Gerhard Richter – Modern Times

Last month I went to see the Gerhard Richter retrospective at MIMA in Middlesborough. Richter is my favourite artist, the benchmark I judge other contemporary artists by, and Middlesborough is only an hour on the train from me.

There were four rooms housing his work. The first room contains Richter’s Corner Paintings. There’s something quite disconcerting about the focus of the room being in the corners. It cuts the viewer off rom the rest of the room, shrinking the viewing space down.

Gerhard Richter – Eckspiegel, Braun-Blau (Corner Mirror, Brown-Blue) 1991

The second room is composed solely of Two Sculptures for a Room by Palermo which is two sculptures of Richter and Blinky Palmero by the artists themselves. The sculptures are situated on plinths and are facing each other so seem to be ’staring’ at each other. The locked gaze creates tension between the two objects.

Gerhard Richter – Zwei Skulpturen für einem Raum von Palermo (Two Sculptures For A Room By Palermo) 1971

Room three shows several of Richter’s Abstract Paintings which he’s probably best known for (along with his Photo Paintings). These were the first Richter works I ever saw and it’s always pleasant to revisit them. It’s easy to forget the subtlety happening on a large-scale while looking at reproductions of his work. They still have the same impact on me that they did when I was a student.

Gerhard Richter – Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting) 1994

The final room contains a selection of Richter’s drawings. The fluency of line he employs is truly spectacular. It also houses some of Richter’s painting of Gilbert & George.

Gerhard Richter – Gilbert, 1975

Gerhard Richter – George, 1975

It goes without saying that I loved this exhibition – it’s a good overview of his work (it’s by no means even close to exhaustive but it would take a much bigger gallery than MIMA to achieve this).  I’d love to see what a bigger gallery, say the BALTIC in Gateshead, could do with his work.

Fiona Crisp – Subterrania

This was the first show I had the chance to see since returning to Newcastle, at BALTIC Centre For Contemporary Art.

Fiona Crisp is a North-East based artist, primarily creating installations of large-format photographs. Subterrania documents underground spaces that are rarely seen. The many prints are large which gives quite a claustrophobic feeling – the individual photographs don’t give the mood justice, it is very much an installation.

The BALTIC show closed a few weeks ago. It will shortly be moving to Impressions Gallery in Bradford from 20th November until 24th January 2010 before finishing at Newlyn Art Gallery in Cornwall between 13th February and 17th April 2010. I’d certainly recommend it. Very different to a lot of photograph-based exhibitions and all the more refreshing for it.

Fiona Crisp – Abteilung Nr/C

Fiona Crisp – Victory Cross Cut

Bloomberg New Contemporaries 09

I went to the Cornerhouse in Manchester today to see Bloomberg New Contemporaries with my good friend Mark.

The first thing that struck me was how much 2D work there was. 80% of the exhibition must have been 2D. I was then informed that Wolfgang Tillmans and John Stezaker were part of the selection committee, which explains how much photographic work there was – a very good thing in my book.

I found the standard of work to be pretty high. Considering it’s a survey of recent graduates the work was very accomplished. It’s also good to see drawing very much back in the limelight.

Two of my favourite pieces below:

Myka Baum – Serpent Sea

Richard Healy – Designs for Nicolae Ceausescu’s 40,000W Chandelier

New York: State Of The Art

It’s taken me quite a while to get round to seeing State Of The Art: New York considering I live exactly nine minutes from Urbis by foot.

A round-up of serveral young artists working out of New York. There were lots of installation and video pieces that didn’t really keep my interest too much. The artists that really stood out for me were Shelter Serra, Joe Winter and Graham Anderson.

Serra’s piece was a miniature cast of a a jeep in EPS foam – the crumbly stuff you find flowers stuck into. Reminiscent of Rachel Whiteread’s work, playful yet poignant.

Shelter Serra – Split Time (H2)

The work of Joe Winter was my favourite of all that was exhibited. His Printershake/Earthquake series was produce by picking up an inkjet printer as it prints it’s calibration page and violently shaking it. Inkjet/Sunset is a photograph of a blue sky printed repeatedly until the ink cartridge is empty. Both subtle and powerful works, they’d make a superb book.

Joe Winter – Inkjet/Sunset

Paul Anderson investigates using paint as a flat surface, playing around with painted folds and stripes to create the illusion of depth using flat block colours. The limited palette of colours only serves to make the paintings more striking.

Graham Anderson – Untitled

I’d certainly recommend seeing this exhibition, it’s free and Urbis is always worth a look.

Trip To Liverpool 2/2

Sorry for the delay in finishing this, life gets in the way. Noisy neighbours, work, lack of coffee – just a few of the contributing factors to the lateness of this post. And my beloved Newcastle United were just relegated from the Premiership yesterday. A sad day.

Anyway, after leaving Milkandsugar we moved on to the Open Eye Gallery on Wood Street. Certainly the best photographic gallery in the North (being from the North-East I do have a weakness for the Side Gallery which has excellent reportage and photojournalism exhibitions regularly but Open Eye is a wonderful site) and it’s always a pleasure to visit.

The current exhibition is a group show called Until It Hurts which is named after Sascha Weidner’s photo installation. There are four artists exhibiting: Markus Hansen, Yang Zhenzhong, Josh Weinstein and, of course, Sascha Weidner.

Sascha Weidner’s installation is the first thing you see upon entering the gallery. Small (7×5″ I think) photographs arranged in a line. Non-sequitar images working together to tell a store. Working on a horizontalal axis it gives the impression of a time line, something which is enhanced by the fact old photographs sit next to new ones. One image doesn’t really do the installation justice but here’s one anyway.

Sascha Weidner – Until It Hurts (2008)

The next artist was Markus Hansen. I’ve seen Hansen’s work in various places lately, magazines and blogs so was nice to actually see some in person. His video projection Other People’s Feelings was being shown. Simply it’s a photograph of a sitter, then a very similar photograph is taken of Hansen adopting the subject’s posture, clothing and expression. On a big scale it’s really impressive, it’s probably closer to method acting than the Cindy Sherman school of photography.

Markus Hansen – Elizabeth, Mother (2006)

My favourite piece was Josh Weinstein’s video installation Cross Examination in which he asks members of the public questions about himself such as what they think his job is, if they think he’s in love and what animal they think he’d be. It’s quite an interesting piece, one lady assumes he’s not financially well-off as he isn’t wearing a suit.

The final artist in the exhibition is Yang Zhenzhong’s video piece I’m Will Die which has many people from around the world repeating the words to the video camera. Sadly, it didn’t capture my imagination in the way Josh Weinstein’s video did, I often find video installations hard to get into and this was no exception, a lack of humour or narrative probably prevented me from enjoying it fully.

From here I went to the ever-full Bluecoat bookshop. I picked up Volume Two of the Complete Peanuts for £7. A bargain, I’m a huge fan of Peanuts and I didn’t have that volume.

Then it was on to Tate Liverpool. I mainly went to see the Glenn Brown retrospective but a look round it’s permanent collection is always worth an hour or two of anyone’s time. This time there had been a rehang, based around sculpture and curated by Michael Craig-Martin. It’s always a joy to see works by Bacon, Matisse, Giacometti et al but I prefered the previous hang of it. And the room curated by Wayne Hemingway was absolutely woeful.

The Glenn Brown exhibition was as mighty as I was expecting it to be. There must have been a good hundred paintings – it must have been close to having nearly everything he’s done since leaving university. One thing I wasn’t expecting was his cycles of work where he reworks the same image in different hues and tones to give similar but different paintings. Much has been said about Brown’s painterly techniques and they are worth repeating: up close his paintings are astounding. There is absolutely no sign of brush mark regardless of how thick the marks of the painting look.

Glenn Brown – The Revolutionary Corps of Teenage Jesus (2005)

Glenn Brown – Anaesthesia (2001)

The Glenn Brown exhibition has now ended sadly – I went during it’s last week. This was the icing on the cake for a great day. Liverpool must be one of the best art cities in the country if not Europe.

Trip To Liverpool 1/2

Every few months we hop on a train and go to Liverpool. Now, Liverpool and Manchester have a fairly healthy rivalry. It’s mainly football based. The major problems between them are that Liverpool has the book shops and galleries while Manchester has the record shops and live music.

First stop was the Walker Art Gallery, to see the exhibition past winners of the John Moores Prize – again. I love the John Moores. For those of you who aren’t aware the John Moore Painting Prize is a bi-annual national exhibition of painting, the top thirty entries are shown and there are five award winners. Past winners include Dan Hays, Peter Doig, David Hockney and Michael Raedecker. It’s always a joy to see Peter Doig’s wonderful Blotter and Alexis Harding’s Slump/Fear (Orange/Black). Peter Doig is the finest painter this country (okay, there’s several countries who could claim Doig as theirs but our claim is as strong as any!) and I like the fact that so many people get to see his work.
The entries and winners of this competition aren’t always to my taste, and that’s how it should be – a genuine mixture of contemporary UK-based painting.

Peter Doig – Blotter

Alexis Harding – Slump/Fear (Orange/Black)

Sadly, the current exhibitions weren’t up to much (I’ve never much liked the work of Maggi Hambling and sports fashion isn’t really aimed at me) but was certainly worth seeing for Blotter alone! A minor gripe though: Slump/Fear isn’t in the winners room despite winning in 2004. Poor.

Went to the Egg cafe which has regular group exhibitions on, under the title of EggSpace. A mixture of work, mainly painting and photography. Some is good, some isn’t. Very good vegetarian food. I recommend the Tandoori mushrooms.

Then moved on to a new gallery, Milkandsugar, which is based in the Tea Factory on Wood Street. Currently on show is Liverpool One: Remaking A City Centre by Paul McMullin. An enjoyable series of photographs documenting the regeneration of the Liverpool high street.

Paul McMullin – Dar Mlodziezy Leaving Wellington Dock

To be continued.

Paul Graham has won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2009. I hoped he would but still remain surprised that Taryn Simon didn’t come away with the prize.

This was the first shortlist I’ve seen in a long time where any one of the four (the other two being Tod Papageorge and Emily Jacir) could have deservedly won which is definitely something the judges should be applauded for.

In my mind, Graham’s photographs make up probably the best body of work made over the past twenty years. From his work on British unemployment during the early 80s to his photographs dealing with race and identity in America, his work is always more than the sum of its parts.

Paul Graham – American Night

Paul Graham – American Night

Paul Graham – American Night

Rachel Goodyear and Aprile Elcich

Upon learning that there’s a new exhibition locally by Rachel Goodyear, one of my favourite contemporary artists I decided that I’d feature some of her work on here. Then I got thinking about how she reminds me of another artist whose work I like, Aprile Elcich, even though their work seems to have no apparent connection.

Rachel Goodyear draws. Her work is on small sheets of paper, mainly pencil and watercolours. Generally consisting of a small sketch in one or two colours, they are much more powerful than they should, subtle yet striking. Her drawings of birds make me think of Roni Horn’s Birds series

Rachel Goodyear – U-Bend, 2008

Rachel Goodyear – Two Magpies, 2007

On the other hand Aprile Elcich creates artists books and works in postcard size with found images, stencils and drawing to create a language of her own. Her work is loose, fresh and to the point. Slogans and statements often cover the images she’s torn up, all done sensitively. There’s clearly a small debt to John Stezaker but the work she’s making is completely her own.

Aprile Elciche – End

Aprile Elcich – Mr Chameleon

Two artists who have no connection but are creating original, unique work that really connects with me, the small scale of their work makes it all the more powerful. Aprile’s wonderful blog about collage artists, Not Paper, is certainly worth checking out, it has featured some fantastic artists.

‘they never run, only call’ by Rachel Goodyear is at the International 3, Fairfield Street, Manchester from 24th January until 7th March 2009.

Katrín Elvarsdóttir

On a recent trip to Iceland I visited the Reykjavik Museum Of Photography. As well as the image archives of the city, fitting as it is in the same building as the library, it had an exhibition by the photographer Katrín Elvarsdóttir with associated texts by the writer Sigrún Sigurðardóttir.

The exhibition was focusing on the problems of immigration with Iceland. In a nutshell Iceland has only accepted asylum requests from three refugees, including Bobby Fischer, which is a contentious point for many liberal Icelanders. At the time of my visit there was growing unrest at the treatment of 42 asylum seekers who looked unlikely to be granted asylum no matter how bad their circumstances.

Elvarsdóttir photographed several immigrants to the country (not all were asylum seekers, not all had been granted asylum by this point) along with an item belonging to them when they came to the country. As tends to be the way, the simpler items tended to be the most poignant. Each was accompanied by some text about the subject by Sigurðardóttir.

© Sylvianne Kithole Moudi, Katrín Elvarsdóttir

© Mikael Fransson, Katrín Elvarsdóttir

The portraits were powerful, especially ones where the sitter made eye-contact with the camera. The stories were often touching, emphasised by the relatively humble – hand-made puppet, prayer books – items that were rightly shown to have real significance by their part in the diptych. I found that when the subject looked away from the camera the connection between the sitter and the viewer was lost. Definitely a sobering collection of work from a photographer whose work I like a lot made all the more powerful by seeing it the country where the issues are happening.

Rut Blees Luxembourg – Caliban Towers

Seeing as this is being exhibited a fifteen minute walk from my flat in Manchester I felt obliged to see it. This is also the first work to be shown at the Pavement Gallery which is located in a former shop window.

There is only one photograph, Caliban Towers, which is a typically striking late-night long exposure of a tower block, the warm orange cast of the street lights make a ordinary block of flats begin to glow and develop a character of their own. Blees Luxembourg shows the humanity within empty urban spaces, areas that are rarely thought of as beautiful or warm yet hold so much human life.

The photograph has previously been exhibited in Shoreditch in an outdoor location so it has bird shit and graffiti on it. The graffiti almost adds to it, the bird shit certainly does not. That was disappointing. Also, it is a fairly heavy structure so is supported from behind which makes the photograph lean backwards which spoils the view of it, the viewer doesn’t feel immersed in the image as the intimacy is broken. This isn’t helped by the fact the window space has a frame in the middle of it.

© Caliban Towers, Rut Blees Luxembourg

I didn’t enjoy this exhibition as much as I had hoped to, mainly due to the fact there’s only one photograph – it would clearly work better in series. It could be said that this exhibition is to show are to people who wouldn’t usually enter an art gallery. That’s an admirable idea – most public art is typically quite poor so to have an established artist on show is a genuine statement of intent. Where that idea falls down, to me at least, is the fact it’s right in the middle of Manchester Metropolitan University – full of the exact people who do use art galleries. I’m generalising of course but the MMU is home to many art and design courses.

It’s always a pleasure to see the work of Rut Blees Luxembourg and this photograph was no exception. I just wish there had been more to see. Any new exhibition space in Manchester is certainly a good thing, flaw or not. I’ll certainly return regardless of the failings.