Newspeak

In London in the week making a presentation about the Irwell Sculpture Trail http://www.irwellsculpturetrail.co.uk/ to the Chartered Institute of Water and Environment Management (http://www.ciwem.org/ ) to develop future project partnerships. (A bit scary to realise that I started the IST in 1993).

Anyway, the only show I had time to take in was Newspeak: British Art Now at the Saatchi Gallery http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/new_britannia/

It wasn’t clear why it called Newspeak. I guessed that it somehow implied that as this is Saatchi’s next generation they are supposed to be speaking new. That was me assuming that they were trying to say something positive about the new collection. But it did seem a bit risky because of the Orwellian interpretations – that Saatchi is attempting to control the discourse (again) about contemporary British Art. I discover via Google that "this exhibition turns that Orwellian vision on its head, showing that the range of visual languages being exploited and invented by these new artists is, in fact, expanding and multiplying." This in itself is a mad newspeak distortion of the meaning of newspeak.

And the claim made for it is not supported by the work or oddly the curation. On my previous visits the latter aspect has not really struck me because the work carried the hang. But while there are some works worth seeing the absence of a sense that this is a cohesive vision makes the linear circulation pattern of the hang seem lumbering. The only locational surprise is Gareth Cadwallader’s Dead Horse installed alone in a thoroughfare between two galleries. In the loose context, I found myself more in the mood for abstraction and so liked (top picture) Marcus Foster’s Untitled form, which he describes as hot air balloon-like but for me was reminiscent of forms from 17th Century Chinese fluted ceramics.

Dean Hughes never puts a foot wrong but I didn’t think Saatchi displayed it very well.

And the other work that stood out for me was Systems House with his mix of minimalism and manufacturing.

Unusually nowadays, the only noticeable use of text was James Howard and his 46 digital prints appropriating the graphics and language of advertising and information posters. Apart from the soft spot for me of finding an artwork which features a dog called Barny in the Saatchi, I enjoyed Howard’s word play

EARLY WARNING
When its fact of life teaching schedule remember to
Include tell her most important one.
ASK YOURSELF
“Is any other dog?
Has it happened
To Barny?
At an alarming rate?”
“Has the children?”

London Reviews

While in London last week I saw four exhibitions:

Eberhard Havekost: Guest
White Cube
http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/havekost/
The most interesting Havekost paintings were the Gast series (Guest) – quite convincingly 3 dimensional forest forms maybe seen at night, which are at the same time strangely out of focus as you approach them. The thing that is odd about the show is the unexplained interruptions in the flow of the display with canvases which are vaguely floating colour fields. Then there is one strong graphic piece, “Distanz” possibly representing the bottom of a door in a corridor and another painting called “H2O”, the torso of a swimmer – neither seeming to make sense in relation to the night forest paintings. The upper floor mainly features more of the colour field paintings – which in the majority work quite pleasantly. Apparently Havekost starts from a photo and “enacts a process of de-materialisation and re-materialisation, from thought to object.” I think the interchange of figuration to abstraction is an interesting effect but the absence of a connecting logic undermines the whole.

Jia Aili & Lu Chunsheng
iniva at Rivington Place
http://www.iniva.org/exhibitions_projects
Jia Aili’s paintings are technically brilliant, though I would locate his iconography and forms with Bacon rather than (as curator David Thorpe suggests) Beckett. Unfortunately, I would say that when he takes the paint beyond the canvas onto the walls and floor they become inauthentic. The painting “Jia Aili, Good Morning” is a case in point: as the paint leaves the canvas at the bottom there is some dynamic spontaneous paint splashing but then other parts are overworked and remarkably clumsily done compared to the rest of the work. This exposed artifice is magnified by elements of broken glass or mirror on the floor which do not make the convincing transition from the image to the gallery spatial reality.
(Sadly I didn’t have time to see Lu Chunsheng’s video).

The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today
Saatchi Gallery
The impressive Saatchi Gallery has a very strong Indian Art exhibition.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/current/indian_art_installation_views.htm

Artists who stood out: Shezad Dawood and especially Chitra Ganesh.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/chitra_ganesh.htm?section_name=new_india

Jannis Kounellis
ambika P3
http://p3exhibitions.com/

P3 is quite a weird space to visit. I think part of the effect of the final installation is the process of getting to it, though the backside of the urban façade. The Kounellis installation is remarkable. Reading the exhibition notes doesn’t do the effects of this many favours, since it is one of those artistic acts that touches your being beyond language.

The Kounellis and Saatchi exhibitions are strongly recommended.