Mr Brainwash's "solo show"

Much better than you could have expected:

Definitely worth a visit if you have a chance.

A day in Hastings

Thanks to our friends (and particularly their mobility and awareness) we braved the rainy weather and paid a visit to Jerwood Gallery opened in Hastings today.

Hastings appeared to me similar to nearby Folkestone, bigger, but less nice. While the main trade street was fairly cosy there were undoubtedly more identical faceless global brands branches, betting and pawn shops, and what specifically caught my eye, many shop signs were just printed in unnaturally bright colours on plastic banners (just as they do in Russia), and there are very few things that can make a shop more ugly and undesirable.

I liked the design of the gallery building - I don't how how well do those "hand-glazed" tiles reflect the dusk sunlight (which was the idea), but they blend almost perfectly with the black wooden net huts surrounding it.

Building the fancy venue ten steps away from boats, stalls and huts used by local fishermen caused a lot of controversy in the town. It is very hard for me as for a random visitor and a foreigner to judge, but I feel that the real reason behind the discontent wasn't just the obstructed view.

For a honest fisherman or woman that gallery with strange people lazing their time away staring at some childish scrawls must be something that seriously challenges their lifestyle - which has been already threatened by market and regulations:

In London the most most famous modern art museum resides in a former power station which industrial assemblies are now serving as lifeless decorations. Boat huts around the Jerwood gallery are very likely becoming the same.

The collection the gallery started with is hardly able to impress someone who is spoiled with a luxury of visiting countless London exhibitions. Some paintings were still good enough to remember and I've written down their details to publish them later on my tumblr, only to find out upon returning home they're not yet online. Anyway we spent more time near windows apparently, taking pictures of the deserted street:

We also had a quick walk in the drizzle to the spectacular hills offering fantastic views on the seashore. The best part was the thickening fog blurring the horizon out and almost hiding the distant objects - that made the perspective very distinctive, and I couldn't help remembering Flatland I read last year.

There is also my full Hastings Flickr set if you are interested.

The Mandela Way tank

A Soviet T-34-85 tank in Southwark is rather famous and has even got its own Wikipedia entry. Originally brought to the UK from Czechoslovakia to be filmed in Richard III set in alternative 1930s Britain (hence tanks and airplanes were required), it went then to a scrap metal dealer and finally to its current owner Russell Gray, a South London developer.

The story of its settlement on the street corner is sometimes regarded as an urban myth as it's too good to be true:

It sits on a rough piece of land belonging to Russell Gray who wanted to build flats here. His planning permission was turned down and so he asked instead to build a tank. Assuming he meant septic tank, permission was granted and Mr. Gray placed a Soviet era T-34 on the land with the gun turret pointing towards the council offices.

There is no direct access to the tank as it is fenced in a kind of a community garden which doesn't look taken care of very well. Still it keeps getting a paint job from time to time and it also features some odd objects inside the fence, e.g. an old telly on the right track.

You might get an impression that it's decaying slowly (as I did myself), but then obviously a tank is a thing which is a bit hard to destroy. Take care in the new year, you steel comrade.

Late Tate

Today's late performance in Tate Britain was a good excuse to revisit the usual exhibition but without the usual crowds.

Maybe it was wine that made me sleepy and apathetic too soon (it seems to be a usual thing to serve alcohol on late events in museums, a tradition I truly admire), but apart from that I can't say I really experienced anything new from the performances themselves. "Define what art is by writing you thoughts down on this large sheet of paper, all together". Meh. Sometimes being creative turns into being creative in a predictable way.

The Crypt Gallery

Walking down the Euston Road today we stopped to take pictures of the St. Pancras Parish Church, and were approached by a gentleman who turned out to be the artist whose exhibition was hosted at the church crypt.

At that time we were the only visitors of the dark crypt behind the enormously heavy solid metal door, and that fact combined with the subdued lights and almost complete silence broken only by the church bell from somewhere above the low ceiling sent shiver up and down my spine. It was totally resembling the setting of a horror film (strange place, sudden acquaintance etc.), but by that I don't mean a bad thing as it's actually a recommendation of the peculiar atmosphere. For those paintings exploiting the uneasy aesthetic of horns and blades spiced up with sexual motives it was a perfect match, I suppose.

Worth a visit if you happen to pass by.

Change of scenery

A year ago I took this picture of a mural near the Chalk Farm station:

Today I found a new one painted at the same wall:

The cheetah was fabulous but I like the successor even more.

When too much is too much

Visiting Tate Modern today I noticed that the pile of clothes in the famous Venus of the Rags installation has grown noticeably.



The figure of Venus looks like it was pressed into the heap now, her cheek resting on a pair of crumpled jeans. The naturalness of her thoughtful pose and confused look are gone completely - to put it simply, it is no longer a witty composition with a kind of message but just random objects stacked on each other.

There is an old photo from 2003 (also, from another gallery) - see the difference.

Sometimes they just try too hard.

A blast from the past

If anyone is interested, I have received a comment to my post of 2009 explaining why I wasn't able to find lion sculptures described in the old textbook.

Somebody in this city has got plenty of chalk

Yesterday we went to check for any traces of protests happened the previous day over tuition fees. Surprisingly, we have found almost nothing even in university areas (tagged walls don't count).

Still there was something unrelated but not very usual we stumbled upon near the UCL:



Yes, it's long so the text version is available in a video description on Vimeo.

The poet can be googled as well as his poems, but not that particular piece. Consider that a première publication.

Sunday

Harrier and Jaguar at Tate Britain:





This is supposed to be an exposure of helplessness of those killing machines (both of the planes had taken part in real conflicts), but for a moment I felt tiny and vulnerable myself instead. People walking around looked like the scavengers around the dead giant's carcass with its surfaces stripped of paint resembling the white bones normally covered by flesh.

Very unlikely anybody in the hall understood fully how had those machines worked and how to build a similar one, witnessing only the shape and the colour. Artists and public were literally feeding on the leftovers technology had given to them.

In other words, the entropy acquired by turning the machine into the art object is most probably less than one it boasted while being functional before.

The Minotaur by G.F. Watts

While the story behind this painting is documented (and is quite straightforward) I can't get rid of my own understanding.

I mean, the Minotaur on this picture is trapped in his spacious prison, with nothing around but sea and stone. Looking at the bird seized by that hideous wretch I can't help thinking of analogies with Frankenstein's monster victims, and also I feel the same tragedy here, a tragedy of rational being wittingly created monstrous and cruel with no other options but to be alone forever.

Anyway, last Sunday I found a new painting to call my favourite.

Breaking the silence

Sorry for delay with postings - I had started a twitter a while ago and then immediately faced that usual problem of it soaking all my thoughts quickly before they get a chance of turning into blog post. I'll improve, but still you can follow me if interested.

Today's news:

a) It snowed. Fortunately, it's still above zero.



b) I've discovered original Banksy's piece almost around the corner:



Apparently, it had been there from September. A good reason to be more curious about your borough.

Lions again

Remembering recent comparison of Trafalgar square and British museum lions, today we suddenly discovered a new pair placed at the opposite side of the British museum building:



In the light Harold Speed regarded those sculptures (the importance of minding material peculiarity while still transmitting original's message), it's perfect, if you ask me - I mean, the mane is successfully simplified and so on. Also, it can be easily compared with Trafalgar square lions for the pose is almost the same and size doesn't differ that much either.

I've even checked the book again if the author had actually these stone lions in his view mentioning British museum, but no, he did really mean little heads on the front side railings.

Safari

Advancing through the guide I had cited from before, the following passage caught my attention:

What are those qualities of hair that are amenable to expression in stone? Obviously they are few, and confined chiefly to the mass forms in which the hair arranges itself. The finest sculptors have never attempted more than this, have never lost sight of the fact that it was stone they were working with, and never made any attempt to create an illusion of real hair. And in the same way, when working in bronze, the fine artist never loses sight of the fact that it is bronze with which he is working.

How sadly the distinguished painter to whom a misguided administration entrusted the work of modelling the British emblem overlooked this, may be seen any day in Trafalgar Square, the lions there possessing none of the splendour of bronze but looking as if they were modelled in dough, and possessing in consequence none of the vital qualities of the lion. It is interesting to compare them with the little lion Alfred Stevens modelled for the railing of the British Museum, and to speculate on what a thrill we might have received every time we passed Trafalgar Square, had he been entrusted with the work, as he might have been.

Obviously, places mentioned are familiar not only to newbie londoners like us but even to every tourist, so today we went to hunt some lions down and to check author's conclusion.

This is the Trafalgar one:



Impressive with its mass, although I can't really say it's breath-taking as a stand-alone sculpture (if no history behind imagined), but for other reason. My perception is stopped far earlier than it comes to bronze or dough or anything. I mean, that time of cheap high-quality photography dominance we're living in accustomed me to expect something to be unnatural (say, plainly geometric or surreally complicated) in an artwork. Just to be lifelike is no longer enough and some emotions must be expressed that can't be caught with a camera that copies shapes and colours religiously.

But what about British museum lions? Here they come:



Remember, the sculptor was complimented for taking material into consideration. If it really was the reason for partition, then his possible way of thinking could be rendered like this: "Hm, the bronze is not a material to represent a lion. Indeed, lions are made of flesh and blood, I've never seen a lion to be bronze. So - eureka! - there won't be a lion carved, only parts of it!"





As I said before, I don't like Trafalgar square lions much, though they are okay for their role in the ensemble. But I really can't understand how British museum railings can be compared with them. First, the very genres are different and second, those parts of lions that are still visible bear the same mane and paws realistic technique as Trafalgar beasts do. Yes, railings lions are more simplified, curls shaped without hair net carved on surface - but I think it's rather a matter of figures size, fine details would be lost under the mould precision limit anyway.

So, I didn't manage to see that difference in the artistic attitude. Maybe it's because of my ignorance. By the way, the idea with the railings wasn't original as I suppose, for there are a number of similar sculptures of the same age within the city centre:



Nevertheless, this walk was more informative than usually.

Sorry, bookworming again

From The Practice and Science of Drawing, 1913:

But while in science observation is made much more effective by the use of mechanical instruments in registering facts, the facts with which art deals, being those of feeling, can only be recorded by the feeling instrument—man, and are entirely missed by any mechanically devised substitutes.

While art is still opposing other activities here, please note that the author is trying to put it into a rational coordiate system with an explanation of an artist being a recorder for feelings, a complex recording device, not yet studied thoroughly but probably would sometime. No references to divine intervention and that pathetic stuff: the nature of many things and processes is unknown but there must be an explanation, and meanwhile we can give them names (i.e. Harmony, Beauty, Rhythm) and use them as black boxes knowing input and output.

[...] beauty is, strictly speaking, a state of mind rather than an attribute of certain objects, although certain things have the power of inducting it more than others

What a lovely Victorian era echo, badly missed nowdays.

Good news everyone

Obama hype is gone and credit crunch motives are almost worked out by now, so street artists sober up gradually and turn to other subjects.

I mean, the last two works by ABOVE are absolutely RAD:

THE NAKED TRUTH from ABOVE on Vimeo.

EARS, TEARS, & FEARS. from ABOVE on Vimeo.

I can't take it anymore

Here is my message to all the so-called street artists:

STOP PUTTING GAS MASKS ON ANY CHARACTER YOU USE!

Another complain is about those recently popular black and white photorealistic wall prints - they are almost always indistinguishable from each other because the technology prevails upon the content in this case and dictates the general style which is often the same.

Sorry for the burst but I have just faced a post featuring both gas masks and greyscale prints.

By the way there are some street art blogs that I read: rebel:art, unurth - street art, Urban Prankster and Wooster Collective. They do repeat after each other sometimes (even using the same photos) but not too often to consider it a problem instead of an oddity.