Faux Poe & Skulduggery : Art of England Blog, May 2008
I’m putting a brave face on my latest injury, this time a rogue giant canvas swung backwards taking my right wrist with it. So this month’s blog sees me approach the laptop with the same ‘hunt and peck’ movement’s synonymous with my mothers typing skills. Or lack of them!
There’s a sombre tone on these streets lately. Something unspoken in the wind. An unnerving sensation stemming from ‘the credit crunch’, a whisper of sobriety where once there was celebration. People are waiting; I’m not sure what for. There’s a pause. Great art is great because it works; great art has a thick skin. Most people agree it’s easier to make interesting things when the going gets tough. The things I love come from struggle. Mental or environmental disharmony seems only to cause creatives to solider on into new territories in search of sanctuary. The collectors, the critics, the spectators watch as if a father lets go of his sons bicycle, it’s stabilisers removed, the child pedaling towards him, to safety, then dad removing himself letting him go again. I’m predicting the most interesting period creatively that we’ve seen for a long time.
The thing is after last month’s adventure I’ve been trying to keep up my best hermit impression. Who knows if a trip to the corner shop might end up being via Borneo. I swore not to leave without a very reliable compass. Unfortunately our editor needed a column and time was running out so I hitched up my wound in a makeshift sling for a pavement pounding.
I’m stood in a redbrick tunnel as if it belonged to a train route that died a long time ago. I watch a film where the flow of the tide swells and falls, dragging discarded junk like plastic bottles and carrier bags with it. I wonder how much control we have over life and I remember sitting by the river outside my studio with my friends from the Opus gallery in Newcastle. We were talking about fun, and I was explaining that even if life feels relentless we should do what’s fun so we never have regrets. The rise and fall of dancing refuge in Hadrian Piggot’s video work ‘Rifiuti’ therefore seemed to mirror the ambiance of the day.
I bumped into my good friend Sarah Maple with her obligatory cute boy on arm at Agent Morton’s first exhibition of works by Rupert Shrive, in Brick Lane. Sarah was a little miserable that her latest video piece was too edgy for Nick Night to air on his Show Studio website but it was wonderful for us both to see the curator Serena Morton with more space to play with. After her very successful time at Scream gallery in Bruton Street, to see her presenting an exhibition in a vast warehouse space off Brick Lane was a joy. The show really was stunning; there was an exciting energy to it. The West-End crowd in an East-End space. Gorgeously hung, lit brilliantly and a perfect atmosphere. The paintings were incredible too. Yes very aesthetic, very pop and visual but also interesting in their distortion of popular culture. As Rupert paints replicas of well-known images on brown paper and screws them up, to me it was like we were watching the last moment of life in a symbol before it finally died. Painting was hanging on to a thin thread of life.
I’m stood there looking at his crumpled up Mickey Mouse, with a skull and crossbones printed on the back of my shirt. That lack of celebration in the wind hits me again as it did last night when I visited the buyers preview for Steven Gregory’s recent works at Opus in Great Titchfield Street. At first I was nervous to approach his bejewelled human skulls. I’ve been seeing that symbol everywhere, it’s like the significance has worn off. Even Grayson Perry has revealed a skull in the show he’s curated in Hastings about unpopular culture. However, I’m beginning to think skulls are very popular, and agree with him that perhaps his skull does represent Britishness.
The question in my mind though, is when the ultimate end we all face became so decorative. It was only a year or two ago my dealers were telling me that nobody wanted to buy things with skulls on. There was none the less something in Steven’s work, a similar result to other artists perhaps, but a very different path to get there. His ink drawings are incredible too, and certainly tap into that Edgar Alan Poe Victorian zeitgeist that’s underpinning a lot of what I’ve seen. Stevens’s stuff had a tongue in cheekiness about it. You just can’t take a Ziggy Stardust skull seriously can you? There really has been a new gothic sense emerging - it’s been bubbling for a while but now it’s screaming it’s way through.
This was certainly most evident in the group show the White Cube had mounted in their Hoxton Square space and the vast basement of the Shoreditch Town Hall. Many darkened inter connecting corridors in the bowels of the building, installations and expertly lit nooks and crannies bought an unnerving Victoriana to life. Surrounded by ominous works by Emin, Hirst, Polly Morgan and others, I felt trapped in curator Harland Miller’s eerie homage to the upcoming bicentenary of Edgar Alan Poe’s birth.
I’ve always come across things by complete chance and I always try to be open to discovering things in any situation. As I walked home from the Agent Morton show in Brick Lane tonight, with all these skulls in mind and fancying myself as a bit of an art Indiana Jones, I saw a discarded piece of cardboard with a scribbled sign pointing to an art show and decided to take the chance and follow the trail. I walked down a deserted street, past a sprawling of graffiti and down a narrow alleyway, secretly congratulating myself on my imminent uncovering of some secret gem to write home about. There’s always that thing in art about taking risks to dig for the work that others don’t uncover, a false idea that one can truly discover something new. Tonight however I genuinely did, a small red balloon blew in the breeze attached to a Huguenot period house behind the hustle and bustle of Spitalfields. In the same handwriting as the sign it read, “I want that handbag”. I pressed the buzzer and waited in anticipation. “is the show on?” I asked a fashionable young lady, catching a glimpse of a well stocked bar with nibbles. “yes she said”. It wasn’t an art exhibition after all it was a sample sale of leather belts and handbags. Amongst the women there I’ve never felt so out of place. Brilliant! My career in art archaeology is certainly over before it started.
Nobody I know can remember queen Victoria’s reign, but I’m certain that with all those great exhibitions and inventions, the railway and photographs there must have been a feeling of celebration. It’s strange to me then, that out of that would come a gothic macabre out-pouring like Shelly, Poe et al. Nowadays with the house price fears and economic situation it’s odd to see the macabre surfacing in our art again. The sense of a bygone time becoming the thematic backdrop for so many shows, the curio and the imagery so prevalent. Perhaps it’s the same as when I feel down and listen to Radiohead even though it’s generally melancholy it does lift me up.
Apart from the noisy Geese I’m so very lucky my studio is near so much art. I’m grateful everyday that just a couple of minutes away I can see pieces by my heroes. One is Inka Essenhigh, who presented a very exciting new series of works at the Victoria Miro Gallery during April. She’s one of the bravest painters, with a unique filter on this place we find ourselves in. Like Bacon she has that ethereal ability to create detournements from reality that seem to take me to their essence. There’s a dedication in that mission, and in particular in using paint to do it. You can’t fake that stuff. When I’m face to face with Inka’s work it always re-affirms my belief that paint can really do it! For me this new series of her works has a much more direct link to her emotions, the seasonal impulse of feeling, however fleeting is captured well enough for me to feel like I can live and sense inside them. Strangely after all the turmoil and darkness this month, the hope I craved was not even a hundred feet away, so it’s with the warm glow of Inka’s very celebratory ‘Spring bar scene’ I leave you until next time.
There’s a sombre tone on these streets lately. Something unspoken in the wind. An unnerving sensation stemming from ‘the credit crunch’, a whisper of sobriety where once there was celebration. People are waiting; I’m not sure what for. There’s a pause. Great art is great because it works; great art has a thick skin. Most people agree it’s easier to make interesting things when the going gets tough. The things I love come from struggle. Mental or environmental disharmony seems only to cause creatives to solider on into new territories in search of sanctuary. The collectors, the critics, the spectators watch as if a father lets go of his sons bicycle, it’s stabilisers removed, the child pedaling towards him, to safety, then dad removing himself letting him go again. I’m predicting the most interesting period creatively that we’ve seen for a long time.
The thing is after last month’s adventure I’ve been trying to keep up my best hermit impression. Who knows if a trip to the corner shop might end up being via Borneo. I swore not to leave without a very reliable compass. Unfortunately our editor needed a column and time was running out so I hitched up my wound in a makeshift sling for a pavement pounding.
I’m stood in a redbrick tunnel as if it belonged to a train route that died a long time ago. I watch a film where the flow of the tide swells and falls, dragging discarded junk like plastic bottles and carrier bags with it. I wonder how much control we have over life and I remember sitting by the river outside my studio with my friends from the Opus gallery in Newcastle. We were talking about fun, and I was explaining that even if life feels relentless we should do what’s fun so we never have regrets. The rise and fall of dancing refuge in Hadrian Piggot’s video work ‘Rifiuti’ therefore seemed to mirror the ambiance of the day.
I bumped into my good friend Sarah Maple with her obligatory cute boy on arm at Agent Morton’s first exhibition of works by Rupert Shrive, in Brick Lane. Sarah was a little miserable that her latest video piece was too edgy for Nick Night to air on his Show Studio website but it was wonderful for us both to see the curator Serena Morton with more space to play with. After her very successful time at Scream gallery in Bruton Street, to see her presenting an exhibition in a vast warehouse space off Brick Lane was a joy. The show really was stunning; there was an exciting energy to it. The West-End crowd in an East-End space. Gorgeously hung, lit brilliantly and a perfect atmosphere. The paintings were incredible too. Yes very aesthetic, very pop and visual but also interesting in their distortion of popular culture. As Rupert paints replicas of well-known images on brown paper and screws them up, to me it was like we were watching the last moment of life in a symbol before it finally died. Painting was hanging on to a thin thread of life.
I’m stood there looking at his crumpled up Mickey Mouse, with a skull and crossbones printed on the back of my shirt. That lack of celebration in the wind hits me again as it did last night when I visited the buyers preview for Steven Gregory’s recent works at Opus in Great Titchfield Street. At first I was nervous to approach his bejewelled human skulls. I’ve been seeing that symbol everywhere, it’s like the significance has worn off. Even Grayson Perry has revealed a skull in the show he’s curated in Hastings about unpopular culture. However, I’m beginning to think skulls are very popular, and agree with him that perhaps his skull does represent Britishness.
The question in my mind though, is when the ultimate end we all face became so decorative. It was only a year or two ago my dealers were telling me that nobody wanted to buy things with skulls on. There was none the less something in Steven’s work, a similar result to other artists perhaps, but a very different path to get there. His ink drawings are incredible too, and certainly tap into that Edgar Alan Poe Victorian zeitgeist that’s underpinning a lot of what I’ve seen. Stevens’s stuff had a tongue in cheekiness about it. You just can’t take a Ziggy Stardust skull seriously can you? There really has been a new gothic sense emerging - it’s been bubbling for a while but now it’s screaming it’s way through.
This was certainly most evident in the group show the White Cube had mounted in their Hoxton Square space and the vast basement of the Shoreditch Town Hall. Many darkened inter connecting corridors in the bowels of the building, installations and expertly lit nooks and crannies bought an unnerving Victoriana to life. Surrounded by ominous works by Emin, Hirst, Polly Morgan and others, I felt trapped in curator Harland Miller’s eerie homage to the upcoming bicentenary of Edgar Alan Poe’s birth.
I’ve always come across things by complete chance and I always try to be open to discovering things in any situation. As I walked home from the Agent Morton show in Brick Lane tonight, with all these skulls in mind and fancying myself as a bit of an art Indiana Jones, I saw a discarded piece of cardboard with a scribbled sign pointing to an art show and decided to take the chance and follow the trail. I walked down a deserted street, past a sprawling of graffiti and down a narrow alleyway, secretly congratulating myself on my imminent uncovering of some secret gem to write home about. There’s always that thing in art about taking risks to dig for the work that others don’t uncover, a false idea that one can truly discover something new. Tonight however I genuinely did, a small red balloon blew in the breeze attached to a Huguenot period house behind the hustle and bustle of Spitalfields. In the same handwriting as the sign it read, “I want that handbag”. I pressed the buzzer and waited in anticipation. “is the show on?” I asked a fashionable young lady, catching a glimpse of a well stocked bar with nibbles. “yes she said”. It wasn’t an art exhibition after all it was a sample sale of leather belts and handbags. Amongst the women there I’ve never felt so out of place. Brilliant! My career in art archaeology is certainly over before it started.
Nobody I know can remember queen Victoria’s reign, but I’m certain that with all those great exhibitions and inventions, the railway and photographs there must have been a feeling of celebration. It’s strange to me then, that out of that would come a gothic macabre out-pouring like Shelly, Poe et al. Nowadays with the house price fears and economic situation it’s odd to see the macabre surfacing in our art again. The sense of a bygone time becoming the thematic backdrop for so many shows, the curio and the imagery so prevalent. Perhaps it’s the same as when I feel down and listen to Radiohead even though it’s generally melancholy it does lift me up.
Apart from the noisy Geese I’m so very lucky my studio is near so much art. I’m grateful everyday that just a couple of minutes away I can see pieces by my heroes. One is Inka Essenhigh, who presented a very exciting new series of works at the Victoria Miro Gallery during April. She’s one of the bravest painters, with a unique filter on this place we find ourselves in. Like Bacon she has that ethereal ability to create detournements from reality that seem to take me to their essence. There’s a dedication in that mission, and in particular in using paint to do it. You can’t fake that stuff. When I’m face to face with Inka’s work it always re-affirms my belief that paint can really do it! For me this new series of her works has a much more direct link to her emotions, the seasonal impulse of feeling, however fleeting is captured well enough for me to feel like I can live and sense inside them. Strangely after all the turmoil and darkness this month, the hope I craved was not even a hundred feet away, so it’s with the warm glow of Inka’s very celebratory ‘Spring bar scene’ I leave you until next time.
You can read up to the minute adventures on the Art of England website: www.artofengland.uk.com
Labels: Agent Morton, art of england, Grayson Perry, Hadrian Piggot, Nick Night, nka Essenhigh, Rupert Shrive, Sarah Maple, Shoreditch Town Hall, Steven Gregory, Victoria Miro Gallery
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