Thursday 26 April 2012

Thursday 26th April 2012

April weather. But always worth beginning a forest art session outside.  Today the children plunged into the task in their waterproofs, until fierce rain and the rumble of thunder propelled us inside to continue the session.

I'm running six weekly sessions with a Year 1 class; our topic is 'shape'.  The idea is to explore simple open ended tasks to reinforce and enhance the learning that goes on with the class teacher, whilst experiencing the freedom and adventure of working in larger, less structured spaces; essentially this is an art project so I feel justified in allowing the children to follow the tasks wherever they lead and am often surprised by the results.

This week we were thinking about squares.  After an initial discussion about squares, the children were given balls of wool and scissors and the task: make a square on the ground. Many of the children chose to work on a large scale immediately and they worked out how to make the sides the same length (some by measuring against the first side, others by eye).  Some of the children laid the wool straight down on to the grass and others found sticks to bang into the ground to create the points at the corners of the square first and then tied the sides to the corners.  They were then encouraged to use further pieces of wool to make lines, diagonal or straight inside the squares or to make other squares.  Some children also filled the squares with daisies or more wool.





When it started to pour with rain we went inside and, inspired by Lygia Pape's work cut up small squares made of double sided paper and arranged them on the wall in a grid.  Spending the first half of the lesson outside exploring squares meant the children came to the indoor task with vigour and extreme concentration.













Thursday 12 April 2012

Thursday 12th April 2012

Went with the rest of the world to the Serpentine for the 'private view' of Hans-Peter Feldman's show  yesterday evening.  Knew he was German, from Dusseldorf  like Joseph Beuys, and was interested in the contents of handbags.  So I was intrigued. 



It's difficult to be truly open and responsive to work when the gallery is crowded and I will go back at a quieter time.  These are my first impressions:

Lots of repetition of things that are the same but different: photographs of lips, photographs of women's knees, photographs of strawberries, paintings by different artists of the sea, brightly painted roman type statues, a wall of  plastic flowerpots complete with plastic flowering plants attached sideways, a few glass cases of similar handbags and their contents, caricature pictures of the artist by various artists and, my favourite part of the show, a darkened room with a line of carousels, each made up of toys, touristy items or bits of ornaments, including the queen and a butterfly, revolving in front of a row of lights contained in coffee tins, creating a wall of constantly dancing and changing shadows.  This was fun and reminded me a little of Christian Boltanski's shadow work but didn't excite me in the same way, partly because the disparate elements of the exhibition didn't add up to a feeling of awe and wonder  .  Feldman's work is manically unserious to the point where some of the ideas lack rigor; who do the handbags belong to - friends? acquaintances? strangers?  It feels as if the show is not quite sure what it is doing - not quite a retrospective (perhaps partly because Feldman destroyed much of his work in the 80s) but not simply current work. 

The Serpentine is probably not the best place for this kind of show - not enough room to leave viewing space around the separate elements. But can't help thinking it would have been possible to create a great show there by leaving a lot of the older work out, perhaps really indulging in a bit more interaction because, at its best,  this work inspires playful thinking.

Thursday 5 April 2012

Thursday 5th April 2012

I saw the Zoe Leonard show at the Camden Arts Centre today and I'm very pleased I did. (It was worth spending twenty minutes paying by phone for my parking space in Frognal.)

I had never come across this artist before but knew part of the show included a camera obscura and was intrigued. One of the galleries is blacked out completely except for a 7cm circle cut into the exterior wall; from this circle a lens transforms the light into a giant, upside down image of a section of Finchley Road, complete with traffic lights, walking figures, and an endless stream of cars and trucks. The room is so dark that at first I thought there was somebody asleep on the floor (in fact it was one of a number of bean bags supplied for comfortable viewing). Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I was certain I was on my own and not about to sit on anybody, I became absorbed by the colours and shadows and delighted by the clarity of the moving images. I came away feeling that I had seen the world as a young child does, making new sense out of every new sight. In this eery upside down silent world, I noticed that people's legs are long, that the lights on cars and traffic signals shine like jewels and I felt aware of something connecting all the separate aspects of the scene – it seemed imbued with integrity, certainty, pattern and purpose beyond that of individuals going about their daily business.



In another room different sized piles of postcards of various images of Niagara Falls sit on a table. Some are facing one way, some another. Many of the images are exactly the same, with variations in colours, some looking faded, printed on different types of card, some with postmarks at the top of the images. This feels like somebody's personal, loving, obsessional collection, in the process of being organized and catalogued. A notice asks you not to touch the postcards, so all the messages from unknown tourists remain unread but are implicit. I was reminded of Susan Hiller's 'rough sea' postcards; both have dynamic, startling images of powerful water, used by tourists to send messages home; collected up and collated by the artists like pebbles from a beach. 

A third room shows large analogue photographs of the sun. These look like varying sizes of light blobs emerging through clouds. Each one has the sun in a slightly different place and they feel drenched in light and therefore imprecise and misty.

Overall this is a great show and I am very pleased I now know about Zoe Leonard.