Souvenirs of Cliftonville exhibition by Sadie Hennessy

 

I went up to Resort Studios with Ruth today to see Souvenirs of Cliftonville an exhibition by Sadie Hennessy.  I'd met Sadie when we went down to the Art Car Boot fair in Folkestone last year and had bought one of her prints there. Sadie's website

   Article about the exhibition in the local paper here

 

This exhibition has arisen out of Sadie's residency and shows 14 commissioned portraits of local Cliftonville residents.  The portraits include found ephemera, the residents own memories and different aspects of Cliftonville.  The portraits give a sense of vintage postcards and have a celebratory feel to them which is very attractive.

The whole exhibition is styled as a souvenir shop which satisfied two of my ideals, an exhibition and a shop. The good news here is that Sadie has produced some great souvenirs to buy at really good prices. So you can purchase, soaps, badges, sweets, mugs, postcards and snow globes amongst other things.

Do go and visit the show if you can it is open on February 14th and 15th, 21st and 22nd   12 till 4pm.
Resort Studios website

Pettman Building
50 Athelstan Road
Cliftonville, Margate
Kent
CT9 2BH

Work on the Mr Lion Project

I have been working on some pieces for the Mr Lion project that we have been exploring in Blank Canvas at the Turner Contemporary Gallery. Link to Blank Canvas facebook page here.

Artist Lucy Steggals suggested the project following her own exploration of other figures from a series of old cards she found. Lucy's website here.

It has been an interesting few months, also working with other artists, playing around with ideas about Mr Lion's character, where he might live, what possessions he might have and what he looks like amongst other things.

We all have different ideas about Mr Lion and will be showing some of these in an exhibition, details to follow.

I have an artists book made from Japanese paper, collage and print, using the letters of the name Mr Lion and have a sketch book where I have been keeping ideas.

Sliding House installation by Alex Chinneck in Margate

I went up to Cliftonville today to look at artist Alex Cinneck's new art work," From the knees of my nose to the belly of my toes" Which is a four storey house in Godwin road where the facade appears to be sliding down to the ground.

The artist was there being interviewed and photographed by his house. It is a striking piece, and people were stopping in their cars to look. Alex Chinneck has said he likes to use materials in un expected ways, like using the solid material of brick in a seemingly fluid way.

The house was compulsorary purchased by the council after being empty and derelict for 11years.
After the installation has been on show for a year the house will be converted back to a home to live in.

I like the homour in the work and the way it leads to questions about housing and homes and about areas like Cliftonville where there are a lot of lovely period properties slowly becoming derelict.

Billy Childish at the ICA

I went to see the exhibition of Billy Childish's work at the ICA last week. Info on the exhibition here. I didn't know too much about him apart from the fact he lived in Chatham and wrote poetry and music and was a bit of a punk. It was good to see some of his work, artists books, paintings, prints, videos and poetry.
A good article about Billy Childish here.

" you also walk up the sides of trees,
your tiny feet stepping close
to the wings of moth"
from Divine Conception 2007


I enjoyed the thickness of the paint applied directly on linen canvas, paintings of boats from the river Medway, and the figure of Robert Walser, who was found in a field close to the asylum where he had been staying for some years. Walser has been an influence on Billy Childish's work, especially his writing.
The combination of sketches and photographs in some of his artists books gave me an idea for similar combinations. There was also one of his mother's pots in one painting and outside on the ICA desk, they were very interesting and I thought I'd see if she exhibited them herself.

Per Kirkeby at Tate Modern and Hampton Court show.

The Hampton Court Flower Show was on last week and I was there again with my sister, trying out my new camera and enjoying the show. Generally Hampton Court Show feels more spacious than Chelsea Flower show, but this year Hampton Court seemed very busy, which was fine until I had my handy cart filled with bargain priced plants.

The perfume and colour of the plants is what draws me time and time again. It is like being awash with beautiful sensations and the sheer variety of plant forms is staggering. From the same basic elements and earth, water and sun, we find all the richness of the plant kingdom.

I have also been to see the exhibition of Per Kirkeby at Tate Modern, I didn't know his work before but was really pleased to see it here at the exhibition. There were a number of his collages that inspired me, using images from the natural world, torn papers and real leaves.



His blackboard paintings hinted at lost histories of work rubbed out and his small bronze sculptures were earthy and powerful. In the last room were some great oil paintings on canvas, his "Soft Lapping of Waves Green" was lyrical and as the name implies full of green tones. Other large paintings, untitled, had reference to his geological interests, layers of formations and abstact shapes.

Waltham Forest Summer exhibition. and May Day.

The Arts Club Summer Exhibition went well. There was a good selection of work exhibited, including sculpture, prints, photographs and paintings. Katja Rosenberg always has some great participatory art work, this year it was on the theme of heros. It was good to invigilate on a couple of days and interact with the visitors.
Being in the park means that if the weather is bad, few people come along, but if it's nice and sunny of course the park fills up and there are a lot more visitors.

The gallery is due to be closed and knocked down early next year, a new building is planned but won't be open for probably 2 years. The whole park is having a revamp, I can't help but be

worried especially by the number of trees that will be cut down.

Last month I was in the park for the May Day celebrations, the Maypole dancers and Morris dancers were there braving the rather cold and windy weather.

Gerhard Richter and Francis Alys Fabiola

I just caught the Gerhard Richter exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, I had been wanting to see his work for some time. In reproduction it has perhaps even more of an ambiguous sense something between photographic reproduction and painting.


In his work from the sixties Gerhard Richter used black and white photographs from magazines for his paintings, which obscure identities and play with the surface of the paint. Later he used photographs of his family friends and associates. There are some paintings of his wife and baby too which seem somehow both touching and disturbing as their faces are obscured and paint is dragged across them.

In the Portrait gallery I spotted another exhibition Francis Alys" Fabiola," which is worth seeing too. The artist Francis Alys has collected 300 odd images of a christian saint known as Fabiola. The image has a Fabiola in profile usually in a crimson veil, and all though at first glance the images seem to be very similar their are infact big differences between them. Francis Alys collected the images from flea markets and antique shops from around the world, and some are of high quality artistically, others are obviously made by amateurs.
There are two rooms full and I was facinated looking round, perhaps something of the saintly qualities of Fabiola are present with such a collection of her image.

Albert Herbert visionary painter

I've had a couple of images by Albert Herbert in my reference collection for some years, without knowing anything about him. Recently I have been looking him up and looking at some of his paintings online.I really respond to his work, which although has biblical themes generally, seems to have an openess and spiritual vibrancy that speaks of wider connections to spirit.
The gallery England and co that represented Albert Herbert has a short bibliography including this section.
"Herbert always used stories as a way of explaining his subjective feelings. His universal narratives were drawn from a myriad of diverse sources including Biblical stories and his own life and experiences. In the late 1950s he was drawn to learn about religion, seeing it as a way of revealing the inner world of the collective mind. In the 1980s he adopted the use of Biblical and theological subjects as a way of making his paintings less private. The surface meanings were often a mask for something else – used as metaphors, universal symbols or archetypes which could be interpreted in several different ways."
I thought I'd try to see some of his work as soon as I can.

Ib Geertsen and Martin Sexton exhibitions.

I just caught a small exhibition of Ib Geertsen's work in the Tea Building on Shoreditch High street. It was the bright colours on his paintings that I saw through the window that drew me inside for a better look. His work had a familiarity about it, though this apparantly is the first solo show of his work in London. But as he has been painting for over 70 years and his work and style has been used in glass on paper and in furniture, I think many other artists using graphics etc have been influenced by him.


Round the corner in Redchurch street was the exhibition I was in the area for, "Beneaththepavement....The beach" at the No More Grey gallery in Redchurch street. both Martin Sexton and Dominique Lacloche had work there. Dominique has used huge tropical Gunnera leaves on painted yellow sun discs on the floor
There were connections and relationships between the fact that these leaves had come from one continent to another and inspired by the natural photosynthetic properties of the leaves, she has created landscapes on their surface which lent a sense of time or history to them.

Martin was showing a number of pieces including an installation on entering the gallery of London concrete paving stones and local builders sand as well as sand collected from Golgotha., and split screen film taken from Stanley Kubrick,s Clockwork Orange." Another installation combines Martin Sexton's golden reliquary which contains the levitating head of John the Baptist, with Dominique Lacloche's Gunnera leaf witha silver moon finnish representing Salome.

Martin was also showing "Diotima Teaches Socrates in the Ways of Love" A mask of Socrates constructed from a 4.5 billion year old meteorite, facing a projected film of the moon on the opposite wall, with a soundtrack using the oldest surviving example of a complete musical composition, including musical notation.

Martin's work is full of layers of symbolic meaning, asking us to investigate the nature of reality and the possibility of universal truths. The exhibition is on till 5th April Thursday to Sat 11am till 6pm and by appointment.

Roni Horn and by the Thames

There is an exhibition of Roni Horn's work at Tate Modern till 25th May, I was struck by her series of photographs of the Thames, that incorporated text as footnotes, thoughts, reflections and quotes about the river and water including things like, "The river is a drain" "Going into water is like going into yourself" " The opacity of the world dissapates in water"

Her large glass sculptures were striking, especially "Pink Tons" A large pink glass cube, the sides are translucent and top polished clear, the light is reflected around the flaws in the glass and the polished top reflects like water.




Outside the gallery the tide was out and people were beachcombing along the side of the Thames. There is access to the river at this point, so I went down and had a look myself through some of the debris washed up by the river. There were a surprising number of pieces of old clay pipes and pottery among rather a lot of modern waste, the old posts left rotting along the shore line reminded me of ancient monuments or enviromental sculptures.

Ray Johnson collages and street photos.

I noticed an advert for a new gallery near Liverpool street called Raven Row, last week. The inaugural show was of the artist Ray Johnson, who worked with collages and started the mass movement of mail art.
The gallery is in a lovely building, whose history below is on the galleries site.

56 and 58 Artillery Lane were built around 1690 on land that was previously a weapons practice ground, and in the Middle Ages the site of the monastery of St. Mary Spital, the largest hospital in Europe. In the 1750s the buildings were transformed into luxury shops in the Rococo style by Huguenot silk merchants, Protestant settlers from France. Nonconformist and politically dissenting groups as well as immigrants began settling in Spitalfields, which experienced waves of violent protest, often by journeymen weavers against wage exploitation. In 1827 no. 58 was modernised with a plain Regency front, only a few years before the weaving economy in Spitalfields collapsed and the area became impoverished. 56 and 58 Artillery Lane housed many families who worked in the local food markets. Rebecca Levy, whose family moved in

to the building in 1925, still lives on its top floor.

There was a large collection of Ray Johnson's work over 3 floors, including many examples of his collages and mail art. It was good to see the multi- layered collages, with their symbolic figures and signs, some very humorous, and some of the quantity of pieces he sent out over the years. He used the popular icons of the times in advertising and celebrity culture of which he was sometimes part.Sadly Ray Johnson died in 1995 after swimming off in the sea.

Walking around the smaller streets near the gallery it was just possible to see traces of the old part of the city, most of the area has been completely modernised now.

New pastels and Cecil Collins

Last weekend was the second conference, Catharsis Transformation through the arts, dedicated to the work of the painter Cecil Collins, at St Ethelburgha's.
Apart from forgetting just how cold an old church can be in the middle of a very cold winter, it was another enjoyable experience. An old arts council film, The Eye of the Heart, was shown, ( such a shame it's not easy to get copies of such films) where Cecil Collins made some of his erudite remarks about painting, the nature of vision and the contemporary world.



Cecil Collins said we "do not have to understand in order to create, it is necessary to create in order to understand" He believed that "to be creative you need to be vulnerable" With a child's way of seeing and that "Art is an expression of life not an explanation of it"

Inspired by Cecil Collins work and following my Tree of Life painting,I did another couple of oil pastels. One similar to the Tree of Life and one focussing on the ground, the earth under the tree, and the light of the sun.