Keith Coventry's work representative of Pope Benedict XVI's recent controversial visit

 There's definitely been a re-ignition of religious intrigue and contemplation recently.Combined with Pope Benedict XVI's controversial return to the United Kingdom after almost twenty years we see Keith Coventry awarded the creme-de-la-creme of British painting, the John Moores Painting Prize, with his current, pious themed, 'Spectrum Jesus', 2009. His work is a copy of the most famous 20th Century fraudster Han van Meeregen's 'Vermeer' paintings. Coventry confesses a focus on art history and tends to shift our notions of 'time-specific' art, playing with the combination and interspersion of different, mostly contrasting periods, styles, subjects fusing them together smoothly into one new artwork that goes against the typical grain appearing eccentric/odd at first. We're left stunted by the attack on our definition of Modernism, Realism, Russian Suprematism or Pop Art by his works and our left to contemplate the message and value from this. His previous works no doubt draw influence from such legends as Hogarth, Walter Sickert, Auerbach, Malevich and such as Picasso's Blue Period, Fauvism. He visualises a critique of art history via the way he puts his works together, this may explain why there is no common style in the history of his works. Although his themes do repeat themselves, for instance he has an inclination to combine the questioning of morals within society with the 'success' of modernism representative within his say his Estate paintings.He combines kitchen-sink with kitsch which is an achievement in itself, he doesn't like to take the 'grit' too far if you will, lightening the load by representing his subjects within a monochrome modernist/suprematist style. 'Spectrum Jesus' is part of a series of paintings of the same subject within a 'colour spectrum', 40-50 different  coloured paintings of a 'fake Vermeer monochrome flat Jesus image'. Such a visualisation couldn't be more relevant in conjuring up many issues towards Jesus and the church within this present time. It questions originality within 'the artwork' and within the religious world. It questions truth in the artworld and in the religious world. With the representation of a 'fake representation of a conceived imagined representation of the hero of the most popular unproven (not everyone's opinion I know) theological text in the world' there are all sorts of readings you can take and think about in your interpretation of this work. It represents some people's yearn for the church and religious institutions to move into the modern world, depicting this age. The spectrum it's part of could also relate to the different ways or emotions with which Jesus and religion are understood, seen and interpreted within the worldly cultural spectrum. It denies past visualisations of ecclesiastical subjects, though in it's repetition holds on to some aspects linked to diptychs or triptychs for example. Like Tracey Emin changes the presentation of women and the female nude within art history through such as, 'My Bed', 1998, Coventry has triggered this within the art history of Jesus's representation. He denies a background of biblical narrative or 'descent from the cross' and instead makes him appear almost 'everyday',a modernised, simplified version of Christ the Saviour. The modernisation of a fraudulent image of Christ no doubt could provide a multitude of catalysts for atheists today which Pope Benedict XVI addressed, it also could ask: is the modern presentation of Jesus and the church working? Or do we need a new period in art 'of the context of what religion is today' for future civilisations  'Spectrum Jesus' is currently showing as part of Liverpool Biennial at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool as part of the John Moore painting Prize Exhibition including 45 shortlisters works.

Liverpool International 10 Biennial On The Approach, Lorenzo Fuzi's single word theme 'Touched' will create climate

The 18th September to the 28 November sees Liverpool once again 'touched' by what Italian curator Lorenzo Fuzi hopes will be multi-layered dense artworks which will no doubt engage us all within a multitude of interpretations, visualisations and inspiration.One particular artist that seemed to be getting headlines is Laura Belem from Brazil who's artwork, 'The Temple of a Thousand Bells' enswarms us into a delicate, spiritual and feminine poetic space that combines legend, fiction and audio composition to lift us into a thousand glass bells of fantastical escape. The experience doubly intensified by it's installation within  National Museum Liverpool's Oratory in St. Johns Cemetery, not usually available to the public. I won't say to much as I know how much it can ruin an experience of a particular artwork if an image is already formed. Laura's work is already available to see right now.

ArtsFest this weekend 10-12th September 2010

If you get time the UK's largest free Arts/Cultural festival takes place all over Birmingham this weekend with over 600 performing visual and digital artists and exhibitions. It was started due to inspiration from the UitMarkt Festival in Amsterdam and extends it's hands out to every part of the arts from ballet to bhangra, dub poetry, indie rock, performance art and exhibitions. Enjoy!

Swiss Art Award Winners 2010

Just to save some of you searching around the net here's the Swiss Art Award winners 2010 who are announced a few days before Art Basel and then exhibited within it:
Simon Frommenwiler, Simon Hartmann, Tilo Herlach, Gabriela Mazza, Christian Wassmann, Beni Bischof, René Fahrni, Joelle Flumet, Clare Goodwin, Marianne Halter, Sarah Hugentobler, Mathias Jud, Pauline Julier, Tobias Kaspar, Brigitta Kuster, Pe Lang, Doris Lasch, Fabian Marti, Anja Moers, Markus Müller, Damian Navarro, Guillaume Pilet, Silvia Popp, Marta Riniker-Radich, Anne Rochat, Pamela Rosenkranz, Nele Stecher, Sahar Suliman, Sönke Gau, Katharina Schlieben, and Christina Vegh-Gronert.

ArtHistoryRag: New Directions- Video Painting

ArtHistoryRag: New Directions- Video Painting http://illusion.scene360.com/painting/5588/innovative-video-painting/

New Directions- Video Painting

Sense of abandonment and invisibility takes theme for Great Britain in this Venice Biennale

The more and more read about Great Britain's entries for the Venice Biennale a sense of familiarity in theme crops up. That it seems is an overall focus on abandonment and invisibility. Scotland's representative Martin Boyce on visiting the site initially for his proposed work at a 15th Century 'Palazzo Pisani', states, ' There was something in the atmosphere and the journey through the different rooms that stayed with me...It had a sense of abandonment.....For some reason I kept imagining the Palazzo as an abandoned garden'.1 His sculptural/installation, 'No Reflections' disrupts the dichotomy between constructed space and real/natural space together with displacing the original building's solidarity or roots reinterpreting your perception of the space. It's the perceived abandonment of the Palazzo that led Boyce to envision the exterior natural space re-entering and re-gaining or sweeping in on the lost space. Boyce's use of, chain made bins and bits of furniture and bedframes adds a sad sense of abandonment to the space. However then there are deconstructed letters on the wall and Boyce has replaced the Venetian chandeliers with Constructivist sculpture in black aluminium which begins to stir up Boyce's previous preoccupation with constructed space, it's interesting that he's deconstructed the letters? Any sense of the living/history, natural elements or resources he sucks the life out of or turns into the functional/constructed. The main piece includes two for one, 'A River in the Trees' and 'Evaporated Pools'. The use of concrete stepping stones together with fake leaves and a dryed up or 'marble pool' again restates his theme of constructed, superficial space. Such abandonment of nature leads to the title, 'No Reflections'. Amazingly this was Boyce's first visit to Venice and clearly it had a huge impact, he commented on the lack of traffic and a general sense of abandonment throughout the city, interesting that he takes Venice's central feature water and drains the life out of it so as to refuse reflection. The piece is quite powerful in the sense that he dares to take the 'majestic beauty' out of Venice, naturally and historically and instead replace it with the irony of a new re-interpreted/ fake 'natural beauty' constructed for you, nature becoming invisible. It raises many questions within the context of one of the places in the World valued so much for it's natural beauty and light together with it's position as forefronter in the creation of constructed artistic beauty. Is it about loss of respect for nature, natural beauty, abandonment of nature/invisibility of its value, the power of the man- made to control and overpower nature and beauty?
What's very strange is that Brit representative Steve McQueen in his video, 'Giardini' takes an almost too simalar approach to that of Boyce, his two screen film piece revolving around Venice mid-winter, post Biennale, post season, post peak life or presence. He again breaks away from conventional views or perceptions of Venetian life but rather than reconstructing nature McQueen presents the winter wildlife of Venice as eerie minimalistic vision of the area around Giardini. What both Boyce and McQueen do take from Venice however, that seeps into their work is a feeling of the gothic,the British Pavilion as the 'haunted castle on the hill'. The 'invisibility' of unseen aspects of Venice or the 'everyday', wild dogs, rain, bells chiming in the background become elevated in importance visually in his minimalist approach. A work very different from his other politically rooted works such as Camera D'Or winner Hunger, 2008 based on the 1981 IRA hunger strikes, focused on Bobby Sands and the British governments treatment of him or his ongoing Queen and Country project which juxtaposes the images of soldiers who've lost their lives in Iraq with the Queen's head on individual stamps as commemorations.
As mentioned in an earlier post the Wales representative this year is Velvet Underground's John Cale with his audio-visual work, 'Dark Days'. Here Cale looks back to his roots and produces a work which expresses the struggle between the disbanding of his homeland and reasons for doing so expressed in the title and respect for his beginnings in the Welsh Youth Orchestra and family. Cale bears resemblance to the above works also in his approach to filming adding a ghostly gothic feel to the piece through his audio/visual autobiographical journey through his old house, focusing on everyday features and his phantom piano playing within the spiritual Welsh chapel, at one point he sits, gets up, sits but never once ends up playing the piano. Its almost a ghostlike travelling back through his past, a past thats there, that made him but was abandoned due to its 'darkness'. He also combines narration, Welsh rugby anthems and the violin one note humming creating ambient edgy moods throughout enhancing artistic experience.However the darkness appears again in the contrasting of this with images of waterboarding, highlighting how the nostalgia contrasts with torture, he himself has claimed he abandoned his home as he felt there was more out there. He wanted to be visible.
Finally the last artist is an extremely interesting up and coming one, Northern Ireland's representative, Susan MacWilliam. She is known for her focus on the paranormal and psychic perception and investigation, focusing on the laboratorial and scientific processes involved. The work is titled, 'Remote Viewing' and involves three works, there is Dermo Optics, 2006 in which she travels to the Dermo Optical Laboratory of Dr Yvonne Duplessis in Paris, where she becomes involved in experiments testing ‘fingertip vision' or a sensory technique in which the eye vision/visiblity is denied as proof. An example of this is an ability to say visualise the colour of something just by touching it say blindfolded. Of course there's a fine art approach to filming, enhancing the experience of the event.The next work is 'Eileen', a fine art biography of the famous Irish medium, Eileen J. Garrett. It features interviews with family and friends and so takes a personal subjective approach studying the social interaction in her life combined with the objective relationship between camera and psychic both portals of exposure, one of life and one of the afterlife.Both exposing a sense of invisibility or the 'unknown', one the scientific depth of parapsychology and the parapsychic scientific process in life many of us don't have a clue about and the other a connection or interaction with a possible afterlife/afterworld.
Finally a series of photographs by Thomas Glendinning Hamilton takes place in the work, F-L-A-M-M-A-R-I-O-N, 2009.The title references French astronomer and psychical researcher Camille Flammarion and also includes a redevelopment of TG Hamilton’s séance cabinet, the Belfast poet/writer Ciaran Carson together with poltergeist researcher Dr. William G Roll.

1 Boyce,M., 'Visual Arts Review: Martin Boyce', 2009, 05/06/09, http://www.scotlandandvenice.com/news/visual-arts-review-martin-boyce

First British showing of Luke Fowler's films at Serpentine

Winner of the Jarman Award 2008 for filmakers and having gained international success it's now time for the Glaswegian to showcase in Britain at the Serpentine until the 14th June. The Jarman Award recognises filmakers who move outside of the filmaking box, pushing boundaries and refreshing perception, Fowler has been compared by critics to the 50s New Wave of British filmakers who broke the mould with their kitchen-sink realism and gritty filming, idealism flushed down the toilet.Fowler produced four 3 minute wonders for Channel Four which involved taking 'everyday life' as a subject. He documents flat tenants, Anna, Helen, David and Lester, in the Victorian house Fowler he used to live in in the West End of Glasgow, some being his neighbours whom he never met previously. Fowler claims he's interested mostly in the relationships of people and between them but approaches filming in his own unconventional way. He takes his work one step further when he moves from everyday subject-matter to individuals who too break with convention in their lives, biographies of unconvention represented unconventionally.For example their is Pilgrimage From Scattered Points, 2006, which covers Cornelius Cardew, an English composer who broke tradition with his alternative, experimental Scratch Orchestra. In The Nine Monads of David Bell, 2006, the life of David, a patient at Kingsley Hall, a centre set up by rebel psychiatrist R.D. Laing. This is a personal project for Fowler who experienced the treatment of mental illness within his own family. Laing believed madness was a product of family and society nothing else and used radical techniques and experimented with LSD in his treatments. Fowler follows Bell’s psychological journey within this context together with including a film that recreates his dreams. Works on paper, including newspapers, which Bell wrote and expressed on are also included.

The depth of Raqib Shaw at White Cube

Raqib Shaw is one fascinating artist with a depth of character and expression that is overwhelming, just viewing his studio within an interview on White Cube's website you get a grasp of his intensity. The gallery appears more of a florists or botanists dream swarmed by rainbows of colour that radiate from the varied flower arrangements invading clusters of his working space, fit for a small wedding. His gallery emanates the vivid palette his works portray highlighting the Persian miniature influence and Indian/Kasmir heritage. The many flowers highlight the importance of nature and a connection to it's flora, fauna, behaviour, power and good and bad forces to him and his work. The title to this show, 'Abscence of God' relates personally to his exposure to Muslim, Hindu and Christian doctrines providing him with a multicultural interpretation of 'God' and 'his' representation. Shaw's work pays definite and clear reference to Persian miniatures that began in the 13th Century but peaked in the 15th and 16th Century.For example you can see a clear parallel in the work of Sultan Muhammed, in works such as "Miraj" (Muhammad's ascent), 1539-43 which like Raqib obtains a depth of intricacy that constantly tickles and tintilates the senses while holding gaze through it's depth of discovery or tale. Raqib's depth is constantly penetrable allowing reinterpretation after reinterpretation but provides a fantasising escapism unlike any other works. Raqib's work are by no means miniature, they take that concept and multiply it repeatedly, he has seven paintings on show here the biggest reaching seven metres. Also featured is his first large sculptural installation titled, 'Adam'. On coming to England Shaw became influenced by Hans Holbein the Younger and in the paintings references his 'Dance of Death' a series of wood engravings. Holbeins miniature or book design and other works are of definite influence and a reproduction of some works aids his own. As with many artists there is a clear interest for Shaw in life and death, mother nature, heaven and hell, Bosch's style relates. In 'Abscence of God VII' its shown how in this exhibition Shaw interveaves classical architecture into his fantasyland integrating West and East. What is most interesting about these works however are the narratives they create, mixing fictional grotesque hybrids with the purity of intricate butterflies, portraying himself as a butterfly catcher hybrid with a broken net. Added to the spectacle of the fantasy is his expansion of palette, a bit like an Indian dish filled with depth of flavour and spice his works involve enamel, acryclic and are transported into fiction via the use of glitter and rhinestones. The vivid palette of colours used projects like an indian spice rack, powerful and bold yet fragmented into a world of fantasy via the use of a scroll to manipulate the surface and create many characters within nature's beauty.
His works have so much to them they can tell a hundred stories time and time again, his liking to Rimbaud is very apparent. While his works portray a rainbow of beauty they also take you to a darker side as does Rimbaud:

'For Hurrah! the wind whistles at the skeletons' grand ball!
The black gallows moans like an organ of iron !
The wolves howl back from the violet forests:
And on the horizon the sky is hell-red...'1

While the paintings take a calmer stance in this exhibition his sculpture, 'Adam' creates an uncomforting disturbing very life-like vision, Adam's head is replaced with that of a bald-like bird, a more crow- like one who is being wrestled by a human-sized highly detailed lobster. There is no surrealism to this though, here fantasy is brought alive, almost as if you were reading Lord of the Rings or Terry Pratchett and the characters suddenly appeared, dark fictional hybrids within your reality.

1 Arthur Rimbaud, 'Dance of the Hanged Men', Document from site Arthur Rimbaud, http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Dance.html, 30th May 2009, from site http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/index-en.php

Arte Povera not so 'poor' it seems..

Tate Modern, London has re-hung one of its wings on level 5 encompassing works revolved around the theme of 'Energy and Process' and by the sounds of critics it is proving to be a great success. What seems to be attracting the most attention apart from Anselm Kiefer is a focus on the 1960s-70s Italian movement, Arte Povera ('poor art') coined by Germano Celant as curator of an exhibition in Genoa in 1967. Although Italy flourished from 1960 with migration from the South slowing down, by 1963 the Socialist Party took over Italy which led to a multitude of problems resulting in the increasing popularity of workers unions, the rising of inflation to account for promised pay rises and eventual economic decline. Student protesting accompagnied this labour protest involving disconcern for Communism, religion, consumerism, traditional family values. Artists from Turin, Milan, Rome and Genoa all formed part of the group, most then being from the poorer half of Italy, bar Rome and used everyday materials to create sculpture, photos, installations, pastiche. It was a focused anti-formal art, leftist based that fulfills process through, '.. the discovery, the exposition, the insurrection of the magic and marvelous value of natural elements...What the artist comes into contact with is not re-elaborated; he does not express a judgement on it, he does not seek a moral or social judgement..he draws from the substance of the natural event..' and from this, 'The first discoveries of this dispossession are the finite and infinite moments of life; the work of art and the work that identifies itself with life; the dimension of life as lasting without end...the explosion of the individual dimension as an aesthetic and feeling communion with nature; unconsciousness as a method of consciousness of the world...for an abandonment of reassuring recognition that is ontinually imposed on him by others and by the social system.'1 Clearly there was a clear retreat back to mother nature for answers and experience due to decreased confidence in socio-political factors and the idealism of consumerism. Arte Povera looked for a more ephemeral mindfulness that lived in the momentary interconnectivity of nature not bound by any didactic control, influence or archetype. Everyday objects in combination with natural elements were popular mediums for 'povera's' expression. Michelangelo Pistoletto's, ' The Venus of the Rags', initiated in 1967, features a copy of Venus classical marble statue facing a huge pile of everyday clothes.Other artists included are Giovanni Anselmo, Lynda Benglis, Anselm Kiefer, Susumu Koshimizu, Ana Mendieta, Marisa Merz, Robert Morris and Michelangelo Pistoletto. Galleries featuring Land art should enhance and stir multitudes of perceptional experience.
Other works by Arte Povera artists have included:
Giovanni Anselmo, 'Untitled, 1968' /'Eating Structure' involves a lettuce squeezed between a large granite block and a smaller granite block, stabilised via copper wire. Once the lettuce deteriorates the wire slackens and the small stone topples. To regain balance fresh 'natural product or lettuce' must be re-added. There's a clear reference to the insertion of nature and it's contribution to balance or bridge the gap between larger forces and the smaller ones.
Alighiero Boetti works with the dichotomy of chance and order, classification, culture and looks 'outside of Western traditions'. He is renowned for a series of embroidered world maps, aided by crafts-workers from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Each country is embroidered as it's national flag but obviously the fact he didn't use embroiderers from each individual country (and of non-Western) raises questions of nationalism, Western control, non- Western regain.The process of 'stitching' also used as a process during a time of global social , economic and political turmoil with Vietnam, Communism and Consumerism is also interesting. "For me the work of the embroidered Mappa is the maximum of beauty. For that work I did nothing, chose nothing, in the sense that: the world is made as it is, not as I designed it, the flags are those that exist, and I did not design them; in short I did absolutely nothing; when the basic idea, the concept, emerges everything else requires no choosing." Alighiero e Boetti, 1974 ² Clearly here is how chance and order play a part in this work.
Obviously these works reflect many conceptual ideas well known to the present but context still separates them and provides fresh inspiration, influence and re-interpretation within contemporary gallery space and arrangement under theme and interaction with variable works.

1 Art in Theory 1900-1990 An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Harrison, C. and Wood, P., Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 1992, pg. 887
2 Quoted in Mappa, Luca Cerizza, Afterall Books, 'Alighiero Boetti', 2008,cited in Wikipedia, viewed 30th May 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alighiero_Boetti