Carolyn Thompson in Porto

the nature of bury

As a curator no matter how much you trust your judgement that an artist will do something interesting, it is still a scary moment when the artist proposes an installation that starts with an ‘empty’ gallery. Whether you take a hard-line on the degree of rigour which an audience faces or not, curating an empty gallery at the start can be daunting. Conceptual environmental artist Kerry Morrison http://www.morrison-prowse.com/kerry/ ostensibly started from just that point in her current show ‘the nature of bury’ at Bury Art Gallery.

Actually the gallery turned out not to be empty, it is filled with a question: “where can I discover the nature of bury?” Kerry has for a number of years working in collaboration and dialogue with the scientific method – the gallery opened with the pregnant ‘scientific’ equipment which would be used to gather the samples, statistics and observations of the nature of bury – the display of a methodology of enquiry. I am pleased to write that Morrison’s query was instantly a sort of consciousness of the gallery space, an almost tangible ontology of her question. Having asked six people the question, she mapped their responses and began a series of artistic-scientific field trips, returning with specimens, new knowledge, new insights.

She writes “I choose my next exploration site from the conversations have with passers by at the current site. A map drawing of the next destination will accompany the first map drawing of the first. Travelling with my cabinet of research materials - a camera, sound recording equipment, jars and receptacles of various kinds, observation logbook sheets, crayons, pens, pencils, and a map of bury - I proceed from the gallery to the selected site of investigation. Upon arriving at the given destination I explore this nature of bury. Meeting people, and talking to them about what I am up to is an important element of the work. Through conversations I hope to discover anecdotes and points of interest relating to ‘place’ and the nature of the place. Each conversation I have will end with, “Where’s another good place discover the nature of bury?” (I paraphrased that lot)

What I find remarkable is that the question she leaves ‘hanging’ in the gallery has gained weight as her researches have begun to fill the space. Her exploration of the identified sites of the nature of bury has, as she intends, returned apparently scientific objective samples and observations, and in this very action she draws the parallels (and exposes) the subjectivity of scientific and artistic investigation of the world. She illuminates the ambiguity inherent and the greening-soon-to-be unquestionable nature of what n(N)ature actually is. In this regard even her lower case title is an insightful touch (I do like an artist who sees the subtler points of the language).

Personally I have no interest in nature or the environment – countryside is the dismal gap between cities as far as I am concerned. I recall Picasso once said that if he went for a walk in the landscape, it gave him green indigestion which required him to relieve the overload of his senses with green or landscape paintings. This always seemed daft to me – one because there is no comparison between the sensual overload of a city street with the monotony of the rural and two, sharing the metaphor of green indigestion, a more sensible care of one’s ‘stomach’ is not to ingest in the first place. When Kerry asked me where the nature of bury was I replied an old chemical site (which has become a site of special scientific interest due to the eco-systems evolved from contamination) and Radcliffe town centre. All that said: I have to own up to a great and growing fascination with the discoveries and objects of nature that Kerry is accumulating in the gallery. Maybe this is how I want my nature anyway – in a gallery (or a good park is acceptable) – either way the in turns beautiful, organic and clinical reification of nature, its artistic scrutiny, draw me (of all people) more frequently back than any recent show to see what new insight her accrual of the nature of bury has to offer.

The show runs 19 July - 8 November

Footnote:
After all I have said about the problems of galleries as crèches, the gallery had just such a out of control children problem overflow into Kerry’s installation. A more thoughtful piece on this to follow.

Peace Demo

WE have the annual irritation of New Labour's party conference this week - Manchester streets are sealed off, police patrol in vast numbers, helicoptors hover overhead night and day. On the first day on which the sun seems to have shone all year, it was great to see the End the Wars Demonstration roll into town.

"The decision to withdraw the poem was not taken lightly"

The banning of the Carol Ann Duffy poem "Education for Leisure" in a GCSE poetry anthology has ripped around the world understandably with the outrage against censorship and also simple-minded stupidity.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/09/banned_books.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/04/gcses.english

As I read this story the thing that struck me was not the fact that the Educational bureaucrats could be so easily bounced into Reaction - it is the defining characteristic of such people - be it in health services, local government or education. The thing that stands out, which sadly isnt being said by anyone, is that the poem is a stinker. Apparently they only had 3 complains and it was withdrawn; wouldnt the world be a better place if 3 complains that it is bad poetry could have got it withdrawn - that wouldnt have been censorship, that would be saving poetry itself from the banality which is its fate.

Cairo : Sound Constructions

Group exhibition from 7 till 30 September 2008
Location: Factory, 1st Floor
7 September, 8:00 pm: Opening
8 September, 8:00 pm : Viennoise – a performance by Mahmoud Refat
Voices, melodies, and sounds fill the space of every city. Noises waft through the air, their origins often unknown. In the ebb and flow of sound, we find our way through the world, or get lost in it—dissolving into a sea of cell-phone ring tones, and re-emerging with the call of a name. Voice and identity are inextricably linked, connecting us to each other while defining us individually.
The sounds of a city can feel like an embrace, but at other times they threaten and disturb. In the privacy of the home, city noise is shut out—but complete silence is rarely achieved. Thus, the artists featured in this exhibition do not attempt to quiet Cairo but instead add their own sounds to it: Their works layer and echo, interpret and describe, both acoustically and visually. Sounds will not only be heard, they will also become visible.
Featured artists: Barbara Armbruster (Germany), Marianne Eigenheer (Switzerland), Zoe Irvine (UK), Hadel Nazmy (Egypt), Mahmoud Refat (Egypt), Beat Streuli (Switzerland).

القاهرة: تراكيب صوتية
معرض جماعى من 7 حتى 30 سبتمبرالمدير الفنى: باربرا أرمبروسترالمكان: المصنع والدور الأول
7 سبتمبر، 08:00 م : الافتتاح8 سبتمبر: 8:00 م : فيينواز - عرض لمحمود رفعت
تملأ أصوات البشD8 والأشياء والنغمات فضاء كل مدينة. وتنطلق ضوضاء عبر الهواء غالباً ما لا يعرف مصدرها. وبين علو وانحسار الصوت نجد طريقنا عبر العالم، أو نتوه فيه – غارقين في بحر من نغمات الموبايل، لنعود مع سماعنا نداءً لاسم. يرتبط الصوت والهوية بشكل لا يمكن فصله، متجلياً في ربطنا ببعض عندما نعرّف أنفسنا كأفراد.

يمكن لأصوات المدينة أن تبدو كما ل و كانت تعانقك، ولكنها في أوقات أخري تهدد وتزعج. في خصوصية البيت، تُحبس ضوضاء المدينة بالخارج – ولكن يندر تحقيق الهدوء الكامل. لهذا، فإن فناني هذا المعرض لا يحاولون تهدئة ضوضاء القاهرة، إنما يضيفون أصواتهم الخاصة لها: أعمالهم تتقابل وترجع الصدي، وتفسر وتصف، سمعياً وبصرياً. لن تُسمع الأصوات فقط، ولكنها ستصبح مرئية.

فنانو الم9رض: باربرا أرمبروستر (المانيا)، ماريان إينير (سويسرا)، زوي إرفاين (المملكة المتحدة)، هديل نظمي (مصر)، محمود رفعت (مصر)، بيت سترولي (سويسرا)
Gallery hours in Ramadan
Saturday till Wednesday: 11:00 am – 2:00 pm & 7:30 pm – 10:30 pm.
Thursday off, Friday 7:30 – 10:30 pm.
مواعيد الجاليرى فى رمضان
السبت حتى الأربع: 11:00 ص – 2:00 م و7:30 م – 10:30 م
الخميس مغلق، الجمعة 7:30 م – 10:30 م

The Reality Street Book of Sonnets

Having recently received The Reality Street Book of Sonnets http://www.realitystreet.co.uk/ edited by Jeff Hilson, I was struck by the exhilarated curiosity one feels when in the presence of a great anthology. I counterpose this feeling with the contrary feeling you get from the salad-mixing of popular anthologies. Bookshop poetry sections offer two shades of negativity in this regard: pick up an anthology at random and you either have that sinking feeling that these people can get away with such sloppy publishing and concomitant sense of superiority you get from seeing these feeble efforts. As Ron Silliman wrote in “In The American Tree” – “[this] anthology is a record of the debate”, but there is an endless stream of imbeciles chattering at the moment. Anyway, these thoughts cause me to return to something I’ve not read for years – ‘A Pamphlet Against Anthologies’ by Laura Riding & Robert Graves. The essay argues that there are only 3 types of anthology that are acceptable:
A non-professional, non-purposive collection, such as the poet’s or amateur’s scrapbook; the rescue-anthology, the value of which is primarily historical; and third – the anthology that is criticism. I think there is a fourth. The question of the form of an anthology is a live one for me at the moment because I am in the process of editing one to accompany next year’s Text Festival. The Book of Sonnets is a particularly good one. It made me think about really good anthologies: “In The American Tree” obviously, Rothenberg & Joris’s definitive “Poems of the Millennium”; “Other” Caddel & Quartermain; the Chicago Review “New Writing in German”. With very positive feelings about the Book of Sonnets, I am pleased to note that the Text Anthology (probably not its final title) shares a number of poets – Tony Lopez, Carol Watts, Robert Sheppard, Alan Halsey, (that I can remember without looking at the list). But having returned to the Riding and Graves, I note they also have a lot to say about the implications of classification within what they call a true anthology – approaches mentioned include alphabetical order of poets’ names or titles, or chronological by birth or death of the poets. Silliman divided In The American Tree geographically – East and West Coast. The fourth type I think is the most exciting to delve into, to read – in the way Lawrence Weiner means with READ ART. It is, as Silliman comments in his introduction the poetic conversation of …“The nature of reality. The nature of the individual. The function of language in the constitution of either realm. The nature of meaning. The substantiality of language. The shape and value of literature itself. The function of method.” So I still have the question of how I will construct the Text Anthology. I’ll want it to do those things. “Anthologies are not facts, but individual viewpoints over complex fields of information.” So it will be a curation.

Anyway, off to Toronto now.

Carol Watts

Carol Watts (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/staff/WattsCarol ) visited yesterday see the Irony of Flatness (picture 1) and discuss various project possibilities. Also shown introducing Phil Davenport to her "China" series - some of which will feature in the Text Festival anthology. Here is a sonnet from her 'Brass, Running':

IX

difficult and persistent is the light
and its qualities a haunting of precepts
her gunmetal sanctuary where breath mists
famished in its reckoning her absence is
a volume to be accounted for do you know
the desolation of measurement motes
descending second per second without
intimation think of the sound of light as
a guttering of limbs its rush a hunger
to sustain the evidence of breathing snatched
from other open mouths the denial
of burning is not harmless she is not here
is something inflammatory baptism: light
and water implicated in the frenzy of cities

Dancing Chairs and a Walking Woman

On a more positive note, the works in the Irony of Flatness (Bury Art Gallery until November) are definitely deserving of more attention. The first is Marianne Eigenheer’s video-drawing “Dancing Chairs and a Walking Woman”. This is a particularly resonant and exciting piece. It recalls Marianne’s experience of walking around the streets of Cairo, having a look round while she was there preparing for a forthcoming show. This meandering came to be represented in the artist’s distinctive arabesque coloured drawing, the depth of her line mirroring her unique sense of space. This drawing in itself became a thirty metre long work which has been exhibited in Germany/Austria (I forget where). During her walk she became fascinated by the way Egyptian men place their chairs in the street, a male gesture of dominance of public space; Marianne began photographing them. “Dancing Chairs and a Walking Woman” is the brilliant counterpoint of these two aspects of the walk – the meandering fluidity circling the sometimes ominous fixed points of maleness – video stills shifting between one set of images to the next spread across to two screens. The depth of Marianne’s spatial dimensionality in this work actually touches you to the core.


By the way, I’ve written the catalogue for Irony of Flatness which is now available for £2 from Bury Art Gallery.

Green Drops and Moonsquirters

Months ago in this blog (more than once) I lamented the state of the English public gallery curating, specifically, as an example I mentioned how it was literally impossible to get into Manchester Art Gallery Asia Triennial video installation because there were so many playing toddlers and crying babies. The Gallery has now gone one step further with its latest offering: Green Drops and Moonsquirters http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/index.php?itemID=44
Of course, because success in the UK galleries is measured by numbers of visitors rather than the artistic quality of exhibitions, this is already a huge hit. But for anyone with any interest in the arts it is truly desperate - the galleries of the City Art Gallery must be hellish. In Manchester, the powers that be are constantly exercised with the notion that the city aspires to being 'world-class'. Every international visitor I have had, visiting the City Gallery can't understand it. Manchester is a great place to live, but without a world class gallery you wonder how it can aspire to be a world-class city; moreover, with a programme like this it is questionable whether the City Gallery is actually an Art Gallery. Maybe the logic of endless years of New Labour cultural pejoration are generating a category of museum practice that at the moment is nameless but is actually an anathema to art itself. In a lot of ways, it is close to the Victorian paternalist notion of the museum as a mechanism for worker's education and betterment. After all, virtually from the cradle citizens are given performance targets. It is frequently noticeable that even young artists, arts development and curatorial staffs have this conditioning which has removed the capacity for free thought. The state managerial approach to public mobilisation through intravenous outputs and outcomes with objectives set in advance means that many young artists dont know how to experiment or challenge themselves without knowing what the result of the experiment will be in advance. State funded galleries are as much part of this cultural ecology - I used "cultural ecology" ironically there because that is the latest jargon bollocks being used by the Arts Bureaucracies. It has been a long running idea in theatre that exposing children and young people to drama you are creating the audiences of the future. But the implementation of this has been didactic theatre endlessly addressing 'issues' of bullying, sex education, "citizenship", etc. So rather than creating the audience of the future, this model is creating citizens who think that is what theatre is. The same is happening in galleries. Children visit galleries either in school parties or with parents. So the school visit teaches them that all art has to be explained and that you have to do worksheets when you visit a gallery/museum. When visiting with parents, you play, dress up and do activities, which teaches you that the gallery is an indoor play centre. This sort of thinking is what has led to some libraries now to be called "ideas stores". So what should we call this thing instead of "Art Gallery"?

The Other Room

The Pros and Cons of Screens

The 'Live Sites' giant screens project aims to leave between 45 and 60 screens in towns and city centres. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is supplying the screens and the BBC will provide the content, including live coverage of the Beijing Olympics and through to London 2021 and beyond. The project is funded from the National Lottery and commercial sponsorship. Local authorities will be responsible for maintenance costs.

CABE http://www.cabe.org.uk/ "fully supports the idea of creative access to the Olympics for the widest possible community through temporary large-scale screens around the country, it has serious concerns about leaving them as permanent installations." ..."Just when we're starting to create well-designed, civilised public space in many English towns, along comes a rash of intrusive neon screens," Sarah Gaventa, director of CABE Space, comments.

There is only really one intrusive screen in Manchester at the moment - in Exchange Square (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Exchange_Square.jpg) which isnt well-designed or civilised. Not withstanding the square's shambolic concept, confused further by a ferris wheel, I had always abhorred the ugly black-surround screen, seeing its broadcasts as offensive appropriations of the public arena. However, when I visited Tokyo with its urban landscape of multiple screens, banked high, tangled with neon, flashing, excitement, I realised that the problem wasn't the screens, it was how crap the English are at doing exhilaration in public. The screens are remarkably ugly in themselves but it is just as ugly that the Government public education/conditioning through the Olympiad that makes them really terrible. The aesthetic and social crime of it is the 'legacy' (a great Government word), which will be endless feeds of BBC breakfast TV and mind-numbing daytime soaps/quizzes and the banalities which pass for early evening news broadcasts.

http://www.cabe.org.uk/default.aspx?contentitemid=2652

Introducing Robert Grenier to the Cotswolds

After the Irony of Flatness, Sue and I introduced Bob and Suzy to the English countryside (since he's so embedded in the Californian countryside). While we were there, I did an recorded interview which will be available soon. But just after the tape stopped, Bob said "I'd like to add an addendum": which was -

"My imagination of coming over to Bury to do this work was that once we had set it forth on the wall, I would have opportunity to finally know what it was. I could read it. I could stand back from it. I could think about it. I could question whether or not these separate images went together with each other, how these images might have gone together. After the fact, the real work was setting it forth on in space on the wall and it’s not my business to know what it says, any more than it is for any poet who writes a poem. I might get different readings on things in passing, but especially with a work of this kind of complexity, organisation, over time. The main thing is to allow it to exist in some space, and I don’t have to worry about what it means it can just be. "

More from the Flatness Opening

Irony of Flatness Opens

A great opening. Pictures mainly of Robert Grenier's reading. Others to follow plus recordings of the performance itself.

Announcing The Irony of Flatness

Three Exhibitions open on Friday at Bury Art Gallery

An exhibition of drawings by international artists
19 July – 8 November 2008

As a mark-making act, drawing can simply be represented as (and be representational of) transferring the three or more dimensions of reality down to two – flatness. The Irony of Flatness is a challenging exhibition of contemporary drawing, which examines the possibilities and power of drawing. Through it, working with shadow, line and gesture, the artists taking part investigate the experience of the act, the space of the act, the moment of the act, and the concept of the act. Continuing Bury Art Gallery’s commitment to innovative international programmes in the north of England, the show features renowned artists featured include Marianne Eigenheer (Switzerland), Stefan Gec (UK), Rachel Goodyear (UK), Robert Grenier (USA), Kristian Gudmundson (Iceland), Alan Johnston (UK), Karin Sander (Germany) and Ulrich Rückriem (Germany).

The drawings featured investigate the full range of media that artists are using today – from animation and film to pen on paper to pencil directly on to the gallery wall. All challenge the irony of the drawings’ apparent flatness with spatial metaphor, line and void toward new dimensions, the presence and role of touch related as well as sight, observing the space between the lines and movement.

World Premiere: at the preview on 18 July, one of the founders of the American LANGUAGE poetry movement, Robert Grenier, will read for the first time from his poem series “64”.

The exhibition is supported by two solo shows:

“the nature of Bury”
Kerry Morrison is an environmental artist who works within the public domain, engaging with people whose lives are touched by their natural environment. She creates artwork in response to local environments relating them to the wider global context. In this exhibition she investigates the relationships between humans and nature, developing a process which will evolve the installation of material found and created over 16 weeks study in Bury.

“On G. Delph. St”
Berlin-based Steve Miller constructs non-animated film sequences, storyboard formats and single images concerned with the absurdity of context and everyday paradoxes of language and dialogues. Strongly colourful and sharply graphic, Miller generates a vibrant 21st Century urban style straight from the heart of European cultural excitement.

Preview Friday 18 July 6.30pm – 9pm

Dinner

Celebrating Phil Davenport's birthday, Sue did one of her legendary dinner parties: (pictures: Barney with Robert Grenier's shoes; + Phil Davenport & Robert)

Tonight Sue created:

• Roast spiced butternut squash soup + Prosecco
• Wild Mushroom Risotto + a Rosé (that Phil brought)
• Roast rosemary and garlic leg of Lamb with fondant potatos and parmiagiana + Greek Nemea (red Agiorgitiko grape) + a Merlot
• A trio of Lemon Desserts with Kir Royale

Countdown to Irony of Flatness

I'm happy now that the countdown to Irony of Flatness has begun - the exhibition opens at Bury Art Gallery on Friday. Yesterday, Robert Grenier (right) arrived from California and Steve Miller (left) arrived from Berlin.

Barney joins the Trehy household!

Budapest

Back from a great visit to Budapest. A good meeting at the 2b Gallery discussing possible future projects http://www.pipacs.hu/2b/2b.html and a fleeting introduction at the Young Artists Association http://studio.c3.hu/ which needs following up in the next visit. The food was great because Sue came with me and we had an apartment. Though there was plenty of champagne drunk on the banks of the Danube!

I also saw an interesting survey show of contemporary Hungarian art called WHAT'S UP at Műcsarnok http://www.mucsarnok.hu/ - I was particularly struck by El-Hassan Roza, Kis Varsó: Little Warsaw is Dead and Szász György, who I will no doubt keep an eye on for future possibilities.

Mirror Canon Snips in Melbourne

Mirror Canon Snips has been installed in The DrawingSpace - Melbourne. Here is an extract of the text (which forms part of the "Space" series of projects, following from Edinburgh, Reykjavik and next Berlin) More images from the installation when I get back from Budapest.

Palatine. descending begins with both registers. of the sequence are important. the undiagnosed wait. a. shimmering caused by the highest perceivable frequency and the inability to focus on the multitude of rising tones. Rise and going. Proposed that the piece be revised and realized the lower threshold won’t be treated as if it is between the upper and the lower threshold, rather all entrances are timed in such a way that the ratio between successive pitches is the subsequent voice imitates the initial voice only weakening. the peristaltic itinerary of thought stooping to the prone who must shade. the ability to breathe necessary to stay alive; iff not sufficient to stay alive, there is categorically no upper threshold – but the pause/non-zero on the landing to breathe necessary (to be) above an illusion of ever-deeper, should be used only for uncomplicated work of short breath. Amusia the collapsing material. Vertigo o the Cut for a crashing chord. the scale of a moment of first or last anniversary in between and leaving footfalls as the breathers and catalysis. Amusia? Pedagogy us only with amusia. spiral similarity equals a dilatative rotation, the product of a dilatation and rotation – the upper and lower thresholds exactly one octave apart.