REVIEW: [Mona Hatoum/Performing for the Camera] @ Tate Modern

Mona Hatoum (4 May - 21 August 2016)
Performing for the Camera (18 February - 12 June 2016)
Tate Modern, London

I popped down to Tate Modern recently for the Mona Hatoum exhibition and whilst I was there, I also had a look around the photography and performance exhibition 'Performing for the Camera'.

Mona Hatoum has been one of my favourite artists since I first started taking art seriously at A Level. Her work commands your attention and at times has a very confrontational presence; it's unsettling, it's visceral and yet poetic too. I have seen a select few pieces of her work over the years, but I was really looking forward to seeing a whole exhibit devoted to her practice.

One of my personal highlights was the installation "Light Sentence" (as in prison sentences), as often Hatoum's work displays political and social undertones. In between a barricade of small cages stacked on top one another, a single light bulb swings in the centre. The projected light from the bulb creates an encompassing surrounding shadow cast around the entire room, transforming it into a 'prison-like' chamber. I think what really worked so well about this piece was the subtle movement of the shadows panning across the walls. The light bulb not only swings like a pendulum, but also moves slowly up and down and the consequent movement of the shadows on the wall makes you feel like you are moving - or swaying. It creates a sense of unsteadiness. The other obvious association I immediately made was feeling like I was in an interrogation room. We've all seen scenes like this in film, where a character wakes up in a dark room, a sinister bulb swings erratically and reveals the character's predicament under confinement or capture. There was something dreamy or illusive about the shadows creating an isolated cell, in comparison to the actual physical barricade in the middle of the room. It felt like being in the point of view of someone slightly hazy.

Another piece I really enjoyed for it's simplicity is '+ and -' (1994/2004). A circular container of sand has a rotating beam that simultaneously smooths and rakes the sand. This is described as a constant process of making and unmaking, a balance of two processes doing and undoing at the same time. I just found this to be really poetic but articulated in such a simple way.



As I mentioned I was at Tate Modern for the Mona Hatoum exhibition, but then I noticed the photography exhibition on and decided to take a look. I really enjoyed this exhibition too. It deconstructs performative acts for photography and allows us to see some of the outtakes or additional shots leading up an iconic image.

"Serious performance art, portraiture, or simply posing for a photograph? What does it mean to perform for the camera? The exhibition explores two forms, looking at how performance artists use photography and how photography in itself is a performance."

This exhibition featured some obvious names in the realm of performance and photography including Charles Ray, Yves Klein, Martin Parr, Erwin Wurm and Ai Wei Wei just to name a few. I really enjoyed this exhibition. I think that it offered a different perception of the artists involved - especially the process and technique to which they choose to use photography to capture an image or an artwork. Especially now where photography is such an accessible and convenient channel of documentation and creativity - it lends itself to some great possibilities.

REVIEW: [Richard Serra] @ Gagosian Gallery, London

Richard Serra
Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London
11 October 2014 - 4 March 2015

The Gagosian Gallery, London recently exhibited a few select works by the renowned sculptor Richard Serra, perhaps most recognisable for his large scale steel installations. This exhibition was no different as the gallery featured the following works 'Backdoor Pipeline', 'Ramble', 'Dead Load' and 'London Cross'.

As is often the case with Serra's work, the sheer scale and mass of his sculptures dominate the space as you pass through it. The presence of these enormous forms have a breathtaking exchange that is only experienced face to face. It is only with such an interaction that you truly acknowledge and embody the physical grounding of the material and scale that Serra tends to work in.

Ramble (2014) by Richard Serra. Photograph by Mike Bruce

Ramble (2014) consists of a room filled with rows of oblong shaped forms that vary in size but are generally large enough to match the average height of a visitor or tower a few inches above. This immediately creates an interesting synergy between the viewer and Serra's forms, as we are made to create an instant relationship between us and this series of sculpture. The layout of these objects feels maze-like and one is compelled to meander their way through the plane of steel blocks. The distance between the blocks in some places is just wide enough to accommodate, once again emphasising the scale of the work in direct relation to the viewer. As well as appreciating the scale of each of these forms, I often felt a desire to touch them and truly appreciate their materiality and surface. There is obviously a fascination Serra has with steel and his repeated use of this material focuses the viewer's attention on just how this material functions and presents itself.

REVIEW: [Thinking with the Body] by Wayne McGregor @ The Wellcome Collection

Thinking with the Body by Wayne McGregor
The Wellcome Collection
19 September - 27 October 2013

This is my recent review I wrote for the online publishing site: http://intuition-online.co.uk/article.php?id=3416

A study of mind, movement and dance, 'Thinking with the body' was the most recent exhibition presented by the Wellcome Collection in the increasing emergence of collaborative art and science practice. In recent years, artists have become ever more interdisciplinary and multi-faceted practitioners in their own right; engaging with an array of experts, scientists and consultants alike to fuel the research invested in their artworks. In this exhibition Wayne McGregor investigates aspects of perception, sensation and physical movement in relation to cognitive and social sciences, demonstrated through the art of dance itself.

The exhibition certainly addressed some really intriguing ideas around the body as a tool and vessel of physical expression. Using dance as a case study, this spontaneous and inexplicable expressive form of behaviour allows the dancer to use their body as their chosen medium. In fact using the body as an artistic medium is not purely restricted to just dancers, performance artists have been doing the same thing for years. Whilst watching the interchange between both the dancers and choreographers, you feel very much like a voyeur; looking in on a unique form of language by those who possess an obvious enriched understanding and utility of the body as an instrument. It goes beyond ordinary gesture, its flexible, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes amazingly subtle, as if they own a completely different embedded vocabulary of movements they are able to appropriate at will. Just like any other type of artist, dancing explores the endless possibilities of the chosen medium and in this respect, the limits to which the body can be used to express both emotion and narrative. Dance is certainly not just a visually spectacular practice but an innate form of expression drawn from the emotive core. As with many art forms; what appears on the surface  is only half the story, the rather more interesting art lies in the cognitive and psychological intentions driving the resulting physical catharsis.

REVIEW: [Dalston House] by Leandro Erlich @ Barbican Centre, London

Dalston House by Leandro Erlich
Barbican Centre
26 June - 4 August 2013

I've always been a fan of interactive and participatory artworks, and London's latest instalment Dalston House was just the type of work I love going to see. Having read about Leandro Erlich's work before, I was intrigued to experience his manipulation of visual and spatial dimensions in the flesh.

What struck me immediately was its nonchalant and honest simplicity. The first thing you see is the huge and imposing mirror, and in effect that is all there is to this illusion: the mirror. However I found myself drawn to the metal scaffolding holding the mirror up. Erlich has purposely allowed the viewer to be able to see the exposed mechanism behind the illusion. Nothing is concealed, there are no smoke and mirrors to the work's production. Every person participating in this work knows more or less how it works, how the illusion transpires ─and still...the magic and curiosity is still very much there. If anything, the pleasure received from the work is even more so somehow when you realise how straightforward it is in its construction.

People are always fascinated by their reflections. Even now when you see someone walk down the street and they catch their reflection in a mirror unexpectedly, they look intrigued or surprised as if seeing themselves for the first time. Seeing one's self allows an unusual, out of body semblance; an awareness of one's body and its ordinary constructs and restrictions in real time and space. Dalston House enables the impossible ─but not in actual physicality, just in the reflected image. Yet this is enough to reverse our rational understanding of our bodies and its capabilities. Participants became acrobats, superheroes, people with gravity defying abilities and contortions. Ironically enough, most viewers were adamantly trying to recreate a realistic portrayal of gravity, dangling upside down for example was popular, or sitting a window ledge from a seeming twenty or so feet off the ground. People were trying to create fantastical scenarios but within the realms of believable physics, as if this makes the illusion even more seductively deceptive. Creating a sub-real reality from the unreal. You get how it works, you see how it works, but you still find yourself staring at your own reflection thinking "I'm dangling upside down from a window ledge." You may know you're lying on the ground but this feels irrelevant when your body becomes the best full scale puppet you've ever had to play with.

REFERENCE: Immersing Body & Mind

The TV documentary 'What makes a masterpiece?' (2012) courtesy of Channel 4, features James Turrell's immersive installations as a play between science and art, powering between experience and aesthetics.

 

"His work is often described as explorations in light and space. The artist calls his work 'adventures in perception' and I can't help thinking this is a take on the brave new world of neuro-aesthetics, which studies the impact of art on the brain. By flooding the senses with otherworldly flushes of light, Turrell is creating something of a new reality, born of a fusion of the two disciplines of art and science. In Turrell's case, beauty isn't so much in the eye of the beholder but the brain." -Matthew Cain

With new technology and developing art practices that now frequently combine the two, it is becoming difficult in defining what exactly affects us when we encounter art. Whether there is some key element that engages the viewer's attention, or whether it is the joy of surprise and the new. James Turrell's installations don't only overload the senses with his extreme colour and light, but they seem to transport the viewer to a psychological state, an alternate reality of escape.

PRACTICE: Jack in a Box

There is a really interesting border between comfort and confinement. The smaller spaces are, the more we tend to feel uncomfortable and constrained. At the same time, some people are reassured by smaller spaces, by a sanctuary, a pocket of space big enough for themselves alone. Just by comparing cenophobia and claustrophobia for example; one is the fear of barren, open spaces, and the other is a fear of crowded, tight spaces. The fact that we are able to pivot towards either extreme demonstrates just how much space can affect us. Can a smaller space become a refuge or a prison?

Above the Below (2003) by David Blaine

1 Without (2010) by Wannes Goetschalckx

1 Kind (2007) by Wannes Goetschalckx

Wannes Goetschalckx is a performance artist who works a lot with restricted spaces. He looks at the emotional and physical in relation to body and space. He aims to reveal the hidden and apparent constraints in human life, the coexistence of comfort and pain, exposure and enclosure, cage and shelter.

"1 Without" is a video installation featuring Goetschlackx doing different activities in various sized wooden boxes, exploring the notion of captivity. It is reminiscent of what children do when they find empty boxes and containers to hide or play inside. From a young age, we learn to explore with our imagination. As we get older we tend to associate smaller spaces more and more with confinement and not play. We see spaces only on the surface, and we no longer seem to possess that curiosity for creating spaces of our own.

'Watch Where You Look' (2012) by Vivienne Du

The Box Task Day 16, Big Brother 6 (2005) courtesy of Channel 4

A task from Big Brother 6 required all the housemates to stay in their assigned cardboard boxes for as long as possible. Due to the nature of Big Brother, the activity was posed as a fun and entertaining treatment of the housemates' endurance. At first the housemates seemed to enjoy their new challenge but clearly as the time went on, the confinement of staying in a box for hours on end clearly became too unbearable for most. Three managed to stay in their boxes for just over 26 hours, you wonder whether they were simply not as affected by space or their determination drove them to stay.

Freak Like Me, courtesy of BBC3

REVIEW: [Abandon Normal Devices] ZEE @ Fact Gallery, Liverpool

ZEE by Kurt Hentschägler
Fact Gallery, Abandon Normal Devices Festival, Liverpool
29 September - 27 November 2011

Kurt Hentschägler's immersive installation 'ZEE' was described by one viewer as "a world as viewed by a dying robot clone from the inside of a Turner painting..."

I was certainly not disappointed. ZEE was a spectacular multisensory experience, that really did made me question how the things I was seeing were happening in my brain. To date, it's one of the most wholly consuming artworks I have had the pleasure of seeing, and I went in twice.

On arrival, participants had to sign an agreement, as the flashing lights and other conditions inside the installation may cause panic, seizures and other slightly unnerving symptoms. We heard stories from the invigilators of people fainting, or having to make an early escape. So after signing my life away on a slip of paper, they took us to the entrance and briefed us on what not to do. On the first occasion, I was in a group of about five, the thought of there being other people there was quite reassuring at first. Once inside, it dawned on me that it would make no difference.