

Gillian Wearing - Whitechapel Gallery

A survey of Wearing's art to date featuring films and photographs. Some of the films are moving and affecting although my preference is for her iconic 1992 series, 'Signs that say what you want them to say, and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say' where strangers are offered paper and pen to communicate their message.

Alighiero Boetti - Tate Modern

Boetti was an Italian artist who spent 1970’s in Afganistan until forced to leave when the Soviet Union invaded in 1979, he opened an hotel in Kabul as an art project. His outstanding works, which take up 2 rooms of this exhibition alone, are a series of embroideries, some very large, of maps of the world with the countries represented by their flag. He did these from the middle of the Cold War till the early 1990’s tracking the changing geopolitical situation. He used helpers with the stitching, women in Afganistan and then Pakistan. One map features a bright pink sea which came about because the stitchers, living in a land-locked country, did not recognise the ocean on the map. Therefore they used the colour which was in plentiful supply, which happened to be pink. Apparently Boetti loved the random nature of this solution and it certainly makes for a striking image.

Serralves Museum, Porto

Serralves Museum displays cutting-edge international contemporary art in a striking minimalist building, opened in 1999. There is no permanent collection on display, temporary exhibitions take up the entire space. At the moment there is a Thomas Struth photography exhibiton which was a bit of a shame as, much as I like his photographs, I saw many of them recently at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. 

We spent more time in the grounds which surround the museum and contain formal gardens and sculptures and also the Casa de Serralves, a lovely pink Art Deco house which is only let down by a complete lack of explanation of how the inside of the building would have looked in its heyday, some reproduction furniture or even a leaflet would've been good.

Travelling Light - Government Art Collection

Selected by Simon Schama; Whitechapel Gallery

The third in the series of works from the Government Art Collection. It perhaps doesn't have the curatical spark that Cornelia Parker brought to his selection but nevertheless there are some interesting exhibits, I particulary liked Map of an Englishman by Grayson Perry, Dartmoor Time by Richard Long and Allotments, Ely, Cambridgeshire by Mark Edwards, all shown below.

Zarina Bhimji, Whitechapel Gallery

Zarina Bhimji was born in Mbarara, Uganda in 1963 to Indian parents, and moved to Britain in 1974, two years after the expulsion of Uganda’s Asian community in the Idi Amin era. She takes beautiful pictures, often of desolute and abandoned landscapes and buildings in India and East Africa. The exhibition also features her film Out of Blue from 2002 and the premiere of her latest film, Yellow Patch (2011), inspired by trade and migration across the Indian Ocean.

Yayoi Kusama - Tate Modern, London

One of the joy's of going to the Tate Modern is to watch middle class parents dragging their children round desparately trying to get the nippers into it, 'oh isn't this one colourful'. Another joy is to see the madness on display, the pure insane in the membrane inventiveness that sometimes you get with abstract art. It's easy to look at a picture of a thing, a portrait by an old master say and think 'very nice' but then what? you move on to the next one and so on without really thinking about it. Abstract art demands more, its a bit more difficult and some things can be very, shall we say, 'challenging' but if you make a connection it keeps dragging you back for another look.

Anyway I digress, as I was saying often the joy is to see the madness and inventiveness on display and this exhibition has both in abundance; not surprising for the former, and possibly the latter, as the Japenese artist has lived in a mental institution since 1977. She experienced hallucinations as a child which she describes in her striking paintings and installations of polka dots; dots everywhere, in the living room, on cats and horses and rivers, in a mirrored 'infinity room', the woman is positively dotty. Not surprising perhaps, she was also forced by her mother to spy on her father's infidelities at a young age, which has seemingly also left her with a fascination with phallic images and voyerism.

In New York in the 1960's she organised happenings where hippies found themselves by painting each other with polka dots (what else) and she also offered to sleep with Richard Nixon if he would pull out (as it were) of Vietnam. Unfortunately Tricky Dickie didn't take her up on her kind offer but full marks for trying.

An exhuberant exhibition full of variety and invention that should be seen if at all possible ...oh and don't she look like Jo Brand?

Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement

Royal Academy – until 11^th December 2011 

I’m not entirely sure how well he captures the “movement” bit, I don’t know who can, but you can’t complain about misrepresentation on the “ballet” bit – there are dancers everywhere in this huge exhibition.

Degas did produce some quite stunningly beautiful paintings and sculptures, and you have to believe that almost all of them are here. For a show of this size, such a narrow focus might be a risk, but it kept my interest throughout.

There are many lesser-known pieces, brought from all over the world, and some fascinating insights into the techniques that Degas employed in an attempt to capture the movement of dance.

Actually, I don’t think he really did represent the energy of the dance itself, but I still think his work is lovely and well known pieces are around every corner.

If there is a criticism it is exactly that – Degas is so well known that it could be a little like an Athena shop (just showing my age). Personal preference would be for a little more biographical background – and maybe more passion. I’m assuming the guy had his share of trials and tribulations but maybe “angry ballet” pictures didn’t sell.

I would recommend the show without reserve, but I’ll be back for “Degas – the crack years” just to balance the sweetness.

Mark

Richard Hamilton 1922 - 2011

British artist Richard Hamilton, pioneer of Pop art, has died at the age of 89. His best known work was his 1956 collage 'Just What Is It That Makes Today's Home's So Different, So Appealing?

He also designed the cover for The Beatles' White Album which is the only Beatles album not to feature the four band members. He explained  "Peter Blake's album sleeve (for Sgt Pepper) was crowded with people and very colourful. I thought it would be appropriate to present an album that was just white."

Hamilton was also distrustful of the political establishment. He produced works about, among others, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Shock and Awe (2007-08) featured Tony Blair wearing a cowboy shirt, with guns and holsters. Hamilton said he produced the image after he saw Blair "looking smug" following a conference with George Bush. Tony Blair looking smug - surely not!

Lawson Oyekan - Trial with Light, Canary Wharf

Like many of the artists whose work is on display at Canary Wharf Lawson Oyekan can be said to be a truely international artist having been born in South London, raised in Nigeria and having also lived and worked in Denmark. Four works are on display in the lobby of One Canada Square (the main tower), they are rough hewn terracotta vessels that Oyekan describes as reflecting emotional experiences in their surfaces.

John Hoyland 1934 - 2011

Some images by John Hoyland, one of the greats of British post war abstract painting, who has died aged 78.

 

 

Richter – Cage Paintings at Tate Modern

Richter’s large Cage paintings are named after avant-garde musician John Cage. Produced by overlaying and scraping back paint they seem to shimmer as you look at them. To be honest they always put Husker Du’s searing New Day Rising album in my head rather than Cage’s music but thats probably just me.

I enjoy Richter’s paintings but I also love his views/outlook as well. Suspicious of ideologies and any claim to absolute truth he states ‘I don’t know what I want, I am inconsistent, non-committal, passive, I like the indefinite, the boundless, I like continual uncertainty’. These views help keep his work interesting. As most of the world’s problems are caused by political & religious fundamentalists who see the world in black and white and claim to have knowledge of absolute truth he is a refreshing change.