Last Week: RB Kitaj at the Jewish Museum, Camden and 21-23 June: Teignmouth Folk Festival

Just a quick post to say that it is the last week of the RB Kitaj exhibition at the Jewish Museum in London. This is part of the Obsessions exhibition which previously showed at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The other part is showing at the Pallant Gallery in Chichester and also finishes on the 16th June.

I saw the London exhibition a couple of weeks ago and, although it is relatively small, it is well worth the trip out to Camden to see work by a man who attended art school alongside Caulfield, Hockney and Blake, and was friends with Bacon, Auerbach and Freud. The museum has prepared a  Kitaj Trail leaflet which contains informative links between the Kitaj works and other exhibits in the museum.

Teignmouth Folk Festival

The good weather has come just in time for the Teignmouth Folk Festival which runs from 21st to 23rd June. The programme of over a dozen performers is now available on the Festival website and tickets can also be obtained in advance from there.

The sun shining on the Teignmouth Folk Festival 2006

The Festival is in its 15th year and usually has something for everyone, with Morris dancers and a number of free events, in addition to the the bigger acts in the main venues.

Laura White: We Can Have It All at Spacex, Exeter

Laura White’s We Can Have It All has been running for a couple of months at Spacex and is now entering its final fortnight (ending February 23).

The installation in the main gallery consists of an array of plasticised art works in the main gallery space and three photographic enlargements of trophies put together from mementos and ephemera in the second exhibition room.

White says that she worked for about six months on the assortment of objects on display in the main gallery and how they should be displayed at Spacex. The result is a visual collage (or is it bricolage?) made of art object pastiches. All the objects on display are familiar but are constructed, at least in part, in bright colours from a material closely resembling plasticine. Many are built around a ‘readymade’ tool or object from the home. The resulting work is then displayed on a plinth, elevating it to the heights of Art to be studied and critiqued. This is a clever piece of work which questions the way that we look at objects and the way that they are displayed. At the same time the installation is brightly coloured and playful, and resembles the corner of a crowded auction hall or a museum storage facility.

The second gallery space contains three large photographs. When she visited the gallery at the start of the exhibition Laura revealed her interest in ephemera and the mementos that we collect in the course of our lives. In this respect she is drawing upon material previously mined effectively by Peter Blake. However, rather than simply collecting and displaying this ephemera she has used them to build new Works of Art, and by photographing and enlarging them turns them into objects for which it is difficult for the viewer to estimate their size without examining them closely in detail. The photographs are not hung but are casually propped against the walls. Again, White challenges our assumptions about Art and the way it is displayed.

The exhibition is on for a further two weeks and is definitely worth a look. If you can’t get along to Spacex then the interactive exhibition tour is pretty good – However, it won't convey the issues of scale or of how each individual item is displayed in the way that the artist intended. There is no substitute for simply being there!

The exhibition guide has an excellent reading list for those who want to explore the themes of this work further.

Peter Blake & Derek Booshier at Pallant House

This weekend is the last chance to see the Peter Blake and Pop Music  and the Derek Boshier: David Bowie and the Clash exhibitions at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester (a bit off the SW patch, I know, but worth the journey).

Latest addition to my print collection

I didn't find the Blake exhibition quite as interesting as the A Museum for Myself exhibition at the Holbourne last year - largely because this show is focused exclusively on Blake's work for the music industry. However, the Derek Boshier stuff was all new to me (in the sense of recognising his contribution to rock art). The exhibition reminds us that Boshier appeared with Peter Blake, Pauline Boty and Peter Phillips in Pop Goes the Easel, the seminal film made by Ken Russell for the BBC's Monitor series in 1962. Incidentally, for a great account of the neglected Pauline Boty's life and work see the posts (part 1 and part 2) in Jez Winship's Sparks in Electrical Jelly blog.

... also the proud owner of this one, on tin

Also showing until the 7th is the Artist Pop Stars exhibition which complements the Blake show and contains material by rock luminaries such as Ian Dury and Bryan Ferry. Taken together, these three exhibitions are a fascinating insight to the close links between the art school and rock.

Got a Girl - my favourite - but I've only got a postcard ...

The Pallant also has its own collection of Modern British Art which includes examples of work by many important artists; and (again until the 7th) has a small exhibition of record cover art which includes 'references to the imagery of post-psychedelia, gith surrealistic and art-nouveau designs'. Who could ask for more?

Ian Dury - Danny Bubbles

The Pallant is a unique place. It consists of two conjoined modern and not-so-modern buildings. The not-so-modern part also houses many paintings and artefacts of note and, at the time I visited, a memorial exhibition of paintings by Adrian Berg (now finished) - This was terrific, by the way, especially for those of us now desperately trying to improve our drawing and painting skills to avoid failing our Access to HE art course ... Finally, the gallery also has a restuarant which serves excellent food and a shop which contains more than just the usual art gallery bits and pieces.

Lodger - Boshier and Bowie - got the LP ...

The Blake, Booshier and Artist Pop Stars exhibitions all finish on the 7th October. I recommend that you get down there, if you can.

Adrian Berg

Fishstock, Brixham 2011 and Devon Open Studios

August has been a bit busy: A holiday in sunny Portugal and a number of gallery visits, combined with other time-consuming stuff, hasn't left much opportunity for blogging.

Art in Portugal

So no chance to write about Alex Katz at Tate St Ives, Peter Blake and Pop Music at the Pallant Gallery, or Raw Materials at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery (Jenny Holzer, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman and Laurence Weiner). In a nutshell, these were all good - although, for me, the Raw Materials exhibition was not quite as good as the line-up might suggest.

Raw Materials: Laurence Weiner

Fishstock Festival

But this post is really to alert you to the latest annual Fishstock Festival taking place at Brixham tomorrow 8 September (and to Devon Open Studios that also starts 8 September).

Fishstock 2011

The day-long Fishstock festival is held at the Fish Market in aid of the Fishermen's Mission - a charity supporting fisherman and their families. It is a slightly odd but enjoyable mixture of music, food, crafts, boats - and lots of fish. This year there are a dozen acts appearing on the main stage and a further eleven on the acoustic one. In addition there are over twenty outside stalls and over fifty inside ones showing local businesses, crafts and lots of food. There are also maritime displays and cookery demonstrations. Full details here (music) and here (stalls).

Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin

Last year the weather was pretty good and everyone had a great time. Highlights for me included Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin (appearing again this year) and the Roobs (favourites with the locals) who did a funky and well-selected set of tunes including Teenage Dirtbag, Need You Tonight, Poker Face and Where Is the Love?  

The Roobs

The Fisherman's Friends were the 'stars' of the show. I didn't know much about them previously but they were both funny and entertaining.  The weather looks good again this year, so hopefully it will be terrific day. Here are some more photos from 2011:

Fisherman's Friends

The inside stalls

Paddy's Whiskers

 

Fish

Folk dancers

Maggie Duffy & Mike Weed

  

And, of course, some Tahitian stuff

Devon Open Studios

Devon Open Studios runs from September 8 to 23. It is an opportunity to meet artists in their studios and, if you wish, to buy art direct from the creator. Some artists may demonstrate, give talks or give you a chance to have a go. The event guide is available here or you can pick up a copy at Devon and Somerset libraries, tourist information centres, major art venues, etc.

 

A Top 10 of Popular 20th Century Artists?

I keep intending to write about exhibitions I've attended recently but ... instead, prompted by the discussions we've been having at the Phoenix Ism's group, I thought I'd do a "best-of" or "most popular" top ten list for 20th century artists. Nerdy or what? The first couple are easy enough but from then on it becomes more than a bit subjective - so, basically, I've taken the key factors as originality and continuing influence (and some personal prejudice). This is what I came up with:

The three dancers - Picasso

1 - Pablo Picasso - No explanation needed.

Nude descending a staircase - Duchamp

2 - Marcel Duchamp - Innovator and inventor of "readymades".

Marilyn - Warhol

3 - Andy Warhol - Innovator and hugely influential in a range of media.

The temptation of St Anthony - Dali

4 - Salvador Dali - Showman, technically brilliant, clever ideas cleverly realised.

The dessert: Harmony in red - Matisse

5 - Henri Matisse -  A large variety of modern work including cutouts. Copies of his prints are still hugely popular.

The two Fridas - Frida Kahlo

6 - Frida Kahlo - Stark portrayal of the pain and harsh lives of women. Highly personal self portraits. Iconic.

Reclining woman with green stockings - Schiele

7 - Egon Schiele - Tortured genius, producing intense drawings and paintings.

Composition no 2 - Mondrian

8 - Piet Mondrian - Pioneer of grid-based pictures, Art theorist, joint founder of De Stijl and inventor of neoplasticism.

Red wedge - Lissitzky

9 - The Constructivists - I'm cheating here, counting the constructivists as one - but they would have understood. Literally, a revolutionary approach to graphic design.

Babe Rainbow - Peter Blake

10 - The Brits: Blake/Hockney/Hamilton/Bacon/Freud/Riley/Emin - Cheating again: I'm a huge fan of each of these but it would be unrealistic to place any one of them in the top ten - wouldn't it?

A bigger splash - David Hockney

Anyway, that's it - Not very satisfying as it leaves out so many great artists (whole movements in fact): Braque, Cezanne, Kandinsky and the Blue Rider, Modigliani, Hopper, Frank Stella, Lichtenstein and the other pop artists, Man Ray and the surrealists, the Expressionists, Paula Rego, the St Ives artists, performance artists from Beuys to Yoko Ono, and so on ... And Dali at number 4? ... Oh well

The Museum of Everything at Selfridges

The Museum of Everything exhibition #4 has only a few days left at Selfridges in Oxford Street.

A few days ago I finally got to take a look at what's on show. The store has given over all their Oxford Street windows to the Museum and each window has large scale models of works from the exhibition. A selection of window photos - snapped between Oxford Street shoppers - are shown below:

The exhibition space is in the basement - the Ultralounge - and is smaller than I expected (smaller than suggested by the extent of the window displays). Nevertheless the Museum has packed in over 400 pieces of work.

Tomoyuki Shinki - Incurve, Japan

Previous Museum of Everything exhibitions have contained Outsider Art, but the art has been by recognised artists (to a greater or lesser extent). The best known of these has probably been Peter Blake and material from the former Walter Potter Museum (see previous post on this). Exhibition #4, however, features work from people with developmental and other disabilities from across the world. In the words of the Museum itself it is "Britain's first and only museum for the unintentional, untrained & unknown artists of our modern age".

George Wilson - Creative Growth Art Center, USA

In addition to the work itself there is a lot of interesting background information available in the exhibition about the artists and the studio workshops where they are based.

William Scott - Creative Growth, USA

The exhibition is fascinating and has attracted a large number of visitors - although it has also attracted some criticism, notably from Adrian Searle in the Guardian. It is true that it does feel a bit uncomfortable being critical of some of the work (it's not all brilliant) because the artists are not professionals and are, in fact, disadvantaged in some way or other. However, the great majority of it is as good as the work of 'regular artists' and much of it is considerably more interesting.

Jeroen Pomp - Galerie Atelier Herenplaats, Netherlands

If there is a theme, it is that of the obsessive/compulsive - one that all art-lovers and collectors can easily relate to. You can view some of the exhibition works digitally here - but it's not really a substitute for seeing the show, which has a wider range, including a significant number of sculpted and made objects (the images reproduced here are from the digital museum).

Daniel Green - Creativity Explored, USA

Marianne Schipaanboord - Atelier De Kaai, Netherlands

In addition to the exhibition itself there is a Museum shop containing some rather expensive mementos and the equally expensive books of exhibitions #1 to #4. It seems churlish to criticise but, as a registered charity, you do wonder about their marketing strategy - and why is there no entry charge? However, you can view and buy Museum merchandise online at the Shop of Everything - it's in a good cause.

All in all, however, a great exhibition - And now we can look forward to #5 ...

The last day of the exhibition is 25th October.