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Nov 2nd: An installation of -real- old tree trunks in the Tate Modern. It was an uninspiring installation. It's been a few years since I last saw the Turner prize and on the whole I found this exhibition not that great, but I loved Mike Tyson's "The Thinker (After Rodin)" (the black vertical shape below). |
November 1 - 3rd: Back in London My alarm clock went off twenty minutes too late and I didn't want to risk missing the boat anyway and sitting out at Hoek van Holland for 4 hours. The trains this week had a lot of delays since the storm on Sunday and so that was why I didn't want to chance taking the train that was likely to be too late. It probably was good to leave in the afternoon. I went back to bed and so was not a wreck that day. But it meant that I ended up missing meeting Gemma and hTra. The crossing was easy and I went watched the move, "Road to Perdiction" on the way over. I really enjoyed being alone. |
 It was a monolithic hexagonal closed form that emmitted a low hum and had a cable into it. Inside was a bank of powerful computers. Like Rodin's sculpture, this work is self-absorbed and I found that a powerful metaphor for not just brain activity (thinking) but also for reflection. The inner (the non-visible, non-material) which is mysterious, and this form was a mysterious encounter. I found his other work, the diagramic paintings on the surrounding walls, just too much 'telling'. They were well executed paintings but didn't excite me. Still I thought he should win the Turner prize on the strength of that one brilliant sculpture (and he did). I was interested in seeing what all the fuss was about Fiona Banner's was about. They had been criticised in the news for their pornographic content. They were very disappointing. The execution of painted pink letters on the wall, looked good, but the content was just sick. Called "Arsewoman in Wonderland" it was a text from a porn film, nothing more. It had nothing to do with sexuality, despite that claim in the writeup. Likewise with her concrete poetry. Aesthetically interesting but conceptually empty. They were letters cast in concrete arranged in a corner with a few recognizable words such as Basel or Far. As far as I was concerned, she was trying to be profound by imitating the chaotic or vulgar. Now where have I seen that before? It would have been more honest to have just thrown them in a corner and not said anymore, or to have just claimed that the words were abstract items. Liam Gillick's work sounded interesting but I found the coloured ceiling, while lovely, too cerebal or too little to get a handle on his work. |
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His display of diagrams looked so boring that I didn't stop to investigate
and I felt a similiar 'tiredness' with Catherine Yass's work. It was beautiful but it felt too derivative. Stan Douglas uses film more imaginatively along with that sensuality. Around King's Cross The York Road end of King's Cross Station in the rain. |
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York Place and King's Cross station on the right It was a bit spooky walking in the dark but I enjoyed the sense of adventure. Finally I found the exhibition I was looking for. It was in the garage space where the orange lines are on the left. I'd walked past it twice! |
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An
area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty was an installation by Richard Wentworth in an old garage at 66 York Way. A conceptual artist and curator whose work I admire, he has lived in the King's Cross for the last 25 years and this installation/ project was a commission by the inner city arts collective Artangel. |
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Some
of their other projects are: Shirin Nesbit's film, Logic
of the Birds at the Union
Chapel, Jem Finer's Longerplayer,
a
musical composition to be heard from a disused lighthouse at Trinity
Buoy Wharf for the next 1000 years, film screenings of new films by Steve
McQueen in a filmhouse, and screenings Matthew Barney's, Cremaster.
In this exhibition, Richard Wentworth had arranged 12 table tennis tables, each bearing drawings of streets by a number of artists, some tactile (for the visually impaired), and some with clever textural twists. The 'maps' also referred the construction going on underground as a principal rail-gateway to Europe. There was also a 'tower' (see image on the right) with a view. It was a periscope giving a 360 degree view of the skyline. There were also videos and film projections of semi-documentaries on the local streets, workers and location. |
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The garage-gallery on the right. Above on the corner you can see the aluminium box-like periscope. There was also a self-guided walking tour, with instructions to find clues or ring a particular number to be found at a particular location. |
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'Ping' was a real table tennis tournament that took place, along with lectures
that related to the 'mapping' of the area in some way. It was a pity that I was in hurry, it was a show worth mulling over. "A map is, along with writing one of our earliest ways of finding our way around in the world. The level of performance in maps varies enormously..." Richard Wentworth |
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Kath's Soho TimeWarp I was rushing to got out with Kath to the music evening she organises in Soho (Piccadilly area). It was such interesting music. A really strange mix -very original stuff by a collection of unusual characters. I really enjoyed it and admire Kath's energy in giving musicians who music is a bit on the edge, some exposure. It was very interesting because some of the music was so unusual that I could think, it is terrible (because of its unfamility - unusual chords, rhythm, etc) or brilliant (because of its originality). It was more like being exposed to performance art in that sense than to music. I guess, because often in the music world, music is presented in more predictable ways than performance art is. And don't get me wrong, all the musicians were very competent. I liked Kath's stuff the best, but, maybe because it was more familiar :) |
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Next day I rolled Huia out on wheels to Sandy's and it was a lot easier than I'd anticipated.
It was great to see Sandy and I told about my Oxford experience and found it a relief to talk to someone who saw that 'colonisation' had so many levels in terms of our histories, etc, rather has something used for a guilt trip. Walking back from her place, I was struck by the presence of autumn and took a few photos. I also got caught in a down pour of rain as you can see in the following photos. |
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And now as it got colder and wetter I took more photos of the York Place area around King's Cross. |
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Being worried about missing the train, I left almost as soon as I arrived back at Kath's and Shaun's, and so I had about a half hour wait at Liverpool St for the train :)
Here is Gray's Road in between rain showers. |
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November 4th: Back in Leiden Now with a vamped up computer and so I let Tama try out photoshop 7. This is his first work. |
Toroa's drawing of Tracey Emin's 2000 photographic work, "I've got it all". |
First we all oogled over the Tracey Emin show. Toroa liked her
photo of her with her naked legs spread out with money
stuffed onto / into her vagina.
I do like her work but seeing it all together like that, I also saw that it was limited too. ie: some works felt 'tired' re: the 'oh I'm a working class woman who's proud to be ... whatever' thing. I'm not knocking her. I think she is very good, but I just found most work, no more than clever one-line jokes. A lot of contemporary art is. It seems to be a current trend. A pinch of 'shock' and a 'punchline' mixed, sometimes with clever sensibility, sometimes not. |
Toroa drawing Tracey Emin's 2000 photographic work, "I've got it all" (on the right wall). Tama is taking time out. |
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And it was interesting to see, although her work was certainly about being a woman, it had little to do with feminism (not that it needed to because she was a woman). It is about issues and because the active charactier is a woman, in that sense it has a feminist edge. Feminism addresses or touches on the imbalance of gender. Emin's work is not about this.
Some works, such as her abortion piece (a video where she talks about having her abortion and her surprise at still feeling awful days afterwards) touches on the feminist in that her story came across as an honest and personal account touching on cause and effect in a woman's life. At the same time, I felt these touches were more accidental and I found that the length and details also trivialized the implications of cause and effect. On the one hand, there's a cleverness in the honest "reality soap" way of her telling, yet at the same time it seems so adolescent. You feel like saying, so what? And yet, some works did seem to have a resonance and her autobiographical presence in all of her work, is the strength in her work. My feeling was that now she's explored the autobiographical of a working class '80's woman that she needs to move on. 
I loved Tama's punchline. He went around as this tied up armless thing, exploring her art. |
Tama making a getaway. In the photo, Tracey is seated in the same chair. I've forgotten now what the title of the book was but it was the punchline, which in my view, ruined the piece.
I also found the sewn texts too sentimental.
Toroa and Tama peeking through the tiny hole at the door at the top of the steps. I liked the messy arrangement of plants and old used wood and the peep hole was good, but... it was a video of someone (perhaps Tracey herself) walking towards you through lush vegetation. I didn't even bother to work out what the punchline was really meant to be --if one was intended. 
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Then there were other pieces that I just loved.
This roughly made wooden tower seemed to be either a spiralling walkway for a cat to reach the bird or a means for showing a bird, seemingly in flight and yet tied to the structure. I like its quirkiness and there was a resonance not only in the associated ideas but also even just in the object than worked well as an object. |
On the other hand, although the text in the neon light suggests the intimate, it comes across as loud. The lighting is too sweet and makes the statement a cliche, not about sensitivity.
It seems that her work is more about taking a found thing and giving it a twist and sometimes this works and sometimes not. I liked her video projection, "Malborough Woman" of herself on a horse wearing a cowboy hat, jeans, boots, and a black bra. The horse walked slowly and gently up and down the beach and she sat serenely, looking with quiet confidence directly at the camera. The music and the English beach backdrop gave it a sadness. At least for me, all English beach resorts look as if they have had their heydey. The song, "Riding for a fall" reinforced the sense of the temporary. The video could be about a number of things; the temporary nature of anything; this woman's confidence; or about switching -the woman instead of the man (from the Malborough posters), or about how switching a sex isn't a switch. Here Emin is just in a bra whereas the Malborough man is fully clothed. I liked it's mix of strangeness and the common. |
I think I liked the video (in the cupbord above) the best. To watch the video you have to hold the door open (It springs shut) and the video loop showed Tracey walking up to and knocking and then banging on a door. On the other side, you saw that it was a loft-like space (perhaps Emin's studio-home) with another Tracey in a dressing gown showing signs of fear at the knocking and at the other yelling for her to let her in.
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This tent is the work, "Everyone I have ever Slept with 1963 - 1995" that made Tracey Emin famous. She has embroidered the initials or names all around the inside of the tent.
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| Her autobiographical openess in her work is touching but I'm not sure if it really is that great. For example the video "Why I never became a Dancer" tells the story of how as a teenager, she had hoped to escape the provincial Margate by winning the British Dancing Championship, but then when she danced the boys called out 'slut' repeatedly until their shouting was louder than the music and she fled the stage. In the video |
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she calls out the names of the boys, adding "This one is for you" while she dances.
I wonder how a working-class audience would interprete her work. I suspect they would find it uninteresting. I found this work irritating but am not sure why. |  |
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Perhaps because of the way she dances (so adolescently). It felt as if she was poking at a wound to make it look worse. Or perhaps this is a world I left behind myself and don't see much point in making art about.
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 In the new wing there was an exhibition of work by contemporary Dutch artists. The green wall painting and couch was by Lily van der Stokker. The text reads: "15 (guilders or Euros) on the fridge", and on the other side it reads "to buy tuna with" The installation on the left was a pile of newly stretched canvases stacked with paper flags and streamers spread over and around them. |
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We also went to the Stedelijk to see the McCahon show (a
New Zealander who Rudi Fuchs has labelled as the van Gogh of the south pacific).
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 It was wonderful to see his paintings -- many I'd seen before -- very serene / peaceful. |
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text to come |
You must face the fact
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You must face the fact |
For
the |
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The Foundation for International Dutch Hague art (Stitching Internationale Haagse Kunst) had commissioned Jessy to organize an exhibition of Hague-based migrant artists. Below, in the foyer of the library, Jessy had asked each of the 16 artists to give him something out of their archive - something they had kept or was important to them personally, rather than an art-work as such. Above: an overlarge Turkish bread by the Turkish artist,,,, |
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Left:
Installation of burn't newspapers, rags, etc by Bali bron artist, Komang
Suaka. |
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Above: A box of dried leavesLeft: Blown glass object |
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Then we went to see the
current exhibition at Quartair, paintings by contemporary Dutch artists
by a Hague private collector, and then to the opening of a new art shop.
There we bought an vinyl record which has been molden into a bowl as a
birthday present for Jacqueline. |
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November 17th:
Tama's latest project Tama has been breeding crystals for the last few weeks. Mostly they are solutions of various types of salt and food colouring and the trays are stacked on the kitchen heater. He gave a presentation about crystals for his class, but I think he was already busy making them before he decided to make the presentation. |
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He now has rows of neatly stacked and labelled match boxes full of these Tama-made crystals. He got a good mark for his presentation at school. He has also started writing poems again. See December for some examples. |
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The
rest of November |
Toroa eating a "mousetrap". When he arrives home, the first thing he does
is make and eat two huge cheese, tomato and pickle sandwiches. He seems
to have grown up a lot since September. He much more responsible about his
homework and organizng himself for school (he has too, we don't do it) and
he growing taller, even though he is still the shortest in the whole school. |
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23rd: Opening of 9 x 9 at the the CBK (Centre for Visual Arts) in Leiden. It was an artist exchange of 9 Hungarian artists with 9 Dutch artists. One of the Dutch was Fleur, one of those in the Oxford exchange and so I expected all the others to be there too. It was a strange opening for me, partly, because I senseed that the other Leiden artists from our Oxford exchange were avoiding me. |
Installation and photographs by Hungarian, Imre Bukta. He hung a real oven on the wall out of which tiny wooden sledges were attached along a steel wire connected to a cooking pot. |
| It was also weird because the Hungarian artists were not introduced and I knew that they must probably be there somewhere. I made several attempts to meet them and then in the end asked the curator, who was very flustered, but did point out Imre. A man in his 50's. I found it strange that here were nine artists and there had been no opporunity that I was aware of, to meet them. Afterall it was an artist exchange. Unfortunately, I took too long to get to the opening the following day in another gallery and so missed meeting Imre again and all the Hungarian artists left that afternoon. | 
Another funny thing, was that the mature work was installed in the back gallery while the more traditional and abstract work was hung in the front galleries. For me it was fine. There was very few people around the work I found the most interesting. But I almost didn't bother walking around to the back because I didn't find the paintings that interesting. To December 2002 |
