Curiosity exhibition and sketches

I caught the last day of the Curiosity exhibition at the Turner Contenporary Gallery on Sunday.

I had chance to see the amazing glass sea creatures again and Turner's watercolour studies of birds.

I also watched Tacita Dean's films one of ,which was a film of the artist Claes Oldenberg Manhatton Mouse Museum in his studio, cleaning and re arranging his collection of objects.

I am always pleased to see other artists studios and what they keep in them, and especially if they seem to collect all sorts of strange objects.. Claes Oldenberg had many such objects from platform boots and a childs trainer, to a mug with an apple core on it, antique perfume bottles and

He moved around on an wheeled office chair, dusting the pieces with a paintbrush and moving some from box shelf to box shelf.

A fascinating study and I was pleased to see it. Often I don't seem to have the time or energy to watch films as well as see exhibitions, so it's good I live close to the gallery.

Tacita Dean's other film, Prisoner Pair was a close up of 2 pears in a bottle of Schnapps, sunlight falls across the bottle and casts shadows, bubbles and small pieces of pear move in the liquid. Strangely mesmerising. I was glad to have watched them before the exhibition closed.

Out side the gallery I sat down for a few minutes taking a few photogrphs and sketching.

The next exhibition at the Turner Contemporary has Sketches from Turner and Constable, which looks great and opens on the 5th October 2013.

Zoo Art Fair

This year I finally managed a couple of art fairs, I have been planning visits for a number of years but never manged to get to any. Autumn seems the time of year when all the fairs are happening, literally some at the same time. I suppose this is to encourage visitors/buyers from abroad to come over and see them all.
I didn't manage Frieze, but I got to Zoo, which this year was held in some old industrial buildings near Liverpool street station. There seems to be a trend to use old semi derelict buildings for exhibitions, the danger being some times that the buildings can be more interesting than the art shown in them.
At Zoo there were several buildings in use, one housing video work others with individual artists and galleries and there was some really good work there.

I really responded to Harald Smykla's work, Movie Protocol, which involves him watching films and transcribing them into a visual language. Info here There was something about these drawings that was really full of life and vitality. I talked to the artist for a few minutes about his work, which started when he was watching TV and thinking about what he could do with that time. I thought the work was full of life because it was done in the moment, fresh and without much deliberation.

In the building showing film and video work I watched and really enjoyed Kathrin Sonntay's film Dracula's Ghost 2009. It was witty and made good cultural and political comments about our love of vampires and our insistence of their history in Transylvania.

Other work I enjoyed were Per Kesselmar's Wide Screen series of paintings, oil on aluminium, which were beautiful pieces full of subtle and concentrated light. Info from the gallery here

ST James Park and ICA

I decided to put some work into the Pastel Society open this year at the Mall Galleries and as it was a sunny day to wander into ST James park. Unfortunately they were dredging and doing work to the lake, which was fenced off. But the trees were coming into leaf and the cherry blossom particularily lovely.



I was taking photos as I walked around, noticing all the flags around too, probably because of the G20 summit. Although the fountains in Trafalgar square were also out of action due to cleaning, there was one of the new art works on the fourth plinth, A colourful design in light reflecting glass for a hotel, by Thomas Schutte, something they call a concept piece I think.
Later this year Antony Gormleys work One and other, involving hundreds of people standing on the plinth for an hour at a time will be there. You can register to be one of the people occupying the plinth for an hour here



At the ICA there was an exhibition of Sean Snyders work, Index, including video installations and photography. Downstairs was a series of images of storage media from Snyder's archive, along with experimental test prints. A video installation showed a film made from a Soviet propaganda film and an art history lecture re-edited and disrupte. It was quite thought provoking, what struck me most though was the sort of certainty that was apparant in the Soviet educator's face and attitude. What we do if we are so convinced by ideology.



Upstairs were two more video installations one Afghanistan circa 1985, is a short film showing footage from the Soviet occupations of Afghanistan. Somewhat incongruously it shows Soviet troops embracing and dancing with Afghanis while their vehicles and weapons are in the background. The other film Casio, Seiko, Sheraton, Toyoto, Mars incorporates footage from the recent American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Sean Snyders voice over tracks the brands of the title involvement with the wars and uses footage from all sorts of footage.

Animation Breakdown, Tate Modern

Tate Modern held an Animation Breakdown weekend this week and I was able to get along to part of yesterdays study day. I was interested in seeing the possible range of work that's being done by contemporary artists, in digital media, following my own interest in video.
So it was great to see a lot of different work and hear from some of the artists during panel discussions. Simon Faithfull showed some work made using palm pilot drawings on a trip to the source of the river Lea. He also showed a tribute, little animation of a dog who had died but through the work was re-animated. Under an Arts Council funding Simon had also gone to Antartica with a research team and sent back a drawing a day by e-mail.

I was interested in his work because it shared similarities with mine and he used animation in small amounts.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jennifer Steinkamp showed examples of her completely computer generated work, which is large scale and based and involving architectural forms. Samba Falls work questions the nature of identity and self, with an opening striking image of a skeleton lying above a barcode.

Animate Projects has many films to watch, news, events and a blog.

In the Tubine Hall was Dominique Gonzalez-Foersters installation TH.2058 looking into an imaginary future in London 50 years from now, when we will be seeking shelter from the continuous rain.There was something menacing about the spider like creature and the bare bed frames, which had some books treated for the expected damp.The giant apple core is by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje von Bruggen.


Outside the sun was still shining and I took some photographs of the silver birch trees, growing taller each year.